Johnson's Rules

While the most commonly recognized forms of learning are reading, listening, and attending classes, life itself is the best teacher of all if one pays attention and learns from both one’s goofs and one’s successes. 

I am not sure who Murphy was or when I first encountered Murphy’s Law, but I was inspired by the ironic truth of the statement and was enchanted by its brevity. In fact I’ve enjoyed such laws, observations, razors, and rules so much that they inspired me to write some of my own over the years.

While I have written nearly 70 of these things <https://sites.google.com/view/dougjohnsonweb/library-rules>, these are just ten of my favorites:

1. Johnson's Observation about the Irony of Success:  The mark of a successful parent is that your children no longer need you. The mark of a successful teacher is that your students go on learning without you. The mark of a successful supervisor is that your workers don’t need supervision.

2. Johnson’s Observation About Public Speaking: You’re never bored when you are the one doing the talking.

3. Johnson’s Law of Literacy: If one can read but is not changed by reading, why bother?

4. Johnson’s Rule of Indispensability: If your job is eliminated, your boss should really regret it.

5. Johnson’s Rules for Spreading Manure: 1) Always check which way the wind is blowing 2) Never lick your finger to find out.

6. Johnson’s Rule of Technology Perspective: Every tech problem is a big tech problem to the person experiencing it.

7. Johnson’s Experience in Assigning Tasks: You may as well give unpleasant jobs to people who are already unhappy.

8. Johnson’s Update of Aesop: The race is not always to the swift, but to those who keep on learning.

9. Johnson’s Homily on Beta Testing: The early worm gets eaten by the bird.

10. Johnson’s Law of Stress Management: If you can’t find someone to pass the stress on to, you’re struck with it.

I expect the wisest people are those who recognize no one has all the answers. Who are still learning from others. Who sometimes change their views. Ask me tomorrow who the smartest person I know is and you will probably get a different answer. All I know for sure is that it sure as hell isn’t me.

Oh, I have a separate list of Lessons Learned from Bicycling <http://doug-johnson.squarespace.com/blue-skunk-blog/2013/7/7/bftp-lessons-learned-from-bicycling.html>  Here are the first dozen of 30. (I was taken to task by a reader for a snarky comment about spandex on the original list which I’ve since removed.)

1. Balance is a good thing.

2. It's usually uphill and against the wind. (Murphy's Law of Bicycling)

3. Most big hills that look impossible are usually a series of small hills that are possible.

4. I've never met a hill I couldn't walk up.

5. It's better to shift to a lower gear than to stop altogether.

6. Sometimes it's nice to be able to have equipment to blame things on.

7. You really can't make your own weather.

8. Coasting feels good, but you don't get much exercise doing it.

9. A beer at the end of a long day of riding tastes better than a beer when just sitting around (or at breakfast, I'm guessing).

10. Don't drink at lunch time and expect to enjoy the afternoon.

11. Bike helmets are a sure sign that natural selection is still a force of nature.

12. The few minutes putting air in your tires at the beginning of the day is time well spent.

And finally, I’ve compiled  a list of My Biases <http://doug-johnson.squarespace.com/my-biases/>. We all have them, of course, but we should be transparent about them. Here are a few:

About education:

1. Ultimately, we are responsible for our own education.

2. The solution to all the world's problems will rely on effective education.

3. Libraries and uncensored Internet access are vital to a democratic society.

4. A teacher's primary job is to instill a sense of importance in his subject. Skills will follow.

5. Schools should teach children to think, not to believe.

About politics and religion:

1. Both politics and religion should be viewed with profound skepticism.

2. Legislators should not require children to take tests that they themselves can’t pass.

On human nature:

1. Although I may not say it out loud, my grandchildren are better than any other children on the face of the planet.

2. I really want most urban legends to be true.

3. Most of us would prefer shallow wit to deep intelligence in our writers and speakers. Thank goodness.

4. Sport stadiums should be paid for by the people who use them; community centers, parks, bike trails, libraries, and swimming pools should be paid for by everyone.

5. Smoking and overeating should be considered poor health choices, not moral failings.

Posters made of the rules (and other stuff)

BFTP: Signs of an abundance mindset in libraries

Given the budget shortfalls in many school districts due to the pandemic, an abundance mindset will be more difficult to maintain that ever. But keep trying! 

It doesn't happen often, but I kind of lost it one day. Our elementary media EAs (Educational Assistants) were meeting and the big topic was changing the circulation policy in our K-5 libraries.

Due to some of our libraries having had highly restrictive circulation policies, the library coordinator, the elementary principals, and I decided that all students, regardless of building, would be able to check out four books at a time, regardless of grade level, and at least one book could be a "choice" book.

Given the following discussion, you'd have thought we proposed taking a torch to books and just watch them burn. What if the teacher doesn't want the kid to check out that many? What if one kid gets all the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books and never brings them back? Just how many books can a kid check out before we cut him off? You get the drift.

But what set my hair on fire was when one well-intentioned EA said, "But in MY library, I take great pride in making sure I have all my books on the shelf and I get judged on how few books I have overdue or missing."

In no uncertain terms, I'm afraid, I reminded her and others that these were not their libraries. These libraries and the materials in them belonged to the school, the kids, and the teachers. We were only the caretakers and managers of the libraries, not the owners. And that the metric we must use to evaluate the success of the library and the library staff from then on would be the circulation rate, not how many books were overdue or lost.

I am embarrassed to say, I saw a few tears. I could have said it more kindly.

On reflection, I could empathize with these smart, caring, and skilled EAs who I sincerely believe love books and kids. For many years in our district, the libraries had been funded by building dollars, creating under funded and highly inequitable collections. Ranging from a meager $1400 to an inadequate $3800 per 6 grade level building, most EAs turned not to the district, but to book fairs and PTOs to add at least a few new titles each year, making sure what new books that did come got into as many hands as possible. During my tenure in the district, for the first time, we established a district-wide library budget that would support a well-weeded collection of 7500-8000 volumes.

While it's fairly simple to change funding sources and formulas, it's a lot tougher to change a culture with a scarcity mentality to an abundance mentality.

What are signs of an abundance mindset in a school library?

• Generous circulation policy
• Forgiving overdue policy (no fines!)
• Multiple copies of popular titles
• Well-weeded collections
• Proactive measures to increase number of students in the library and lengths of library visits
• Proactive measure to make sure all classroom teachers get kids to the library on a regular basis
• Providing classrooms sets of library materials
• Participating in book award programs
• Student clubs, volunteers
• Readily changing book displays
• Genrefication of the collection

Is your school's library working in an abundance or scarcity mindset? And can the librarian still have an abundance mindset even when library funding may not be optimal? 

I think so. Please don't cry when you read this.

Original post 9/1/17 

My criminal past

Not sure why I wrote this, Blue Skunk Readers, but it was a long weekend here in "lockdown." Feel free to share your criminal activities in in the comments section. But make sure the statue of limitations from what you plead guilty to has passed.

 My criminal past

The criminal masterminds about which one reads are not really masterminds at all. If they were, they would remain unknown, freely practicing their illegal trades - like me. It’s only the poor crooks who get caught and get the associated publicity. I have had a long criminal career, encompassing many illegal behaviors. So it may sound rather self-aggrandizing, I do consider myself a mastermind.

Although, my first crime was an inauspicious beginning...

Beginning around the age of six or seven, my granny would let me walk the block and a half to the local grocery store - Gantz IGA in Lake View, Iowa. One day I quickly stuffed a small package of M&M’s in my pants pocket and started to leave the store. Mr. Gantz, whose office was right next to the candy rack (I wonder why), stopped me on the way out and asked me what I had in my pockets. “Nuthin,” I muttered as I looked at the floor. “Be sure if you come into the store, it’s because you need to buy something,” he scolded me without making me empty my pockets.. Thankfully, my deed was not reported to my grandmother and the next time I was in the store, I left an extra nickel because I felt guilty about stealing the candy. I’ve never stolen anything since.

Like most people, I’ve gotten a few speeding tickets - I am a firm believer in driving exactly at 112% of the legal limit, but sometimes I miss a speed trap coming into a town. My most serious ticket was when I was 17 and driving my “Unsafe At Any Speed” Corvair that had a broken speedometer cable. On curves on the road into Sac City. I was clocked and ticketed for doing 60mph in a 35mph zone. Not only did I have to pay a fine, I had my license suspended for 90 days. It was tough getting auto insurance after that, so I did not drive for probably four months. While my license was suspended, I let my buddy Craig drive my car. He wrecked it when another car turned right in front of him. 

My other serious moving violation happened when I was driving on the campus at the University of Northern Colorado. My coffee thermos slipped to the floor, and while I was picking it up, I managed to ass-end the car ahead of me. The victim turned out to be the son of a highway patrol officer so I wound up getting a ticket for reckless driving instead of careless driving. I had a choice: pay a fine equivalent to half my month’s salary or take a four-week defensive driving class. Of the dozen or so other thugs in the class, I think I was the only one who paid much attention. I still use some of the tips the class offered.

I celebrated my 18th birthday with my coworkers from the Trojan Seed Corn plant where I had a summer job. One fellow, Jim, was in his early 20s and bought a case of beer which the four of us drank as he drove us around town. When the beer was gone, Jim parked in an alley behind a bar and, obviously drunk, tried to get the bar to sell him more beer. Instead, they called the cops who arrived shortly after, blocking the alley entrance. The problem with drinking on my 18th birthday was that Iowa law required one to be 21 before you could drink booze of any kind so I was ticketed for underage drinking, fined $35 by the Justice of the Peace, and released. I walked back to my truck, still parked at work, and drove home to the farm. Probably still under the influence.

A week later, my dad said that he read about me in the Sac Sun, the weekly town newspaper. Seems my arrest made the police log. Dad said from now on, I needed to be home by 10. I said I was 18 and didn’t have to follow his rules anymore. He said as long as I was living in his house, I had to follow his rules. I moved out the next day, spending the rest of the summer sleeping in an old house some buddies rented to practice as a rock and roll band. While there was an outhouse, there was no running water, so I took a long dip in a gravel pit after work everyday. 

It may come as a surprise, but I am an international criminal as well. While working in Saudi Arabia as a teacher, I became a world-class smuggler. It wasn’t drugs or diamonds but wine yeast and R-rated video tapes that I snuck through customs. While the sale of liquor was (and still is, I think) illegal in Saudi, officials looked the other way when expats made their own. Some ambitious folks made “sadiqy” (Arabic for friend) a clear grain alcohol in homemade stills, but most of us just made wine. Bottled grape juice, sugar, water and yeast were mixed together and let to ferment for 19 ½ days and then siphoned off into the same bottles the grape juice came in. The biggest problem was that bread yeast made for worse tasting wine than that made from wine yeast. But wine yeast was also illegal in Saudi. So on return from my vacations to the States, I would take apart my infant son’s toys (the Busy Board worked well), pack them with wine yeast, and screw them back together. As we were going through customs, which always seemed to be at about 3am, I would pinch Brady so he would cry and the customs guy would expedite our clearance. It also helped when the baby had dirty diapers.

My co-consiprator

Any movie rated R or worse was also invariably confiscated by Saudi customs. So I would remove the tapes from the VHS cassettes of movies I wanted to watch, wrap them in plastic bags, and drop them into the bottom of canisters of WetWipes, replacing some wipes on top of them. I would reload the tapes into cases when back in my Saudi home. The only time I was questioned was when the officer found a bunch of empty VHS tape cases (that Brady’s mother packed) and asked why I was bringing them in. Luckily, Brady started to cry about then. The story was that if anything illegal was found by customs, one could spend an indefinite amount of time in an unpleasant Saudi jail - where there was no obligation to feed the prisoners - and be automatically deported on release. Smuggling was probably not among the top ten smartest things I’ve ever done.

Finally, my last foray into the dark side of the law was being a plagiarist. Sort of. I had started writing a new column for a national organization’s journal. About three months into the work, I got a very unkind email from the editorial staff saying that an Internet search had determined parts of my column had been stolen from writing already published. I asked them to check the source of this “plagiarized” material. After a couple days, I got another email saying that the investigation showed the material came from an article written by a “Doug Johnson.” They kept me on as a writer, but admonished me that they only wanted new material. From then on I was more careful about “repurposing” my writing - a technique I had found useful ever since high school.

Although as I have demonstrated, I have been a life-long criminal, it may have been due to my cleverness that I have yet to spend a night in jail, appear before a jury of my peers or ask for a pardon from President Trump. Or more likely, it was early lessons from my family that I just wasn’t smart enough to get away with a damn thing. I’m glad my dad did not work for Saudi customs.