Trash map

Despite the fact that it's 10 years past the millenium, we still fail as a people to understand the consequences of our actions.

Look at the amount of waste we landfill, for instance while Connecticut throws away only half a pound a trash a day per person, other states exceed 10 pounds per person per day -- including Nevada where nearly 17 pounds of trash per person are thrown away.

Nevada can blame the fact that it's a state that draws many tourists, thus increasing the per capita totals.

But in Indiana, we still throw away nearly 10 pounds per person and you can't blame the status of being a tourist attraction as the reason.

And my home state, Wisconsin, isn't far behind with about nine pounds per person.

Here's a map I made that shows the best -- in lightest colors -- versus the worst -- in darkest colors.

Missing Michael Jackson's mom

I saw her. I swear to God.

I was driving down the alley between Roosevelt High School and the Jackson family homestead at 2300 Jackson when I saw Kathryn Jackson, the mother of Michael and Janet and LeToya, et. al.

I had finished my shift at the Post-Trib and decided, on a whim, to drive by the Jackson house in Gary because it was the day before the the one-year anniversary of Michael's death.

After turning down the road that separates 'Velt and the Jackson house, I saw a distinguished women step from a blue Hyundai and it looked just like Kathryn. I had to drive around the block to get a parking spot and by the time I walked to the house, Michael's mom was still outside. But because I made the mistake of carrying a reporter's notebook, in case I wanted to record what I saw, I was swamped by people who wanted to tell me what they'd seen. Kathryn remained outside but I missed a decent photo of her. And because of poor planning, I had only my cell phone for a photo.

So the only photo I could get was Kathryn's bodyguard standing outside the front door.

I talked with some regular people, including Vanessa Lewis, who received a hug from Kathryn and told me repeatedly how it was a blessing from God. Others wanted to know what paper I worked for and they wanted to share their stories in print. (It turns out that there are a fair number of shirt-tail relatives, who remain unimpressed by my last name.)

I remain impressed by the outpouring of love from Michael's fans, despite all the allegations. The house has become a shrine to him, his music and the message he intended to send through that music.

But I'll tell you the most striking thing is this 79-year-old woman, who has a mansion in California and tacit control of tens of millions of dollars, returning to her home of 20 years. She comes back to spend time in a home that is smaller in size than her garage. It's a home of 400 square feet where she raised nine children along with husband Joe.

Do you know what she was doing?

She was having dinner in her old house with her sister and other friends and family.

It can only mean that the old place remains close to her, to the formation of her children and to the lives of her grandbabies, for whom she now cares.

Home is home, even if it's thousand of miles away physically, and a million miles away metaphorically from where she now resides.

But it's also a sign of a woman who knows where her roots remain, and how important it is to feed the roots that feed not just her but the children of Michael and her other kids.

Further, the humility of eating in a house probably as large as her formal dining table in California shows that she knows what is most important.

It is home, and family and the atmosphere that made both.

I didn't get a close-up view in my two hours there, but I did get a feeling from both Kathryn and the small group waiting outside -- and both rang strong with true love.

A newspaper philosopher came I

The New York Times has introduced a blog about philosophy -- and who says newspapers are dying?

Of course, as a journalist and pretend philosopher I'm fascinated. And so are at least the 787 people who thus far have commented at http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/16/what-is-a-philosopher/?scp=1&sq=philosophy&st=cse.

Simon Critchley, best known for having the most English name possible without using "Lord" or "Knobblybottom" in his name, starts off with the question, "What is a philosopher?"

And like most philosophers, Critchley has more wind than a thousand head of dairy cows (which are responsible for 18 percent of greenhouse gas emissions by the way).

In his first post, Critchley Knobblybottom asks the question: What is a philosopher?

He then goes on to outline the history of the question going back all the way to Thales, considered the first philosopher because he proposed, "All is water." (Important note here: He never tasted my incredibly dry martinis.)

But the answer, like much of philosophy, is less clear in his explanation.

Let me suggest that a philosopher isn't just someone who asks questions. We all do that. Asking questions doesn't make you a philosopher or a cop or a doctor or a journalist.

What would make you a philosopher -- and not one of the other many question-seeking jobs -- is how you go about getting the answer. And I would suggest -- for your approval or disapproval, as my mentor Dr. Richard Behling would have offered -- is that it is a mixture of the empirical and the logical, along with dashes of psychological, sociological, historical and now scientific.

The point of philosophy, it seems to me, is getting to the truth of the question. If the question is, "Why is the sky blue?" we don't spend much time with the esoteric, "What is blue?" Instead, we understand the a priori knowledge and build on it as we have about how the light of the sun refracts through the lens of the Earth's atmosphere. Simple stuff. And yet not, as we're often unlikely to come to easy answers to more difficult and less obvious questions.

Still, I find it exciting that a major American newspaper would begin such a discussion -- which might answer the question, "Who is the newspaper and philosophy dork?" Answer: Look in thy mirror.

Can you spell socialist?

There's nothing in the Constitution about spelling.

But that didn't stop President Theodore Roosevelt from forming the Simplified Spelling Board.

With funding help form Andrew Carnegie, he sought to to simplify the strange, contradictory spelling of English -- particularly American English.

Started in 1906, the panel immediately met with resistance, first from newspapers. "We dont neid know speling rools," was the common claim of the day. Or something like that, given I made up that sentence entirely.

Even the nation across the pond, England, complained there was only one English member of the board that would standardize spelling of, um, English. So, to appease the British, Roosevelt appointed three more Englishmen to help standardize spelling.

(That reminded me of the great second paragraph of a short story by Canadian humorist Stephen Leacock, writing in about 1900: "But the scene of this narrative is laid in the South of England and takes place in and around Knotacentinum Towers (pronounced as if written Nosham Taws), the seat of Lord Knotacent (pronounced as if written Nosh). But it is not necessary to pronounce either of these names in reading them."

Aggrieved as the panel might have been by biting journalistic and cartoon commentary, they pushed forward and issued a list of 300 words with more to come.

This form the wikipedia entry about the board:

"The Board's initial list of 300 words was published on April 1, 1906. Much of the list included words ending with -ed changed to end -t ("addressed", "caressed", "missed", "possessed" and "wished", becoming "addresst", "carest", "mist", "possest" and "wisht", respectively). Other changes included removal of silent letters ("catalogue" to "catalog"), changing -re endings to -er ("calibre" and "sabre" to "caliber" and "saber"), changing "ough" to "o" to represent the long vowel sound in the new words altho, tho and thoro, and changes to represent the "z" sound with that letter, where "s" had been used ("brasen" and "surprise" becoming "brazen" and "surprize")."

But both people and institution had enough. a U.S. representative -- from Indiana no less -- submitted a bill that said the government would have none of this new spelling. The bill passed unanimously.

The next year, Roosevelt was watching a naval review with a boat launched by a newspaper passed by. It's name was "Pres bot." Roosevelt laughed and waved at the boat named jokingly at his effort to fix American spelling.

A death float

I'm perpetually six weeks behind on reading my subscription to The New Yorker, largely because I try to read everything in each issue.

My most recent favorite, which I read today, is "The Ice Balloon," by Alec Wilkinson. In one of the countless stories we've never heard, this is about S.A. Andree, a Swede who in 1896 had tried to float a balloon over the then undiscovered North Pole.

He brought along two fellow adventurers, although he beginning didn't auger well when just after taking off, the balloon sank into the water and the crew had to begin unloading ballast.

The three didn't come within three hundred miles of the north pole, ditching the balloon and beginning a wayward journey pulling their own 350-pound sleds filled with provisions, meager because they had intended on much more success.

They lived on the meat of polar bears and seals, all the while riding ice floes through the late fall and early winter of 1896.

Ultimately, they died from what Wilkinson suggests was exhaustion and the cold.

Their bodies weren't discovered until August 1920, when a Norwegian vessel on a scientific mission came across the remains -- along with their journals and a couple dozen photos that hadn't been ruined by the same weather that ruined the men.

I know we can't know all history but I'm forever amazed by what I don't know. I suppose, though, we rarely read the stories of the failures unless those are the spectacular failures like Robert Scott. He and five others finally reached the South Pole, only to find they'd been beaten their weeks earlier by Roald Amundsen. On Scott's attempted return, the entire party died from hunger, exhaustion and the cold.

And, in all honesty, it is the story of these people and those who settled the American West by literally walking the continent, who remind me never to complain about a close parking spot.

This is an actual photo taken by one of the mission members, Nils Strindberg (a distant relative of Swedish playwright August Strindberg). He took the photo shortly after they crashed. You can see more haunting photos on his Wikipedia entry

Ivar the, um, Boneless

I was about ready to go to bed early, tuckered out having worked a Saturday shift.

But I turned on the TV one a last time to see if there was anything remotely interesting on, something, like say, the History Channel, when I found a documentary about Ivar the Boneless.

I've come to dislike the History Channel, as it concentrates on ice road truckers and families of fat pawn brokers. These are people I know in real life without having to see them on TV.

But I was glued to Ivar the Boneless.

It turns out he was one of many Viking chieftains who understood the riches of the British Isles and sacked many a community. That, of course, is not so strange. Viking raids in the British Isles were so common you'll still find many children named Trevor Smorgasbord. OK, maybe not. But I'm exaggerating to make a point here.

The curious part about Ivar the Boneless is -- to be blunt here -- the boneless part. I watched a bit of the documentary, checked out some citations on line and found that he was considered a wise, fearless but ferocious leader -- who was carried around on a shield. Reports of the time said he had normal legs that were as soft and pliable as cartilage.

Other, more catty reports suggested that the "boneless" surname stemmed from impotence.

But a condition exists that matches the former, osteogenesis imperfecta, which, as the legend goes, forms cartilage rather bone in the legs and other parts of the body.

I, for one, salute Ivar the Boneless for overcoming his disabilities to slaughter strangers.

The Eastern front

Today I learned that nine out of 10 German war casualties during World War II were on the Eastern Front.

The statistic shocked me.

I knew some about the brutal battles in Russian winters, the siege of Stalingrad, the battle of Moscow. I knew the German soldier army's scorched-earth policy obliterated village after village as it marched east. And the Russians returned the favor as they turned the tide and marched toward Berlin.

But 90 percent of all German causalities died against an army other than ours?

The eye-opening statistic reminded me of how myopic I can be.

As a child, my dad read countless books about World War II, all of them in the European Theater and all of them from the western perspective. After graduating early from Boyd High School in 1945, he enlisted and took off for the war like his older brother John. But the war ended in April my dad would spend his Army time as part of the occupational force.

Meanwhile, I was taken by the air and naval battles in the Pacific Theater, so my grade school reading revolved around Pappy Boyington and Admiral Nimitz.

"Why don't you read about the battles in Europe?" he asked.

I don't recall the answer, but I do remember the thought: flying and shipping seemed more romantic than marching through mud.

So I only knew the vagaries of the Eastern Front until today, including the perpetual threat on "Hogan's Heroes," where German soldiers trembled at the threat of being sent to the Eastern Front.

Since learning this new statistic -- nine of 10; 90 percent -- I've studied the Eastern Front a little more and will continue to do so. I read that Herman Goring implored Hitler not to open up a battle in the East after being so successful as they ran over Denmark, the Low Countries and France. But Hitler had ignored the advice of his generals in battling France and now was megalomaniac in his military knowledge.

And many military scholars believe the Eastern Front was the real main theater of war in Europe. That D-Day and the western surge across France, while brave and well-generaled (a phrase I read in a Civil War book today), was important only in keeping Axis soldiers from fully fighting in the East.

It's good to be reminded of how we can be blinded by the world's history if we only account for our own history.