I have just heard the news that some members of a high school football team in New Jersey were involved in an assault of some people who are in very serious condition. The Coach of the team went before the school board and bullied them into allowing the boys under investigation to play the next game.

I am sorry, but I am now officially anti-high school football. Period. It is not just the New Jersey thing. These thoughts have been on my mind for quite a while. I was a player in high school. I even played while in the army in Europe. I am outraged over the Penn State affair and now this high school coach has gotten my ire up as well. Something is wrong when high school coaches are more admired and compensated than the Superintendent or Principal. And at the college level you can say all that in spades! It is time we got our entire education system out of big league sports. If there is a market for such activity, let it be run by the city or county recreation departments for the school age kids and by the professional leagues beyond that. I am sure that the big colleges and universities could work out franchise arrangements with the pros for the use of the school mascot names and rental of the stadiums and probably come out ahead of where they are now.

The sea is up and the wind is blowing pretty hard so no one is on the beach.  Something made me think of "cultures" and "environments" and "ecosystems".  And some thoughts are wallowing around in my mind.  I watch a lot of the stuff on the Smithsonian channel as well as on PBS that have just dynamite pictures of wildlife and obscure cultures that are found in out of the way places.  I really like to see those things.

But it seems to me that it is a required part of the genre that the producer of the piece must lay a load of guilt on the audience by reminding us that we are polluting the world, raping the lands and oceans of all the resources, warming the globe, etc, etc.  And then there is the people.  Whether it is the (ex) headhunters of Borneo or the people I used to call Eskimos but now seem to have a dozen or so different names, or guys in the jungles of Brazil, they are all presented to us as having such a wonderful culture that meets all their needs if we (not the photographers who are making money off them but just the rest of us) just would leave them alone and quit raping the land and polluting the rivers and ocean of the world.  You get the picture.

But then, it seems to me that the same folks (not the photographers, but the people who actually cast the piece with the subtle messages mentioned above) don't give a whit about preserving my culture.  My culture should just make way for everyone else and get over it.

Maybe I am just too sensitive.