Bad Americans
It’s coming. Mark my words. It’s coming. Soon there will be a debate on what it even means for something to be a school shooting.
Senator Chris Murphy gave a short and harrowing speech on the floor of Congress yesterday after the school shooting in Florida. What some people are going to pick up on is not the meaning behind his words, but the fact that he said this was the nineteenth school shooting of the year.
I’m not here to pick nits. Murphy’s statement shook me. But he was a bit off. The most aggressive data set I’ve found defines a school shooting as “any time a firearm discharges a live round inside a school building or on a school campus or grounds.” And for that, there are 18. But only a relative few have resulted in fatalities.
If Wikipedia hasn’t steered me wrong, there have been 20 gun deaths in American schools in the first seven weeks of the year. That’s 20 too many. If it keeps up at this pace, there will be 150 kids killed in school by guns this year.
For sake of comparison, in 2016 there were 2,820 kids 13-19 killed in car crashes. Add that to the 723 kids under 13 who were killed as passengers vehicle occupants, and you’ve got a devastating 3,500 lives lost. (Source: iihs.org)
This is not meant to minimize yesterday’s tragedy. More than anything else, I’m sharing these numbers because I’ll need to explain this to my own kids before they get on the school bus. This is how they will not be afraid to continue on the business of everyday life. And this is how I’ll be able to go through my day knowing that most likely we’re only days away from the next “school shooting”.
At the very least, Americans are bad at calculating risk.
To lighten the load a little bit, and keep you from watching all those unsettling videos from yesterday, today I’m sharing some funny and instructive videos I stumbled into about more things Americans are bad at doing.
Kids Can Cook
Sometimes you need a good kick in the ass.
Oh yeah. Happy Valentine’s Day. You know, to those who celebrate. It’s also Ash Wednesday. Hopefully you had an enjoyable Fat Tuesday.
Last night I was lucky enough to be one of the parents checking out Tech Valley High School, which even though I’ve now seen it with my own eyes, doesn’t actually seem entirely real. It’s a bummer that admission is based on a lottery instead of interest or talent, because my little budding computer scientist would love nothing more than to spend his days applying math and science to solving problems.
But so it goes.
Earlier on Fat Tuesday I was actually getting fat, and feasting on a couple of grilled cheese sandwiches from The Cheese Traveler. It was my first time in the shop since I had to vote against them at Melt N’ Toast. The catharsis is real. And maybe it was good that Eric wasn’t there.
Baby steps.
As I was eating grilled cheese sandwiches, thinking about grilled cheese sandwiches, and talking about grilled cheese sandwiches, an interesting topic arose. At what age can a kid be taught to make a grilled cheese sandwich?
Valentine’s Day Fail
There’s this crazy thing that happens when kids get older.
On one hand they take up far less time as they can independently do so much on their own. For example, last night when I was off to traffic court, I forgot that I was supposed to feed the kids before I left. So as I was putting on my suit, the kids heated up their own dinners in the microwave.
Before you jump on me for every word in that last sentence, dinner was leftover whole wheat spaghetti with homemade arugula pesto. We may have fallen down a few rungs, but we’re not quite yet at the nuking frozen meals stage.
On the other hand, older kids take up far more time because the school projects they are involved in are more elaborate. And even without team sports, after school activities can become a logistical challenge.
Wednesdays are the worst. Which, naturally, is when Valentine’s Day falls this year.
Family Time
Back in December I wrote about The Quite Demise of Family Dinner. Having a daily blog is a lot like having a diary. In this case, it’s useful to see that the state of Family Dinner has actually improved a bit from its nadir at the end of last year.
It does not feel like an improvement however.
The encouraging writer might try to tell readers how to make Family Dinner work despite it all. What I find amazing is how hard it is to execute three evenings at home around the dinner table with two kids who aren’t into sports, and two parents who both have pretty flexible schedules.
Giving advice on the matter to single parents, families of athletes, or those homes with two full time working parents seems like the hight of hubris. That said, there are a couple of things we are doing to try and improve the situation.
Melting
If I’m not mistaken, today is the day that the world gets together to show the power of cooperation as citizens of the world. And as fate would have it, it’s also the day our federal government shuts down (at least for one hot moment) because two political parties couldn’t agree on the budget.
But I’ve been in a self imposed online news vacuum. I’m staying off Twitter as much as possible. I’ll stay up on what’s happening by reading The Economist. That’s as real as news gets. I’d recommend you pay them the exorbitant fee they want for weekly delivery. Even if you don’t read it every week, you’re paying to support real journalism. And that’s not cheap, but it’s important.
Shall we talk about the weather?
I’m looking ahead to next week, and do you know what I’m seeing? Days above freezing and nights below freezing. For those who live in the maple belt, that’s sap running weather. I don’t have any trees to tap, and I know just enough about this subject to be dangerous. But even if the sugar shacks are still shuttered for the season, this is just another sign of the spring to come.
Maybe there will be more snow on Tuesday, however it will soon melt away. Hey, speaking of melting, this seems like the perfect time to finish my rant from yesterday. Because politics aside, I’m deeply concerned about a civilization that prizes things that melt in your mouth.
Going Soft
School lunches. There’s a post percolating about the vile state of school lunches. It’s amazing to think that what’s being served today is in any way an improvement from any point in history, but it’s true. Actually “flabbergasting” might be a better word.
Today’s post isn’t that.
However, since the school lunches are abysmal, my kids bring lunch to school almost every day. There is one exception, which we may have discussed in the past, when the cafeteria serves “Italian Dunkers”.
It’s only because I’m packing non-refrigerated lunches on a daily basis, and shopping in the grocery store for reasonably good choices to fill the kids’ lunch sacks, that I realized an alarming trend.
Killing Winter
Winter is dying. That may take a certain amount of hubris to say on the day of a snowstorm and a low of eighteen degrees. But that doesn’t make it any less true.
The days are getting longer. The sun’s rays are getting stronger. Winter, like the other seasons, will be gone before you know it. So take this as your friendly reminder to make the most out of the opportunity.
I for one, have at least one more big batch of chicken bones in the freezer. Maybe two. With luck, I’ll be able to find some time today to fill up the pressure cooker and fill up the house with the glorious smell of chicken stock. There’s nothing quite like that aroma to keep the cold at bay.
And when it’s all done, I’ll be able to chill down the hot golden liquid in the freezing garage.
But I haven’t made a batch of chili this winter. There has been no bolognese. I did not poach a dutch oven full of tonno del chianti in olive oil. The annual pot of split pea soup hasn’t materialized. I haven’t cooked a single bowl of chana masala. And I forgot all about red beans and rice. Heck, we still are sitting on pounds of slow cooker pulled pork in the chest freezer.
Seriously, this job thing has really cut into my cooking.
With the snow storm raging today, it’s probably a good time to make sure you know about a winter festival that’s happening this Saturday in Schenectady, and the other bloggers I’m going to see while I’m there.
The Whiz
Four years in Philadelphia taught me all about the glory of Cheez Whiz.
That’s actually how you spell it. Four years in Philly didn’t teach me that. In fact, I have a mental block on the spelling of this shelf stable Kraft “cheese dip”. The only way I know that the spelling is correct is because I’m looking at a jar of the stuff as I write these words.
In college I would go to the dining hall and put Whiz on my fries. I’d add it to cheesesteaks. I’d pump it on burgers. If you had some corn chips and jalapenos, Whiz would turn your meager lot into nachos. On those occasions when I might be eating vegetables, Whiz could find its way onto a pile of broccoli. For as much Whiz as I’ve eaten over the course of my life, until this past weekend I never ever even considered buying it at the store.
Really, it goes against everything I hold dear. So what gives?
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