Why Are Cable Connectors Different in the Burbs?

I’ve lived in the Philadelphia suburbs for just over 21 years, adding to the variety of places I have lived in during my lifetime. I grew up in the city, taking a short detour into a midwestern college town. We once even lived in what was at the time a relatively new development of townhouses, surrounded on one side by farmland and on the other by the construction site of a new interstate highway. I’ve lived in majority black communities and have also been in areas where I could count all of the black families on one hand. As a result I’ve had the opportunity to see how things are handled in different types of living areas. One of those lessons came when we first bought our current house, as we tried to sign up to get cable.

The previous owner was an elderly widower who moved in with his son out of concerns about his health. He had never had cable. So when I called the cable company, they said they needed to send a surveyor out to see if cable was even available in my neighborhood. I mentioned that both of my neighbors had cable, but I guess my word wasn’t good enough. Eventually, the surveyor came out and verified that cable was indeed available and soon the installation was under way.

Back then my neighborhood (in fact the entire region) was served by only one cable company, a company with which I had dealt with for years while living in Philly. To their credit, the installer was on time and did a very good job with the installation. He answered all of my questions and explained what I needed to know about my new cable boxes. He was careful not to damage my house and cleaned up near areas where he had to drill in order to pull the cables from one room to the next.

As he was hooking everything up I noticed that the cables he was using seemed to have heavy duty connectors on their ends. The metal on these connectors seemed thicker, made of heavy duty materials as opposed to the connectors I had grown accustomed to seeing in my apartment in the city. In fact, those city connectors always reminded me of tinfoil, whereas these suburban connectors looked like some sort of thick alloy. They were so different that I just had to ask why.

I’m not sure if the installer was supposed to give an honest answer to my question but he did. His answer, though simple, caught me completely off guard. It seemed that suburban customers got thicker metal connectors on their cables for one very simple reason: they complain more often. So it is true. The squeaky wheel does get the oil. It also gets better materials and better quality cable connectors. Up until that point I had expected a number of things to be different in the burbs vs how they were in the city. How cable is installed in a home was not one of the areas where I expected to see a difference.

So the next time you hear someone complain about how people in the city are often treated differently from those in the suburbs and how rural areas are also treated differently, remember not all cable installations are the same.

Should I Hate Mr. Ratburn Now?

Arthur (the children’s cartoon on PBS) was a fixture in our household for a number of years. Both of my children enjoyed watching and we even had a few of the books in our home library. I suspect my entire family can still sing the theme song. I certainly know it by heart. Arthur was a safe place to learn about manners and about handling bullies. With a cast made up of a number of different types of animals the cartoon was also a safe place to learn how people who are different can get along. But Arthur’s 22nd season began with a twist, one with which I suspect Christian parents will struggle. How we handle this twist will shape the beliefs of our children. Our responses will also affect how the church is seen from the outside.

This plot twist involves Mr. Ratburn, a third grade teacher who has been a part of the cartoon since its start. For twenty one seasons Mr. Ratburn has been a calm (but not perfect) mentor to the students of his class, representing an adult point of view for dealing with the ups and downs of being a child. This year we learn something about Mr. Ratburn which to my knowledge has never been talked about in any other episode. In this season’s premier episode Mr. Ratburn marries an aardvark: an aardvark who showed up for the wedding in a suit and tie.

So, how should followers of Christ deal with this plot twist? The knee jerk reaction is one of anger, lashing out at the show and its writers. I think this is the wrong response. For 21 years there was nothing wrong with the cartoon (aside from controversy over an episode of its spin-off “Postcards from Buster”). If parents suddenly slam the door on the series we send the message that Christians are afraid of and/or hate people who, in real life, are like Mr. Ratburn. We leave our own children with the wrong impression of how they should deal with real world issues. We also send the wrong message to people outside the church to whom we are called to minister. In order to avoid sending the wrong message believers should avoid the knee jerk reaction we are told we must have, choosing instead to trust God’s Spirit to give us the words we need in order to minister instead of trying to fight back. In other words we need to have a conversation with our children and with others who might be curious about our views.

Yes, I am certain that Mr. Ratburn’s wedding is meant to deliver a certain point of view, one that is at odds with the Christian faith. But we are told that our battle is not with flesh and blood. And so we must avoid the temptation to fight back out of a spirit of fear and hate, choosing instead the wisdom and love that can only come from our relationship with Christ. We must respond by being the light both in our homes and in our community.

No, I do not hate Mr. Ratburn. Nor should you.

Do you watch tv with your children?

On the day I finished this post I read about an Alabama PBS station which refused to show the episode. In their explanation they spoke of how parents trust PBS to provide programming that is safe for children to watch alone. I never trusted PBS or any other station, choosing to watch with my children. In fact even if the programming was “Christian programming,” I watched. (I know a lot of VeggieTales songs by heart.) I felt safer doing this and it gave opportunity to bond with my children.

Here is a link to a post where, while watching tv with one of my children, I found myself asking, Have We Lost Our True Heroes?

Have We Lost Our True Heroes?

From time to time I like to watch tv (actually more often YouTube) with my sons. I want to know what they are watching and what influence the programming will have on my kids and on their peers. Recently I watched an episode of a show which left me in complete shock. The show's heroes were looking for a way to help a friend. In the end they chose to rob a bank, framing an adversary for the crime. After surprising my son by calling the heroes the bad guys, I had to explain how a true hero would never rob a bank. The conversation left me pondering a question: one I would like to ask you now. Have we lost our true heroes?

This is something I find myself thinking about ever since watching a PBS series covering the history of television. In one of the episodes the show's creators looked at the evolution of the television hero. Early heroes were clearly defined, often wearing white and always doing what's right. Over the decades our heroes have become more "real" which tends to translate into more flawed. As a result our heroes have picked up a tendency of wrestling with internal moral dilemmas almost as often as they wrestle with bad guys.

The PBS episode talked about a number of different heroes over the years, many of which were characters I grew up watching. My earliest memories of tv heroes were of Superman and of the Lone Ranger, though I watched them in rerun. There were people like Speed Racer, who occasionally made a wrong decision or two but always had his heart in the right place. The PBS series moved from these types of heroes to people like Hawkeye Pierce on MASH, who once performed an unnecessary surgery in order to get an inept officer off the battlefield. This moral dilemma challenged the viewer to decide if it is right to do wrong if doing so would save lives.

The PBS episode ended by talking about the show “Dexter” in which the hero kills bad guys who would have otherwise escaped justice. The official webpage for the show describes Dexter as a crime solver by day and serial killer by night. As the local forensics expert, he is able to hide his crimes from the investigators with whom he works. I have only watched one episode of Dexter which I admit I found entertaining. It is also perhaps one of the most challenging programs in which to find a true hero. Even Dexter struggles with whether or not his life as a vigilante is acceptable and so should the viewer.

While I understand the entertainment value of having a hero who also qualifies as a bad guy, the trend is still troubling especially in a show aimed at kids like the one with our friendly neighborhood bank robbers. The target audience for Dexter is old enough to process whether or not the ends justifies the means. And while most kids understand that robbing a bank is wrong, the message sent when the "heroes" are the robbers is not the one we need today. When this is what we present as good we lose something important. We lose our heroes and in the process we lose our children.