february christmas lights

Over the last couple of weeks I noticed a handful of houses around my neighborhood and some of the areas I drive regularly finally take down their Christmas lights.  This wasn't a situation where the lights were up but not on.  The lights were turned on every evening like it was Christmas season.

I have also noticed that an office in my building has a Christmas tree up in a meeting room visible from a public hallway.  I haven't seen it lit in a few weeks, but it is still prominently displayed.

Part of me is irrationally irritated at this.  However, my irritation doesn't make sense.  If someone wants to leave lights up it isn't my business, and really Christmas displays are attractive.  It's just that seeing Christmas displays feels incongruous with the season.

I think this part of me is a little hypocritical as well.  I have believed and continue to believe that certain fashion rules are made to be broken.  This shouldn't be any different, right?  Is a lit Christmas display in February the equivalent of an all-white outfit in November?

cherokee princess

From when I was born until when I was elementary-aged my dad worked on a few different reservations.  We are as white as white can be, and no one in our family ever pretended any different.  It never crossed my mind to think any differently about the situation, either. However, one of the first questions I'd get from people who did not live near the reservation was whether I had any Native American ancestry.  This was almost always a prelude to someone telling me about their grandparent who was half-blooded [fill in Native American tribe].

Even as a kid, this pattern jumped out to me because it happened so often.  Why did people who had probably never been on a reservation care so much to identify with a specific tribe?  In my experience (from the 80s and early 90s) reservation life was different from life off the reservation in a lot of respects, so it felt a little like trying to gain the benefits of an identity without paying in experience.

I don't remember this firsthand, but there's apparently a joke that gets told among Native people about how every white person's grandmother was a Cherokee princess.  That does fit my experience.  Everyone and their brother seemed to want to tell me about their Native ancestor.  In fact, even if I mention now that I used to live on a reservation to a small group of people it is more or less guaranteed that someone in the group will notify me of their Native American heritage.

This is what has made the evolving story surrounding Elizabeth Warren fascinating to me.  I don't doubt that she fully believed that she could claim Native American ancestry.  I've heard enough people who were convinced of it themselves that it fits the pattern.  Why, just based on family stories, she decided she should assert that as an identity baffles me.  Even if she had a close Native ancestor, she clearly had to know that she was mostly Caucasian and lived a Caucasian life.  She should have especially known that as someone who originally hailed from Oklahoma.  Of all of the unforced errors a [future] politician could commit, this is among the dumbest.

However, as dumb as I think that scandal is, my experience says that Warren doesn't go much further than a lot of other Native American wannabes.  I am certain that a lot of the folks laughing about "Pocahontas" Warren's claims have also asserted their non-existent Native heritage whenever they got the chance.  The reason I'm so sure is that I've probably heard one of them talk about their Cherokee grandparent some time in the past.

1000

After nearly fourteen years, this is my 1000th article on this blog.  Since another word for thousand is "grand" I've compiled a few "grand" facts.

• "Grand" originally came from the French "grant."  Then, as now, it meant large or powerful. [source]
• The name for the 100 grand bar (originally, the $100,000 bar) was inspired by the popularity of quiz shows in the 1950s. [source]
• The Grand Slam tournament in tennis, which is a sport I hardly know anything about, includes four events across three continents. [source]
• Alex Rodriguez set the major league baseball record for grand slams with an astounding twenty-five during his career.  This is one of those records that requires both individual skill and the fortune to have teammates who put you in a situation where a grand slam is a possibility. [source]
• While a Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming was founded in 1929, the current park includes large portions of land that were donated years later by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. [source]
• The Republican moniker "G.O.P." now stands for "Grand Old Party."  However, it originally stood for "Gallant Old Party." [source]
• On average, two or three people die from falling into the Grand Canyon every year.  However, since millions of people visit a year it has to be considered a safe place to visit, statistically speaking.  That said, I would be uptight about the possibility if we visited it with our kids. [source]
• Gerald Ford grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan.  He holds the distinction of being the only U.S. president to hold the office without having been elected either president or vice president. [source]
• There is a World War II power station underneath Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan, New York.  It was placed there to protect it from German sabotage during the war. [source]
• The first piano created was a grand piano by Bartolomeo Cristofori in Italy in the late 1600s or early 1700s.  It was originally known as the "pianoforte," which means "soft" and "strong."  It differed from the harpsichord before it in that you could modulate the volume of the instrument based on how forcefully or lightly you struck the keys. [source]
• The "grand theft" in "grand theft auto" refers to the fact that what is being stolen is valuable.  "Petty theft" refers to the theft of less valuable items. [source]

lessons at the mechanic

When I was at the mechanic a few days ago waiting to have the brake pads battery replaced on my car I noticed that there wasn't really a way to avoid hearing chatter around me.  I especially heard the conversations that other people had with the representative from the dealership who were explaining what they found wrong with their cars.

One man was told that he needed to replace his tires with a set that cost $800, but he declined to do so due to the lack of funds.  An older lady was told she needed to replace her battery, and was confused that it wasn't covered by her warranty.  Another man was informed that he had nails in two different tires, but that the fix was cheap and quick.

As a parent, it occurred to me that these are the sort of situations that I need to be training my kids to handle one day.

In the example of the first man, if you have a car or anything else that is expensive it will cost money to maintain.  Failing to budget for those expenses leads to inevitable unpleasant surprises.  I never really appreciated that at a younger age, and I certainly didn't maintain my vehicles as well a decade and a half ago as I do now.  We have had some unpleasant surprises over the years related to the cars.

In the example of the older woman, my initial reaction was to think that of course the battery is not under the car's warranty.  However, that is not necessarily an intuitive fact to know.  Why is the alternator something that would be under warranty (which the representative explained to the lady) but the battery isn't?  I know it's because the battery is guaranteed to need to be replaced, but an older lady may not understand this.  The kids need to understand that the stuff that is covered by warranty is almost always the stuff that is least likely to need to be replaced.  Warranties are useful, but they are also frequently written so that you still have to pay to fix the thing under warranty.

In the example of the last man, sometimes what sounds like bad news may actually be good news.  Had he not discovered the nails he may have had to replace the tires, but he was able to get them plugged cheaply.  Don't always expect bad news, and appreciate the good news when you get it.

The sorts of things you need to understand to manage in life aren't always what you learn in school.  It's hard as a parent to remember that there are lessons to learn everywhere.