Pax Plena

Tag: Culture

  • A Visit from a Friend

    A Mourning Dove. I call him Dave.

    I’m in Indiana this week. My time of being a nomad is well underway. It’s cloudy and muggy out. The heat grasps at the moisture in the air. It’s oppressive. Not quite as dreadful as DC in the summer. But pretty close. Even the squirrels and chipmunks have stilled their play to allow the afternoon heat to drag on.

    Soon, I imagine, they will resume their scurrying and gathering, or whatever it is that my friends do during the heat of the summer. My ex-wife’s backyard is filled with animals. I usually spend my days at the dining room table with an unobstructed view of the backyard. When animals make their way onto the deck (which happens fairly often) I call them my friends.

    So, with my friends scampering about, I suppose that the only idle one around here is me. My son has resumed school. His family here has resumed their work routines. My girlfriend in CO remains busy doing attorney things while maintaining her home for her kids. My family in OK are all, well, doing okay! Work, School, and Church seem to run the days there.

    The Sentinel.

    As I thought about the constant motion, it occurred to me that I felt a bit like the tree in the backyard. I call him The Sentinel. A fine specimen of a sugar maple, he stands athwart the chaos of days and looks calmly on. His stately branches reach out and provide shade and shelter as the world passes by. It could be said that he stands idle. But, at risk of being overly animistic, I don’t think he does. I think there’s a wisdom to watching and learning before acting. At least that’s what I think he does, and what I hope I’m doing.

    At any rate, what made today especially interesting was that a mourning dove joined me on the deck this afternoon. He was a handsome fella. He seemed rather content to join me and sit on the deck while we awaited the afternoon thunderstorm. As the humidity rose, I began to wonder where he would go should it truly start to rain.

    It prompted me to learn a bit more about mourning doves. I read that female mourning doves sit on their nests from late afternoon throughout the night. So, I figured that this mourning dove, who was decidedly nowhere near a nest, was a male. For all I know, he had just finished the morning shift of nest sitting and was cooling his heels until the storm arrived or passed. I’d say, he was here at least 20 minutes.

    In considering his stay, my mind began to wander, and I grew concerned for him. I hoped that he wasn’t injured.

    But isn’t that rich! He was doing what I was doing. Together, between me, the bird, and the tree, we were all idling and whiling away the afternoon. There was nothing wrong with me. The tree seemed fine. Yet, I immediately wondered whether there was something wrong with the bird.

    It wasn’t a flash of insight, but it struck me that maybe a guy just needs a damn break from time to time. And while it’s not popular in our culture and economy to take breaks (Gasp! Resume gaps!), maybe taking a break is okay.

    Because, come 6AM tomorrow, I reckon we’ll both be up, taking care of the kids, and doing all the things, all over again.

    I learned a lot today. I’m glad my friend stopped by.

  • Endless Summers

    It’s been a minute. Half a year nearly. My plan coming into 2026 was to write more – and I have to an extent. Just not here. My journal is full. I’ve also unexpectedly written job applications and cover letters aplenty. But this space has surely been neglected.

    I think like many people who started blogging around the early aughts, the point was simply to share what was on the mind – whether it be about politics, faith or just what happened during the day. There was no rhyme or reason to any of it. I remember an embarrassing amount of two paragraph posts about nothing at all in the early days of Pax Plena. I also posted way more than I should have about politics (a quaint bygone era compared to the rough and tumble dissension we seem to have in the public conversation today). I even managed to continue posting through law school, my doctoral work and the early days of my academic career.

    Then things just gradually went off the rails. I started to self-censor. I was careful to the point of being paranoid about sharing thoughts or content related to my field. I felt the need to keep up a certain facade regarding my personal life. Eventually, all of the things that make a person interesting were out of bounds at least in terms of sharing and my own writing.

    Today, that notion of blogging is almost completely gone. There are TONS of platforms for sharing content. Pictures. Music. Videos. Memes. Things that are silly. Things that are sad. Sites for personal interests abound – fishing, gaming. watches, fountain pens, sports are a few personal favorites. There are also multiple sites for accessing content. It really doesn’t matter – if there is an interest in the content, whatever the stripe, it can be found in abundance.

    Which makes my whole exercise here at Pax Plena ripe for a revisit.

    Now that I lack institutional affiliation, I find myself wondering about the kind of content that I’d like to share. I wonder what folks would find interesting. I don’t feel the same shackles constraining me any longer. It’s almost like I can write about and say whatever I want again. It’s exciting but also strange. I suppose liberty can be that way.

    Most of my friends and colleagues don’t have this luxury. I know that some former colleagues do not write freely because professional obligations require them to self-censor. The first amendment may be alive and well as we approach America’s 250th Anniversary. But both the public and private sectors have a way of stifling speech that is far more nefarious than a lot of us think about. In the public sector, otherwise interesting writers are constrained to share or “publish” only the content that their bosses approve. If you are a federal worker, the authority of the President to fire simply doesn’t cut in your favor. In the private sector, thanks to the bastardization of at will employment, may workers find their speech rights limited by company policy, lest they find themselves axed for expressing an opinion that isn’t company friendly. It’s enough to make one wonder if the first amendment right to free speech is worth it. And for many it’s easier to self-censor rather than take the risk. Democracy truly does seem to die by a thousand cuts.

    So, I think it’s fair to say that I need to pause a bit and think more about what kind of content I’d like to share now that I have the luxury of freedom. I also need to think about what my stamina and pace of life will find manageable. I think I’m up for regular posts. A weekly essay would be interesting and doable – though it’s admittedly not very frequent. But I also don’t want to write just to write. So, I wonder what kind of value I can add to any reader’s life by my scribblings. The old adage is to write about what you know. These days, parenting and fatherhood, faith, doubt, job transitions, and relationships are all at the forefront of my mind. Maybe it’s just the general ennui of one’s mid-40s that keeps my focus so narrow. But it’s also good manners to stay in one’s lane so to speak. Lot’s to think about.

    For now, it’s Fourth of July Eve here in the USA. My nephew’s birthday will kickoff soon. He turns 12 this year. Hard to imagine really. It’s a funny thing with these kiddos: the time seems to pass so quickly.

    I can recall being 13 and the summers seemed endless. Back then I could while away an afternoon inside my grandparents’ house, parked in front of the AC reading the latest volume I’d slipped from the Library in town. Grandma would fix us lunch. There was the hope of fishing in the late afternoon still to come. The future then seemed so bright and exciting. There were no worries. No debts to pay. No utilities to cover or careers to maintain. No people to please. I had an unshakable, blind faith and confidence in the world and the people around me. I knew that they would take care of me and that all would be well.

    It never entered into my mind (not with any sort of fulsome reckoning), that one day, the people I love and trusted, the real grown ups in my life, would no longer be around.

    Seven years ago on July 4th, 2019, we all popped fireworks out at my Grandpa’s house. We did the same on July 6th at a relative’s place. I had no idea that less than a month later my Grandpa would be gone; that seven years later, Grandpa, the dogs in the picture, and even my relative’s partner – and a whole host of others – would all be gone. Such things do not really cross the mind of a grown man, not really. Let alone the mind of a child.

    This year, the Nation is 250 years old. I’m 43. My son is 13. And it feels like the entire world has changed.

    Summers, now, seem so quick. The future seems dark – like the best of days are all behind us. I find that I trust people less. And it’s a sad, thing to trust others less, particularly when I know how garbage of a person I am.

    On this 250th Anniversary of America, I feel most for the kiddos. It’s like the current generation of kids got all of the fake adults. I think that most of us Millennials really know don’t know how to adult. We all just woke up one day, and all of a sudden we found ourselves here with kids, jobs, relationships, regrets and none of the fun we were having back when we were 13. It’s not true but the whole thing doesn’t seem fair. Some days it doesn’t even seem real. Life is but a dream. It feels like maybe one day we will wake up and none of this will have happened. The world won’t be so chaotic. Mistakes won’t have been made. We won’t have elected a crazy orange dictator to leader our country. And I’ll be young, safe and happy once again.

    Maybe in the distance, my Grandpa will be lighting fireworks while the dogs trot behind him ready to sit back down when the nonsense is over.

  • Tech Dilemmas

    For a variety of reasons, I’ve lately had the need to rethink my technological footprint. Over the past five months or so my job has taken a few left turns that now have me working on projects that were not contemplated when I was originally hired. Many of these find me making treks back and forth between my offices on the U of A campus. In turn, I’ve felt the pull to travel lighter, and to pair down my tech footprint to only the essentials.

    Enter Apple’s new iPad Air (or iPad Air 3).

    As any good technophile knows, the decision was not one easily made. I had five key criteria in seeking a new tablet:

    • Portability
    • Digital Note-Taking
    • Laptop Replacement
    • Processing Power
    • Word Processing Capability

    I’ll explain each below.

    Portability. As mentioned, my new job obligations see me schlepping across resort-like U of A on a fairly regular basis now (I’m clearly not biased toward my alma mater at all). By way of explanation, the University of Arizona is in the midst of developing programs that involve a major commitment to Native American Advancement at the institution, and I’m grateful to be a part of the team that’s seeing some of these initiatives through. But the changed reality for me is that I’m no longer tethered to a desk at any particular location, on any given day. This means that much of my work was being done on my MacBook laptop circa 2016.

    To be fair, my MacBook is still a fine machine. It has ample storage and I’ve yet to run into a processing task (or series of processing tasks) that it can’t handle. Even so, having replaced the keyboard twice, it was quickly becoming less portable and more a computing station in my home office. The wear and tear of trips across campus would not have served its longevity very well, and I’m not overly eager to spend upwards of $2k USD on a replacement. I could probably have made the arrangement work for another year or two, but the hinge of the screen and top case had become gradually more flexible (loose), and the screen itself was beginning to show faint signs of degradation in the coating of its Retina display. Not something uncommon after a usage-intensive three year run, but clearly happenstances that would not bode well over the long-term.

    Thus, my need for a newer, portable replacement.

    Note: The iPad was not an obvious choice for me. I had considered getting a new laptop altogether. The price point of the MacBook line is still pretty good and some of the internal hardware has been upgraded overtime. But in my three year break from the iPad, some quick research told me that the internal processing, app selections and software upgrades had all made the iPad a much more formidable player in the productivity space. (I had an ailing iPad Air 2 that hadn’t really seen much use since my, then, toddler son scraped up the back of it while playing on a less-than-sparkling wood floor). Given the price difference between a tablet and a laptop in the Apple ecosystem, a tablet replacement for my laptop seemed like a good option for what I envisioned.

    Digital Note-Taking. Another key component of my job involves taking copious amounts of notes. Formerly, I had done most of these by hand and then manually transcribed them word-for-word on my work computer. In a laptop replacement, I wanted to avoid this if at all possible and find a combination of hardware and software that would transcribe my abysmal scrawl into usable text that I could edit and modify as needed without the need to transcribe. On this score, the Apple Pencil seemed like a nice alternative. So, whatever iPad I bought would need to be compatible with this function of the Apple Pencil.

    I should probably mention that I’m not an artist by any means. Some users seek out the Apple Pencil purely for sketching and drawing – and nearly any iPad available today has this function and capability. But given how atrocious my handwriting is, despite Mrs. Gensman’s best efforts during Senior year of High School, I needed something with the power and ability to do the impossible: make my handwriting legible, recognize it (something my Mother still can’t do), and transform it into digital text like you’re seeing now.

    Laptop Replacement. Above all, the replacement had to wield the ability to take the place of my laptop in my technological day-to-day existence. This may seem an obvious point but I reckon it’s an important distinction. Some tablets are great at providing options to consume media. One can use a Kindle to read voluminous amounts of books. The iPads of yore, even, were great vehicles for watching movies and streaming videos on YouTube and Netflix.

    But whatever I opted to purchase needed not only to handle both reading books and watching movies (flights are long after all), but also help me stay atop the steady and increasing workload that is now coming in. In sum, I needed a machine that would both allow me to consume media, and be productive. (This narrowed the options considerably but more on this later).

    Processing Power. Given the above, the device I sought would need to have top of the line processing power. It would need to handle multiple applications at once and accommodate my spastic nature. It’s not uncommon for me to type a few paragraphs, hit on a word that pops into my mind, and then send me reeling on a lesson in etymology, and wondering whether the word selected is fit for the occasion. Self-doubt is a cruel mistress.

    Suffice it to say, the ability of the internal processor needed to be stronger than my undiagnosed, adult ADD at a price that wouldn’t break the bank.

    Word Processing Capability. And finally, my “forever” device needed to provide multiple, and ample opportunities for me to write.

    To the kids reading (I so hope you’re not reading, kids), pay attention during your English class. Pay attention to your English professors in college (no matter how lame they may be). And above all learn to write. And when you’ve mastered this basic skill, learn to write well.

    As a university yokel-in-residence, I can’t claim to have followed the advice I’ve just given. But writing in all its forms, from emails, to contracts, to law review articles (yay – new publication coming soon!), to hiring decisions, to blog posts – writing is 90% of what I do. So, my laptop replacement needed to provide the capacity to accomplish this basic function with aplomb.

    (Lest anyone think I’m being overly dramatic, think about the apps any given professional might use on a daily basis: Apple Mail. Outlook. Microsoft Word. Dropbox (file syncing across devices and because Box sucks). iA Writer. Scrivener. Facebook Messenger. iMessage. Skype. Snapchat. Kik. Twitter. The lone thread in all of these apps is that they all depend upon the ability of an individual to translate the thoughts in the mind to digital text on a platform. Simply this and nothing more. And as our robot overlords come to take our jobs, the ability to write and communicate is one of the lone bastions of human ingenuity that they have not quite mastered. Or have they?)

    Outcome

    Out the gate, I immediately bought the new iPad Mini (or iPad Mini 5) that was released alongside the iPad Air this past March. The Mini ticked nearly all of the boxes above. It’s portable. It accommodates the Apple Pencil and digital note-taking. It has superb processing power. And I thought that this made it was a viable laptop replacement. Until it wasn’t. Alas, I overlooked the key final component: It was incredibly difficult to actually write on the iPad Mini.

    Consider the following image:

    The iPad Mini checks four out of the five boxes that I wanted in a laptop replacement. It’s incredibly portable. The entire bezel of the device is only slightly larger than than the largest Apple iPhone. It’s size makes it great for note-taking. Any moleskin notebook aficionado will appreciate the form factor of the new Mini. And it’s processing power is actually equal to that of the iPad Air. It is also an amazing media consumption device. Users can happily surf the web, watch movies, and read books to their electronic heart’s desire.

    But it’s 7.9 inch screen means it also has a concurrent 7.9 inch (or so) keyboard. And this made it terrible for word processing, and thus a terrible laptop replacement. I honestly didn’t think that this would be a problem given that my hands are only slightly larger than those of a large child. But even for me, it was ridiculously difficult to type on the external keyboard that I purchased for the Mini, and the onscreen keyboard wasn’t any more convenient. Suffice it to say, I had made a costly miscalculation (the iPad Mini with 256 GB of storage, and Wi-Fi only capability runs $549.00 USD – excluding tax).

    Given the tech dilemma, I wrote off the mistake à la Seinfeld  and purchased an iPad Air (or iPad Air 3).

    As you can see in the image above, the iPad Air 3 is considerably larger than the iPad Mini. The extra 2.6 inches doesn’t seem like a lot, but in the context of onscreen real estate, the difference is dramatic. The iPad Air allows me to tick the final box and actually be productive in the crucial area of word processing capability. This transforms the device from one that permits media consumption to one that also allows for creativity, and communication. I’m sure there are some users that would not see so stark a contrast, but here are some side-by-side comparisons that illustrate the point:

    Above, the Air and Mini showcase their respective screen viewing capacities. The Mini is scarcely larger than the Apple Pencil that I used for taking notes, while the Air has a full-sized keyboard that makes typing a breeze.

    Above, you can see how much easier it is to write on the iPad Air than the Mini. Both are actually great for taking notes. But the larger screen makes transcribing my scrawl much easier – both to do, and to read!

    Afterward

    In sum, I’m a few weeks into the experiment, and I can’t say that I’ve missed a beat by not lugging around my laptop. Even when I work from home, the experience of using the Air makes me inclined to sit at the kitchen table with my iced coffee and work, rather than dragging the laptop out from the doldrums of my home office. In terms of price point, the iPad Air is in the almost dead center of the iPad lineup and retails for $649 USD, excluding tax. I find that this extra $100 over the Mini is worth every cent for its larger screen and word processing capability.

    While there are some limitations, and a few processes that can be done faster on a computer, unless you are in the top 1% of tablet users, I think the iPad Air is a reasonable middle ground between Apple’s smallest iPad and its most expensive (the iPad Pro).

    With that, here’s that a new device will inspire more blogging, and increased productivity.

  • Why Dads Matter

    My Post

    It has been a long while since I’ve graced the pages of Pax Plena with a new post. Given a quiet Father’s Day Sunday here in the U.S., I couldn’t think of a better time to resurrect our ailing blog once again. Like Lazarus rising from the dead, this disease of blogging silence never quite seems to lead to death. Our blog has merely fallen asleep.

     

    What prompted me to write this afternoon was an opinion column by the Washington Post’s Megan McArdle that shared some personal reflections on why fathers matter.

    [Link]

    Truth be told, I don’t really know of any camps that are ardently claiming that fathers do not matter. Granted, an article in the Atlantic, circa 2010, made the case that “there’s nothing objectively essential” about the contribution of a father to the well-being of a child. The point seems a bit weak. The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Indeed, other sources cite a wide body of literature that assess the importance of fathers and their role in fostering the well-being of their kiddos.

    Then again, it is the Atlantic, so one would do well to consider the source… 

    By contrast, McArdle notes of her own family life that “my mother was usually the one who dressed wounds if you fell off the jungle gym; my father was the one who encouraged you to climb a little higher than felt strictly safe.”

    Sure, the point is anecdotal, but I think it’s about right. In our family, Mother was always the one who set the rules, bedtimes, and made sure that we went to church. My Father seldom went to church, and had zero inhibitions about letting me ride in the open bed of a pickup truck while we drove around dusty county roads picking up cans to take to the recycling center. Note: This wasn’t something we did for the sheer virtue of a good deed, or environmentalism. There were no such bourgeois luxuries in the Fodder family of the 1980s. We just needed the money.

    Such parenting today would immediately draw the ire of the nearly every child advocacy group in America, and quite possibly one’s local Department of Child Welfare. Suffice it to say, times were different in the 80s. And, to be fair, if Dad had insisted that I sit next to him inside the cab of the truck, I probably would have pitched a royal fit, and left him wishing that I had just rode in the back of the damn truck to begin with. We poor kids could be a precocious lot. 

    But there was something that was actually quite important that I learned from those dusty drives with dear old Dad. I gained a sense of independence, and self-sufficiency that I never would have gotten had either of my parents been the “helicopter parent” that’s en vogue today. From Dad, I learned to search within myself, and try to solve problems instead of complaining about them. I learned that you can’t always have what you want, but that you can obtain what you want if you’re willing to work for it. And I learned that there are literally millions of ways one can perish by eating a Twinkie.

    (Family Joke: Whenever someone passes away, and one is foolish enough to inquire as to their cause of death within earshot of my Father, Dad’s glib response is always that they “choked on a Twinkie.” We usually groan and laugh, but I suppose normal folks might think this is morbid. Tomāto/Tomăto.) 

    And really, that’s why Dad’s are important: they show love to kids in a fundamentally different way from that of a Mom. And the difference is accounted for in that each parent brings their own lived experiences to the child rearing table, and kids are better for it. After all, what kid doesn’t need more love in their life?

    So, to all of the Dads out there, take heart: you matter. And don’t let the Atlantic tell you otherwise.

  • Change and Home

    Changes

    Today finds me in the sterile confines of Denver International Airport en route to Oklahoma. After only a few days on the job at the University of Wyoming, I am traveling back to Walters for the annual Comanche Homecoming Celebration. 
    To be sure, I realize the benefits of air travel. I’ll be reunited with friends and family from near and far in a matter or hours, traversing great distances that even a car ride would take north of 14 hrs to compete. 
    And yet, flying is certainly an abominable way to travel. Just a few minutes ago, I was comfortably seated at the far end of seats near gate A49, when a middle-age woman sat uncomfortably close to me.

    True to form, she immediately popped open her laptop, fired up her cell phone, and began yelling into the receiver. In the course of ten minutes, I heard every detail about the new house she and her husband are purchasing, right down to the interest rate of the mortgage, and the need for her husband, David, to be very careful in making sure that all of the paperwork gets filed in a timely manner.
    Poor David. I suspect there will be hell to pay when she gets home. Seems he misplaced the documents amid the sea of folders in their home office.

    When I could no longer take listening to the details of a perfect stranger’s life, (keep in mind I had no choice in the matter), I moseyed toward the restroom for a brief pit stop prior to boarding.
    And even in that hallowed sanctum, I could hear a voice from the stall next to mine, barking complaints into his cell phone about the poor planning that went into the entire trip. Apparently, he wanted a direct flight to begin with and couldn’t countenance having a layover in Denver.

    All of which leads me to conclude that the golden age of air travel had to have been in the 60s and 70s, when flights were cheap, the cocktails flowed freely, and cell phones weren’t yet thought of.

    Even so, it’s nice to be going home. I’m enjoying my new job in Laramie and excited for our future there. But the allure of home in Walters is never far from my mind. Change is afoot in my life. But Walters, I suspect, will always be my true north – no matter how far south I have to travel to get there.