12-College today…some things never change, some things ought to

If you are a college grad and you want to feel really old, take your teen (or a borrowed one) on a tour of a college or university. 

On a fairly quick “student life” tour of a state university this week, I noticed some things are radically different.  Forgive me if it doesn’t have much to do with academics and job placement, as the student guide really didn’t talk about that much.  Instead:



Giant fiberglass mascots are new

·         Many (but not all) students not in class are in lounge areas typing on their laptops or their smart phones,  not engaging each other.
·         Whiz bang technology seems to have been put to use mostly in large campus buildings, such as perfect acoustics in a music hall or cool computerized systems in the library.
·         Tutoring help is much more available and without social stigma, apparently.
·         Part of your college bill is for $100 you get each semester to spend in the coffee shop, activity desks or dining halls that are NOT the dorm cafeteria.  (I want the coffee shop contract, please.)
·         The “gym” is now a state-of-the-art facility with rock climbing walls and exercise equipment, and students are encouraged to get a personal trainer and get or stay in shape through all kinds of classes and programs.
·         Freshmen and incoming new students take a “trip” together (not acid) a few days before school begins to meet other people and get to know the geographic area in which the school is located.  The school seems to place a good deal of emphasis on whether kids are happy.

Some things stay the same:

·         Sports are still out-of-proportionately important.

·         Large classes are still held in large lecture halls (auditoriums), and students still look bored and unengaged.

·         Small classes are taught in lecture mode in classrooms, and the engineering ones are still almost all male.

·         The geology exhibits of rocks and minerals has not been changed since what appears to be the 1950s.

·         Women-only and men-only dorms still exist.

·         Dorm rooms are still roughly the size of a death row cell, with just slightly more cinderblock charm.

·         The student tour guide referred to the “freshman 15” in regards to added pounds from cafeteria food.

·         Professors are still crammed in tiny, cluttered offices and still post office hours.

·         Dorms still have a resident assistant who looks after you, sort of.

·         You can still resell your outrageously-priced textbooks.

·         You still, at 18, are expected to declare a major and decide -- within the next four years and without spending an amount of money that would clear your parents’ mortgage -- what you want to do with the rest of your professional life.

I don’t underestimate the important life experience of bathing in a communal bathroom, getting your snail mail (if any) out of a little metal box with a key, and possibly living in close quarters with someone you don’t know and will grow to hate.  But that last point about making a career choice at 18 or 22, even, seems to be a major flaw. 

I don’t see any systematic change or paradigm shift in how we teach or advise or mentor, other than knowing a lot of students do internships before graduating.  A bachelor’s degree is still mostly filled with at least two years of classes that have little or nothing to do with your chosen profession – or any other – and classes are still mostly taught by lecture, by which some people do not learn.



You have to tell college women this, really?



I’m not dissing the value of a broad, liberal arts education.  If I was an important blogger, I'd piss a lot of academics off here.  There is value in learning for learning’s sake, in art, in culture, in an experience of gaining an educated perspective.  (This, despite the fact that a sign apparently needed to be posted inside the women’s bathroom stalls that said, “Please Flush Toilet After Use.”

I’m just saying, after all those years, I would have expected more would have changed….something big, something in the SYSTEM of how we educate people to go out into the world and earn and contribute.

We have seen that these young people will change careers, what, eight times in their lifetimes?  They don’t go back to college each time, so how are we preparing them for this?  ARE we preparing them for this?  CAN we, since some of those jobs may not exist now?  Are we preparing them for jobs that exist NOW in which they can actually pay off their student loans in a fairly short and reasonable length of time?

At the re-sale book stand, one text book jumped out at me:  Botany.  To tell the truth, I could have reached over and grabbed that book, just for pleasure reading.  I wanted to major in biology but couldn’t hack the two years of chemistry and one of physics, so I ended up as an English major (journalism) with a biology minor, mostly just to get done. 

Today, long story short, I am a financial advisor.  (Which is more proof that English majors can do anything.  And, yes, that last sentence was incomplete.)

I love what I do, I love my clients, and I think I’m pretty danged good at it. 

But, looking back, if I had known at 18 what I know now – about jobs, the sucky parts, and the important parts, and that every day you have to roll out of bed and see the same people and do roughly the same thing for 40 or more hours a week, and that, yes, job pay and benefits count – I may have chosen differently.

A botany major with a business minor might have meant I could have run my own greenhouse, or run one for someone else.  Or just enjoyed putting my fingers in potting soil and making things grow.  Or experimented with ways to grow things better, sturdier, faster.

As a newspaper reporter,  I interviewed a city planner – a job I never heard of at 18 -- and thought, “THAT would be a great job, creating green spaces and helping decide where development goes.”

I have a morbid fascination with oddities, so perhaps I should have gone into police work. Or psychology. Or moved to Las Vegas or the Wisconsin Dells.  Or managed a buffet restaurant.

And I love to cook and bake, but my college didn’t offer a chef school or a hospitality track, so I never explored it.

I asked a couple good friends if they would have chosen differently, now 30 or more years later.

One, a retired public relations professional in her early 60s, graduated as a teacher because women either did that, nursing or social work.  Instead, ”I think professions more suited to my capabilities and personality would be some sort of engineer, architect, interior designer or business owner,” she said.

“I had entrepreneurial talents at the age of 10 when I started my first company - making Christmas decorations out of felt and sequins and going door to door in the neighborhood selling the prettiest at 50 cents.  And, then there was the shoe shine company.  I would ask to polish anyone’s shoes for money.   And, then there was the book I started to write - I thought " A Woman's Guide to Car Repair" would be a winner as I found that some mechanics take advantage of a damsel's car in distress.  And, there were many other ideas that still race through my head on business start-ups.”  She has a profitable side business, but never spent her working life doing that.

Another 50-something friend noted that an internship would have been helpful to her early on.

“Also, I have always loved to travel and wanted to be a flight attendant for a few years before college.  But my parents and advisors told me if I did not go to college immediately after high school I would never go.  Then I felt the pressure after college to get a professional job and get married – instead of being a flight attendant. I did not get married but got a job in my field.

“Medicine was an interest of mine  and I love animals.  Had I taken the few years to travel and get to know myself better I may have become a vet – which I would have loved.”

None of the three of us are unhappy nor unfulfilled.  In fact, we are pretty darned smart, accomplished cool women!

But while the mores may have changed, and more options are available, the college-at-18 system is still in place. It’s either that, or the military and then college.  Without a four-year degree, we’ve been told, your earning power is miniscule.

As much as this country cannot afford a brain drain, maybe college should not be de rigueur for all smart, motivated kids.  I have known several people who have juggled a job, family and college later in life.  It’s not easy, but they are motivated, and they almost always get impressive grades.

What may ultimately lead to a radical change is spiraling costs of even a public-school education.  More and more kids are wanting to avoid spending $80000 on a four-year degree that does not guarantee them a job, let alone a fulfilling job with earning power to pay it back. 

Necessity, like always, is the mother of invention.  There is hope, though change is slow.

11 – Bean gets off on right foot with Bootmobile

Maybe as a child I was posed for photos one too many times in front of fiberglass Smokey Bears at summer picnic spots, but I love kitschy oversize fiberglass symbols of some company or animal or local attribute. 

Especially if they move.



The new BootMobile, right, next to the traditional
Bean Boot at the Freeport, Maine, headquarters



This week, L.L. Bean, the Maine-based outdoor retailer, unveiled a “BootMobile” – a giant replica of its iconic Bean Hunting (Duck) Boots – well, one of them.  The car has the rubber-soled bottom and leather toe where the hood and sides and trunk are, and on top of the roof is the lacing of the popular ankle-high boot.  The laces are made of 2-inch mooring rope used on tug boats, and they are accurate down to their two-tone color.

Since Bean is turning 100 years old this year, it’s sending the 13-foot high and 20-foot long BootMobile on tour of major U.S. cities this year.  It drove down from Freeport, Maine, headquarters to get off on the right foot in Times Square.

I love that!  And apparently I am not the only one – reporters do, too.  It made the Wall Street Journal, the NY Times, San Francisco Chronicle, USA Today and about a zillion blogs, including this one. 

Why do I love thee?  First of all, what a great job someone has!  Imagine being able to drive that thing around the country and have little kids – and adult women like me – point and laugh! 

Secondly, this is a source of national pride.  I just love that they took their boot, figured out how to apply it to a truck body, literally, and then Honey, I blew up the boot.  They were able to make the car run, with working lights and windows and doors and seat belts and everything.  As homo sapiens in America, we have evolved so far from hunting and gathering that we have leisure time and money to burn enough that someone said, “create it!” and some mobile-smiths said, “Yes, we will!”  That took some real creativity and know-how, and never let us say America is not up to the challenge!  No other cultures really do this…I can’t picture a giant kim chee-mobile in Korea, for instance.  Only in America.

Here’s a link to the website where they show a little film on how they made it (they actually scanned in a boot, of course):  https://100.llbean.com/2012/01/introducing-the-l-l-bean-bootmobile

Thirdly, it draws you in like road kill, you can’t help but look.  Your eyes say they can’t believe themselves, “Can it be, a giant duck boot driving down the street, or did my Ambien produce yet another unknown side effect?” 



A 1952 Weinermobile,
photo by Mrmiscellaeous, 2005



Of course, the Oscar Meyer folks can cry, “Fowl!” or “Where’s the beef?” because they were the first to make a hot dog-in-bun mobile.  The Weinermobile actually turned 75 in 2011.  Kraft (the parent company) has a fleet of six 27-foot long Weinermobiles, a 15-foot minimobile, and a 30-food Weinermobile Food Truck that actually served beef wieners on its tour last year.  You can see one on display at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Mich., where you can also enjoy a weiner at the Weinermobile Café.

But why stop here?   I’d love to see, for instance, a parade of uniquely American food stuffs – al beit not very aerodynamic ones, come to think of it -- like a Jeno Pizza Roll Mobile, a Velveeta CheeseMobile, a SpamMobile and a HersheyBarMobile.  The Frito Lay folks could have a whole variety of ChipMobiles, DoritoMobile, FritoMobile, TostitoMobile…but not LaysMobile, sorry. 

While the Weinermobile probably was designed to dazzle children, I love that button-down-collared adult corporate L.L. Bean loosened up enough to have fun with a BootMobile. 

Years ago in Seattle, there was a Toe Truck.  It was a tow truck, of course, but it was decked out like a big toe on the hood.  Occasionally you’d see it going up and down the hills of Seattle, on its way to rescue some defunct car.

I never lived in Seattle (but would love to), only visited, and it was amazing how many times I saw this truck. 

It’s amazing, too, how many times I saw the negative advertising in Marquette, Mich., on a van.  A frustrated owner had spray-painted in yellow on the side, “Lemon (outline drawn of lemon) – shot in 1-1/2 years.”  Years later I did buy a mini van, two in fact.  But neither were of the offending lemon model.  Subliminal messaging may have had its effect.

Happy Centennial to L.L. Bean.  And let L.L. Bean be an inspiration to corporations everywhere who need to be able to laugh at themselves a bit, and have a little more fun – so we can, too. 

Loosen up your two-inch thick laces, folks, and hold on tight for the ride – it ought to be a gas!

10-Young people wade through musical cesspool to meet The Beatles

Tribute bands have always seemed a little too obsessed to me, kind of like the folks who show up as Trekkies at Star Trek conventions.

But when it comes to the Beatles, I’m all ears.  Much has been written about their musical revolution and journey.   I can’t hold a candle to the theories of historians and sociologists.

I do know that I grew up with them, musically and culturally, and I don’t remember a time without Beatles music.  While I was young – only 7 – when they first appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show, their musical (r)evolution followed the issues of our lives.

Simply, they are the best.

Not “were.” Are.

You might expect someone age 55 to say that.  But 17-year-olds? 

Seventeen-year-olds were among the small audience in this boutique theater where The Revolution 5 – yes, five young men ages 21-44 from central Minnesota in Flyover Land – re-created the music of the Fab Four on a dark winter evening.  (They didn’t wear wigs, just white shirts and skinny black ties, and they weren’t impersonators.)  http://www.therevolution5.com/

Actually, a good smattering of people in their 20s and 30s were among the 50 and 60-somethings who turned out to hear the music played live.  One young man across the aisle obviously knew as many of the words to the songs as I did.  The 17-year-old to whom I spoke in the elevator after the concert simply explained, “I just like them (the Beatles).”  She brought her 19-year-old boyfriend.

Amazing.  She, like my sons, was rasied in a time when a good portion of popular music is crap.

Crap music exists for every generation, and who am I to judge?  I enjoyed The Monkees in my childhood. 

But somehow young people, and middle-aged people, and five musicians spanning 23 years, had waded through that musical cesspool and come to appreciate the genius of Beatles -- even without screaming crowds, fainting women, constant headlines or chart-topping new releases.

Most people my age or older can remember where they were on Feb. 9, 1964, when the Beatles debuted on Ed Sullivan, just like we can recall where we were when we heard Kennedy was shot, Neil Armstrong landed on the moon, Elvis died, and 9/11 occurred. 

I was sitting on a footstool in a shingled bungalow at 1645 Brenner Street, Saginaw, Mich., having my then-blonde hair painfully rolled up on those sticky pink sponge rollers.  Heavily indoctrinated in Lawrence Welk by my father, I tended to agree with his pronouncement that their rock-and-roll (which could barely be heard over the audience screams) was “noise.”

Thankfully, my musical development did not stop there.

I learned a few things at this tribute band concert.

·         “Act Naturally,” which Ringo Starr sang, was actually written by  Buck Owens.  That Buck Owens of “Hee Haw,” which I also remember from my childhood.  It was a campy, sexist, corn-pone, hillybilly-filled TV variety show hosted by Buck and Roy Clark -- who actually had a great deal of musical talent. 

·         Apparently the Beatles used more cowbell earlier than Will Farrell and Blue Oyster Cult.

·         When Paul McCartney wrote “Yesterday,” none of the other three Beatles could add a thing to it, pronouncing it perfect.  Paul did the first Beatles solo on their fourth Ed Sullivan appearance, taped, which ran Sept. 12, 1965.  (Some say this is the most musically-perfect song ever written.  View performance at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLVuwIJvMX4 )

No one will ever see another Beatles concert.  McCartney still tours, but attending the expensive Sir Elton John concert here in Duluth, Minn., last year is probably as close as I’ll get to seeing Sir Paul. 

So bands like The Revolution 5 are a good thing.  They show us that great melodies, harmonies and lyrics, whether simple, poignant or political commentary, are still treasured by younger people who didn’t experience them the first time around.

They remind us that, despite the lewdness and degradation of women in today’s popular music, great music doesn’t  have to do that.  Controversy arose when John said “Christ” in “the Ballad of John and Yoko,” and the group used the anatomically correct word “breast” in “Lady Madonna,” in relation to nursing, not sex.  Other than that, the most obscene thing I can recall might have been an inference in “Penny Lane,” where the fireman “liked to keep his fire engine clean, it was a clean machine.”  (Or not.  It may have simply referred to a clean fire engine.)

In fact, though they were international superstars arguably more popular than Jesus, their songs throughout their careers and their often-complicated lives still searched for the simple things we wanted in 1964 and still want in 2012:  love, peace, spiritual fulfillment and simple joy, whether it’s “a couple of kids running in the yard” or love and companionship “when I’m 64.”  Turning 70 this June, widower and divorcee McCartney, now one of the world’s richest men, is still seeking the love about which he wrote so many wonderful songs.  He attempted marriage for the third time in 2011. 

All of that is timeless. 

Young people are turned on and tuned into the Beatles, still.  It gives me hope.

And I say, it’s alright.



9-For the new year, I’m going back 40 years on TV

While most folks are writing resolutions and looking forward to 2012, I’m going back to 1972 or thereabouts, even earlier, on what has just shown up here in the hinterlands as “Me TV.”

I don’t get cable.  Never wanted to pay for something that encouraged me to sit on my behind more than I do.  I was a bit jealous of those who could watch re-runs of “Bewitched” on “Nick at Nite,” however.

No more – I get “Me TV” for free!  http://metvnetwork.com/schedule.php

Once High Definition TV came in, we got more local stations.  Normally, that is not a bonus.  Some would say it was a penalty, as in, “Oh, great, now we can watch the same abysmal local TV morning shows on two local channels simultaneously!”

But one of the local stations subscribed to something called “Retro TV,” which was great for seeing Thomas Magnum, P.I., in his short-shorts.  (Funny, even though I was sexually active in the 70s, I don’t remember the shorts and Selleck’s endless legs, I just remember the shirts open to his waist in every shot…).  It was not so great because the variety was limited, and “Daniel Boone” episodes were on three times a day.

This new service, which apparently stands for “Memorable Entertainment TV,” is exactly that.  I often have the TV on while doing household chores, and, since I am a single mom with a dog who sheds (no “doodle” end on the “labrodoodle” for us), I spend a LOT of time doing household chores. 

Recently I practically danced a jig (old, retro term for “extreme happiness”) when I could watch “Gunsmoke,” “Bonanza” and “The Big Valley” back-to-back.  I half-watched (mind you, I am not sitting on said behind glued to every word, but multi-tasking while getting the jist of most of it) them all. 

With that, and other half-watchings in the past few weeks, here is what I discovered:

These shows seem much, much different when watched through 50-something eyes than those with a childhood or young adult perspective.

For example, the “Gunsmoke” episode with Charlie the Indian brought me to tears, the poor guy was so discriminated against, tortured and even bullied by the local kids and adults, for which people commit suicide today, and then, worse, he was set up for a crime and wrongfully shot for it.  How tragic is all that!  Ben Cartwright at least tried to help him. I probably missed a lot of that message when I was 10.  And Festus was downright creepy when I was 10, with that lazy eye and dragging that zombie leg.  Now, Miss Laura thinks he’s a right nice plain spokin’ single guy with a big heart in the right place, and if he asked me to dinner at Miss Kitty’s saloon, I might just take him up on the offer.  (If you've been single in the hinterlands long enough, Hoss Cartwright looks pretty good, too.  Another nice, under-rated guy.)

It pleases me no end to come up with some obscure name from my long-term memory of an actor that time apparently has forgotten, but Laura Zahn has not (e.g. Earl Holliman or Zalman King).  I even enjoy placing them in future roles, al beit it takes me a day or two to do it (I believe Holliman starred opposite Angie Dickinson who played a police person named “Pepper” in some god-awful cop show whose name I have repressed).  And I get a huge kick out of seeing them in a couple of these classic shows in a few days (Holliman died a painful gunshot death in “Bonanza” just a day before he showed up as a guinea pig air force enlistee in “The Twilight Zone.”)

A lot of these stars are dead.  In fact, some whole casts.  The only one alive in “Bonanza,” for instance, is David Canary, who played good-guy “Candy” and who enjoyed a long, successful career as bad-guy Adam Chandler in “All My Children” (not to mention his good-guy twin, Stuart Chandler, who was mentally-challenged and showed Canary was really a pretty good actor, better than the Candy character allowed him to show…and a great head of hair remains, even if it is white).  The entire “Bewitched” cast is deceased, as well.

I am agog at the outdated mores and sexist and racist roles and how environmental issues have changed.  June Lockhart, who went from Timmy’s mom in “Lassie” and had to fight discrimination in city hall, to the “Lady MD, she’s as pretty as can be at the junction, Petticoat Junction,” ended up in “Lost in Space,” but still with no more clout than the mission commander’s wife and space mom.  Ed Ames played a “half-breed” Indian in “Daniel Boone,” but the full-blooded characters never seemed to be played by actual Native Americans (nevermind the inaccurate story lines around how Native Americans actually lived).  Buffy and Jody in “Family Affair” let loose their exotic pet hamster pair in Central Park (OMG this probably led to the python problem in the Everglades), and Betty Jo and Steve Elliott’s baby had an allergic reaction to crop-duster Steve’s insecticide-covered jacket – which was laughed off (DDT was shown to not be a laughing matter) in “Petticoat Junction.”

Single fathers didn’t do it alone.  Brian Keith as Uncle Bill had Sebastian Cabot as a butler.  Steve Douglas (Fred McMurray) in “My Three Sons” spent a lot of time reading the paper because he had Uncle Charlie to cook and clean, even after son Robbie married Katie, who certainly could have helped a little around the house because she (of course) didn’t work.  Sherriff Andy didn’t raise Opie (who is still the cutest, sweetest child actor EVER) without Aunt Bea’s help in Mayberry.  Ben Cartwright had a Chinese cook and three grown sons to help (OK, it was a little odd that none of those guys married or partnered up, and they helped on the ranch but didn’t lift a finger on housework)...Single mothers?  Like who?  That came later, much later.

And speaking of Uncle Bill – I had one, and he was gay.  Unlike my Uncle Bill, who lived openly with his partner, poor Lee Majors in “The Big Valley” and Robert Reed in “The Brady Bunch” had to be straight, and Paul Lynde (Uncle Arthur in “Bewitched”) lost a starring role in the Donny and Marie Show in 1978 after being arrested outside a gay bar in Salt Lake City.  Gay women?  Like who?  That came later, much, much, much later.

Michael Landon as Little Joe Cartwright is still the best-looking man on TV. 

Some of these were really, really good shows.  Some were really, really bad.  I still think “M*A*S*H” and “the Dick VanDyke Show” and “the Mary Tyler Moore Show,” with grumpy Mr. Grant and cougar Sue Ann Nivens and narcissist Ted Baxter and quirky neighbors Rhoda and Phyllis, were some of the funniest ever.  And “Batman” and “Lost in Space” were some of the worst, especially in terms of sets.  They must have cost about a nickel to make, with giant buttons and gizmos seemingly made out of cardboard and sparkle glitter.   It’s fun to look at those now and see how far special effects have come.

And it’s fun to share “Batman” POW! and THUNK! fight scenes with a 16-year-old who never knew them, only the film re-makes, and show him what real TV was like, back in the day.

Today we have dismal reality TV like “the Bachelor” and that house where a bunch of young adults all live and sleep together.  And I’d put the writing in any of today’s dramas up against the writing in the Charlie the Indian episode of “Bonanza,” or even the “Big Valley” episode where the neighbor’s new young wife was romantically attracted to her stepson and paid dearly for it. 

But in terms of women, GLBT, minority and environmental themes, we’ve come a long way, baby.  I don’t want to go back to the past.  But I do like to re-visit my childhood TV shows.

What time is “Hullabaloo” with Bobby Sherman going to be on?