Still flaws. Still learning. Watch me grow!
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Johnny Gets This Feeling...
I'm still trying to figure this out. As George Harrison said in 1987, "It's gonna take time...".
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Story of an Artist
Newsweek is set to report this week that the McCain's did not pay the property taxes on their 1.4 million dollar oceanfront condo in La Jolla, California for over 4 years. But, this must be understandable because, and let me give you a little "straight talk" here-they have SEVEN houses! It is hard to keep up with these things. Not only does he have no idea what gas costs, but he can't even remember to pay taxes on one of his luxury properties.
The Obama campaign should be nailing this fraud who masquerades as in touch with the common man while labeling Obama as an elitist. When is the last time a common man could afford oceanfront property in La Jolla, a sprawling ranch in Sedona, and five other homes? All this at a period in history where Americans are losing their homes at one of the highest rates since the Depression.
As mentioned before, I'm not out here to defend Obama. I support him purely because he is a vehicle to lead us away from another four years of neoconning. But it really takes a lot of gall to label him arrogant or elitist while they sit on patios surrounded by the red rock canyons of Yavapai County sipping hundred dollar bottles of wine, content in knowing that Cindy has 109 million in the bank.
Huh? (A real response from John McCain)
Question: When was the last time you pumped your own gas and how much did it cost?
McCAIN: Oh, I don't remember. Now there's Secret Service protection. But I've done it for many, many years. I don't recall and frankly, I don't see how it matters. I've had hundreds and hundreds of town hall meetings, many as short a time ago as yesterday. I communicate with the people and they communicate with me very effectively.
McCAIN: Oh, I don't remember. Now there's Secret Service protection. But I've done it for many, many years. I don't recall and frankly, I don't see how it matters. I've had hundreds and hundreds of town hall meetings, many as short a time ago as yesterday. I communicate with the people and they communicate with me very effectively.
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Off The Road
Were we the last generation of young folk who could afford to just hop in the car in Richmond at 2:30am and not stop driving until 5:30 the next morning in western South Dakota (total fuel costs one way: 75 bucks)? Or are we as a nation in a temprorary lull of roadtripping adventure until the technology emerges to make it feasible again? I wonder if the increasingly prohibitive travel costs will help regional cultures to be spared extinction. It seems like this country is too big to prosper without affordable movement, or at least the promise of it. For four hundred years we've been pushing on, killing Indians, and climbing peaks. Is it really all over except for the rich? This is what I was built on, from the time I was 15 and realized what was out beyond the hundredth meridian. I think of some sad eyed teenager now discovering Kerouac. Will they be able to gas up and go?
Saturday, June 21, 2008
Friday, June 20, 2008
Yay!
Newsweek has a poll out today with a 15% lead for the candidate who doesn't represent a party that wants to privatize national parks, destroy public education, and bomb, bomb, bomb Iran
Oh, and the folks (and they are very conservative folks, but I've been following their tracking since the 2004 election, and they're fair) at Election Projection have Obama up to 348 electoral votes. The map in Wednesday's post came from them as well.
There are suggestions that Obama could raise 500 million for the general. That would mean he could afford to spend 10 million in each state. Obviously some states don't need that kind of infusion like California, Illinois, and Vermont, but imagine what that kind of money could do in North Carolina, Montana, or even Mississippi.
Let's just hope this Newsweek poll is not a peak, but a plateau, or even the base of the mountain.
The irony of all this is that I have no love for the guy. He's not anything special to me, but I can just imagine the possibilities for wilderness protection should he be elected along with a senate that gains 7 or 8 democrats.
Oh, and the folks (and they are very conservative folks, but I've been following their tracking since the 2004 election, and they're fair) at Election Projection have Obama up to 348 electoral votes. The map in Wednesday's post came from them as well.
There are suggestions that Obama could raise 500 million for the general. That would mean he could afford to spend 10 million in each state. Obviously some states don't need that kind of infusion like California, Illinois, and Vermont, but imagine what that kind of money could do in North Carolina, Montana, or even Mississippi.
Let's just hope this Newsweek poll is not a peak, but a plateau, or even the base of the mountain.
The irony of all this is that I have no love for the guy. He's not anything special to me, but I can just imagine the possibilities for wilderness protection should he be elected along with a senate that gains 7 or 8 democrats.
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
The Latest Map
This map shows 325 electoral votes for the candidate less likely to torture people or sell off Federal wilderness areas to oil and gas companies. This map though should show 338 electoral votes as the most recent polling shows Virginia as slightly Blue. Just wait for the slime to come, although even Huckabee today says it would be a mistake. Remember ignore the national polling! On a state by state basis this is a LANDSLIDE (of course no one gets to vote on 6/18).Saturday, June 14, 2008
Pompous
I first found out I was joining a profession of dunces when I went to take the GRE. I took it in the testing lab at GMU in the spring of 2001. Upon completion I was given a copy of my scores, as well as a pamphlet interpreting scores. The pamphlet had one interesting item. it showed the mean score for test-takers in a host of different fields. At the very bottom, with an average score over a hundred points beneath its closest competitor was education. The saying goes "Those who can't do teach." I was soon to find out that those who know nothing teach elementary school.
My first few years in teaching the problem wa not so apparent. I was working in a failing elementary school on the edge of the Trinidad neighborhood in Northeast DC. Many of my colleagues were transplants from other careers doing Teach for America or the DC Teaching Fellows as i was myself. I spent most of my free time there hanging out with a guy named Allen who was well versed in politics, literature, and the Elephant 6 Collective. The staff was mostly black, but welcomed us in warmly. Most of us were filled with idealism to save the ghetto, and we were all united against a tyrant principal who once went as far as to force a teacher whose mother had just died to come in and copy busywork for her class before she could leave for the funeral. In a setting where the kids are hanging on for dear life the people who were there belonged. They were talented, devoted people trying to be parent-figures, social workers, educators, and friend all at once.
Then after 3 years I came to Virginia. It was there that the low-brow reality of elementary school faculties became clear. I worked with one 4th grade teacher who tutored one of my fifth graders. This woman complained to me that the homework I assigned the kid was too hard for her to help him with. He would get everything wrong on an assignment he had done with her, and that she had checked. This woman had a master's in education, but was unable to convert fractions to decimals.
Now and then in team meetings we'd be discussing the next story or book to assign kids. I'd sometimes joke and say something like "It's time we had them read The Sound and the Fury. " A typical response would be "never heard of it." I found that in Virginia our elementary English teachers were completely ignorant of all writing more complex than the latest Judy Blume. They were charged with creating good writers, but most of them could barely write themselves.
The grasp of history, geography, and economics is just as weak. I witnessed a 2nd grade teacher (with a PhD) tell her class the other day that Christopher Columbus was the first European to encounter the Powhatan Indians when he reached the New World. Not wanting to embarass the lady I bit my lip until it bled.
This brings me to today. My school district decided after analyzing all my college transcripts that I was highly qualified to teach English and History, but not Mathematics or Science. So in order to meet the requirements of No Child Left Behind something had to be done to make me "highly qualifed". The answer, take a 120 question test called Elementary Content Knowledge. If I could make it through this grueling exam in the eyes of the state I would be ready to impart wisdom to the youngsters (of course I have gone 7 years without this test, but NCLB now demands I prove my worth). So I arrived at the testing center this morning. In a room in which I was the only male, I sat and listened to the nervous pre-test chatter of those around me. One of the things I heard most often was someone saying they had already registered for the July administration of the test in case they failed today. More were talking up their joy at being allowed to use a calculator on the math portion. They were starting to make me nervous, as I had no calculator and it had never occured to me that failure was possible.
So on to the test. On the social studies portion they checked to see if I knew Mt. Everest was in the Himalayas, that the President is the commander in chief, and how to use latitude and longitude to find a point on a map (why do we even teach kids to use latitude and longitude on paper-it is a measure of a spherical surface, but anyway...) The math portion required me to be able to find the median of a set of numbers containing only 5 numbers! I had to be able to find percentages when given a numbers of things within a group, and be able to find a coordinate pair on a graph. Science required me to demonstrate that I could tell how many atoms of hydrogen were in a compound that had the subscore 4 next to the H.
Anyway. Battery is dying, but elementary ed is a black hole.
My first few years in teaching the problem wa not so apparent. I was working in a failing elementary school on the edge of the Trinidad neighborhood in Northeast DC. Many of my colleagues were transplants from other careers doing Teach for America or the DC Teaching Fellows as i was myself. I spent most of my free time there hanging out with a guy named Allen who was well versed in politics, literature, and the Elephant 6 Collective. The staff was mostly black, but welcomed us in warmly. Most of us were filled with idealism to save the ghetto, and we were all united against a tyrant principal who once went as far as to force a teacher whose mother had just died to come in and copy busywork for her class before she could leave for the funeral. In a setting where the kids are hanging on for dear life the people who were there belonged. They were talented, devoted people trying to be parent-figures, social workers, educators, and friend all at once.
Then after 3 years I came to Virginia. It was there that the low-brow reality of elementary school faculties became clear. I worked with one 4th grade teacher who tutored one of my fifth graders. This woman complained to me that the homework I assigned the kid was too hard for her to help him with. He would get everything wrong on an assignment he had done with her, and that she had checked. This woman had a master's in education, but was unable to convert fractions to decimals.
Now and then in team meetings we'd be discussing the next story or book to assign kids. I'd sometimes joke and say something like "It's time we had them read The Sound and the Fury. " A typical response would be "never heard of it." I found that in Virginia our elementary English teachers were completely ignorant of all writing more complex than the latest Judy Blume. They were charged with creating good writers, but most of them could barely write themselves.
The grasp of history, geography, and economics is just as weak. I witnessed a 2nd grade teacher (with a PhD) tell her class the other day that Christopher Columbus was the first European to encounter the Powhatan Indians when he reached the New World. Not wanting to embarass the lady I bit my lip until it bled.
This brings me to today. My school district decided after analyzing all my college transcripts that I was highly qualified to teach English and History, but not Mathematics or Science. So in order to meet the requirements of No Child Left Behind something had to be done to make me "highly qualifed". The answer, take a 120 question test called Elementary Content Knowledge. If I could make it through this grueling exam in the eyes of the state I would be ready to impart wisdom to the youngsters (of course I have gone 7 years without this test, but NCLB now demands I prove my worth). So I arrived at the testing center this morning. In a room in which I was the only male, I sat and listened to the nervous pre-test chatter of those around me. One of the things I heard most often was someone saying they had already registered for the July administration of the test in case they failed today. More were talking up their joy at being allowed to use a calculator on the math portion. They were starting to make me nervous, as I had no calculator and it had never occured to me that failure was possible.
So on to the test. On the social studies portion they checked to see if I knew Mt. Everest was in the Himalayas, that the President is the commander in chief, and how to use latitude and longitude to find a point on a map (why do we even teach kids to use latitude and longitude on paper-it is a measure of a spherical surface, but anyway...) The math portion required me to be able to find the median of a set of numbers containing only 5 numbers! I had to be able to find percentages when given a numbers of things within a group, and be able to find a coordinate pair on a graph. Science required me to demonstrate that I could tell how many atoms of hydrogen were in a compound that had the subscore 4 next to the H.
Anyway. Battery is dying, but elementary ed is a black hole.
Friday, June 13, 2008
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Digital Camel 1000
Tom, you mentioned doing something special for the 1000th post and I'm still racking my brain. I suggested whoever hits it should do it. You suggested it should be me because, "It's your's after all". I didn't come up with a thousand posts. gel paco, tadpole, social insect, jefe, The Bishops, yourself, and I have come up with the bulk of them together. Our resident guest blogger Joe Budzinski has too.
This is a unique space. The circumstances surrounding it's genesis have long since fallen by the wayside but the driving force behind it hasn't changed, for me. My reasons, my intentions, have not yet run their course, and hopefully never will. I hope that what drove me to sit down and write something, anything, or to share a picture or two, a song, a video, will continue to drive me for the rest of here to come. In the meantime I hope that each contributor continues to find their way here in order to share a little bit of whatever drives them to express their creativity. It's easy here. It's electronic. It takes a minute of your time. We're amongst the best friends I know I've ever had. While my own contribution has it's unique driving desires behind it, I probably would have quit blogging long ago if I didn't have someone to share it with and someone who would participate in sharing it too. I feel lucky to have this stream of consciousness; inconscienable to anyone else but us (and likely even between us, at times). This space goes in a hundred different directions at once (something that I really like about it). The strangest thing, for me, are the subtlest ways in which it connects me to you guys when the things like phone calls and emails and visits go by the wayside or become too expensive.
I think I feel like we got off to an awkward start a thousand posts ago. I think we are creating an interesting piece of side-history in our friendships. Nothing will ever replace real human social interaction in person, never. This is just some weird, wonderful, byproduct of what we already truly have in our relationships with each other. We shape it, we mold it, we mess around with it, and we create it together. And we're starting to get really good at it, from my view. What it means to have it, I think we'll see much, much later. Keep up the good work, gentlemen.
This is a unique space. The circumstances surrounding it's genesis have long since fallen by the wayside but the driving force behind it hasn't changed, for me. My reasons, my intentions, have not yet run their course, and hopefully never will. I hope that what drove me to sit down and write something, anything, or to share a picture or two, a song, a video, will continue to drive me for the rest of here to come. In the meantime I hope that each contributor continues to find their way here in order to share a little bit of whatever drives them to express their creativity. It's easy here. It's electronic. It takes a minute of your time. We're amongst the best friends I know I've ever had. While my own contribution has it's unique driving desires behind it, I probably would have quit blogging long ago if I didn't have someone to share it with and someone who would participate in sharing it too. I feel lucky to have this stream of consciousness; inconscienable to anyone else but us (and likely even between us, at times). This space goes in a hundred different directions at once (something that I really like about it). The strangest thing, for me, are the subtlest ways in which it connects me to you guys when the things like phone calls and emails and visits go by the wayside or become too expensive.
I think I feel like we got off to an awkward start a thousand posts ago. I think we are creating an interesting piece of side-history in our friendships. Nothing will ever replace real human social interaction in person, never. This is just some weird, wonderful, byproduct of what we already truly have in our relationships with each other. We shape it, we mold it, we mess around with it, and we create it together. And we're starting to get really good at it, from my view. What it means to have it, I think we'll see much, much later. Keep up the good work, gentlemen.
Sunday, June 8, 2008
Digital Camel 5 1/2 (a)
It was 6:30 AM this morning and the window unit in the kitchen was (and still is) gurgling, drowning in it's own juices, spitting little water droplets out of the top vent, and leaking into the 5 gallon roaster sitting on the radiator below it (which I emptied again this morning).
There is an incredible amount of nostalgia going on over at Said the Gramophone lately. Or maybe the music they're featuring just makes me nostalgic. Either way, I know Summer doesn't officially begin for another couple of weeks or so, but for me it started yesterday. Here in Baltimore the temperature is reaching the upper 90's and the humidity is a warm wet blanket that you can't get out from underneath.
When the windows in the home are shut and the car doors close, and there is nothing but the whirring noise of the air conditioner to comfort you and your family, you need a little Digital Camel to carry you through. This, dear friends, is the reason why, courtesy of the internet, we find ourselves with half of the 5th installment of the downloadable audio experience today.
Nostalgia can come at you from any number of angles and these songs do too. Some have the feel of the summer at 1625 1/2. Others have the feel of riding down California highways. Most of these old-ish sounding songs are quite new, starting with Al Green's "Just For Me", an indulgence I encourage all of you to make. Sit back in your imagined chair, watch the imaginary beads well up on your absent freshly squeezed lemonade, and lazily watch the world go by. Or have a look out the car window at your neighbor passing you, windows down, bare feet on the dash, cheeks flushed from heat, content with where they're going.
Saturday, June 7, 2008
Jean Valjean in Animal Form
The Summer of Ursa Love Begins
As a side note, this post 998. You should do something really special for 1,000.
As a side note, this post 998. You should do something really special for 1,000.
Friday, June 6, 2008
Vote Dem in 08....
- He's only half-black. Jefferson's kids were half-black, and your teacher told you he was a good president.
- It makes you feel exotic to begin your day surrounded by Honduran day laborers when you pick up your morning coffee at 7-11.
- They pledge allegiance to the violent nation of Israel as proudly as any GOP'er
- You have plenty of sympathy for terrorists and Roman Polanski, but couldn't care less about the murder of children en utero.
- You wish you had a little less take home pay in your check.
- You oppose all military interventions except the ones Clinton carried out in the Balkans
Vote Republican....
- Because in your heart you know miscegenation is wrong despite what the laws say now.
- You think torture is no different than fraternity hazing so why not vote for a guy who's been tortured.
- The poor can fend for themselves. It's the investment banks we need to protect.
- Stupid polar bears think ice is a good hunting platform
- Because your economic situation is less important to you than whether or not Ellen can get married
- You support all military interventions except the one's Clinton carried out in the Balkans.
- Unborn children mean everything. It's once they're born that you stop caring.
- You don't see the irony of the US operating an extrajudicial system/prison camp on the island of Cuba as you vehemently support the continuation of the embargo against the government in Havana.
The Tale Continues
Gabcast! tom #4 , in which our hero looks at clouds, eats garlic bread with Laura Marcus, and wonders why gays got all the girls..
Thursday, June 5, 2008
Too Pathetic To Believe
Here's http://www.johnmccain.com/ .On the front page we see that the election, Obama and Iraq all share the spotlight with golf gear!
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
I guess I can safely apply a bumpersticker to the Subaru
Why does McCain continue to give "my friends" speeches before small, unenthusiastic crowds on nights when both Dems will be surrounded by thousands of revved up supporters a few minutes later? If that is Mc's stump speech this could be a cakewalk.Monday, June 2, 2008
Sunday, June 1, 2008
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