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Jamming in Lakeside

Big power outage last night, and more storms rolling across northern Ohio. I'll have to turn off the laptop soon. Today I hope to sign up for an afternoon class at Lorenzo's Culinary School. It's on making peach jam. Isn't that a great idea for a one shot class? Registration is limited, so I might not get in.

We decided to skip the program last night (it was near 90), and walked down to the dock where we visited with a neighbor and two other teachers from the Rhein Center. The lake was such an unusual color reflected for a hazy sky--almost white. Many kids were fishing with their dads--always a fun sight. We got back to our cottage about 9 p.m. and realized the power was off. It was restored around midnight. So I suppose the program was interrupted too.

I'm enjoying the writing class--Pat is such a fun teacher. Yesterday one of the writers mentioned that she is in a book group with a newspaper journalist who told the group they are taught in journalism school to include opinion in their news reporting to make it more interesting. What a shame! I read a "news" story in today's WSJ about upcoming legislation for "universal" (i.e. compulsory and tax supported) pre-school. Although the reporter (and I use the term loosely) said there was research showing Head Start had not resulted in the hoped for outcomes (I think there is zero carry over after a year or two), everything she cited was pro-government pre-school. She particularly focused on wealthy supporters of the idea. There are so many ways to slant a story--and she (Deborah Solomon) had hit most of them. Having a mother who is married to the father, and who has finished high school, will get far better results than universal pre-school in closing the "rich-poor gap" a favorite economic term of today's journalists.

Update: The peach jam class was cancelled! Not enough people signed up. Also, the power outage was due to a fire in a transformer at Rts. 53 and 163. Most of the Marblehead peninsula lost power.