Ruth Underwood, Frank Zappa and a cast of a dozen perform "Pygmy Twylyte" on PBS in 1974:
Miss Teen South Carolina 2007 explains the dearth of geographical instruction in the greater United States and "the" Iraq, such as:
A chance to catch up on the 127th Annual "Upperclass Twit of the Year" via Monty Python circa roughly 1970:
And, speaking of England and all that, simply my single favorite video clip ever: Jacqueline Du Pré plays the first movement of the Elgar Cello Concerto:
I try not to take things too seriously, but seeing Jackie Du Pré run down the cello at around 2:48 of the Elgar makes the entire "Internet destroys the world as we know it" thing worthwhile, imho.
P.S.: Bonus points for the look from bouffant-coiffed Daniel Barenboim as he starts off Du Pré and the orchestra at the beginning of the Elgar. It's quite obvious he can hardly wait from sheer anticipatory excitement, knowing his girlfriend Jackie is the Janis Joplin of the cello. Notice the left-hand conducting...he's almost as excited as the listener most certainly is. You don't have to love "classical" to love this...wow...
Friday, January 30, 2009
Newspapers Now Use Unorthodox Methods, But Evidently I've Been Using Them All Along
Print newspapers might be going the way of the Dodo, leisure suits and drivers using their turn signals, but, late in the game, they're doing some very interesting, 'Net-integrated things:
II.
And speaking of finding stuff, it's always fun to look through Sitemeter and find Google search strings that, unfathomably, lead folks to your blog. Most popular search phrases recently have been trying to find information out on "Manny Aragon", "Instructional Coaches" and "Bad Teachers", but a few recent favorites include:
Welcome bizarre people. Just be advised I, myself, can't swing because I get motion-sickness. Very easily.
Just so you know.
P.S.: Perhaps if the print media put more post labels for "swinging", "unorthodox sexual practice" and such on their new cool 'Net-integrated features newspaper could survive forever. It's an idea I'm sure the folks at the Journal, etc. had long, long, long ago.
P.P.S.: Btw, this is Post #650 for Burque Babble. What a semi-long, unorthodox trip it's been.
Have a good weekend everybody.
- The Seattle Times Twitters a highly contentious school board meeting that results in the closure of five public schools in the city;
- The Albuquerque Journal's Leslie Linthicum has a great idea to eat one of those infamous APS cheese sandwiches and the Journal videotapes/edits the experience (HT to John Fleck);
- And, the New York Times posts a slide show combining photos from a new production of "Hedda Gabbler" with, specially created/commissioned?, music by P.J. Harvey.
II.
And speaking of finding stuff, it's always fun to look through Sitemeter and find Google search strings that, unfathomably, lead folks to your blog. Most popular search phrases recently have been trying to find information out on "Manny Aragon", "Instructional Coaches" and "Bad Teachers", but a few recent favorites include:
- "Where's a good place to find seafood cioppino in Dallas, Texas?"
- "Teachers fear trips", and, from Clackamas, Oregon:
- "Can a teacher be fired for swinging?"
Welcome bizarre people. Just be advised I, myself, can't swing because I get motion-sickness. Very easily.
Just so you know.
P.S.: Perhaps if the print media put more post labels for "swinging", "unorthodox sexual practice" and such on their new cool 'Net-integrated features newspaper could survive forever. It's an idea I'm sure the folks at the Journal, etc. had long, long, long ago.
P.P.S.: Btw, this is Post #650 for Burque Babble. What a semi-long, unorthodox trip it's been.
Have a good weekend everybody.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
The Obama Administration Continues To Invade My Cerebellum
Those of us on the Lefty side are so used to reading things from a G.W. Bush White House that some of us are having a hard time adjusting. I mean, we had eight years of totally expecting that every piece of communication from the Executive Branch of the U.S. Government would reflect the exact opposite of our own view of the world. And Shrub never let us down. It was like magnetic polarity or something...it was a natural law.
So to read a story in which the new White House chef lambastes public school lunches, attacks the overly cozy Factory Farm-U.S. Department of Agriculture subsidy relationship and says:
I'm having a hard time believing the New York Times isn't downloading my political daydreams and running them as stories the next day.
This one has it right down to my mental picture of what a cultural revolutionary in the White House would look like:
Sam Kass, White House Chef and obvious dream figment
Shaved head, sinister smile, obligatory chef smock with shoulder food thermometer holder. Surrounded by stainless steel refrigeration units. Yep...that's my dream for dietary overthrow exactly. It's creepy...
Get out of my head, Obama Administration! Stop stealing my dreams, New York Times!
Come to think about it, the Shrub Administration was my nightmare for eight years. This doesn't seem like such a bad deal. Kinda creepy, and I still don't quite trust it yet, but not such a bad deal.
So to read a story in which the new White House chef lambastes public school lunches, attacks the overly cozy Factory Farm-U.S. Department of Agriculture subsidy relationship and says:
In 2003, U.S.D.A. spent $939.5 million dollars buying surplus commodities for School Lunch. Two-thirds of that bought meat and dairy, with little more than one quarter going to vegetables that were mostly frozen; and we should not forget that potatoes are the top selling vegetable in our country. The problem that arose is that between 80 and 85 percent of schools fail the basic government standards for the percentage of fat in the lunches due to the food it supplies schools....well, it's a bit of a shock to the Lefty system. I keep peering around the back of my computer screen, expecting to see someone holding up a sign saying "Just Kidding!".
I'm having a hard time believing the New York Times isn't downloading my political daydreams and running them as stories the next day.
This one has it right down to my mental picture of what a cultural revolutionary in the White House would look like:
Sam Kass, White House Chef and obvious dream figmentGet out of my head, Obama Administration! Stop stealing my dreams, New York Times!
Come to think about it, the Shrub Administration was my nightmare for eight years. This doesn't seem like such a bad deal. Kinda creepy, and I still don't quite trust it yet, but not such a bad deal.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
True Confessions: A Socialist Complains About "Economic Stimulus 2009"
You ever been really broke, flat-out busted and then had somebody suddenly hand you 700 million dollars? The New Mexico Legislature was seemingly prepared to go on a Ramen and Shasta diet when the Feds suddenly showed up with some caviar and Dom Perignon in the guise of "Economic Stimulus 2009: Works Progress Administration II".
Now I'm an unabashed Liberal. Big L, big I, big...you get the picture. F.D. Roosevelt is one of my favorite Presidents...Hell he's one of my favorite historical persons all time. Right up there with Leon Trotsky, Eugene V. Debs and Mordecai "Three Fingers" Brown. And I think Roosevelt's attempts to resurrect the American economy in the wake of what became known as the Great Depression were exactly the kind of big-picture, intra-United States projects/thinking the country has desperately needed again for decades.
But I gotta admit all this "Economic Stimulus II" has a bit of the feel generated last year when Treasure Department head honcho Henry Paulson and his equally inept colleagues went around telling Congress, John Q. Public and whoever else would listen that if we didn't give the financial markets $350 billion in 72 hours the sky would fall, the nation would crumble and dogs and cats would start living together in chaos. Or last year when ex-President W led the effort to save the American economy by just giving every tax payer $600 to go buy an HDTV. That certainly seemed to work.
The problem I have with all this is the lack of (and here's a good Socialist, Trotsky, festooned with negative connotation term for ya) planning. Many in this country are obsessed with the idea that "Socialism" is evil. In reaction, instead of carefully planning the government allocation of dollars to help the "Hell No We're Not Socialists" economy, we're just dumping the money into the financial markets, state governments etc., calling it a "stimulus" and pretending to let the "Invisible Hand" pick it back up from there.
So instead of a careful, thoughtful approach that will lead to Rooseveltian things like a 21st Century version of the Hoover Dam (and yes, I know that putting dams along the Colorado was a bad idea in the long run), "Works Progress Administration II" seems destined to be a smash-and-grab for quick money and lots of it, creating the perfect scenario for hyper-short term thinking, "shovel-ready" (i.e., certainly not the Hoover Dam) projects, and a military-industrial complex level of lobbyist's meddling/pilfering.
So this, big L, Liberal is quaking in his Eugene V. Debs boots reading stories about "Economic Stimulus 2009". As most of you know, even FDR himself was perhaps overly concerned with deficit spending in a recession/depression. The idea of some weird Free Market Anti-Socialism Big-ASS Government (FMASBAG), where the government attempts to "save" the economy by acting like an ATM plopped down in the middle of the NM Roundhouse scares me just a little, tiny bit. Okay, more than a tiny bit.
I know...party pooper. Hasn't the military-industrial complex been given the ATM treatment for years? Why shouldn't the Department of Education, etc. get the same treatment DoD? Why shouldn't mistreated states like New Mexico and horribly mistreated constituents like the children of New Mexico?
Um...well because....um... well let's just watch. Check back with me after the ATM feeding frenzy ends, and we'll compare notes. Myself, I'm predicting a Hoover Dam-sized case of financial ugly here.
"All of this will have a very short fuse," a Senate staffer told the Journal on Tuesday. "It's use it or lose it."Now you don't have to be a "fiscal conservative" to see potential pitfalls in handing state legislatures tons of unfettered cash. And the "fettering" here is noted in the Coleman story and elsewhere in terms like "penciled in" like "clean water projects are penciled in for another $28 million" and, as new U.S. Rep. Martin Heinrich says, "this entire package is designed to create jobs and to do it as quickly as possible."
--Michael Coleman, Albuquerque Journal, 1.28.09
Now I'm an unabashed Liberal. Big L, big I, big...you get the picture. F.D. Roosevelt is one of my favorite Presidents...Hell he's one of my favorite historical persons all time. Right up there with Leon Trotsky, Eugene V. Debs and Mordecai "Three Fingers" Brown. And I think Roosevelt's attempts to resurrect the American economy in the wake of what became known as the Great Depression were exactly the kind of big-picture, intra-United States projects/thinking the country has desperately needed again for decades.
But I gotta admit all this "Economic Stimulus II" has a bit of the feel generated last year when Treasure Department head honcho Henry Paulson and his equally inept colleagues went around telling Congress, John Q. Public and whoever else would listen that if we didn't give the financial markets $350 billion in 72 hours the sky would fall, the nation would crumble and dogs and cats would start living together in chaos. Or last year when ex-President W led the effort to save the American economy by just giving every tax payer $600 to go buy an HDTV. That certainly seemed to work.
The problem I have with all this is the lack of (and here's a good Socialist, Trotsky, festooned with negative connotation term for ya) planning. Many in this country are obsessed with the idea that "Socialism" is evil. In reaction, instead of carefully planning the government allocation of dollars to help the "Hell No We're Not Socialists" economy, we're just dumping the money into the financial markets, state governments etc., calling it a "stimulus" and pretending to let the "Invisible Hand" pick it back up from there.
So instead of a careful, thoughtful approach that will lead to Rooseveltian things like a 21st Century version of the Hoover Dam (and yes, I know that putting dams along the Colorado was a bad idea in the long run), "Works Progress Administration II" seems destined to be a smash-and-grab for quick money and lots of it, creating the perfect scenario for hyper-short term thinking, "shovel-ready" (i.e., certainly not the Hoover Dam) projects, and a military-industrial complex level of lobbyist's meddling/pilfering.
So this, big L, Liberal is quaking in his Eugene V. Debs boots reading stories about "Economic Stimulus 2009". As most of you know, even FDR himself was perhaps overly concerned with deficit spending in a recession/depression. The idea of some weird Free Market Anti-Socialism Big-ASS Government (FMASBAG), where the government attempts to "save" the economy by acting like an ATM plopped down in the middle of the NM Roundhouse scares me just a little, tiny bit. Okay, more than a tiny bit.
I know...party pooper. Hasn't the military-industrial complex been given the ATM treatment for years? Why shouldn't the Department of Education, etc. get the same treatment DoD? Why shouldn't mistreated states like New Mexico and horribly mistreated constituents like the children of New Mexico?
Um...well because....um... well let's just watch. Check back with me after the ATM feeding frenzy ends, and we'll compare notes. Myself, I'm predicting a Hoover Dam-sized case of financial ugly here.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Let's Saddle Up on the Economic Stimulus Pony My Public School Friends
The economic stimulus plan that Congress has scheduled for a vote on Wednesday would shower the nation’s school districts, child care centers and university campuses with $150 billion in new federal spending, a vast two-year investment that would more than double the Department of Education’s current budget.--Sam Dillon, New York Times, 1.27.09With fifteen years in teaching public education I'm reminded, while reading this NYT story, of the line my mother used when somebody brought up buying something new for the house. "We don't deserve nice things," she would say in her unmistakable, three cars-on-cinder blocks in the front-yard Texas accent.
Golly. More than doubling the U.S. Department of Education budget. Guess we got us a new President or something. I'm might start shopping for some new drapes for my classroom. But not the real expensive ones. We still don't deserve those.
Calamities Possibly Averted! Digital TV and APS Cheese
With the steely eye of Death almost at hand, the small, furry creature known as Analog Television may perhaps be saved by brave Congresspeople and a new President with bold ideas that evidently include saving small, supposedly outdated entertainment options. Much has been made about the "Switch to Digital", 99.9993% of the buzz created by television stations/networks themselves. How many informational crawls along screen bottoms, funny if somewhat age-offensive YouTube videos, special news bulletins and doomsday-sized countdown clocks have we been subjected to in recent months/years?
I can't say I watch much TV myself (that would take time away from my Internet addiction), but in all the informational Hellfire and doomsday clock madness trying to scare Americans into action on this vital point, here's one campaign I haven't seen employed by anyone:
"The Switch To Digital: Maybe This is A Good Time To Consider That You Watch Too Much &*$@*&! Television!"
Instead, the campaigns by the very media conglomerates and TV manufacturers standing to make tons of money while filling up even more of the landfills in the process have seemed to imply some sort of patriotic duty is involved. Or that by missing out on Digital, Analog America will be deprived of some Constitutionally-protected right/obligation to be entertained at the highest resolution possible. You'd think we were talking sugar and gasoline rations during World War II here, or at least "Victory Gardens".
Now Congress seems ready to extend the countdown clock in what must surely be the most important piece of legislation in the history of the Republic. Praise the Cathode Ray and pass the Digital ammunition! May the holy, very sharp light of HDTV shine on us all?
Otherwise, what are we all going to do (and live for) in our Great Depression II unemployment.
Maybe he who controls the spice really does rule the world...
II.
Or perhaps he who controls the cheese rules the cafeteria. In its continuing effort to recoup .0000127% of its annual operating budget, the Albuquerque Public Schools has decided to maintain the policy in which deadbeat parents will have their kids subjected to the extortion of cold cheese sandwiches until they (the parents) start paying up for lunch. So far, the program has recouped $42,000 in lunch debts and cost approximately $47.3 trillion in public relation dollars.
Taking off the satire/sarcasm hat for a second, I am glad to read that the program has also led to an thirteen-hundred student increase in those perceived eligible for free/reduced lunch. At the same time, it baffles me as to why the District doesn't use this brouhaha as an opportunity to revise the entire way meals are delivered in the District.
Nobody likes the current state of cafeteria affairs. Let me repeat that: NOBODY LIKES WHAT IS HAPPENING!
APS is serving poorly-constructed, unhealthy, visually unattractive to the point of nausea meals on old-school Styrofoam trays to students whose only other option (other than bringing their lunch) is paying airport prices for terribly unhealthy junk food via the "snack bar".
Moreover, the District is, quite obviously, making a killing off the "snack bar" profits ($2.00 for a .40 cent piece of pizza?), profits which are further maximized by having such lousy APS "line" meals. Any kid who can rub two dollar bills together is going to go for the "snack bar" and avoid "the line" like the Styrofoam plague it is.
Why not totally revamp APS meals and the APS Food Services now? A few ideas to start:
The other, non-testing, days...who cares. The delivery and ingestion of food by students is considered with the same avoidance of thought given to trips to the laundromat or MVD. We know it's a sorry state of affairs. Nobody likes it. NOBODY. So we try not to think about it until TESTING TIME rolls around and it's time to go buy 75 cases of those little orange juice boxes and a truckload of animal crackers.
There's got to be a better way. Now is the time to do it.
I can't say I watch much TV myself (that would take time away from my Internet addiction), but in all the informational Hellfire and doomsday clock madness trying to scare Americans into action on this vital point, here's one campaign I haven't seen employed by anyone:
"The Switch To Digital: Maybe This is A Good Time To Consider That You Watch Too Much &*$@*&! Television!"
Instead, the campaigns by the very media conglomerates and TV manufacturers standing to make tons of money while filling up even more of the landfills in the process have seemed to imply some sort of patriotic duty is involved. Or that by missing out on Digital, Analog America will be deprived of some Constitutionally-protected right/obligation to be entertained at the highest resolution possible. You'd think we were talking sugar and gasoline rations during World War II here, or at least "Victory Gardens".
Now Congress seems ready to extend the countdown clock in what must surely be the most important piece of legislation in the history of the Republic. Praise the Cathode Ray and pass the Digital ammunition! May the holy, very sharp light of HDTV shine on us all?
Otherwise, what are we all going to do (and live for) in our Great Depression II unemployment.
Maybe he who controls the spice really does rule the world...
II.
Or perhaps he who controls the cheese rules the cafeteria. In its continuing effort to recoup .0000127% of its annual operating budget, the Albuquerque Public Schools has decided to maintain the policy in which deadbeat parents will have their kids subjected to the extortion of cold cheese sandwiches until they (the parents) start paying up for lunch. So far, the program has recouped $42,000 in lunch debts and cost approximately $47.3 trillion in public relation dollars.
Taking off the satire/sarcasm hat for a second, I am glad to read that the program has also led to an thirteen-hundred student increase in those perceived eligible for free/reduced lunch. At the same time, it baffles me as to why the District doesn't use this brouhaha as an opportunity to revise the entire way meals are delivered in the District.
Nobody likes the current state of cafeteria affairs. Let me repeat that: NOBODY LIKES WHAT IS HAPPENING!
APS is serving poorly-constructed, unhealthy, visually unattractive to the point of nausea meals on old-school Styrofoam trays to students whose only other option (other than bringing their lunch) is paying airport prices for terribly unhealthy junk food via the "snack bar".
Moreover, the District is, quite obviously, making a killing off the "snack bar" profits ($2.00 for a .40 cent piece of pizza?), profits which are further maximized by having such lousy APS "line" meals. Any kid who can rub two dollar bills together is going to go for the "snack bar" and avoid "the line" like the Styrofoam plague it is.
Why not totally revamp APS meals and the APS Food Services now? A few ideas to start:
- Meals should be created on-site
- Lose the Styrofoam and get some real plates/utensils
- Dump the snack bar
- Make all the meals "free", using a college dormitory cafeteria system instead
- Changing the half-ass way schools have students fill out "free/reduced lunch" forms. Make them do it in class.
- Tell parents that the new, revamped cafeteria is paid for with these federal dollars.
- Make the completion of this process a bigger deal than some shameful form filled out while registering their kid.
- At the same time, work to eliminate the entire "free/reduced lunch" idea. Pressure the State & Federal Government to see that lunch is a required part of the school day, like textbooks and maps on the classroom walls.
- Take some of the money devoted to incessantly testing our students and put it into the student mouths so they can be better equipped to study, learn, thrive in school.
- Take private donations from school parents and local businesses to help provide quality meals at public schools.
- Make it a five-year goal to eliminate the presence of any cash registers and "free/reduced lunch code readers" in APS schools.
The other, non-testing, days...who cares. The delivery and ingestion of food by students is considered with the same avoidance of thought given to trips to the laundromat or MVD. We know it's a sorry state of affairs. Nobody likes it. NOBODY. So we try not to think about it until TESTING TIME rolls around and it's time to go buy 75 cases of those little orange juice boxes and a truckload of animal crackers.
There's got to be a better way. Now is the time to do it.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
This Newfangled Internet Is Really Cool For Researching Education Stuff
In just a few minutes of going through this new "search engine" called "Google" (which I think is named after a really big number or something), I found out quite a bit on this newfangled New Mexico public school "funding formula" idea. One thing I've found in using this new "Internet" thing is that you often end up spending/wasting a lot of time finding out stuff slightly different from what you started out looking for.
For instance, this time around I wanted to find out how much implementing No Child Left Behind is costing New Mexico. I thought about this after reading today's Journal story with politicians hemming, hawing and hemming some more about whether to have voters approve a $380 million increase in the gross receipts tax to pay for a newfangled "funding formula". Knowing that my own school has had to start implementing a NCLB-related "intervention" strategy without receiving any additional money, staff, new rooms...nothing, I wanted to see how the "unfunded mandate" costs of NCLB compare with the $380 thrown around in this newfangled "funding formula".
And so my wondrous journey around this thing called "Google" began. It went something like this:
So the upshot is that this damn-fool Internet didn't give me exactly what I wanted this fine Sunday morning. I would have been off riding a bicycle...far more truth and information in a 35-mile ride imho. Still, I think if we can better use this newfangled "Internet" we might find out the answers to stuff that could help us make better informed choices when it comes to public school education funding in this country. Damn fool dreamer that I am.
I think I'll start by getting ahold of this actual human being I saw mentioned on the "Communities for Quality Education" website: "For more about NCLB costs, please contact Scott Young, senior policy advisor, at syoung@qualityednow.org or 202-454-5671."
I think I'll send Mr. Young an email right now. Oh wait, Xavi Alonso just got a yellow card for Liverpool versus Everton. And I see someone has sent me an email directing me to a video where this cat is being swung around by a moving ceiling fan. Oh dear! The cat has been thrown against the wall! That is both horrific and guiltily funny. I think I will try to find similar videos on this newfangled "YouTube" website. I see "YouTube" has a search box feature as well. I'll just type in "funny cat videos".....
P.S.: By this Monday morning I finally tired of YouTube cat videos and tried the aforementioned email address for "Communities for Quality Education". Instant delivery fail notice. Hmmm...anybody got some more recent state-by-state NCLB cost data? Is there a YouTube video with cats explaining the unfunded mandate costs of NCLB while swinging from ceiling fans?
For instance, this time around I wanted to find out how much implementing No Child Left Behind is costing New Mexico. I thought about this after reading today's Journal story with politicians hemming, hawing and hemming some more about whether to have voters approve a $380 million increase in the gross receipts tax to pay for a newfangled "funding formula". Knowing that my own school has had to start implementing a NCLB-related "intervention" strategy without receiving any additional money, staff, new rooms...nothing, I wanted to see how the "unfunded mandate" costs of NCLB compare with the $380 thrown around in this newfangled "funding formula".
And so my wondrous journey around this thing called "Google" began. It went something like this:
- I ran into a fact sheet (i.e., short recap of a really long, questionably interesting study) from the study that quite obviously got the ball rolling on the whole newfangled "funding formula" idea.
- And then there was this (also blessedly short) "final goal statement" from the study (PDF warning: It's short but in a .pdf....you have been warned!)
- Quickly followed by the study itself in all its long, time-intensive loading PDF glory
- Then I went looking at the quite useful New Mexico Legislature Bill Finder webpage, but didn't see a 2009 version of the "funding formula" legislation, at least from last year's main sponsor Rep. Mimi Stewart. Another warning: the New Mexico Legislature Bill Finder site is highly, highly addictive for the wonky among us. As White Russians are to the alcoholic, so is this website to an education wonk. Most of you already know about it, but if I can save just one wonk from a two-month legislative bender spent sloshing around this website, I will have done my job.
- And speaking of my job and sloshing, I did run across a new bill sponsored by Rep. Stewart seeking to formalize professional development standards for teachers of the "Gifted". Now somebody over the last year or so told me Rep. Stewart was, for lack of a more professionally developed word, pissed off as Hell at the Gifted Education community last year because all these Gifto advocates came down on her like a house-a-fire on the, perhaps mistaken, belief that the new "funding formula" (2008 iteration) would cripple/destroy/end Gifted Education in New Mexico. Well, speaking on behalf of all who work/participate in this strange little dressing room of the K-12 teaching gymnasium, I just want to say: Rep. Stewart, you're really cool and work real hard and we appreciate you. We're sorry if we we're a little over the top last year. We won't do it again, and we think your new bill to insure Teachers of the Gifted really know something about teaching Gifted students is really keen. And yes, I admit I'm saying that as someone who already has the 12 hours of college credit in "Gifted" and that I might be a teeny-weeny bit less happy if I didn't and your bill passed. But you're aces in our book. Aces. Now please don't call our parents or take away our cell phones. Please.
- A list of state-by-state studies done to establish District/State costs to implement NCLB. It even had New Mexico on it!
- Unfortunately, the linked story was for a 2005 study in New Mexico;
- and the link was broken;
- but it did say that NM "was going to have to spend" from $26 to $37 million per annum on NCLB behind stuff. And that was way back in 2005, when the number of schools under NCLB "restructuring" wasn't near what it is now. You got to think that number has at least doubled by now;
- but that's "thinking" instead of knowing. I went through the rest of the site involved ("Communities for Quality Education") and couldn't find anything more recent;
- a situation that remain unchanged when I went back to this other site where I found the original New Mexico study that started all this "funding formula" stuff to begin with.
So the upshot is that this damn-fool Internet didn't give me exactly what I wanted this fine Sunday morning. I would have been off riding a bicycle...far more truth and information in a 35-mile ride imho. Still, I think if we can better use this newfangled "Internet" we might find out the answers to stuff that could help us make better informed choices when it comes to public school education funding in this country. Damn fool dreamer that I am.
I think I'll start by getting ahold of this actual human being I saw mentioned on the "Communities for Quality Education" website: "For more about NCLB costs, please contact Scott Young, senior policy advisor, at syoung@qualityednow.org or 202-454-5671."
I think I'll send Mr. Young an email right now. Oh wait, Xavi Alonso just got a yellow card for Liverpool versus Everton. And I see someone has sent me an email directing me to a video where this cat is being swung around by a moving ceiling fan. Oh dear! The cat has been thrown against the wall! That is both horrific and guiltily funny. I think I will try to find similar videos on this newfangled "YouTube" website. I see "YouTube" has a search box feature as well. I'll just type in "funny cat videos".....
P.S.: By this Monday morning I finally tired of YouTube cat videos and tried the aforementioned email address for "Communities for Quality Education". Instant delivery fail notice. Hmmm...anybody got some more recent state-by-state NCLB cost data? Is there a YouTube video with cats explaining the unfunded mandate costs of NCLB while swinging from ceiling fans?
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Go See "Wit" At Albuquerque High School!
(Note the use of the imperative in the title above)
It spells that should get your ass down to Albuquerque High School tonight and see the last night of this play. I'm not kidding, being cynical or even whiny. Really.
While Burque Babble has extreme doubt of its ability to make anyone out there do anything, it is enormously suggested that dear reader go see Albuquerque High School's production of Margaret Edson's "Wit". The last night of its run is tonight. So go, tonight. 7:00 p.m.
At the high school in its "performing arts center" or whatever they call the place with the, admittedly, uncomfortable seats that face a stage.
The production is, let's see I haven't done art criticism in quite some time...what were those adjectives/adverbs that get used in art criticism all the time?...oh yeah:
The production is stunning.
No, I'm not exaggerating. No, I'm not saying that with the caveat that it's a high school production and therefore needs to be cut massive slack. And no, I'm not saying that because I happen to have taught about half the students in the production back when they were in middle school.
It really is quite good, and as entertaining as a play about stage four metastatic ovarian cancer can be. Yes, it's about cancer, but don't let that throw you off. It's really good.
While my ex-students do a great job, the lead performance is by a young woman I didn't have the pleasure of teaching. A young woman named Feldman. She is simply wonderful in this play. She's in high school, a junior I hear, and she's stellar. Again, I do not say that because she's in high school. I would say that if she was 35, and the production was at the Vortex or in the "Revolutions" show. Stellar.
If you've been around this cynical, negative, whiny part of the blogosphere for any length of time, you know Burque Babble isn't much for the rah-rah, pom-pom cheerleader shtick.
Well, rah. Rah. Give me a W. Give me an I. Give me a T. What does it spell?
It spells that should get your ass down to Albuquerque High School tonight and see the last night of this play. I'm not kidding, being cynical or even whiny. Really.
Go see it.
P.S.: Thanks to all in "Wit" for a wonderful, enthusing, inspiring night of theatre-going last night. Bravo.
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