Thursday, June 23, 2005
1172 The gap between rich and poor--the series
In yesterday's Wall Street Journal had another in its series about the growing gap between the rich and poor. It really fell flat for me. It is beyond anecdotal, moving quickly to fairy tale. Could the author (whose name I forgot to write down) not find better examples than a 58 year old man who had a GED and a single woman who has three children and had her first baby (unwed) at 18? What really frustrated me is that Ron Larson, 58, the guy with the GED, was making the same as I was in 2000 when I retired, and I had a master's degree, 24 years experience on the job, and had rank of associate professor. The solution, if I caught the drift, is more education. Why?After you read through the meaty paragraphs with filler of concern and pity, you get to the little morsels, particularly mistakes made in youth that come back to bite later--like an arrest that unhinges a security clearance years later; failure to finish high school; and an out of wedlock baby or two. I can think of no government program or change in evil corporations that will turn that around.
The examples of success included a "lucky" 20 year old, son of Puerto Rican immigrants, who really hustled, took extra training in-house and moved from the kitchen to the operating room as a surgery assistant. The other success story was a young man whose parents had worked hard and helped him with good values and financial support for his education. He was having no problem exceeding his parents' standard of living.
Go figure.
1171 Playing the race card in Columbus, Ohio
You know the lawyer's hand is really weak when he pulls out the race card when: Columbus has a black mayor; Columbus has a black female Superintendent of Schools; Columbus has a black female school board President; and Columbus has a black Chief of Police. But when Regina Crenshaw, a black female middle school principal, is fired after a black female disabled student is sexually assaulted on her watch, her lawyer says it is because she is a black female.Regina Crenshaw claims she acted appropriately and had reported problems in the past which the district had not investigated. I can go with that. Why not defend her on that evidence, if it exists? But race and sex? No, not this time, not this case.
Heard on radio 610June 15th - With her attorney, husband, and minister by her side, Regina Crenshaw entered a not guilty plea for failure to report the alleged sexual assault on March 9th. Outside the courtroom, Crenshaw said it's time for closure. The charge against Crenshaw is a misdemeanor and if convicted, she faces 30 days in jail and a $200 fine. Crenshaw also plans to proceed with a public hearing to get her job back. A date for that hearing has not been set.
June 22nd - The attorney representing the former prinicpal of Mifflin High School has filed a motion to dismiss. Toki Clark points to affadavits she says prove other teachers and administrators, faced with potential abuse situations, took the same course of action as her client. Clark says she can only conclude that Regina Crenshaw was prosecuted based on race and gender.
Update, April 28, 2006: "Regina Crenshaw was found not guilty Friday afternoon by a Franklin County Juvenile Court jury. She’d been charged with a criminal misdemeanor for not immediately calling police after the sexual assault of a 16-year-old girl at Mifflin High School, where Crenshaw was principal last year. The Columbus school board fired her because of the incident. But today’s verdict may play a factor in future litigation.
Crenshaw wept when she heard the jury’s verdict. Later she told reporters she felt justice had been served."
1169 Blogging bathrooms
What can you say about bathrooms? They occasionally come up in my stories--like the one I did about cats and the one about books. But photos--that's different--there's more than meets the eye and this photoblogger has done a series of bathroom shots that is just amazing.Wednesday, June 22, 2005
1168 When will politicians learn?
It is NOT an apology when you claim the people who heard what you said were 1) offended without cause by what you said (i.e. blame the victim), 2) misinterpreted your comments. This is what Durbin has done twice. First on Friday, and then on Tuesday.“Let me read to you what I said [on Friday]. ‘I have learned from my statement that historical parallels can be misused and misunderstood. I sincerely regret if what I said causes anybody to misunderstand my true feelings. Our soldiers around the world and their families at home deserve our respect, admiration and total support.’”
“Mr. President, it is very clear that even though I thought I had said something that clarified the situation, to many people it was still unclear. I'm sorry if anything that I said caused any offense or pain to those who have such bitter memories of the Holocaust, the greatest moral tragedy of our time. Nothing, nothing should ever be said to demean or diminish that moral tragedy.” Durbin's most recent apology
Now ladies, let's assume your husband compared you to a fat cow in front of his friends. In his sincere apology he says, "I sincerely regret if what I said about you being a fat cow causes you or my golf buddies to misunderstand my true feelings. You deserve my respect, admiration and total support."
He wouldn't be sleeping on the couch; he'd get a one way plane ticket home to mama, who'd probably make him sleep in the basement. Come on, Illinois Democrats. Someone teach this guy how to apologize! If he were a Republican, he'd be applying for unemployment, a la Trent Lott.
1167 Perpetual adolescence of the Left
Dr. Sanity does a good job of analyzing the Left, their state of denial, and their adolescent mind set.She started blogging about a year ago with an MSE on the Democratic Party. She found them to be paranoid, with flawed short term memory, with extremely poor judgement focusing on trivialities, with Major Depressive Disorder with psychotic features and Narcissistic Personality Disorder (with paranoid features). Of course, that was during the campaign, but not much seems to have changed.
1166 Statistics
About once a year for one week we'd have to track all our questions in the library. I'm not sure which black hole these are tossed into, but I think ours were repackaged and sent to ARL or maybe ACRL. They have categories like "ready reference," "directional," "telephone," "e-mail" and so forth. You'd get a huge sheet, one for each day and one for each staff person, and you'd make hash marks in the appropriate column as inquiries were made. Sometimes you'd get a trifecta or even a quadfecta with several questions chained together. "Hi, do you remember me?" (one slash mark). "Have you heard about the science fair my son wants to enter?" (two slash marks), etc. The cartoon "Overdue Media is running a series on reference stats. If you don't think it's funny, then you've probably never worked in a library.1165 Let's send in Dick Durbin
The Illinois Democrat needs a dose of reality. Looking at the world's developing hot spots, not yet blamed on Bush, let's send him on one of those Congressional fact finding missions to Zimbabwe where the leaders are in the early stages of a Cambodian killing fields. Maybe he can talk it out of existence with exaggeration, crocodile tears and puffery. Get G. Voinovich (R-OH) to help with the tears, just to make it bi-partisan."The current attacks on urban centers are part of a corrective strategy to drive perhaps two million people back onto the land. Once there, they will be cut off from the rest of the country and at the mercy of government-controlled food supplies. It is more difficult to starve people in urban areas where the outside world might catch wind of what's going on. As one displaced farmer puts it: "The people don't want to go back to the rural areas because they are afraid and also they know the hardships they will face. In summer, it would be easier for people--even those who have lost the skills--to live off the land from berries and wild mushrooms--but it's the height of winter now and there is nothing."
But controlling this population becomes easier all the time, as millions have fled over the past few years, over 3,000 people die every week of AIDS, and most college graduates, many of whom are activists, leave the country. The result has been an astonishing decline in the population, which is down to around 10 million from over 13 million a few years back. Not that the government minds. In August 2002, Didymus Mutasa, today the head of the secret police, said: "We would be better off with only six million people, with our own people who support the liberation struggle." "
The killing fields of Zimbabwe
1164 Tagged by R Cubed: Books that Matter
R Cubed, who has been blogging since January has tagged me to write about books. I have no idea who she is, but she apparently found my blog and whispered sweet nothings to me so I would write this and tag five others. I think I may have done this exercise, but if so, here it is again, and probably different. What matters on Wednesday isn’t what you cared about on Sunday. It’s a myth that librarians read a lot (and if you see them doing it on the job, that is a job assignment). I don’t read nearly as much as my non-librarian friends.
What is the total number of books you have ever owned?
I have no idea, but several thousand would be a good guess. I pick up a lot of books at sales and give-aways. I’ve also inherited books from my mother, grandmother and great-grandfather. Because all our shelves are full, I try to donate to the Friends sale when I bring a batch in. Right now I have 13 books lying on their sides waiting for me to take some sort of defensive action so they can stand up.
What is the last book you have purchased?
I don’t buy many books except at sales, but I think the last new one was “In but not of” by Hugh Hewitt in May which was on our book club list and not available at any of the libraries I checked. It’s an advice book, really more suitable for new graduates, but interesting. Of course, I did everything wrong, and that’s why I’m not rich and famous or powerful.
What is the last book you have read?
I haven’t finished it yet I’m on p. 167 (I’m a very slow reader), but it is The Devil in the White City (2003, Crown) by Erik Larson. I just blogged about it a day or two ago.
What are 5 books that mean a lot to you?
I have a miserable background in literature, so I can only cite non-fiction. I don’t know when the golden age of American education was, but it certainly wasn’t during my schooling. I never had a high school or college course in American or British literature and I‘m a liberal arts graduate. Not that I couldn’t do this on my own, but life happens--kids, work, church, stuff--and the books don’t get read unless I have to for some project or group. So here’s a list.
1) I’d like to say I’m a Bible scholar, but I’m not, but that seems to be the book I open most often. Right now, the NIV is my favorite translation. I probably have 10 translations.
2) “The Story of English” by Robert McCrum et al (Viking, 1986) really expanded my horizons. It was a tie-in to a PBS show I thought was sort of dull--but I loved the book based on the show.
3) I’m very fond of Frank Luther Mott’s multi-volume work on “History of American Magazines,” and I used it when working on one of my own publications and would read it again just for fun, but of course, that will never happen.
4) How the Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill made me proud of my Irish roots and it‘s always fun to discover some part of history you knew nothing about.
5) “Seabiscuit; an American legend by Laura Hillenbrand was awesome on many levels--the author’s detailed research, her own illness while writing it, the wonderful story, and reading it on Amtrack while traveling across the country. And I love horses. As a kid, I only read horse and dog stories.
So, I'm tagging Family Man Librarian, Matthew, Tomeboy, Sal, and Jordan.
1163 Site meters can enslave
Some bloggers become slaves to their site meters. Not me. I only check, oh, 4 or 5 times a day. I'm too cheap to pay for one, so I have a freebie with limited features. If I don't check every 100 visits, I'd miss all the fun. I don't get the really wild questions like Vox Lauri or Paula, but I do have some persistent favorites. Three out of every 100 queries are people wanting to know how to fix a broken zipper, something I asked last October, but no one could tell me. Now my own question has corralled others, as though I am the guru or maven of broken zippers (the pants were 20 years old for goodness' sake).About four out of every 100 are visitors who have found the photo of the kittens belonging to the Agricultural Librarian at Ohio State. I saw the photo in her office and thought they were so adorable I asked if I could scan it, and she gave me one. (I've heard that some photographers use freeze dried animals to get those cutsy poses, but these kittens were alive and well.) And as the weather has warmed, I'm getting about three clicks a day to my own painting of my children sitting in front of the Marblehead Lighthouse.
The other day someone read 45 of my entries spending an hour and a half, and I hope she comes back and helps the stats again. Many readers seem to start at Shush's or Conservator's blogs, can't leave a comment there, so I think they come on over here. The best way to get visitors is to leave comments at someone else's blog, but most of the time I can't think of anything to say. Especially if I think it is really awful.
And I have many ethical people visit here. My stats are highest over the lunch hour, so they aren't reading during work time. Peak days seem to be Wednesday and Thursday. By Friday my readers are in TGIF mode and who wants to read a retired librarian when leaving work early for the bar?
So here's the formula for breaking 90 visits a day: zippers, kittens, lighthouses and comments. I've looked at some of the blogs drawing 1,000 or more visitors a day, and I'd need to be much saucier, sassier and younger than I am. I give up a lot for my craft, but I won't be anyone but me.
1162 Teaching English ain't easy
Nathan Bierma loves the English language, but he has discovered that teaching grammar is different than using it professionally. Here's his English 101 story from the Chicago Trib. I occasionally try reading the blogs of college young people and have definitely experienced his #1, #2, and #4.1161 What children ask for
Yesterday's question in VBS was something along the lines of "If you could have anything you asked for, what would it be." Apparently, only one little girl (probably watches beauty pageants on TV) thought beyond material needs and did indeed ask for world peace, according to my husband who teaches the class. Most asked for material things, but not a bike or a pony like my generation would have done (we were self-centered too), but a house! One little girl asked for a shopping mall! Now THAT is materialistic. "What do you suppose children in Third World countries ask for," my husband mused.Tuesday, June 21, 2005
Stories from Lakeside
At the end of the week we’ll be heading for our summer home at Lakeside on Lake Erie, a Chautauqua community. We’ll be reversing the days of summer that we had all those years when we were both employed, which was work four days, take a day of vacation and spend three at the Lake. Now we’ll play three weeks, come home to attend to details for a few days, and go back to more play. It's a tough life being a DINK living in a NORC.
Lakeside Summer 2004
Memorial Day Week-end, 2004
All about Mayflies
Thoughts on July 4
Week-end entertainment
Friends of the Hotel Sale
The week’s entertainment, mid-July
Art Show Opening
Pleasant surprises
First Donut of the season
Complementary colors
Entertainment just steps away
The Last Day of July
Client Appreciation Party
Week Eight at Lakeside, 2004
Colors of SummerCottage Decor
Week Nine at Lakeside, 2004
Packing to go home
And for 2005
Week One, 2005
A Lakeside Wedding
Mind and Memory class
Blueberries are brain food
Perfect Day at Lakeside
Lutheran Chautauqua
The Secret is Out
Another perfect summer day
Lake Erie Cruise
Thirty years ago at Lakeside
First time visitors
Our Town
Apple Pie Sailing Weather
Peace Week
The Big E
Sailing the Front Porch
Resurrection Lilies
Baby in the hotel dining room
Lakeside art class
Kelley's Island
What I haven't seen this summer
Photo Album at the Antique Sale
Summer 2006
Suspenders
Yard Saling
Lighthouse-opoly
Walk along Lake Erie
Remodeling at Lakeside
Our Lakeside cottages over the years
My office nook at Lakeside
Wooden Boat Show
First week's programming
Chinese Acrobats
July 4, 2006 at Lakeside
Lakeside archives
Tram Tour
Kids' Sail
Week 8 at Lakeside
Lakeside dock scenes
Purple Martins at Lakeside
Antique Show, pt. 2
Summer 2007
Tony Campolo preaches at Lakeside
First time visitors
Lakeside is open
Fourth week visitors
Third week programs and activities and
class on geology of the Great Lakes and
art show opening
Flowers of Lakeside
1158 I love my mom, but. . .
My husband is teaching Vacation Bible School this week. This is an enormous undertaking for our church--I think about 3,000 kids are enrolled for one week sessions over a two week period. There is even a special VBS class for developmentally disabled children. Anyway, yesterday at lunch he told me that in his fourth grade class he has 17 children from 15 schools, and one of those schools is about 70 miles away. I think that is amazing. When I went to VBS back in Forreston, IL, we had town kids and country kids--two, possibly three schools and probably 4 or 5 churches.The theme is something about Africa, and one of the questions was "if you were lost in the jungle on safari, what one person would you want to have with you?" Most of the kids said their dad, a few said their mother, but one little girl said, "Well, I really love my mom, but she's always getting lost, so I'll say my dad."
Of course, I would have asked why we were lost if the dads were so great at asking directions.
1157 Words and phrases for pundits
Words mean something, unless they are overused. Then they become posters, or occasionally poetry. I'm working on a list of the typical words and phrases used by the left or right about the right or left. On this first day of Spring I'm just taking them out of my word safe, holding them up to the light and deciding if they can be strung together as an essay, a poem, a joke or an obituary for discourse. Here are some of my jewels found along the way. Step lightly.
Democrats' favorites include:
outraged
shocked
horrified
politicize
crony
rich buddies
anti-choice
anti-science
hypocrites
idiots
morons
backwater
Haliburton
coalition of the rich and religious
dismantle
high-profile fundraiser
stolen elections
red-meat-but-no-brain
Bush lied
Nazis, Hitler
Gulag, Stalin
polls show
talk-radio
right wing spin
wingnuts
fake but accurate!
Rovian
WTF?
Republicans are currently using these treasures:
MSM
pro-abortion
anti-gun ownership
freaks
baby killers
tired
socialists
communists
disinformation
anti-American
snobs
left-coast
wackos
Deaniacs
kooks
unhinged
Moore lies
snookered
spittle-flecked
high-profile fundraiser
tax and spend
radicals
Clintonesque
SF-180
Bush-wackers
tin-foil headgear
moonbats
fake but accurate?
whiners
wusses
WTF?
1156 Noonan's plan to save PBS
Peggy Noonan has a plan to save PBS that is so sensible and so good, that I just know no one will take her suggestion. Congress seems incapable of coming up with these ideas."Why, then, doesn't Congress continue to fund PBS at current levels but tell them they must stick to what they are good at, and stop being the TV funhouse of the Democratic Party? Nobody needs their investigative unit pieces on how Iran-contra was very, very wicked; nobody needs another Bill Moyers show; nobody needs a conservative counter to Bill Moyers's show. Our children are being raised in a culture of argument. They can get left-right-pop-pop-bang anywhere, everywhere.
PBS exists to do what the commercial networks should and won't. And just one of those things is bringing to Americans who have not and probably will not be exposed to it the great treasury of American art, from the work of Eugene O'Neill (again, ABC won't be producing "Long Day's Journey" anytime soon), outward to Western art (Shakespeare) and outward to world art.
And science. And history. But real history, meaning something that happened in the past as opposed to the recent present, with which PBS, alas, cannot be trusted.
Art and science and history. That's where PBS's programming should be. And Americans would not resent funding it."
Complete essay here.
Monday, June 20, 2005
1154 More exceptions for faculty women . . . and a few guys
OnCampus, the Ohio State Newspaper for faculty and staff, had this interesting item about the need for even more exceptions for part time female faculty, who can’t meet the expectations that promotion and tenure might involve 60 hour work weeks."In Ohio State’s 2003 faculty work/life survey, one-third of female assistant professors and 20 percent of male assistant professors expressed interest in reducing their work hours to have more time for family and personal needs. While the university has a provision in its faculty rules for part-time tenured and tenure-track appointments, fewer than two dozen of the nearly 3,000 regular, non-clinical faculty currently take advantage of this option and this mismatch between policy and behavior may be hampering not only retention but the recruitment of talented faculty."
"Institutional culture plays a key role in fostering acceptance of those who wish to take advantage of a part-time appointment. The work group found that most chairs, many deans and faculty governance leaders weren’t aware of the provision in Ohio State’s policies. “But the biggest issue is the cultural norm — the expectation that people must work 60-plus hours a week or they don’t get anywhere, and that unit excellence depends on 150 percent effort by each faculty. That is the cultural norm in academia, and that is the norm we have to break if we are going to embrace part-time tenured or tenure-track faculty,” Herbers said." OnCampus June 8, 2005
Call me crazy, but it would seem to me that if you are working part-time AND given more time to complete your research, you have waaaay more time at the library, lab or computer than the woman who shows up at work every day on the usual tenure clock. What am I missing here? Women who work full time and who have teen-agers in the home could teach these new mommies something about time management. I recall interviewing a faculty woman applying for research funds who had eleven children and was home schooling!
One of the ideas is to grant automatic extensions to the tenure clock for each baby (by birth or adoption) instead of making people request it. Come on. These are grown-ups! They need to read the rules and see what applies to their case. The baby rules are nothing compared to facing a panel of peer reviewers to get published. Women already get opportunity to purchase retirement credit for time off work when having or adopting a baby, although my case was a loophole because my tenuring unit (Libraries) changed retirement systems (from PERS to STRS) while I was off work in the 1960s raising my babies, and neither system would let me claim the time their own silly laws said I had coming to me.
Having been there, I have some advice for 18-19 year old women who are thinking of an academic career. Complete your education in a reasonable 6 year time table. Don’t live with your boyfriend before marriage or try to live in Europe or Asia just having fun--it really messes up the time schedule. Marry and have your babies (reversing that REALLY messes it up). Stay home, enjoy them and raise them to school age. Go back to work part-time. Ease into full time. You really do have enough time to do it all as long as you don’t extend your adolescence by 15-20 years with loans from daddy and Uncle Sam, messy relationships and out of wedlock babies. Also, without social security reform, you’ll be working until 75 anyway, so there’s plenty of time.
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