Candles Flame

Here's a little poem I wrote at 4am when I couldn't sleep. The funny part is that I was almost asleep and then the first two lines hit me. I decided I better write them down just in case I'd forget them in the morning. I ended up writing the whole poem and wasting another 30 mins after that trying to get to sleep! Feel free to help me edit it if you think a line could be better!

Candles Flame
It billows to and fro they say
Lighting the paths of others way
The fires flicker, dance, and play
Burning swiftly, steadfast til day


Even knowing of certain end
Makes the best from which wax can lend
Does not question, want, nor pretend
Contently to it duties it tends


When darkness falls and end has came
When fires sputter and ash go lame
Bares no burdens of waste or shame
Laments no suffrage, casts no blame


A meaningful life for those who seek to live like candles flame.

Lunch at Maxine's

This review was an assignment for my Creative Writing class but I thought it would be a great thing to put on my blog for those around my area that check it from time to time. I would ask of those willing to be critical of the review and how I presented it if they'd like to. Either message me, email me, or leave a comment. The assignment requires the review to be no longer than 750 words, which mine is exactly. Anyway, if you don't want to critique me then feel free to just read for your own information and use the review to decide if you'd like to try the place out!

Also important to note: I paid lunch prices. The dinner prices are higher but it looks like they have live music being played and a very upscale environment in the evenings. Here's their website if you'd like to see what they serve and how much it costs. http://www.maxines521.com/

Lunch at Maxine's

            “I’ll have the usual.” It would take me a good while to recount all the times I’ve heard this phrase on a movie or television show.  A fool and his money are easily parted but not many people are willing to be so foolish when it comes to the money they spend on the food they eat. This is my best guest at why having the usual is something that we see so often in entertainment or even in person. While I am just as guilty as the next tight fisted fellow, I was afforded the opportunity to venture out of my comfort zone and try a new place that I had seen many times but just didn’t want to chance one of my precious and few nights out on a potential bad experience. I just had lunch at Maxine’s and I’d like to tell you all about it.

            In uptown Michigan City, the 500 block of Franklin Street to be precise, there is a dainty yet inviting blue sign that hangs above the restaurants’ front door.  “Maxine’s” it reads in scripted font. I have to start off by saying that my expectations of this restaurant were exceedingly low. I expected a run of the mills Midwest Ma’ and Pa’ owned diner in what is a shrinking part of a growing city. Armed with a $20 dollar bill and an unhealthy portion of preconceived negative opinions, I opened the door. In the vestibule I was greeted with the sweet scent of coconut and a surprisingly classy look. Even so, I anticipated Pa’ Podunk behind a cash register billowing a hillbilly holler towards the back at Ma’ Podunk to herald my arrival.

            It’s great to be wrong sometimes. Before I stepped over the threshold of the interior door I was taken a vast by the scene my eyes met with.  Polished wood columns with floral arrangements mid way made a dotted line down the middle of the restaurant. A baby grand piano sits at the immediate right of the interior entrance with brochures lying on it, outlining the things to do in Michigan City and other events such as Ballroom and Latin dancing classes.  On the left, a small bar like something you’d see in a movie. I didn’t guess by its size that it was very used even outside of the time of day. At 3pm while having my early dinner/late lunch the bar sat very quiet and quaint, lonely looking with only one fellow and the bar keep providing company.

            I took it all in so quickly that the shock of reality didn’t hit me right away. This was no Podunk diner. This was a NICE restaurant. Business men and women in suits and ties were scattered around at tables behind the gorgeous dark and assorted drapery that divided the smoking and bar section from the non-smoking portion.  I have $20 dollars. Uh oh! After answering, “Booth, Nonsmoking, please” I noted a beautiful hand painted mural that ran the entire length of the wall from the front to back of the restaurant with ritzy fancy folk covered in furs and tuxedos congregating with a man in a top hat that I can only akin to the Monopoly Man.  I prayed that there was something light on the menu I could get away with and conceded that at worst case I could afford a salad.

            For the food network fans out there, Gordon Ramsey would approve of at least the aesthetics so far. I bring up Chef Ramsey because I immediately thought of him once I was handed a single page, double sided, laminated menu with little fluff on it. A final shock to my expectations came when I viewed their lunch prices. Reasonable is the term that comes to mind when I consider them with soups for 4-5 dollars, Salads for 7-8, and entrée’s from as low as 9.99 to 14 dollars. I ordered the black mushroom soup and a braised lamb shank with a cheesecake dessert.  The food tasted as good as the place looked.

            I did end up running over 20 dollars after a tip but admittedly I ordered the most expensive entrée knowing I had plastic in my wallet to back up President Jackson in the event I needed to. I’m glad I stepped out of the comfort zone on this. I’m glad my expectations were thwarted and wrong.  I found a new place to eat and a diamond in the rough of Michigan City.

Public Daycare... Oops, I Mean School.

I've been wanting to rant about my opinion of our public school system for a while now. Since I cut class today I figured it was a good time to sit down and have at it since I'd be missing one of my weekly writing exercises in class.  It seems like it can really be difficult at times to find time to lollygag and have fun expressing your ideas on paper so that's why one of my favorite things about my Creative Writing course is that I have time set aside every week to write SOMETHING at least a couple times.

At any rate, some of my readers know that I am an English major. Not many of them know that I aspire to be a teacher, specifically, a teacher abroad. I'll blog about that another time but I felt mentioning it it was relevant to the topic and might give you some sort of an idea of where I'm coming from here or why I even care. I'm very disturbed about the lack of actual education that our system provides to date and I think it's going to have a very strong impact on the world of the next generation.

Grade school is public daycare. I dare you to argue that, in fact, I triple dog dare you to - comments are enabled so feel free to challenge it. Anyone with a high school education knows that outside reading and arithmetic, grade school learning is busy work to bide time for mommy and daddy to finish their shift at work. There are 3 major contributors to the reason to back that claim.

A. Staying Current - In college, we buy a new book every semester. It's annoying and probably not as needed as every 6 months but with every edition there comes new information that updates the texts that we learn from so that we aren't learning inaccurate or incomplete facts. I remember in grade school, going to the book shelf in the room and picking a book to use for the year. A half dozen names or so inscribed in the front. 6 to 10 years of children learning the same information without amendments for new truths and discoveries of old fallacies. I shutter when I think of the nonsense they tried to teach me in "Health Class" and how I now everyday read articles on Yahoo! or Reddit that illustrate how science has proved this or that fact wrong in the past or not as relevant as we learned it was. Public schools don't have the funding to stay current. I guess that it doesn't matter that much when we're not teaching from text books because we're too busy teaching from test books. More on that in another blog maybe.

B. Censorship - There are a great deal of reasons for censorship ranging from religious conflicts to being just too complex for a young person to understand and even just too gruesome or dire of an event to be taught in classrooms. Grade school History is a complete and utter waste of time. You spend most of your time in High school history classes unlearning or correctly learning everything you thought you already learned in grade school. Then in college, you learn that there are even more cracks to fill and that in all reality even the History we learn isn't accurate because it's all just interpretation of events of the benefactors of the historical events. 

In my opinion this is a HUGE problem and should be rectified immediately. While more and more people are going to college there are still more and more kids not finishing High school. That means more and more people are running around with a cursory knowledge of things which are completely/mostly inaccurate or just not at all completed as an actual fact. How many American's do you suppose would say that Christopher Colombus was the first man to discover America? I don't have any hard facts here but I'd be willing to bet that you'd be very shocked at how many actually do think that. Too many people don't finish their education, or don't continue into secondary education for us to allow as much Censorship in the topics we are teaching at school.

C. Applicability - As tragic as it is that we can't provide the funding we need to stay current, as depressing as it is to know people go through life with confidence in false or partial teachings, I have to admit that the worst of it all is the fact that we just don't learn things we need to know. By and large, the majority of education up to college and even some there within secondary education is just wasted time and resources. There is no applicable use for a grade school students knowledge of the Boston Tea Party or even the details of the Revolutionary and Civil war. As important as that is to our society to preserve and propagate our history, a child is just never going to apply anything he knows of those things to his present or immediate future life. If you don't use it, you'll lose it.

There's a reason why the only thing my parents can remember from school is how to read and perform basic math functions. They are smart people and it's not beyond them to learn and use more complex things in life but the fact of the matter is that their life doesn't require more complex things and likely never will. They have no applicability for any knowledge past basic reading, writing, and arithmetic. Here's another sad reality: Most people don't. Most people are in the same boat. Most people pick a single trade or skill and learn it, master it, and use it every day to make the money they need. A general education isn't useful to them, sad as that may seem, it's not by their choice but by the reality of society and how it works.

I'd like to think that one day our young people can be in a class room that teaches them literacy and problem solving skills but moreover increases awareness *and interest* in the variety of skills and trades the world needs today. I'd like to picture a school system that you send your kids to in order to get ready for life on their own and the ability to make decisions towards their chosen professions instead of being looked after while you go to work. I sincerely hope we begin offering an education in life, how it works and how to navigate yourself through it to get where you want to be, rather than a general cursory knowledge of a conglomerate of random facts taught only for the purpose or retaining the funds needed to keep the doors open. Above all else though, I hope for a system that teachers can be apart of that helps them make the difference they wanted to make when they decided to be teachers. We have to stop letting the people with the money teach, and start letting the people with the desire to teach teach.