Jingoist Jingle

I have no idea what reminded of this today, but I've felt for a long time that the U.S. ought to change its national anthem, "The Star-Spangled Banner." A song about bombs and war doesn't seem like the best way to celebrate national spirit or start a baseball game.

I've always preferred the song "America the Beautiful." It was one of the songs we sang along with our teacher's guitar in kindergarten, so I suppose it's got a nostalgic air for me, but it also focuses on things that I think are better to be proud of. Instead of bombs, wheat fields and high mountains. Instead of victory in war, spacious skies and two vast oceans. It's a theme not unlike that of the Swedish national anthem, "Du Gamla Du Fria". Though there are apparently a lot of people who would like to change the Swedish national anthem to Ulf Lundell's "Öppna landskap," the theme is basically the same: focus on Sweden's natural beauty. (Since "Öppna landskap" mentions moonshining, though, I don't know if that change would jive with the officials...)

But whatever it was that reminded me of my distaste for "The Star-Spangled Banner" today, I decided to search Facebook to see if anyone agreed with me. There's always a group for these things, right? I can't say I put a huge amount of effort into finding a group, but nothing came up on the obvious search terms (except groups calling to change the U.K. and Canadian national anthems). I looked at the Wikipedia page for the national anthem and saw nothing mentioning a movement or campaign to get it changed. After a Google search, though, I did find this blog post by Amanda Marcotte. She argues that "America the Beautiful" is just as bombastic (pun intended, certainly) as "The Star-Spangled Banner," but personally I'm not PC enough to think a "hey, we're awesome!" attitude in a national anthem is wrong. She also says that it would be just as difficult to translate into Spanish as the current anthem -- translation into Spanish is the context in which she's brought up the issue -- but besides not agreeing with that (nothing says that the language in the Spanish version of either has to be as advanced as in the original in order to be beautiful), translatability is not necessarily my first priority here.

However, the suggestion that Amanda makes for our new national anthem, "This Land is Your Land," certainly has its appeal. Aside from echoing "America the Beautiful"'s spirit of America having a huge and varied landscape, by mentioning California, New York, the squares of the city, the shadow of the steeple -- I like the fact that it makes America not just a landscape, but a landscape with people in it. The main theme, "This land was made for you and me," a theme of inclusion that reminds us that we all came from other places, is much more worthy of celebration than superiorly bombing your enemy to smithereens. Just like with Emma Lazarus' "The New Colossus," there's a risk of feeling sarcastic when singing this song of inclusion and welcoming. But like Amanda mentions in her blog post, the last lines of "This Land is Your Land" are:

In the squares of the city - In the shadow of the steeple
Near the relief office - I see my people
And some are grumblin’ and some are wonderin’
If this land’s still made for you and me.

As Amanda writes, "Best part is the implied challenge at the end for this country to actually live up to its promise." At any rate, I'd rather sing "America the Beautiful" and feel a bit ashamed about us not quite living up to the spirit of caring for America's landscape, or sing "This Land is Your Land" and feel a bit ashamed about us not quite living up to the spirit of welcoming all types of people in our country, than to sing "The Star-Spangled Banner" and feel ashamed that my country doesn't even strive towards these priorities and focuses pretty exclusively on "bombs are kewl."

My Name is Lori - Karma Lite

Tonight I managed to commit an act of charity, and also to lose my bank card.

About 13 years ago I had a summer job at the 3M tape factory. I worked the graveyard shift, 10 pm to 6 am, so my days were naturally turned around. Personally, I thought it was ideal; you get to sleep as late as you want and still have your evenings free. Can't they open a graveyard shift high school that I can work at? I doubt the students would complain...

One weekend morning at about 2 am I was grocery shopping at Cub Foods and was approached by a petite Hispanic girl in a Taco Bell uniform. She probably weighed 50 pounds soaking wet. She'd just finished work and was supposed to be picked up by a family member, but the family member never showed. She wondered if I could give her a ride home. I took a quick look around while the gears were whirring in my head -- what the hell, why are there so many elderly people shopping at Cub at 2 in the blinking morning -- and decided that the quotient of possible danger to logical explanation for why she asked specifically me multiplied by the unlikelihood of someone dressing up in a Taco Bell uniform in order to kidnap me seemed pretty okay. Her house was on my way home anyway, so I told her to hop in.

When we pulled up to her house, she pulled out a Taco Bell-stamped envelope of money (it was apparently payday, and I totally wondered at the time why Taco Bell paid her in cash) and gave me a $5 bill. I most certainly did not want her money and very much wanted to refuse it and explain that I was glad I could help her get home safe, but I've always had a shyness of the "avoid ANY kind of conflict AT ALL COSTS" type (don't worry, I'm mostly over that now), so I thanked her and took the money and went on my way.

And that bugs me to this day. I was actually thinking about it earlier today. I'm excellent at holding a grudge, especially against myself.

Now, 13 years later, I'd just put Benjamin to bed here at my parents' house and headed out to pick up some milk and OJ. I took a drive over to Byerly's, just because the place gives me the super warm fuzzies. When I was putting my groceries in the car, I remembered that I wanted to take out some cash, and while I was looking back at the store to see if they had an ATM, a woman approached me and asked for help.

She wasn't a tiny Hispanic girl, but rather, a kind-sounding middle-aged lady that happened to be missing a few teeth and was on the brink of tears.

Her explanation of what she needed was a bit fuzzy to me, given that she was visibly shaken and speaking quietly, but the gist of it seemed to be: she was visiting someone at St. John's hospital, her wallet was either lost or stolen, she needed to get home to Stillwater, and wondered if I had a few dollars for gas.

I answered, quite honestly, that I didn't have any cash.

Before I had even finished saying so, she excused herself for bothering me and walked away.

This is where I go back into the store to get the cash I needed anyway, and lose my bank card.

See, American cash machines have the unfortunate routine of spitting out your cash and THEN your card. I'd forgotten this and am once again grateful that Swedish cash machines work the other way around. I grabbed my cash from the machine, went over to a cashier to ask her to break up the bill for me, and walked back past the cash machine in time to wonder why it was beeping so loudly. Then I swore pretty loudly and lunged at the machine a split second too late to save my card from being sucked back in and shredded, and was greeted by the message "Your card has been destroyed for security purposes, please contact your financial institution." (And you have to admit that you, too, would have stood there pressing buttons and hoping to magically reverse that process, yes?)

Anyway, whatever.

I went back into the parking lot and saw the dejected lady sitting in a rather vintage-and-not-in-a-good-way vehicle with two equally dejected looking men. The window was down, and as I approached I could see that she was crying. When I asked if she was alright, she tried to brighten herself up and say that she was fine. I asked about who she'd been visiting -- her dad had had a heart attack but he was doing alright now -- and saw that her gas gauge read bone dry. I gave her $5 and said that I hope her dad will be alright. She thanked me and said she was going to sit and compose herself for a while, but as I buckled up and started my car, I saw one of her male companions on his way to the 76 station with a gas can in hand.

I hope 2 gallons of gas was enough to get that clunker home to Stillwater. Perhaps now I will let myself off the hook for not refusing that other girl's money. But mostly, I just think it's funny that I've added to the list of times that my mother thinks I've narrowly escaped a kidnapping attempt outside of a St. Paul grocery store.

Klyftpotatis

The gap between poor children and rich children is up for discussion again, this time in regards to the grades they get in school: Choice in School Widens the Grade Gap .

I'd like to provide an alternative analysis.

There is indisputably a positive correlation between having well-to-do parents and performing well in school. Therefore, I don't find it inappropriate for me to exchange the concept of well-to-do kids for the concept of talented kids.

We see on the graph that grades for all 4 categories -- what has been labeled high, fairly high, fairly low, and low income kids -- have gone up since 1990.

Parents being given the opportunity to choose an alternative to mediocre public schools has therefore, according to my analysis, not brought down the lower income children. Rather, it has helped put an end to the holding back of children who are more talented at traditional schoolwork. It has even, perhaps, created the desired effect of causing the public schools to get their butts in gear and improve themselves -- thereof the rise in grades for all categories of children.

I do believe that we need to make sure everyone can choose a better school and that income, which is only symptomatically related to success in school (but, once again, undeniably related nonetheless) is a barrier that we should make efforts to break. But there would be little point to having grades if everyone got the same, wouldn't there? If anything, I think the real story in this graph is "what's up with the general grade inflation going on here??" I don't doubt Fjelkner's analysis (she is the head of my teachers' union) about returning the responsibility for schools to the national level -- I have yet to form an opinion on that subject, and frankly think it would be 12 of one, a dozen of the other -- but I appreciate Margareta Pålsson (schools spokesperson for the ruling conservative party) saying that choice in school is critical and what we need to do is make sure that those choices are open to everyone. I'm also pleased to see that even Ylva Johansson (schools spokesperson for the socialist party) sees school choice as a part of Sweden now, and that solutions to both problems and "problems" must be found in other areas.

Either way, I don't see the benefit to Sweden of making sure everyone is equally poorly educated. But, with a bit of deja vu from the earlier article I blogged about on the subject of the growing number of "rich" children, it appears that I'm surrounded by people who feel that everyone getting the same grades is an obvious end unto itself.