Welfare Child

When I was born, my father was a broke college student and my mother worked at one of the campus cafeterias.  Upon dad’s graduation, he accepted a low-paying teaching job at a small rural high school while mom took a part-time job at the local bakery.

 

To put it bluntly, we were poor.

 

Not dirt poor.  We were never left wanting for food, clothing or shelter.  But, in those early belt-tightening days, mom and dad couldn’t necessarily guarantee all three without a little assistance.

 

So they did what millions of Americans are forced to do every day.  They swallowed their pride and asked for help from the government.  They went on food stamps and, consequently, were able to maintain a healthy family unit through those first few difficult years.

 

We were, as some might put it, part of the 47%.  The takers.

 

Fortunately, our dire financial circumstances didn’t last long.  When I was a toddler – shortly after the birth of my siblings – dad got a nice pay raise when he was hired at a bigger school (and a few years later at the local community college) and mom went to work at an optometrist’s office in town.

 

My parents were able to get off the government dole through ambition, determination and hard work.  By the time I finished high school, we were living the definition of the middle class American Dream, complete with a nice house, annual family vacations and plenty of other comforts that many people are forced to do without.  All in all, we represented a very American ideal – we were a self-made success story.

 

But, my folks weren’t really 100% self-made, were they?  Without a taxpayer-sponsored safety net to help kick-start their future, I shudder to think what might have happened to our family.  Would we have been able to ever climb out of poverty?  Would my brother and sister have ever been conceived?  Would we have had chances to play sports, go to Disney World and eventually graduate from college with minimal debt?

 

The answers to all those questions is, of course, “who knows?”  But, I think it’s safe to assume that my mother and father would have had to sacrifice at least some of the luxuries they were able to provide.  And, I can say with some certainty that I would not have the opportunities I have today if it weren’t for the help we received way back in the late ‘70s.

 

I share this because I hope it helps at least a few skeptics connect the dots.  That it helps them realize the average person collecting welfare, food stamps, Medicaid, etc. is not a lazy freeloader, but more likely someone who has fallen on hard times and may not be able to get back onto his or her feet without a little boost.

 

Are there people who game the system?  Sure, and they need to be held accountable.  But would you take away from the many who aren’t to punish the few who are?

Dear Sarah...

"I’m speaking up for him and his 1st Amendment rights and anybody else who would wish to express their not anti-gay people sentiment, but their support of traditional marriage..."

- Sarah Palin, defending Dan Cathy, President of Chick-fil-A

--

Dear Sarah:

Please study up on the Constitution.  The First Amendment protects individuals from being LEGALLY punished for their speech.  Last time I checked, no one from Chick-fil-A has been arrested for speaking up against gay marriage.

If anything, this is an ideal case study for what makes our democracy great.  Dan Cathy can say basically whatever hateful things he wants with NO fear of government reprisal (the deal with idiot running Boston is a conversation for another day – his is the kind of over-the-top reaction that makes liberals look bad).  Conversely, consumers are well within their rights to choose not to do business with a company that attempts to undermine a lifestyle they support.

Think about that.  A captain of industry speaks his mind freely.  Some agree with his stance, some do not.  Those not in agreement campaign to boycott his business, while many who agree go out of their way to show support.  Ultimately, the business will succeed or fail based not on any actions of government, but on the feelings of consumers.  It’s the perfect marriage of democracy and capitalism which – if I remember my elementary school Social Studies correctly – are the two primary foundational principles upon which our Union was established.

In summary, Sarah, if you want your political views to be taken seriously by anyone outside the fringes of the Tea Party, please find yourself an old Civics textbook and start reading.

Sincerely,

All of us who apparently understand the Bill of Rights better than a former Vice Presidential candidate

Sight for Sore Eyes

At some point in the second grade, I started periodically coming home from school with blinding headaches.  I can remember writhing and crying in agony on my parents’ bed praying for the pain to stop.  I can be a bit of a drama queen, so I’m sure I overdid it significantly, but still, it hurt like hell.

Over the course of the school year, these episodes became more and more frequent.  It didn’t take Dr. Oxley, the family optometrist, too long to realize that a combination of a desk in the back of the classroom and rapidly degenerating vision were causing the grief.  On the second to last day of school, I put on my first pair of glasses.  Oversized with bulky, brown plastic frames – they were NOT a model of high fashion.

For the next 28 years, my life became a never-ending cycle of increasing prescriptions and thicker lenses, then bifocals, then soft contacts, then disposables and, finally, in my early thirties, when my eyes could no longer handle the strain of the slick ribbery discs anymore, it was back to glasses nearly full-time.  While my latest pair of specs are a bit more stylish than those of 1984, they still provided all the same dilemmas – smudges, grimy noseguards and poor grip in any sweat-inducing environment.

But that all started coming to an end on Tuesday, March 13, 2012, when I placed a call to the folks at Clear Choice Custom LASIK Center (along with a few other clinics) to inquire about corrective surgery.  You can imagine my surprise when they were able to get me in for a pre-op consultation two days later and then scheduled my surgery for March 23 (three days ago as of this entry).

On the day of my surgery, I woke up with 20/475 vision and by 2:30 p.m., was 20/15.  Walking out of the clinic that afternoon and being able to read the street signs was one of the most euphoric experiences of my life.

So here comes my sales pitch, directed primarily at any of my 18 loyal readers who are considering LASIK surgery:

Do it.

Here are a few of the things I did this weekend that I have literally NEVER been able to do without the aid of corrective lenses:

• Drive a car
• Mow the lawn
• Watch my kid and dogs romp around at the park

I spent the better part of Friday night lying in bed staring at a door frame outside our bedroom, admiring the sharp, crisp edges and angles.  Dorky?  Yes.  But don’t knock it until you try it.

Nevertheless, I don’t want to totally oversell it, so I’ll lay out some of the pros and cons I’ve experienced to help provide a more balanced viewpoint:

Cons

• When the anesthetic wore off after the surgery, the burning sensation in my eyes was almost unbearable until I was able to get into bed and keep them shut for a few hours
• I’ll have sensitivity to bright lights and some dimming of vision in the dark for the next week.
• I’m experiencing a lot of dryness and abrasiveness and, along with a week of prescription medication, will need to apply artificial tears for the next few weeks.
• I’ll have periodic blurred vision during the healing process.
• I have to tape these dopey protective shields over my eyes when I sleep to ward off the impulse to scratch, rub and squeeze.
• I have to wear sunglasses outdoors at all times for the next seven days, which looks pretty stupid when it’s gray and rainy outside.
• I have to be very cautious to keep foreign substances out of my eyes.  This includes showering (and drying off) with my eyes shut for the next week, which is not easy when you have my level of (un)coordination.

Pros

• I. CAN. SEE.

You’d be surprised at how drastically that one Pro outweighs all the Cons.

So, as I said, do it.  But don't be afraid to shop around.  There are clinics everywhere that provide the service.  I only have three pieces of advice:

1. Don’t make a decision based on price.  Cheaper probably isn’t better, but that doesn’t mean the most expensive is your best option either.
2. When you make your initial calls, ask a lot of questions.  This will help you set a comfort level.  Do the same if/when you go in for a consultation.
3. Ask around.  You’ll be amazed at how many people you know have had a LASIK procedure.  Two of my neighbors had theirs done at Clear Choice and gave rave reviews.  This did wonders to ease my nerves before my surgery.

I’ll close by recommending that you at least consider the folks at Clear Choice – at least if you’re in Northeast Ohio.  They’re friendly, they’re experienced and their clinic includes a little “café” that is always stocked with complimentary fresh drinks and cookies.  Here’s how you can find them:

Clear Choice Customer LASIK Center
7001 S Edgerton Rd, Suite D
Brecksville, OH 44141
(440) 740-0400

http://www.clearchoicelaser.com

Trust me, once you make the decision, you’ll “see” why I’ve made such a fuss. (nyuck nyuck)

A Jobs Well Done

Today’s Internet has been flooded with tributes to Steve Jobs, from one sentence tweets to pages-long homages.  There’s no questioning his brilliance.  He brought modern technology to the masses.  He made complexity simple.  He made “nerdy” pursuits fun. 

But I think, most importantly, he introduced beauty to an unbeautiful world.  Here’s how I know:

For Father’s Day, my wife bought me an iPod Touch.  Frankly, I didn’t need it – I already had a Droid 2.  But, as soon as I tore off the wrapping paper, I was hooked.  Even the box was stunning in its artistic simplicity.  And, the iPod itself was dazzling!  It was gleaming silver.  It was sleek.  It rested perfectly in my hand.  In a word, it was gorgeous.  I liked to look at it as much as I liked to actually use it.  My Droid – ugly and clunky – immediately went to the wayside, used only for the occasional phone call or text message.

Unfortunately, one day later, the Touch fell onto a concrete floor.  It was still functional, but shattered – the screen barely legible under a spider web of cracked glass.

Getting it repaired took a few days and, when it came back, we made sure to eliminate future breakage risk by covering it with a heavy-duty rubber case.  It was now protected from the inevitable mishaps of its clumsy owner.

And I immediately loved it less.

It was like covering Aphrodite with a burka.  The iPod still functioned as it had before.  The apps were the same.  The screens were the same.  But the experience wasn’t.  It was heavy.  It was bulky.  It was inelegant.  It was disappointing.

Don’t get me wrong – I still love my iPod and am incessantly tinkering with it.  It’s fast, it’s got the best app store on the market and it has great multimedia capabilities.  It’s the best PDA I’ve ever owned, even without the cellular capabilities of a smartphone.

But it’s no longer a thing of beauty.

And, that, in my opinion, was the genius of Steve Jobs.  From the first iMac to the latest iPad, the Apple products that bore his mark of leadership were as well suited for display on a living room credenza as they were in an office cubicle.  Think about it … when’s the last time someone came up to you to show off their hip new BlackBerry or HP Pavilion? 

Jobs insisted, sometimes militantly, that form be inherently married to functionality.  No innovator in recent history – from Ben Franklin to Henry Ford to Bill Gates – understood this better than he did.

And I’m not sure anyone ever will.

Blow Up the BCS!

I like symmetry.  It’s why I was a mediocre architecture student – great engineer, terrible artist.  But sometimes my boring, balanced view of the world can come in handy.  And that’s why I think I have the solution to fix the mess that has become of I-A (Bowl Subdivision) college football.  And, since it’s somehow been consuming me for the past few days, I guess I’ll commit it to writing, even though I know there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell anything like this would ever come to fruition.

• There are currently 124 (or so) teams in I-A.  Add a few worthy programs from I-AA (Appalachian State, for example) to round it out to a nice even 128.
• No more conferences – they’ve become a mockery anyway.  Instead, to borrow from Ohio high school football, align schools into eight geographical regions and assign 16 teams to each region.  Then break each region into two eight team divisions (or “districts”).
• Follow the Minor League Baseball model and further break everything into a top-level and secondary level (like AAA and AA in MILB), so you have 64 schools in 1-A-1 and 64 in I-A-2.  In Season 1, schools would have to be assigned at the discretion of some sort of ranking committee.
• In an 11 game regular season, schools play everybody in their region, as well as a few outside of it.  1-A-1 and 1-A-2 schools would never play each other (no more cupcake games!).
• The top teams from each district play for the regional championship, with these winners advancing to an eight team playoff to determine the National Champion.  In other words, there would be TWO postseasons, one for 1-A-1 and another for 1-A-2.
• More borrowing – this time from European soccer: At the end of the season, the last place team from each 1-A-1 district is relegated to 1-A-2 the following season and the first place team from each 1-A-2 district is promoted.  The geographic alignments at both levels would mirror each other making it a seamless swap each year.

Think about it, by getting rid of conferences and the BCS, you eliminate the “no respect” complaints of programs like Boise State and TCU.  Schools would earn or lose respect and championship opportunities based entirely on their on-field performance and never because of conference affiliation or biased polls.

Plus, with this setup, you’d still have 32 1-A schools playing at least one postseason game, meaning you could theoretically maintain some sort of Bowl system, albeit with the elimination of many second-tier games (Who cares about the New Mexico Bowl anyway – besides gamblers?).

I’m sure someone with more smarts than me could easily start poking holes in my idea, considering I came up with it in about 15 minutes.  Nevertheless, with the system’s current mess, I haven’t seen anybody else bring anything to the table (aside from some terrible ideas over at ESPN.com).

Until I do, I’ll be busy doodling nice proportional squares and circles in my notebook.