Truly Popular, Truly Powerful

Why is it that people feel the need to make others feel bad? Why is it that people need to exert power over others in order to feel powerful? Answer: because somewhere inside, the people who do this are unsatisfied with, or lack confidence in themselves.

Want to be truly popular and feel good about yourself? Go out of your way to do something nice to someone. Give someone a compliment. Offer someone a hand with something with which they're having difficulty. Just say "hi" to someone by name. Do all of these things sincerely, and soon you will have the respect of more people and more friends than you ever had before.

I know. I speak from personal experience.

So, if being nice to people results in more friends, why don't more people do it? There's a simple answer to that too: being friendly and complimentary and helpful opens you up to being hurt in return. Safer to be mean because it puts others on the defensive.

I'll tell you this much: if you're genuinely nice to others, you will be repaid in kind 10, 100, 1000 times over. It's worth the risk.

This will give you a true kind of power. Not power over people but power of people. Not the power of intimidation, but the power of cooperation. There's even a word for this: synergy

I know. I speak from personal experience.

Finally, remember this:

"No one can make you feel inferior unless you let them." - Eleanor Roosevelt

Ducks on the Pond

A creek passes within about 150 feet of my home. There is a eddy in the creek just where it goes under my street, which creates a deep pool. The pool attracts a lot of wildlife. Every time I pass it on my way to and from school, I stop to see if anything's happening there. It's a little window into the natural world around us.


Every year around this time, a life and death struggle takes place there. The contestants are baby steelhead trout and ducks.

Over the course of each summer, I see a gradual increase in the number of steelhead fingerlings in the pool. I've never seen any adult steelhead there, so I guess the fingerlings drift downstream from their birthing place and stop in the pool because it is so deep. By the time school starts, there are hundreds of fingerlings in the pool. After awhile, ducks and other birds discover the fish and start hanging out at the pool too.


The steelhead are at a big disadvantage because they have nowhere to go. By late summer/early fall the water level in the creek is so low that it isn't flowing to the bay. The trout are stuck in the pool. This allows the ducks to calmly float on the surface and casually pick off the trout one by one.

Last year the trout were almost wiped out. They weren't, obviously, because some came back this year to lay eggs, but it was close. One morning last fall I counted 14 ducks on the pond at once, all looking for a quick bite to eat.

I haven't seen more than 4 ducks at one time on the pool this year, which has helped the little fish. I still see dozens of 2" long fingerlings in the pool. Missing, however, are the big ones: a couple of fish that had grown to around 6 inches in length. Did they escape downstream, or did one of the ducks get them?

Each year, I find myself hoping for one good rainstorm to raise the level of the creek high enough that the fish can escape downstream to the bay. Would this save the fish?

Not really, for the bay and ocean are full of other predators. Still, it gives the fish a fighting chance.

Better than being stuck in a pond with no place to go and hungry ducks floating above.

Putting the "Revolution" in Revolution Foods

First off, let me say that I'm totally in favor of what Revolution Foods is trying to do: provide healthy, organic lunches from sustainable sources to all of you.

The problem is that a lot of kids don't eat the lunches.

Each day after you are excused from your lunch tables to go play, the Green Team is bombarded with uneaten lunches. It's as if the kids are revolting against Revolution Foods. Not exactly what the company owners had in mind when they named the company.


This creates another problem: a whole bunch of unnecessary waste being sent to our already overburdened landfills.

To me, this is a classic example of the so called "law of unintended consequences" in which an attempt to solve one problem creates a whole different one.

Perhaps the greatest example of this is rabbits in Australia. There, in 1859, a landowner brought in 24 rabbits, along with some other animals, in order to have something to hunt. Rabbits breed early and often and in Australia, it has no natural predators (animals that eat rabbits), so there was nothing to stop the rabbit population from getting bigger. 10 years later, 24 rabbits had become millions.


There were so many rabbits that they ate all the crops and all the food meant for farm animals. A "rabbit proof fence" was built to keep the rabbits away from the farmland. The fence is 2021 miles long (to get an idea of how long that is, the distance between Mill Valley and Lake Tahoe is about 200 miles, so the fence equal in length to about 5 round trips to Tahoe).



Now I'm sure that Revolution Foods won't cause any wild consequence like that, but the fact remains that kids basically don't like the food. The question is why not and what can Revolution Foods do about it?

I think that the problem has a simple cause and a simple solution. See, I like the food. Kids don't. This suggests that the food is being made for adult tastes, not kids'.

Kid have undeveloped palates. My two nieces' favorite restaurant meal is plain pasta with parmesan cheese. Kids are capable of tasting 4 basic things: sweet, salty, sour and bitter. Many restaurant chefs know this. Go to some upscale restaurant (semi-fancy) which serves some exotic food like "pan-asian fusion cuisine" to adults and you will find a kids menu offering things like macaroni & cheese and chicken strips (fancy chicken strips, but chicken strips nonetheless). Kids don't like exotic and fancy, they like simple (my nephew is an exception, but that is a story for another post).

I know that Revolution Foods is very serious about their business. Their food is better this year than last, so I know they're trying to make the food tastier for you.

Here's how you can help them: Every now and then, someone from the company comes to Park and asks kids how they like the food. If they ask you, be respectful, but honest. If you don't like something, like the sloppy joes, try to explain why. Don't just say "it's gross". If you give them good feedback("it's dry", "all I taste is bread"), they will take it back to their bosses and the lunches will improve. Then we'll have a real food revolution - healthy food that kids will actually eat!

How to Wear a Pinnie

So, we played soccer in PE today and one of the teams wanted to wear pinnies so they could recognize their teammates. It took nearly 5 minutes for everyone to put them on, for a lot of the kids couldn't figure out to do it.

What they didn't realize is there are many ways to wear a pinny. So many in fact, that a pinny can be considered a fashion accessory. Take a look:

Normal


As a shawl


A tropical bare midriff look


V-neck vest


Off the shoulder

Friendship

What qualities make good friends?

I asked this question to both of my 5th grade classes yesterday and both came up with the same answers:

1. Loyalty
2. Honesty
3. Respect
4. Trustworthiness

When I asked what they meant their answers were:

"Loyalty means sticking up for me when somebody else says mean things about me."
"Loyalty means staying friends even after we have an argument."

"Honesty means telling me the truth - even if the truth makes me feel bad."

"Respect is, um, really complicated."
"Respect means not being mean."
"Respect means treating other people like I want them to treat me."

"Trustworthiness means doing what you say you're going to do."
"Trustworthiness means keeping private conversations private."
"Trustworthiness means not talking about me behind my back."
"Trustworthiness means not saying bad things about me just to stay friends with somebody else."

When we started talking about trust, it seemed like everybody had something to say. Without any prompting from me (though I did try to help clarify things), it was apparent that the kids felt that this was the most important quality for a friend to have. In fact, the the first thing a friendship has to have, they felt, is trust. If you have trust, everything else will follow.

What People Think

I have a friend who has a mental illness called Agoraphobia. Agoraphobia is fear of open places.

She is especially afraid to go to places that are unfamiliar or crowded. She is very reluctant to go anywhere she's never been and refuses to get into an elevator or onto a bus. For 18 years, her agoraphobia was so bad that she could not go more than a block away from her house.

Her therapist told her that there were two causes to her problem:

1. A feeling that she needed to control everything around her in order to feel safe.

2. A deep rooted fear about what other people thought of her.

My friend is a little better now, but the lesson for you is: There are a lot of things in life that you cannot control, especially what other people think of you. If you worry about this too much, it can literally drive you crazy.

Inspiration by Perspiration

Two of my nieces, Haley (left, above) and Kristin (right), are into Rock Band and Guitar Hero (the wii versions).


They were also into "High School Musical" and used to spend hours each day singing the songs from that musical. In fact, they were so excited about that show that they convinced their parents to cut short a vacation in Hawaii just so they could get home in time to see the premier of the show on TV.



Anyway, knowing that they enjoyed such things, I gave them a copy of the 08 Park School dance dvd that we made in PE.

They liked it. Now, instead of singing songs from some Disney Channel thing, they run around singing "Peanut Butter Jelly Time" and "Barbie Girl". It's driving my brother crazy.