The Undiscovered podcast episode "Party Lines" is the best piece of non-partisan political commentary I've heard in a long time (especially since Dan Carlin hasn't put anything out for a while) which means that very few people will be interested in what they have to report; the show explains a new mathematical method to determine how much gerrymandering has gone into a particular voting map (and the answer is usually "a lot") and the groundbreaking method-- like the method of throwing a cornhole beanbag-- is beautiful in its simplicity; votes are tallied and then a computer draws a trillion feasible voting maps and re-tallies the actual votes in regards to these particular borders, so you can see lots and lots of results and determine a few things:
1) what probably should have happened,
2) what's in the realm of possibility,
3) and what's an absurd result because of rigged maps . . .
this method is so beautifully elegant that it has passed through the Pennsylvania Supreme Court (though Trump advised Pennsylvanians to "challenge" the new map, as the "original was correct" . . . but we know Trump isn't so good at math) and while the Supreme Court is avoiding the issue (probably because gerrymandering helps Republicans right now) they won't avoid it forever, because as soon as Democrats take power, the conservative court will make the logical ruling and trust the numbers; Democrats and Republicans both love to gerrymander, it's just that Republicans control everything right now, so they need to gerrymander while the gerrymandering is good, which I totally understand; my other political thought today, which is a bit of an aside, is that, after much reading, discussion, and research, I've decided that most folks voted for Trump to give the middle finger to liberals and the political establishment-- they don't care about his lack of experience, his policy on healthcare, or his crass buffoonery . . . in fact, his crass buffoonery, unsolicited and stupid lies, lowbrow language, braggadocio, old man whiteness, racism, sexism, unwarranted confidence, clueless sensibility, and general un-hipness is exactly what Trump supporters love about him, because they know this will trigger absolutely irrational unseated anger in intellectuals and liberals-- there is no one more underserving of attention and power than Donald Trump, and therefore he is the perfect candidate to elect . . . so I tried to figure out who would be the perfect liberal candidate to trigger all the same emotions in conservatives and it's obviously not Barack Obama-- Obama actually got elected, because he's too on the nose . . . he's nerdy and intellectual, but he's black-- his saving grace-- because no conservative wants to be that overtly racist in this day and age, so I think the Democratic inversion of Donald Trump is Fred Armisen, he's ironically uncool, indecisive, apologetic but still kind of an asshole, unflinchingly liberal, empathetic, utterly nerdy, capable of weird indignance, and-- like Portlandia-- an inside joke that only liberals get.
Halloween is a Test
I have nothing creative in the tank, as I'm using all my willpower to not eat the Reeses peanut butter cups in the closet.
Will Lab-grown Chicken Still Be Slimy?
Handling raw chicken is almost gross enough to make me become a vegetarian (but not quite).
The Cheez-it Chompspiracy
I'm not a big fan of orange foods (aside from oranges, which I love) and while I'll occasionally munch on a carrot or sample a sweet potato, purely because I know they are salubrious, what I really truly and passionately despise are orange processed foods-- especially foods with weird orange dust that coat your fingers, such as Doritos and Cheese Doodles . . . my children know they can't eat those two orange foods anywhere in my vicinity, without the consequence of receiving a nutritional diatribe; one of the orange foods that I am trying to (unhappily) tolerate are Cheez-its . . . they're totally disgusting and barely qualify as victuals but my kids like them and as long as they don't take them out of the kitchen or eat an ungodly amount of them, I try to withhold my ire . . . but the classroom is a different place entirely, a place of intelligence and education, so when I noticed a charming, athletic, and intelligent student of mine chomping away at some Cheez-its, I immediately launched into a processed food lecture . . . and then I noticed a girl behind her was also snacking away . . . and she had a bag of Cheez-its and when I asked if this was planned, yet another female student lifted her own bag, the third bag of Cheez-its in a fifteen foot vicinity and these students insisted that they brought the snacks independently, and that there was no Cheez-it conspiracy between the three of them, and they were good students, honors students, so I believed them . . . and I'd like to add that I really like cantaloupe, especially if there's a slice of prosciutto wrapped around it.
Republicans: Mad as Hell (Just The Way They Like It)
The Weeds provided a great explanation for the growing political polarization in our whacked-out nation with their episode "Republicans control everything, and they're mad as hell" . . . Republicans should be content and proud of their victories and marching forward on various conservative reforms with a coordinated consensus, but instead they are angry about everything-- the caravan, abortion, immigrants, environmental protections, the rights of consumers, football players expressing their first amendment rights, conservative voices being silenced on college campuses-- and the reason for this anger may be that even though they've galvanized their political party (through gerrymandering and the fact that rural areas are overrepresented mathematically in our voting system) they have no traction in the media and culture . . . despite, Republican political power, the media and cultural hubs of NYC and coastal California will not bend the knee; coastal elites and the entertainment industry (aside form Kanye) ridicule and lampoon Trump and his party; meanwhile, Millennials-- even conservative Millennials-- are less racist, more tolerant of gay marriage and transgender people, more open to immigration than older conservatives, and they are more willing to support socialist policies that might actually help young people navigate healthcare, college, and the labor market . . . many college campuses are more liberal than ever and the Republicans just can't seem to get anyone intellectual to respect them and listen to them . . . so they remain angry and embittered, despite the fact that they are running the country and could have a great impact (or perhaps will have a great impact in deregulating all sorts of business, banking, and environment policy) but instead of having an open dialogue about these issues, Republicans will keep pushing wedge issues like the caravan and the wall and abortion, so they can get mad as hell and lament the fact that the culture won't reflect their policies (conservatives may also be angrier in temperament due to psychological reasons, because most conservatives are concerned more about "purity, loyalty, and authority" than most liberals).
Thus Endeth the Week
Parent/teacher conferences, a couple of away games, a puking player on the bur ride to South Amboy, forgotten socks by my son at South Amboy (so he had to share socks) and a bleeding player on the way home from South Amboy, Pub Night, a hard fought loss this afternoon, dinner with my family for my brother's birthday, and a bunch of other stuff . . . an epic week, so I'm rooting for this blustery Nor'easter to cancel all the weekend stuff.
Female Hillbilly Escapes the Heartland
Sarah Smarsh's Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth is a more poetic, even harder luck version of J.D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy, and while at times I got mired in the details I still think this is a worthwhile and important read, especially for effete liberal middle class folk like myself that can barely understand the way 60 million rural people live in our vast and economically imbalanced shitshow of a country; the image that becomes a metaphor for Smarsh's youth is when she goes to pet some half-feral kittens, though she is worried that her scent will repel the mother cat from her young: "I reached out and patted a furry head . . . the head rolled away from the small body, leaving a track of blood on the concrete floor," and her dad explains that "a possum or a fox got 'em" and gnawed all the heads off the cute little kittens; while in suburbia, we care for and protect our puppies and kittens, on the farm in Kansas, that's not the case . . . Smarsh has a true "free range" youth and she was lucky to survive it and move into the middle class; while there are moments of unadulterated fun and her parents are not stereotypical rednecks, nor are they stereotypical conservatives, she is often surrounded by drunks and addiction, violence and transience, and she has a hard time-- despite her great intelligence-- finding her educational groove; the foibles and flaws of the folks surrounding her could generally have been softened by money, but there was no money to be found and so Smarsh realizes that "I was living in an environment full of what society had recently discovered was dangerous: the smoke, the fried food, the unbuckled seat belts . . . but I didn't know the half of it: sugary diets that led to cavities, noxious glue in the walls of cheap houses, nitrates from farm runoff in our drinking water, insecticides on the wind that shimmered down from crop-dusting airplanes" and-- without the ability to move, seek healthcare or help-- that these problems have blossomed into "obesity, diabetes, meta-amphetamine addiction, and opioids overprescribed by the same doctors who were supposed to help," and Smarsh grapples with the fact, that due to shame, racism, and pride, people where she lived voted against their best interests and backed Reagan and the Republicans, who were interested in gutting environmental protections, ending the possibility of small family farms, and erasing the promise of affordable healthcare and rural school funding, and anything else that would help the people in her impoverished predicament; America-- especially the Republican party-- has shamed the poor for being poor, despite the fact that we've created a system that has incredible benefits for the winners and incredible costs for the losers, even if the losers work hard every day, so hard that their bodies disintegrate and they have no way of healing themselves; Smarsh points out that there wasn't stereotypical sexist behavior in this world; women suffered violence from drunken and broken men, but they also made the big family decisions, left when they felt like it was time to leave, did work that was just as difficult as the men, and partied as hard as the dudes . . . it's a good book and beautifully written, but it's a tough pill to swallow and the easy answer is for us economically stable folks on the coasts is to say: "they voted for this and they got what they voted for," but these policies aren't good for any of us-- there by the Grace of God goes I-- and the newest one is how the Trump administration has undervalued the social cost of carbon emissions . . . absurd, awful, and will hurt those that live close to the land and don't have the option to up and leave it more than it will hurt the rest of us.
A+ in Chest Hair
Yesterday we had a half day of school with the students and then had to return at 5:30 PM for the dreaded parent/teacher conference night . . . before I left for work for the second time, I threw on the same clothes I had worn in the morning: khaki pants and a festive red plaid button down shirt, I then drove back to EBHS, watched some of the soccer game-- the weather was warm and beautiful-- and then headed to my classroom to chat with parents; after six or seven conferences, I had a break, so I went to the bathroom and when I looked in the mirror, I noted that my button down shirt was unbuttoned beyond my normal level (and my normal level of unbuttoning is already in the "casual" zone, as not only do I have tenure but I also have a thick neck) but tonight I was unbuttoned to a place most people would call "club" and I had shown these parents some serious chest hair . . . and it's well past beach season, so it was pretty unkempt.
A+ in Stealing
I had a bit of a Willy Loman moment yesterday when my son Ian opened his book bag and produced one of the soccer balls I instructed him to steal from gym class, and I then commended him for his initiative . . . I had just finished teaching the play and quickly remembered the moment when Willy condoned Biff's "borrowing" of the football from the locker-room and then later wondered why Biff ran off with Bill Oliver's fountain pen; I'd like to think this situation is slightly different but you will have to be the judge; last week, my soccer team told me that the gym class has been using three balls that belong to our travel soccer team-- we have practice at night on the school turf and sometimes we leave a ball or two behind, and these balls are then impressed into service for the school (despite the fact that they have our team name and the assistant coach's name on them) and so I told my team that we have to get those balls back, as the ball bag is rather depleted . . . and, of course, Ian was able to smuggle one out of class and bring it back to its rightful home . . . it was probably a bad way to go about getting the balls back, especially because in the past Ian has been involved in some sketchy situations at school, but I'm still proud of his moxie (and glad to have another ball in the bag).
Like Father (Unlike Father)
Alex took his sweatshirt off at the restaurant last night and I was sitting on the same side of the table as him and I said, "Look at this!" and then I took off my fleece and-- surprise!-- we we wearing the exact same powder blue "Moab Utah" t-shirt, but Alex wasn't as excited as I was . . . in fact, he put his sweatshirt back on.
A Good Day to Fly a Kite, Not Chip a Ball Over the Flat Four
Wind: the hot sauce of weather (we had to play on the waterfront in Elizabeth today and while the temperature was a deceptive 47 degrees, the high winds really spiced things up).
Less Drama, Crisper Salads
Winter skipped the whole "coming" thing: it's here (especially in the English Office, which lost heat this week because a boiler pipe went . . . it was so fantastically cold inside that I was bringing random teachers in the hallway in just to feel it . . . our boss had to leave because she couldn't bear being there for an extended time, and we felt really stupid complaining it was too cold because we spent so much time last month complaining that it was so hot).
Nothing Like a Captive Audience (When You're Feeling Your Oats)
My first period creative writing class is comprised of eleven girls and one boy (and me) and this one boy wrote a wonderful personification piece (inspired by Sylvia Plath's "Mirror" and this gem from the New Yorker) from the perspective of a diamond engagement ring that was rejected once, stored away for a few years, and then got a second chance and found success . . . after the author read it aloud, I heard a few grumbles from the ladies, so I asked them-- knowing it was a loaded question-- if anyone had a problem with a recycled diamond ring, and then the festivities began . . . because hell hath no fury like a woman scorned with a secondhand ring; apparently, you should buy a "new" diamond specifically for the new person you have in mind (despite the fact that this "new" diamond is already 1 to 3.5 billion years old) and this led to a lot of good-natured early morning debate, and the ladies had to endure my various rants about strip-mining, the DeBeers conspiracy, the overhang, blood diamonds, rampant materialism, and the influence of the media on a saturated, overpriced market . . . in the end, we all agreed that it was a fun way to start the day, though I had little or no success convincing any of these women to forego engagement rings (and then, as an added bonus, a senior in my comp class said that people were getting sick because the weather dropped forty degrees in two days, so I got to call her "grandma" and lecture the class about why we actually get sick more when it's cold (it's mainly because viruses survive better in low humidity . . . although I also found some reasons that contradict my lecture-- perhaps when our feet are cold then our immune system doesn't work as well . . . so I'll have to apologize tomorrow for calling her "grandma," as perhaps the whole old-time "don't go outside with your hair wet" faction is right).
I Need to Stop Losing My Temper (But My Kids Also Need to Stop Doing Stupid Shit)
Catherine was at a cooking class last night, so I was in charge of dinner-- but she kindly ran to Costco and bought us two rotisserie chickens, so I didn't have a whole lot to prepare; I made some green beans and heated up some store-bought mashed potatoes (yuck) and put one of the rotisserie chickens on a baking sheet in the oven, and a few minutes later, once it was hot, I took it out of the oven and told the kids to come-and-get-it . . . meanwhile, as the kids started spooning out green beans and potatoes, I carried the other rotisserie chicken down to the extra fridge in the basement, not thinking that anything could go wrong during my momentary absence, but when I got back upstairs, my fourteen year old son Alex was carving the rotisserie chicken with a big knife-- and this was not the problem . . . his other hand was the problem-- as he was holding the chicken in place with, of all things, our big red fabric oven mitt, and once he carved some meat, he grabbed it with the thumb and paw of the mitt, and this mitt was absolutely filthy-- it's an oven mitt, for Christ's sake-- so it was filthy before he started fondling the chicken with it and now it was moist and filthy and soaked with rotisserie chicken fat and this simultaneously grossed me out and pissed me off, causing me to launch into a profanity laced tirade about common sense and culinary hygiene, after which I showed him how to use a fork . . . and then I apologized and told him I shouldn't have lost my temper over something so ridiculous, and he apologized for being really stupid and we all agreed that the oven mitt is NOT for handling food.
Hey Stacey, A Good Podcast is Better Than a Bad Book
Jonathan Goldstein's podcast Heavyweight is by turns poignant, acerbic, mock-epic and-- of course-- funny . . . it generally has a very different tone than Malcolm Gladwell's often epically profound podcast Revisionist History, but each series has an episode that tackles the fickle and arbitrary nature of human memory; Gladwell's take on this theme is "Free Brian Williams,"a heavy tale of an NBC news anchor who told a war story that wasn't true and the consequences this false memory had on his career and reputation . . . Goldstein's version is a comic masterpiece, "#16 Rob" is about character actor Rob Corddry's attempt to convince his family that when he was a kid, he broke his arm (or did he?) and it's worth saving for a long drive with the kids . . . it's exactly an hour long and worth every minute (and I would recommend this podcast to my stupid friend Stacey, except that she's given up listening to podcasts and instead started reading/listening to books during the time she used to listen to podcasts-- she made this resolution because she started listening to a bunch of stupid podcasts where comedians waxed philosophical about how important comedy is and she wanted to break the habit, but I think she threw out the baby with the bathwater-- of course it's admirable that she's reading so much and I'll begrudgingly admit that she's compiled a huge list of books she conquered this year-- but still, listening to a good podcast is better than a reading bad book . . . and "Rob" is a really good podcast, certainly better than the last book I read).
Don't Blame Me . . . I Was Doing Laundry
I would like to point out, for the record, that I finished Christina Dalcher's dystopian feminist novel Vox in a laundromat . . . because the first half of this book seems designed to make women really angry at white men, for oppressing and subjugating them-- so I found it both ironic and appropriate that I was doing the kind of work that men in the novel freed themselves from when they shackled their women's voice boxes . . . women in this Fundamentalist Christian/Extra-Trumpian near future of this novel are forced to wear word counters on their wrists, which only allow them 100 words a day-- if they speak over the limit, then they get shocks of increasing severity . . . this book is the opposite of The Power in scope, quality, and theme; The Power is true sci-fi, the world is the main character and it is comprehensively evoked by Naomi Alderman, while Vox is a bit half-baked, the Pure movement version of Christianity and the surrounding corrupt politicians more of a caricature than a possibility-- although perhaps that's what people said about the Taliabn when they were just getting started-- and the larger themes of the book get lost in the plot, big ideas about how society can make children become monsters, how communication is the cornerstone of our society, and how Socratic dialogue between all people propels knowledge and civilization forward are pushed to the wayside as the story becomes a laser-focused, plot driven thriller (where, ironically, in the end, a bunch of men come to the rescue . . . it's a bit out of nowhere) and the science-fiction is lost in a world of chivralic fantasy . . . I finished because I wanted to know what happened-- which isn't saying much-- and while the premise had some potential, if you're looking for a dystopian feminist manifesto, try the aforementioned book The Power or the classic The Handmaid's Tale . . . or even the wacky Charlotte Perkins Gilman fin de siecle utopian novel Herland (I'd also like to point out that out of the several dozen people I saw come through the laundromat, I was the only one with a book . . . everyone else was either watching the weather on the TV or poking at their phones).
Capsule Reviews
I almost forgot to write a sentence today because Cat and I got so wrapped up in the Amazon series Forever . . . I can't tell you about it without ruining things (unlike the fantastic Netflix show I watched with my kids earlier in the evening, Adam Ruins Everything . . . a show in which Adam everything everything about everything, ruining these things but also enlightening you) but my advice is this: watch the first three episodes of Forever in one sitting and then decide if you're going to proceed.
It Would Be Thirteen Years
Here's some more house stuff that you might eventually learn, but-- unfortunately-- by the time you learn it, you won't get too many future chances to put your knowledge to good use . . . but perhaps some lucky homeowner will stumble upon this post before it's too late: if your contractor installs the stacked washer/dryer laundry center and then builds the bathroom cabinets, then thirteen years later, when the stacked washer/dryer laundry center breaks and you need to have it removed so a new one can be installed, there's no guarantee that the stacked washer/dryer laundry center will fit between the sink and the cabinets and then you'll have to rip out the cabinets, reschedule the installation, and make another visit to the laundromat.
Thanks Weather Gods!
The weather gods have responded to my plea for some decent fall weather, so I'm going to go outside and enjoy it; I'll write something profound once it starts raining again (and I have a feeling my sentences would be a lot shorter and a lot more vacuous if I lived in San Diego).
Dave Appeals to the Weather Gods
Hey Weather Gods . . . I know you're listening . . . I'm on a sentence-writing-strike until we get some fall weather up in here!
Touch Typing = Coffee with Sugar and Creamer
The unemployment rate is low right now, but there are problems with the numbers-- they don't accurately represent all the people-- and it's a lot of people-- who have dropped out of the job market entirely: these people aren't retired, they aren't employed, and they aren't seeking employment . . . and they are mainly men; a recent episode of Hidden Brain attempts to explain one factor of this phenomenon . . . some of the sectors of the economy that are booming are regarded as "women's work," and men are having a hard time moving into these jobs; the episode-- entitled "Man Up"-- focuses on nursing, and how the men who have made the transition often need to compensate with extra-manliness because (unlike femininity) manhood is "hard to earn and easy to lose"; I never thought about this all that much until I listened to this episode, but I certainly work in a field that could be considered "women's work"-- I teach Creative Writing class!-- and I'm used to working side-by-side with women, and-- more often than not-- I've had a woman as my boss; I always thought of this as a perk of my job-- we have lots of smart, charming, attractive women in my department, but I also might compensate about certain things to accentuate my manliness: whenever my buddy Bob types anything-- he's a fantastic and flamboyant touch typist-- I give him a hard time for excelling at something so feminine, and whenever my friend Terry puts sugar and creamer in his coffee, I tell him that a man drinks his coffee black . . .on the whole though, it's fun to work with a bunch of women and it's easy to be the funniest person in the room (because women aren't all that funny) and if there's ever a heavy object that needs lifting or a tight jar lid that needs unscrewing, I'm at the ready.
Dave Tries (Awkwardly and Unsuccessfully) to Use an Interrobang‽
The interrobang is a very specific unit of punctuation, designed for use at the end of question that is both exclamatory and rhetorical; I attempted to use one the other night but-- perhaps because of lack of practice-- I did not meet with any success; my wife and I had just rolled in from a night of comedy at the State Theater and I was very thirsty-- it's always hot and dry in that theater-- and so I took a quick of slug of the first bottle of seltzer I found, which happened to be "mint lime" flavor, a flavor which i find detestable, and so I yelled, "WHO BOUGHT ALL THIS MINT FLAVORED SELTZER‽" and as soon as this exclamatory (and rhetorical) question left my lips, I knew I was in trouble . . . because my wife does the grocery shopping and so she bought all the mint flavored seltzer; apparently, she likes the various types of mint flavored seltzer that appeared in our kitchen recently (and the boys and I hadn't gotten around to gently breaking the news that we did NOT like this new-fangled mint flavored seltzer) and so she let me have it-- both for my exclamatory and rhetorical tone and for the fact that I never do the grocery shopping and therefore, I shouldn't be complaining about the products that miraculously materialize in our kitchen for our consumption, and I deserved all this vitriol and more (and then I found a great use for this seltzer that I formerly found detestable: a splash of it goes perfectly with mezcal on the rocks).
Was Bob a Coffee Samaritan or an Electromagnetic Rube?
Last week, my friend and colleague Bob was driving home from work and he spotted a travel coffee mug balanced on the roof of the Xterra in front of him and Bob is a good dude, so when he came to stop at a busy intersection, he exited his car, jogged up to the driver, motioned him to roll down the window, and told him about the cup on the back of the car and asked if he should grab it for him, and the driver-- without making eye contact-- said, "Sure" and so Bob jogged to the back of the Xterra and tried to pull the cup off the hood, but it was oddly heavy and kind of sticky, but he persevered, got it off the roof, and handed it to the driver, who took it from him and said, "Thanks" -- but still no eye contact-- and then the driver stuck the cup to the outside of his door, a defiant and gravity-defying move that made Bob realize the the coffee cup was magnetic, seriously magnetic, and then, without further explanation, the guy drove off; Bob jogged back to his car, through heavy traffic, confused as to what just happened-- he wasn't sure if he rescued a coffee cup from the perils of the open road or if he had just fallen prey to a weird practical joke; a few minutes later he pulled up next to the Xterra-- and he knew it was the right car because there was a coffee mug stuck to the driver side door-- and the driver still wouldn't make eye contact with him and so the question still looms large in both of our troubled minds: was Bob a good Samaritan or a gullible rube . . . and if Bob was a gullible rube, then was the coffee-mug-bit a piece of hilarious prop comedy or was it the work of a true menace to society, who likes to see good dudes run through traffic so he can show off his magnet.
Done and Gone (Are Not the Same)
Catherine and I went our separate ways today; she took the boys and a friend to Comic Con at the Javits Center in NYC (apparently it's a vast venue and after lunch she let them go off by themselves while she wandered alone and collected free stuff and at 3:30 PM she sent me a text that said, "Going to the parking deck now . . . Boys are gone," which scared the crap out of me until I realized she meant to text "done," not "gone") and meanwhile I had another schizophrenic day . . . early this morning I took the dog to the beach-- her first time there-- and it went extremely well: she didn't get carsick (I sat her in the front seat, kept the window open and gave her a Swedish fish at the beginning and middle of each ride, all internet tips that seemed to do the trick) and she loved the sea and sand and surf . . . the water was so warm that I took a swim; then I headed home because our washer/dryer died and I needed to drag four giant baskets of laundry to Wayne's Wash World III, a laundromat "conveniently" located right in the middle of town, so there's not much parking . . . no spaces in the little lot in the back so I had to settle for a spot right across from the place, but on the other side of Route 27, which is quite busy on Sunday; so I lugged the four baskets across the road, washed them, dried them, and then carried them back across the street; my second time doing this I had some serious attitude when I plunged into traffic, I was hot and bothered from digging around in the giant dryer and basically tempting someone to hit me and my laundry . . . perhaps the money from the lawsuit would pay for the new appliances; then I rushed home to meet the guy who needed to flush out our tankless hot water heater and when we cleared some space for him to get to the equipment and hook up his lines, I noticed that under the box that held my wife's wedding dress, there was a bunch of black mold . . . but the beach was beautiful, as was our walk from Ocean Grove into Asbury, it's just unfortunate that it didn't happen in the reverse order (because now all I'm thinking about is cleaning that mold in the basement, instead of the warm surf . . . but at least I have a couple photos to refresh my memory . . . and after doing all that stuff, I went and coached my travel soccer team, which has merged with my friend Phil's team, and Phil carried the ball bag from the goal over to the bench and then he asked me what the deal was-- he said the bag smelled like vomit and so I told him that was because my dog puked on it and I hadn't washed it yet . . . but that was two weeks ago, hopefully-- with a Swedish fish or two-- Lola won't be doing that anymore).
From Mitvah to Melee
Today, we went from a lovely bar mitzvah-- featuring marvelous speeches from both the man of honor (Martin) and his dad (Adrian's speech was a bit of a roast about Martin's artistic nerdiness, complete with references to D&D, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Magic: The Gathering, popsicle stick sculptures, and Kubo and the Two Strings . . . which are all things my kids enjoy as well) and an awesome meal at Stage Left . . . to something else entirely: Ian, Ben and I hustled out of the restaurant to get to their club soccer match, which turned out to be the opposite of spiritual nerdery and delicious foodery; the Cosmos played a team from Paterson, which seemed to be comprised of a number of kids with either pituitary disorders or forged paperwork, and the game got ugly and then it got uglier; a kid kept punching my son in the back of the neck and the ref finally noticed and issued a yellow card and called a PK, Ian buried it and all hell broke loose, the ref issued another card, the recipient cursed out the ref, some sort of scuffle erupted and the refs finally ejected two players from the Paterson side . . . so they were down to 9 players (but winning the game 3 -1) and then the Cosmos scored again; meanwhile, the red-carded players came over to the bleachers and the Paterson parents congratulated them for their spirited and violent play, and then cursed us out (in both English and Spanish) and the game slowly wound down and the Cosmos got one last corner, and Ian launched a perfect ball and before our kid could head it, he was pushed to the ground . . . no call and the final whistle was blown and then-- of course-- there was fight during the handshake line-up and the refs confiscated the Paterson team's player cards so they could red card the entire team and the coach and consequently prevent them from playing their next match, then the Paterson players came back to the field, with their parents following close behind, a ref got pushed, and it looked like a full brawl was imminent, but the Cosmos coach got our players away from the field and then there was a lot of angry milling around and finally the refs vacated the premises with the Paterson player cards and then there was more angry milling around and then the refs came back and spoke to both teams for a while and then the refs made the players do the handshake line again-- a good intention that everyone knew would result in more chaos-- and apparently, according to several witnesses, the Paterson players spit on their hands-- of course-- so there was even more discussions and arguing and then we finally split, and it was a bipolar day to say the least (but I never felt threatened because I brought Lola to the game and she was ready to rumble).
College, Expensive and Absurd (and great fodder for a novel)
Take a second rate college with an inane administration, add a number of irate and eccentric teachers of the arts, add curricular and campus dysfunction and you've got the kind of novel English teachers love: the academic satire . . . it's a fairly narrow genre but-- typical of my profession-- I have read too many books of this ilk and I have a number of favorites (Moo by Jane Smiley, Straight Man by Richard Russo, Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon, I Am Charlotte Simmons by Tom Wolfe, White Noise by Don DeLillo, Giles Goat Boy by John Barth are a few) and I'm going to add Julie Schumacher's epistolary novel Dear Committee Members and the traditionally written sequel The Shakespeare Requirement to the list; The Shakespeare Requirement, like it's predecessor, is mainly very funny, though it tackles some serious issues as well-- especially if you're a parent or student, shelling out 50,000 dollars a year for your education-- Jay Fitger, the unhappily divorced and always irate Creative Writing Professor, is now department chair and he needs to garner consensus on a statement of vision, so the college doesn't prune his worthless non-STEM department down to nothing; he's teaching a "Literature of the Apocalypse" class in an antediluvian science classroom that is literally (and inadvertently) apocalyptic: " a faintly illuminated bunkerlike enclosure . . . this windowless chamber had an emergency showerhead in one corner and presumably, at the time of the first atomic explosions, been a science lab" and he informs his students that they "should leave all gleaming gewgaws at home and take notes by hand," and he's not just talking about cell phones," Fitger-- though his face is swollen from several wasp stings-- more apocalypse-- says he is talking about everything: "iPhones, iPads, laptops, desktops, earbuds, tape recorders, DVD players, Game Boys, minifridges, pocket pets, laser pointers, calculators, e-readers, slides rules, astrolabes and-- unless they could supply a note form a medical professional-- iron lung or dialysis machines," which is pitch perfect tone for a sardonic professor in a slowly dying department in a system that has become too expensive for the students, too bureaucratic for intellectual pursuit, and too pragmatic for the arts and there is the battle between liberals and conservatives-- and though the liberals outnumber the conservatives, their departments are being starved, while Econ has the fund-raising ability, the new digs, and the blessings of the dean-- the school is going to weed out less successful departments, departments that can't pull in "customers," and this is based on some real facts-- college students are shifting their majors to studies that seem more practical--so less students are majoring in English, History, Philosophy, etc and more students are majoring in STEM (science, technology engineering and math) thought he research doesn't really show that majoring in these means you''re more likely to find a career but it does feel that way . . . if you're spending so much money on college, than perhaps you should study money, not something silly like literature or philosophy or art . . . or Shakespeare; Schumacher also satirizes the whole "coddling of the American mind" situation, the micro-triggers and the overly liberal feel-good campus zeitgeist of the bulk of the students, in sharp contrast to the tactical advances made by the various teachers and administrators . . . this may be the last book in this genre I read until my kids graduate from college, for obvious reasons.
Peanuts Solves Your Existential Woes
I was nervous all day today because (as rumor had it) we were facing the best middle school team on our schedule-- Metuchen-- and my crew hadn't lost a middle school soccer game in nearly two years; we were undefeated last year and only lost one game the season before . . . but all good things have to come to an end and we went down today to a big, fast, skilled team; my team is generally quite small and we got knocked off the ball in the middle of the field and struggled to penetrate . . . the score was 1 - 0 at half, off a half-volley rocket shot, and in the second half we failed to clear a couple balls in the box and ended up losing 3 - 0; my only advice was that we could have run through the ball more and we could have committed more fouls-- as we were so overmatched in size and speed that the refs weren't calling much when we did slam our bodies into the larger kids . . . luckily, there's always a Peanuts comic to celebrate a rough day on the pitch, and this one immediately came to mind.
Dave Retires From Parent Activism
My wife and kids were very proud of me for all my parent activism (unlike Marls and Zman-- see yesterday's comments) and I must say that, while the process was exhausting, I was happy to help enact some change around this ponderous journal assignment and to open up the dialogue about homework in general at the high school level . . . I ended up celebrating my anti-homework crusade at the laundromat last night (how dare the dryer break during soccer season!) but I want to post the email I received from the principal and superintendent to show how seriously the administration in Highland Park took my concerns and how timely they replied to all my emails . . . while I never want to tackle an issue like this again, I'm glad to see that if you're logical, persistent, and thorough . . . and you talk to everyone you know about the problem, that you can actually get something done at the local level:
Hello Dave
The humanities director and I met with the English Department this morning. The humanities director and I will also be reaching out to Ms. Berit Gordon, a Literacy consultant, to work with the department on its efforts to tier expectations for writing by taking into account best practice research and differentiation of assessments. We have already reached out with Dr. Taylor's assistance to Dr. Heather Casey, the coordinator of the literacy program at Rider University for her guidance as well. One of our teachers is also working with Rutgers on the expository writing class so we have a vested interest in reviewing practice.
Improving our writing assignments is in line with each high school department's goal this year to identify differentiated assessments and share them with each other moving forward. I have requested that the English department revise current practice for double entry journals to include as part of the evaluation of the task that the students select five to ten entries/annotations they feel are the best reflection of their efforts and for which they will receive written feedback from the teachers. This will encourage the students to be reflective with their writing and to take more ownership of the assessment process. As I stated in the previous email, Dr. Taylor, Ms. F., and I all agree that to make any other large-scale changes to the assignment so late in the process is not practical. Ms. M. did share with me today that she made an adjustment on her own with her students today regarding the word count requirement and the due date for the assignment.
The department along with all its members is committed to reviewing practice and improving the writing feedback process moving forward. They also strongly believe that students need to write more in order to improve their writing, which I support wholeheartedly.
Ms. F. and I have also expressed to Dr. Taylor the need to revise the homework policy since it is outdated. He has expressed that he will work on this timely issue with the board.
I hope that this addresses the issues you have raised and ask that you continue to reach out to teachers first when you have a question or concern. If you are unable to resolve the concern at that level, I will always do my best to assist.
Hello Dave
The humanities director and I met with the English Department this morning. The humanities director and I will also be reaching out to Ms. Berit Gordon, a Literacy consultant, to work with the department on its efforts to tier expectations for writing by taking into account best practice research and differentiation of assessments. We have already reached out with Dr. Taylor's assistance to Dr. Heather Casey, the coordinator of the literacy program at Rider University for her guidance as well. One of our teachers is also working with Rutgers on the expository writing class so we have a vested interest in reviewing practice.
Improving our writing assignments is in line with each high school department's goal this year to identify differentiated assessments and share them with each other moving forward. I have requested that the English department revise current practice for double entry journals to include as part of the evaluation of the task that the students select five to ten entries/annotations they feel are the best reflection of their efforts and for which they will receive written feedback from the teachers. This will encourage the students to be reflective with their writing and to take more ownership of the assessment process. As I stated in the previous email, Dr. Taylor, Ms. F., and I all agree that to make any other large-scale changes to the assignment so late in the process is not practical. Ms. M. did share with me today that she made an adjustment on her own with her students today regarding the word count requirement and the due date for the assignment.
The department along with all its members is committed to reviewing practice and improving the writing feedback process moving forward. They also strongly believe that students need to write more in order to improve their writing, which I support wholeheartedly.
Ms. F. and I have also expressed to Dr. Taylor the need to revise the homework policy since it is outdated. He has expressed that he will work on this timely issue with the board.
I hope that this addresses the issues you have raised and ask that you continue to reach out to teachers first when you have a question or concern. If you are unable to resolve the concern at that level, I will always do my best to assist.
The End of Homework? Not Quite . . . But It's a Start
Here is the next (and hopefully final) chapter in the saga of the anti-homework-crusade: today, Alex's teacher made some concessions on the assignment, including:
1) removal of the 150 minimum for each entry;
2) time in class each day to do one entry;
3) she pushed back the due date;
4) the kids get to select their best five journals and they comprise the bulk of the grade;
and then Alex met with her after school and thanked her for revising the assignment; I talked to her on the phone after school and she confirmed what I figured was the case-- she inherited this assignment from her mentor (and then she added the 150 word minimum in an attempt to make it more rigorous, perhaps not fully quantifying the consequences of that choice) and she swore that she would read "thirty percent" of the journals for each child-- so seventeen journals per student-- and since she teaches two honors classes, this adds up to 850 journal entries; I am skeptical of this, but some teachers are gluttons for punishment so perhaps she will wade through all this pre-sophomoric writing . . . I also explained to her that in my district, we don't do any analytical writing at home because the kids cheat and plagiarize, so we make them do the analytical stuff in class-- usually with pen and paper-- and have them read and do more creative stuff at home; she understood this temptation and said that they were going to try to put the journals in to Turnitin, an anti-plagiarism website-- but they were just starting that this year (so anyone with an older brother or sister that took honors English is still set because their work is not in the database) and I couldn't resist expressing how perfectly ironic I found it that this stream-of-consciousness novel of teen disillusionment was being used to make students embittered about education; she countered that some students later expressed that they were glad that they really pushed themselves on this assignment, but it just seems odd to use this particular book to institutionalize kids and I told her that J.D. Salinger is probably turning over in his grave because of the way his novel is being used . . . aside from that monologue, which she endured without complaint or comment, the phone conference was civil and I'm happy that the assignment has been amended . . . the principal and superintendent also got back to me-- as they did through the entire process-- and they're really taking this seriously and meeting with the English department about writing expectations, revising the homework policy, revising the writing assignments, and really revamping how this large scale assignment is being done-- so I guess I really opened a can of worms, and possibly helped to foment some real change in how writing is assigned and assessed and the takeaway is that it was exhausting to "be the change that you wish to see in the world," especially since the change Alex and I wanted was to do less work . . . we ended up putting in a concerted, laborious, and organized effort to advance the principle that we should all be doing less work, and that may be the greatest irony of all.
1) removal of the 150 minimum for each entry;
2) time in class each day to do one entry;
3) she pushed back the due date;
4) the kids get to select their best five journals and they comprise the bulk of the grade;
and then Alex met with her after school and thanked her for revising the assignment; I talked to her on the phone after school and she confirmed what I figured was the case-- she inherited this assignment from her mentor (and then she added the 150 word minimum in an attempt to make it more rigorous, perhaps not fully quantifying the consequences of that choice) and she swore that she would read "thirty percent" of the journals for each child-- so seventeen journals per student-- and since she teaches two honors classes, this adds up to 850 journal entries; I am skeptical of this, but some teachers are gluttons for punishment so perhaps she will wade through all this pre-sophomoric writing . . . I also explained to her that in my district, we don't do any analytical writing at home because the kids cheat and plagiarize, so we make them do the analytical stuff in class-- usually with pen and paper-- and have them read and do more creative stuff at home; she understood this temptation and said that they were going to try to put the journals in to Turnitin, an anti-plagiarism website-- but they were just starting that this year (so anyone with an older brother or sister that took honors English is still set because their work is not in the database) and I couldn't resist expressing how perfectly ironic I found it that this stream-of-consciousness novel of teen disillusionment was being used to make students embittered about education; she countered that some students later expressed that they were glad that they really pushed themselves on this assignment, but it just seems odd to use this particular book to institutionalize kids and I told her that J.D. Salinger is probably turning over in his grave because of the way his novel is being used . . . aside from that monologue, which she endured without complaint or comment, the phone conference was civil and I'm happy that the assignment has been amended . . . the principal and superintendent also got back to me-- as they did through the entire process-- and they're really taking this seriously and meeting with the English department about writing expectations, revising the homework policy, revising the writing assignments, and really revamping how this large scale assignment is being done-- so I guess I really opened a can of worms, and possibly helped to foment some real change in how writing is assigned and assessed and the takeaway is that it was exhausting to "be the change that you wish to see in the world," especially since the change Alex and I wanted was to do less work . . . we ended up putting in a concerted, laborious, and organized effort to advance the principle that we should all be doing less work, and that may be the greatest irony of all.
Surreal Kitchen Accessory in the Guise of a Band Cheers Up a Soggy Version of Dave
I was sitting outside at Pino's-- beer-soaked and annoyed, because I put my pint of Guiness down on a very tilted, rather slick table and it slid off and when I tried to catch it, the glass shattered on the ground and the beer flew all over my pants-- but when I went inside to go to the bathroom, the band was just finishing their set and the lead singer said, "We are Psychedelic Oven Mitt . . . thank you for listening to the noise we make!" and that made me very happy, despite my sogginess, and the next morning I looked the band up on the internet and that made me even happier because they spell "psychedelic" in their own particular style: PSYKIDELEC.
The Continuing Saga of the Anti-Homework Crusade
I've now written several thousand words to administrators and my son's 9th Grade Honors English teacher about the district homework policy-- and despite the fact that I'm a veteran teacher, I'm starting to feel like a crank-- but let me lay out the assignment and the situation so you know what I'm dealing with; my son is reading Catcher in the Rye and he generally has to read a reasonable amount, three chapters a night or so . . . but along with the reading he needs to complete two literary analysis journals per chapter . . . each journal must be at least 150 words and must analyze language, rhetoric, style, metaphors, similes, imagery etcetera-- these aren't free response journals-- and so if he's got three chapters of reading then he also needs to complete 900 words of literary analysis, and there are 26 chapters in the book so this adds up to 52 literary analysis journals . . . or 7800 words of literary analysis . . . 26 pages; in a few weeks, he's doing more analytical writing than we draft in the entire Rutgers Expos course . . . Zman recognized the fact that the assignment is more than ten percent of the length of The Catcher in the Rye . . . and the journals are due at the end of the book and she doesn't give feedback along the way or use them in class, the kids just grind them out (or copy stuff from the internet or steal their older sister's journals or write dream diaries, it doesn't matter because she can't humanly grade them all) and once I really understood the length and insanity of this assignment and how cavalierly disrespectful of time and intellectual energy it is, my only recourse was to find the district homework policy and see if I had a leg to stand on, and it turned out I had three legs to stand on . . . as the assignment is in flagrant violation of three parts of the policy:
4. The number, frequency, and degree of difficulty of homework assignments should be based on the ability and needs of the pupil and take into account other activities that make a legitimate claim on the pupil's time;
5. As a valid educational tool, homework should be clearly assigned and its product carefully evaluated and that evaluation should be reported to the pupil;
7. Homework should always serve a valid learning purpose; it should never be used as a punitive measure;
4. The number, frequency, and degree of difficulty of homework assignments should be based on the ability and needs of the pupil and take into account other activities that make a legitimate claim on the pupil's time;
5. As a valid educational tool, homework should be clearly assigned and its product carefully evaluated and that evaluation should be reported to the pupil;
7. Homework should always serve a valid learning purpose; it should never be used as a punitive measure;
and so I wrote several emails arguing that this assignment was incredibly time-consuming and onerous in nature-- kids were spending all weekend on it, staying up until 2 AM, etc, etc-- and that the teacher was not "carefully evaluating" the product, nor could she ever carefully evaluate the product . . . she was going to receive well over 1000 journal entries from her students, so she might spot check a few or grade a few at random-- and neither option is acceptable-- and the assignment was obviously punitive because she kept telling kids "if you don't like it, drop Honors and go to College Prep," making this some sort of hazing/initiation/badge-of-honor ritual to whip kids into shape and break them . . . so I met with the principal Friday and it was a positive meeting in regards to the fact that they were hearing my concerns and the superintendent and the principal and the head of humanities met today and agreed to discuss this assignment and expectations in general with the English department, but that could be everyone just humoring me and hoping this will blow over, so I told the principal and superintendent that they need to enforce the district policy and my son brought a petition to school today with the district homework policy on it and got a bunch of signatures-- he is going to meet with his teacher tomorrow and discuss the assignment . . . the teacher keeps asking me if Alex needs help on the assignment and I've told her he doesn't . . . he's actually done a great job and he's caught up-- he's done 32 journals, without feedback, which is shameful-- and I've advised him not to do any more writing until he gets feedback on every journal he's written . . . what a shitshow and what a sad way to read Catcher in the Rye (I wonder if Mark David Chapman Had to complete an assignment like this when he read Catcher and it sent him over the edge) and I'm sure this isn't over and I'm going to end up angrily reciting a lot of numbers at a Board of Ed meeting.
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