Maybe it’s the crowd I run with. Maybe it’s a sign of our times – whether economic or digital. But I miss the tradition of the Christmas Letter.
When I was a boy, one of the favored holiday treats – not quite up there with my mother’s Vanilla Kipferln cookies or my Grossmama’s precious packages of Julius Meinl chocolate wafers from Vienna , but surely on a par with the Advent wreath and singing carols by the piano – were the holiday cards that arrived with a family letter. These missives from people my parents knew from The War or from my dad’s Harvard days, but we kids only knew through their annual dispatches, were a window into another world, one of privilege, access, and refinement – or at least (even to our impressionable young minds) to pretenses thereof.
Imagine, if you will, the voice and manner of Thurston B. Howell III (from TV’s Gilligan’s Island) recounting his clan’s far-flung and glamorous exploits from the year past, recited in a warm yet holier-than-thou tone: “Susie polished her tennis game this summer, making it to the top of the Juniors Ladder at the club. Stanford will be lucky to have her next fall!” “Tommy Jr. spent his sophomore semester abroad at Colgate’s little outpost in Kitzbuhl, brushing up on his Deutsch (and his slalom skills!). Mitzie and I will be joining him there after the holidays for a week on the slopes.” “Caroline is a shoe-in for valedictorian this year at Lawrence – nothing but straight A’s for our little scholar!” “We made the most of the summer on the Vineyard… sailing nearly every day with our friends Willard and Diana, and toasting the sunsets from our verandah, martini in hand.” “The only thing better was our two weeks in Florence in October – my golly, the art, the architecture, the opera… divine!”
These weren’t the only such letters that arrived, naturally. Other old friends kept tabs with notes and photos of their trips, their children’s successes, their personal bests. And usually with a little less one-uppitiness. (In fact, my mother received just such a letter the other day, from a cousin who recounted in six pages of fine detail his 5-month retirement trip by ship from the Arctic to Antarctica. "Myamar is so much better than Thailand," he says. So apparently, the artform is not altogether dead.)
Touching base
I was reminded of these annual looks back as we spent part of the past two nights hurriedly scribbling cards and sticking on stamps to get our holiday wishes in the mail before the 24th. I was thinking about was how the form has changed, even if the desire to share has not. Today, we’re ever-more instant in our personal reportage. Ace your golf game – text-message your buddy to rub it in. Get your homework done in a flash – IM a friend to check in. Have photos of the big fish that didn’t get away – post ‘em on flickr. Have an idea? Blog it. All of the above… put it on Facebook.
It’s not that we’re communicating less. It’s just that our personal news comes and goes in bits and sound bites now. We share it quickly, like a hot potato, as if by letting the moment simmer it will lose value. That we might pause and reflect on our comings and going is, like, too much effort, too much looking back and not enough “what’s next?”.
So, I miss the annual ritual of reflection that came in those cards. I regret that we too did nothing more than “touch base” this year as we whirled through the address book to get cards in the mail. If anyone reads this blog and remembers – remind me next year to put it in a letter.
December 23, 2008
December 10, 2008
The next Kennedy
The news that Caroline Kennedy might enter the political arena as the next Senator from New York, replacing Hilary Clinton, has me feeling mixed emotions.
Ever since she chose to steer clear of direct public exposure—choosing to work on the sidelines, but in enough public view to maintain her visibility and clout—I have been among the ranks who are inspired by her example, her decision not to get down in the trenches, her … well … unique separateness. It has been, I think, a source of her strength as well as a big part of her continuing mystique. She’s not a dilettante. She chooses her battles, and wages them quietly but effectively, whether for the New York education causes or as head of Barack Obama’s vice-president search committee. And despite the extraordinary push/pull that must always be there in the Kennedy family to assume one’s place in public life, she has kept her distance and led a quieter life.
Now, whether because of Ted K being on the wane or because of the inspiration of Obama, or maybe because her kids are grown and she can more freely devote herself to life in Washington, Caroline Kennedy seems ready to step up to the plate.
Don’t get me wrong. I have always thought of her as the most capable of the extended collection of Kennedy and Shriver kids. I don’t know her, and have absolutely nothing but her public persona to go on, but I just feel that she stands head and shoulders above the rest of her family’s generation.
But do I want to see her go into public office… to run for public office… and all that entails? I just don’t know… Yes, I would like to see her rise up and carry on the work and champion the causes that her uncle is beginning to relinquish. There is no one else who could do that (conversely, I shudder at the speculation that Ted is positioning wife Vicki as heir apparent for his Massachusetts seat). Our the country could be a better place for having Caroline Kennedy on the Senate floor. In fact, much of the world would cheer her arrival in our legislature and as a presence on the world stage. Her stature is simply that great.
Yet, I wonder if she could do just as much good off the campaign trail—step up her public prominence, perhaps, maybe assume a leadership role on some national or global foundation. Maybe I just have trouble dispelling the image of the little girl playing under the desk, who grew into the graceful person she seems today. She’s a quiet force right now. Does she really need to join the fray of public politics?
Ever since she chose to steer clear of direct public exposure—choosing to work on the sidelines, but in enough public view to maintain her visibility and clout—I have been among the ranks who are inspired by her example, her decision not to get down in the trenches, her … well … unique separateness. It has been, I think, a source of her strength as well as a big part of her continuing mystique. She’s not a dilettante. She chooses her battles, and wages them quietly but effectively, whether for the New York education causes or as head of Barack Obama’s vice-president search committee. And despite the extraordinary push/pull that must always be there in the Kennedy family to assume one’s place in public life, she has kept her distance and led a quieter life.
Now, whether because of Ted K being on the wane or because of the inspiration of Obama, or maybe because her kids are grown and she can more freely devote herself to life in Washington, Caroline Kennedy seems ready to step up to the plate.
Don’t get me wrong. I have always thought of her as the most capable of the extended collection of Kennedy and Shriver kids. I don’t know her, and have absolutely nothing but her public persona to go on, but I just feel that she stands head and shoulders above the rest of her family’s generation.
But do I want to see her go into public office… to run for public office… and all that entails? I just don’t know… Yes, I would like to see her rise up and carry on the work and champion the causes that her uncle is beginning to relinquish. There is no one else who could do that (conversely, I shudder at the speculation that Ted is positioning wife Vicki as heir apparent for his Massachusetts seat). Our the country could be a better place for having Caroline Kennedy on the Senate floor. In fact, much of the world would cheer her arrival in our legislature and as a presence on the world stage. Her stature is simply that great.
Yet, I wonder if she could do just as much good off the campaign trail—step up her public prominence, perhaps, maybe assume a leadership role on some national or global foundation. Maybe I just have trouble dispelling the image of the little girl playing under the desk, who grew into the graceful person she seems today. She’s a quiet force right now. Does she really need to join the fray of public politics?
December 1, 2008
Lost in space
The past week’s events in Mumbai, India, in particular the way ordinary bystanders participated as “citizen journalists” in reporting the terror-attack events as they unfolded via online services such as Twitter and Flickr, got me thinking about how I use Web 1.0 and 2.0 tools, and how I am beginning to feel a bit pixilated in my online activity.
First a small step back… I have been messing around with Facebook over the past few weeks. It started as an experiment in child monitor (mine, not yours!) but has quickly, and remarkably easily, blossomed into a daily activity almost as necessary as checking my e-mail. And therein lies the quandary. Is Facebook the straw that could break this cyber-camel’s back?
Assuming I remember them all, I have cyber selves and accounts at:
• Hotmail – my day-to-day e-mail account.
• Gmail – for my personal-business e-mailing.
• CCICrosby.com – where I handle e-mail for my job.
• Facebook – At my new best time-waster (to quote a friend), I keep tabs on friends, colleagues, and other loose connections. I’ve posted some photos. I also play word puzzle games that I find a bit annoying, but my wife got me into it. And I keep track of several blogs that I like to read.
• delicious – I use this site regularly to keep track of all the websites and blogs I need at my fingertips for work or personal interests.
• Twitter – I do have a Twitter account, though I don’t use it much. A work colleague uses Twitter often to troll for information on articles we’re planning. I just haven’t gotten into the habit. Certainly the Mumbai reporting opened my eyes to new possibilities.
• LinkedIn – Go here to see or join my professional connections and network. I’m still getting the hang of all you can do with LinkedIn from a business standpoint, and I don’t have as cool connections as my wife (she’s linked to the governor, at least one Red Sox ace, and the host of a certain national TV dance show), but I see the potential.
• weber-wise – this blog… thank you for reading.
• Amazon wish list – This is my master file of all music, movies, and books that I hope to get at some point, or simply things that I want to remember for some reason. By the way, Christmas is just around the corner…
• iTunes shopping cart – a companion to my Amazon list. Here is where I keep track of single tunes that I want to add to my collection someday. This was a hard adjustment to make at first, since I consider myself an album kind-of guy. But at 99 cents apiece, I can adjust. I often shuffle music ideas back and forth between iTunes and Amazon as my whims and priorities change.
• Peapod – I love this service, which lets me grocery shop online and have someone else lug in the heavy bags. And the site’s database keeps track of everything I’ve ever ordered, so I can do all my shopping in a few quick clicks.
• MySpace – Mostly dormant at this time (you’ll see, I have basically no friends here). I set it up last year, partly as a cyber exercise and partly to keep tabs on my son, his friends, and my brother.
• Second Life – OK, I’m really adrift here. I created a character this summer (named Spyder Wirefly… cool, eh!?) but I find it darned difficult to do anything. I had a heck of a time modifying my avatar’s appearance; I can barely figure out how to get to the site and move around; and communicating with others…? Maybe I’d be better off living my second life as a mute! The notion of earning Linden dollars, buying or selling stuff, conducting business, running a presidential campaign, or any of the other interesting options you hear about on Second Life… well, let’s just say I’m still learning to do that in my first life.
Seeing it all laid out here, the list is pretty awesome. I remember only five years ago being impressed that I was part of an active listserv. But managing it all demands time and patience, as well as a certain degree of “here I am” ego. It’s no wonder I don’t write in this blog more frequently, or that several of my sites are less that robust. I’m really actually fairly busy at work, thank you, and at home I’ve only got so many hours to give over to my cyber life. I know it will sort itself out and some of these services will fall into disuse. But for now, all I can say is, thank god for bookmarks.
First a small step back… I have been messing around with Facebook over the past few weeks. It started as an experiment in child monitor (mine, not yours!) but has quickly, and remarkably easily, blossomed into a daily activity almost as necessary as checking my e-mail. And therein lies the quandary. Is Facebook the straw that could break this cyber-camel’s back?
Assuming I remember them all, I have cyber selves and accounts at:
• Hotmail – my day-to-day e-mail account.
• Gmail – for my personal-business e-mailing.
• CCICrosby.com – where I handle e-mail for my job.
• Facebook – At my new best time-waster (to quote a friend), I keep tabs on friends, colleagues, and other loose connections. I’ve posted some photos. I also play word puzzle games that I find a bit annoying, but my wife got me into it. And I keep track of several blogs that I like to read.
• delicious – I use this site regularly to keep track of all the websites and blogs I need at my fingertips for work or personal interests.
• Twitter – I do have a Twitter account, though I don’t use it much. A work colleague uses Twitter often to troll for information on articles we’re planning. I just haven’t gotten into the habit. Certainly the Mumbai reporting opened my eyes to new possibilities.
• LinkedIn – Go here to see or join my professional connections and network. I’m still getting the hang of all you can do with LinkedIn from a business standpoint, and I don’t have as cool connections as my wife (she’s linked to the governor, at least one Red Sox ace, and the host of a certain national TV dance show), but I see the potential.
• weber-wise – this blog… thank you for reading.
• Amazon wish list – This is my master file of all music, movies, and books that I hope to get at some point, or simply things that I want to remember for some reason. By the way, Christmas is just around the corner…
• iTunes shopping cart – a companion to my Amazon list. Here is where I keep track of single tunes that I want to add to my collection someday. This was a hard adjustment to make at first, since I consider myself an album kind-of guy. But at 99 cents apiece, I can adjust. I often shuffle music ideas back and forth between iTunes and Amazon as my whims and priorities change.
• Peapod – I love this service, which lets me grocery shop online and have someone else lug in the heavy bags. And the site’s database keeps track of everything I’ve ever ordered, so I can do all my shopping in a few quick clicks.
• MySpace – Mostly dormant at this time (you’ll see, I have basically no friends here). I set it up last year, partly as a cyber exercise and partly to keep tabs on my son, his friends, and my brother.
• Second Life – OK, I’m really adrift here. I created a character this summer (named Spyder Wirefly… cool, eh!?) but I find it darned difficult to do anything. I had a heck of a time modifying my avatar’s appearance; I can barely figure out how to get to the site and move around; and communicating with others…? Maybe I’d be better off living my second life as a mute! The notion of earning Linden dollars, buying or selling stuff, conducting business, running a presidential campaign, or any of the other interesting options you hear about on Second Life… well, let’s just say I’m still learning to do that in my first life.
Seeing it all laid out here, the list is pretty awesome. I remember only five years ago being impressed that I was part of an active listserv. But managing it all demands time and patience, as well as a certain degree of “here I am” ego. It’s no wonder I don’t write in this blog more frequently, or that several of my sites are less that robust. I’m really actually fairly busy at work, thank you, and at home I’ve only got so many hours to give over to my cyber life. I know it will sort itself out and some of these services will fall into disuse. But for now, all I can say is, thank god for bookmarks.
November 17, 2008
Finally, a good use for the Internet
OK, so that’s a bit extreme. But after spending way too much time online with Facebook lately, I’ve found balance in my life.
First, about this Facebook thing… I admit to being a latecomer to the party. But judging by various associates, friends, and friend of friends who’ve also joined recently, there’s still a lot of room for growth in this puppy. As one colleague said to me, “welcome to the new biggest time waster in your life,” and by golly she was right.
The site just sucks you in with all kinds of mind candy – games to play, events to join in, photos to post and share and comment on, all manner of gizmos to show which movie star you see yourself as, gifts to “send,” drinks to pass around (that one remains a mystery to me), and more. Starting with the “Bill is _ _ _” status report at the top of the page, the site is demonically designed to make you “need” to come back often and update yourself and check on your many friends. That some friends report “other people” who update their status constantly throughout the day makes you wonder if those folks have an offline life. (It also makes me wonder how my friends know this detail about their Facebook friends’ obsessiveness.) I mean, really, is the world a better place for our knowing that “Susie is watching Johnny play in the back yard” (and which is she watching more closely – Johnny or Facebook?)
Don’t get me wrong. It’s been fun to connect casually with a few folks who I’d otherwise be missing. It’s like popping back into lives that had drifted apart. Within limits, that’s a good thing, and just might lead to interesting possibilities down the road.
In the meantime, however, Bill is … not so sure Facebook is a good thing.
Craigslist, on the other hand, is a godsend. For months, I have been grumbling about the clutter in our house. Things certainly have piled up over the years. Toys get outgrown, and boxed, and stored and… dusty. Furniture from a previous generation of dwelling are a bit too nice to be discarded, but don’t fit in the current abode or in our future plans. Dishes. Lamps. Videos. Albums. Rugs. More dishes. Our attic holds a vast store of stuff that fits into the “one man’s trash…” category.
Now that we’ve arrived at the “enough is enough” stage, craigslist is my exit strategy.
I posted several pieces of furniture and some unused toys on craigslist yesterday afternoon as a first foray into cybersales – and much to my joy, I got three bites within a few hours. That’s progress. Because believe me, there’s more where that came from.
If all goes well, I now have a new part-time job. Just like the folks I remember from Downeast Maine who have permanent yard sales in their garages (stop by anytime), if you need to find me, just know that “Bill is… rummaging in the attic.”
First, about this Facebook thing… I admit to being a latecomer to the party. But judging by various associates, friends, and friend of friends who’ve also joined recently, there’s still a lot of room for growth in this puppy. As one colleague said to me, “welcome to the new biggest time waster in your life,” and by golly she was right.
The site just sucks you in with all kinds of mind candy – games to play, events to join in, photos to post and share and comment on, all manner of gizmos to show which movie star you see yourself as, gifts to “send,” drinks to pass around (that one remains a mystery to me), and more. Starting with the “Bill is _ _ _” status report at the top of the page, the site is demonically designed to make you “need” to come back often and update yourself and check on your many friends. That some friends report “other people” who update their status constantly throughout the day makes you wonder if those folks have an offline life. (It also makes me wonder how my friends know this detail about their Facebook friends’ obsessiveness.) I mean, really, is the world a better place for our knowing that “Susie is watching Johnny play in the back yard” (and which is she watching more closely – Johnny or Facebook?)
Don’t get me wrong. It’s been fun to connect casually with a few folks who I’d otherwise be missing. It’s like popping back into lives that had drifted apart. Within limits, that’s a good thing, and just might lead to interesting possibilities down the road.
In the meantime, however, Bill is … not so sure Facebook is a good thing.
Craigslist, on the other hand, is a godsend. For months, I have been grumbling about the clutter in our house. Things certainly have piled up over the years. Toys get outgrown, and boxed, and stored and… dusty. Furniture from a previous generation of dwelling are a bit too nice to be discarded, but don’t fit in the current abode or in our future plans. Dishes. Lamps. Videos. Albums. Rugs. More dishes. Our attic holds a vast store of stuff that fits into the “one man’s trash…” category.
Now that we’ve arrived at the “enough is enough” stage, craigslist is my exit strategy.
I posted several pieces of furniture and some unused toys on craigslist yesterday afternoon as a first foray into cybersales – and much to my joy, I got three bites within a few hours. That’s progress. Because believe me, there’s more where that came from.
If all goes well, I now have a new part-time job. Just like the folks I remember from Downeast Maine who have permanent yard sales in their garages (stop by anytime), if you need to find me, just know that “Bill is… rummaging in the attic.”
November 7, 2008
Harsh words
I’ve been wrestling this week with mixed feelings about boys, bullies, and the messy rites of growing up.
At my son’s school… well, actually, in my son’s physical and virtual social networks this week, a major rift happened when four boys went onto Facebook and posted a photo of all the 7th and 8th graders from a school outing and then tagged each student’s and teacher’s face with rude, racist, slanderous, malicious comments. They targeted appearance, socioeconomic status, weight, ethnicity, sexual orientation, heritage, intelligence, lack of coolness – everything bad you can think of, if you put yourself in a smartass 13-year-old frame of mind.
The thing blew up on Monday at school. Several girls confronted the boys in the lunchroom. Some kids went to the principal. Everybody talked about it. Everybody knew.
By Tuesday morning, two boys were suspended (I’ll call them Jerk 1 and Jerk 2) for a day, the other two (Jerks 3 and 4) spoke with the principal. Jerk 1 spent part of his day at home (presumably under the watchful eye of a parent?) texting Jerk 3 at school (in blatant violation of the no-cell phones policy) about how he was grounded for a month and sharing their indignation with the lunch table gang about how “people can’t take a joke” and the like. Jerk 4 somehow managed to talk his way out of trouble. A letter came home with all kids that afternoon, acknowledging the incident and repeating the no-bullying policy in bland legalese.
On Wednesday, the principal called an assembly of the 7th and 8th graders, during which Jerks 1 and 2 were made to give public apologies (consensus is that the boys were marginally contrite) and did some public squirming (Jerk 1 took blame for writing bad things about his classmates but baldly claimed no knowledge of who wrote the bad things about teachers, even though his classmates in the audience “all” knew Jerk 3 did that bit). Then the town safety officer spoke about Internet civility, and gave the students a chance to speak and to vent. During this portion, amazingly, Jerk 3 stood up and tried to argue that “it wasn’t that bad – it was meant to be funny.” The audience didn’t much buy that line. After the assembly, Jerk 1 handed out individual, hand-written apologies to the kids he dissed online. Despite the relatively identical nature of his message to each kid, that helped some. He also asked several kids “can we be friends,” since he’s under orders to make new friends as part of his rehabilitation. (Even though he was the ringleader of this debacle, his friends are being portrayed as the proverbial bad influence.)
Anyhow, the week ended today with confirmation that Jerk 1 is a serial offender, Yesterday during gym class he was overheard repeating out loud the same insulting remarks he made online about one of his female victim’s appearance. The girl’s mother marched into the main office this morning packing that piece of info. Jerk 1 clearly has some more lessons coming on the subject of respect…
So, is this “boys being boys” or something more? Certainly, kids have been obnoxious toward each other since Neanderthal days. Name-calling is nothing new – and the more hot-button bad words you can string together the better, right? General stupidity isn’t exactly a rare human condition either. Nor is it a surprise that teens who are left under-supervised will tend to get into trouble. In education, they term such kids “at-risk,” and usually school officials can see these problem children coming a mile away. At worst, they’ll see abusive behavior surface on the playground or “out back after school.”
But in the new world of online interaction, the school doesn’t necessarily see all that goes on. Nor does it necessarily have authority to punish or arbitrate offenses. Parents are likely fairly out of the loop. In cases of cyberbullying, it happens in perhaps the worst combination of ways – acts of abuse taking place within a relatively closed network of individuals who are ill-equipped to respond appropriately. In English, that means kids are online slamming each other without adult intervention and the victims are either intimidated or embarrassed into not responding and left to deal with the hurt or humiliation on their own.
Thank heavens, then, that this week’s particular act of mayhem hit a large group all at once. Almost no one was spared, which helped the victims deal collectively with the pain and anger. That doesn’t necessarily make it any easier to take for the weigh-conscious girl who was called fat and ugly, or the academically challenged African American boy who was labeled a dumb black blob, or the Hispanic girl who was labeled an immigrant whore. Nor for the so-called “Goth wannabe,” the “rapist,” or the “flat-chested” girls. Labels have a way of sticking, even among the best of friends. The stigma can’t so easily be erased.
There is no easy solution. Just as we all did during our own uneasy youths, these kids too will process and (one hopes) shed this unfortunate incident. Out of misery can come growth for all involved. That doesn’t make it any simpler to help navigate or monitor as parents or educators. It just means there’s one more playground we all have to watch.
At my son’s school… well, actually, in my son’s physical and virtual social networks this week, a major rift happened when four boys went onto Facebook and posted a photo of all the 7th and 8th graders from a school outing and then tagged each student’s and teacher’s face with rude, racist, slanderous, malicious comments. They targeted appearance, socioeconomic status, weight, ethnicity, sexual orientation, heritage, intelligence, lack of coolness – everything bad you can think of, if you put yourself in a smartass 13-year-old frame of mind.
The thing blew up on Monday at school. Several girls confronted the boys in the lunchroom. Some kids went to the principal. Everybody talked about it. Everybody knew.
By Tuesday morning, two boys were suspended (I’ll call them Jerk 1 and Jerk 2) for a day, the other two (Jerks 3 and 4) spoke with the principal. Jerk 1 spent part of his day at home (presumably under the watchful eye of a parent?) texting Jerk 3 at school (in blatant violation of the no-cell phones policy) about how he was grounded for a month and sharing their indignation with the lunch table gang about how “people can’t take a joke” and the like. Jerk 4 somehow managed to talk his way out of trouble. A letter came home with all kids that afternoon, acknowledging the incident and repeating the no-bullying policy in bland legalese.
On Wednesday, the principal called an assembly of the 7th and 8th graders, during which Jerks 1 and 2 were made to give public apologies (consensus is that the boys were marginally contrite) and did some public squirming (Jerk 1 took blame for writing bad things about his classmates but baldly claimed no knowledge of who wrote the bad things about teachers, even though his classmates in the audience “all” knew Jerk 3 did that bit). Then the town safety officer spoke about Internet civility, and gave the students a chance to speak and to vent. During this portion, amazingly, Jerk 3 stood up and tried to argue that “it wasn’t that bad – it was meant to be funny.” The audience didn’t much buy that line. After the assembly, Jerk 1 handed out individual, hand-written apologies to the kids he dissed online. Despite the relatively identical nature of his message to each kid, that helped some. He also asked several kids “can we be friends,” since he’s under orders to make new friends as part of his rehabilitation. (Even though he was the ringleader of this debacle, his friends are being portrayed as the proverbial bad influence.)
Anyhow, the week ended today with confirmation that Jerk 1 is a serial offender, Yesterday during gym class he was overheard repeating out loud the same insulting remarks he made online about one of his female victim’s appearance. The girl’s mother marched into the main office this morning packing that piece of info. Jerk 1 clearly has some more lessons coming on the subject of respect…
So, is this “boys being boys” or something more? Certainly, kids have been obnoxious toward each other since Neanderthal days. Name-calling is nothing new – and the more hot-button bad words you can string together the better, right? General stupidity isn’t exactly a rare human condition either. Nor is it a surprise that teens who are left under-supervised will tend to get into trouble. In education, they term such kids “at-risk,” and usually school officials can see these problem children coming a mile away. At worst, they’ll see abusive behavior surface on the playground or “out back after school.”
But in the new world of online interaction, the school doesn’t necessarily see all that goes on. Nor does it necessarily have authority to punish or arbitrate offenses. Parents are likely fairly out of the loop. In cases of cyberbullying, it happens in perhaps the worst combination of ways – acts of abuse taking place within a relatively closed network of individuals who are ill-equipped to respond appropriately. In English, that means kids are online slamming each other without adult intervention and the victims are either intimidated or embarrassed into not responding and left to deal with the hurt or humiliation on their own.
Thank heavens, then, that this week’s particular act of mayhem hit a large group all at once. Almost no one was spared, which helped the victims deal collectively with the pain and anger. That doesn’t necessarily make it any easier to take for the weigh-conscious girl who was called fat and ugly, or the academically challenged African American boy who was labeled a dumb black blob, or the Hispanic girl who was labeled an immigrant whore. Nor for the so-called “Goth wannabe,” the “rapist,” or the “flat-chested” girls. Labels have a way of sticking, even among the best of friends. The stigma can’t so easily be erased.
There is no easy solution. Just as we all did during our own uneasy youths, these kids too will process and (one hopes) shed this unfortunate incident. Out of misery can come growth for all involved. That doesn’t make it any simpler to help navigate or monitor as parents or educators. It just means there’s one more playground we all have to watch.
October 17, 2008
Divided we fall?
I had an early-morning daydream yesterday while showering (my best place for free-form thinking) in which the McCain-Palin ticket did in fact win the election. But within days of taking office, John McCain died suddenly and suspiciously (in one version of this reverie, he was shot; in another, someone slipped a mickey into his daily meds). In either case, Sarah Palin was immediately elevated to the presidency amid all of the angst of recent weeks and compounded by the aftermath of an assassination.
These thoughts drifted through my mind after reading Max Blumenthal and David Neiwert’s article “Meet Sarah Palin's radical right-wing pals” on Salon.com. This fairly sobering piece of investigative journalism sketches a portrait of an ambitious young local politician who allowed—and seemingly still allows—members of the Alaska Independence Party to fill her head with gun-totin’, secessionist, Christian ultra-right ideas as she’s marched her way from local to statewide to national office. While her husband was a card-carrying member of the AIP until just recently switching to Independent (after all, an obvious AIP affiliation could hinder her political ascension), Palin allegedly has repeatedly used her role as mayor and governor to front for any number of the group’s questionable goals. No surprise, Extremist Number One “Bo” Gritz surfaces in the piece, claiming her as a devotee of his us-versus-U.S. movement. And the neo-Nazis and skinheads aren’t far behind.
The lengthy piece is worth a read, so I’ll say no more about it. But it raised another concern for me. And that has to do with where we Americans get our information and what it means when we pick one media source over another.
For me, at least, unlike any political campaign in the past, the media has squared itself off into distinct pockets of perspective. Certainly, in our nation and many others, there have always been the “liberal media,” the “right wing press,” and every shade in between. It’s been a part of the fabric of mainstream media in much of Europe and in most Latin countries for decades, but it seems to have blossomed most obviously in this country in the last decade. Today, you’d be hard-pressed to identify a truly independent, right-down-the-middle media outlet.
Given my own leanings toward liberal causes, and thus toward Obama, I find myself tuning in mostly to the media Sarah Palin loves to hate. Couple that with a growing desire for a slightly escapist take on all the grim economic headlines of late, we’ve gravitated toward MSNBC for the nightly newsertainment of Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow.
(For anyone who hasn’t seen it or read the text, you ought to watch Olbermann's Special Comment from Oct. 12, in which he goes full-bore against McCain and Palin’s unabashed inciting of supporters to threaten the safety of Barack Obama. It’s a remarkable piece of anger and honest outrage.)
So it struck me the other night, after watching the final McCain-Obama debate and sliding first into one mainstream network’s straight-laced post-event analysis that I wanted—no, needed—to hear Olbermann and company’s more pithy (and mostly anti-McCain) take on the proceedings. I’d watched the debate, and had my own opinion of how the two men fared. There wasn’t much I missed of their good points and bad calls. So an hour’s worth of “yeah, right on!” railing before bed seemed appropriate.
Somewhere along the way, however, I found myself wondering what the right-leaning media was saying about who won or lost or lobbed the best zingers. Fox News and their ilk too have their punchy pundits and their outraged commentators. And they were no doubt preaching to their own choirs and fanning the flames of diehard Republicanism. So what were they saying—and to whom?
In all the sniping and yelling, I am left wondering what wounds this election will leave in its wake. We are a country more divided than at any other time in my life—divided between left, right, and middle; between haves and a growing number of have-nots; between hope and anger and despair—with a media that, for better or worse, encourages the divide. You hear Obama and McCain talking about “reaching across the aisle” to achieve consensus, but it rings as overly idealistic, or pandering, or plain old politics-as-usual, to think that they, or the public, can or will so easily “get along” once the votes are counted. When you have guys with guns in their closets who are ready to use them against fellow citizens (and candidates who will watch their backs)… when you have politicians who will blatantly lie to get ahead, who cynically know their supporters are listening to the cues and winks but not the words coming out of their mouths… when “fear itself” is what we have to fear these days and loathing is waiting in the wings… it’s hard to be very optimistic. I do look forward to a brighter day as promised by the Obama campaign. But today, it feels like behind every silver lining there’s a dark cloud.
[End note: Despite the gloomy prospects, you still gotta laugh. So for today’s bit of levity, click on this Palin-as-prez spoof. Remember… it’s a joke!]
These thoughts drifted through my mind after reading Max Blumenthal and David Neiwert’s article “Meet Sarah Palin's radical right-wing pals” on Salon.com. This fairly sobering piece of investigative journalism sketches a portrait of an ambitious young local politician who allowed—and seemingly still allows—members of the Alaska Independence Party to fill her head with gun-totin’, secessionist, Christian ultra-right ideas as she’s marched her way from local to statewide to national office. While her husband was a card-carrying member of the AIP until just recently switching to Independent (after all, an obvious AIP affiliation could hinder her political ascension), Palin allegedly has repeatedly used her role as mayor and governor to front for any number of the group’s questionable goals. No surprise, Extremist Number One “Bo” Gritz surfaces in the piece, claiming her as a devotee of his us-versus-U.S. movement. And the neo-Nazis and skinheads aren’t far behind.
The lengthy piece is worth a read, so I’ll say no more about it. But it raised another concern for me. And that has to do with where we Americans get our information and what it means when we pick one media source over another.
For me, at least, unlike any political campaign in the past, the media has squared itself off into distinct pockets of perspective. Certainly, in our nation and many others, there have always been the “liberal media,” the “right wing press,” and every shade in between. It’s been a part of the fabric of mainstream media in much of Europe and in most Latin countries for decades, but it seems to have blossomed most obviously in this country in the last decade. Today, you’d be hard-pressed to identify a truly independent, right-down-the-middle media outlet.
Given my own leanings toward liberal causes, and thus toward Obama, I find myself tuning in mostly to the media Sarah Palin loves to hate. Couple that with a growing desire for a slightly escapist take on all the grim economic headlines of late, we’ve gravitated toward MSNBC for the nightly newsertainment of Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow.
(For anyone who hasn’t seen it or read the text, you ought to watch Olbermann's Special Comment from Oct. 12, in which he goes full-bore against McCain and Palin’s unabashed inciting of supporters to threaten the safety of Barack Obama. It’s a remarkable piece of anger and honest outrage.)So it struck me the other night, after watching the final McCain-Obama debate and sliding first into one mainstream network’s straight-laced post-event analysis that I wanted—no, needed—to hear Olbermann and company’s more pithy (and mostly anti-McCain) take on the proceedings. I’d watched the debate, and had my own opinion of how the two men fared. There wasn’t much I missed of their good points and bad calls. So an hour’s worth of “yeah, right on!” railing before bed seemed appropriate.
Somewhere along the way, however, I found myself wondering what the right-leaning media was saying about who won or lost or lobbed the best zingers. Fox News and their ilk too have their punchy pundits and their outraged commentators. And they were no doubt preaching to their own choirs and fanning the flames of diehard Republicanism. So what were they saying—and to whom?
In all the sniping and yelling, I am left wondering what wounds this election will leave in its wake. We are a country more divided than at any other time in my life—divided between left, right, and middle; between haves and a growing number of have-nots; between hope and anger and despair—with a media that, for better or worse, encourages the divide. You hear Obama and McCain talking about “reaching across the aisle” to achieve consensus, but it rings as overly idealistic, or pandering, or plain old politics-as-usual, to think that they, or the public, can or will so easily “get along” once the votes are counted. When you have guys with guns in their closets who are ready to use them against fellow citizens (and candidates who will watch their backs)… when you have politicians who will blatantly lie to get ahead, who cynically know their supporters are listening to the cues and winks but not the words coming out of their mouths… when “fear itself” is what we have to fear these days and loathing is waiting in the wings… it’s hard to be very optimistic. I do look forward to a brighter day as promised by the Obama campaign. But today, it feels like behind every silver lining there’s a dark cloud.
[End note: Despite the gloomy prospects, you still gotta laugh. So for today’s bit of levity, click on this Palin-as-prez spoof. Remember… it’s a joke!]
October 3, 2008
Old home week
Lately I’ve been mulling the notion of home and one’s sense of place …
As part of its 50th anniversary celebration, our historic neighborhood association is hosting a performance this weekend by internationally known storyteller Jay O’Callahan, who grew up in our neighborhood and has based a number of his most popular stories on his escapades and observations of growing up here in the 1940s to early ‘60s.
Meanwhile, our family is preparing for a trip to my hometown to visit my mother, who herself is at this moment down in South Carolina visiting my sister and her partner, who moved from St. Thomas to horse country this past spring. It’s been ages since I was in Erie last; the visits are way too infrequent for my mother’s liking, though for me the place changes so little from one trip to the next that it is so fixed in my mind that it is easily visited in memories.
And… my wife and I are going through our own mental exercise of considering how long to stay in our current home versus packing up and downsizing our family unit to smaller, more manageable digs. (There’s nothing like a coming winter and an economic calamity to get you thinking about having someone else shovel the sidewalk—or better still, sweep up the sand and palm leaves!).
And … at work we’ve been spending a lot of time researching 50+/senior-lifestyle subject matter as grist for possible publications and website work. The world of 50+ is a land of man opportunities right now… as a business market, as a social landscape, as a destination that is approaching fast.
Anyhow, in our neighborhood—known as Pill Hill for the many doctors who settled here at the turn of the 19th century and filled with grand Victorians and other many-roomed manses (the O’Callahan’s house has 35!)—homes rarely change hands. Until just the past few years, almost no one left their house standing up, as they say—that was the case for our home, and with any number of others around us. Certainly the burgeoning options for senior citizens (assisted living, continuum communities, and the like) is starting to cause a shift, but even then, many of the most recent expatriates have stuck pretty close to home turf as they have downsized to condos and apartments on the fringes of our neighborhood. As a result, they maintain their friendships with former neighbors nearly as much as if they still lived around the corner.
As we prepared for tomorrow night’s performance, and a reception afterwards at the former O’Callahan house, the old-timers have surfaced in great numbers and will be driving in from across town, down on the South Shore, and other parts. I know of at least one native who is actually flying “home” from California for the event! Along the way, I’ve heard interesting stories from some of them as I’ve taken their ticket orders—this one grew up next door to the O’Callahans and remembers watching the children playing in the yard (a yard designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, no less!); another one bought the house from the O’Callahans and raised her children there over 10 years, surviving a major fire and lord knows what else; still another was a cohort of Jay’s and factors into a few of his storied exploits; still one other revealed that she is guardian of a fabled cookie recipe of a long-passed O’Callahan neighbor (also central to a story or two) and asked if our caterer would object if she baked a batch for the occasion.
Anyhow, I think you get the drift… it’s a neighborhood in the truest sense. It has history. It has a back-story. It has its characters, its clashes, its gossips, its rivalries, its rules and formalities (heck, at the annual Christmas party, everyone wears nametags, even though most of them have known each other for 40 years). It has secrets that some of us newcomers will never live to know.
Except for the well-to-do-Bostonian part, it reminds me of the community in Downeast Maine where my wife and I owned a house for a number of years. There they refer to you as “from away” if you aren’t a second or (better) third or fourth generation local. You could be accepted—to a cautious degree—by evidence of your hard labors on your property and your willingness to engage in the social mix (mostly man-to-man talk, and woman-to-woman). But basically you would forever be “from away.”
All this is rattling around in my head because I recognize myself as one of those tail-end baby boomers who is somehow, somewhat rootless. It wouldn’t have done to stay in my hometown after high school—the options were just too limited, then and today. And Cleveland didn’t quite cut it when I finished college. Though I’ve lived in Boston for more than 35 year, I’m not sure I feel “from here” either. Maybe it comes from reading too many travel magazines and watching too many episodes of “House Hunters” and “Bizarre Foods.” I can see myself, our family, living someplace else. And in these anxiety-fueled days of uncertain finances and unstable employment (not to mention bio/nuclear terror, global warming, pesky Russians, killer Koreans, irrational Iranians, mooses, and other things that keep Sarah Palin up at night), I find myself thinking about starting over in somewhere that’s cheaper, warmer, simpler, and offers a bit more peace-of-mind. (Call now if you know where that is…operators are standing by! And no, Margaritaville doesn’t count.)
Then I think of a gathering like what will happen tomorrow night—200 friends and neighbors coming together to celebrate their unique sense of community and collective history—and I wonder what I would miss, what our son will have traded off when he looks back on now from his future self, by picking up and moving on.
(Spooky end note – I just noticed that the streaming radio station—reallymusicradio.com—I’ve been listening to has been playing a succession of “movin’ on” songs. The last one had a refrain that caught my ear: “time to leave .. it’s hard to care.” Ooooooeeeeee! Time to sign off!)
As part of its 50th anniversary celebration, our historic neighborhood association is hosting a performance this weekend by internationally known storyteller Jay O’Callahan, who grew up in our neighborhood and has based a number of his most popular stories on his escapades and observations of growing up here in the 1940s to early ‘60s.
Meanwhile, our family is preparing for a trip to my hometown to visit my mother, who herself is at this moment down in South Carolina visiting my sister and her partner, who moved from St. Thomas to horse country this past spring. It’s been ages since I was in Erie last; the visits are way too infrequent for my mother’s liking, though for me the place changes so little from one trip to the next that it is so fixed in my mind that it is easily visited in memories.
And… my wife and I are going through our own mental exercise of considering how long to stay in our current home versus packing up and downsizing our family unit to smaller, more manageable digs. (There’s nothing like a coming winter and an economic calamity to get you thinking about having someone else shovel the sidewalk—or better still, sweep up the sand and palm leaves!).
And … at work we’ve been spending a lot of time researching 50+/senior-lifestyle subject matter as grist for possible publications and website work. The world of 50+ is a land of man opportunities right now… as a business market, as a social landscape, as a destination that is approaching fast.
Anyhow, in our neighborhood—known as Pill Hill for the many doctors who settled here at the turn of the 19th century and filled with grand Victorians and other many-roomed manses (the O’Callahan’s house has 35!)—homes rarely change hands. Until just the past few years, almost no one left their house standing up, as they say—that was the case for our home, and with any number of others around us. Certainly the burgeoning options for senior citizens (assisted living, continuum communities, and the like) is starting to cause a shift, but even then, many of the most recent expatriates have stuck pretty close to home turf as they have downsized to condos and apartments on the fringes of our neighborhood. As a result, they maintain their friendships with former neighbors nearly as much as if they still lived around the corner.
As we prepared for tomorrow night’s performance, and a reception afterwards at the former O’Callahan house, the old-timers have surfaced in great numbers and will be driving in from across town, down on the South Shore, and other parts. I know of at least one native who is actually flying “home” from California for the event! Along the way, I’ve heard interesting stories from some of them as I’ve taken their ticket orders—this one grew up next door to the O’Callahans and remembers watching the children playing in the yard (a yard designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, no less!); another one bought the house from the O’Callahans and raised her children there over 10 years, surviving a major fire and lord knows what else; still another was a cohort of Jay’s and factors into a few of his storied exploits; still one other revealed that she is guardian of a fabled cookie recipe of a long-passed O’Callahan neighbor (also central to a story or two) and asked if our caterer would object if she baked a batch for the occasion.
Anyhow, I think you get the drift… it’s a neighborhood in the truest sense. It has history. It has a back-story. It has its characters, its clashes, its gossips, its rivalries, its rules and formalities (heck, at the annual Christmas party, everyone wears nametags, even though most of them have known each other for 40 years). It has secrets that some of us newcomers will never live to know.
Except for the well-to-do-Bostonian part, it reminds me of the community in Downeast Maine where my wife and I owned a house for a number of years. There they refer to you as “from away” if you aren’t a second or (better) third or fourth generation local. You could be accepted—to a cautious degree—by evidence of your hard labors on your property and your willingness to engage in the social mix (mostly man-to-man talk, and woman-to-woman). But basically you would forever be “from away.”
All this is rattling around in my head because I recognize myself as one of those tail-end baby boomers who is somehow, somewhat rootless. It wouldn’t have done to stay in my hometown after high school—the options were just too limited, then and today. And Cleveland didn’t quite cut it when I finished college. Though I’ve lived in Boston for more than 35 year, I’m not sure I feel “from here” either. Maybe it comes from reading too many travel magazines and watching too many episodes of “House Hunters” and “Bizarre Foods.” I can see myself, our family, living someplace else. And in these anxiety-fueled days of uncertain finances and unstable employment (not to mention bio/nuclear terror, global warming, pesky Russians, killer Koreans, irrational Iranians, mooses, and other things that keep Sarah Palin up at night), I find myself thinking about starting over in somewhere that’s cheaper, warmer, simpler, and offers a bit more peace-of-mind. (Call now if you know where that is…operators are standing by! And no, Margaritaville doesn’t count.)
Then I think of a gathering like what will happen tomorrow night—200 friends and neighbors coming together to celebrate their unique sense of community and collective history—and I wonder what I would miss, what our son will have traded off when he looks back on now from his future self, by picking up and moving on.
(Spooky end note – I just noticed that the streaming radio station—reallymusicradio.com—I’ve been listening to has been playing a succession of “movin’ on” songs. The last one had a refrain that caught my ear: “time to leave .. it’s hard to care.” Ooooooeeeeee! Time to sign off!)
September 4, 2008
God, family, and Sarah Palin
What to make of Sarah Palin…? Last night’s performance at the RNC was pretty incredible for the amount of “change” she represents for the Grand Old Party. Yes (she can!), she proved that women can make it (almost) to the top while juggling family and moose-hunting season – something other women (Democrats and Republicans) have already done, certainly, but now it’s no longer a “sacrifice” or a “trade-off” (or worse, just plain wrong). Now it’s a badge of honor. Bring it on!
It’s also now apparently OK to have a messed-up family, with a DUI husband who burns precious fossil fuels in pursuit of long-distance snowmobile championships, and a daughter who managed to miss mom’s messages about abstinence, underage drinking, and lord knows what else, and get herself pregnant with self-professed “redneck” who’s known around town as “sex on skates” and who professed on his now blocked MySpace page to not want kids. I suppose when Levi hits Bristol in a drunken rage or leaves her after changing one too many diapers, Palin can add “mother of an underage single mom” to her resume too. It’s all good, eh?
Then there’s Palin’s outspoken affirmation that we’re on a mission from God in our fight in Iraq – just as we are, apparently, in our pursuit of more oil in Alaska. Makes you wonder about the God who’s inspiring the Muslims warriors. Whose guy is right? And then what?
And then there’s Palin’s savvy media manipulation, in one breath (another example of superwomanly multitasking?) scolding and warning the evil media to leave her family matters private, then proceeding (next breath) to introduce dad and the kids one by one to the TV camera so they could smile sheepishly and wave, then pass baby Tigger, or Trigger, from one to the next. (Did you catch the littlest girl licking his hair like a cat…cute, but icky!) Not to project too far into the future, or to ill effect, but what happens if Palin’s oldest son, Trick, or is it Truck?, goes off to war, gets wounded or (God forbid, since he is OUR God) killed… will that elevate Palin to American Hero status for her “ultimate sacrifice”? Plays like a Lifetime movie, doesn’t it?
You have to hand it to John McCain. While some news reports (in the evil media, of course) are saying he picked an obscure governor from a remote state to thumb his nose at the Republican Guard, I mean party leadership, for trying to force some inside-the-beltway VP choices on him, let’s give him a credit for selecting a running mate who hits nearly every hot-button issue (well, let’s not talk about that “experience” thing, OK?) – working class, mothers, babies, disabled people, oil, religion, military, government spending, corruption, foreign relations (remember, Alaska IS right next to Russia, so who really knows them better?), women, children, sex, abortion, gun control, small-town values, the evil media … gosh, the list is endless. What a brilliant choice! OK, fine, so he didn’t learn about the pregnant-daughter thing until after he’d picked Palin because she exercised her right to choose not mention it during the three-hour, 40-page job application process. Hey, some things work out for the best, right? Just proves what a terrific decision-maker, political strategist, and free-thinker he is… and with God on his side too. How can he lose?
It’s also now apparently OK to have a messed-up family, with a DUI husband who burns precious fossil fuels in pursuit of long-distance snowmobile championships, and a daughter who managed to miss mom’s messages about abstinence, underage drinking, and lord knows what else, and get herself pregnant with self-professed “redneck” who’s known around town as “sex on skates” and who professed on his now blocked MySpace page to not want kids. I suppose when Levi hits Bristol in a drunken rage or leaves her after changing one too many diapers, Palin can add “mother of an underage single mom” to her resume too. It’s all good, eh?
Then there’s Palin’s outspoken affirmation that we’re on a mission from God in our fight in Iraq – just as we are, apparently, in our pursuit of more oil in Alaska. Makes you wonder about the God who’s inspiring the Muslims warriors. Whose guy is right? And then what?
And then there’s Palin’s savvy media manipulation, in one breath (another example of superwomanly multitasking?) scolding and warning the evil media to leave her family matters private, then proceeding (next breath) to introduce dad and the kids one by one to the TV camera so they could smile sheepishly and wave, then pass baby Tigger, or Trigger, from one to the next. (Did you catch the littlest girl licking his hair like a cat…cute, but icky!) Not to project too far into the future, or to ill effect, but what happens if Palin’s oldest son, Trick, or is it Truck?, goes off to war, gets wounded or (God forbid, since he is OUR God) killed… will that elevate Palin to American Hero status for her “ultimate sacrifice”? Plays like a Lifetime movie, doesn’t it?
You have to hand it to John McCain. While some news reports (in the evil media, of course) are saying he picked an obscure governor from a remote state to thumb his nose at the Republican Guard, I mean party leadership, for trying to force some inside-the-beltway VP choices on him, let’s give him a credit for selecting a running mate who hits nearly every hot-button issue (well, let’s not talk about that “experience” thing, OK?) – working class, mothers, babies, disabled people, oil, religion, military, government spending, corruption, foreign relations (remember, Alaska IS right next to Russia, so who really knows them better?), women, children, sex, abortion, gun control, small-town values, the evil media … gosh, the list is endless. What a brilliant choice! OK, fine, so he didn’t learn about the pregnant-daughter thing until after he’d picked Palin because she exercised her right to choose not mention it during the three-hour, 40-page job application process. Hey, some things work out for the best, right? Just proves what a terrific decision-maker, political strategist, and free-thinker he is… and with God on his side too. How can he lose?
August 28, 2008
Olympic perks
Holding somewhat true to their personae from the Games, it's amusing to note the perks coming the way of various gold-medal winners.
Misty May, fresh off her appearance with teammate Kerri Walsh on last night's Letterman show, will be trading her beach bikini for a tutu (or whatever) on the upcoming season of Dancing with the Stars . Is she up to the Olympian standards set by Kristi Yamaguchi and Apollo Ono? We'll see.
Meanwhile, freckle-faced gymnast Shawn Johnson will lead the "Pledge of Allegiance" tonight for Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama at his mega-rally in Mile High Stadium. Johnson then heads off on a 40-city gym-stars tour, where she'll be blogging from the road and selling cute baubles in her online store.
Make hay while the sun shines, ladies.
Misty May, fresh off her appearance with teammate Kerri Walsh on last night's Letterman show, will be trading her beach bikini for a tutu (or whatever) on the upcoming season of Dancing with the Stars . Is she up to the Olympian standards set by Kristi Yamaguchi and Apollo Ono? We'll see.
Meanwhile, freckle-faced gymnast Shawn Johnson will lead the "Pledge of Allegiance" tonight for Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama at his mega-rally in Mile High Stadium. Johnson then heads off on a 40-city gym-stars tour, where she'll be blogging from the road and selling cute baubles in her online store.
Make hay while the sun shines, ladies.
August 21, 2008
I stand corrected
Alright, I stand corrected... Nastia Liukin has a busier and brighter future than I predicted in yesterday's post. According to the Associated Press, she plans on competing for the world gymnastics title in London next year. She's also in line for a US Weekly cover shoot, another magazine shoot with tennis ace Maria Sharapova, and possible TV show appearances and a modeling career. OK, so I was a little hasty... good for her!
August 20, 2008
Olympics observations
I understand that NBC is somewhat beholden to the schedule of events in Beijing, but after a week and a half of Olympics on our household’s schedule, it would seem as if the only events taking place in China are swimming, gymnastics, women’s beach volleyball, and boxing. Why? Because except for over the weekend, our only time to watch is during evening hours, and the network is covering the same set of events nearly every night. Yes, they’ve successfully built up the drama of Michael Phelps’ medal chase, and Shawn & Nastia vs. the Chinese Children, but it’s come at the expense of many other sports and other worth athletes getting their shot at primetime.
Sure, I’ve gotten to see Michael Phelps win all eight of his medals (it seems like even more, given all the replays), but, really, swimming isn’t THAT interesting.
Women’s volleyball has earned my respect, however. Looking way past the clothing questions (why is it that men can compete in t-shirts and shorts but women need bikinis?), it really is a fast and difficult sport. (For the most in-your-face example of why bikinis and beach volleyball are a match made in guy heaven, see the Cracking the Code photo gallery at NBC.com. No ifs, ands, or butts about it!)
Most impressive events that I’ve seen – badminton, women’s trampoline, steeplechase in the pouring rain, team handball.
What I have yet to catch a glimpse of – the Cuban baseball team, U.S. men’s basketball, table tennis, archery.
What I don’t need to see more of – cycling marathon, marathon running, boxing… oh, and swimming.
An equity question: The NBC anchors so blatantly love U.S. gymnast Shawn Johnson, at the expense of Nastia Liukin, that it borders on rudeness and vaguely nationalistic. (The live commentators/analysts are better – they call the action as they see it.) A few nights ago, when both women were being interviewed by Bob Costas after the all-around finals, he did everything but elbow Liukin out of the way to lob flattering questions to Johnson – even though Liukin had won more and higher medals. And the camera operators are just as bad, doing frequent, adoring close-ups of All-American-pixie Johnson with her button nose and freckles.
By contrast, Liukin is so focused and steely – so stereotypically Russian – most of the time that she’s not instantly loveable. She also is a victim of bad political timing, now that the Putin Party is starting a new Cold War in Europe. Despite her own electric (though fleeting) smile and the fact that she’s won more big medals than her teammate, Nastia isn’t Apple Pie American enough to grab the spotlight away from Sweetheart Shawn.
You can already write the next chapter for both women – Liukin will follow in mom and dad’s footsteps, fading into obscurity (outside the elite gymnastics world) to become a coach to future athletes, while Johnson will get the product endorsements, the “Tonight Show” appearance, the profile on “Nightline,” the Gym Stars world tour…
Meanwhile, Michael Phelps’ face, geeky ears and all, already adorns ads for Omega watches, Visa, Speedo, and soon, Pizza Hut (huh?). I do like the fact that he’s endorsing Frosted Flakes instead of Wheaties. There’s, um, nothing like a hefty dose of sugar to help you fly through the water, I guess.
So, does that leave room for Misty May on the Wheaties box? Probably not in a bikini…
Sure, I’ve gotten to see Michael Phelps win all eight of his medals (it seems like even more, given all the replays), but, really, swimming isn’t THAT interesting.
Women’s volleyball has earned my respect, however. Looking way past the clothing questions (why is it that men can compete in t-shirts and shorts but women need bikinis?), it really is a fast and difficult sport. (For the most in-your-face example of why bikinis and beach volleyball are a match made in guy heaven, see the Cracking the Code photo gallery at NBC.com. No ifs, ands, or butts about it!)
Most impressive events that I’ve seen – badminton, women’s trampoline, steeplechase in the pouring rain, team handball.
What I have yet to catch a glimpse of – the Cuban baseball team, U.S. men’s basketball, table tennis, archery.
What I don’t need to see more of – cycling marathon, marathon running, boxing… oh, and swimming.
An equity question: The NBC anchors so blatantly love U.S. gymnast Shawn Johnson, at the expense of Nastia Liukin, that it borders on rudeness and vaguely nationalistic. (The live commentators/analysts are better – they call the action as they see it.) A few nights ago, when both women were being interviewed by Bob Costas after the all-around finals, he did everything but elbow Liukin out of the way to lob flattering questions to Johnson – even though Liukin had won more and higher medals. And the camera operators are just as bad, doing frequent, adoring close-ups of All-American-pixie Johnson with her button nose and freckles.
By contrast, Liukin is so focused and steely – so stereotypically Russian – most of the time that she’s not instantly loveable. She also is a victim of bad political timing, now that the Putin Party is starting a new Cold War in Europe. Despite her own electric (though fleeting) smile and the fact that she’s won more big medals than her teammate, Nastia isn’t Apple Pie American enough to grab the spotlight away from Sweetheart Shawn.
You can already write the next chapter for both women – Liukin will follow in mom and dad’s footsteps, fading into obscurity (outside the elite gymnastics world) to become a coach to future athletes, while Johnson will get the product endorsements, the “Tonight Show” appearance, the profile on “Nightline,” the Gym Stars world tour…
Meanwhile, Michael Phelps’ face, geeky ears and all, already adorns ads for Omega watches, Visa, Speedo, and soon, Pizza Hut (huh?). I do like the fact that he’s endorsing Frosted Flakes instead of Wheaties. There’s, um, nothing like a hefty dose of sugar to help you fly through the water, I guess.
So, does that leave room for Misty May on the Wheaties box? Probably not in a bikini…
August 6, 2008
Summer homework, or not
My son—for better or worse—falls in the camp of kids whose school requires a certain level of homework during the summer vacation months. (His buddy Conor, from the next town over, has no such burden, Nick reminds me. Cheap!) It’s not such an overwhelming load—a dozen pages of math review problems from the past year plus three books to read. Oh, and a science project.
The math is almost done. Two and a half pages to go, and apparently it was no heavy lifting (though my wife and I have yet to check his calculations.)
The science project isn’t so bad either—an expanded version of a water-cycle write-up and drawing that his class did this past year. I can’t say I get the point of it, but that’s another matter.
And the reading has been happily consumed. Nick’s on the third of his required books (Fever 1793, Tangerine, and King Arthur), and has finished at least three of his own choosing as well, and there’s still a month of summer left. He’s supposed to write a short comment about each required book on his English teacher’s blog, plus he’s been keeping a blog of his own that chronicles his summer exploits in includes full-length book reviews of everything he’s read. That’s his summer writing “assignment,” concocted by task-master dad, though he’s proud of the blog and (mostly) a willing author.
My wish for him is that he finishes his math and science work by this weekend—the book will be no problem. Then he can live every kid’s summer dream of no schoolwork.
Apparently that dream is a hot topic, at least as laid out in yesterday’s Washington Post. The article goes into great detail on educators’ opinions pro and con about piling on the schoolwork to keep young minds sharp and minimize backsliding over the summer. I have mixed feelings about this. On one side, I too fear that, left to their own devices (i.e., total slack-off), kids risk losing much of what they gained during the previous school year. This hinders the learning process at a time when our schools already are falling short of the mark, and adds stress for kids when they have to re-immerse themselves in intellectual activity after two months of goofing off. That doesn’t mean resorting to 6 hours a day of lessons while their friends head off to the beach, but it does require some small amount of effort in each of the primary subject areas. On the flip side, however, I believe kids need time to rejuvenate. And that means run around, get fresh air, veg out in front of the TV or PS2, laugh, play, etc. I know from my own experience that, after intense practice at something, I often make the biggest leap in learning by then NOT doing that thing for a while. Somehow it seeps in deeper than banging my head against the wall again and again.
And that is why I hope Nick finishes his summer schoolwork soon, so he has a couple weeks to not think about it. School time will come soon enough, and summer is supposed to be time off. He earned the break; he should get to enjoy it.
The math is almost done. Two and a half pages to go, and apparently it was no heavy lifting (though my wife and I have yet to check his calculations.)
The science project isn’t so bad either—an expanded version of a water-cycle write-up and drawing that his class did this past year. I can’t say I get the point of it, but that’s another matter.
And the reading has been happily consumed. Nick’s on the third of his required books (Fever 1793, Tangerine, and King Arthur), and has finished at least three of his own choosing as well, and there’s still a month of summer left. He’s supposed to write a short comment about each required book on his English teacher’s blog, plus he’s been keeping a blog of his own that chronicles his summer exploits in includes full-length book reviews of everything he’s read. That’s his summer writing “assignment,” concocted by task-master dad, though he’s proud of the blog and (mostly) a willing author.
My wish for him is that he finishes his math and science work by this weekend—the book will be no problem. Then he can live every kid’s summer dream of no schoolwork.
Apparently that dream is a hot topic, at least as laid out in yesterday’s Washington Post. The article goes into great detail on educators’ opinions pro and con about piling on the schoolwork to keep young minds sharp and minimize backsliding over the summer. I have mixed feelings about this. On one side, I too fear that, left to their own devices (i.e., total slack-off), kids risk losing much of what they gained during the previous school year. This hinders the learning process at a time when our schools already are falling short of the mark, and adds stress for kids when they have to re-immerse themselves in intellectual activity after two months of goofing off. That doesn’t mean resorting to 6 hours a day of lessons while their friends head off to the beach, but it does require some small amount of effort in each of the primary subject areas. On the flip side, however, I believe kids need time to rejuvenate. And that means run around, get fresh air, veg out in front of the TV or PS2, laugh, play, etc. I know from my own experience that, after intense practice at something, I often make the biggest leap in learning by then NOT doing that thing for a while. Somehow it seeps in deeper than banging my head against the wall again and again.
And that is why I hope Nick finishes his summer schoolwork soon, so he has a couple weeks to not think about it. School time will come soon enough, and summer is supposed to be time off. He earned the break; he should get to enjoy it.
July 17, 2008
Nature of things
I haven’t written lately because, well, I’ve been busy. And now is supposed to be those lazy days of summer?? Apparently not.
Recent highpoints:
Work has had its ups and downs. On the downside – it’s budget time again and I had to come up with a 10% cut to keep pace with rising paper and ink prices, shrinking circulation, and other things out of our control. Painful, yes, but also a healthy exercise in product evaluation and quality control. On the upside, I was able to preserve the status of my most key personnel; I happily gave a glowing evaluation to a critical staff member; and today we got an RFP from one potential client, a “next steps” request from another, and an important commitment from an existing client. Not bad for a day’s work.
This is a busy period for my wife – a couple of those out-early-home-late performance weeks where she’s juggling back-to-back events, multiple press interviews and media queries, live performance photo shoots, and client visibility. She recently switched to a new web-enabled cell phone (a pocket-sized computer, really) that gives her mobility whole monitoring the several hundred e-mails she gets daily (plus weekends), and it’s already paid for itself in terms of flexibility. Now she can actually drive home from work (15 minutes) and deal with 30 or 40 e-mails before she walks in the front door. Or, if duty calls, she can book a newspaper interview from her beach chair—though she’d prefer to leave the thing at home rather than risk dropping it in the sand. In today’s anytime-anywhere now-now-now mode, that amounts to major progress.
I’m looking forward to early August, when we decamp to the Cape for two weeks. Nick will be in camp there (his annual infusion of rifle and arrow shootin’ and sailing), and while it’s absolutely not vacation time for either Kathy or me, there is a healthier pace to our life. I get to walk the dog in the early morning (something I don’t even consider at home, even though I get out of bed at the same hour either way). My “desk” is our outdoor dining table on our screened-in porch (Kathy opts for the indoor laptop and the AC). We have wireless Internet, a good printer, cell phones, and FedEx knows where we live. We haven’t figured out how to make this a permanent live/work location, but we’re considering the angles. Anyhow, I get a ton of work done on the porch and I get to hear the birds chirp – a win-win.
In non-work life, I have poison ivy for the second time since Memorial Day. Serves me right for trying to improve our view at the Cape. I don’t know where the poisonous plant was that I touched, but I’ll tell you this: Those recent reports about rising CO2 levels from global warming causing poison ivy to flourish – I believe them. Pretty soon, I’ll be like that boy in the bubble, never leaving the house without long sleeves and gloves, then stripping down to my skivvies using rubber gloves and tongs, and washing everything with Technu (I wonder if they make it in “fresh” scent?).
Then again, when I gaze over the cranberry bog across the road from our house, with its seasonal colors and soft contours, or see the stars and sky through the trees, I guess a little scratching is a small price to pay…
Speaking of nature’s modes of revenge, we have West Nile Virus/EEE mosquitoes in our Brookline neighborhood (everybody out of the pool!!); it’s tick season on the Cape; and the no-see-ums were out in force last weekend on the beach. On top of that, we have deer invading gardens in our neighborhood in Brookline and hordes of ravenous chipmunks devouring our tomatoes and digging holes in the yard on the Cape. And bunnies… lots and lots of rabbits this year. The only thing we haven’t had was the cicadas. This was supposed to be their big year (one in every 17, or something like that) and not a peep, or squeak, or whatever that sound is they make. Did they appear elsewhere and I missed out on the chorus, or are they waiting till there’s a new man in the White House and all’s right with the world?
Recent highpoints:
Work has had its ups and downs. On the downside – it’s budget time again and I had to come up with a 10% cut to keep pace with rising paper and ink prices, shrinking circulation, and other things out of our control. Painful, yes, but also a healthy exercise in product evaluation and quality control. On the upside, I was able to preserve the status of my most key personnel; I happily gave a glowing evaluation to a critical staff member; and today we got an RFP from one potential client, a “next steps” request from another, and an important commitment from an existing client. Not bad for a day’s work.
This is a busy period for my wife – a couple of those out-early-home-late performance weeks where she’s juggling back-to-back events, multiple press interviews and media queries, live performance photo shoots, and client visibility. She recently switched to a new web-enabled cell phone (a pocket-sized computer, really) that gives her mobility whole monitoring the several hundred e-mails she gets daily (plus weekends), and it’s already paid for itself in terms of flexibility. Now she can actually drive home from work (15 minutes) and deal with 30 or 40 e-mails before she walks in the front door. Or, if duty calls, she can book a newspaper interview from her beach chair—though she’d prefer to leave the thing at home rather than risk dropping it in the sand. In today’s anytime-anywhere now-now-now mode, that amounts to major progress.
I’m looking forward to early August, when we decamp to the Cape for two weeks. Nick will be in camp there (his annual infusion of rifle and arrow shootin’ and sailing), and while it’s absolutely not vacation time for either Kathy or me, there is a healthier pace to our life. I get to walk the dog in the early morning (something I don’t even consider at home, even though I get out of bed at the same hour either way). My “desk” is our outdoor dining table on our screened-in porch (Kathy opts for the indoor laptop and the AC). We have wireless Internet, a good printer, cell phones, and FedEx knows where we live. We haven’t figured out how to make this a permanent live/work location, but we’re considering the angles. Anyhow, I get a ton of work done on the porch and I get to hear the birds chirp – a win-win.In non-work life, I have poison ivy for the second time since Memorial Day. Serves me right for trying to improve our view at the Cape. I don’t know where the poisonous plant was that I touched, but I’ll tell you this: Those recent reports about rising CO2 levels from global warming causing poison ivy to flourish – I believe them. Pretty soon, I’ll be like that boy in the bubble, never leaving the house without long sleeves and gloves, then stripping down to my skivvies using rubber gloves and tongs, and washing everything with Technu (I wonder if they make it in “fresh” scent?).
Then again, when I gaze over the cranberry bog across the road from our house, with its seasonal colors and soft contours, or see the stars and sky through the trees, I guess a little scratching is a small price to pay…Speaking of nature’s modes of revenge, we have West Nile Virus/EEE mosquitoes in our Brookline neighborhood (everybody out of the pool!!); it’s tick season on the Cape; and the no-see-ums were out in force last weekend on the beach. On top of that, we have deer invading gardens in our neighborhood in Brookline and hordes of ravenous chipmunks devouring our tomatoes and digging holes in the yard on the Cape. And bunnies… lots and lots of rabbits this year. The only thing we haven’t had was the cicadas. This was supposed to be their big year (one in every 17, or something like that) and not a peep, or squeak, or whatever that sound is they make. Did they appear elsewhere and I missed out on the chorus, or are they waiting till there’s a new man in the White House and all’s right with the world?
July 1, 2008
Search Me?
I was killing time on the Web tonight, snooping on a few old friends to see what might turn up on Google. That led me to search myself.
Well, if I’d known how common my name apparently is around the world, I’d have changed it a long time ago, or at least taken my full, formal name more seriously to improve my future searchability. (I suppose it doesn’t help your Google ranking to modify the form of your name with each job change over the past decade or so…who woulda knew?)
Anyhow, I did turn up some interesting things. Like a link for a now-defunct video titled “William Weber eats small children.” I’m not really sure what to make of that. I’m also an author, a TV newscaster, a deceased actor (remember the 1943 classic “Happy Land”? … me neither), a film editor, the oldest living Cincinnati Reds ball player, a guitarist (whose slogan is “Buy me whiskey now!”), a plastic surgeon, and the fellow responsible for space telecommunications and navigation for the JPL. There are many references to other Dr. William Webers (something my parents would have wished for – but none of them links to anything about my uncle, the best Dr. William Weber in my book.) There’s even a whole Bill Weber directory on Linked In. (See if you can pick me out of the crowd.)
I did find a few links about me, including a reference to a job I had five years ago, found on a Swedish website. By adding my town to my name, I did find a few references to me connected to our local school’s School Improvement Plan (I’m on the advisory council), to my standing on our historic neighborhood board (I’m the V.P., heaven help me), and eventually to me at work.
And finally, there were a couple references to my favorite other William Weber, who lives around the corner. But I don’t need Google to find him. We not only live three blocks apart, we cross paths at the same car dealer, dry cleaner, video store, landscaper, HVAC service, market…
With or without Google, I guess, there’s a lot of me to go around.
Well, if I’d known how common my name apparently is around the world, I’d have changed it a long time ago, or at least taken my full, formal name more seriously to improve my future searchability. (I suppose it doesn’t help your Google ranking to modify the form of your name with each job change over the past decade or so…who woulda knew?)
Anyhow, I did turn up some interesting things. Like a link for a now-defunct video titled “William Weber eats small children.” I’m not really sure what to make of that. I’m also an author, a TV newscaster, a deceased actor (remember the 1943 classic “Happy Land”? … me neither), a film editor, the oldest living Cincinnati Reds ball player, a guitarist (whose slogan is “Buy me whiskey now!”), a plastic surgeon, and the fellow responsible for space telecommunications and navigation for the JPL. There are many references to other Dr. William Webers (something my parents would have wished for – but none of them links to anything about my uncle, the best Dr. William Weber in my book.) There’s even a whole Bill Weber directory on Linked In. (See if you can pick me out of the crowd.)
I did find a few links about me, including a reference to a job I had five years ago, found on a Swedish website. By adding my town to my name, I did find a few references to me connected to our local school’s School Improvement Plan (I’m on the advisory council), to my standing on our historic neighborhood board (I’m the V.P., heaven help me), and eventually to me at work.
And finally, there were a couple references to my favorite other William Weber, who lives around the corner. But I don’t need Google to find him. We not only live three blocks apart, we cross paths at the same car dealer, dry cleaner, video store, landscaper, HVAC service, market…
With or without Google, I guess, there’s a lot of me to go around.
June 25, 2008
Spell check, or check out?
At the risk of this turning into a rant, I feel compelled to talk about the craft of writing and the slippery slope that today’s school children – at least in my community – find themselves careening down (rather than scaling successfully).
In my community, the prevailing wisdom (and I use that phrase very loosely) seems to be that spell-check is the great solution to all that ails the beleaguered education system, a system that apparently doesn’t have the time, will, leadership, or vision to put basic communication skills high enough on the list of “basics” that our children need to learn in elementary school.
For my son, an incoming seventh grader, his last spelling drilling took place in 3rd or 4th grade – around the same time he had his last instruction in cursive writing – though that’s a subject for a separate rant, er, I mean, blog entry. Anyhow, since then, there has been sporadic spelling work, though it’s usually wrapped into vocabulary homework for social studies, meaning that the meaning of the word is more important than the spelling thereof. In 4th grade, there was a little of this and that for spelling, grammar, and handwriting, but certainly how words were spelled was not a priority. And in 5th grade, where written homework increased both in quantity and required quality of expression, the fact that spelling mistakes occurred just wasn’t that big of a deal. My son’s teacher – a wise but career-end-stage teacher – said, quite frankly and on more than one occasion, that since kids mostly use computers to do their homework, spell-check will take care of most of their spelling mistakes. There was simple no acknowledgment that whether the child could actually spell correctly without spell-check was or should be a point of concern.
So far, I’ve only dealt with spelling…grammar is yet another sad story. Other than a glancing blow past the concept of outlining (yes, the classic subject-predicate-dangling-modifiers graphic scheme of olde), there was absolutely no attention paid during class time to whether kids used necessary nouns and verbs, proper punctuation, correct capitalization, sensible sentence structure, or anything else. The language arts/social studies teacher seemed more concerned with covering the requisite course material than making sure the kids could communicate their knowledge.
And – in one of those mixed-up bits of edu-think these days – the teacher followed a strand of prevailing thought about “reaching all learners” by requiring the students to do posters and drawings and storyboards for some of their assignments – and grading the students on the quality of their projects. What the heck ever happened to putting words on paper to demonstrate one’s knowledge? Or giving a speech in front of the class? And what consideration or accommodation is given to kids who are crummy artists, or can’t translate fact-based content into sketches and pretty colors? No knock to the kids who actually can draw better than write…but for the kids who find drawing a struggle, or an unsatisfying way to communicate, they become double losers – penalized in their learning process and their grades by having to draw a picture rather then put into words what they learned about, say, the trading/commercial practices of ancient Africa. And note, this doesn’t even begin to approach the question of why the kids aren’t learning to express themselves via 21st-century tools such as websites, blogs, wikis, Nings, PowerPoint, podcasts, and video as opposed to antique approaches like drawing with freakin’ colored pencils! (Check out Vicki Davis' Cool Cat Teacher blog and some of my other ed-blog links for a glimpse at the possibilities.)
Where does all this lead? In the near term, it presents a class of seventh graders who are entering a new school term woefully unprepared to perform at the level or writing quality that their teachers will expect – thus dragging down the learning process. It means our kids are being taught using old-school methods when the world is moving to Web 2.0 and beyond. And in the longer term it points to kids who are going to struggle in high school if they somehow don’t learn writing and spelling and note-taking skills ASAP. (Did you hear the rumor about the Brookline high schoolers who can’t read the blackboard when the teachers write in cursive?)
As a parent, it leave me angry for my son, livid as a taxpayer, frustrated as an editor who spends his days covering 21st-century education gains, and disheartened as someone who simply cares about our nation’s role and standing in the future. Do I think it’s all a lost cause for my kid? No. My son is a smart boy who will pull it together in his own time. But, man oh man, I don’t like what it says about my local school district and it’s ed policies.
In my community, the prevailing wisdom (and I use that phrase very loosely) seems to be that spell-check is the great solution to all that ails the beleaguered education system, a system that apparently doesn’t have the time, will, leadership, or vision to put basic communication skills high enough on the list of “basics” that our children need to learn in elementary school.
For my son, an incoming seventh grader, his last spelling drilling took place in 3rd or 4th grade – around the same time he had his last instruction in cursive writing – though that’s a subject for a separate rant, er, I mean, blog entry. Anyhow, since then, there has been sporadic spelling work, though it’s usually wrapped into vocabulary homework for social studies, meaning that the meaning of the word is more important than the spelling thereof. In 4th grade, there was a little of this and that for spelling, grammar, and handwriting, but certainly how words were spelled was not a priority. And in 5th grade, where written homework increased both in quantity and required quality of expression, the fact that spelling mistakes occurred just wasn’t that big of a deal. My son’s teacher – a wise but career-end-stage teacher – said, quite frankly and on more than one occasion, that since kids mostly use computers to do their homework, spell-check will take care of most of their spelling mistakes. There was simple no acknowledgment that whether the child could actually spell correctly without spell-check was or should be a point of concern.
So far, I’ve only dealt with spelling…grammar is yet another sad story. Other than a glancing blow past the concept of outlining (yes, the classic subject-predicate-dangling-modifiers graphic scheme of olde), there was absolutely no attention paid during class time to whether kids used necessary nouns and verbs, proper punctuation, correct capitalization, sensible sentence structure, or anything else. The language arts/social studies teacher seemed more concerned with covering the requisite course material than making sure the kids could communicate their knowledge.
And – in one of those mixed-up bits of edu-think these days – the teacher followed a strand of prevailing thought about “reaching all learners” by requiring the students to do posters and drawings and storyboards for some of their assignments – and grading the students on the quality of their projects. What the heck ever happened to putting words on paper to demonstrate one’s knowledge? Or giving a speech in front of the class? And what consideration or accommodation is given to kids who are crummy artists, or can’t translate fact-based content into sketches and pretty colors? No knock to the kids who actually can draw better than write…but for the kids who find drawing a struggle, or an unsatisfying way to communicate, they become double losers – penalized in their learning process and their grades by having to draw a picture rather then put into words what they learned about, say, the trading/commercial practices of ancient Africa. And note, this doesn’t even begin to approach the question of why the kids aren’t learning to express themselves via 21st-century tools such as websites, blogs, wikis, Nings, PowerPoint, podcasts, and video as opposed to antique approaches like drawing with freakin’ colored pencils! (Check out Vicki Davis' Cool Cat Teacher blog and some of my other ed-blog links for a glimpse at the possibilities.)
Where does all this lead? In the near term, it presents a class of seventh graders who are entering a new school term woefully unprepared to perform at the level or writing quality that their teachers will expect – thus dragging down the learning process. It means our kids are being taught using old-school methods when the world is moving to Web 2.0 and beyond. And in the longer term it points to kids who are going to struggle in high school if they somehow don’t learn writing and spelling and note-taking skills ASAP. (Did you hear the rumor about the Brookline high schoolers who can’t read the blackboard when the teachers write in cursive?)
As a parent, it leave me angry for my son, livid as a taxpayer, frustrated as an editor who spends his days covering 21st-century education gains, and disheartened as someone who simply cares about our nation’s role and standing in the future. Do I think it’s all a lost cause for my kid? No. My son is a smart boy who will pull it together in his own time. But, man oh man, I don’t like what it says about my local school district and it’s ed policies.
June 18, 2008
Great expectations
It’s a wonderful thing when a piece of architecture does the job its builders intended. And I don’t mean just keeping the rain off our heads.
I am in Washington, D.C. today – home to a lot of spectacular architecture – to attend an event at the Library of Congress. It’s a “hall rental,” if you will – the building is just the stage. But, oh, how well it works in that regard. The Great Hall is designed to celebrate and elevate the written word, noble ideas, and the men and women responsible for them through the centuries. It is a breathtaking space, for its scale and craft as well as for the message.
That tonight’s event is a confluence of commerce and high ideals is notable, perhaps, but in the end, the high ideals win out. Cable in the Classroom, the education foundation of the NCTA, is hosting its annual Cable’s Leaders in Learning Awards in the Great Hall to celebrate the innovative work of a dozen educators from around the U.S. Lots of ed-speak will be spoken, and a fair bit of cable business will be done too, among the invited guests – educators and education proponents, and lots of “industry” types, which in D.C. means cable owners and operators and the senators, congressmen, committee staffers, and aides who matter to them. Celebrating the good work of teachers is a “win” for educrats, and celebrating cable’s role in supporting and promoting those teachers is a “win win” for cable, especially in “today’s competitive climate” (i.e., not everyone likes cable – just ask FCC chair Kevin Martin … better yet, don’t).
Staged in the Library of Congress, this evening’s event will send a potent message: education ranks right up there among our nation’s highest aspirations. It is not a bad thing that there’s a business angle to the proceedings, don’t get me wrong, because without the support of the cable industry's system operators and programming networks, the teachers who are the stars of the event tonight might not be able to shine, or shine as brightly. It’s just good to remind oneself, while being overwhelmed by the awesomeness of tonight’s event and setting, that in order to achieve lofty goals – whether educational or architectural – somebody’s got to foot the bill. Cable deserves credit for understanding that and making the most of it.
I am in Washington, D.C. today – home to a lot of spectacular architecture – to attend an event at the Library of Congress. It’s a “hall rental,” if you will – the building is just the stage. But, oh, how well it works in that regard. The Great Hall is designed to celebrate and elevate the written word, noble ideas, and the men and women responsible for them through the centuries. It is a breathtaking space, for its scale and craft as well as for the message.
That tonight’s event is a confluence of commerce and high ideals is notable, perhaps, but in the end, the high ideals win out. Cable in the Classroom, the education foundation of the NCTA, is hosting its annual Cable’s Leaders in Learning Awards in the Great Hall to celebrate the innovative work of a dozen educators from around the U.S. Lots of ed-speak will be spoken, and a fair bit of cable business will be done too, among the invited guests – educators and education proponents, and lots of “industry” types, which in D.C. means cable owners and operators and the senators, congressmen, committee staffers, and aides who matter to them. Celebrating the good work of teachers is a “win” for educrats, and celebrating cable’s role in supporting and promoting those teachers is a “win win” for cable, especially in “today’s competitive climate” (i.e., not everyone likes cable – just ask FCC chair Kevin Martin … better yet, don’t).
Staged in the Library of Congress, this evening’s event will send a potent message: education ranks right up there among our nation’s highest aspirations. It is not a bad thing that there’s a business angle to the proceedings, don’t get me wrong, because without the support of the cable industry's system operators and programming networks, the teachers who are the stars of the event tonight might not be able to shine, or shine as brightly. It’s just good to remind oneself, while being overwhelmed by the awesomeness of tonight’s event and setting, that in order to achieve lofty goals – whether educational or architectural – somebody’s got to foot the bill. Cable deserves credit for understanding that and making the most of it.
June 13, 2008
On a different note
I just came across David Byrne’s YouTube video "Playing the Building," in which he wired the metal fixtures, pipes, tubes, and pillars of an abandoned building to solenoid valves and various motors via an old organ. Pressing the keys on the organ activate individual switches and make the valves bang into the metal and create cool , echo-y sounds.
He regales his guest in the sense of wonder of it all, and touts the fact that everyone is equally good – or bad – at “playing” this instrument. A clever egalitarian construct, I suppose, but it ain’t music.
Makes me want to hear something by Harry Partch. He knew how to make pipes and tubes really sing!
He regales his guest in the sense of wonder of it all, and touts the fact that everyone is equally good – or bad – at “playing” this instrument. A clever egalitarian construct, I suppose, but it ain’t music.
Makes me want to hear something by Harry Partch. He knew how to make pipes and tubes really sing!
Focus on the here and now
Last night’s Celtics-Lakers game was an incredible roller coaster ride, and a great lesson in focus and determination. From two minutes into the game and through the entire horrific first half it seemed as if we were watching the utter collapse of the Celtics. Nothing was working right – not their shots, not their defense, and certainly not the refereeing. The Lakers, meanwhile, looked locked and loaded. Their efficient ball handling and smooth floor moves seemed to have the Celtics’ heads spinning.
How Paul Pierce and crew managed to refocus, re-dedicate themselves to the game at hand, and find their purpose was an absolutely amazing thing to witness. That they actually won in the end – a 30-point reversal of fortune in 15 minutes of play – was icing on the cake to their astonishing turnaround effort.
Post-game, Paul Pierce said his advice to teammates was “don’t look at the score; just go out and compete.” And coach Doc Rivers said he and the team don’t think in terms of “how many more to win” but rather concentrate all their energy on winning the next one. That’s focus – and really good advice for many situations in life. Don’t sweat the peripheral stuff; deal with the immediate. Doesn’t mean you can’t have a larger game plan – just keep it in perspective.
Speaking of perspective, it seems Kobe Bryant has his own way of dealing with things, however less admirable. When asked at the post-game press conference what he and his team would do need to do to recover from the surprising loss, he basically said, “get roaring drunk and then go back to work.” Charming.
How Paul Pierce and crew managed to refocus, re-dedicate themselves to the game at hand, and find their purpose was an absolutely amazing thing to witness. That they actually won in the end – a 30-point reversal of fortune in 15 minutes of play – was icing on the cake to their astonishing turnaround effort.
Post-game, Paul Pierce said his advice to teammates was “don’t look at the score; just go out and compete.” And coach Doc Rivers said he and the team don’t think in terms of “how many more to win” but rather concentrate all their energy on winning the next one. That’s focus – and really good advice for many situations in life. Don’t sweat the peripheral stuff; deal with the immediate. Doesn’t mean you can’t have a larger game plan – just keep it in perspective.
Speaking of perspective, it seems Kobe Bryant has his own way of dealing with things, however less admirable. When asked at the post-game press conference what he and his team would do need to do to recover from the surprising loss, he basically said, “get roaring drunk and then go back to work.” Charming.
June 10, 2008
iTunes, my tunes
A question from a friend (“What are you listening to these days?”) got me thinking. For a guy who has 1,000+ albums stashed in the attic and half as many CDs on the active music shelf (after a major purge last year), I realize that I'm not exploring music as much as I once did. Oh, there are plenty of reasons, lame and legit: I am counting my pennies toward retirement (that’s a joke, but probably shouldn’t be); I don’t have as much free time to listen anymore; I don’t browse at music stores like I once did; rummaging through music pages at Amazon is a pain. Besides, after watching pretty nearly pop music trend cycle through and then recycle, I find it hard to be surprised anymore.
There are other reasons as well. First with CDs and now with iTunes, the tactile joy of holding and examining an album cover and liner is gone. Some designers have figured out how to make interesting CD covers and booklets, but mostly they've just taken the old album-cover concept and shrunk it by 75%. And if you shop on iTunes, the notion of a cover and liner notes is pretty much a nonstarter.
Then there’s that fact that using my iPod has broken with my old obsessive habit of listening to one album for days or weeks on end until I'd fully absorbed it. Shuffle mode is fine for casual background listening, but it runs completely counter to deep exploration – you lose track of everything in your library once you pass 20 gigs of storage. Same holds for playlists – unless your musical tastes are exceedingly eclectic (and mine are fairly diverse) – after 15 or 20 lists you start repeating songs and the lists turn to clutter.
On the upside, I do appreciate that at both Amazon and iTunes I can stockpile musicians and discs that interests me. These lengthy lists are a great way to quickly stash a reminder. Now, if only I can win the lottery so I can buy or download everything I’ve squirreled away...
All that said, I do what I can to keep my listening varied. Here is what’s in my car at the moment, in no particular order:
There are other reasons as well. First with CDs and now with iTunes, the tactile joy of holding and examining an album cover and liner is gone. Some designers have figured out how to make interesting CD covers and booklets, but mostly they've just taken the old album-cover concept and shrunk it by 75%. And if you shop on iTunes, the notion of a cover and liner notes is pretty much a nonstarter.
Then there’s that fact that using my iPod has broken with my old obsessive habit of listening to one album for days or weeks on end until I'd fully absorbed it. Shuffle mode is fine for casual background listening, but it runs completely counter to deep exploration – you lose track of everything in your library once you pass 20 gigs of storage. Same holds for playlists – unless your musical tastes are exceedingly eclectic (and mine are fairly diverse) – after 15 or 20 lists you start repeating songs and the lists turn to clutter.
On the upside, I do appreciate that at both Amazon and iTunes I can stockpile musicians and discs that interests me. These lengthy lists are a great way to quickly stash a reminder. Now, if only I can win the lottery so I can buy or download everything I’ve squirreled away...
All that said, I do what I can to keep my listening varied. Here is what’s in my car at the moment, in no particular order:
- Alejandro Escovedo’s “A Man Under the Influence” (until I get his new CD)
- Vince Gill – the rollicking disc from his great 4-CD set
- Aimee Mann’s "Whatever" (until I get her new CD)
- Albita (waiting for a new CD)
- Tinariwen (“Water for Life” is simply amazing)
- Paul Simon’s “Surprise” (I especially like the Eno bits)
- Jimmy Buffett (hey, it must be 5 o’clock somewhere)
- Pavarotti's last CD
- Muse (my son’s choice, but they’re actually OK)
- Bass Notables (my own compilation with Jack Bruce, Animal Logic, Steve Swallow/Carla Bley, and others)
June 9, 2008
Girls, Boys - What's the difference?
A new posting by Glenn Sacks takes the AAUW to task for its latest research report, “Where the Girls Are: The Facts About Gender Equity in Education." Not enough solid research; not enough proof in their pudding, says Sacks, who pokes holes in the report’s data as nothing more than a thin layer of gloss on the argument that boys and girls are actually equals in school – or, worse, that a) boys so-called gains are made at girls’ expense and b) that, if there is a crisis, it is limited to minority and low-income children.
Considering the obvious facts that children within narrow age ranges or individual grades cover a wide developmental and intellectual spectrum, not to mention that all kids simply are not created equally, such definitive, attention-getting reports as this new one do a disservice to efforts to “teach to the child” that should be the goal of today’s education system.
As I listened recently to a friend explain why she is pulling her 7th grader from our public school system in favor of a private school where the entire faculty is trained in an individualized-teaching philosophy, I cringed at what this says about our best-in-town school. In a world that has increasing demands for multifaceted individuals who can think creatively and resourcefully, who understand collaboration and cultural difference, who have facile minds, is it even remotely good enough to “teach to the middle” or not to recognize the differences among individual students and put education resources in place for each student – boy or girl – to find his or her own way to succeed?
As the product of an all-boys high school (who absolutely hated it at the time), I am today envious of schools that separate boys from girls at middle school or high school. It’s not just the removal of the distraction of the opposite sex that matters (though that helps too). It’s the recognition that boys and girls do learn differently – at different rates, in different ways, at different times – and by separating them you have a slightly better shot at teaching each child. It seems so simple. Yet, hurdles keep being put in the path. Apparently, thanks to the AAUW, now we have another one.
Considering the obvious facts that children within narrow age ranges or individual grades cover a wide developmental and intellectual spectrum, not to mention that all kids simply are not created equally, such definitive, attention-getting reports as this new one do a disservice to efforts to “teach to the child” that should be the goal of today’s education system.
As I listened recently to a friend explain why she is pulling her 7th grader from our public school system in favor of a private school where the entire faculty is trained in an individualized-teaching philosophy, I cringed at what this says about our best-in-town school. In a world that has increasing demands for multifaceted individuals who can think creatively and resourcefully, who understand collaboration and cultural difference, who have facile minds, is it even remotely good enough to “teach to the middle” or not to recognize the differences among individual students and put education resources in place for each student – boy or girl – to find his or her own way to succeed?
As the product of an all-boys high school (who absolutely hated it at the time), I am today envious of schools that separate boys from girls at middle school or high school. It’s not just the removal of the distraction of the opposite sex that matters (though that helps too). It’s the recognition that boys and girls do learn differently – at different rates, in different ways, at different times – and by separating them you have a slightly better shot at teaching each child. It seems so simple. Yet, hurdles keep being put in the path. Apparently, thanks to the AAUW, now we have another one.
June 7, 2008
Rocky start
My son and his sixth grade class had a get-to-know-you session the other day with his seventh grade social studies teacher. It's one of those rights of passage that helps set the tone for the next year.
As the teacher strolled through the room tossing out U.S. geography quiz questions, he stopped at one boy's desk and looked down.
"What's your name?"
"Boris," the boy said somewhat sheepishly at having been singled out.
"Boris, eh..." said the teacher. "So, is your girlfriend Natasha?"
"Um, huh??" said Boris, puzzled. (Heck, everybody knows Boris likes Emily.)
Around the room, perplexed faces stared at this strange teacher and his weird question. Then one kid giggled. He knew. And he knew he was the only one who knew about Rocky and Bullwinkle.
You never know what can get a student-teacher relationship off to a good start. If it's a sly reference to the squirrel and moose, that's fine with me.
As the teacher strolled through the room tossing out U.S. geography quiz questions, he stopped at one boy's desk and looked down.
"What's your name?"
"Boris," the boy said somewhat sheepishly at having been singled out.
"Boris, eh..." said the teacher. "So, is your girlfriend Natasha?"
"Um, huh??" said Boris, puzzled. (Heck, everybody knows Boris likes Emily.)
Around the room, perplexed faces stared at this strange teacher and his weird question. Then one kid giggled. He knew. And he knew he was the only one who knew about Rocky and Bullwinkle.
You never know what can get a student-teacher relationship off to a good start. If it's a sly reference to the squirrel and moose, that's fine with me.
June 6, 2008
Mean boys?
One of my side activities is as a parent rep on our school advisory council. During a meeting today about the school improvement plan for next year, the discussion turned to middle school socialization issues... namely bullying, inappropriate text messaging, teasing, and just what is the difference between some of these behaviors as a normal part of kids growing up and when it turns into a pattern of behavior that warrants attention by school officials or parents.
A big blind spot at our school is over girls versus boys. Perhaps this betrays a pattern of its own, developed over many years, during which women were in all positions of command -- principal, vice principal, guidance counselors, aides, most teachers... Somehow, concerns over "mean girls" got attention via lunch groups, visits from teen counselors, mentoring activities, and the like. Meanwhile, the boys were left to fight it out on the playground, or across the lunch table, or in the local parks. "Boys will be boys" has been the prevailing attitude, usually accompanied by a shrug.
Finally, there seems to be some creeping recognition of a need to look at both halves of the classroom. Parents are asking for a guide to middle school, both in terms of social issues and the shifts in curriculum and academic demands. Curiosity is being raised by the new principal's drafting of a bullying policy. And though they are still infrequent visitors, more parents of boys are showing up at PTO meetings to learn what they can from other parents and from school officials. It's a long way still from open recognition that boys need as much help -- just different help -- as girls in learning how to get along, figure out their pecking order, and help each other grow up. But it's a start.
Recommended reading:
The Minds of Boys: Saving Our Sons From Falling Behind in School and Life by Michael Gurian and Kathy Stevens
A big blind spot at our school is over girls versus boys. Perhaps this betrays a pattern of its own, developed over many years, during which women were in all positions of command -- principal, vice principal, guidance counselors, aides, most teachers... Somehow, concerns over "mean girls" got attention via lunch groups, visits from teen counselors, mentoring activities, and the like. Meanwhile, the boys were left to fight it out on the playground, or across the lunch table, or in the local parks. "Boys will be boys" has been the prevailing attitude, usually accompanied by a shrug.
Finally, there seems to be some creeping recognition of a need to look at both halves of the classroom. Parents are asking for a guide to middle school, both in terms of social issues and the shifts in curriculum and academic demands. Curiosity is being raised by the new principal's drafting of a bullying policy. And though they are still infrequent visitors, more parents of boys are showing up at PTO meetings to learn what they can from other parents and from school officials. It's a long way still from open recognition that boys need as much help -- just different help -- as girls in learning how to get along, figure out their pecking order, and help each other grow up. But it's a start.
Recommended reading:
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