My e-mail to the PSAL boys and girls bowling commissioners

date: Mon, Nov 25, 2013
subject: Suggestion for PSAL bowling program: basic varsity instruction

Dear Ms. D’Orazio and Mr. Cutaneo,

This e-mail is in response to your post on psal.org, Bowling Coaches Advisory Meeting, soliciting "input and insight to assist in the future direction of the PSAL bowling program." I am not a PSAL bowling coach. However, I am a PSAL bowling alumnus - I bowled for the Stuyvesant High School team - who this season watched several of his alma mater's boys and girls teams' matches at Bowlmor Lanes at Chelsea Piers.

My suggestion that I believe would dramatically elevate both the technical quality and varsity competitive experience of the PSAL bowling program is the PSAL-wide implementation of standard basic instruction in bowling knowledge and fundamentals.

Varsity athletics are not about come as you are, then leave as you came, yet that is what is happening to PSAL bowlers. The boys and girls team records of Stuyvesant's bowlers, their opponents, and other schools on www.psal.org confirmed my PSAL experience and current observation that PSAL bowlers typically do not progress in a way that indicates normal instructional varsity coaching. My conclusion is the lack of teaching and training in the PSAL bowling program has retarded the progress of PSAL bowlers and depressed the competitive standard of the teams. The students who join as novices typically finish their PSAL careers with only marginal improvement despite having been PSAL bowlers for 2, 3, or even 4 years. There are individual exceptions to the norm, of course, but PSAL bowling is a team sport and PSAL bowlers can't compete for the city championship on their own. The common case with exceptional breakthroughs is exemplified by Stuy girls divisional rival HS Fashion Industries and the Stuy boys' 1st round play-off opponent, Queens Vocational Tech. [HS Fashion Industries' top bowler] and [Queens Vocational Tech's top bowler] stood out as seniors who significantly improved over their PSAL careers while surrounded by teammates who did not, indicating their individual improvement occurred independently of their PSAL teams.

Neglecting to teach and train student-athletes causes detrimental effects in any varsity sport. But instructional neglect is magnified in a technical sport like bowling because PSAL bowlers can’t run faster and jump higher to compensate for fundamental flaws. For most PSAL bowlers who attempt to improve on their own, their skill level is undermined by inefficient training, gaps in basic knowledge, and fundamental flaws that would have been preempted had they received proper teaching and training at the outset of their 1st year in the PSAL bowling program. That's the case with my alma mater. This season, I was impressed by the character and competitive mettle of the senior-heavy Stuyvesant girls team but was dismayed by their technical fundamental flaws. The girls practiced on their own over their PSAL careers, but for every thing they each did right, it was cancelled by one or two things they each did wrong. If the Stuyvesant girls team had been coached properly so that its technical bowling quality matched its exceptional team character, the girls would have been legitimate PSAL championship contenders this season rather than reaching for gritty upsets of higher ranked teams. A lack of basic instruction was also evident in the Stuyvesant boys team, which was rife with fundamental flaws with no indication of coaching correction. The defect was endemic - I witnessed no evidence of normal varsity coaching with Stuyvesant's equally flawed regular-season opponents.

I understand that knowledgable bowlers among school faculty and departmental budget and access for on-lane practices are limited. I assume those logistical limitations are not unique to Stuyvesant in the PSAL bowling program.

I therefore suggested the USBC High School Coaching Guide and USBC varsity bowling manager Brian English [his e-mail] to the Stuyvesant bowling coaches and Assistant Principal Barth. (If the inserted link doesn't work, here's the full link to the USBC coaching guide PDF: http://usbcongress.http.internapcdn.net/usbcongress/bowl/highschool/pdfs/HSBowling_Coaching_Guide.pdf. Or go to the USBC website: www.bowl.com/highschool/. Open ‘Materials’. The /highschool materials page contains descriptions and links to the USBC High School Coaching Guide PDF and other useful documents.)

For novice PSAL bowlers, the USBC coaching guide lays out the formative steps to becoming a serious bowler. For advanced PSAL bowlers, the USBC coaching guide is a useful refresher on the basics. For PSAL coaches, requiring their bowlers to learn and train from the USBC coaching guide would establish a common language and technical baseline with which to teach the game and build up their teams.

Although they may lack bowling experience, PSAL coaches possess a wealth of varsity coaching experience. Adding bowling instructional resources to their coaching faculties should provide them enough building blocks to develop a normal varsity curriculum of basic instruction for PSAL bowlers, so they can have a true varsity experience. USBC's Brian English and local expert bowling instructors, who are perhaps PSAL bowling alumni, can be consulted to help customize a basic instructional template that works around the logistical limitations of PSAL bowling. While the USBC coaching guide assumes instruction will take place on the lanes, much of its content appears to be adaptable off the lanes with classroom work, off-lane exercises, and video analyses of matches and practices. (Cell-phone video capability is ubiquitous these days and should be made a valuable training tool for PSAL bowling.) Training takes longer, but the classroom teaching of the basic knowledge in the USBC coaching guide should be completed in short order. On-lane team practices, including non-decisive C games, can be made more efficient with skill drills that are coupled to classroom work, as opposed to unstructured free bowling. 'Homework' reading assignments with on-lane and off-lane exercises can finetune PSAL bowlers' personal training. And that’s before PSAL coaches get creative, such as making full-scale approach-to-arrows lane mock-ups to train on at school.

I want to be clear that I am advocating for standard basic instruction for PSAL bowlers with the object of setting fundamentals, not advanced instruction that would be unreasonable to expect from non-expert PSAL bowling coaches. With proper basic training, PSAL bowlers who join as novices should be able to attain a portable 150-160 average with a solid foundation to improve by their 2nd year on the team. And they should be able to acquire basic proficiency without expensive equipment - shoes and a custom-drilled, weight-appropriate plastic or urethane ball are sufficient. Consistent spare-making alone would raise their averages to a 150-160 level. The PSAL bowling program can defer on advanced instruction to individual coaches and bowlers.

If basic training becomes standard throughout the PSAL bowling program, I believe it would catalyze a chain reaction with a revolutionary impact on the competitive culture of PSAL bowling and, perhaps from there, the course of bowling in New York City. I toyed with the idea of limiting my suggestion to Stuyvesant for a competitive advantage, but victory is not the ultimate purpose of PSAL bowling and varsity athletics in general. The purpose of PSAL bowling is to provide an inimitably formative competitive varsity experience for our teenage boys and girls with an emphasis on 'competitive'. Therefore, reforming the varsity experience for Stuyvesant's bowlers requires a whole environmental change, which means their PSAL opponents need to improve, too.

I hope that made sense.

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These are excerpts from e-mails I wrote to the PSAL bowling commissioners and PSAL coordinator Lance Hermus in our follow-up exchange:

The change has to begin by taking root somewhere. While I'd like to see the change spread immediately through all of the PSAL, I would understand if the first step was a controlled experiment, such as one girls division and one boys division that are in notable need of repair. Of course, I would suggest the experimental divisions be Manhattan I, the home of Stuy bowling. But I also would understand if PSAL bowling officials chose a division they could monitor more easily in person.

I would calibrate at a whole division rather than a singled-out team as the basic experimental unit because the regular season is a practically self-contained social interactive environment. It would be jarring if one team was singled out to do something very different from the rest of its division. And opponents naturally influence each other in the 'play up/down to your competition' phenomenon. As such, normative social expectation, peer pressure, along with cooperation among the coaches should be harnessed to help the project. If they've all been specially chosen by PSAL bowling and in it together, the coaches who compete against each other on the same days, usually in the same centers, can compare notes, and encourage and help each other in person. The time/place concentration of division matches also means it should be only marginally more work for PSAL bowling officials to track the progress of a whole division compared to a single team. In it together, the coaches can unself-consciously apply the new instructional practices in matches. Experimenting with a whole division means more could be tried within the scope of matches - granted, without interfering with the matches' integrity. If a coach falters in spite of the peer pressure and support of the other coaches, the PSAL bowling program wouldn't have placed all its eggs in one basket. Failures constructively inform, too, and are softened when buttressed by success stories.

My input on the technical details of bowling instruction is necessarily limited (I topped out as a 175 bowler after Stuy), but I do have some tactical background, such as informed my application suggestions in the 1st e-mail. Teaching bowling fundamentals isn't witchcraft; the needed coaching reforms are doable with some creativity to work around the logistical limitations. The larger hurdle is changing the prevailing mindset and retiring old ways.

I believe PSAL-wide standard basic instruction will have a greater demonstrable impact on PSAL girls bowling compared to PSAL boys bowling because bowling is primarily about technique. The basic physical abilities needed in bowling - balance and coordination - are gender neutral. F=MA power makes a difference only after the fundamentals are set. With proper training, boys and girls bowlers should reach the 150-160 plateau with equal ease and time, within 1 year, based on consistent (not perfect) spare-making and a sprinkling of strikes. From there, it's about adding strikes through advanced technique that brings power to bear and equipment upgrades, which is the stage where boys and girls begin to separate.

Let's say basic coaching instruction improves a hitherto dormant boys team and girls team so that each owns, conservatively, a 600 (4 X 150) A-Team by the following season. Let's say their B-Teams are made up of 1st year novices at 400 (4 X 100). That hypothetical boys team would rise into, if I recall correctly, the 20s on this season's PSAL city ranking, which would be a significant upgrade, moreso with the ladder play-off format. However, that hypothetical girls team would rise to 5th on the PSAL city ranking with a strong enough A-Team to defeat every other team except New Dorp and maybe Tottenville. In other words, while there's plenty of untapped bowling potential on the boys side, there are reservoirs of untapped bowling potential on the girls side, and every PSAL bowling team can make this upgrade.
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While watching Stuy's matches this season, the phrase "soft bigotry of low expectations" came to mind.

There's no way to water down the influence of PSAL bowling coaches on the attitude of PSAL bowlers. The coach structures the team and sets the competitive standard. When a PSAL bowling coach doesn't care enough to teach the game, train his bowlers, and enforce a high standard, the team will follow the coach's cue. The students, in turn, won't care to learn, practice, and compete as serious varsity athletes. As high school students, PSAL bowlers know the varsity archetype of training and competing under a coach who instructs and holds his team accountable. So, when PSAL bowling coaches neglect to fulfill even a rudimentary version of the varsity archetype, they implicitly teach their teams to disregard bowling as a serious varsity sport. The return on investment from PSAL bowling coaches who don't coach is PSAL bowlers who don't respect and don't commit to the sport.

I'm not a good enough bowler to offer much advice on bowling instruction. I can endorse the USBC high school coaching guide for its similarity to the resources my class-year teammates and I used when we learned the game, but that's about it. However, I can suggest that it's important to indoctrinate 1st year PSAL bowlers right away, before they can limit their expectations or pick up bad habits. Instill a serious attitude about PSAL bowling from the outset with proper training and a competitive varsity ethos, and the rest will fall into place.

I think the hardest challenge will be readying the coaches. The Manhattan coaches I watched this season would need to learn bowling fundamentals in order to teach them. That shouldn't be too difficult, but I'm not convinced they have the wherewithal to develop basic instructional programs on their own. To begin, I think guidance and an instructional template need to be developed and pushed down from your level. Then the program can be adapted and refined with feedback.
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The tip-of-the-tongue excuse by PSAL bowling coaches and phys-ed assistant principals is the shortage of budget and access for on-lane practices. I believe that roadblock will need to be bridged by PSAL-level guidance that includes creative work-arounds such as I suggested earlier, e.g., classroom and video work, off-lane drills at school, perhaps with lane mock-ups, take-home on-lane and off-lane exercises, reading, and video review, and ways to make the precious few team practices more focused, efficient, and productive than unstructured free bowling. For example, team practices can be used to introduce on-lane skill drills that the students then repeat on their home lanes.

As far as other common excuses, PSAL bowling coaches who (inexcusably) haven't already learned their bowling basics, including the instructional theory, should learn them in short order. Bowling fundamentals are not esoteric, and as professional high-school teachers, learning in depth then teaching subject matter is what they do. And varsity sports normally require training schedules for coaches and students in addition to scheduled matches. The current shortage of scheduled training in the PSAL bowling program is actually abnormal. The addition of normal varsity instruction will help normalize the varsity experience for PSAL bowlers. Generally, training with teammates and coaches is as impactful on the students as the matches. Training is where much of the personal, social, and team-cultural growth happens. A template that overlays a training schedule onto the PSAL bowling season shouldn't be difficult.

As I said, I'm not a good enough bowler to flesh out my suggestions with much more detail. But once the idea is accepted that basic instruction in PSAL bowling is feasible despite the practical constraints, I believe tailoring a training program for the PSAL will be relatively simple for creative bowling instructors. I analogize it to the weapons training in my Army basic training. Shooting, like bowling, is mostly about technique, and like PSAL on-lane practice, our access to the firing range was limited. Thus, most of our weapons training took place in classrooms, the barracks and other company areas, and a crude, frustrating simulator (equivalent to a poorly made lane mock-up). If the Army can teach soldiers how to shoot with limited access to firing ranges, then the PSAL should be able to teach 1st-year novice PSAL bowlers how to bowl with limited access to the lanes.

I don't expect there is a ready-made working model for lane-limited varsity bowling instruction at either the high school or college level. If there is, the USBC's Brian English should be able to help you find it. I expect the PSAL bowling program will need to invent its own.

I selfishly look forward to these reforms coming to Stuy bowling and the Manhattan I division. I don't want to witness anymore of what I saw this season: the anomie of the Stuyvesant boys team and the winning team character of the senior-loaded Stuyvesant girls team undermined by team-wide technical flaws that should have been corrected by real varsity coaching at the start of their PSAL bowling careers.
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If you believe it is feasible for PSAL bowling to be normalized as a varsity sport, but the chief obstacle is small-minded coaches and assistant principals (who hire and instruct the coaches) whom you lack the power to compel, then it seems the solution is to seek out like-minded coaches and assistant principals whom you don't need to compel. Start small. Work closely with the select few coaches and APs who want what you want and are willing to work with you to bring your vision to life.

Big things grow from small things. If your reach exceeds your grasp, then start by reaching within the limit of your grasp. Crawl, walk, run. Spark, tinder, kindling, fire. A seed becomes a forest.

Maybe only a handful of PSAL bowling teams have like-minded coaches and promising conditions for reform. Maybe only one team has them. If you can successfully reify your vision at a handful of schools, or even just one school, to start with, you'll then have a working model with DNA that can spread throughout the PSAL.
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The Staten Island teams have a high competitive standard. In terms of reach versus grasp, they are low-hanging fruit and good tinder to catch a spark. The SI division is a place to demonstrate that normal varsity coaching can work logistically.

However, SI bowlers are already elite. I doubt they qualify as typically novice PSAL bowlers. Using them to develop a PSAL-standard basic instructional template strikes me as like developing a basic math program for regular-ed or special-ed students by basing it on specialized exam-school students.

Said another way, I conceive PSAL-standard basic instruction as taking typically novice PSAL bowlers and training them to a 150-160 level by their 2nd year with basic knowledge and fundamentals, and a solid foundation to improve. But if SI bowlers have been properly coached outside of school, are they appropriate test subjects for your experimental pilot program?

That said, refreshing the fundamentals doesn't hurt. SI bowlers would still benefit from the social-cultural added value of normal varsity coaching. And, if normal varsity coaching can be shown to work in SI, then the logistics would be viable elsewhere.

Now, that reservation applies to SI boys teams, not SI girls teams. Judging by their records on psal.org, most SI girls bowlers would benefit from basic instruction, which, combined with the healthy competitive bowling environment in Staten Island, makes them excellent candidates for an experimental pilot program.

I think your cite of some parts of Queens and Brooklyn is closer to the mark. Students in those areas are exposed to serious bowling via local leagues. Unfortunately, most leagues don't coach. Good bowlers try out for those school teams with some regularity, but not enough of them to fill out line-ups like the SI teams. Some years they get lucky with a coincidental cluster of good bowlers, but most years they don't.

The PSAL format encourages upsets. Any team that can field 4 or more bowlers who are merely good enough can, on a good day, upset a powerhouse team. The question is, how can a PSAL team that usually mixes good bowlers with novice teammates become good enough to compete with the top teams every year?

The answer is a system that turns novice bowlers into fundamentally sound bowlers every year, like the JV squad in other varsity sports. With proper coaching, PSAL teams wouldn't need good bowlers to try out, because they'd manufacture good bowlers from novices. Then, the few elite bowlers who do try out would join teams that can immediately go toe-to-toe with the powerhouse teams. The competitive standard of the whole PSAL bowling program would be raised thus.

Here's my plug for Stuyvesant as a candidate for your experimental pilot program:
There's no denying that the state of bowling in Manhattan is discouraging for competitive youth bowling. However, most Stuy kids commute from the outer boroughs. For PSAL bowling, Stuyvesant profiles more like a Queens or Brooklyn school than a Manhattan school in terms of the students' exposure and access to bowling at home.

Bowling is a thinking man's sport based heavily on technique and attention to detail. Stuy bowlers are smart, disciplined, hard-working, respond well to structured instruction, and they're competitive - ie, they're coachable. They're just not being properly coached. If they're properly coached, Stuyvesant bowlers will reward you with demonstrable improvement.

Stuy's bowlers want to be better; check out their quotes in the Stuyvesant Spectator coverage:
Boys: http://stuyspec.com/sports/24575/pinheads-bowl-over-the-falcons/
Girls: http://stuyspec.com/sports/24582/winning-is-right-up-the-pinheads-alley/

(Note: The Pinheads is the girls team name. The boys team isn't named after the girls team. The boys were nameless this season, indicative of their anomic state.)
--

Eric

To be fantastic

Wes Anderson's 2009 animated movie adaptation of the Roald Dahl classic, Fantastic Mr. Fox, is good. There are significant changes from Dahl's original story. I haven't decided the movie's social ethical lesson. There may not be an affirmative social ethical message to the movie.

Rather, Anderson's version of Mr. Fox's story is most like a red-pill parable about unchaining vigorous or "wild" masculinity from civilized, emasculating domesticity while still affirming the importance of dyadic love and family, reminiscent of Sam Shakusky's story in Andersons's 2012 Moonrise Kingdom. Like Moonrise Kingdom, Anderson's Fantastic Mr. Fox applies a red-pill take on complementary gender relations. Mrs. Fox is tough, capable, and keeps up with her dynamic man like Suzy Bishop, and also like Suzy, she stays firm within her dyadic feminine role and faithfully follows her mate's masculine lead.

The red-pill lesson of Anderson's telling is masculine actualization requires a man to slip the safe tethers of civilized life, reject the known conventional path, step off into the unknown, and court risk, danger, and fear.

Since Foxy retired as a thief at his wife's behest, he has been a columnist for a small newspaper; however, he doubts anyone reads his words. Foxy understands that masculine actualization can only come through active praxis, not passive talk. Restless, his essential need to unite with his inner free, wild wolf overcomes his civilized fear of the wolf.

Foxy rejects the ordinary life that's been imposed on him, switches from object to subject, and sets out to reshape his world to his will. When he decides imprudently to buy a home above ground against his wife's warning that foxes live underground for a reason, Foxy deliberately sets in motion his rise as a man.

On the flip side of taking the nonconformist, unconventional, unsafe way are reasonable doubt from others and paralyzing self-doubt. Other people know what is known while the aspiring man doesn't - and can't - know what is unknown until the truth is discovered out there. He will be opposed in his journey, and they may be right. He may be wrong. He may fail and suffer for his pride.

Felicity believes her tamed husband has become reckless and she's right; Foxy is indeed a husband and father with a vital responsibility to his family. Foxy breaks his promise to Felicity to stop stealing, in spite of her contentment with conventional family life, and endangers his family and community so that he can be "fantastic" again. Defying Felicity in order to revive his "wild" masculinity reminds of Rocky's response to Adrian nagging him not to box again in Rocky II: "Adrian, I never asked you to stop being a woman, so please, please don't ask me to stop being a man. Please."

In other words, Foxy is fantastically selfish. While he shows a conscience and expresses reflective doubts, he continues to act impulsively with a near-sociopathic disregard for the dangers he thrusts onto others and harm he causes. The unretired thief not only violates social norms to do what he wants, he breaks his own rules, such as when he looks the rabid beagle, Spitz, in the eyes. Wanting, taking, and defying limits are requirements for a man to go his own way.

In the dancing finale, Foxy has reconciled "fantastic" vigorous manhood with "glowing" responsible fatherhood, but the cost to his family, the animal community, and human community for Foxy's personal development is great. The only saving grace is the lives lost to pay for his self-centered quest are limited to fierce yet cider-addicted, crazy Rat (the stolen chickens were destined to become food either way), though not due to greater care by Foxy. His friends and family risk their lives on his behalf and almost lose them. The other animals volunteer as decoys and survive a barrage by snipers. His nephew Kristofferson was captured and should have been killed. His son Ash ran through a torrent of bullets to save the rescue party at Bean's compound. The movie ends without a promise of a happily ever after ending. The animals remain under siege, trapped in the sewer, and are starving when Foxy breaks into the supermarket. Since the supermarket is owned by Boggis, Bunce, and Bean, and the animal marauders don't take care to hide their theft, the animal-human war brought on by Foxy only promises to widen. Foxy has dampened the crisis for the moment, not solved the crisis he brought on.

Throughout the movie, Foxy charges headlong into risk relying on his burglar's quick mind, skills, and athleticism, and comes through his trials with no more personal injury than his shot off, chewed up tail that he pins back onto his pants. After a moment of self-sacrifice to end the crisis (or does his sawing through the sewer bars show that he was actually running away?), he chooses instead to lead everyone in a dangerous gamble rather than surrender himself. For Foxy, charisma and swashbuckling verve seem to be enough to escape blame. He effortlessly draws Kylie and others into his schemes and routinely overrides the conventionally alpha, jealous, but equally overawed Badger. Despite the widespread harm he's caused, the natural alpha Foxy is apparently forgiven after his charming appeal to the "wild" nature of his friends and family and the stop gaps he achieves by involving them all successfully in the inflammatory, risky missions to empty the human antagonists' warehouses and rescue Kristofferson.

Like Sam Shakusky, Foxy radically alters his world in order to fix his dissatisfaction. Like Sam, Foxy proves he has the right stuff. Unlike Sam's reification, it's not clear Foxy has changed his world for the better, and he expresses lingering doubts in his last newspaper column. But as always, Foxy doesn't allow any doubts to stop him from going his own way.

Wes Anderson, upholding the theme of vigorous masculinity balanced by dyadic love and family, hints a warning that a thin line separates talented, compulsive Foxy from his near-equal in electric, thin and hungry (or thirsty in his case) Rat. As young men, the two were on the same side as colleagues, respectful rivals, or perhaps even partners in crime. The chief difference separating them in middle age is Foxy has been grounded by his family. Foxy defies his family responsibilities to pursue his passion, but his family ties save him from falling to Rat's bachelor fate, lost in himself, swallowed by his selfish appetites. Foxy achieves a happy life balance with his wife and son by his side, while lonely Rat dies as he lived.

Moral of the story: A red-pill man strives to be extraordinary and reshape the world. His vision is to be invented. The world will resist him, and his selfish quest carries a price that more than he may pay. Risk, doubt, and fear are unavoidable, and he will break through to extraordinary manhood only by overcoming discouraging setbacks. A man cannot know whether he is extraordinary merely by talking about it. To find out, he must gamble to reify his will through praxis. He can't allow others to hold him back from his mission, but he also can't succeed alone. If he proves to be only ordinary, then he will pay the penalty for daring beyond his limitations. But if the truth is he is an extraordinary man, then he might ultimately succeed to be fantastic.

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."
-President Theodore Roosevelt, from "The Man In The Arena", Sorbonne, Paris, France, April 23, 1910

Eric

Thoughts of the day

It's cold again. Time to break out my base layers (aka winter underwear), such as my UNIQLO Heattech long johns. I have a small collection of base layers from the 3 winters I served in Korea. My Bonfire Radiant makes me miss my Army Goretex jacket, though I preferred to wear my field jacket for the traditional aesthetic. I discovered that wearing the Radiant with only a T-shirt as a top isn't enough to keep warm on a cold blustery day. The Radiant and Heattech long johns (with slacks, no other top) are enough for 32 degrees, 14 MPH wind, 23 degrees wind chill. My Army polypros under slacks and hoodie are toasty. The Radiant and Army polypros can keep me warm in biting single-digit degree wind chill, though I still need to add protection for my hands and face. The Radiant's powder skirt that buttons at the waist stops the cold wind from blowing under the jacket from below, though some cold air still enters from the face opening. Last winter, for the first time I recall, I became sensitive to the cold while indoors. The most striking change was my difficulty warming up in bed. To compensate, I just recovered an old, worn pair of roomy, thick cotton sweatpants I had consigned to my rag pile to wear around my apartment. I forgot that I had cut off the bottom 6 inches of the right leg. Oh well. I can still use it as intended; my right ankle will just be colder than my left ankle. I may cut off the bottom of the left pant leg and turn the sweatpants into clam diggers.

The NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) National Weather Service (weather.gov) is not the same thing as The Weather Channel (weather.com).

Ugh, clothes moths. For a while - weeks at least, maybe months - occasional small bugs have flown around my apartment. I thought they were related to my produce purchases or coming in through a gap in the window screens. Today, to my dismay, I discovered the source. They're clothes moths. I was rushing out and grabbed one of my Army-issued undershirt, cold weather, men's, type 1, class 3, brown 436, 50% wool, 50% cotton's out of the closet. I put it on before noticing large moth-eaten holes by the hem with many orange granules. I then noticed more moth-chewed holes on the sleeves with more orange granules. I pulled it off and put it into a plastic bag. On closer examination, there looked to be a number of old moth cocoon shells on the fabric. The gross thing is I wore the shirt covered with the moth-eaten holes, orange granules (eggs or excrement?), old and possibly fresh moth cocoons, and who knows how many eggs and larvae. I may have scattered them around my apartment. I had a number of wool clothing items (sweaters, jackets, scarves, caps, gloves, socks, shirt) stored in the same area as the moth-infested shirt, including my treasured wool and leather high school varsity jacket. The moth-spawning shirt had been, in fact, resting on my other wool/cotton Army-issued cold weather undershirt. Sifting through my cold-weather clothing, I saw 2 larvae crawling and black granules on the closet shelf. My black Army-issued watch cap and black wool gloves also had holes, though not as egregious as the shirt. I sealed the wool clothing items in plastic shopping bags. Moth larvae camouflage well. They're small, either translucent or the color of the underlying material, fuzzy like wool, and curl up and freeze. Their cocoons look like fuzzy lint. There may be moth eggs on the synthetic and cotton clothing items I had stored in the same area, too. Eventually, I'll get around to washing everything in hot water - supposedly, 120-degree water kills moth larvae. Not the shirt, though - that's an unrecoverable loss. It was one of my favorite and well-used pieces of Army-issued uniform wear. I wonder, are the clothes moths an unintended consequence of scavenging? Update: I spotted a moth resting on a wall in my apartment. I then discovered that a wool jacket I've had since childhood that I treasure because my mom repaired it was also infested by moths. The moths go to dark places to do their business, which means they hide on the inside, back, and underside of clothes. From the outside, the jacket looked fine, but inspecting the hitherto hidden areas revealed the damage. The jacket was resting on top of another wool jacket, but like my other Army-issued cold weather undershirt, the other jacket lacked apparent moth damage. I plastic bagged them both.

Will Stuy bowling change course due to my actions? I'm disappointed and morose when I adopt a cause, know it's right, make my moves, and make no difference. It's like trying to change the course of a river by tossing in pebbles from the bank. I encouraged the team members to do what I did as a high school student, but what I did was extraordinary. Stable reform on a perennial scope can only come from the coach and assistant principal, not from the students. I pushed the coaches and assistant principal, too, but they don't appear interested in change. They've settled for the easier wrong rather than the harder right. Was the problem unsolvable under the circumstances or was I unfit to solve a solvable problem? Does it make a difference? I'm disgusted either way. Thus, MGTOW. Maybe the students will pleasantly surprise me; I won't know until next season. I worked the problem at the student level, coach level, assistant principal level, and PSAL official level, so while disappointed, I'm satisfied I made a reasonable effort to make a difference.

The walk to Stuy is 2.9 miles. I should have walked to and back from school more often in high school. I should have done a lot at Stuy differently. The walk to Columbia is 5 miles.

The Staten Island Ferry fare is free.

A Serious Man is depressingly desolate like another Coen brothers movie set in the north-midwest United States, Fargo, and nihilistic like Waiting for Godot. As in the Coen brothers' Fargo, Asian men are disparaged in A Serious Man, except as alien and sinisterly conniving rather than pathetic and buffoonishly conniving. The lack of redemption in religion is a strongly overt theme. Danny and his smoking buddy high at his Bar Mitvah is hilarious. Part of the soundtrack sounds like the mysterious sounding part of the soundtrack from The Game. The pinnacle of rabbinical authority in the movie, Rabbi Marshak, delivers the film's coda in his guidance, modified from Jefferson Airplane's "Somebody to Love", to Danny Gopnik: "When the truth is found. To be lies. And all the hope. Within you dies. Then what? . . . Be a good boy." There is no reward for being good, however, there is retributive punishment for being bad. The protagonist, Larry Gopnik, is objectified by his family and routinely disrespected by them. The movie serves as a cautionary tale about being a docile, trusting, faithful, responsible, selfless beta provider. Confused, clueless Larry: "Everything I thought was one way turns out to be another." Friend at picnic: "Then, it's an opportunity to learn how things really are." It's a classic red pill wake-up call. I'm like Arthur Gopnik, who cries that Hashem has given him bupkes while Arthur has poured himself into the Mentaculus, his treatise on the "probability of the universe". Like my idealism, Arthur's Mentaculus happens to be true as esoterica, but is connected to nothing substantial in the world and confers no real value to Arthur. Arthur envies his brother's conventional trappings of success (job, family), but Larry is stuck in the Jolly Roger Motel, too. Arthur and Larry's dilemmas raise the question I'm asking: So what's true? Somebody to love, according to Jefferson Airplane on the soundtrack. It's a good answer; I haven't found a better one.

Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane was quite pretty when she was young and not counter-cultural.

Grantland article about DJ Short, an OG cannabis breeder. His life has truth.

WGTOW Amanda Bynes is back home with her parents from her inpatient treatment and, as expected, will continue with outpatient treatment. Is her treatment a cure, brainwashing, or both? Unfortunately, paparazzi are harassing her again like wolves on the hunt.

Gavin Aung Than draws, Calvin and Hobbes style, a commencement address that Bill Watterson gave to the 1990 graduating class of his alma mater, Kenyon College. "Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement.", "To invent your own life's meaning is not easy".

My working definition of 'red pill': Red pill is this generation’s beatnik unplugging from the zeitgeist. Red pill isn’t the truth for all and it's not a membership with a normative set of ideas, so it falls short of a conventional social movement in that sense. Coalition politics is not a purpose of the red pill, though collective social action can spawn in the red pill ecosystem. Rather, red pill is a clearinghouse of ideas and a philosophical approach. Red pill scrutinizes the social ecosystem with a critical lens and promotes inquiry that’s subversive in the skepticism about socially policed, politically correct orthodoxy. There is necessarily a social component to individual truth, and red pill points the way for a re-calibration of social consciousness. Red pill is introspective with the goal of gleaning personal truth and catalyzing personal evolution in the Nietzschean sense.

Before I can begin to sync my wavelength out there, I need to figure out what my wavelength is.

M3 speaks for me, but be careful not to fall into this trap. Figuring things out red-pill style needs to include breaking down the elements. For instance, I desire socialization and solidarity, but I should take care not to conflate that want with other wants.

Reaction to Wes Anderson's animated movie adaptation of Roald Dahl's Fantastic Mr. Fox moved here. Youtube compilation of final fights from the 6 Rocky movies.

From Up on Poppy Hill by Studio Ghibli is a coming-of-age love story set in 1963 Yokohama, Japan. It's innocent, kind, and nostalgic with the kind of sweet romantic fantasy that molded my romantic-idealist conceptions as a boy. I didn't appreciate then that the model doesn't apply to me because, one, it's made-up, and two, even if it were true, I'm not a chick magnet like Gilbert Blythe or Shun Kazama. The fellowship and solidarity of the students strike a chord with my military experience and the related dreams reacting to my present anomie. I like the voices in the English-language version, but I don't like the liberties the American team took with the script. Assuming the English subtitles accurately translate the Japanese-language version, the original contains simpler, more straightforward dialogue. The story is told better without the embellishments and idiomatic changes in the English-language version. The incestuous, genetic attraction story angle is off-putting. Umi and Shun profess their romantic love to each other while they still believe they're genetically brother and sister. The conclusion of the story is they aren't brother and sister after all, so they're free to consummate their love. However, the question of Shun's genetic parentage isn't neatly foreclosed by the meeting with Captain Onodera. Umi asks her mom if she's sure Shun isn't her brother, and her mother responds by saying the possibility hadn't occurred to her and asks whether Shun looks like Umi's father. The thing is, Shun is a dead ringer for Umi's father. Umi and Shun also look enough alike to be opposite-sex versions of each other. It's odd that Umi's father led Shun's adoptive parents to believe he was Shun's biological father, although Onodera apparently corroborates the Tachibanas are Shun's parents. It's possible that Shun was born from an affair between Umi's father and Tachibana's wife; I wouldn't be certain they aren't related until their DNA was tested.

Amy Winehouse cover of the oft-covered Gerry Goffin and Carole King classic, "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow". The song was first made famous in 1960 by The Shirelles - their version. Winehouse's version is my favorite. She was a talent.

Sweet description by a feminine girl of submitting to the love of a masculine man, stigmatized in the comments.

Ouch, again: a gut-punch example of chicks despise nice guys. The letter from Annoyed hits all the markers. She may as well have used a red-pill conversion narrative checklist. The plural of anecdote is data: I've been that guy with that girl. The destructive feedback loop described by Annoyed is really what happens. Ugly truths are ugly.

Hitori (or one man) date. Oh no.

Betapedia is depressing and enlightening.

Secular Patriarchy has an intriguing platform advocating for cultural and legal codification of complementary, traditional gender relationships. (h/t) The intense specificity in some of his positions, such as his emphases on "unconditional Chivalry" and a "Superior Power" that seems to be a 1:1 substitution for God, can be jarring, but I can't be put off by a technique I've applied in my activism.

Maggie Geha is a pretty girl. A former dancer, she's deceptively tall (5'11") and voluptuous (34-25-36).

TV sports reporters Sara Eckert, Cassidy Hubbarth, Toni Collins, and Prim Siripipat remind me of each other in their youthful fertile style.

At Grantland, Jay Caspian Kang's latest on Jeremy Lin, inspired by Lin's 2nd, recent return to MSG as a Rocket. I often find Kang's work to be somewhat cryptic, but he stays focused with this piece. As a fellow Asian American man, Kang gets the Asian American social perspective on Lin. Where my take and Kang's take diverge is that I understand the deeper issue fueling objections is a broader social-culture normative contest rather than outrage within the scope of specific offenses. The utility of aggressive reactions to slights against Jeremy Lin is following the precedent of the social-political corrective playbook established by other American minority groups that have pushed for increased normal status in American social culture. The complementary tactic to normalizing the preferred status is stigmatizing and/or marginalizing the repudiated status. It's the basic Marxist (method, not ideology) activist game of reification. Create the subject position and destroy the objectified position. Play the game or not play it, in American social politics, it's the only game.

The landslide victory by the liberal-ideologue Democratic candidate in the NYC mayoral election after 2 decades of stability and growth under Republican mayors reminds me of the saying that the 1st generation grows the family business into an empire (Giuliani), the 2nd generation maintains it (Bloomberg), and the 3rd generation loses it. The impulse to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs seems ingrained in our social-political psychology. We'll see.

GWU law professor Jonathan Turley on the Executive overextending its powers.

Interesting take on Marxist-corrupted liberalism as a revenge obsession.

The Hydra's Eternal Rebellion is as good an explanation as any for the opponents of my civil-military advocacy in college.

What is a neoreactionary? I don't know, but here's How to Look at the World Like a Neoreactionary.

What is the Dark Enlightenment? Here's a round-up. This seems to be regarded as the authoritative guide. It's subversive stuff, a widely ranging, multi-faceted counter-cultural umbrella that includes the Manosphere. The content is varied and evolving. I don’t agree with all the specific content and oppose some of it, such as the white nationalist advocacy. However, I can’t fault the ethos of interrogating the dominant politically correct culture. I applaud the search for healthier alternate norms.

Funny pic, which appears to be from a Middle East conflict, for any D&D player. Reminds me of Lisa Simpson playing a guitar and singing protest songs at the SNPP: "Come gather around people, it's high time you learned, about a hero named Homer and a devil named Burns."

I'm a sports fan, but my fandom only exceptionally adopts particular pro athletes, such as Jeremy Lin tribally, unorthodox Knicks forward Anthony Mason, and Ty Cobb historically. Russell Wilson, the young Seattle Seahawks QB, is growing on me.

Televised version of Stephen King's The Stand. It was a cheesy translation of the book, but it was good enough to inspire me to read the book. It's a good book. A list of non-zombie epidemic horror movies, including 1985 favorite, Warning Sign.

AsapSCIENCE is a cool youtube popular science site that uses animated whiteboard drawings to answer questions.

The Lake Peigneur sinkhole, most likely caused by an exploratory oil drilling miscalculation in 1980, is a cautionary tale of unintended consequences and the Seconds from Disaster lesson that unfortunate combinations of factors, mundane errors, and accidents can trigger fast-changing chain reactions with large, catastrophic effects. In such a world, a fixed, perfect-control, zero-defect mindset is incompatible with complex endeavors. Shit happens. Do the best you can with what you have to work with and prepare for something to go wrong as best you can, but from there, you can only be resilient and adaptable.

How to Start a Fire Without a Match.

Youtuber RayMearsBiggestFan offers a convenient collection of Ray Mears instructional clips. I've found Ray Mears youtube videos to be a comfortable accompaniment with meals.

Adhesive hanging hooks from the 99-cent store are junk. (And I paid $1.40.) They weren't strong enough to hold up my poncho curtain on a wall, ball cap on a door, or brush broom inside a closet. A few hours looking good, then pop, on the floor. Looks like I'll splurge on 3M hanging tape after all.

My weight has been ticking up, I believe because I've been eating a lot of starch recently: processed bread with peanut butter and jelly and bachelor meat sauce, pasta, bannock, bannock pizza, and rice. What's to blame? Meal patterns? Sleep patterns? Cold weather? Or just my compulsion to machine-gun food into my mouth until I feel satisfyingly full?

My first attempt making french fries failed. Here are tips for making them correctly. Soak out the starch. Boil in oil. Then boil in oil a second time at higher temp. When I try again, I'll use the Nesco rather than the Salton. Update: Soaking, battering, and pan frying strips of Eastern white potatoes and sweet potatoes made pretty good French fries. I haven't succeeded with the Nesco yet, though.

Mm, Beef Stroganoff (with mushroom and onion sauce, brown rice with peas, and vegetable medley). Yum. I don't know why it was discarded, but I appreciate a scavenged prepared meal. With all the chicken and pork in the diet, changing up the palate with some savory beef was a treat.

My latest bachelor stew: In the Mirro, base of 15-ounce can Goya Jack Mackeral (mackerel in brine) and 18.8-ounce can Progresso Rich & Hearty Savory Beef Barley Vegetable Soup, 2 diced Eastern white potatoes, 2 diced garlic cloves, some diced yellow onion, La Fe frozen cut green beans, approx 30 ounces of pork bone broth and potato starch water, white rice, Barilla fiori pasta. It was good. The canned mackerel worked just as well as canned salmon for half the price.

I made a bachelor stew with 1 chicken thigh, Associated frozen cut okra, La Fe frozen cut green beans, 1 sliced carrot, diced potatoes, diced garlic, diced onions, white rice, ziti pasta, and ditalini pasta. It was good. The chicken thigh produced good chicken broth for the stew.

Bachelor meat sauce made with 1 chicken breast (not deboned) worked.

My bachelor stew made with pernil pork shoulder didn't work as well as the chicken thigh stew. This time, I used the Mirro instead of the Nesco for a higher boiling temperature, but the broth from the pork was thin again. Lacking a strong-flavored meat grease, it's not a bachelor stew; it's just soup. I ended up dicing the boiled pork in order to spread the flavor. An interesting twist was using Best Yet canned Bartlett pears in place of diced potatoes; it was okay.

Bachelor sandwich: Bannock bread made with salt and vinegar, no baking soda, sliced italian sausage, melted mozzarella cheese, baked yellow onions, seasoned salt. Not bad.

Bannock bread made with salt and vinegar, yellow onions, garlic, and seasoned salt, baked in the toaster oven at 400 degrees on 5 minutes a side over oil is a good imitation of scallion pancake. The oil is the key to crisping up the bannock bread. I pretty much wiped out a 5 pound bag of flour eating faux scallion pancakes.

Mozzarella should be melted to where it just browns but before all its moisture is boiled away. That's the point of flavor.

Not all supermarket shelf bread with chemicals and preservatives listed in its ingredients is mold-free. I bought 2 loaves of bread on sale, Harvest Pride Potato Bread and Harvest Pride Texas Toast Bread. The taste, thickness, and texture of the potato bread worked especially well with PB&J. Although I bought the bread on their sell-by date, both ingredient lists included many chemicals with several preservatives, so I thought I would be safe storing them outside the refrigerator at room temperature. I was down to 4 slices of the potato bread and took out a slice to cleanse my palate with my latest bachelor stew. I bit, swallowed, and noticed a tangy flavor. When I took a closer look, I saw the slice and remainder of the loaf were moldy. I discarded them. I then examined the Texas toast bread, which I hadn't yet opened. There were 2 spots of what looked to be mold. I pinched off the spots, toasted the 2 slices, and stored the rest of the loaf in the freezer. Some brands of bread can be stored at room temperature for a long time and don't grow mold. Other brands of bread grow mold at room temperature and need to be stored in the freezer. Chemicals, including preservatives, in the ingredients aren't necessarily a guarantee that the bread is immune to mold.

Impulse buyer's remorse: The 19.6-ounce box of Pepperidge Farm Golden 3-Layer Cake I bought on sale for $2.50 is tasteless. Powder-box brownies are cheaper, thicker, and taste better. Well, now I know. I hope the 27-ounce box of Mrs. Smith's Classic Sweet Potato Pie that I also impulsively bought on sale for $2.50 tastes better. Update: The Mrs. Smith's sweet potato pie wasn't bad. A bonus is I can re-use the aluminum pan that held the pie.

Betty Crocker milk chocolate brownie mix is good, perhaps even my favorite brownie mix so far.

The Betty Crocker fudge brownie mix is okay. Update: I baked it just long enough so the consistency was just past batter and more brownie-fudge than brownie-cake. I then placed it in the fridge until it was cold - not intentionally, I only wanted to cool it faster to room temp out of the toaster oven, but I left it too long in the fridge. I spread grape jelly and sour cream on top. The BC fudge brownie was decadent: chocolatey and thick.

Oranges are surprisingly filling. Must be the fiber.

Shit: I broke the Salton. I was making chicken bone broth in the Salton, went on-line, became immersed in writing, and forgot about the bone broth. When I returned to the kitchen, the Salton pot was boiled dry, the power switch was still on, but the power light was off, and the Salton was cold. I took it apart with my Leatherman, but didn't see any part that looked obviously out of place. I don't know what's broken. I put it back together hoping the Salton would magically come back to life, but no - still dead. How am I going to cook rice now? Until (if) I buy an automatic rice cooker, I'll have to make my rice in the Salton pot or Mirro over the Toastmaster burner or maybe even in the Nesco. They're not automatic rice cookers, though, so I'll have to watch them. At least when the Sunbeam popped, it happened during normal use. The Salton breaking is entirely due to carelessness. The redundancy in my kitchenware is wearing thin. The Toastmaster burner just got promoted to the lead role and I'm running out of back-ups.

Eric

Veterans Day 2013

On this Veterans Day, over twelve years since the 9/11 attacks galvanized our resolute military response, American soldiers continue to serve on the ground over there, competing with their lives for the shape of the world that we pass on to our children.

Military historian T.R. Fehrenbach: “You may fly over a land forever; you may bomb it, atomize it, pulverize it and wipe it clean of life—but if you desire to defend it, protect it and keep it for civilization, you must do this on the ground, the way the Roman legions did, by putting your young men in the mud.”

Army Lieutenant Ben Colgan was the subject of my 1st post on this blog. A little over 10 years ago, on 01NOV03, he was killed in action while leading his platoon dynamically in the post-war, peace-building mission in Iraq. Men and women like LT Colgan are the best of our American generation.

I've said this before and today is a good day to say it again: Young veterans need to become a social movement.

Eric