Traipseround

Journal reflection 6.22.11: UWM NWP ISI

2011-06-23T13:11:00.002-05:00

Below is a journal entry I wrote in a fifteen minute reflection session at the end of the third day of UWM's National Writing Project, a program I am happy to be enrolled in this summer. I had just come off an hour's worth of time to write. It felt good.

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

Ahhhh a chance to write: time—an hour—for rumination, punctuation, consideration, composition and revision. This is a luxury I could get used to. This is a habit I could develop. Is there anyone here who doesn’t just cherish this kind of time? Teachers. They never have any time. Teachers of writing. They have even less. I knew a man who said something to the effect of, “I cannot afford NOT to take the time to write during the day.” That is a position I respect. Commitment fueled by desire (he’d have said compulsion fueled by derangement). But really… to get yourself to the point where you’ve whittled out that kind of time every day, time to compose meaningfully, to compose for publication, to make what you write worthy of others’ eyes. I need to get myself there. It seems like the only way to provide the outlet for all the ideas that accost me on a daily basis. Like a release valve. I will blog again. Nurture an audience, any audience, really, whoever will read what I write. But I can’t bite off too much…write for the habit and maybe the audience will follow along. To be sure I feel the need for the authenticity to come back to my instruction. Bring some chops to my teaching. Do as I say AND as I do. Come follow me, teach me, lead me learn from me interact via the written word in an environment that supports whatever writing you can create. Build a body of literature and, thus, a literary sensibility. Learn to scratch graphite across the page and change someone else’s body chemistry. Bam!

Snow, wind, drift and finally sun.

2011-02-02T10:18:00.006-06:00

That blizzard worked its magic on eastern Wisconsin with 50-60 mph winds howling off the lake all night long. As the day broke, the wind subsided a bit and the prospect for fun in the snow presented itself.

After getting some work done in the front (above), this is the job (below) that remains in the back. Good thing there's a teenager in the house for help with the second round!

Saturday all day

2011-01-15T11:23:00.004-06:00

It's what I do. yeahh.

Oh please, good people at the Paris Review

2010-12-13T20:54:00.014-06:00

Send me another Winter issue. I love your magazine. I read every issue. I like to smell it and
run my fingers across its pages. I have even given gifts of this publication to other fair friends. Many are the joys of receiving this publication every quarter. All these joys have been dashed by the animal at the bottom. She's cute (see second pic) and alarmingly skinny (first). Makes it really hard to gain the catharsis of a good doggy scolding. There's no satisfaction.

Is there possibly enough karma on my Paris Review ledger to warrant one new replacement copy? I'll pay something. I'll read it to Emma, the pictured lab. I'll even commit the whole volume to memory if I must. Just please don't make me resort to the old "my dog ate it" line. You can see how she has destroyed the front cover, the back cover, selected inside pages and the spine. There is nothing there to love that hasn't been tarnished by poor, sweet, innocent (naughty) Emma.

So, Whatya say???

Update: Whoa, I just started paging through these newly mangled pages. Interview with Louise Erdrich? C'mon I'm gonna need to read that. Franzen's interview would be good, too. OK, I'm gonna spill for it.

The cell phone photo text pun walk contest

2010-11-14T14:40:00.011-06:00

I was teasing my wife earlier today by sending her all sorts of silly photo/texts from my phone while on a trip to the store.

You know, I'd tell her that I was sure she was nuts about me;

told her to quit whining;

and finally to just leave me alone.

Pretty stupid, huh? But then I thought, this could be a competition! Two people take a walk wherever they are (ideally somewhere separate) and commence to trying to batter the other with text/picture related observations. One eventually submits to the will of the superior text/photo/pun/walker. Start a cell phone photo text pun walk contest with a friend today!

An emerging reality, not a sentence

2010-10-24T10:11:00.007-05:00

I've recently written elsewhere and done some thinking about getting old. It happens to everyone.

First of all it bears mentioning that I have always aspired to be older than I am. When I was twelve, I wanted to hang out with high school kids. When I was fourteen, my older sisters' friends were just as interesting (if not more so) than mine. At fifteen, I started getting interested in girls. Only once, for a period of a year or two, did I date someone my age. Otherwise, it was always girls at least a year or two older. While I wandered the campus at the University of Wisconsin, I often envied the young families I saw living their lives in the neighborhoods around mine. I'd yearn to be like those folks. To this day, most of my closest friends are four to ten years older than me. So feeling like a kid comes naturally to me.

In the past few months, this has begun to change. I look at the general populace, those I pass by when driving through the city, and see people younger than me. I look at who I am associating with, and I see old people, my peers. You know-- grey hair, sagging bodies, lots of discussion about health and other ailments, people who are executing retirement plans, not making them. My own physical ailments have begun to assert themselves: arthritis, thyroid issues, sleep disorders, the whole line-up. But you work with those; manage them; find a way to keep living a vital and active life.

But then in the past few weeks, I've experienced a distressing inability to read productively at night. Complaining about the type in a book, the low wattage of the bulb in my bedside lamp, the headaches I get, always falling asleep. The problem wasn't any of those things. The problem was my failing vision. I'd need glasses to read. At first this seemed like a sentence. I was never again going to be able to read the way I always had. I'd always need the crutch. But then I realized this wasn't that much of an issue. Many of my peers, even those my own age, have made this adjustment years ago. I've watched my wife and two of my three children get glasses/contact lenses. Actually, it's a wonder my eyes haven't given out earlier.

Now that those glasses in the picture are a reality, a very personal aspect of my aging has asserted itself. The process has been a little distressing, and a little revealing. Time takes its toll on all of us. Sometimes we look forward to the benefits of age, sometimes we're withered by that reality. But aging is not a death sentence. Aging is a process of adjustments to new realities. Deny them at your own peril. Recognize them and move on in order to live that vital and active life.

Now, about all those old people around me....

Henry James's Portrait of a Lady

2010-09-22T19:48:00.012-05:00

Been spending the last few weeks engaged at various levels with the first 200 pages of this novel. I've read The American and really enjoyed it. I really like the idea of Isabel Archer. Perhaps rather more than Lily Bart, Emma Bovary, and Dorthea Brooke: heroines of a similar order. But like the creator of Madame Bovary, at least, I fear I am beginning to tire of the author's distant admiration of his leading lady.

With characters this important, I want to get up close and intimate. So far James seems to be perched on a setee across the room observing and admiring Isabel. He reports her conversations; we surmise her motivations. But if she truly is a transcendent character, a Victorian herione, don't we want to come to know her a little better? Don't we want a window into her soul instead of into the parlors where she interacts with other ex-patriot Americans? All the Touchetts as well as Lord Wharburton fall in love in short order. 200 pages in I am still seeking for my admiration to get some traction.

The upside to technology

2010-09-12T13:31:00.005-05:00

So much about our modern world causes us to be a little suspicious of the myriad technological devices that have worked their way into our lives. Today, I have a reason to be thankful for the whole of technological advancment that has brought us to this point in our digital history.

My daughter Lauren has recently arrived in Nigeria for a year of study abroad. For many reasons, we were skeptical and worried about this trip. All along the way, Lauren has been able to stay in touch with us. Phone calls from airports in Frankfurt and Lagos let us know the travel portion went off without a hitch. She called us to let us know she arrived safely in Ibadan, her destination. And today...today, we got to do the Skype thing. We got to look around the study center at the University of Ibadan, meet some of her African hosts/instructors, and most of all, talk to Lauren.

The most striking thing about this first face-to-face encounter with Lauren in Nigeria was how utterly familiar she looked. It seems really silly and perhaps a bit naive to say that, but it's true. It was Lauren, the same girl, just pretty far away. It appears that she is in the company of warm, generous and vital people who are sure to help create an intense and rewarding experience for her at the University of Ibadan. What a thrill!

The Lacuna

2010-07-09T08:50:00.012-05:00

“At the back of the cove on that side, a rock ledge rises up from the water. You can see that cliff from the ferry…At the base of that cliff, something lay under the water that can’t be seen from a boat. A dark something, or rather a dark nothing. A great deep hole in the rock. It was a cave, big enough to dive down and crawl into. Or feel around the edges and go a little way inside. It was very deep. A water path tunneling into the rock… Not a cave exactly but an opening, like a mouth, that swallows things... It goes to the belly of the world. …In ancient times God made the rocks melt and flow like water.”

– Barbara Kingsolver, The Lacuna p. 35.

A tunnel. An underground cave. A long narrow, dark passageway that draws you in with the promise of a new world and threatens you at the same time. I was wondering if Harrison Shepherd, the main character in the novel, experienced a Lacuna effect in his relationship with Diego Rivera, Frieda Kahlo, and Lev Trotsky. The association with these three characters was alluring and dangerous to the young William. Frought with tragedy and danger, these associations drew William in even as he lost other more transiently important relationships (Van, his mother, the other young man in Lev’s camp, even his father). The promise of an exciting and ideal world either of Lev’s reckoning or Diego’s, or Frieda’s waits at the far end of his association with these great people. Yet he is endangered by them at the same time. There were other, more obvious, references to the Lacuna (train tracks, dark alleys, etc.) but I can’t help but wonder if these relationships were Lacuna-esque as well. Its hard to cast the lacuna as a good thing or a bad thing.

I have memories of these kind of relationships from my youth. People who I thought were really exciting and offered a new lease on life if I were to hang around them. So I’d give it a try. As often as not, I’d find myself disenchanted or feeling foolish for trying. Maybe they were out of my league. Maybe, for lack of a better way of putting it, I was out of their league. Either way, I’d sometimes learn and sometimes not learn the error of my ways and back out of the Lacuna of that relationship before it sucked me in and drowned me.

Here’s another thought. People who directly pursue their passions excite me. Those with the confidence to go forward with uncertainty and resolve on a path that does not provide security or surety of results have an air about them that many, many people admire. Count me among them… the admirers, that is.

Pausing for a moment

2010-06-29T11:47:00.007-05:00

On the second day of a bicycle trip with a bunch of hs students along the Milwaukee river's watershed, we stopped here. Just to the right of this shot is a little path that leads down to the tree line in the back. There runs the North Branch of the Milwaukee River. Its just a little stream at that point. It could run between your legs if you wanted it to. Its pretty!

What the...?...the walk 1.17.10

2010-01-17T11:57:00.006-06:00

My lab partner in chemistry class was named Jeff Szablewski. He was a nice guy. We got along pretty well. But he was from the south side, so we didn't fall into the same social group.

He would say, "Hey come visit me on my side of town, and I'll show you the only place where 19th street meets 20th street." He would say it as a joke. One day we did hang out and he took me to the fabled intersection of 19th and 20th on Milwaukee's south side. We had a good laugh and shared lines like, "Where else but on the south side, heh?"

This morning I was on my walk and walked past this intersection... who knew?

Some education thoughts

2010-01-14T16:30:00.002-06:00

My mom shared an article with me this afternoon. It got me thinking about schools and unions and the way they should move forward together.

I like to think that I occasionally advocate things that shake up long held union beliefs. I am willing to listen to folks talk about merit pay. I like the idea of year round schools. I can see a scenario (that would have to include a level regulatory playing field) where I'd support expanding charter schools along with some support from vouchers. I'm also OK with a negotiated reform of due process and tenure practices in American public education. I'm not entirely sure "negotiated" is a term Ms. Rhee (mentioned in the article) embraces.

That said, I still haven't found my way to endorsing even further our country's vacuous embrace of standardized testing as some type of miracle of accountability. Most tests administered on that level are not a valid reflection of the work that goes on in the classroom. They just don't measure what they claim to measure. Jumping through Mr. Duncan's hoop to grasp at more federal ed. dollars, while understandable, still bothers me.

Where do we want control of the educational process to rest? Federal government? State government? Municipal government? School Boards? Individual classrooms? Parents?

The first two options are too broad, the second two are very open to corruption, cronyism and abuse, the last two are too narrow. I want to put my faith in directly elected school boards with strong superintendents, activist teachers and an involved citizenry.

Proposition 8

2010-01-12T20:13:00.004-06:00

I'm only now catching on to the wave of information surrounding Perry v. Schwarzenegger and its effort to overturn Proposition 8. That measure made same-sex marriage illegal in that state. This week's Newsweek features a piece entitled "The Conservative Case for Gay Marriage: Why same-sex marriage is an American value". This was written by the man who won Bush v. Gore before the US Supreme Court. He, Ted Olson, along with his adversary in Bush v. Gore, David Boies, will make the case for re-instituting gay marriage in California.

In a case that most observers say is headed for the US Supreme court itself, the conservative legal scholar lays out his rationale for the constitutional, statutory, legal and moral case for gay marriage. In so doing, Olson calls on the authority of the Declaration of Independence, the Gettysburg Address, the 14th Amendment, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, KS, Loving v. Virginia and a host of other legal and moral precedents. The simplicity and elegance of the argument coupled with the notoriety of its chief proponents give me hope for the success of the case.

Here's a little passage that I liked a lot, especially since it corroborates much of my experience in this debate over laws with such ludicrous names as the "Defense of Marriage Act":

In what way would allowing same-sex partners to marry diminish the marriages of heterosexual couples? Tellingly, when the judge in our case asked our opponent to identify the ways in which same-sex marriage would harm heterosexual marriage, to his credit he answered honestly: he could not think of any.

Yeah, nobody ever has.

Two doors... the walk 1.2.10

2010-01-02T16:37:00.006-06:00

These two door pictures were taken on different sides of the same property-- public property-- in our fair city. It was a good day for photos, a cold day for a walk. I've purposely obscured the sign on the one and accidentally obscured the sign on the other (lousy photo!). The door below has a hand written sign on it that says "Ace Boxing Club". Know where we were?

Checking out downtown...the walk 12.29.09

2009-12-29T17:13:00.008-06:00

This is one of my favorite new places in Milwaukee...
I hope circumstances like KRM, and a regional transit authority allow this place to grow even more vital to our city. This is an example of a public building that people put some care and vision into. I hope we can find ourselves working toward a day when investing in our public spaces is embraced again.

Spose its not much of a mystery where I went today...

A cloudy, cold day...the walk 12.27.9

2009-12-29T16:48:00.043-06:00

First to the river (basically the site of the first set of "The Walk" photos) where the video below was shot. At the time I was really struck by how high the river had risen since my last visit just a week before. All the rains around Christmas really had an impact. At this point the weather was getting colder and, in addition to all the flotsam picked up by rising waters, the river was starting to slush up with more ice.

I'll try and avoid crappy cell phone vids going forward.

From there I ventured westward for this shot of a cool church in town...

...and then even further west to see the site of the first school I spent any time in as a pre-professional teacher. It was a good day for a walk.

Any guesses where I went?? Can you name the two institutions?

Health Care reform?

2009-12-22T14:00:00.005-06:00

This is a curious question. Is what the senate passed the other day (likely the template for whatever finally makes it out of committee and into bill form) really health care reform? What does real reform mean? What was it supposed to mean from the start? What does it mean now? How important are the following elements of health care reform:

universal coverage
elimination of as much graft and waste and inefficiency as possible
no pre-existing condition opt outs for insurance companies
an individual mandate
a public option
medicare for America's poor and under-insured
some way to get the cost of under-insured citizens off the rolls
health care for immigrants (legal)
health care for immigrants (not legal)
pharmaceutical cost savings for seniors (especially) and everybody eventually
elimination of redundant services
torte reform
single payer system
market-driven reform
competition (real competittion)
elimination of monopolies in health insurance in some areas

Note: (2/5/10)I am posting this a month and a half after I originally wrote it. Unfinished, it is here because I told myself I'd at least post the fractured things I write, even if (or perhaps because) I don't go back and finish them.

The walk

2009-12-21T10:51:00.007-06:00

From time to time, I'll post photo, audio, video clips from my weekly walks with my black lab Emma. I go to different places around Milwaukee on these walks. Can you tell where I've been? This one's easy. I walk between these two places (roughly) pretty often. Where do I walk?

Important people

2009-10-14T16:45:00.004-05:00

Here is a very impressive video. Been a long long time since something moved me to tears. I am a bit embarrassed to admit that the tears were not for the poignancy of the message, or its hopelessness, which my cynical self still feels. But instead, it is for the poise and grace of twelve year old girls. For the beauty of a simple speech well-delivered.

She may or may not be accurate in her message. She may or may not have actually written the speech. But one thing cannot be denied: when someone knows a message, internalizes it, and delivers it with conviction and clarity, little can stand in the way of its effectiveness. Not the age or relative naivete of the speaker, not the language or vocabulary of the speech, not even a sophisticated, distracted, culturally and physically distant audience. When important people invest themselves in clear ideas people will listen.

This girl is important.

And I know people like her. Recently I have been reading and talking to folks who don't share my experience with and opinion of this generation of young people. I know this girl, or I should say I know people like this girl. Not very many. Maybe one or two. But I'm damn lucky to know them! I feel a little sorry for people who haven't had the opportunities that I have to come to know young people of this caliber. And I sure find it hard to convince them that these people exist, and that they are important. But it seems like its part of my job. It seems like because I have the privilege to know people like this, I must make it apparent to skeptics that the world will be in good hands.

This girl for president. Or something.

Dowd on Safire

2009-09-30T12:19:00.003-05:00

I just had to share this lovely column. I would much prefer sharing a subway seat with the late Mr. Safire to having dinner at Ms. Dowd's house. That said, I find her brief tribute to her fellow resident of murderer's row quite touching. I tip my hat to her...

The passing of William Safire

2009-09-27T16:28:00.004-05:00

Today, at the age of 79, William Safire died of pancreatic cancer.

As I broke out of high school, there was little I knew for sure. But I quickly learned one thing: reading Bill Safire would always yield benefits. From that point forward, until the last few years, I often went out of my way to read his column in the NYTimes Magazine called "On Language", to read his column on the editorial page of the paper, and, during the Russert era, to view his regular appearances on "Meet The Press".

As I read the news today about the passing of this master of English language usage, I had a rude awakening. "Why haven't I been reading him for the past four or five years? He has been writing. He has been published regularly. His importance in the field of American letters hasn't diminished." There are lots of explanations for this disconnect, none of which makes losing him any easier. If you get time, read some of his old columns, reflect on the beauty of our language, and come to know the study of linguistics alongside one of politics and journalism's leading men.

Keeping the president from speaking to schoolchildren?

2009-09-06T15:11:00.009-05:00

The email brought me news from my principal the other day that the entire school district I work for will not be airing the president's message to school children live on the day it is broadcast. There was some concern about how closely scheduled the school day is and how difficult it might be to fit the president's message into this tight schedule. Some have maintained that the decision came in response to calls of concern from parents who objected to the prospect of their child viewing the speech in school.

If this is so, I do not know why the concerns of a vocal minority so often influence policy to the extent that they do. I have many concerns that we are not dealing with these parents, critics to be sure, in the most effective manner. I am not sure why calls of concern cannot be handled responsibly, diplomatically, and effectively, without falling back to a position of "Let's not do anything that upsets these folks." It seems that all too often, administrators, faced with upset parents, capitulate. Instead school administrators might want to consider acting as real leaders in their community. Taking stands that might upset some folks because they believe in the position in principle. This is not always easy to do, but in a district like mine, the public expects leadership out of its schools. On this one issue, I do not think they are getting it.

Update: here is the text of the speech
UpdateII: (9/8/9 am) Now my district is showing the speech across the curriculum to all students, at least in the building I teach in.

"Meet the Press" spent a bit of time on the issue. The consensus of the round table members pretty accurately reflects where I stand on the issue. Thom Friedman was most blunt and emphatic. The first 4:20 or so of this clip stays on the topic.

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

Money lenders in the temple

2009-09-01T21:02:00.005-05:00

I was teaching today. I hadn’t done this for a number of months. It is what I love. Late last night when I couldn’t sleep I was writing in my room. I was listening to Conor Oberst. One of his songs still echoes in my head . Those two developments came together today in an interesting manner. And they made me think of Emily Dickinson’s “A Light Exists in Spring” as well as Matthew’s gospel, the ultimate source material for the reference.

I taught for the first four hours of the day. This left me utterly tapped. My room, chock full of students every single hour, pulsed with the tension of kids trying to be good on the first day. The first day sucks because I inevitably talk for the whole hour. And while I try and communicate the seriousness and levity of my class, my mind is racing. Where am I going to get the seats for the students standing against the wall? How am I going to be able to rework this class to accommodate so many students? How can I make my class better this year? How do I set just the right tone for the school year? The second two questions are normal for me. No matter how much time I spend on these topics during the summer, they always haunt my first few days. But those first two questions are particularly troublesome this year. The district, responding the pressures from the dysfunctional funding formula set in place sixteen years ago by Wisconsin Republicans, has ramped up class sizes in all my classes (and those of most of my colleagues). So here I am beating back these thoughts while I rattle on and on. I am grateful to my principal when he walks into my room, sees the seating situation and hustles some folding chairs into the room. Everything is moving forward. But something is wrong. I feel dirty.

There are money lenders inside the temple. We are moving forward with the agenda that the money lenders have put in place. For Matthew in the gospel, the money lenders were usurers profaning the temples of Jerusalem by plying their trade and getting between God and his people. For me, those whose agenda we’re buckling to by cutting and cutting public education funding are the money lenders. The school is our temple. Learning is going to happen in here-the temple. You can’t stop it. But the moneylenders have poisoned the sanctity of what goes on in here. We need someone to come in here and overturn some tables. Or we need to remember Emily Dickinson when she wrote her poem, “A Light Exists in Spring.”

A light exists in spring
Not present on the year
At any other period.
When March is scarcely here

A color stands abroad
On solitary hills
That science cannot overtake,
But human nature feels.

It waits upon the lawn;
It shows the furthest tree
Upon the furthest slope we know;
It almost speaks to me.

Then, as horizons step,
Or noons report away,
Without the formula of sound,
It passes, and we stay:

A quality of loss
Affecting our content,
As trade had suddenly encroached
Upon a sacrament.

Those last two lines often remind me that we should feel a loss when we allow trade to encroach upon a sacrament. Shouldn’t we? Dickinson did as she watched the quality of light pass. The quality that exists when March is scarcely here. I do as I change my Creative Writing class to respond to that encroachment. I am allowing the encroachment to happen. I feel the loss.

BBC's booklist

2009-08-17T14:34:00.005-05:00

Here's an interesting list. How many have you read? Thanks to Ingrid Pierson for the link to the list (via Facebook). My wife and I each worked through the list. That she's read three more than me only surprises me because its not a greater differential.

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen XO
2 The Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien XO
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte XO
4 Harry Potter series – J.K. Rowling O
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee XO
6 The Bible XO (not all of it)
7 Wuthering Heights – X
8 1984 – George Orwell X
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman O
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens XO

Total: X=7, O=8

11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott XO
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy XO
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller XO
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare X (not all) O
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien O
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger XO
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger O
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot X

Total: X=6, O=7

21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell O
22 The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald XO
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy O
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky XO
28 The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck XO
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll X
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame

Total: X=4, O=5

31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy XO
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens O
33 The Chronicles of Narnia – C.S. Lewis O
34 Emma – Jane Austen XO
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – C.S. Lewis O
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini XO
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden XO
40 Winnie the Pooh – A.A. Milne XO

Total: X=5, O=8

41 Animal Farm – George Orwell X
42 The DaVinci Code – Dan Brown O
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez XO
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving XO
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – L.M. Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy X
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood X
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding XO
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan XO

Total: X=6, O=5

51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel XO
52 Dune – Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen XO
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens XO
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley X
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime – Mark Haddon O
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez XO

Total: X=5, O=5

61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck XO
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov X
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt O
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold O
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac X
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding O
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie O
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville X

Total: X=4, O=5

71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens O
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker X
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce X
76 The Inferno – Dante
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray X

Total: X=2, O=1

80 Possession – AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens XO
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker XO
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert XO
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White XO
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton

Total: X=4, O=4

91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad X
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery XO
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams XO
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole XO
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare XO
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl X
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

Total: X=6, O=4

Grand Total X=49, O=52

X= Mike
O= Judy

Marilynne Robinson's Gilead

2009-07-29T11:04:00.006-05:00

I read this book last week. What a delight! It made me think deeply and beautifully about grace, forgiveness, fatherhood, mistrust, reconciliation, God, my children, my wife, heaven, words, religion and existence. Metaphysical, philosophical, and alluring. Those first two traits don't always come together with the last in the same package in literature. But this piece of fiction swirls in the milieu of true, intellectual, Christianity. It reminds me with pride of a time when I held more genuinely to the precepts of organized religion. It made me hope for a future life full of the kind of considerations this elderly father has for his young son.

The novel takes the form of a letter, written over the course of months, from this father to his son. What a gift such a letter would be. And what an account of a man's life this letter becomes. If you haven't taken the time to read this book, you probably should. You can borrow it from me if you know me.

Michael Jackson at Summerfest!

2009-06-30T00:57:00.002-05:00

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

2009-06-03T21:58:00.006-05:00

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

2009-05-17T15:47:00.004-05:00

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.

2009-05-12T23:10:00.007-05:00

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...

2009-05-07T18:05:00.003-05:00

...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

2009-04-22T19:50:00.004-05:00

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...

2009-04-20T07:00:00.005-05:00

...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

2009-04-19T12:13:00.005-05:00

These two front page Journal Sentinel stories remind me of the song by the band Live called "The Beauty of Gray".

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

2009-03-22T14:56:00.006-05:00

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

2009-03-16T08:13:00.006-05:00

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?

2009-03-06T09:21:00.006-06:00

I asked my students the following three questions today.

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?
How many of you maintain a social networking site and visit it/update it between once a day and five times a week?
How many of you text message friends more than 10 times a day?

Results (after two classes--55 students):

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

2009-03-01T19:38:00.010-06:00

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?

Is this where journalism is going?

2009-02-20T13:50:00.008-06:00

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?

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

2009-02-17T06:49:00.003-06:00

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.

iTunes for the newspaper business--and addictive narcotics!

2009-02-11T12:59:00.008-06:00

Who else but John Stewart?

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Walter Isaacson

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things With Demetri Martin

Funny Political News
Joke of the Day

They refer to Isaacson's Time magazine piece on the topic.

God and science line up for another dance

2009-02-11T09:27:00.005-06:00

This article begins with an interesting assertion: that belief in religion is an adaptation that has facilitated humanity's evolutionary success. Try that on for size in the Intelligent Design v. Evolution debate. Right? The whole notion of intelligent design exists because of evolution. It's like the Darwinists saying to the creationists, "Boy, I brought you into this world, I can damn well take you out of it."

But then the article goes on to deconstruct that argument in favor of another, possibly related one. That our brains have an innate function for god-belief. Essentially, belief in god is biologically a part of us. We use different parts of our brain for dealing with living things than we do with inanimate things.

Oh the potential experiments are endless and ethically dubious. If you get to the end of the article without thinking of Lord of the Flies, then go back and read again!

I've made it!

2009-02-10T22:53:00.004-06:00

OK, I'm a little bit psyched. I have made the blogroll at Boots and Sabers. Woohoo. My favorite conservative blog. I get my ass kicked around from time to time arguing mindless liberal drivel, but, hey, its fun!

Kay Ryan in the Paris Review

2009-02-04T22:48:00.009-06:00

Been reading the Paris Review's interview with new US poet laureate Kay Ryan. Here are a few nuggets from the interview. Talking to poets can be such a gas.

Q: Why do you tend to write short lines?
A: Edges are the most powerful parts of the poem. The more edges you have, the more power you have. They make the poem more permeable, more exposed.

On the usefulness of poetry: It's poetry's uselessness that excites me. Its hopelessness. Prose is practical language. Conversation is practical language....But of course, poetry has its balms. It makes us less lonely by one. It makes us have more room inside ourselves.

Q: Why do you avoid the hot emotions that are often associated with confessional poetry?
A: If you put ice on your skin, your skin turns pink. Your body sends blood there. If you think about that in terms of writing, cool writing draws us draws our heat.

I'm moving on to the magazine's 1968 interview with the recently departed John Updike. Damn...so urbane!

Brooks on us

2009-01-28T19:05:00.004-06:00

David Brooks. I never fully know what to make of the guy. Sometimes he can be such a snarky little bitch. Then he goes and writes a column like this. Really a thoughtful, interesting piece. Read it and see what you think.

I'm less inclined than he to assert the generation gap in this respect. Maybe because it makes me, as someone who definitely feels defined by what life asks of him, feel like even more of an oldster when I view it in those terms. But I also see young people ready to submit to "institutional practices." And that makes me think the generational difference is not so pronounced as Brooks might assert. What'ya think?

Funny, dumb

2009-01-22T15:12:00.003-06:00

In case you think I'm looking down my nose at the poor sap in this video, it needs to be said that I am insanely jealous of anyone who can do that flippy thing with a pen where it flips around your thumb and lands back in the writing position. This guy brings that skill way up to a new level.

There are some other areas he needs to concern himself with. Common sense chief among them.

Hat tip to Jed at Boots and Sabers

Best of luck to Mssrs. Holbrooke and Mitchell

2009-01-22T14:07:00.013-06:00

I am glad to hear that these two guys (ambassador Richard Holbrooke left, Sen George Mitchell, right), skilled as they are in intransigent international political negotiations, arrive at State with clear missions and a chance to restore diplomatic integrity to US foreign relations in the Mideast. Best of luck to them both, and their boss, HRC.

I have always been a fan of diplomats. I believe they go to work once the generals and politicians have beat each other's brains against the wall and are no longer capable of any real progress. If only we could find a way to skip to the diplomatic work, without all the brain bashing. Some day maybe...

Safire on inaugural address

2009-01-20T17:51:00.004-06:00

Yeah, he's a grumpy old man with a bit of a god complex, but I have always loved to listen to him speak/read what he writes. As I listened to the inaugural, I actually thought, "This is pretty good, but only pretty good. It could easily be seen as a disappointment." Old Bill apparently agreed with me. Good thing there's a lot more to an administration than the inaugural address.

I'll echo Safire's thoughts about two little bits of the speech here: a sneaking suspicion about the originality of the “we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist” line. And flat out admiration for, "the mystic chords of memory"...just beautiful.

I did like much of what he said throughout the speech.

Feeling strong and full of potential.

A look at al-Jazeera

2009-01-19T22:08:00.006-06:00

A writer for the Boston Globe looks with a fresh set of eyes at what has become, even in our country, an institution. Albeit a reviled institution. What will become of the craft of journalism? What will become of war coverage? Isn't war coverage especially one that needs to hold onto some remnant of objectivity? Otherwise, whose to distinguish between facts and fiction? Will it all be left up to the artists?

Calderwood asks at the end if we'll come to see al-Jazeera style coverage in the name of peace, as opposed to seeing it in the name of a 'side'. It's something to hope for at least.

A grievious loss

2009-01-19T09:41:00.004-06:00

This one really bothers me. I could look at it rationally and say it is not that different from any other business closing during difficult economic times. But when a place like this goes down, you feel a bit more of a loss. Maybe it is only because of my emotional attachment to this particular business. But I feel like this company's abscense will leave a particularly big void.

I am sure there are people who grieve mightily when a concrete mixer goes out of business. They see the company as literally a part of many, many people's lives and they know that the community will feel the loss of those jobs acutely. I guess it should make me appreciate businesses (especially close-run family businesses) a little more than I do. People pour their heart and soul into their business and really work to insinuate the business into the community.

My grief seems compounded by the fact that Schwartz's has done that insinuating on a couple different levels. As I write this on Monday morning, the story is the most read and the most emailed on the JSOnline site. It is obvious that the Milwaukee metropolitan area knows about these stores and that they have a place in the minds of many of the city's newspaper patrons. However, on the very local level, Schwartz's seems to have found its way into neighbors' routines as well. In Shorewood, the store is a meeting place where you are likely to run into friends from across the village at any given time. During the holidays, the aisles of the store fill with the children of Shorewood who have left for school or careers, and return to the store for last minute holiday book shopping. Friends you've been too busy to stop and say hello to tap you on the shoulder and enjoy a shared title. There may even be folks youve been avoiding that you find yourself saying a polite hello to, realizing the folly of your avoidance. I am sure that people in Brookfield, Mequon and the east side of Milwaukee can share similar experiences. It's just sad.

I'm so proud of her

2009-01-14T20:03:00.004-06:00

My sister showed the impeccable good taste to travel this month with her sweetheart to the US Virgin Islands and get married. Mary had spent the entire semester away from her job as faculty member at the University of Wisconsin. She took a sabbatical and worked in Salt Lake City for a semester. Away from those she loved for that whole time left her reflective about what really matters in her life, I can only imagine. My first conversation with her was truncated by a different call coming in so I haven't been able to speak with her at length about her thoughts/planning process. But this was no fly-by-night decision.

I have always admired my sister, and I have always admired elopers! There is much to recommend a traditional wedding service, but there is much to avoid about them as well. My vote goes for the latter scenario. While I appreciate the power of declaring your love for your mate in front of a congregation full of people who love you and are invested in you, the picture is rarely so pure. Vows written and rehearsed and read in front of loved ones hold power. But the real power of vows exists between the two people.

Its great that there is an official, but whether it is a judge, or a priest or your best friend ordained on some crazy website, that person's job is to be witness on behalf of some other entity (God, the state, some crazy website?). So really they are necessary, but not central to the union. Even the Catholic church agrees, my mother tells me. The husband and the wife administer the sacrament of marriage to each other, the priest does not do it. It takes only two. And that's the beautiful thing about a marriage. Two people commit to each other in a really intense and intimate and permanent way. They agree to love like mad, fight like it matters, give a shit about all aspects of the other person. They couple, physically and emotionally and personally.

So the big crowds are fun for some folks. For some they make the marriage more important because there are all those witnesses. I am so impressed by those, like Mary and Bill, with the sense to commit in a simple and private ceremony that reflects the nature of the union. Bravo to Mary and Bill and their union confirmed in the warmth of the Caribbean. I love you both.

FIFA World Player of the Year

2009-01-12T15:46:00.006-06:00

Now I am not the world's most ardent soccer fan. I love the sport. I'd rather watch it than just about anything else. But, because I am afraid of what will happen if I subscribe to cable and receive a package that includes a station like FSC, i am not exposed to much soccer on tv. Thus, I do not keep up with club soccer or just about anything else besides Shorewood High School soccer and the World Cup. So when I read that Christiano Ronaldo was named FIFA's world player of the year, I was not surprised. He is certainly one of those names that anybody knows--and a prodigious talent on the world's biggest stage, to boot. Turns out I should have been surprised. Apparently, no player from outside Spain or Italy's club circuits has won FIFA's big award. Seems a little strange to me that neither the English Premiere League nor the great Brazillian swath of talent has garnered any recognition from FIFA.

Mountain of Snakes

2009-01-06T19:59:00.003-06:00

A really impressive account of Sean Penn, Douglas Brinkley and Christopher Hitchens's trip to Venezuela and Cuba to speak with their heads of state. I encountered this story back in November in The Nation and shared it with some friends. Then today, in talking with a former student, I was reminded that I haven't checked out the full account. The Huffington Post was the beneficiary of Penn's full story.

In the video attached to the November Nation piece, he comments on the story and puts some more overt politics into the mix. The whole thing interests me. Dude got the first foreign interview with Raul Castro since the revolution in 1957. The first interview period since the guy's been head of state.

Props to Sean Penn and go see Milk.

Apple's Macbook Wheel

2009-01-05T21:17:00.002-06:00

Damn! I got my new computer just a little too soon. Unlucky!!

Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard

McIlheran comments on auto makers in Wisconsin

2009-01-04T12:22:00.008-06:00

In the past, I've railed on JS columnist Patrick McIlheran for some of his rightward leaning views. I'm not saying I was wrong to do that, but I will say I feel much better about being able to say this about his most recent JSOnline column.

This is decent reporting.

Ford's 2007 deal with the UAW, for instance, is 2,215 pages long and weighs 22 pounds. For companies zealous about getting their in-plant culture right, that towering degree of inflexibility kills the deal. "If they go to Alabama, they know they'll never have to deal with that," said Mark Perry, an economist at the University of Michigan-Flint.

I feel like I can now enter into productive dialogue resulting in the kind of give-and-take public discourse that gets real change to happen. I'd guess that he'd still want to go harder on unions than I would, but after reading what some of the folks in his article said, I want to go back to unions and say, "Given what's happening to the big three auto makers on your watch, what concessions are you willing to bring to the table in order to achieve a status the article characterizes as 'team members talking quality' as opposed to 'line workers telling managers to talk to the hand'?"

I suspect that McIlheran has gone and found some experts with pretty strong right wing credentials to comment on his story (The Brookings Institution is not known as a bastion of liberal thought or a hang out for union sympathizers). They have an agenda that generally demonizes unions. That's fine. Let the other side construct a logical argument supported by credentialed thinkers from the other side, then bring the principals into the discussion.

Now we have the media doing what it should. Of course the case could be made that McIl. might have done the legwork on both sides of the issue, but let's not try and tackle too much right away. This was, after all, a column of this guy's opinion. Its just nice to see his assertions backed up with some actionable ideas.

No Great Michief

2009-01-02T08:49:00.009-06:00

I've just finished Alistair MacLoed's No Great Mischief. Part way through reading this book, this occurred to me: There is a striking similarity between Mr. MacLoed and Jhumpa Lahiri.

Here we go. First off, each writer has the uncanny ability to write to the reader's heart in a way that almost nullifies the act of reading. Or rather it elevates the act of reading to such a degree as to make it almost indistinguishable from living, or believing, or thinking, or desiring. I am barely aware of the fact that I am reading when I course through the books of these two authors. Except for the fact that their words distill reality into such a beautiful experience that I almost don't recognize it, I would think that I am actually living the experience of the characters in the book.

Talk about a breeding ground for empathy.

How can you not better understand the experience of first and second generation immigrants from India after reading The Namesake, Lahiri's account of what its like adjusting to life in the frigid northeast US? Once a Calcutta family proud of their independence and happy in the the clamour of India's major metropolis. Now an aspiring young academic and his new wife shivering through Boston winters in pursuit of a life in suburban American academia.

How can you not better understand the legacy of a young Cape Breton man after reading No Great Mischief, Macloed's account of the legacy of his family's arrival to “the land of the trees” from their native Scotland two hundred years ago. Still pulsing through his characters' veins is the blood of the Macdonald clan, brought to Cape Breton by a patriarch generations ago at great cost and with great love. “Blood is thicker than water” resonates with multiple meanings as this novel unfolds its tribute to the life of Cape Breton's mining, fishing, and farming Scotch.

Both authors have made their names by writing two collections of short stories (Lahiri: The Interpreter of Maladies and The Unaccustomed Earth; MacLoed: The Lost Salt Gift of Blood and As Birds Bring Forth the Sun) and the novels noted above.

Both writers document the experience of immigration.

Aside from the fact that Lahiri is ravishingly beautiful and MacLoed is, well, not, you might think there is a stronger connection between the two. I owe a good deal of my 2008 reading pleasure to these two fine authors.

Vanity Fair's oral history of the Bush administration

2008-12-30T09:54:00.005-06:00

This will be some really interesting reading. And, with Annie Leibovitz photos, pretty too. Let's face it, Rummy is eye candy in anyone's book.

I haven't read it yet (it is lengthy), but I will be reading it soon. Probably blog some of the individual entires, too.

Let's consider ourselves...

2008-12-27T09:05:00.006-06:00

I often ask myself, "What will the world judge you by?" I can't help but think that this is part of what the world will judge our country by, and it grieves me. I know that there are reasonable people that may disagree over immigration policy. I also know that NYT is not entirely above a little message messaging from time to time (the shot of the young man lighting votive candles at church is a little over the top). But still, even if just the core of the video's story is true, we have pursued and financially benefited from a policy of overaggressive policing of immigrant status.We have done this to the detriment of the social fabric of our country. It does not strengthen our moral fiber to enact these law and order policies. Instead it tears away at societal role models and chips away at the Ellis Island inscription.

Not even if the country went red!

2008-12-16T20:12:00.007-06:00

I can safely say that, even with the fiasco of the election of 2000, I would not be supporting Fair Vote, the organization that seeks to neuter the Electoral College. Call me elitist, but I'm glad the founding fathers actually put in some protections against pure populism.

Quaterbacks, teachers, and financial analysts...

2008-12-12T08:43:00.003-06:00

I'm glad there are folks out there thinking hard about things without easily apparent answers. Malcolm Gladwell writes in the New Yorker about the difficulty of predicting good teachers and good quarterbacks. Apparently one financial group has a model that might work, but do we have the cash??

I could get behind merit pay systems if there were actors considering things from perspectives like this one. I reject all attempts to conflate test scores and merit unless there are lots of other factors figuring prominently in the equation. I'd also like to see more work done on those tests.

Teasing

2008-12-11T00:09:00.002-06:00

In my family, we tease because we love. I felt validated reading this defense of teasing.

Blagojevich-OK I'm up for a little just plain mean

2008-12-10T17:22:00.017-06:00

You know, it's the Trib. If anyone can be mean at this point, it's them. Reading this reminds me of how I'd feel if I saw a member of the Detroit Lions dancing on the big star at midfield of Cowboys stadium after trouncing the 'Boys 41-0.

She looks like a nice enough gal (not!), but, my heavens, I think I can actually see the knife twisting as I read this. This post is really only about catharsis. The problem might be that the column seems to be informed by a similar motivation. Is it OK to publish a column in a major daily with spite as its main angle? Like I said, if anyone can get away with this kind of thing, it would be the Tribune, wronged as it was by Blaggo.

Crowdfunding?

2008-12-09T21:45:00.003-06:00

This is an idea that needs to mature, in my mind. Why might sources want to contribute to a reporter's fund that's reporting on corruption in local gov't.? Could it be that they are intrinsically motivated to clean up graft in city hall? Could it be that they want to send a smarty-pants reporter off on a wild goose chase, so the reporter doesn't uncover the donor's own shenanigans?

I can also imagine (all too easily) a slow decline in the quality of news coverage as the fast money comes to support flashy/high profile stories. Thence a small drop to really cool, slightly sensationalized stories. Yet another little knock and dude's getting four, five figures a day to chase Shia Labeouf through Hollywood.

This might be a better model for journalism.

Either way, someone has to realize that free journalism is not an answer. Solid reporting has a value that needs to be renumerated. This is a thought from the comments after the first story, and one I agree with.

Looks like the Child Welfare Bureau and China think alike

2008-12-08T17:32:00.005-06:00

Talk about a disturbing trend in public accountability. It seems that the Child Welfare Bureau in Milwaukee, will recommend you for psychiatric care if you insist too hard on answers to your questions about sticky issues they're dealing with. In China, they deal with dissenters the same way. Remind me to be nice to the next bureaucrat I happen to cross paths with.

Torch Pass

2008-12-07T10:13:00.002-06:00

If you can get through the love fest between these two and cheshire cat grin on Gregory's face throughout the interview, there are some interesting things said regarding the role of Sunday morning news shows at this point in media history.

I feel as if programs like MTP act as the village elder giving advice to a new generation of civic leaders. Less so the Brokaw/Gregory exchange which seemed a little manufactured to me.

Pitts on the Black Monday Walmart incident

2008-12-04T21:32:00.004-06:00

Leonard Pitts knocks some interesting ideas around in this recent column. I do wonder what gets into people when they can so readily disregard the life of another in the name of a bargain on a new iPhone.

Kenosha's text ban

2008-12-04T10:40:00.004-06:00

I like what this young writer has to say about Kenosha's recent ban on texting while driving. I fear she will never get credit for the final two sentences of her column. I fear she will be cast as yet another entitled young person trying to hold onto ill-begotten rights. In reading her column, nothing seems further from the truth. I hope I am wrong about my fears.

The other thing that comes to mind when I read her reactions to this legislation is that legislators are always going to pass laws that objectify a demographic they don't feel particularly beholden to. Young folks (those likely to be adept, and relatively safe, texters) either can't vote yet, or are part of a demographic that typically doesn't vote in very large numbers. This fact makes them easy targets for legislators who want to make an example of someone. The logic that Anderson puts forth in her column isn't likely to be addressed, unless of course we see statewide legislation along the same lines.

My Morning Jacket

2008-12-01T22:44:00.007-06:00

Spent the last few months falling in love with a few new (to me) musical acts. Its rare for me to get all giddy about bands. I enjoy new music, tend to reject old music, and generally find myself a lukewarm if somewhat faithful adherent to artists who curry my favor. But lately I'm getting all crazy about a few folks making music these days. These Kentucky boys can really bring it.

My time with them started this past summer when I brought their Evil Urges CD up to Door County for our week of B's (more on that some other time). It always seemed to be playing on the cd player in the car while I made my morning trips into the gas station for a paper. The August sun shone and I kept the windows down and the volume up.

I always seemed to pass the same people making their way to work on those trips. There'd be the two young babushka girls, eastern European resort workers on their bikes heading to work. But they didn't ride together, they rode in sight of each other, that's all. There was the couple who rode together on one bike. He pedaled while she sat sidesaddle on the rack over the rear wheel. A wiry fellow, he really had to work to get them both up the two Sister Bay hills. I thought: either he really loves her, or he is her slave.

If I could get over the fact that I made the wrong Ryan choice last February, I could enjoy this fellow with a little more untarnished pleasure.

But the fact remains while Ryan Adams heralded a new generation of Milwaukee fans from his back on the stage, I took in Ryan Shaw, an energetic young performer of his own right, at a nearby venue. Now I only wish I made a different choice.

Why do folks want to do this?

2008-07-02T09:22:00.006-05:00

I hope that this is just another case of killing something by committee. People are upset that a couple of Vietnamese kids spoke a couple of sentences in Vietnamese to their parents during a graduation address. Aren't these speeches vetted ahead of time? Can't a school decide for itself what is appropriate for their own ceremony?

“As board members, we get to observe the different ceremonies, and there’s some inconsistencies I think the board, or administration more importantly, needs to address,” said Rickie Pitre, a board member. “I don’t like them addressing in a foreign language. They should be in English.”

So it's about what Rickie Pitre likes, is it? Then he should speak at the damn commencement if he's so worried about it.

Reflecting on SoCal field trip

2008-04-25T09:03:00.007-05:00

A week removed from my time in Anaheim with seven editors of the school newspaper that I advise, and, as usual, I find myself thinking about 1) how lucky I am to work with the likes of these particular kids, 2) how much more I can be doing for them, and 3)how ambivalent I remain about these trips.

While I can manage to get the basic arrangements accounted for: transportation, hotel, conference registration, etc., I can't seem to do much more. I make my way through the conference and see the organization of some staffs and the power of their experience. I provide a nice time for really good kids.

But the trip does not really push them to another level of experience. I'd love to be able to challenge them better. Some of the kids are better travelers than I am. Some of them idled through the experience. Some of them may even have been a bit bored by the non-convention contents of the trip. After all, we only managed a trip to a baseball game and a trip to a beach. and as one of the kids said, "We really didn't see L.A." I remember coming home from the beach on Saturday night thinking on some level that I have failed these kids. I know they were disappointed we didn't get a fire on the beach. I was disappointed as well. Maybe a trip to the Hollywood hills would have been cool. At the time there was a story in the news about the land to the left of the "H" on the "Hollywood" sign being up for sale. It might have been cool to get up around there on Saturday evening. But my timid and possibly over-cautious nature limited the experience a little.

See, this is my ambivalence: I know I am a good adviser for this group. I know their experience on the paper is a valuable one. I know the experience of the paper is more valuable for the things like the trip we took. But it isn't what it could be. And the newspaper staff works so hard throughout the year as to deserve the best in trip/experience planning. They only get what I can offer. So it could be better and that is the source of my ambivalence.

Enough whining. The trip was good and folks were glad they got a little California sunshine in the middle of their dreary Wisconsin spring. I was as well.

Sanctimony from the right

2008-04-06T15:11:00.000-05:00

Listen to Pat McIlheran talk about the Supreme court race that just finished Tuesday:

Backers of Butler apparently wanted a contest of résumés: Butler's on the court while Gableman's judging in Nowheresville.

Is there a problem with that? Of course that's what folks wanted. Furthermore, conservatives and/or those who supported Gableman would likely characterize their support of him along the same lines. They believed in his resume over Butler's. Maybe that's not what truly bothered the JSOnline columnist. He then turned his column to an analysis of the ads in the race. He focused on the one ad that was the most widely denounced in a race featuring lots of nasty mud slung from third parties on each side. The ad in question was NOT produced by a third party, but by the Gableman campaign.

Apparently, if you think this ad is racist, you're not being logical:Claiming racism is a harmful reflex. It certainly hobbles any more general discussion of courts and crime. Six of the suspects on the Milwaukee Police Department's 10-most-wanted list are black men. The Milwaukee Homicide Review Commission reported that 46% of homicide suspects were young black men, a group that constitutes 3% of the city's population. If mentioning black suspects makes one racist, it effectively removes crime as a discussable issue.
I have serious troubles with that type of logic. His evidence does nothing to support the position that the ad is not racist.

Unfortunately, he goes on to tell liberals what we think, which seems to be that we have a tendency to tell others what to think:The revelation here isn't that ads can be tawdry or that campaigns cost money, all commonplace. It is what liberals think of the typical Wisconsinite: You're weak-minded, prone to suasion by utterly baseless TV ads. You're particularly attuned to secret appeals to your inner racism. Most of the state is a seething pit of bigotry. You cannot be trusted to choose a judiciary.
He finishes by implying the Gableman strategy is just hitting its stride because it'll be needed again when a race of resumes would be a bad idea for conservatives.
Liberals' contempt for you isn't really news. Still, it's good to be reminded. Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson, philosophically aligned with Butler, is up for a vote next spring. She's already said she's running. "I will mobilize the forces of good," she said with a smile to some journalists.

Take that as a warning: Better do as you're told next time or this whole democracy thing is so over.
Buckle down every one.

And remember, no whining over the results of elections.

Has The Atlantic gone Tabloid?

2008-04-04T15:33:00.001-05:00

The cover of this month's Atlantic features Britney Spears. The story documents the rise of the paparazzi as a force in American media. What are the effects of such a trend, especially when combined with the influences of talk radio and the internet? Here is a link to an NYU panel discussion, led by the author of the cover story. It may be an interesting take on our evolving media. Enjoy.

The state of our state

2008-04-02T07:28:00.000-05:00

I'm often emotionally involved in elections. I have to say that even though this election will likely loom as very important for me in the near future, I didn't get involved emotionally in the campaign. I know that had everything to do with the ugliness of the campaign. But it was ugly on both sides, and I have to believe that, in the end, it was a wash.

I'm left worrying that this map is pretty accurate in describing the state of politics in Wisconsin of late. I'm feeling more and more like a minority.

Death by a thousand cuts

2008-03-02T13:24:00.001-06:00

You have to give it to the righties in Madison and throughout Wisconsin for their strategy to attack public programs for which they don't care. Not a fan of public education? Why simply restrict its funding, begin a significant public relations campaign against it, and institute policies that weaken it. Then, as it struggles, convince people that the program is weak and faltering and thus not a good investment of taxpayer dollars. This also works for public transportation. I am sure that Milwaukee County Executive Walker is quite satisfied that reduced routes and higher fares have made ridership drop at a time, nationally, when public transportation is flourishing.

_{photo credit Marquette Tribune}

A test case for war?

2007-12-03T23:03:00.000-06:00

Is there something we are to take from this report, besides the fact that dollar for dollar, sanctions and continued inspections, along with persistent diplomatic pressure, are a much better investment than armed conflict?

The new estimate declares instead with “high confidence” that the military-run program was shut in 2003, and it concludes with “moderate confidence” that the program remains frozen. The report judges that the halt was imposed by Iran “primarily in response to increasing international scrutiny and pressure.”

I struggle with how to walk hawks through the logic of diplomacy.

As many wars have ended because of the work of diplomats, as have from the achievements of generals.

Why shouldn't we keep on her?

2007-12-02T12:44:00.000-06:00

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Patrick McIlheran, in a column today, takes issue with One Wisconsin Now and other liberal groups seeking Justice Ziegler's dismissal from a case involving the sales tax in Wisconsin. One group that worked hard to get Ziegler elected to the case, Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, has filed a friend of the court brief in the case. Since she is still dealing with allegations she failed to properly recuse herself from cases when she served on a lower court, aren't her critics justified in holding her feet to the fire? McIlheran doesn't think they are:

A particularly loud group, One Wisconsin Now, just launched a Web site aimed specifically at continuing to pump air into the whole "scandal." They're in for the long term. Why should they be any more deterred by the other justices' final word than they were by the judgment that really counted: the 58% to 42% verdict of voters that, ethics accusations or no, Ziegler would make a better justice than her opponent.

Aparently once the election's over her critics should just forget her missteps and turn their head when she stumbles again.

I say: "Stay on her."

When Brash is In

2007-01-07T11:58:00.000-06:00

Know that pride,
Howe'er disguised in its own majesty,
Is littleness; that he who feels contempt
For any living thing, hath faculties
Which he has never used; that thought within him
Is in its infancy.

-William Wordsworth

I started to dislike The Simpsons about nine years ago when, on a cold February dawn, I had the forensics team's van all warmed up in the parking lot of St. Francis High School. I sat in relative warmth that Saturday morning as students slowly began to show up. One, having walked across the frozen, windy football field, ducked into the van muttering some line from The Simpsons about how cold it was out there. I thought it was mildly funny and appreciated the reference, even if it was to a goofy TV show. A few more kids got dropped off and climbed in. Finally another kid came across the same field and, pink-faced, uttered the same Homerism as the last kid to come that way. It was then that I realized how closely these kids watched this show. I am OK with this. The Simpsons makes me laugh and contains lots of funny plays on popular ideas. But its default of irreverence becomes tiresome to me. I see this irreverence in our society at large and it bothers me.

I can remember some time ago being vaguely nauseated at the people airing their dirty laundry in front of Judge Wapner in The People’s Court. At it’s beginning Wapner’s show seemed to promise something redemptive. We may not have wanted to take our issues to a real court, but if both parties were amenable, we could take it before the People’s Court and agree to abide by the good judge’s ruling. Somewhere along the way we lost interest in whatever low level of justice was being affirmed, and began to revel in the joy of another’s misery. A not-so-slow decompositional drip occurred: Divorce Court, Judge Judy, Judge Joe Brown, etc. Now we’re voting people off islands and stages and Bachelor pads along the French Riviera.

I can tell why many folks practice irreverence toward public officials. Kennedy's womanizing White House shenanigans, Watergate, Iran-Contra, Monica Lewinski, the 2000 election of our current president, and much of the political malfesience that has accompanied his tenure all reward a certain cynicism toward those who serve in public office. It's natural for hard-working Americans to see all these events as evidence that even those in society's upper eschelons stumble and fall, or just behave badly. We have arrived at a malaise of cycicism that seems to poison our society.

Rare is the person who now decides to go into public service for the intrinsic rewards in such service. We can easily see the impact this fact has on the pool of candidates for any given office. Consider that effective and systemic gerrymandering over the past ten years has left very little chance of replacing an incumbant in the vast majority of federal legislative seats. What results is a frighteningly shallow and stagnant talent pool. In a sense, this fact too might reward that cynical view of public serevants. But that sells short those hearty souls who have managed to stay alive in the shallow, stagnant talent pool. These are individuals made of pretty stern stuff. And we seem to want to spend inordinate effort tearing them down. To what end? What do we as a populace stand to gain by such a dubious victory, especially when the grounds on which we tear these public servants down resemble the very judgements we make from our living rooms in declaring the next American Idol.