George on my mind

I've heard it said that all of us can be broken down into four groups:

1 - People who know, and know they know: Learn from them

2 - People who know, and don't know they know: Tell them
3 - People who don't know, and know they don't know: Teach them
4 - People who don't know, and don't know they don't know: Avoid them

Of course, all generalities are bad. Comparisons are odious, but not as odious as giving billions in war supply contracts to your chum's war supply firm, who in turn improperly installs water pumps on showers used by our troops in Iraq, which is why soldiers are being electrocuted in Iraq. Check it out, but it's sad:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/03/20/electrocuted.soldier.ap/

And before anyone gets all up in my grill for constantly picking on the person in photo 4, anyone should remember that unlike Mr. Garrison Keillor, Mr. Arthur Lee, and Mr. Forrest Gump, the cute little shaver above is responsible for the deaths of countless individuals the world over.

I've been thinking about knowledge and its all-too-often missing cousin, wisdom. We've all known highly educated people who do stupid things (stick a knife in the toaster, try to add 12 gallons of gas to a 10-gallon tank, cut self shaving) and we've all seen flashes of brilliance in otherwise dim lights (viz. any Matt Damon movie.) My father worked with a man of no-more-than average standing, a guy who hardly spoke to anyone as he slumped about. Little known to his co-workers was the fact that the fellow had been stationed in England during World War II and had become fascinated with the days of the Roman invasion of England, and read everything printed about those days and spent his vacation every summer touring English archaeological digs, digging that he was digging up artifacts.

My father, master of subtlety, told me about this one summer when I was fourteen and on vacation at the beach, trying to amass enough Skee-Ball tickets to get a pocket comb. The lesson was not lost on me. In a recent comparison with every pre-schooler in my family, it turned out that I know much more about the Roman invasion of England than all of them! Ha!

It does take all kinds to keep this village raised. Knowing the steps to true enlightenment is valuable knowledge, yet when your carburetor malfunctions, you don't care whether the tech can find his way to Satori or not.

I see that Laura Bush will be "guest host" on "Today" the day after tomorrow. This, of course, places her maladroit husband squarely on the horns of a dilemma - should he watch The First Lady swap recipes with Natalie Morales after watching Ann Curry make sad eyes about a story involving a lost dog and then glad eyes about a story about a woman who found an original Van Gogh in a frame purchased at a swap meet, below a print of dogs playing poker - or should he stick with his usual morning fare of "Walker, Texas Ranger" on USA Network and that smart-aleck "Frasier" on Lifetime? Decisions, decisions.

Not many people even remember Senator Roman Hruska, (R., Of Course) who is best known for responding to criticism that Harold Carswell, who had been nominated by "Dick" Nixon to the Supreme Court in 1970, was a mediocre judge, by saying, "So what if he is mediocre?There are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren't they? We can't have all Brandeises, Cardozos and Frankfurters and stuff like that there."

Mediocre people everywhere still rally to the stirring words of Roman Hruska, and heeded them en masse in 2000 and 2004. I can't help but feel that we would have been better electing my father's long-ago co-worker. At least he knew something about the invasion of sovereign foreign nations, and why there are damned few English men named Julius Caesar Wilberforce-Humphreys III.