On Leland Denton

I've already posted some of the material below on other sites, but I would feel remiss if I didn't post a tribute to my beloved grandpa here.
 
        How does one put a person into words?  I can see Grandpa in my memories presiding over family feasts, leading our church’s worship, eating with us at Godfathers' Pizza or at his house after the worship service, playing Chinese rummy in his kitchen, teasing my cousins who attended KU, and swapping military stories with other old veterans.  I remember him letting us play in the neighborhood pool and humoring us grandchildren during Thanksgiving when we wanted to ink his fingers as we played “detective.” (I believe he turned us down since he needed clean hands to cook.)  I remember him congratulating us after ballets and sports events, and telling us about his many trips abroad and visiting distant relatives.  I remember him patiently explaining how his electric jigsaw machine worked, pointing out new paintings he was working on, and gifting me adorable teddy bears nearly every Christmas and birthday until I decided I was too old and practical for them and gathered the courage to tell him I wanted to stop collecting.  He had wonderful cooking skills and loved to retell the story of a time from my early childhood when he'd shown me dozens of lunch options, and I, a picky eater, had looked up at him and said, "Can't you just cook me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?" My tastes widened as I grew older, and I really enjoyed his food.
        Grandpa was always generous; he helped finance the family's two trips to Hawaii, he sponsored me and two of my cousins in The Order of the Eastern Star, and he would often slip me gas money when I came to visit the family in Topeka and would not accept refusal.  It was the same whenever he and Margie came to Hutchinson, where they would treat my husband and me—and other family and friends in the area—to supper (or lunch or breakfast, whichever suited all concerned) so we could spend some time together.  I can still picture the way he ate and the way he spoke and the way he looked so proud when speaking of our family.  He also had such an unconscious air of dignity and could tease with such a straight face that I sometimes didn’t know he was joking until he cracked a smile or another listener laughed.  His dignity seemed like sternness to me as a young child, but I knew he loved me, and as far back as I can remember, I never wanted to disappoint him.  My deep respect for him only grew as I aged, to the point where it's difficult to put in words.  As a result, I never felt that I knew the best way to tell him how much I loved him.  He seemed to have all he needed and wanted, so gifts were difficult, and my respect for him sometimes made me shy to converse with him as much as I now wish I had.
         If I've learned anything from Grandpa's passing, it's to always keep in close contact with the people we love--to spend time with them and talk with them to show that they're important to us.  We never know how much time we'll have with them here on earth.  Thank goodness that by the grace of God, if we've accepted Christ, we will meet again!

On Perceptions of Human Interaction

        I've heard many out-of-staters comment on how friendly Kansans are--greeting passersby, opening doors for people, smiling at strangers, or giving a two-fingered wave to passing cars on country roads.  However, others, such as a Chinese student who'd previously lived in New York, consider us quite unfriendly and standoffish because we are more task-oriented than people-oriented and rarely strike up conversations with strangers and inquire about their lives.  One could say these people with divergent experiences have simply met different Kansans, which is surely true, but I think it's more than that; each person evaluates a new society based on their own society and social expectations.  
        To Kansans like myself, small talk in the grocery checkout line, with someone asking to borrow a pencil, or with fellow students and coworkers seems suitable.  However, we often consider small talk--and certainly consider deep talk--with strangers in other circumstances as an intrusion, most notably when one party is engaged with a solitary activity like reading or is working on a particular task that needs to be finished.  A person who insists on conversation in such circumstances, despite covert signals of dismissal, strikes us as either shockingly rude, or mentally or socially deficient; we might call such behavior nosy, prying, or forward.
         Particularly if the person is of the opposite gender, we may consider insistent, unwelcome attempts at conversation as the inept flirting technique of the socially unschooled, to be avoided at all costs by respectable persons--and not without reason.  I had such an encounter with a student at HCC a few semesters ago who kept finding strange excuses to come up to the front desk to chat about inane topics despite gentle hints that I had work to complete.  He finally admitted he was trying to glimpse of the ring on my hand to find out if it was a wedding band.  (I strongly assured him it was.)  Incidentally, the same person later came up with a friend "to conduct a behavioral science experiment" by discussing uncomfortable subjects in front of me.  I immediately took my mug and left to make tea, and thankfully, they'd gone when I returned.  As expected, future contacts felt awkward for me, but they fortunately never again roved into unpleasant territory.
        While some people, such as this young man, don't catch social cues that they're intruding because they are untutored, others don't notice the signs because their culture either employs different cues or has different social expectations.  This can make interactions a little awkward, as in the case of a certain Muslim man, originally from Pakistan, whom I often met in Topeka's Barnes and Nobles one summer during college.  I spent quite a bit of time there, reading books the library didn't have in stock, and when that man was there and an open seat was nearby, inevitably, he'd sit down near me and start chatting.  Not wanting to be rude, I'd chat back, and certainly our conversations were a little interesting, but I really wanted to be left alone to read; I felt amazed that he didn't understand that.  We were in a bookstore.  I had a stack of books with me.  I'd chosen a spot alone.  I kept my finger in my book to mark the spot where he'd interrupted my reading . . . an hour before.  To my way of thinking, what more clues did a person need?  Yet, oddly, it seemed too impolite to say so; future avoidance seemed more diplomatic.
        Given my social background, I'm also glad I don't live in one of the African countries where people commonly sit down for a half hour with everyone they meet on the road to go through a lengthy list of polite questions and answers (How did you sleep?  How did your mother sleep? and so forth through the family and probably on to the well-being of the livestock and fields).  As one might expect, this culture doesn't have a concept of "lateness," and people often arrive hours after the arranged time to meet for school or a wedding or church or whatever other event was scheduled.  Naturally, Westerners find this frustrating; why not pass friends with a simple "hello" and talk with them later, or get where you're going together and discuss life there?  Still, one can't think ill of a culture whose customs place such high value on community.
        Even within a society, people may have circumstances that make themselves or others uncomfortable during interactions.  For instance, a loner may feel terrified and unable to relate to anyone in a crowd, and someone unaccustomed to people of a different age group or gender may feel uncomfortable or interact awkwardly with people from such groups.  Furthermore, a person used to dealing with the hard of hearing--or who is hard of hearing himself (or herself)--may speak far too loudly around others; a parent or teacher accustomed to dealing with rambunctious kids may repeat themselves too often or speak in an unintentionally condescending or campy manner that alienates older conversation partners; a person accustomed to the company of adults may not know how to interact with children and may ignore them or fail to use vocabulary they understand and conversation topics they enjoy.  Other challenges like social phobias, ADD, autism, and dementia can also make interactions difficult for all parties.  Success in these cases, as many experts will advise, only comes through patience and experience--and often a conscious effort to shift gears and modify one's interactions to the specific party at hand.
         Interacting with people is so difficult that it takes up a huge chunk of the self-help and etiquette sections in bookstores and is the primary topic in periodical advice columns--and to confuse matters, one will find that advice, theories, and conclusions on human relations vary.  Among other worthy sources such as the works of Dale Carnegie and Emily Post, I recommend the website The Art of Manliness (which is also the title of a book by, I believe, the same authors), which has several excellent articles, among them, some explaining the art of conversation: dos and don'ts, how to make small talk, and how to avoid conversational narcissism.  (Thanks, Tessa, for the links on Facebook!)
         How I wish polite human interaction were taught in upper elementary schools and middle schools!  How much more pleasant society would be if people learned and embraced the common-sense "rules" of conversation at a young age!  However, learning to understand, appreciate, and follow our own or another society's expectations for conversation and the like goes against our natural proclivities as fallen people to be self-centered.  We prize our own perceptions of what human interaction should be like over the perceptions of others; we prefer to gain attention rather than to give it and to focus on ourselves and our interests over the needs and interests of others.  Alternately, in an alternate selfishness, we may disdain necessary and polite human interaction in our desire to be alone with our tasks, being passively rather than actively rude.
        To sum up my view of the matter, education, experience, and an intentional, selfless effort to "read" situations and tailor each encounter to the other party is the the best way for all concerned to enjoy the most satisfying and productive interaction possible.

On History

As schoolchildren, we form loose, disconnected impressions of history—mental pictures built largely on paintings, photos, and movies of the American Civil War, the Middle Ages, the Wild West, the Victorian Age, the Oregon Trail, prehistory, the Space Age, and so forth.  We have no idea how or in what order these events or eras connect—or perhaps even that they connect at all.  However, as our minds mature, if we properly pursue our studies in history, we start to make connections and see, for example, that the treaties made in the years before 1914 led to the “Powder Keg of Europe” and the Great War, and that decisions at the end of the first world war led to the second, and so on.  And then, at some point along the way, some students of history receive an epiphany; their brains  become able to envision history—not as a list of names and dates, but as a fully interwoven tapestry of human stories.  At that point, music history, political history, technological history, geographical history, and all the rest becomes one: a huge, streamlined, moving force of persons and cultures, causes and effects flowing on from Creation till now, shaping our present in numerous ineffable ways.   It’s a glorious—and somewhat frightening—vision.

 Whether we reach this interconnected vision of history or not, our worldview affects our conception of history, and our conception of history forms a large part of our comprehensive worldview.  That is to say, depending on the perspectives or philosophies we bring to our vision of history, we may conceive of ourselves and humanity in any number of ways, between seeing our place in history as insignificant and the value of a few lives as miniscule compared with either the Good of Mankind or an eternal existence—or on the other hand, seeing each life as a heavenly gift of equal, high value, capable of affecting history, and the future, as (in the much-quoted metaphor) the smallest stone can still send ripples through a pond.  From this worldview (which changes over time on the basis of new information and ideas), we think and act accordingly in all facets of our lives.  For example, those who believe in an evolutionary view of history, feel that some peoples are more evolved than others, and see natural selection as a desirable event may, as Hitler and Margaret Sanger did, actively participate in genocide, abortion, and other forms of unnatural selection, which someone with a religious or humanistic view of history would see as morally and ethically abhorrent.  Our worldview, then, can be affected—and preferably improved—by our understanding of history.  The same is true vice versa.

Reluctant students of history would be best off matching their historical studies to their non-historical interests.  For example, someone interested in technology could study great inventors and inventions of the past.  Someone interested in sports could read sport histories and biographies of famous players.  Someone interested in stories could read books like Rifles for Waite and Pride and Prejudice.  Someone interested in movies could watch films like Luther and Memoirs of a Geisha.  Matching what we learn to our interests in the beginning will counteract initial aversions to “history,” and a little exposure to the past may lead to curiosity about related matters.  For instance, a movie lover watching Downton Abbey might become curious about the business with the household’s new telephone, which may lead to them Googling information about telephone history, which may lead to a study of Alexander Graham Bell, which may lead to aeronautics and then perhaps the legend of Icarus, and so on.  For younger generations, the format of sites like Wikipedia lends itself well to their casual, episodic study habits, for they can easily click links to related terms and thus expand their knowledge based on their own curiosity rather than the dictates of the pre-selected material in a textbook.  Once students have laid a basic historical foundation in their minds and kindled an interest for certain areas of history, students may be open to more reliable, sequential, academic sources of information and willingly choose to increase their knowledge thereby.

In brief, the study of the world’s history is relevant and valuable for all people.  Historical knowledge makes it much easier to place historical references in context, to interpret current events in light of their historical context, and to compare current events to similar historical events so we can learn from past mistakes, extrapolate probable outcomes, and thus plan better for the future.  Our goal, I feel, should be a mature, integrated vision of history, which provides a framework for inserting new information.  As time goes on and we learn more—intentionally or incidentally—our historical vision will gain color and fullness, making us more self- and culturally-aware and better prepared for the future.  Best of all for those turned off by such a dry, useful-sounding description, learning history is FUN!  It's like reading a novel with an infinite number of volumes and abridgments to choose from; you'll never be bored with the right story in hand, and you're not likely to run out of reading material anytime soon.