my gray matter

vote for sale

i really enjoy newsweek magazine. i particularly enjoy the social and political commentary of contributing editor, anna quindlen: a truly brilliant woman, in my opinion. and regardless of whether i agree with everything she says i am always forced to think when i read her articles. i love debate and thinking. in my friendships, i very rarely need to agree about political or social issues with someone, as long as we can have good and respectful discussion and enjoy our conversation over a refreshing adult beverage.

when i first started this blog site i had hoped it would spark similar conversations and thought. but i’m afraid it’s gotten tame. and an even scarier possibility is that i’ve gotten tame. however, i am unwilling to accept that, so today i start afresh with new thoughts for respectful debate and conversation. unfortunately, the electronic limitations of a blog site prevent us from enjoying that adult beverage together, at least at this moment.

in honor of the afore mentioned author who i so greatly respect, i’d like to reference her most recent article in newsweek in which she questioned the lack of leadership in the government of our fine country. reading her article touched a nerve in me that i’ve wanted to address for some time. now is that time.

i am ashamed of the leadership of our country and very concerned for our long-term future. before you think me unpatriotic, i assure you that i am not. i love america. i love the setup of our government into three distinct branches: legislative, executive and judicial. i love the separation of church and state and the freedom of religion. i love that all people are closer to equal than every before. i love grilling on my deck, the nfl and an afternoon at wrigley. i love america.

but that same governmental system that i so truly believe in, is failing us miserably. i’m not simply bashing our current president. i believe our problem is deeper than the current administration, and it’s a problem that i began to notice during the presidency of bill clinton. i can already see all of the republicans reading this, you’re excitedly anticipating a tirade against president clinton. sorry, wrong website. and i also won’t launch into a speech about president bush. though, as a democrat, it would be fun! instead i’d like to point out a trend that i’ve notice for the last two administrations, and a trend not that unlike a junior high playground.

when bill clinton was the president of our country the republican party did everything it could to usurp his authority. like vultures hovering above, they waited for any false move. i remember being so embarrassed that the leaders of our country were acting with such immaturity. then, a republican was elected as president. and for years now i have watched the democratic party do the exact same thing to president bush. and frankly i’m tired of paying people to spend their time and energy dismantling the credibility of another person. can you imagine if you tried this tactic in your workplace? your boss comes to you in the evening for a report of how you’ve spent your day. you proceed to inform her that you spent your entire day keeping track of everything bob, the i.t. guy, did wrong and you’ve been telling everyone else in the office about it. you’re hoping your work helps to ensure that he’s never voted employee of the month again.

of course that’s ridiculous, and yet politicians are making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to do essentially that.

so i’ve decided to inform the political leaders of our country about how they could really do a great job and ensure reelection for the rest of their lives. one simple word: lead. in fact i’ve decided to give my vote only to people who i believe are more interested in leading our country than tattling on everyone else. so mrs. congresswoman, mr. representative or mrs./mr. presidential hopeful, my vote is up for grabs to the most inspiring person, regardless of political party. for a real leader, i will cross party lines and cast my vote. please notify me at this blog site if you have any vision for our country and i will confidently cast my vote for you.

november one

on november first i witnessed the most amazing thing. i watched as christina gave birth to the coolest kid i've ever met. gabe forrest klinepeter was born at 12:39pm. gabe means hero of god. i liked the name even before i knew what it meant. forrest was my grandfather's name. one of the most influencial men in my life.

i'm sure that there will be lots to blog about as i get to know gabe more. right now the thing i'm most amazed by is how much i already love him. in a few short weeks i would do anything to help him. i never imagined i would be this attached to him. even now, while not sleeping much, i'm not as impatient as i should be. he's just that cool.

i've attached a quicktime movie with some music. i think he's maybe the cutest baby ever born, but i'm probably slightly biased.

Download gabe_forrest.mov

who's a horses booty for not bloggin'?

i am.

mini me

i’m about to embark on the most amazing and overwhelming journey of my life. christina and i are having a kid. unbelievable. i’ve included a picture. i think it looks like me. in four weeks we will find out what it is. everyone keeps asking me what i want, a boy or a girl. can’t say i really have a preference. i think boys are probably more work when they’re young, but there’s nothing quite as scary to me as a 15 year old daughter. either way it’s going to change me forever. i’m sure of that.

more about this later.

s.l.c.

it’s tuesday morning and i can barely move my right arm. before you feel too sorry for me let me explain why. i spent the last four days snowboarding in utah. i bet you don’t feel so bad for me anymore. it’s true, my wounds are self-inflicted, but so worthwhile. christina and i hopped on a plane with our good friends chris and natalie and headed out to salt lake city: a nice city known for a great view, the olympics, and polygamy. just kidding. no offense to any mormons reading this page. actually, are mormons allowed to use the internet. just kidding again.

the day before we arrived they got about ten inches of snow, which made for great boarding on friday and saturday. but sunday was the day when god himself visited the top of the mountain. throughout the day we got about a foot and a half of snow which made for the best boarding i’ve ever experienced.

the boarding was fantastic, but my favorite part of the long weekend away was watching christina overcome fear. don’t get me wrong, i had as much fear as she did about falling, hurting myself, catching an edge, the chairlift breaking, etc. it wasn’t about how much fear we each had, but rather, how willing we each were to try to overcome it. we had some fantastic conversations about why and what we fear, how to acknowledge fear but still try new things, distinguishing which fears are legitimate, and ultimately how to overcome fear for the sake of experiencing life to its fullest. needless to say, we didn’t answer all of these complex thoughts, but we had a great time talking about it and gained some important insights into each of our personalities.

it has caused me to wonder; how many opportunities and experiences am i missing out on because of fear? i’m quickly realizing that the first step is to separate recklessness from fears worth overcoming. i’m certainly not advocating reckless endangerment. i also think that recklessness isn’t limited to physical harm. some people walk through life consistently being emotionally reckless, which causes great harm to themselves and others. but once i’ve become aware of avoiding recklessness, i again come back to the question of what i might be missing out on. what relationship have i limited because i’m afraid to tell someone how much his or her friendship really means to me? what experiences have i missed out on because i feared failure and preferred the comfort of what is already known? i could list about fifty more questions, but don’t want to take up the space.

i don’t have a great answer for how to balance experiencing life with the reality of fear. unfortunately, even in the beautiful mountains of utah the answer didn’t come to us. i’m sure someone’s written a book that gives the “answer”, or a formula to apply. or maybe i’ll just keep asking myself the question and that will be enough to help me get the balance right.

by the way… if you’re ever in salt lake, there’s an amazing little pizza place just east of the city called “the pie pizzeria”. i highly recommend it.

a friend in post war germany

i recently spent a week in germany. what a beautiful country. i wish i could say that i was there for pleasure, but it was mostly work. i spent the entire week in the city of stuttgart, in the southwest region of germany. it’s a very old city with a complex, hilly street system. if i ignored the architecture and the consistent snowfall, it felt as if i was traveling around san francisco. because the city is known in germany to be very confusing to navigate, a kind man named norbert transported me around. norbert was in his early thirties, a few years older than me. we actually looked and dressed rather similarly. we each had our north face coats, jeans, and comfortable shoes. thankfully, norbert’s english was far better than my german, or our travels would have been very quiet.

norbert is an anesthesiologist in a city a few hours away from stuttgart. he’s married with two young children. he was volunteering to drive me around for the conference i was there to help produce. he told me about his life, his work, and the town he lives in. he also told me about the history of stuttgart, and that most of the city had been destroyed in the war. as he was describing the rebuilding process, it hit me. sixty years ago norbert and i would not have been learning about each other. we wouldn’t have talked about our wives, the music we like, or how tired we are of snow at this point in the year. we would have been trying to kill each other. we would have been enemies in a war spanning the globe. this thought was very unsettling to me. mostly because i was enjoying my daily rides with norbert and learning about his life. how could i fathom taking a life as valuable as his?

the more i thought about it, i realized that if it were sixty years previous, and norbert and i were on opposite sides, we wouldn’t really be fighting each other. at least not for the sake of killing. i wouldn’t be fighting so that his family would never see him again. we would be fighting over the conflicting ideals of our countries, or at least of the current leaders of our countries. i would be fighting to stop the horrendous acts of an evil dictator named adolf hitler. and like most germans at the time, norbert would be fighting out of fear for that dictator rather than belief in the same values.

i would be engaged in a battle between myself and death. and in war, the avoidance of death necessitates killing. it’s rather crass, and i don’t mean to be overtly simplistic. and, i’m also sure that there are people who would simply enjoy the killing part. but if it were me, the fear of death would be my only motivation. another person’s life is less important to me than living to get home to be with my family and friends. even as i’m writing this it sounds so selfish. but it’s honest.

maybe someday i’ll be riding through the streets of mosul listening to the life story of a kind iraqi gentlemen who doesn’t seem that different from me. maybe we’ll talk about our families and how silly it seems that once we were enemies. i wonder who we’ll be at war with then?

where did jon go?

i want to apologize for my absence recently. there is no good excuse for my delinquency. there are however lots of bad excuses and some really good ones that aren’t true. it probably won’t happen again, unless it does.
i have thoughts to share and will be posting more frequently again. thanks for your patience and for continuing to read the site.

jon

the pizza king

i’ve been thinking a lot recently about hierarchy. i don’t really know why, but it’s a topic that i’ve been reflecting on. i find it interesting that in every sub-culture there is a hierarchy of power and authority that isn’t necessarily recognized outside of that sub-culture. say you work in an architecture firm, or at a bank, or a day-care center, or anywhere really, there is a specified organizational chart that defines who has power and authority. and because you are a good employee, you honor that chart by following the directives of people above you in the chart. none of this is inherently wrong. but here’s where i think sub-cultures get weird… more than just decision making rights are given up to the highest position in the org chart. in many sub-cultures those people receive an element of worship that is really quite strange. stories about who they really are, the things they like, their expectations, and the force of their interactions become office folklore.

i remember one of my first jobs as a high school student was making pizza at a pizza hut in fort wayne, indiana. ahh, humble beginnings! there was one person who owned all of the pizza huts in the city. people talked about him, and the money he made, like he was a mythical god. as if there was a place along side zeus and dionysos for “the pizza king”. eventually i left my job at pizza hut to move to chicago and go to school. interestingly, there was no one talking about the “the pizza king” in chicago. no one marveled at his money, no one cowered or stood in awe as stories about him were relayed. no one cared. but there was a whole new hierarchy within the sub-culture of my school.

i have found this same phenomenon to be true with each sub-culture i have been a part of and left, and it doesn’t just apply to your job. the hierarchy of sub-culture is present in every aspect of our lives. whether it’s your job, family, church, or school, there is someone at the top. just look at pop culture around us. people like paris hilton, ashlee simpson, donald trump and reality television are perfect examples. these people and ideas bombard us every day in the media. but, do you think that an aboriginal community deep in the bush of australia care at all about them? the answer is no. their sub-culture probably has its own paris hilton and donald trump.

i’m sure if you look hard enough you will see this same trend in the sub-cultures that you have been a part of. maybe all this means is that the next time someone high up in the food chain of your sub-culture treats you poorly, keep perspective by realizing that in the sub-culture next door, that person’s really not that important.

monkeys and bananas

i was emailing a friend today who is currently living in japan. he was writing about an upcoming adventure he’s taking into the mountains of japan where wild monkeys roam. he was considering taking bananas to feed them. this line of thought caused me to wonder, “do monkeys actually like bananas?” what if all along monkeys really wanted green beans and eggplant? maybe that’s why they swing from trees yelling. they long for the day that their bananas are replaced with mixed vegetables. it would undermine every monkey characterization ever expressed. and, if monkeys don’t like bananas, then dogs might not really like bones, birds might not really like seeds, and babies might not really like “baby talk”. the world we think is true could be a total lie.

i would invite you to respond with some other culturally accepted, potentially not true ideas, with no tangible means of verification.

my christmas list

in case you were planning to buy me a present for christmas this year, i wanted to make public my christmas list. let’s be honest, it’s going to save me a trip to return whatever you picked out for me if you simply use this list. rather than being creative or thoughtful, lets get back to the real meaning of christmas… you giving me what i want, baby jesus in a santa clause suit, and burl ives singing the christmas songs of a day long past.

actually, my goal this year is to completely avoid receiving or giving any obligatory gifts. so if you were planning to give me something, but only out of obligation, i’m releasing you from any guilt, and giving full permission to not give me anything. and, if i happen to give you a present, but you haven’t gotten one for me, i release you from any form of embarrassment for not reciprocating a gift. i’m tired of obligation and guilt deciding my christmas gift list, so i wrote out a list of everyone i’m going to get a gift for this year. i know it’s early, but i wanted to be sure that my list most accurately represented the people that i genuinely want to give to. if you’re not on the list, don’t take it personally. it’s not even a reflection of the quality of our friendship. i have some great friends that i’m not planning to give to, maybe because i don’t need to give them a gift to state the value of our friendship.

if after all this you are still planning to give me a present, i have a recommendation for you. the problem with giving me a present is that i genuinely don’t need anything. i can say, with full confidence, that i have every single thing i need in life. even my “want” list is pretty small. so, what can you give me for christmas this year? do something kind for someone who truly has need. buy a sweater for a homeless person. give one of your coats away to a person living on the street who is cold. invite a hungry person into a restaurant to eat with you. volunteer to serve christmas dinner at a soup kitchen. take the money you would have spent on me, and give kindness and warmth to someone in need. now that would be the best gift you could give me.