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Sap Soapbox & Vagueness



At 12:48 PM 3/22/01 -0500, Tom Berry wrote:
>
>In another way of looking at it, it's similar to the concept by which one
refuses to consider anything to be a problem, crisis or anything else with
a negative connotation. In this kind of thinking, such situations are
always "challenges," "opportunities," etc. That may be well and good to a
point, but at some time or another reality needs to set in.<

OPTIMISM ENDS WHERE YOUR FIST TOUCHES MY NOSE:
The Pollyanna Pangloss species of management Tom cites here had infected
the brain of an otherwise fine fellow who supervised our gang of
researchers at the Corps of Engineers in St. Louis.  His mantra was: "There
are no problems, only opportunities."  He chanted this even when I reported
that a fellow employee was threatening to punch my lights out because I
kept asking him to revise the reports he was handing me.  My thought was:
"Yes, we have the opportunity to get rid of this bellicose bum before he
beats my brains out." Not too much later Mr. Ratherfightthanswitch did
punch and kick and bite someone at work. Not me, though, and not, alas, Mr.
Allsforthebest.

The latter eventuality, had it come to pass, might have been instructive.
My mother, a recently retired middle school teacher, had a PaulyAndy
principal who downplayed the threats of an obstreperous 7th-grader who was
terrorizing kids and teachers. According to the Panglossian principle the
boy was not a problem but an opportunity. One day opportunity's child took
umbrage at some instruction from the principal ("Remember, he's your Pal!")
and windmilled him with a lunchbox, breaking his pal's glasses and the nose
so thoughtfully provided by the Creator to hold them up. Thus did the
principal study at the school of hard knocks, and thus the boy get
transferred to a special school for problematic and/or opportunistic children.

LIFE, THE UNIVERSE, AND EVERYTHING:
While I was working at the reference desk in the science library at
Washington State University last year, an email question came from a high
school girl in Australia. I can't quote it exactly, but the substance of it
asked if we would be so kind as to send her any information on the ecology
of the Cascade Mountains for a paper due in her science class. I think she
narrowed it down to "just the plants and animals." That, at least,
eliminated the need to send her the geology floor, but we still thought the
request rather a tall order to fill and found, instead, a few books on the
topic already in Australian libraries along with a couple of website
addresses.

Yours,just back from vacation,

Michael "Fool Disclosure" Tarabulski


*******************************************************************
Michael Tarabulski
International Jazz Collections
Lionel Hampton Center
University of Idaho
Moscow, ID 83844-4247
208-885-6355
*******************************************************************

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