Today is the 3rd anniversary of my Blog's re-invention (originally it was launched around by birthday in 2004 but I accidentally deleted all the old stuff and started over with a new focus and format).  Since June 2005 I have posted many things, news, opinions, and photographs.  Starting out as social commentary and then sharing my adventures in life as I moved to China.  I have been fortunate to meet and maintain some good friendships over these years.  I hopefully have opened some peoples eyes to points of view outside of the popular ones and inspired debates or people to seek better understanding for the things I discuss or rant about.  I also hope I have helped my friends and family keep up with my times here in China.  I have fell off my monthly newsletter so this is the only venue they have for updates now. 

 

Time is the enemy of all, for me it is work.  My hours dedicated to work have sky rocketed and unfortunately there is no real end in sight.  I do hope to get back to a normal work load in August, one that will afford my evening back so I can write, watch a TV series with my wife, spend quality time with my daughter after we get her back (not until Chinese New Year now ) work on photo editing, etc.  As the project I am working on draws to an end the meetings and work load increase.  Time is always the one thing there never seems to be enough of, and if there were, well I believe it would be waised on the things we really don't want to spend time on anyway.

 

Thank you to all the people who have ever stopped by, left comments, hints, suggestions, and arguments.  I have enjoyed reading them all and hope I can maintain the standards of this blog in the future.  While this is an outlet for my voice and thoughts in this world, it is by no means just a one way communication channel. 

Well I feel like an all day sucker!  After an 'independent investigation' the mayor of Gloucester Massachusetts has denied the rumors, shown the school’s principal as having memory irregularities, and told TIME magazine in no particular terms, "liar, liar pants on fire"!  Well, of course she did.  The city can not bury their heads in the sand and hope this goes away.  Their community has become the butt of many jokes over the course of the story breaking and they want to maintain some city dignity and pride.  Under scrutiny the TIME article seems to be losing water, and losing it fast.  Of course, there are means, motive, and opportunity here for Gloucester to bury their shattered city image, if you tend to believe in such things.

 

The Associated Press and the loathed NY Times have articles citing real reporting, you know... people going out and interviewing more then two or three people for collaboration and asking people on both sides of this issue what was going on.  Still, we do not know who is involved and to what extent.  There seems to be an ounce of truth to the tale, albeit two girls and not the 7 to 8 as originally thought.  This is beginning to remind me more of the kids game ‘telephone’ then anything else.  Now again, there is incentive for the city to get this story to go away, quickly and quietly, which was not going to happen if it stayed in the public spot light.  So, now we have to question our rash rushes to judgment and phantom belief the press are full of professionals who will never do something to fabricate a story, you listening NY Times???

 

If the pact story turns out to be a rumor based off of two best friends silly promise and a reporters desperate attempt of gaining recognition and fame, well then it goes to show how far our reporting industry has continued to fall in the wave of false reported story they keep racking up year after year (eroding public trust and confidence, and people wonder why bloggers are gaining in credibility over ‘professional’ reporters).  If the story turns out to be true, something that can only happen if the people involved come forward them selves to validate, then we have a better story of a city’s attempts to cover-up a public relations nightmare of its citizen’s behaviors and morals.  Most likely the real truth will never be knows as our short attention spans jump on the next fascinating tid-bit to surface. 

 

Still I stand by my original views of sex-ed being the parents' responsibility and not the school's.  I don't think having day care on a high school campus is a good idea as it sends an inconsistent message to the kids and is no better then having a licquor story in the lunch room that sells booze, smokes, and porn next to the condoms, birth control pills, and RU-486 style morning after pills.  Parents should tell their kids about sex, its responsibilities and consequences, and leave sex-ed to discuss STD prevention and situational awarness and not letting yourself get into a bad situation in the first place.  Schools are for learning, not an auxliary for a family planning helath clinic. 

 

As a person who jumped on this story, I am guilty of proliferating the story and for that I deeply apologize as I do try not to have this happen.  I do usually wait a few days or weeks to talk about something out of respect, the truth to emerge, and better coverage to inform my opinions.  I jumped the gun, got burned, and deepened my cynicism of the general press and media in our great nation.  With this being said, the Gloucester story was only an event that I was using to advance my agenda of pointing out our declining family values and need to strengthen our family relationships, commitments, and responsibilities.  For this I can not, should not, and never will apologize as I know I am right.  

 

Family is the core of any society.  Its values are a society’s and show their virtue and strength.  Ours has been in free fall since the 1950’s and I hope others see this as clearly as I do, and do something about it.  Each of us has different levels of beliefs and values, but the core begins with the family and these need addressing, strengthening, and re-enforcing now more then ever, and now before the above story becomes real and a new national fad (once the genie is out of the bottle it is hard to get them back in and this would not be the first time a national story influenced a teen trend repeated for generations, school shooting jump to the front of my mind).

 

I wanted to use this story to highlight the need to discuss values, morals, personal and social responsibilities.  I am still going to do this, and hopefully my foolish rush to judgment will not lessen the impression of importance and vital need for bringing these topics to the forefront of peoples minds, forums, and thoughts with themselves, families, and friends.  I feel this is THE most important issue facing us, as a society and nation, today.  You can not build a house on a weak foundation and expect it to stand, weather a storm, or endure the test of time.  If our foundation is solid, strong, and enduring then we can survive anything that comes our way, even if we have to rebuild a part of or even the whole damn house if necessary.

 

A parting thought I want to share with my readers and friends, please take 10 to 15 minutes to think about values, morals, and beliefs.  Write them down, search for them on Google, dictionary, or library.  Identify the core ones, the personal ones, and the overall social ones.  I will discuss them over the course of July and as the kids are home for summer break and we have long and warm days ahead we can take the time to reflect and think about what makes us what we are, why we are, and what is most important to us and then discuss with our families and close friends.  Dedication, vigilance, and tenacity are what is needed to correct and protect what we have.  You can only stray off the path so far before you become lost, once lost it is easy to become causality, and history is full of them.

In scanning the news this morning, between meetings, I ran across this TIME article and all the flaming comments around it.  In the Time Magazine Web Article by Kathleen Kingsbury, the magazine is scooping probably the most troubling story of kids run amuck since the Georgia boys accused of rape, all parties involved being under 12.  The article misses a few very important points to take pop shots at the entertainment industry (ok, I can get behind that argument and applaud it) and the left's loathing of President Bush's "head in the sand" approach to sex education (yes that was biased and on purpose).  Politics aside these are real lives, 17 pregnant teens barely old enough to drive and at least half of which vowed to do this together.

 

The principles of reporting are simple, so simple 5th graders can follow them.  Who, what, where, when, and why are the 5 basic principles reports are supposed to outline in order to inform us.  This information is supposed to be fair, balanced, and opinions or judgments are to be either withheld or expressly identified as such.  The TIME article does none of this.  It is informative, it provides the 5 principles, but its conclusions and assumptions are illogical and based in typical public ignorance and dogma of the entire teen culture and reality.  In high school my civics teacher made us all read TIME, Newsweek, and US News and World Report each week to learn about current affairs, debating, and opinion forming.  It seems the quality of reporting, writing, and presentation of their headline articles has slipped.  Yes I know this is the web and not the full magazine, but still branding is branding and they put this out there for the whole world to digest.

 

The worst article based off the TIME one is the New York Times Article that drums up on all the anti-right innuendo laid down by the original.  The worst part is its continuation of tie in between Hollywood and the issue at hand.  While the article states the adults of the community are busy pointing their fingers at what appears to be the whole world, they are guilty too, as they go after Zoe 101 star, Jamie Lynn Spears, for being an inspiration (Something Ms Kingsbury did not do).  The NYTimes article is fairly bad, but worse are the comments by the readers!  Not only did they completely miss the point, they are so crystallized in their opinions and agendas they have no real solutions other then blame the opposite side of their personal agendas.  While it does foster discussion, it does not outline how that discussion should go, what a good article should do... outline the for and against arguments, possible solutions and impacts of those, as any Op Ed article should do.

 

Lastly we have a balanced article by Reuters, the Reuters News Article goes to the heart of some of the arguments the NYTimes article omitted and Time only touched on, the fathers of all these kids.  This article skirts biased opinions and offers the best glimpse into the controversy I have seen.  This is along the lines of what TIME should have done in the first place.  TIME is a magazine, pushing an agenda, and they also want to show human interest stories, but the way Kathleen wrote it only caused a line in the sand and shouting to start, not the real dialogue and spin the story disserves.  Reuters gave good facts and insight, TIME only gave shock and sentiment.

 

Why, when I have been so busy, too busy to do anything, am I now commenting on this?  One, which I hinted to early on, is because of the bad reporting and miss management of the story, but also the seemingly blind rage the NYTimes readers dove into when expressing themselves about the story.  Therefore, here is what we should be talking about and not talking about with what is going on in Gloucester Mass:

Discuss: Teen pregnancy, teen behaviors, bad parenting, eroding social values, socioeconomic impact, social responsibilities of all parties, and how to resolve

NOT discuss: Sex education in schools, abortion and adoption, family planning, government run clinics or programs, welfare mothers, and governmental responsibilities

 

First off, due to length, the Not discuss issues.  This is a social problem, not a governmental problem.  Parents who think schools are supposed to teach their children about sex and parenting should have their kids taken away in my opinion.  Schools can teach health, but sex ed is up to a family and/or church to discuss because it is personal, embarrassing, awkward, and just part of being a parent.  These girls SIGNED A PACT to get pregnant, no sex ed, access to condoms, pills, patches, etc. could prevent it, they made up their minds and peer pressure was in full effect.  The girls who belong to broken homes or poor homes will be part of the welfare system, so crying about it now will not change anything, it is just being part of the problem.  Parents have ultimate responsibility over their kids; legally, ethically, and morally.  Parents decide where to send their kids to school, what school to enroll them into, what church they go to, what activities they attend after school, and to a larger extent then people admit who their friends are.  Parents provide a roof, food, and discipline to their kids, so if the kids are acting out they have enough tools to get them into line if they mess up.  We can not, should not, and better not try to legislate this issue, it is social and social issues have absolutely no ability to be controlled by government policy in the United States (how many negatives can I get into 1 sentence?).  Come to China and you can legislate social issues, 1 child, religion, entertainment, etc.  We have to ask ourselves, which path are we going to follow, freedom or George Orwell’s 1984?

 

Teen pregnancy, yes it’s true it has been around since the dawn of time.  That is why women mature faster then men, which is why they can have children younger and seem more attractive to men, its biological, we can't fix that.  This being said, we have the ability to change our behaviors by understanding them, teaching about them, and controlling them through will power and dedication, also through social mechanisms like taboo, shame, and condemnation.  Kids are smarter then their parents give them credit.  I remember being a teen and amazed at how naive and stupid grown-ups were.  Now that I am older I realize I was very naive but also right on some levels.  Anyone who does not believe their kid is not thinking about sex by age 13 is in full blown denial.  Parents need to talk about sex before their kids reach teen years and begin to rebel and not listen. 

 

Teens feel pressure, isolation, and alienation so they will cling to anything that eases these burdens.  For some its sex, drugs, music, sports, video games, any thing really, for others, well its really bad stuff like this.  These girls are all missing something really important in their lives.  They are smart enough not to fill the void with drugs or bad behavior, but dumb enough not to think through the full consequences of their actions.  What about 5, 10, 15, 20 years form now?  At 36, when their peers should really be coming into their own in careers, family, and life they will be attending graduations, marriages, births, and divorces of their children!  Unless you have the money the Spear family does there is little to no hope of going to college, even community college.  Raising a kid before you know anything about life really highlights the fact that a teacher can never pass on more then 75% of their knowledge, leaving their kids in really bad shape for values, morals, life experiences, wisdom, antidotes, and lessons learned from observing others making mistakes.

 

We live in a reality of dual income parenting, or do we?  Since when was $30k a year not enough for a family of 3 just starting out?  Since when was $80k a year not enough for a family of 4 to live comfortably?  I will tell you when, when we started selling our futures for material objects and Madison Ave ideals of life style and happiness.  Parenting takes one thing above all others, time.  Children need to be raised, raised with values, morels, and judgments that only parents can pass along.  If parents are not doing this who is?  Daycare workers making minimum wage and without college educations, optimistic outlooks, or solid social understandings, I don't think so.  After school programs that just fill time between 3 PM and 6PM, nope their main concern is funding and attendance so they can stay in business.  No, the issues are lack of quality time.  Parenting is a 24/7 position, on you can not quite from, resign, or get fired from.  You created life you have to take care of, until it can take care of itself, fully.  Providing more money at home means nothing if you are never there.  Chasing money for family gain leads to kids wasting this money on shoes, drugs, alcahol, and getting each other pregnant because, no one is ever home or cares about me.

 

Our society has shifted priorities to obtaining materialism and marketing ideals and not retaining and maintaining the very ideals that made the nation what it is today.  Families need 2 parents, full time.  Families teach, instruct, discipline, nurture, protect, and maintain itself at a level worthy of success and continuing on to the next generation.  Single parent families can not provide all of this.  Even with help from their parents, single parents are passing along a legacy of dependency to their children through their actions, their kids see what is going on and learn from it.  This is why the concept of a vicious cycle exists in psychology and sociology.  Yes, teens are rebellious and going to do what they want, but parents still have control of them until they move out... unless they give up that control.  Parents need to be parents, not friends, buddies, or the like, but people who shape and mold the kids into a grown up despite all the kids’ resistance and struggle against them.  When we stop doing this we get, well, girls making pacts to get pregnant so they can have a 'special love' in their lives.

 

So the damage is done, now what?  These girls will soon be changing diapers, wiping runny noses, and working swing shifts at dead end jobs or passing along the kids to the parents so they can finish school or training that will land them a better job.  Unfortunately better jobs require more time, time that is not flexible or 'kid friendly'.  Factory jobs that have on-site day care are rare, and even then they are hard to get because so many people want to work there.  So the kids end up on food stamps, working dead end jobs, can not save enough to send them selves or their kids to college, or retirement they begin to draw more and more from society as a whole.  Having a large low income population leads to more crime, proved.  This situation also leads to less opportunity for a community because business is attracted to higher educated and better trained workforces.  As the labor pool becomes less attractive to industry, it leaves which causes more and more of the same.  This impact leads to dependency on government aid, WIC, food stamps, welfare, housing assistance, et al.  We have seen this for generations yet why is this social impact of the story not reported?  In our global world competition for lower rung jobs intensifies, opportunities will go where the market is, that is life.  These girls’ actions, while not overtly selfish, show a shallowness and lack of consideration not only to them selves and their families, but to their community, state, and country.  Acting responsibly is a lesson parents have to teach, and teach by example, how can these girls pass this along to their kids?

 

Only the Reuters article really went after the second half of the story, them men involved.  Now what good will it do to imprison a high school student for getting a more then willing girl pregnant?  If did not she would find someone else who would, even a 24 year old homeless man.  Now if the men were over 18 then yes, they were responsible and need to pay, but for those not, well, just force them into work and garnish their wages OR help them with city or county jobs if they get married and for as long as they are married?  As I stated earlier, the damage is done, but there is responsibility to go around.  The girl's parents will have to turn their lives upside down to take care of 2 generations instead of just 1, which is their responsibility for being bad parents.  The fathers of these kids need to do one of two things, step up and pay child support for 18 to 21 years, or get married if the situation is really really really really right.  The women will be living with their responsibility for the rest of their lives, it takes two, so the other needs to share in it as well.  It’s preferable to have the fathers in their kid’s life, to show them they love them, care for them, and most importantly RAISE THEM.  Its time to bite the bullet and become a grown up, to everyone involved.  The school, well encouraging and enabling this behavior is just wrong.  Why don't they have convenience stores on campus serving beer, cigarettes, drugs, and porn to the kids, its enabling a behavior the kids should not be practicing and telling them its socially acceptable just as much as having day care and strollers in the halls of the high school.  The school needs to SUPLEMENT the parent’s sex ed lessons by lecturing about the negative of ALL teen behaviors.  Kids need to hear about teen pregnancy horror stories just as much as seeing the burned our wreck of a 'teen drinking cars' that tours campuses nationally every year.  It's parent’s responsibility first, and schools to reinforce and supplement, constantly.  Our government is there to protect and serve our needs, not wants.  People who are poor because of legitimate reasons need this help, people who are injured, handicapped, deficient in capacity, etc need assistance to have a quality life and deserve it as well.  This is the limit of our government, not to shore up the selfish and conceded desires of a group of girls who planned, chose to do this, actually went through with it, and relish in the attention it is giving them.  Our government should protect their children's interest if their families can not, but it should not do so to the degree that it becomes profitable and enabling for their selfish lifestyles and others who aspire to follow in their foot steps.

 

What to do?  What to do?  What to do?  We can't throw the baby out with the bath water, pun intended.  We can only fix this in the right and correct way, socially.  As I have stated again and again, this is a social problem, it requires a social solution.  We have become way too complacent and accepting of blatant and wanton eroding social behaviors for far too long.  Am I calling for more church?  No, that is not for everyone, it’s personal if people want to choose this route.  Our society is the most diverse on the planet, yet without some common threads it can not sustain much longer.  We, Americans, need to investigate, evaluate, uphold, teach, and hold accountable our core values as a nation.  Parenting needs to become the number 1 priority as many of our social ills fall squarely at the feet of the family or lack of family present in our youth's lives.  We need to change our motivating factors, measurements of success, ideals, and values.  By doing this all else will begin to fall into place.  Hollywood is only a warped reflection of our society, an entertainment way of expressing the extremes of our society.  If our values shift and change, then Hollywood will follow, it has to because it is made of people in our society.  We need to focus more on the family and less on money.  We need to work harder on raising our kids and teaching them well then on that next promotion or bonus.  The writing on the wall is there for us to see, has been for over 20 years now, and now it’s in bright neon.  School shootings and violence, teen pregnancy, drug culture, lack or respect to authority, jaded indifference to our neighbors, callowness, it’s all right in our face.  From numerous people incapable of stopping a may stomp his toddler to death to road rage and disillusioned young adults, its all there in all its ugly glory.  How much more do we have to see before we wake up and change? 

 

This story reminds me of Nero, fiddling away while Rome burned.  We are the current Rome, the height of civilization of our era yet unable to prevent our own downfall.  Doomed like an ignorant deaf, dumb, and blind person to stumble over the cliff, not by a cruel act of nature but because we are listen to iPods, playing PSP, and planning our next weekend while we walk towards the cliff.  The signs are there, are we so arrogant to believe we can not fall as the Romans did?  Are we so better then them that we are immune to their fate?  We can change course, but we have to so now, and it will be hard, long and hard, but the alternative and outcome is much less desirable.  We need our families back.  We need fathers teaching their sons to play ball, their daughter how to fish, and being there to pat them on the back with then succeed and on the butt when they get out of line.  We need mothers to comfort their sons and daughters, pass along wisdom and nag them incessantly about nutrition, health, and life.  We need this more then McMancions, Europeans family vacations, new cars for graduation, TVs computers, stereo systems, and game systems in the kids bedrooms.  We need family dinners at a table with discussion, pizza night, game night, and monthly outing for team building and lesson learning.  Without family there is no society.  Without society there is no nation. 

 

Its easy to say I am making a mountain out of a mole hill and how 17 pregnant girls in Massachusetts are just some kids run away with bad ideas and misguided friendship, but I say this acceptance and complacency to the issue itself is the root cause of the situation in the first place.  No one is accountable anymore, it’s always someone else’s fault, even if these girls did plan these pregnancies for many months before any of them even had sex.  No the problem is we allow this to happen with only token opposition and outrage.  We are complacent in our own demise just as these girls are in their own futures.  I do not blame them, fully, I do wish them luck and success, but I know the odds are overwhelmingly against them and their kids.  I just wish our nation had people who would stand up and change these declining values we have.  It’s been nearly 50 years in the making and we continue to let it slide, further and further.  Eroding family is the cause of our social ills, not a symptom, no the 17 girls are the symptom, just as are all the other signs on the wall, how much brighter do we need them to get before we see them?

After a little drama age trumpted youthful enthusiasm.  Detroit skated off the ice with their 2nd Stanley this century, and for all time they rank third only behind two Canadian teams, all of which make up 1/2 of the original 6 NHL teams.  5 of Detroits vets have been on the Stanley teams going back to the '97 season.  For the first time the captian of the Stanley winning team was an European, as well as the MVP.  Most astonishing was the lack of fires in downtown, most likely because of the rain and not a strong police presence (for those who grew up or know Detroit you know what I am talking about).