Documentary film worth seeing: “The Other ‘F’ Word” at the Texas Theatre

November 20, 2011

Here’s the trailer:

Kathryn and I caught it last night at the renovated, historic Texas Theatre on Jefferson Avenue in Oak Cliff (formerly an independent town, now a sprawling neighborhood of Dallas).  The audience enthusiasm didn’t overpower the movie — the audience was much smaller than the film deserves.

It’s showing again this afternoon and Wednesday night at the Texas.

Advantages of seeing this at the Texas:

  1. Parking is easy and free after 4:00 p.m. on Jefferson Avenue.
  2. The bar has Mothership beer on tap (and a variety of other good libations).
  3. Popcorn is cheaper than at most megaplexes, plus it doesn’t taste as if made from petroleum by-product (which is not to say it is healthy, but that it may be less unhealthy).
  4. History point 1:  This is a near-Art Deco theatre built originally by Howard Hughes.
  5. History point 2:  This is the theatre in which Lee Harvey Oswald was captured in his flight from the scene of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
  6. It’s a great film.
  7. It’s a great theatre to view great films in.

Punk never made a great impression on me.  But at length, years later, I think I understand part of the angst and noise of the punkers, thanks to this film.  The description at the YouTube trailer:

THE OTHER F WORD
directed by Andrea Blaugrund Nevins
produced by Cristan Reilly and Andrea Blaugrund Nevins

IN THEATERS NOVEMBER 2ND, 2011
http://www.theotherfwordmovie.com/

This revealing and touching film asks what happens when a generation’s ultimate anti-authoritarians — punk rockers — become society’s ultimate authorities — dads. With a large chorus of punk rock’s leading men – Blink-182’s Mark Hoppus, Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Flea, Rise Against’s Tim McIlrath – THE OTHER F WORD follows Jim Lindberg, a 20-year veteran of the skate punk band Pennywise, on his hysterical and moving journey from belting his band’s anthem “F–k Authority,” to embracing his ultimately authoritarian role in mid-life: fatherhood.

Other dads featured in the film include skater Tony Hawk, Art Alexakis (Everclear), Mark Mothersbaugh (Devo), Tony Adolescent (The Adolescents), Fat Mike (NOFX), Lars Frederiksen (Rancid), and many others.

These are Tea Partiers with a cause and a brain, and a sense of social responsibility.  Lindberg said, near the end of the movie:

That’s what I want to hold on to, is that feeling that we can make a change out there.  Maybe the way we change the world is by raising better kids.

Readers of this blog may note the great irony in one of the chief profiles of the film being of Ron Reyes, a member of early West Coast punk band Black Flag, who quit the band in the middle of a set to protest the violence that afflicted the Los Angeles punk scene, and moved to Vancouver, British Columbia, to raise his kids well.

Heck, it’s probably a great film to see even if you can’t see it at the Texas.

(You know, I’ve got some shots of our tour of the Texas Theatre in August . . . hmm . . . where are those pictures?  Other computer?)


November 20, 1942: Alaska Highway opened

November 20, 2011

Widening the Alcan Highway, 1942 - Wikipedia image from Library of Congress

Widening the Alcan Highway, 1942 - Wikipedia image from Library of Congress

Thinking of Alaska today — a good day to ponder the Last Frontier.

Alaskan Frontier?  It’s been 52 years since Alaska became a state.  My students’ grandparents may remember the time, but the students don’t.  Alaska has not even been in the news much in the lifetimes of current high school students.  Construction on the Alaska Pipeline finished in 1977; the Exxon-Valdez Disaster rocked us in March 1989.  Juniors in a Texas U.S. history class were born circa 1994.  Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s nomination for vice president in 2008 prompted a bit of interest in people in Alaska, but not much more, for our students.  The earlier “bridge to nowhere” issue was just one more Washington, D.C. scandal to them.  Alaska holds no thrall over most U.S. high school students today.

In autumn, especially in Texas where winters mildly bluster most of the time, my thoughts turn to colder climes and earlier times.  I think of Alaska “back then.”

Much to study, much to know.  Alaska winds through American history in odd, mostly ignored ways — Alaska was the gateway to the Americas for those migrants who came in through Beringia in the Upper Paleolithic period, 12,000 years and longer ago; for nearly 150 years Alaska was the Russian Czar’s colonial presence in America, based partly on the exploration of the area by Vitus Bering, after whom both the Bering Sea and Bering Strait take their names (but just try to find that in the Texas text books); the U.S.-Russian treaty of 1824 rarely gets a mention anywhere, though it is the source of the line drawn at 54° 40′ North latitude which gave specificity to the jingo-ist slogan, “Fifty-four forty or fight!”  The administration of President James K. Polk resolved that crisis — with Britain — at 49° North, but Polk’s popularity maintained.  Alaska became Seward’s Folly in 1867 when Secretary of State William H. Seward negotiated the purchase of Alaska from Russia, for about $7 million.  This is one more indication of the power and genius in Abraham Lincoln’s cabinet, that such deals could occur even two years after Lincoln’s death (see the story in Doris Kearns Goodwin’s book).

Then there were the gold rushes, the Klondike Gold Rush of 1896-99, and the Nome Gold Rush of 1899-1909.

In World War II Japan attacked and occupied two islands in the Aleutian chain; Alaska became a point of defense against Japanese attacks on the mainland.  In partnership with Canada, the AlCan Highway took form to supply troops and troop supplies to Alaska — now called the Alaska Highway.

November 20, 1942, marked the formal opening of the road, the Alaska Highway.  Even today, it’s not a paved road.  Those who drive the road need to be prepared for hundreds of miles of graded, but unpaved road, with all the hazards such driving should imply but most Americans are wholly unfamiliar with.

The Alaskan Frontier

Mt. McKinley
Mt. McKinley and the Alaska Range, Mt. McKinley National Park, Alaska, 1958.
Taking the Long View: Panoramic Photographs, 1851-1991

Mt McKinley and the Alaska Range panoramic, LOC - 6a00286r

(click the thumbnail image for a larger version; even larger versions available at Library of Congress American Memory site)

On November 20, 1942, U.S. Army engineers, working closely with partners in U.S. civilian agencies and Canada officially opened the Alaska Highway. This overland military supply route, originally known as the Alcan Highway, passed through the Yukon, running from the prairies of British Columbia to the Territory of Alaska. The roadway was over 1,500-miles long and connected Dawson Creek, British Columbia, to Fairbanks, Alaska. It provided Americans and Canadians on the Pacific coast new avenues for the transportation of goods, and an increased sense of security after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and escalating hostility in the Pacific. This first phase of construction was completed in less than eight months.

In the 1780s, Russian fur traders became the first European settlers of the land across the Bering Strait from Siberia. Russian influence on native Alaskans is explored in the Library of Congress exhibition In the Beginning Was the Word: The Russian Church and Native Alaskan Cultures. The Library’s collaborative digital project with Russian libraries, Meeting Of Frontiers: Siberia, Alaska, and the American West, explores the comparative history of the Russian expansion across Siberia to the Russian Far East and the Pacific, the American expansion westward, and the meeting of the Russian-America frontier in Alaska and the Pacific Northwest.

The Russian-American Company administered Alaska from 1799 until 1867, when Secretary of State William H. Seward negotiated the purchase of Alaska for the United States. Congress established The Territory of Alaska in 1912, prompted by the significant gold discoveries of the 1880s and 1890s.

Building near the base of a mountain.
Independence Mine, Palmer Vicinity, Matanuska-Susitna Borough, Alaska
Jet Lowe, photographer, May 1981.
Built in America: Historic Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record, 1933-Present

There is a wealth of material on Alaska in American Memory collections.

More sources:

Of the many posts on Alaska at Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub, you should see at least these:

1895 Rand McNally map of Alaska - Wikipedia

1895 Rand McNally map of Alaska - Wikipedia image

Map of the Alaska Highway, from Milepost.com

Map of the Alaska Highway, from Milepost.com


Constitutional right to be stupid: Birthers at it again

November 19, 2011

Where are the Republicans to stop this waste of time and money?

I get e-mail, from the Obama bunch; can you believe it?:

2012 Ed —

It’s no surprise that professional conspiracy theorists are still on the birth-certificate warpath — but now elected officials are getting their backs.

Yesterday, four Republicans in the New Hampshire State House supported a hearing requested by a group of birthers who want President Obama officially removed from the state’s primary ballot.

It’s not clear whether all this is a smokescreen or whether these dead-enders actually believe this stuff. But they aren’t letting the facts get in their way — one group in Arizona has even demanded that the President “release the microfiche” of his birth certificate.

Sadly, I don’t have any microfiches on hand, but we have the next best thing: In honor of birthers everywhere, we’re re-releasing the campaign’s limited-edition “Made in the USA” mugs.

Donate $20 or more today and we’ll send you one — complete with a reprint of the President’s birth certificate on the side for everyone to see.

Get your limited-edition mug

Here’s what one of the state representatives backing the effort had to say about yesterday’s hearing: “I’m not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but even I could take [the long-form birth certificate] apart and see that it was fraudulent.”

Well, I won’t argue with one part of that statement.

There’s clearly nothing we can do to satisfy this crowd — or anyone else who insists on wasting time and energy on nonsense like this.

But when it starts to make your head hurt, I’ve found the best remedy is to have some tea in my “Made in the USA” mug.

Works like a charm. I recommend Earl Grey:

https://donate.barackobama.com/Birth-Certificate-Mug

Thanks,

Julianna

Julianna Smoot
Deputy Campaign Manager
Obama for America

More:


November 19th, 1863: Mr. Lincoln at Gettysburg

November 19, 2011

A mostly encore post about today’s anniversary of Lincoln’s speech at Gettysburg.

Prior to 2007, this was the only known photo of Lincoln at Gettysburg, on the day of his address - Library of Congress

148 years ago today, Abraham Lincoln redefined the Declaration of Independence and the goals of the American Civil War, in a less-than-two-minute speech dedicating part of the battlefield at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, as a cemetery and final resting place for soldiers who died in the fierce battle fought there the previous July 1 through 3.

Now in 2011, we’re in the “150th anniversary” years of the Civil War.  Maybe some will look back to the time our nation worked hard to tear itself asunder, and learn lessons that might help us keep from doing that in the 21st century.  Some might find inspiration, or aspiration, in Lincoln’s words at Gettysburg.

Interesting news for 2007: More photos from the Library of Congress collection may contain images of Lincoln. The photo above, detail from a much larger photo, had been thought for years to be the only image of Lincoln from that day. The lore is that photographers, taking a break from former Massachusetts Sen. Edward Everett’ s more than two-hour oration, had expected Lincoln to go on for at least an hour. His short speech caught them totally off-guard, focusing their cameras or taking a break. Lincoln finished before any photographer got a lens open to capture images.

Images of people in these photos are very small, and difficult to identify. Lincoln was not identified at all until 1952:

The plate lay unidentified in the Archives for some fifty-five years until in 1952, Josephine Cobb, Chief of the Still Pictures Branch, recognized Lincoln in the center of the detail, head bared and probably seated. To the immediate left (Lincoln’s right) is Lincoln’s bodyguard, Ward Hill Lamon, and to the far right (beyond the limits of the detail) is Governor Andrew G. Curtin of Pennsylvania. Cobb estimated that the photograph was taken about noontime, just after Lincoln arrived at the site and before Edward Everett’s arrival, and some three hours before Lincoln gave his now famous address.

On-line, the Abraham Lincoln Blog covered the discovery that two more photographic plates from the 1863 speech at Gettysburg may contain images of Lincoln in his trademark stove-pipe hat. Wander over to the story at the USA Today site, and you can see just how tiny are these detail images in relation to the photographs themselves. These images are tiny parts of photos of the crowd at Gettysburg. (The story ran in USA Today last Thursday or Friday — you may be able to find a copy of that paper buried in the returns pile at your local Kwikee Mart.) Digital technologies, and these suspected finds of Lincoln, should prompt a review of every image from Gettysburg that day.

To the complaints of students, I have required my junior U.S. history students to memorize the Gettysburg Address (though, not yet in this school year). In Irving I found a couple of students who had memorized it for an elementary teacher years earlier, and who still could recite it. Others protested, until they learned the speech. This little act of memorization appears to me to instill confidence in the students that they can master history, once they get it done.

To that end, I discovered a good, ten-minute piece on the address in Ken Burns’ “Civil War” (in Episode 5). On DVD, it’s a good piece for classroom use, short enough for a bell ringer or warm-up, detailed enough for a deeper study, and well done, including the full text of the address itself performed by Sam Waterson.

Embedded video from CNN VideoIn 1863 Edward Everett, the former Massachusetts senator and U.S. secretary of state, was regarded as the greatest orator of the time. A man of infinite grace, and a historian with some sense of events and what the nation was going through, Everett wrote to Lincoln the next day after their speeches:

“I should be glad, if I could flatter myself that I came as near the central idea of the occasion in two hours, as you did in two minutes.”

Interesting note: P. Z. Myers at Pharyngula notes that the Gettysburg Address was delivered “seven score and four years ago.” Of course, that will never happen again. I’ll wager he was the first to notice that odd juxtaposition on the opening line.

Do you have a favorite performance of this address you’d commend for internet bloggers?  Let us know where to find it, in comments.

Tip of the old scrub brush to Chamblee54 for reminding us about the anniversary, today.

Resources for students and teachers:


Kids Bill of Rights

November 18, 2011

Kids write and sing about the Bill of Rights — captured on video by the folks at EmergentOrder.com (the producers of the second Keynes/Hayek video).

How close to right are they?  Can you use this in class?

Can your kids improve on this, or do something like it?


More Keynes v. Hayek rap: Fight of the Century, Round II

November 18, 2011

Oddly, Black Flag actually tracked down the follow up to the Keynes/Hayek video.

What do you think?


Leonid meteor shower? Not much here . . .

November 18, 2011

I haven’t seen anything this year (but I’ve not left the city,either).

1833 Leonid shower, from 7th Day Adventist book- Wikimedia

Wikipedia describes this old woodcut: "The most famous depiction of the 1833 actually produced in 1889 for the Adventist book Bible Readings for the Home Circle - the engraving is by Adolf Vollmy based upon an original painting by the Swiss artist Karl Jauslin, that is in turn based on a first-person account of the 1833 storm by a minister, Joseph Harvey Waggoner on his way from Florida to New Orleans."

There are a few spectacular shots of the Leonid meteors this year — got one you want to share?

Peak night was supposed to be November 17 Astronomy Magazine’s website holds out some hope that you might catch a few shooting stars on November 18.  It’s worth a look, if you’ve got skies.

Next up:  Geminids, with a peak night of December 13, 2011.


“Fear the Boom and Bust,” Hayek vs. Keynes, a rap-off

November 18, 2011

NPR’s Morning Edition featured profiles of three figures in American economics this week, Ayn Rand, Friedrich von Hayek, and John Maynard Keynes.

The Keynes piece featured excerpts of the YouTube video below — so I’m reposting my original post of the rap from a year and a half ago.  It’s salient now, more than it was then.  However, a post at the blog of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) suggests Keynes’s legacy is much greater than this series lets on.  What do you think, Dear Reader?

This is really good.

It’s a pretty good rundown of the fight between Keynes and Hayek, conducted mostly after Keynes’ death in economics classrooms and central banks world wide.

Watch it, and hope for more soon, at Econstories, the blog of the guys who created the thing, John Papola and Russ Roberts.

Resources:


Scalia and Thomas: Neither is Caesar’s wife

November 18, 2011

It sure looks like a breach of ethics, but James Oliphant writes in the Los Angeles Times that there is no formal rule prohibiting a sitting Supreme Court justice from hobnobbing with a law firm set to argue a gargantuan case in a few months.

The day the Supreme Court gathered behind closed doors to consider the politically divisive question of whether it would hear a challenge to President Obama’s healthcare law, two of its justices, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, were feted at a dinner sponsored by the law firm that will argue the case before the high court.

The occasion was last Thursday, when all nine justices met for a conference to pore over the petitions for review. One of the cases at issue was a suit brought by 26 states challenging the sweeping healthcare overhaul passed by Congress last year, a law that has been a rallying cry for conservative activists nationwide.

The justices agreed to hear the suit; indeed, a landmark 5 1/2-hour argument is expected in March, and the outcome is likely to further roil the 2012 presidential race, which will be in full swing by the time the court’s decision is released.

The lawyer who will stand before the court and argue that the law should be thrown out is likely to be Paul Clement, who served as U.S. solicitor general during the George W. Bush administration.

Clement’s law firm, Bancroft PLLC, was one of almost two dozen firms that helped sponsor the annual dinner of the Federalist Society, a longstanding group dedicated to advocating conservative legal principles. Another firm that sponsored the dinner, Jones Day, represents one of the trade associations that challenged the law, the National Federation of Independent Business.

Another sponsor was pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc, which has an enormous financial stake in the outcome of the litigation. The dinner was held at a Washington hotel hours after the court’s conference over the case. In attendance was, among others, Mitch McConnell, the Senate’s top Republican and an avowed opponent of the healthcare law.

The featured guests at the dinner? Scalia and Thomas.

One wishes for some of the usual journalistic “balancing,” with someone to note who among the crowd represents the opposite side in the case, and someone else to note that the dinner had a lot of other sponsors.  But one might get uneasy thinking that the usual journalistic balancing can’t be mustered here, and that Scalia and Thomas just don’t care about appearances of ethical violations, if they can get away with it.

Lower court judges have clear ethical guidance on the issue, counseling against such appearances:

It’s nothing new: The two justices have been attending Federalist Society events for years. And it’s nothing that runs afoul of ethics rules. In fact, justices are exempt from the Code of Conduct that governs the actions of lower federal judges.

If they were, they arguably fell under code’s Canon 4C, which states,A judge may attend fund-raising events of law-related and other organizations although the judge may not be a speaker, a guest of honor, or featured on the program of such an event.“

Those rules do not apply to the nine people who sit on the nation’s highest court.

In those few times I lunched with Thomas and worked with him, when he staffed environmental issues for Indiana’s Missouri’s Sen. John Danforth, I found him an agreeable lunch companion and smart, but a great idealogue.  Had I known then what we all know now, I would have paid closer attention, asked different and sharper  questions, and kept notes.  And I might have dropped a few hints about history, and Caesar’s wife.  Supreme Court justices should consider themselves wedded to the American republic, and act accordingly.

What do you think, Dear Reader?  Was this a violation of ethics, even if not required by the rules that apply to Supreme Court justices?


The library of non-pornography spam

November 18, 2011

Spam evolves.

Recent crackdowns on the mega-scale spammers cut spam intercepted by filters at a site like this one from several thousand per day to a few hundred, or even less.  Until recently, most of that spam came from pornography sites.  That meant that, with a few keyword searches of the mountains of spam, a weblog owner could separate out most of the bad stuff, and rescue the few legitimate messages that somehow ran afoul of the filters.

But, spam evolves.  In the past month Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub fell victim to one or several bot programs that insert non-pornographic comments into messages from hijacked or legitimate, but commercial, e-mail messages.  Our spam totals have crept upwards once again.  We get a thousand spam messages one more than one day a week now.  Because I hate to lose any legitimate comments, I try to sift through that stuff to find errors.  It’s frustrating.

No Spam sign from stock.xchng

Please, no spam comments here!

Today some poor bastard spammer’s machine broke down, and I got a comment in the spam filters that features many of the lines used by the bots — and you can see why spam filters might have difficulty with them.  Below is the bulk of that comment, featuring dozens of spam lines.  Instead of just one line that my spam filter would probably catch, I got — how many? — more than I bothered to count.  It all came in one comment.

One might be struck by the inanity of the work displayed here.  Some person, a thinking, breathing human being who probably hopes his or her children won’t hate him or her, bothered to write up all these bland, colorless lines, in hopes they would evade spam filters.  What a waste of human effort.  Oh, the humanity — or lack of it!

Can someone automate the process of purging these things from comments altogether?  I can only hope.  Here are the lines, for the record, more than 4,000 words intended solely to clog up the tubes of the internet and frustrate blog owners and blog readers.

The library of non-pornography spam

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Friends, Romans, and Jackson whoever you may be, please quit sending me all of those messages.  Quit sending them to anyone.  Stop abusing this device we call the internet, eh?


Daily Floggings of Teachers Dept.: Utah

November 17, 2011

Sign on the door of the mishipmen’s mess:  “The daily floggings will continue until morale improves.”

In an effort to raise teacher morale to a level at least as high as that of the British Navy back in the day when everyday brought “flog and grog” — though, admittedly, we work in education today without the grog — policy makers continue in their efforts to blame teachers for every problem of education, and they pledge to “hold teachers accountable” regardless the issue.

In November 16th’s Deseret News from Salt Lake City:

Utah senator says teacher morale is low and lawmakers need to address teacher perceptions

SALT LAKE CITY — A freshman state senator, who held a series of tell-all meetings with Utah school teachers, relayed to his colleagues Wednesday a common theme among public educators: Teacher morale is low.

“They are discouraging new teachers from entering the profession. … They feel classroom size is an issue. … They feel that they don’t have the professional development support they need,” said Sen. Aaron Osmond, R-South Jordan, at an Education Interim Committee meeting. “That’s what they feel. I’m not validating it or invalidating it. I’m communicating it to this group.

Osmond went to teachers to get feedback on his controversial proposal that would make it easier to fire teachers. His legislation would dismantle current state orderly termination laws that require districts to have a specific, documented cause when firing teachers and allow teachers a chance for recourse. The proposal would also give more control to local districts so they can develop termination policies based on what works for them and institute one- to five-year contracts at the end of which schools could let teachers go without cause.

Osmond held four meetings where public school educators could give him a piece of their mind. Hundreds of teachers attended.

“Our public employees feel that there is a major morale problem in education,” he said.

No kidding?


Teach for America: Savior of Dallas schools?

November 15, 2011

Lead editorial in today’s Dallas Morning News (page 14A):

Retaining Teachers

DISD should redouble efforts to support Teach for America recruits

In 2009, the Dallas Independent School District welcomed 80 Teach for America teachers to its campuses. These newly minted teachers were part of a competitive program that sends top college graduates to work in urban and rural public schools.

Two years later, only 45 teachers from that inaugural class remain in the district.

Where did the others go? DISD can’t say for sure.

Teach for America teachers make a two-year commitment. So, after fulfilling that obligation, they’re free to pursue other teaching opportunities, graduate school or entirely different careers.

Losing 43 percent of the first TFA class is somewhat troubling — particularly because that’s higher than the program’s national attrition rate in high-poverty schools. But that fact alone doesn’t mean that DISD and Teach for America aren’t a good fit.

One number doesn’t tell the whole story, and DISD would benefit from additional data as subsequent TFA classes complete their two-year stints. It would be useful for the district and Teach for America to know more about why these teachers are leaving and whether they are seeking out teaching jobs in other districts.

Still, the attrition rate raises important questions about what more DISD can do to support these young teachers — and encourage them to stay.

TFA is supplying the Dallas school district with teachers who were high achievers and leaders on their college campuses. And while they’re new to teaching, many are distinguishing themselves quickly. In 2010, DISD reported that the district’s TFA teachers were outperforming their peers in educating students in reading and math.

Even Teach for America’s critics, who often complain that TFA corps members don’t stay long enough to make a difference, would agree that these teachers will become even more effective with additional years of experience.

With all this in mind, DISD should refocus its efforts to ensure that TFA teachers who spend two years at a Dallas public school consider extending their stay. While this is still a relatively new program in DISD, the early numbers suggest that the district has not been a particularly welcoming place.

DISD should bolster its mentoring efforts and consider what other strategies could be employed to help TFA teachers succeed — and feel motivated to continue teaching.

There’s no doubt that some TFA corps members enter the program planning to teach only two years before embarking on another career. But Teach for America’s hope is that some will be inspired to continue in education.

Other districts with similar challenges have had more success retaining TFA corps members.

DISD should seize this opportunity to mentor and develop a unique group of teachers — instead of simply watching them walk out the door.

I work alongside several Teach for America people — to a person, great colleagues.  Some of them faced the same barriers to entry I did — Dallas was unhappy with my recommendations, for example, and held out my hiring for a few weeks because they didn’t want to take the recommendation of the chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee which deals with education policy, for whom I worked for a decade, but instead insisted I get a teacher  or someone from a local education establishment to write the letter (I got a person who assigned substitutes in a local district to comment — we knew each other on the phone).  Why they wouldn’t take the word of someone who knows me over someone in education, I don’t know — but there is a moral in that morass, somewhere.

Dallas ISD is generally not a teacher-friendly place these days.  After two rounds of layoffs, we have all been informed clearly that we are all on the maybe-needs-firing line.  TFA teachers can stay above that only partly — the poisonous atmosphere infects all faculty meetings and department tete-a-tetes.

There is a big difference between TFA teachers and others:  TFA is tough (sometimes stupidly too tough), but they let every one of their people know that each one is valuable, and expected to do great things.

Dallas ISD tried to do that once.  We had a kid give a great motivational speech at the fall welcome-back-teachers ball.

Then the district announced it had goofed, and a few hundred teachers would have to go.  Then word got out that the mother of the kid who gave the speech — a teacher — was on the chopping block.  Then word got out that the whole program the kid was in, was on the chopping block. Yeah, we believe in you, kid — we just don’t believe in education any more.

Is TFA the answer to Dallas’s woes?  What’s your view?  I’m still thinking about an appropriate, and informative response.

Also see this at the Dallas Morning News site:

Sidebar:

What is Teach for America?

Teach for America is an organization that works to recruit high-achieving college graduates for two-year teaching stints in urban and rural public schools. The hope is that many will continue to work in the field of education or an area that impacts student achievement.

The selection process is competitive — only 11 percent of this year’s 48,000 applicants were accepted.

The chart shows the number of Teach for America teachers in DISD, broken down by the school year they arrived. Many of those who started in 2009-10, the inaugural year in DISD, left after serving their two-year commitment.

School year TFA members received In DISD as of Sept. 26
2009-10 80 45
2010-11 107 102
2011-12 45 45
Total 232 192

SOURCES: Dallas ISD; Dallas Morning News research


Elizabeth Warren: Grace under pressure (we need this woman in the Senate)

November 14, 2011

Here’s a woman who keeps her wits about her; no wonder Scott Brown is scared by Elizabeth Warren’s campaign:

Vodpod videos no longer available.

According to the story at Huffington Post:

BROCKTON, Mass. — Moments into a speech before volunteers here Wednesday evening, Elizabeth Warren was interrupted by a Tea Party supporter who hurled a gender-based epithet at the Senate candidate. The man, who said he’d been unemployed since February 2010, objected to Warren’s expressed affiliation with the frustrations of Occupy Wall Street, and argued that the Tea Party has been protesting Wall Street excess for longer than the nascent global movement.

The crowd tried to shout the man down, but Warren told her supporters to let him speak. “No, no, it’s alright. Let me say two things,” she said. “I’m very sorry that you’ve been out of work. I’m also very sorry that the recent jobs bill that would’ve brought 22,000 jobs to Massachusetts did not pass in the Senate.”

There’s more.  The man called her “a socialist whore;” just to irritate the Tea Party and Republicans, probably, Warren’s organization let the guy wander away, no Tazer, no fight, no handcuffs.  Warren addressed his issues and the issues that his presence highlighted.  Civil discussion of serious matters.

This is a case of Elizabeth Warren modeling the way on bringing civility to political discussion.

Other candidates, are you paying attention?  Voters?

We need this woman in the Senate, even if you’re not from Massachusetts.

More:


Poet Devona Wyant, “On the difference between 1 and 99”

November 14, 2011

On the difference between 1 and 99

 

1% is when you spend the winters at your house on Fiji.

99% is when you heat your living quarters

with a single space heater.

1% is when your prescription is automatically

in your medicine cabinet and you don’t have to think about it.

99% is when you count the remaining pills of your

prescription and know you’ll run out before your SS check comes.

1% is when you tell your driver which car to drive today.

99% is when you walk everywhere you go

if your town doesn’t have buses.

1% is when you walk into the trendiest restaurant in town

and you don’t even need a reservation.

99% is when you buy outdated meat and produce

or stand in line at a soup kitchen.

1% is when you turn on the news and nod at the politician

who says if you can’t work, you shouldn’t eat.

99% is when you don’t know what the politician said

because you couldn’t pay the electric bill.

1% doesn’t have to go to work.

99% can’t even apply for a job because you’re unemployed

and they aren’t accepting applications from the unemployed.

1% turns away from the bottom 99% because if they don’t work

or pay taxes, they have no value.

99% may be buried in a Potter’s Field before the expected life span

because

. .you were malnourished, sick, numb from cold and depression,

. .and told you have to get off the sidewalk.

One will die acclaimed.

One will die unclaimed

. .because America can’t have street beggars.

But it does have an invisible army of the poor…unarmed,

under-housed, under-fed, under-educated, out of hope, out of time,

and out of social uniform.

Just so much cannon fodder for our Class Warfare.

Devona Wyant

I subscribe to Poem-a-Day and a couple of other services that deliver poetry to my mailbox.  I subscribe to a couple of list-servs that feature poets.  A precious few favor me with e-mails, somehow listing me among their friends.

I got this one today, probably unpublished elsewhere.  Watch for it.

[This poem above is not quoted, though it is the work of Ms. Wyant, because the quote formatting changed the formatting of the poem itself.  Please be sure to attribute the poem correctly to Ms. Wyant, who holds the copyright.]

Poet Devona Wyant, center. Caption from Lincolnton, North Carolina, Times-News: Poets Morgan DiStefano, Shane Manier and Devona Wyant and their group, Poetry Lincolnton, released their first anthology in June [2013].

Poet Devona Wyant, center. Caption from Lincolnton, North Carolina, Times-News: Poets Morgan DiStefano, Shane Manier and Devona Wyant and their group, Poetry Lincolnton, released their first anthology in June [2013].

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Art historians do better than conservatives on the history of DDT

November 11, 2011

The art historians at least get the facts right — why can’t conservatives and erstwhile scientists like Steven Milloy get it right?  This is from “The War Against Bugs,” by Steven Heller at imprint:

The War Against Bugs, by Print Magazine -- a Neocide ad from European media.

The War Against Bugs, by Print Magazine — a Neocide ad from European media.

With all due respect to entomologists, there is nothing aesthetically pleasing about bugs (insects by any other name). These little monsters certainly have ecological significance, but don’t tell me they are fun to have crawling around. Hence, chemical manufacturers have made it their business to find he most efficient means of ridding the pests while retaining the fine upstanding species. Too bad that anything designed to kill will doubtless have ill effects on he eco-system. In he 50s DDT was the magic bullet against such varieties as various potato beetles, coddling moth, corn earworm, cotton bollworm  and tobacco budworms (eeeecccchhhh!). Then in 1972, the US Environmental Protection Agency curtailed all use of DDT on crops. The ban did not take hold in other countries until much later, and DDT was vociferously promoted through eerie calls to arms like this poster by Savignac.

Read more: The War Against Bugs — Imprint-The Online Community for Graphic Designers
For great design products, visit our online store: MyDesignShop.com

Nota bene Mr. Heller does not claim DDT use against malaria-causing mosquitoes was ever banned.  He focuses instead on the promotion of DDT.

Truth in art.