Matthew Dicks's Blog, page 4

“You can do it, Duffy Moon”

My friend, Kaia, and I were sitting at a picnic table beside a lake, struggling to gain access to a Google account.

It was making us a little crazy. It shouldn’t be so hard.

At one point, I entered the requested code and said, “You can do it, Duffy Moon.”

Then I said, “Who the hell is Duffy Moon?”

I had no idea where that odd phrase had come from or why I had just said it.

So I paused our attempts to access the Google account to instead ask Google, “Who is Duffy Moon?”

I didn’t expect an answer, but instead, I found something surprising.

“You Can Do It, Duffy Moon!” is a motivational phrase from the 1976 ABC Afterschool Special, “The Amazing Cosmic Awareness of Duffy Moon. ” In the show, Duffy is a sixth-grader who is teased and bullied for his size. Searching for solutions to his plight,  he buys a magical book called “Cosmic Awareness” that teaches him to “Think Big”. 

By chanting the self-motivational mantra “You Can Do It, Duffy Moon!” to himself, he develops confidence and the ability to overcome his challenges.

And apparently, I watched this after-school special at some point — maybe in 1976 when I was five years old, but more likely a couple of years later when it was rerun — and Duffy Moon’s motivational phrase had lodged itself in my brain, only to be released four decades later on a picnic table by a lake when frustrated over something that shouldn’t have been so difficult.

Crazy. Right?

The brain is a mysterious and wondrous thing. It contains almost everything we’ve ever seen or heard, but much of it remains unavailable to us until something prompts our recall. In this case, my frustration over a bit of technological stupidity, technology unlocked this motivational phrase from the archives of my brain and spat it out.

Who knows that my brain may fire off next? So much content, waiting to be remembered, restored, and repurposed for today.

I found “The Amazing Cosmic Awareness of Duffy Moon” on YouTube, preserved by the Pennsylvania Public Library Film Center.

Of course, I watched it. 

I have no recollection of this after-school special. Not a single iota of recognition. But I found it to be a fascinating relic of the 1970s, where bullying was rampant, children wandered the world blessedly unsupervised, and storytelling was far less sophisticated.

It’s not great, but it’s amusing. And apparently, I watched it when I was a boy.

Epanding and dabbling and in some cases, excelling

Amongst Charlie’s many pursuits, photography has become a passion. We recently visited a camera store in Hartford, where he bought a used Canon SLR camera — a model so complex that I’m not even sure I can use it.

But to his credit, he spent about 15 minutes in that store, talking to the salesperson about things I did not understand and examining the camera until he found the one he liked, using his own allowance to fund the purchase.

I’m not sure where these passions emerge:

Music, railfanning, cubing, baseball, golf, videography, and now photography.

He also plays the guitar, trumpet, and piano.

His interests are broad and ever-expanding, but I couldn’t be more pleased. Part of me wishes he would focus on one thing and pursue greatness, but a bigger part of me knows that it’s his expanding understanding and love for the world that will serve him best.

We could all take a lesson from him.

Actually, I did.

While driving through Canada on vacation, I discovered that Charlie was in the backseat, learning French using Duolingo. Within an hour, I had purchased a family plan, and we were all learning French.

More than three weeks later, I still haven’t missed a day, and so much of my six years spent studying French in high school and college is returning.

Elysha has switched over to Spanish.

Clara is studying French and Yiddish.

All thanks to Charlie.

While in Canada, Charlie took many photos. These are just some of the pictures I liked best.

He may be dabbling in many things, but he’s also becoming quite good at many of them.

Respect for these people

While vacationing in Quebec City, we took a scenic train ride north to a small Canadian town filled with art galleries, lovely little shops, and excellent food.

While walking past a pub. I saw this sign for karaoke.

What impressed me the most about this sign?

Karaoke starts at 10:00 PM and ends at 1:30 AM.

These are not people who need to be in bed by 9:00 PM or would rather be sitting on the couch, watching the latest binge-worthy television show.

I can’t tell you how many times someone has expressed an interest in joining me on my trips to New York City and Boston for events like Moth StorySLAMs, comedy shows, open mics, and sporting events, only to lament that they couldn’t possibly stay awake after midnight on a workday.

I certainly wouldn’t recommend doing it every week, but every now and then?

Sacrifices sometimes need to be made to achieve great things and create memories that last forever.

The people who populate this Canadian pub understand this well.

These are people who know how to have fun.

These are people who do not allow bedtimes to stand in the way of singing poorly and publicly.

I admire the hell out of these people.

Poop

“The Kids Should See This” curated library of exceptional videos aimed at inspiring curiosity, critical thinking, and wonder in learners of all ages—from young children to adults.

Rather than mindless animation or cartoon fluff, TKSST highlights “not-made-for-kids, but perfect for them” content—short, fascinating video pieces that educate while entertaining.

If you want to understand kids, know this:

The channel contains 86 videos about poop.

Kids, even when they are deeply interested in science, history, music, and art, are still kids.

Trump’s stupidity about wind turbines

Donald Trump believes a lot of stupid things.He believes that “the human body is like a battery, with a finite amount of energy, which exercise only depletes.”It’s true. He’s said this more than once — in interviews, on the record, with actual journalists.More than once, he proposed dropping a nuclear bomb into a hurricane to destroy it.He said that Democrats “want to legalize abortions post birth.”Rather than admitting to making a simple mistake, he used a Sharpie to alter the path of a hurricane on a map, making it appear as if he were correct, even though every single American could see that the map had been changed with a Sharpie.He thinks global warming is actually a good thing “because we’ll have more oceanfront property.”He thinks that wildfires can be curtailed by “sweeping the forest.”And how could we forget the unforgettable:“And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning.”Donald Trump believes a lot of stupid things, but I think his stupidest belief is that wind turbines are bad. Trump’s aversion dates back about 14 years, when he objected to offshore wind turbines visible from his Menie golf course in Scotland near Aberdeen. He described them as “ugly,” “monstrosities,” and a “blight” spoiling his ocean views. But since then, his objections have evolved to include:Wind energy is a “scam” or “con job,” and is blamed for rising electricity prices, which is utterly preposterous.Turbine noise causes cancer, which is abjectly false and so stupid even to suggestWindmills disorient and kill whales, for which there is no evidenceTurbines “rust and rot in eight years” and can’t be buried, when in reality modern turbines are built to last around 30 years and are roughly 90% recyclableThe ground beneath wind turbines is littered with piles of dead birdsThe last claim is at least valid in that wind turbines do kill birds that fly into the blades. In fact, it’s estimated that 140,000–500,000 birds are killed every year by wind turbines, but that places wind turbines just seventh on the list of top killers of birds.But it gets better:Cats are estimated to kill 2.4 billion birds per year in the U.S.Buildings are estimated to kill 365–988 million birds per year.Vehicles kill an estimated 89–340 million birds per year.Power lines, communication towers, and pesticides also kill hundreds of millions of birds per year combined.This makes death by wind turbine less than 0.0096% of the total bird death, or about one in every 10,000 bird deaths.In fact, there are 70,000 wind turbines in the United States today, meaning that each wind turbine is killing about seven birds each year at most.The suggestion that piles of dead birds litter the ground beneath a wind turbine is ridiculous. Statistically speaking, there might be 5-7 dead birds below each wind turbine in the United States, but only if all the deaths took place in the same week.The claim that wind turbines are killing too many birds to exist is stupid.All of this wind turbine stupidity — and the subsequent harm it causes when Trump and his administration remove incentives for energy producers to build more turbines simply because he has decided in his toddler brain that wind turbines are ugly and evil — makes me love this ad for Vattenfall’s Wind Farm Seaweed Snacks.I love it when celebrities are willing to stand against stupidity, even when that stupidity is being spewed by a convicted felon and former best friend of an infamous sex trafficker who was found by a jury of his peers to be guilty of sexual assault but who also currently occupies the White House.

You didn’t learn to write

A serious question:

When you were taught to write, did your teacher or professor ever instruct you on how to:

Engage your reader?Entertain your reader?Hold your reader’s attention?Keep them in suspense?Surprise them?Challenge their beliefs?Present an idea in an oblique way?Amuse them?Make them laugh?Maybe even make them cry?

Were you ever taught how to: 

Connect to your reader?Make yourself known?Express vulnerability?Tell a story?Make your words unforgettable?

If so, congratulations.

But if you’re like most people, your teacher or professor probably taught you how to write in complete sentences with clarity and maybe voice. They taught you how to structure a paragraph and an essay, and they probably taught you how to support your ideas and arguments through rhetoric, data, and evidence.

The problem?

None of that teaches you to write things others want to read.

In cooking terms, it teaches you how to make the dough and maybe bake the cake,  but it never teaches you how to decorate that cake.

Successful writers — novelists, nonfiction writers, storytellers, comedians, columnists, playwrights, essayists, memoirists — somehow learn along the way how to engage an audience and entertain them.

Most of us understand a truth that I speak to students and clients almost every day:

No one wants to hear anything you have to say unless you give them a reason to listen.

The same applies to the written word:

No one cares about anything you write unless you give a reason to read.

Bestselling authors, award-winning speakers, and champion storytellers somehow figure out how to do the job because almost no one teaches them how to engage and maintain an audience on the page or stage. Somewhere along the way, they learn through experimentation, example, or sheer will.  

Probably a combination of the three.

But you shouldn’t have to “figure it out.”

There’s no point in teaching someone to write well if you don’t also teach them how to make that writing interesting, entertaining, amusing, surprising, suspenseful, and compelling.

Teaching writing absent this makes no sense.

In cooking terms again, it’s like teaching someone how to operate a bakery but never teaching them how to attract customers.

So if you’ve dreamed of writing or speaking in a way that makes others want to read your work or listen to your words, but you can’t seem to capture an audience’s attention, it’s probably because you’re leaning on the lessons of the past without seeking out the strategies, techniques, and wisdom required to move beyond clarty, structure, grammar, and voice to work and words that are entertaining and compelling.

But it’s not too late.

Just like clarity, structure, and grammar, the strategies and techniques required to capture and hold a reader can be learned.

Take a class with someone who knows how to engage and entertain. Take as many as you can.

Study the work of writers, filmmakers, musicians, and playwrights who engage and entertain you. Ask yourself what they are doing to engage and entertain an audience, and then try to do the same.

Make lots and lots of stuff. Practice, experiment, and practice some more.

It may take time, but you, too, can grab the attention of readers and audience members if you want.

Anyone can.

Bump

Instead of the words “Bump” or “Speed bump” on a road sign to indicate a bump ahead, Montreal (and maybe all of Canada) uses this image instead.

I like it a lot better.

Something to smile about

Sometimes we all need a story to warm our hearts.

This is it.

In a Madison, Wisconsin pond, a pair of sandhill cranes returned to their nesting spot in the spring with the newest addition to the family, a sandhill colt, only to discover their nest had flooded while they were away.

In search of a new home, they found a nest abandoned by a pair of Canadian geese and took up residence, only to discover one unhatched goose egg left behind by its parents.

That egg hatched days later, and the gosling that emerged immediately bonded with the female crane.

Thus, a new family was born:

Two sandhill cranes, their child, and their adopted gosling.

Weeks later, the geese returned to the nest to discover the sandhill cranes had adopted their gosling. They circled the nest for an hour while the gosling hid beneath its sandhill crane mother, and the sandhill crane father challenged the geese, charging at them as if to say:

“Back off. This adoption is permanent.”

The geese eventually relented, and the unlikely family remains intact today.

All of this has been documented by wildlife photographer Alan Ginsberg, who is clearly living his best life.

It would be lovely to think that human beings could be as kind and accepting as this pair of sandhill cranes. In a world filled with small, frightened, stupid people who are unable or unwilling to accept and embrace others who look differently, worship differently, love differently, and were born in places other than their own, it’s heartwarming to see a species of bird accept and embrace an entirely different species of bird as their own simply because a young bird was in need and they were able to help.

Thoughts from Canada

A few random observations from our recent vacation to Montreal and Quebec City:

The official language of the province of Quebec, where both cities are located, is French.

Quebec City, especially, is a very French city. Children are only instructed in the French language.

Nevertheless, we had no issues with speaking English in either city, though the road signage in Quebec City and the surrounding region is entirely in French, and English is spoken decidedly less there.

But we were able to communicate quite well with people in both cities. Only once did we encounter someone who spoke almost no English, but even then, things worked out well.

Despite being in Canada and in a province where French is the official language, about 98% of the music we heard — and we heard a lot — was American, primarily from the 1970s through the 1990s.

I heard Rick Springfield’s “Jessie’s Girl” four times in three different cities.

I heard a string of 1950s doo-wop songs in a Montreal pharmacy.

I heard “Welcome to the Jungle” and “Take On Me” at least three times each.

We ate three meals a day in restaurants for seven straight days and heard music playing in every restaurant, but I can count the number of French songs I heard playing on one hand.

American music seems to be everywhere.
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Payment in every restaurant in Canada was completed at the table via an identical device, which I liked a lot. The consistency of the process was appreciated, and the speed and ease of payment were outstanding. I preferred this approach over the numerous methods used to present, pay, and process checks in the US.
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Many of the restrooms in Canadian restaurants are small, single, unisex rooms with a toilet only and a communal sink outside. This makes a lot of sense—no need for a restroom for each sex.
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Breakfast in Quebec, and perhaps in most of Canada, is annoying. Most restaurants open later in the morning than in the United States, and few serve the kind of eggs, bacon, and toast breakfast I’m looking for. Instead, breakfast often consisted of breads and pastries, fruit, and salad.

So much salad.
But on a few occasions, we found ourselves in restaurants that included baked beans and meat pie as part of the breakfast, which I loved. Being French Canadian, my family grew up eating lots of baked beans, and my mother often made meat pies. Having both for breakfast was like a nostalgic return to my childhood.
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I saw many older Canadians walking around with ski poles for support in lieu of canes. It was an interesting choice. I suspect it makes more sense in January than it does in August, but either way, it worked.
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We walked five to seven miles every day of vacation, including five days in Quebec City, which is comprised of steep hills and many sets of stairs. My shoes — Nike’s Air VaporMax Flyknit sneakers — are the best, and my feet did not hurt once on the trip.

I’m on my feet for much of the day when teaching, so I spent a great deal of time choosing a sneakers that would make my feet feel good by the end of the day, and since donning these sneakers two years ago, I can’t believe how comfortable they are/

In the rare instances that I am required to wear something other than these sneakers, it feels as if I’ve stepped back into the Stone Age.

I can’t recommend them enough.
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Our only disappointment was our first Airbnb in Montreal. It was centrally located and clean, and it overlooked a train station, which for Charlie was a joy. Charlie is a railfanner, and his YouTube channel features train videos, so he managed to record a great deal of train footage.

But our bed was the least comfortable Elysha and I have ever slept in, and the apartment wasn’t large enough for us to spend any time relaxing. This forced us to see more of the city and stay out later than we might have otherwise, but the awfulness of that bed cannot be underestimated.
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Our original vacation plans were to visit London and Paris, but Elysha decided to pivot as the time to our vacation grew near and planned a vacation to Montreal and Quebec City instead.

I was a little dumbfounded.

Canada instead of Europe?

Quebec City instead of Paris?

We will make our way to London and Paris someday soon, but Elysha was right about how much we would enjoy this trip. Montreal was a majestic city, full of beauty, history, great food, and seemingly endless adventures.

After three days in Montreal, we drove to Quebec City, stopping in lovely Trois-Rivières along the way, and the beauty of this place blew me away. One of only two remaining walled cities in North America, Quebec City does not feel like a North American city. Every home, shop, museum, street, fountain, statue, and staircase is something to behold. We spent four or five days in Quebec City, and I could’ve easily spent another four or five days and still found things to do.

The city is also surrounded by beauty. Fifteen minutes north are the Montmercy Falls, which are taller than Niagara.

We took a scenic train ride north to a small Canadian town, where we wandered the streets, visiting galleries and shops,

The food was excellent. The people were lovely. The sites were spectacular. The history was never-ending.

I cannot recommend this city enough. Go to Quebec City. You will not be disappointed.

 

 

Wouldn’t make a grilled cheese

While visiting Quebec City, we ate dinner at a restaurant known for its incredible shepherd’s pie.

The shepherd’s pie was excellent. It was exactly the way my mother made it.

However, when placing our orders, Clara — who has food sensitivities related to her autism and is in therapy to expand her menu options — asked if the chef could prepare her a grilled cheese.

She really couldn’t eat anything else on the menu.

The server said no, which I found extremely annoying.

Yes, it would be excellent if my daughter could find something to eat on the menu.

Yes, it would be impossible to begin cooking meals not on the menu to accommodate every guest.

‘But if a kid asks for the grilled cheese, you have a choice:

Make the damn grilled cheese, which will take all of three minutes, and for which you absolutely have the necessary ingredients.Refuse the child’s request and make the meal far less enjoyable for her and probably everyone else at the table.

This restaurant chose the latter, and that is exactly what happened. Clara ordered a cheese platter and found some of the cheese and crackers to be tasty, but the experience created unnecessary stress and consternation for her and us.

And had an adult requested the grilled cheese?

Sure, say no. Adults can fend for themselves, but this was a kid, on vacation, looking for something that she could enjoy, and given her limited options at the moment through no fault of her own, an accommodation could have been made.

When I managed McDonald’s, we were occasionally asked to make a grilled cheese or “Cheese Delight,” and yes, it was annoying to insert a non-menu item into the production cycle, but it was worth the minor annoyance to make a customer happy.

Had the customer asked for shrimp scampi or blueberry pancakes, I would have explained that these things were beyond our ability to achieve, but a simple grilled cheese?

Toasted bread and cheese?

You need to be a pretty pathetic or an incredibly snobby chef to refuse that request.

Of all the restaurants we ate at while on vacation — and it was a lot — our shepherd’s pie restaurant could have been one of the best. The food was fantastic, the service was otherwise excellent, and the restaurant offered a few delightful moments to make the meal and experience special.

But my daughter couldn’t eat much because of a lack of flexibility, which struck me as a stupid decision.

When a business has the chance to do something small to make a customer very happy, they are foolish not to. The restaurant business isn’t easy. Profit margins are slim, employee turnover is high, and the state of the economy can wreak havoc on your sales.

Small acts of kindness go a long way to building loyalty, establishing goodwill, and making a customer believe that they are paying for a service delivered by people who care.

This can be the difference between a business staying in business and being forced to close its doors.

A grilled cheese is a tiny ask in the restaurant world, especially when that request is made by a young person.

Refusing it was a mistake.