Saturday, October 22, 2011

An Email From My Young'un.

When my son was in the second grade, I remember that he wrote s story. I thought it was great, but when I told him so, he said, “You’re just saying that because I’m your kid.”

I then proceeded to show him how the story grabbed my attention and came to a fantastic climax – just as any well-written story should do. I told him that I did understand that a second grader wrote it -- but despite that, it was still a great story.

My son has always had a way with words. He reads a wide variety of things – he read the Communist Manifesto when he was in middle school – so he could know who the enemy was.

This week I received an email from my son. I could not help but think as I read it that I must have done OK as a father.

As a side note, “Pop” has never been a phrase used in my family. But when my son calls me “Pop,” I take it with pride.

With his permission, enjoy his email:

Hey pop,
This came up in a thread about the cold war/air power.
http://www.life.com/gallery/41912/one-ride-with-yankee-papa-13#index/0
One ride with Yankee papa 13, 1965.
Classic B&W action shots, some are quite emotional.

My job has me working from sun up till sun down these days, but I'm happy to have it. I don’t understand these people my age with the victim mentality.
Occupy wall street, despite they’re fooling themselves with a lack of knowledge of history, are essentially a Marxist movement. People's councils are their prototype for a new system.

I'm waiting to see if this ignites with a spark or fizzles like a dud.

I posted a polite view from my point in a huge OWS echo chamber thread on the political part of my major forum.
Someone from OWS had asked why a movement friendly garbage truck driver hadn’t just come down and helped dispose of the waste.
I replied:
Because the truck is company property, using company fuel, and the waste must be disposed of properly, which costs a fee.
The garbage truck driver doesn’t own the means of garbage disposal.

I also told them to assert the working class identity while being college loan recipients was unappreciated by one who's collar is blue and didn’t go to college.
(A NATEF program for ASE technical training isn’t the same, generally speaking)

They're probably still circle jerking about how wrong I am. I wont go back.


I don’t think politics is good for my blood pressure.


Now if that does not give you hope for the future, then nothing will.

12 comments:

  1. (A NATEF program for ASE technical training isn’t the same, generally speaking)

    No, it's probably a better deal and more useful than the median college degree.

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  2. Yeah, it has this "real life" thing going for it.

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  3. Bravo!

    I hope he is the majority of his generation.

    Alas, I doubt it.

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  4. Matt, I see why you are understandably proud.

    I can also see why he felt alienated from that forum, but he's not alone and bravo to him for standing up to his peers when it's so much easier to "go along". I've often felt that there have to be more in Hollywood, for example, that are conservative but are afraid to rock the overwhelmingly liberal boat. I recall a well-thought-of, intelligent poster on another forum who was afraid to let her colleagues in academia know her true life views. Sad.

    Sounds like your son's a chip off the old block! (Well, not that old...:-) Thanks for sharing it.

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  5. You done good Pops :)

    Seriously, you can really be proud of your son Matt - and of yourself for raising him right. I admire his clarity of thought and his courage in expressing this to an antagonistic forum.

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  6. He's a grounded, appreciative, and reasonable young man Matt. You did a marvelous job raising him. He has his head on straight, and his values firmly fixed.

    May there be millions more like him. MILLIONS!

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  7. What tickles me, in an ironic way, (and pissed off way) on that linked thread is the photographer they're displaying is Larry Burrows, a photographer literally beloved by US Marines because he went where they did, all over the country. He in turn loved the Marines and dedicated much of his time solely to them. He did not hang back in Saigon hotels only making brief trips to Injun country for posed photographs.

    Burrows would have vomited at some of the comments on the thread using his work. He risked his life daily with "his Marines" for 9 years until his death there.

    Larry Burrows and Henri Huet died in 1971 when the helicopter they were riding in was shot down by 37 mm antiaircraft fire over the Laotian border and Ho Chi Minh Trail area. Their remains were not discovered until 1996, and not recovered until 1998. By then the only remains distinguishable as to identity were his legacy of photographs.

    Nothing in Burrows legacy indicated anything like the venom of several commentators on that linked thread. He wasn't recording philosophical history, he was recording daily life of the men he loved to be with. Period.

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  8. Thanks for that background, Aridog.

    I got to the third comment and stopped.

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  9. I'm not even going to look. I can't.

    Matt, it's so refreshing to see your son THINKING! Not that your son hasn't thought in the past, but that there's been a lot of no-thought in general.

    also - I just have to share this. Because I love it.
    http://gizmodo.com/5851062/generation-x-is-sick-of-your-bullshit

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  10. Good job, Matt. As LR said would that there were millions more like your son, and who knows, maybe there are.

    Tough pictures at the link. I know how Farley felt, the pitilessness of war.

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