Michael Jackson at Summerfest!

Monday night in Milwaukee. The clouds bustle over the city casting occasional showers, keeping the inhabitants of our fair city damp and honest. Thousands of people find their way to Maier Festival Park despite the less than ideal weather. Here’s what’s remarkable to me. On a night when I travel down to Summerfest with my wife, my son (14), and one dear friend, we have the good charm to meet with four of our other very close friends for an evening of music, food and refreshments. Whose spirit settles over the summerfest grounds? Not Henry Maier, the ex-mayor who’s lent his name to this park. Not Bo Black whose driving optimism and unquenchable passion for summerfest will forever inspire anyone unlucky enough to follow in her footsteps. No, nether of these folks stood watch over us all on this blustery June evening. Instead, I’m reasonably sure it was the king of pop himself. Yep MJ, Michael Jackson.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am not one of these folks who hustles over to the nearest memorial to lay flowers and sparkly gloves in honor of my fallen idol. In fact, I’ve never really had much appreciation at all for the man. I come firmly from the generation split in its views about Michael. Half of the population thinks of him as an immense talent who’s transformed pop music and led us all down a path of self discovery. And the half that includes me generally thinks of him as some crazy whack job that barely brooks attention in a world engulfed in many more problems than we can normally count.

Tonight was different. I heard a funky cool indie rocker (Brett Dennen), an aging Wisconsin area blues band (the Velveetatones), a crazy cool hip hop artist (Lupe Fiasco), and one of the finest show bands ever to slide a bottle neck across a pedal steel guitar (Robert Randolph Family Band) all pay this man tribute. Michael’s music took many forms: it wafted on the gentle lake breezes; it dodged pesky skirmishes with the rain, it drove from guitars and it sang from the voices of musicians who all know that his music helped pave the way for their success.

Tonight I can’t help but thank my lucky stars that I live in a city like Milwaukee, that I have the friends and family that I do and that I get to listen to artists as in tune to their musical heritage as these folks seemed to be tonight. It was a rare night at Summerfest. I am glad I was there.

Grief hurts

Christy died last night. I didn't even know she wasn't well. Turns out she has struggled with a chronic illness for some time, but that doesn't mean her death was at all expected. She was the kind of woman who brings such light and joy to a gathering that it is really hard to imagine the world without her. She leaves behind a son and husband at home, and an adult daughter attending Columbia University's Graduate program in journalism.

I don't know what to do with this information. It appears funerals really are good things-- especially for friends and family of the deceased. I don't know as much for the immediate family whose grief must rage on desperately despite the need to reconcile their lives with the lives of those more loosely attached to them. More importantly, how do we reconcile our lives with the new life we are forced to live without someone so beautiful, so hugely important, so nurturing in our lives.

I started this post on June 3rd distraught about Christy's death. I still am, one week later.

*********************

Today (June 10th) I sit in a classroom half full of grieving teens and the other half full of kids who either feel bad for not sharing the grief or kids who just want to get up and make others feel better. Nobody, including me, wants these kids to be writing essays right now. But that's what life is at these times. Incongruous, stupid, hard to accept and ultimately unfair in a way that often feels like a personal attack. Young people teach me so much. Their strength and forbearance now-- right now, as I write this-- gives me ultimate faith in their ability to heal and come back stronger to support someone close to them later on down the road.

My world has lost two people in the last couple weeks. People close to me share these losses plus at least two others. There's a sense of being a punch-drunk boxer waiting for the bell to ring to end the round. Only I'm sure some in this room with me and others close to me wouldn't know how to find their corner when the bell does ring.

Bless them all: Christy, Fritz, Alex, Steve and Mary's dad. Bless us all. Bless you all.

A typical angle against unions

When Pat McIlheran writes about unions, you know he'll be bringing the goods. An unabashed union hater, the guy typically finds some fairly clever way to twist an old tired criticism of unions around to make it sound like a new and thus more legitimate criticism of organized labor. His column in today's Journal Sentinel is just such an article.

He states that the new Employee Free Choice Act, given a recent shot in the arm by senator Arlen Specter's defection to the Democats, favors dishonest union organizing over honest union organizers.

A bill before Congress would overturn [ the practice of waiting six weeks and having a secret ballot to install a union] - dictating instead that, once a union collects signatures from half a workplace's employees, the union is installed without an election.
[...]
This makes problems, says Wathen, for honest union organizers. Their careers hinge on how well they make the sale. There are all kinds of ways to bring in signatures. Take, for instance, the union-sponsored pizza party. You show up for the pizza, you sign the sign-in sheet, you don't flip it over to read the disclaimer on the back reading, "I hereby authorize the union to represent me for the purposes of collective bargaining."

This is bunk. It's just like the notion of unionized labor as a reinforcer of lazy job habits (with no motivation to always be doing better, workers get soft and slowly slide into a pattern of mailing it in because their wages and working conditions are protected by the negotiated contract). There are always examples of people doing things the right way or the wrong way, unions don't make this go away. Instead they protect the wages and working conditions of employees who would otherwise be vulnerable to the whims of management. Making this easier only hold management's feet to the fire. Not a bad thing if you ask me.

Rock on, Obamas.

This is fuckin' cool as hell. Compare this to the canceled poetry luncheon at the White House in 2003. Then ask why there are more stories sympathetic to this president in the press than there were for his predesessor. "Whatever" with the liberal press bias. One party does things that are spiteful and ill-advised, while the other does open hearted, if a little stuffy and pretentious, things. A factual reporting of both things might look like bias. Saints come off looking better than murderers when you just line up the facts.

Some idle thoughts on education...

...as I listen to a community toss and turn over the issues facing the funding of its schools, I can't help but wonder if this legislative session will provide some relief. With Dems in both houses of the legislature and in the governor's chair, might we find an opportunity to revisit some of the more punitive aspects of the funding formula? I can see why foks sitting on school boards would be a little hesitant to advocate for repeal of the QEO unless they also get some room under the revenue caps to pay for that move.

Is this too much money going back into schools? Does the public generally support the funding restrictions of the past 16 years? As they watch their schools being dismantled, do they care enough to vote a change?? I don't mean to make these questions sound like partisan foregone conclusions , but the effect of year upon year of punishing cuts to our budget leave me and my colleagues asking what the pubic want of its schools.

I can certainly teach to rooms full of 30-35 students, and that would cost a whole lot less. But the fact is the students, and by extension the community, would get a whole lot less in the way of educational bang for the buck. But the state says we must cut. Popular extra-curriculars will not get the knife because the support exists in the community to advocate for the programs. So district administrators and board members labor to justify the maintaining of the 8oo lb gorilla in the room--staff costs.

Troubling oral arguments at SCOTUS this week

As I look at this story and transcripts of the oral arguments, it appears this was a pretty entertaining day at the court (this would have been Tuesday). Admittedly this story sends shivers down my spine. The thought that some school official could take my child into a private room and order him or her to disrobe and expose the inside of their underwear chills me, to say the very least. Perhaps most bothersome is this line, by the usually even-headed David Souter:

“My thought process,” Justice Souter said, “is I would rather have the kid embarrassed by a strip search, if we can’t find anything short of that, than to have some other kids dead because the stuff is distributed at lunchtime and things go awry.”

If this is any indication of how he is going to rule on the matter, then I worry pretty intensely for the fourth amendment. I hope this is just another case of a justice on the court trying out some logic on a lawyer during oral arguments. I'm on those transcripts later this evening.

The efficacy of torture...

...apparently isn't what the CIA and other proponents declare. I find this article to be disgusting.

The C.I.A. officers used waterboarding at least 83 times in August 2002 against Abu Zubaydah, according to a 2005 Justice Department legal memorandum. Abu Zubaydah has been described as a Qaeda operative.

A former C.I.A. officer, John Kiriakou, told ABC News and other news media organizations in 2007 that Abu Zubaydah had undergone waterboarding for only 35 seconds before agreeing to tell everything he knew.

The 2005 memo also says that the C.I.A. used waterboarding 183 times in March 2003 against Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-described planner of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

There is a reason, since post WWII Algiers, that countries decry this type of conduct.

Gray- Not black or white

These two front page journal sentinel stories remind me of this song by the band Live.

Not that I'd really aspire to a world devoid of absolutes, but rather, I'd aspire to a world where people slow down and look in detail at issues before reacting to them in a shallow, partisan way.

I think the Sensenbrenner story goes to show us that politicians probably ought to be judged by their whole record, not just one strand of their voting behavior. Considering the Menomonee Falls Republican's stances on immigration and gay marriage, I'd be pretty ready to brand him as a major assshole only looking out for himself and those who look like him or support him. I'd have been wrong.

The story at UWM gives me some hope (at least locally) that the era of zero tolerance policies at all levels of gov't. might be coming to a close. I appreciate the clarity of rules and laws. I appreciate the work that good prosecutors do in bringing bad guys to justice, etc. But to look at the situation at UWM these days as simply another battle in the war on drugs is to ignore the human truths behind many of these stories. Human truths expressed by my friends Tyler and Santera, for instance. They're just reactions...honest ones, I assume, but human ones. If the district attorney and his prosecutors are willing to approach the situation at UWM with an eye to the beauty of gray, there may be some hope for all involved.

Merit pay for teachers

I'll begin to post readings I've done on the topic here from time to time. Here are two: an editorial from the Concord (NH) Monitor right after Obama's education speech, and a response to that editorial from a Concord area reader. They both seemed interesting enough. And because both the editorial and this folkbum guy have mentioned it, I'll include a link to a document that describes the Denver merit-pay system: ProComp. This is a voluntary (for those hired before Jan 1, 2006, mandatory for those hired after) compensation program used by the public schools there that has some potential.

Some reading to be sure, but the idea is going to need some consideration, so why not get started?

President Obama on education

The president spoke last week about education reform. He laid out a five part plan to raise our standing as a nation in our efforts to educate our children.

• First he'd like to see us reinvest in early childhood education programs, including a process that shuts down ineffective and wasteful programs.
• Second, he'd encourage high standards in all states. NCLB has encouraged a "race to the bottom" by allowing each state the ability to set and define its own educational standards. That has created a very wide range of standards, some of which are pitifully low. Success is not lowering standards so everyone can achieve them. Success is moving larger and larger percentages of our students into positions to achieve difficult standards.
• Third, he mentioned a merit pay system for teachers. He sees this as a way to supplement the next point and to reward effective teachers and encourage struggling teachers to improve. He is also sure that merit pay will have a real impact on student achievement.
  
• Fourth, the president seeks to promote innovation in our schools by removing limits on innovative charter schools that work. He also seems willing to make charter schools accountable for reporting their results in a manner consistent with how public schools now do.
• Finally, he'd like to see barriers to higher education removed for more students. Colleges and universities are the crown jewel of our educational system. A college degree has never been more important for students entering the job market. It has also never been more difficult to achieve, financially. More tech schools and two-year program offerings will help as well. So will reforming student loan programs that have proven to be sources of greed and corruption, not support for financially needy students.
• He spoke to parents and to students, and encouraged the kind of values regarding education we all know to be valuable--and in increasingly short supply, especially where they are needed most. And he finally highlighted the following video as an example of the things we should be addressing as a nation. It's a lovely compilation. Watch it.
  

A new time for writing?

I asked my students the following three questions today.

1. How many of you write for publication (loosely defined as having something to say, slowing down enough to make sure you say it right, and then putting it somewhere so others can read it) in any way outside of class?
2. How many of you maintain a social networking site and visit it/update it between once a day and five times a week?
3. How many of you text message friends more than 10 times a day?

Results (after two classes--55 students):

1. 2
2. 48
3. 54

Does writing instruction need to change because of this?
My students tell me, "No..."

I am not so sure.
I am also not so sure about this...

Missing teacher

Here's a story of a young teacher who just disappeared for a while before showing up floating in the New York Harbor and unaware that anything was wrong. She disappeared the day before school started and was gone for three weeks.

I don't know how I'd go about piecing life back together again after a period like this. What must it be like to have lived an entire portion of your life as someone else, or in some other reality? What causes such a person to blank out?

Read the story while listening to this song.

Is this where journalism is going?

Here's one view.



Here's another.



What is the danger of free market journalism devolving to this type of coverage, with this type of treatment? What we see here is sensationalism and hyperbias. It is fast becoming the stock and trade of "coverage" on cable news shows like Fox's and CNBC's. This is what is driving ratings; this is what is setting the agenda. It is a step down from O'Reilly, Limbaugh, Hannity, et al. because it masquerades as news. The others at least have the grace to admit that they are not news shows.

This blog on the NYTimes's site, the source for the above pairing of videos makes me think a bit: Even if we say something to the effect of "It's ok, I'll watch some of this (Fox) and some of that (CNBC/MSNBC), and I'll arrive at truth," you're still assuming the truth lies between two distorted visions of reality. We've even lost the talking head (the news anchor overseeing the delivery of the product back at the studio). In each case, the talking heads have become the sputtering fools.

Update:
After watching Becky Quick on Meet The Press this morning, I now think maybe the sputtering fool act was just that, an act. Which then leads me to believe that the ratings game ploy is even more brazen than I gave credit for in the original post. On Meet the Press this morning, Quick came off as a pretty articulate and decent on air persona. She stuck up for her guy, and generally avoided sounding like a fool alongside the estimable Al Hunt and Michelle Norris. So if she's a legitimate guest on this program, wouldn't it stand to reason that she's perfectly capable of creating a show with at least some of the qualities of MTP, as opposed to her "Squawk Box"??

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Maybe more to the point of this post, isn't this closer to the type of coverage a serious media outlet ought to pursue?

Bush v. Cheney--Who wins?

A recent article in the NYTimes details an emerging picture of the last days of the Bush White House in respect to pardons-- specifically the potential pardon of vice president Cheney's former chief of staff I Scooter Libby.

The officials said Tuesday that Mr. Cheney’s lobbying campaign on behalf of Mr. Libby was far more intense than previously known, with the vice president bringing it up in countless one-on-one conversations with the president. They said Mr. Bush was unyielding to the end, already frustrated by a deluge of last-minute pardon requests from other quarters.

I can see why Bush would be reticent here. He had already commuted the sentence of Mr. Libby. Isn't that going pretty far? If he was going to pardon the guy, why would he have bothered to communte the sentence in the first place?

At the time of the commutation, Bush said something that may have led Libby supporters to believe a pardon was in order:

"As to the future, I rule nothing in or nothing out."

Oh well... One of the sources for the article claimed:

“The biggest myth of the presidency is that Vice President Cheney always got his way.”

At least in this respect, Cheney didn't get his way.

A great story in today's paper-HS sports rock.

This story has really fine emotional appeal, but it is also an example of a story that tells itself. Lucky for Art Kabelowski to get to be the one to tell it. You see this kind of behavior on small fields of play all the time. When the home soccer team plays the ball out of bounds because an opposing player is hurt on the field, the opposing team throws it back in to the home team. Common decency. But this is a different story, about basketball. I love those moments. Its why I am often sticking up for HS jocks. They're commonly great kids.