The Future's There for Anyone to Change

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Happy BIrthday Gingerelly!
Can't wait to see you later today!

Hi Again...
I got back in last night from a work trip...Detroit to Milwaukee to Knoxville....exhausting, but it all went great, and is leading to what I think (hope) will be great results. Leaving again Sunday for D.C. for an ed tech conference.

I am a little punchy.

Peace and love, y'all.

THE BIGGEST LOSERS!
Mike and I were in D.C. last Friday for the big awards banquet. Didn’t win the award we were up for, though it’s nice to have been a finalist. Just happy to be here. Taking it a day at a time. Throw the ball, catch the ball, hit the ball.

Tonie and I watched Milk night before last (finally!), and loved it. Penn was once again off the scale good, and Josh Brolin was even better than that. Went to see Up last night, and WAY loved it. Brilliant. So, two off-the-hook great movies in two days…pretty good.

The short at the beginning of Up was also excellent. We were both very struck by how much it spoke to us as parents of kids with special needs. I don’t think that’s what it was about in any particular way, but it applied.

Day trip to Waco Friday. Then still LOTS of travel for the last chunk of June—Detroit, Milwaukee, Knoxville, another D.C. trip—and then it all settles down for a while.

We have triumphed over the encroaching nastiness, and the pool is now blue and brilliant and we are in it every night. I’m grilling a lot. Just made a new batch of salsa with smoky-grilled veggies. Mmm. Venison steaks and chicken breasts last night. Mmmm. The Stubb’s marinade is tasty.

It’s possible that this is not the deepest or most insightful lj entry I have ever written.

The no-beer thing is coming along nicely. Have lost a little weight from avoiding those carbs, and have invested the money I’ve saved. The market sucks, but for a just-getting-started investor like yours truly, that’s a good thing.

Pic of Harrison and me

Tonie got mad cellphone camera skillz.

Brand New Poem, First in kind of a while.
Rabbit. Hat.

Blue balloons are tied to coolers,
at the Town Lake picnic benches,
and the dad has said, yeah, okay,
guess he only turns five once,
and has written a check.
Front and center, here comes
the check’s recipient, my friend
Jack, wearing a red tuxedo and top hat:
The Amazing Jaconi! His brother
calls him The Amazing Jack-offsky!
I’m too good a friend to laugh at this,
much, if Jack is actually in the room.
The Amazing Jaconi has asked me
to tag along and see this, his first real
show, and I’m here to suffer through it,
because—despite the hours I know
he and Eugene the Wonder Rabbit
have invested in this act—they’re
not very good. No big chore to peel back
the apple-skin thin layer of distraction
by which the illusions fail to convince,
and yet, inexplicably, the kids are buying it.
He is getting by on sleight-of-attention span,
a few sight gags, a booger joke. Man knows
his audience. The kids love him! And the mom
smiles, fooled not at all as Eugene emerges
from the hat, seeing through the cheap trick
to the real magic beneath: the sweet rabbit,
my friend’s good heart and modest skill, the
children’s contagious willingness to pretend belief.

Jeopardy category: Causal Reasoning and Song Lyrics
Alex: And the answer is, "Because a vision softly creeping left its seeds while he was sleeping."

Contestant: What is, "Why has Paul Simon come to talk with darkness again?"

Alex: Correct! Next! The answer is, "Because Bob Marley knows how to do his thing."

Contestant: What is, "Why should one not treat Bob Marley like a puppet on a string?"

Alex: You're on a roll! Last answer, "Because the world is round."

Contestant: What is "Why does the world turn John Lennon on?"

*ding,ding, ding*

Alex: Great round!

Apparently, Ace Frehley
is going to be sent to outer space, where he will broadcast metal guitar riffs back to Earth. VH-1 will make a reality show out of this.

True or false? I have no idea. It is weird enough that it might be true.

We live in strange times, my friends.

June, AEP = Tuxedos for Mike and Me
The Association of Educational Publishers' (AEP) Awards program recognizes excellence in educational products, and each year there are many entrants, and they are judged in a 2-tiered process by objective judges who are themselves award-winning educational media professionals.

The field is narrowed to 3 finalists. Winners are then anounced at a big black-tie shindig in D.C. in June. This year, Joe Rospers, the Obama campaign's New Media Director, will be speaking. And ...

this year Mike and I will be there representing Ignite! Learning since we are, you know, FINALISTS in the the middle school math curriculum division!

meme, from blue_thundering
List 15 books that will always stick with you. And you're not allowed to agonize about it.

So, in no particular order:

Harry Potter and the Whole Damn Series of Books, by J.K. Rowling
Sometimes a Great Notion, by Ken Kesey
The Time Traveler’s Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger
The Princess Bride, by S. Morgenstern/William Goldman
Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned, By Walter Mosley
Macbeth, by William Shakespeare
Lonesome Dove, By Larry McMurtry
Selected Poems, by Mary Oliver
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert Pirsig
Go, Dog. Go! by P.D. Eastman
Thief of Time, by Terry Pratchett
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams
The World According to Garp, by John Irving
The Spenser Novels, by Robert B. Parker (the characters stay with me, rather than any particular installment)
The Road Less Traveled, by M. Scott Peck

Some Others that Came to Mind:

The Gold Cell, by Sharon Olds
Charlotte’s Web, by E.B. White
Life of Pi, by Yann Martel
The Tao of Pooh, by Benjamin Hoff
The Screwtape Letters, by C.S. Lewis
Dune, by Frank Herbert
LOTR trilogy, by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Book on the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, by Alan Watts
The Ninemile Wolves, by Rick Bass
The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test, by Tom Wolfe
Drowning with Others, by James Dickey
Getting Things Done, by David Allen

cool article from edutopia on the big mess that is the textbook industry:
http://www.edutopia.org/muddle-machine

"Who writes these things?" people ask me. I have to tell them, without a hint of irony, "No one."

It's symptomatic of the whole muddled mess that is the $4.3 billion textbook business."

So, Tonie's birthday was yesterday, and
and we watched the the new Star Trek Friday night (EXCELLENT!), and Harrison spent Friday night in San Antonio and he and Cuba (our niece) did a tots campout at the zoo with Tonie's mom (so cool)!

He did great, loved it, didn't cry, had a blast, and was happy to see me when I got him yesterday to fetch him home. He was asleep almost immediately in the car.

Then last night we drank champagne and ate sushi and watched the movie version of Neil Gaiman's Stardust with Madison (VERY fun, and Madison--who can be hard to please with movies--also really liked it), and then we finished the champagne and sushi and watched the season (and probably series) finale of Dollhouse, which was also excellent. *wipes away tear at show's likely fate*

And of course today is Mother's Day, and Tonie and Madison are going to the drafthouse to see a romantic comedy and drink italian sodas and such as that, and it will be another fun domestic day hereabouts.

Life is good.

Peace and love to y'all.

And especially to the beautiful and wonderful mothers reading this. Happy Mother's Day!

let's check your problem-solving skillZ:
Jeff and Tonie are eating sushi and drinking champagne. The champagne? Doesn't keep so good. The sushi? Also not an excellent item, shelf-life-wise.

What to do?

What to do?

The force is pretty damn strong with this one.
Harrison is in a phase that is crushing my spirit.

He is exhuberant and boisterous and repetitive and the center of the universe in a way that is pretty damn charming if you’re giving him one-on-one attention, but exhausting if you’re trying to do anything else.

Here’s a sample conversation:

Him: Daddy let’s you and me go fight lightsabres!
Me: I’m cooking right now, but maybe later.
Him: I want to go outside and fight lightsabres!
Me: Later.
Him: No! Now!
Me: I don’t like the way you’re talking.
Him: Daddy? Excuse me. Can, can, can, can, can, can you please go outside with me and we will fight lightsabres and you can be a Sith and I can be a Jedi, and we will fight and I will get you, and I can be Obi Wan and YOU can be Darth Maul and then I will GET you [pace and excitement building to the point that what follows is pretty much all one word] because you, you, you, you, you, you, you, you are a SITH-you-will-be-a-sith-be-Darth-Maul-and-and-and-Darth-Maul-is-a-Sith-and-we-will-go-outside-to-the-yard-and-I-will-be-a-Jedi-and-I-will-be-Obi-Wan-we-will-fight-lightsabres? Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease? Fight? Outside?
Me: Okay, that was a lot better asking, but I’ve already said we will have to wait because I’m cooking dinner.
Him: Daddy? This my lightsabre! And it’s Dylan’s. And we share it. And it is mine.
Me: That’s right. That’s Dylan’s lightsabre and he shares it with you and you can play with it anytime you want.
Him: Can we go outside? You and me? And you can be a Sith and I can be a Jedi and we will fight and I will get you? With my lightsabre? And I will be Obi-Wan?
Me: Please stop asking that. I already told you, we will play later.
Him: Sith eat boogers. But Jedi don’t eat boogers. This my lightsabre. Darth Vader music go “Dunh-dunh-dunh-dunh-dunh-dunh-dunh!” [editor’s note: he does a pretty good Imperial March] and Sith are scary, but Jedi are good. Hey, Daddy? Excuse me. Can we go out to the yard and play outside…um…with my trike? And then ... we will bring our lightsabres and we will fight and I will be a Jedi?
Me: You need to find something else to do. Go look at a book or get your guitar.
Him: And then we will play Star Wars?

Memories of Summer as a Child
I listen to instrumental music a lot when I write, and got WAY hooked on this from the snippets I heard in an NPR story. I love this music; so un-show-offy and so perfectly played.

What’s that? Why, yes, you are correct; that *IS* Nigel Tufnel aka Count Rugen (the 6-fingered man), playing guitar and mandolin on this beautiful album.

Here’s the NPR piece I heard:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=100007776

another one from linda pastan:
Ethics

In ethics class so many years ago
our teacher asked this question every fall:
If there were a fire in a museum
which would you save, a Rembrandt painting
or an old woman who hadn't many
years left anyhow? Restless on hard chairs
caring little for pictures or old age
we'd opt one year for life, the next for art
and always half-heartedly. Sometimes
the woman borrowed my grandmother's face
leaving her usual kitchen to wander
some drafty, half imagined museum.
One year, feeling clever, I replied
why not let the woman decide herself?
Linda, the teacher would report, eschews
the burdens of responsibility.
This fall in a real museum I stand
before a real Rembrandt, old woman,
or nearly so, myself. The colors
within this frame are darker than autumn,
darker even than winter—the browns of earth,
though earth's most radiant elements burn
through the canvas. I know now that woman
and painting and season are almost one
and all beyond saving by children.

Pears
Some say
it was a pear
Eve ate.
Why else the shape
of the womb,
or of the cello
Whose single song is grief
for the parent tree?
Why else the fruit itself
tawny and sweet
which your lover
over breakfast
lets go your pear-
shaped breast
to reach for?

Linda Pastan

very interesting thoughts on university graduate school education as a rigged game:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/opinion/27taylor.html?em

I was very struck by this:

Graduate education is the Detroit of higher learning. Most graduate programs in American universities produce a product for which there is no market (candidates for teaching positions that do not exist) and develop skills for which there is diminishing demand (research in subfields within subfields and publication in journals read by no one other than a few like-minded colleagues), all at a rapidly rising cost (sometimes well over $100,000 in student loans).

and:

The dirty secret of higher education is that without underpaid graduate students to help in laboratories and with teaching, universities couldn’t conduct research or even instruct their growing undergraduate populations. That’s one of the main reasons we still encourage people to enroll in doctoral programs. It is simply cheaper to provide graduate students with modest stipends and adjuncts with as little as $5,000 a course — with no benefits — than it is to hire full-time professors.

In other words, young people enroll in graduate programs, work hard for subsistence pay and assume huge debt burdens, all because of the illusory promise of faculty appointments. But their economical presence, coupled with the intransigence of tenure, ensures that there will always be too many candidates for too few openings.

The general view here seems pretty true to me, along the lines of "The house always wins," and only slightly less true than "Never get involved in a land
war in Asia."

Your thoughts?

quote of the day:
The U.S.A. has been a lucky country, and despite its present suffering it is unlikely that America’s luck has run out. Relying on the import of money, workers, and brains for more than three centuries, North America has been a Ponzi scheme that works.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4848&page=0

The Idle Parent is hilarious!
Slate has started running this guy's columns and he is brilliant!

http://www.slate.com/id/2216568/

An excerpt:

This last summer holiday, quite remarkably, we found ourselves lying in bed till 10 or 11 on several occasions, and this with children aged 3, 6, and 8 in the house. Sometimes, agreed, they would come and wake us by doing horrible things, jumping on our legs, "rampaging" as we called it, and hitting one another. But after we'd chucked them out a few times, they began to look after themselves. They are all quite capable of pouring milk on cereal, and Arthur, the oldest, can make tea and porridge.

Children actually have an inbuilt self-protective sense that we destroy by over-cosseting. They become independent not so much by careful training but in part simply as a result of parental laziness. Last Sunday morning, Victoria and I lay in bed till half past 10 with hangovers. What a result! And the more often you do this, the better, because the children's resourcefulness will improve, resulting in less nagging, less of that awful "Mum-eeeeeeeh" noise they make. They can play and they will play.

So lying in bed for as long as possible is not the act of an irresponsible parent. It is precisely the opposite: It is good to look after yourself, and it is good to teach the children to fend for themselves. Our offspring will be strong, bold, fearless, much in demand wherever they go!