Sure, okay. Because doing more of what isn’t working will surely work somehow.
(Alternate title: The beatings will continue until the morale improves.)
Obama says American kids spend too little time in school, putting them at a disadvantage with other students around the globe.
“Now, I know longer school days and school years are not wildly popular ideas,” the president said earlier this year. “Not with Malia and Sasha, not in my family, and probably not in yours. But the challenges of a new century demand more time in the classroom.”
The president, who has a sixth-grader and a third-grader, wants schools to add time to classes, to stay open late and to let kids in on weekends so they have a safe place to go.
[via]
I don’t have a problem with kids having a safe place to go, but the rest of it makes me insane. More insane. Insaner. More Insanerer.
The angrier they are, the more vibrantly beautiful they become
Walking from the cafe to his apartment to look for a rare book on octopuses in Haida mythology, I asked Dr. Anderson what draws certain people to cephalopods. The way he talks about them suggests an interest than runs deeper than science—he talks about why people don’t care about them as much as otters and killer whales and sharks, animals with “charismatic megafauna effect,” and the edges of his voice take on a tinge of resentment. “Nobody’s looking at octopuses besides me,” he said. “There are two species, maybe three, living in Puget Sound. The Enteroctopus dofleini and the red octopuses, which like to live in beer bottles. Nobody knows how many there are of those, either. I once found eight in eight beer bottles in a row. On a night dive, I saw 12 in one spot. But nobody seems to care.” He talked about how octopuses have personalities and maybe even emotions. “Nobody has proved that yet,” he said. “It might be up to me.” It takes a special kind of person, he suggests, to devote a life to the study of cephalopods.
What kind of person?
He paused. “You have to be different. They’re not cute and cuddly. Some would say they have a cold intelligence.”
[via]
First chair
I was in the band in high school.
Does that surprise you? It surprises me, and I there for it. In fact, I was in band for six years total and had the same director, Mr. Freeman, for all those years. Mr. Freeman liked me. I don’t know why. I must have been incredibly frustrating for him. There I was, possessed of all sorts of raw talent and a noticeable lack of ambition in equal parts. I could play well but didn’t like to practice. I never really learned to breathe properly but still pulled off good performances. I usually memorized the entire piece by the third time through it and so didn’t turn the pages when he really needed us to follow along and do that.
All sixth graders in the county were given some sort of assessment at the end of the year to see if they have any musical ability. I hadn’t given it a second though so when I was asked if I wanted to be in band, I said sure, and when I was asked what I wanted to play, I said flute because it was small and easy to carry. Also, no reeds.
I don’t remember much about those six years oddly enough. I remember becoming first chair fairly quickly and from there on being either first, second, or third, which might have bothered other people but didn’t bother me. I remember that my neighbor who was a senior when I was in 8th grade, started leaning on me to think about trying out for Drum Major when I got to high school. I could not imagine anything worse, really, and I never considered it, but Mr. Freeman never gave up on this baffling dream until I finally ran out of opportunities to avoid trying out and he realized I truly wasn’t interested.
What was he thinking, I wonder? I have always wondered. Because I am such an optimist, I suspect I made him so angry with my lack of discipline but annoying ability to perform when it mattered, that he wanted me to stop performing completely since I was a bad example. In middle school, whenever he was out and we had a substitute teacher, he left instructions that I be the director, which I hated. When we got to marching band in high school, he made me right-hand guide, which I also hated.
But I liked being in the band. Even though we were a small band at a poor high school in western North Carolina, we did okay, and sometimes placed well at competitions, and I liked being in the middle of all that music, no matter how pedestrian, that was being made. I always tended to pick apart music in my mind, sorting out the various layers and parts, so being in a band allowed me to indulge in that in real time.
Mr. Freeman was a good man, and a talented musician. I don’t know how he stood us sometimes and I wonder what he planned to do with his career. Did he mean to spend his adult life teaching truculent adolescents to play Stars and Stripes Forever? Probably not. But he did do just that and he did it with remarkable patience and skill. Teenagers are pretty wretched people sometimes, thoughtless and self-absorbed. It’s only now, 20 years later, that I realize how much I’d like to thank him for that remarkable patience and everything he taught me.
Group rules
Oh, Flickr Groups.
I like Flickr. I’ve got a few photos over there. I’ve met some neat people through Flickr and seen some wonderful photographs. I’ve joined a few groups and moderate some as well. These particular groups have all inevitably emerged from conversations among friends and are very specific. The ones I have joined are similarly straightforward and low maintenance. Ultimately, I am not in that many because there is nothing low maintenance about most Flickr groups. Let us consider some rules I found just this morning in a handful of different groups:
- This is a family group. You know what that means. Artistic nudity is allowed.
- There is a special area for sharing thoughts and feeling, and help each other to raise our souls to be noble. No one is perfect, God only is perfect, but the perfect human is who keeps trying to be perfect and then noble spirit, a place to raise our souls for a better life and better community.
- Please Comment on 3 for every picture you post.
- Do not give awards to your own photos.
- This Group is also about ARTISTIC Presentation of NATURE!! Therefore, our talented painters and illustrators are mostly welcome, too!! And, GOOD-TASTE processed (“photoshoped”) NATURE-images are also mostly welcome!! But COLLAGE or STILL- LIFE images are not allowed!!
- If you get three or more comments at one of your photos in this group you can be promoted to “Creative Master”
- IMPORTANT: WE DON’T ACCEPT MEMBERS WITHOUT AN ICON
- No verbally attacking other members
- If you’re looking for extra awards, reposting is allowed! However, please make sure that you remove your photo to repost ONLY if it has made it to page 5 or beyond! You are only allowed to repost an image ONCE! If a 2nd repost shows up, it will be deleted!
- No PEOPLE, HUMANS, PERSONS, etc.
- Please only nominate pictures that you feel are worthy of our Group
- To keep the view of the * POOL * very special…I am having to sweep the group daily, so this means that….**shots that simply do not gel to the pool will be removed**, it is nothing personal, I just want to KEEP THE LOOK *MAGIC* Remember only *YOUR BEST*. This is not a dumping ground!
- Your photos must show reflections on water, glass, sea, lakes, rivers or any other shining surfaces. The reflection must cover at least 20% of your photo.(Please avoid posting common sunset photos, without visible reflection. They may not been accepted)
All of these groups–ALL OF THEM–have a profoundly garish and usually animated award badge. In fact, I have noticed that the more a group considers itself an arbiter of good taste and quality photography, the more likely it is to have the most breathtakingly garish and animated logo. And this logo is something you are supposed to litter across the Flickr landscape as a condition of your membership (the standard ratio seems to be three awards/comments for every one photo added to the group). Because it means something? Because it has some sort of magical power? I don’t know.
If you’re like me, you read these invites and find yourself annoyed that so much is demanded of voluntary membership. Okay, that anything is demanded. I think the reason it bothers me is the tacit assumption that what I want more than anything is to belong, to join, to be a part of this random meaningless group of people and bathe in their over-punctuated praise of my photo. It makes me as uncomfortable as it makes me angry. If you are dispensing that much exuberant praise, then I have a difficult time taking it seriously or even caring. If you expect me to dispense that much exuberant praise (or, indeed, any exuberant praise), then you are quite simply mad.
While I’m at it, I also hate it when people say “my friend!” There’s a lot of that at Flickr as well.
Cocked at a disturbing angle
Flames
Smokey the Bear heads
into the autumn woods
with a red can of gasoline
and a box of wooden matches.
His ranger’s hat is cocked
at a disturbing angle.
His brown fur gleams
under the high sun
as his paws, the size
of catcher’s mitts,
crackle into the distance.
He is sick of dispensing
warnings to the careless,
the half-wit camper,
the dumbbell hiker.
He is going to show them
how a professional does it.
-Billy Collins
I love this poem. Truly and with all my heart. There are some more Billy Collins poems here.
Edited to add: And here is another favorite.
Goober.
J: Driiiiiiive cayerful!
T: Draaahve cayerful now, ya’ heeyur?
J: You be sweet now.
J: Y’all come on with us.
J: Don’t be a stranger!
T: Oh my god, I heard “You be sweet now!” about 500 times. Jeet yet?
J: Try to ack like sumbody.
T: My favorite is still “You BEST ack like sumbody.”
J: BES. You BES ack like sumbody.
T: I stand corrected. Goober.
