Short and Sweet

[note: this is making the email rounds, and because the Oregonian doesn't seem to archive anything older than 14 days, I can't prove this really happened, but it's still cool!]

FROM THE SUNDAY OREGONIAN'S "SHORT & SWEET" COLUMN:

"Other than telling us how to live, think, marry, pray, vote, invest,
educate our children and, now, die, I think the Republicans have done a
fine job of getting government out of our personal lives."
--Craig Carter

here's a link to another page that does a nice artistic job with these words

Review: Joan Baez, "Come from the Shadows"

Too pure for this cynical age?
I also think this is a great record, and one of the most emotional experiences I get from listening to a song, I get when listening to "The Partisan." I don't normally have heroic fantasies about becoming a Freedom Fighter, but for some reason, the combination of Leonard Cohen's words, the driving beat and the descending note riff, and Joan's voice just moves me to goosebumps, and incipient tears by the time she get to the last verse. Pick this one up if you like Joan. For the cynics among you, it's probably too late.

This album is no longer in print, but can be had in some boxed sets, and songs are available from iTunes.
Complete album info from Baez' web site

Making Content Accessible, by any means necessary

[note to readers who aren't enrolled in the teaching credential program I've been in since September: I thought I'd preserve some of my writings here, if I felt it had any meaning beyond the mind-numbing study of pedagogy. So, about all you should need translated is that a TPE is a "Teacher Performance Expectation," of which there are 13! AAVE is short for African American Vernacular English, or by its less popular name, ebonics. If you think this is worth reading, let me know, and I'll see if I have anything else worthwhile.]

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By Any Means Necessary

TPE 4 is too wordy to repeat in full here, but the essence is the title: Making Content Accessible. There has been a recent spate of commercials on TV lately for a high-end car that uses a button to start, instead of using a key. The gist of each commercial is that this starter button is hidden and is slowly revealed, in a surrealistic setting. It might be underwater, it might be on a mountaintop, but the goal is to find the button, no matter how far one must go to reach the goal. Once the button is pushed, it just devolves into a routine, forgettable car commercial. The quest for the button is all that remains, at least in my mind.

The button we’re talking about here is the connection between teacher and student. It’s not going to be necessarily something that a teacher parrots out of a manual, and it may lie hidden, but we have to keep searching for it. Because every teacher has a different personality, a different culture, and sometimes different language backgrounds, the connection to the students, who are just as different and unique, will often be an individual one.

When I took my CSET tests, the main test was for Chemistry, but I also passed the general science CSET, which allows me to teach 9th grade integrated science, a course that is being phased out. I figured that most of what I’d be experiencing would be in the chemistry classroom, not in the 9th grade science class, which is somewhat of an afterthought in my teaching goals. But, as the songwriter Robert Hunter once said:

“Once in a while, you get shown the light,
In the strangest of places if you look at it right.”

As it turns out, my experiences this semester that reflect on TPE 4 have come more often in that 9th grade science class than in the chemistry classes I’ve been observing. The chemistry classes are all pretty much the same, the teacher lectures, works problems out on the board, and I’ve not been very involved, unless it’s a lab where I walk around and try to help the students.

But over in the 9th grade science class, during the last period of the day, I have found myself much more involved, and much more challenged. The class is the only one this teacher has, in addition to his other biology classes. Most of the time it feels like some sort of stepchild. Students are often working on a “dry lab” which is nothing more than a worksheet. There is very little student prep, and sometimes the worksheet is copied from a book the students don’t even use. There is very little ‘observation’ going on, so I just help the kids try and figure it out.

The corner I usually sit in is easily classified as a ‘loser corner.’ Most of the kids just tune out, and do nothing, often wearing headphones to listen to music, as the teacher rarely seems to notice these things. I have tried to make connections with the kids, on different levels, and it would be silly to think I’m always successful. A student named Jay, who is rarely even in class, has been far beyond my attempts so far in establishing a rapport. One of the kids has an iPod like mine, so we talk about that once in a while. I was trying to explain the term ‘epicenter’ to them, and used the analogy that ‘San Francisco is the epicenter of cool,’ which they didn’t seem to get, until one of them half-jokingly said, “you mean, like San Francisco is the epicenter of gay people?” While he finally got the point of what an epicenter was, the conversation couldn’t stop there, as I felt it important to try and disabuse him of this idea that gays only lived in San Francisco.

One of the kids said he’d heard that if you go to prison, you turn gay. Another kid, who usually spends most of his time doodling, said no, that his dad was in prison, and that wasn’t true. I was impressed that he felt he could share this with me. We continued on with the worksheet, and I was able to help them see what they needed to do.

This is only a taste of what I will face as a teacher, and there will always be some sort of bridge I will need to cross to make the content accessible, and maybe with a little trust, the students will walk a little in my direction across that bridge as well.

I think anyone that knows me knows I don’t like to say too many nice things to people, lest they think I’m trying to impress them, but there is something Dr. Cooks said early in the semester that has stuck with me. The class was discussing ebonics, and the whole controversy, and while I don’t think I saw eye to eye with Dr. Cooks on every point, this is a pretty close approximation of what he said:

“Am I saying that you need to learn ebonics to teach? No, but if you find yourself in a classroom in Oakland, and most of the students come from homes where the primary discourse is AAVE, then maybe you ought to become more familiar with AAVE yourself. You’ve got to do whatever you can to help your students.”

This was something I could relate to. The idea wasn’t to just parrot some politically correct designer of curriculum, but to be aware of whatever environment I was in, and use whatever tools I could to reach the students, to make the content more accessible.

On a recent community visit to the Mission District, we visited a community organization called Mission Dignity. They help youth in the community, regardless of whether or not they have documented status. For example, they help a gang member with his schoolwork, and this gang member leaves his schoolbooks at the center, so he doesn’t get in trouble with the gang. The center coordinator, Emilio, gave us a little tour of the facility after he had spent some time talking to us, and proudly took us to the famous poster of Malcolm X, with the words “By any means necessary” boldly printed. I remember when Malcolm X was around, and how in the minds of most white people, those words seemed like threats of violence. But here, the context was love, and a desire to help youth reach their goals, in any possible way.

We all need to make the content accessible to our students “By any means necessary,” and do whatever we can to help our students.

Review: We Five, "You Were on My Mind/Make Someone Happy"

Great Music, Lousy CD transfer

I was so excited to receive this CD, mainly for the first album, which I used to own on vinyl, but also to hear their versions of Get Together and High Flyin' Bird, songs I'm somewhat a 'collector' of. I'm not criticising the original studio recording, but I've heard plenty of archival music that's been cleaned up, and brought back to life in a quality manner. This thing just sounds like the publisher was out to make a buck, and spend as little money as possible making it sound better. The hiss is instantly noticeable, and something unnecessary in today's world of digital filters and so on. Having said that, I'm not sure what to tell people who really want to have this. There's still lots of great music, you just need to get used to hiss and crappy sound. Be forewarned I guess about anything this label puts out.

Amazon Link

It's All Too Complicated Now

"Home is where one starts from. As we grow older
the world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated
Of dead and living." - T. S. Eliot, from "East Coker"

The Iraqi election is kind of a watershed moment, no matter what goes down in the future. A friend of mine wrote to me suggesting I blog about the election, since he felt little was being said about the people killed that day. George W. Bush is no doubt proud that as many people voted as it seems they did. This would make many people hope for the results of the election to somehow turn sour, and repudiate Bush's pushes. It's kind of the old 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend' mindset. Never mind that the enemy of your enemy might just still be your enemy, and simply wants something out of the deal for him, the hell with you.

Lost of course is the fact that our President lied to us in order to do a first strike on a crippled country. Sure, I have no doubt that Saddam Hussein wouldn't hesitate to stick it to us if he had a chance, but we were up his butt so far, he never had a chance. The other "Axes of Evil," Iran and North Korea, are much more of a threat, but they are also not pushovers in a military sense. So, when we run out of Grenada's and Panama's and Iraq's to liberate, who's next?

I honestly wish the Iraqi people the best, and hope they find what they're looking for, and that we can bring our troops home as soon as possible. It's starting to look like the Shiites are winning the tally, and fears of another Iran, duly elected 'democratically,' are starting to keep people in Washington DC awake at night. Hoping that Iraq crashes and burns, just to stick it to George W. Bush is not something I'm going to do, as much as I want to see that little monkey squirm. George will trip over his own shoelaces eventually.

Zabriskie Point Meditation

I was asked to write a "Wilderness Meditation" for my church's Lenten booklet. Even though I was not keen to do it, I was goaded on by saying "You do your blog all the time, 150 words should be no problem!" So, what the heck, I did it. So, as a change of pace from writing about George W. You-Know-Who, here's a short meditation:

Standing on the observation area of Zabriskie Point in Death Valley, one can see God’s rhythms played out across the desert. Every hill and valley makes sense, there’s not a lot of vegetation to get in the way of seeing the pattern. The hills flow from gold to brown to red, almost as if they are moving. I feel like a grain of sand on the beach.

Like a grain of sand, but not necessarily in the insignificant sense.
Like a grain of sand in the ‘cog in the universe’ sense.
Like a grain of sand in the ‘oneness with God’ sense.
Like the lines from an old Byrds song:

“And I opened my heart to the whole universe
And I found it was loving”

Listen for the still small voice

“There once was a note, pure and easy
Playing so free like a breath rippling by”

Go with God

The Pledge of Allegiance

An updated version of the Pledge of Allegiance

Will the Real 'Fake News' Please Stand Up?

You can see by the volume of my output here, that it's been harder to write lately. I've noticed a lot of progressives have been dealing with a certain level of depression since the election. Is this because progressives are just crybabies? I don't think so. I think the problem has to do with the odd sensation of getting disconnected from reality. Who would imagine that the guy who didn't finish out his Air National Guard duty, lied about WMD's in taking us to war, and clearly lost all three presidential debates would be the one winning the election? I mean, I could have strung out the comma-separated examples of incompetence in the last sentence until the cows came home, but I hope you get the point. It's hard to accept the outcome, when facts seemed so clear.

When I was in 9th Grade, around 1965, I read George Orwell's 1984. Even that young, I felt like I understood the story in symbolic terms, and didn't think it was meant to take place literally. Now here we are in 2005, and much of it has come to pass, literally. The whole state of news information/disinformation is positively bizarre right now.

Out of one side of the media's mouth, we hear the story about CBS and how they handled the story of George Bush' missing service in the Air National Guard. It's pretty well known Georgie boy abused the system. Even with a reward, nobody can seem to locate anyone who remembers serving with the future president during the 'missing period.' CBS indeed rushed to judgment, and in a proper world, it certainly merits the gnashing of teeth, etc. But this occurred during the same campaign where the infamous Swift Boat Veterans for Truth smear came out. Not only was the swift boat ad campaign a politically motivated smear from the get-go (whereas even the conservative inquiry into the CBS 'Rathergate' fiasco found no evidence of the so-called liberal bias) but it was quickly blown out of the water as far as the 'truth' was concerned. Nonetheless, the story stayed in the media. For weeks and weeks and weeks...

The recent icing on the cake came when it was revealed that conservative radio personality Armstrong Williams took $240,000 to spread the Education Department's official propaganda about the No Child Left Behind program. This is plainly illegal, but we aren't hearing any apologies from the Administration. This wasn't even the first time the government had paid for phony news stories.

Which brings us to the topic of 'fake news.'

One of my favorite TV shows is "The Daily Show" hosted by Jon Stewart. Ostensibly a comedy show, it has become a major force in political news. While the 'reporters' make no pretenses about faking their location (Baghdad, Washington, etc.) much of the news that's delivered is quite real, and the comedy comes in the form of comic irony. George Bush is presented in all his stumbling glory, and the comedy stems from the the feeling that this is all just a bad dream. Things can't really be that bad! Our leaders can't really be that stupid! They are self-labeled a 'fake news' show, and the true irony (I'm using that word too many times, but you should start to see why this is all making me pretty dizzy!) is that this show is often closer to the truth than what you see on the number one cable news outlet, Fox News. Fox News, which spews slanted coverage and ideological propaganda non-stop, is 'Fair and Balanced,' while the Daily Show, which has had many world class special guests and covered what the 'real' news show are afraid to cover, is called 'fake news.'

But wait folks, it gets weirder.

Last year, the folks at CNN's 'Crossfire' thought it would be a good idea to have Jon Stewart as a guest, the only guest. Usually there's more than one guest, but it was a Friday, and it all looked so easy, the funny guy (Stewart) would provide the entertainment, and we could all just slide into the weekend. But no, that's not what Stewart had in mind. In the video, which has become one of the most popular archived video clips on the net ever, Stewart ripped into his hosts. Jon told the talking heads "Stop, stop, stop, stop hurting America." This was totally unscripted, and the regular guys on Crossfire were totally caught off guard. At one point, Tucker Carlson (who wears a bow tie as an affectation) says to Stewart "Wait. I thought you were going to be funny. Come on. Be funny."

Stewart replies: "No. No. I'm not going to be your monkey."

Before it was over, Jon called Tucker a dick, and the rest is history. For those of you who haven't already seen the video, or read the transcript, you must check it out (click here).

But, once again, the story doesn't stop there. Only just recently, CNN fired Tucker Carlson (don't worry about him, he'll probably turn up at MSNBC) and decided to shelve the whole Crossfire show for at least the time being. More than one TV critic proceeded to write about the whole affair, tongue firmly in cheek again.

So, check this out. 'Fake' news, 'Fair and Balanced' news, moral outrage over flawed journalism of a true story, and endless reportage on a story everyone knows to be false! War is Peace, Hate is Love. Is your head spinning too?

Got Rapture?

Very few people actually read my rants, just a few friends I notify now and then, so I guess I mainly write for me. Sometimes I write for people like me who were totally unaware of really big things, until the elephant comes into view. Then, wow, how come I didn't know before?

I was recently sent a link to an excellent speech by Bill Moyers, on receiving Harvard Med's Global Environment Citizen Award. It was an excellent speech, and I think most of you know Bill Moyers is truly one of the good guys in the world of TV journalism. His series with Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth, is one of the best things ever seen, and has a deep and lasting effect on me.

One of the most interesting observations Bill makes is that many of the people who don't care about the environment are quite aware they are harming it, but since they are going to be called soon to the Rapture, it doesn't really matter. I had never heard of the Rapture Index before, but yes, it's real. Actually, it seems like one of those fake news sites, where someone is pretending to be really serious about a topic, but the tongue is always firmly in cheek. Not so this time. There are some pretty funny pages about guessing who the antichrist is, but it's funny to me, not sure how funny it is to the 'true believers.' The New Covenant Christian Ministries has a page, full of flow charts and diagrams showing different scenarios about when the true believers will fly into the air, the unworthy going to hell, the length of the 'tribulation, ' and the final scene, the "New Heavens and New Earth."

Apparently, a huge number of Americans believe in some form of Rapture dogma, and this alone I found quite disconcerting. The worldwide scourge of fundamentalism is clearly not limited to Islam. In America, we have a large movement, some very close to the seat of power in the White House, who are looking forward to the end of the world.

Just the other day, at the Christmas Pageant at our church, someone read these lines from Isaiah:

"Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain: And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the Lord has spoken it."

Isaiah 40:4, 5

Now, I don't normally quote the Bible, I'm pretty Bible-illiterate, but the reason I bring this up relates to the concept of taking the Bible as literal truth. Does anyone really believe that the valleys and the mountains will end up at the same elevation? Is the earth destined to be smooth as a marble? Of course not. This is clearly allegorical prose. What a drab world we would live in, if there was no allegory, no allusions, only literal statements of verifiable fact. Then why do people try to force literal sense out of one of the most clearly hallucinatory (I don't mean that in a bad way!) books of the Bible, Revelations?

So, all I'm trying to say here is that there are lots of people walking around today who believe in the literal version of the Rapture, as told to them by others of course, and you might be surprised to find out who these people are. You might even be related to them.

Bah Humbug!

Jesus as Underdog?

Give Me a Break! There is a phony movement going on, being played up at Fox News, which seems to be gaining traction, even among people who wouldn't ordinarily buy the swill they sell.

Stories are floating around about how people are saying "Happy Holidays" more now than "Merry Christmas." I'm hearing about a lack of Christmas music at shopping malls. It sounds eerily familiar, kind of like what I seem to hear every Halloween.

Every Halloween, I hear stories about poisoned candy, the apochryphal "razorblades in apples" and so on. The intent of all these stories is to paint a picture of the decay of modern civilization, and how unsafe things are compared to the "good old days." What a load. I have been hearing about how bad Halloween is since I was a little kid. I don't think things are any worse now than they were in the 1950's; they're probably safer. We're all just a lot more terrified, and scared to death these days. It helps keep us under control.

The Christian Right is emboldened by the fact that many of Bush's cronies are fundamentalists, and they have given themselves credit for winning an election that I'm not even sure was counted fairly. From what I hear, it seems like they are no more active than before, but they have an increasingly powerful propaganda machine with Fox News. Bill O'Reilly has been harping about how Christianity is under attack, giving it sort of an underdog status.

Jesus is no underdog in America. If anything, there have been more calls lately to turn away from a pluralistic society, where the minority is protected from the tyranny of the majority, and turn America into some sort of theocratic Christian state.

Just like Halloween, this is so bogus. I can't recall a time when "Season's Greetings" and "Happy Holidays" haven't been on many of the Christmas cards I've received. What the hell is wrong with not wanting to send a "Merry Christmas" card, especially one of those with heavily religious overtones and graphics, to a friend who you didn't know was Jewish? To tell you the truth, I think there's too much religion in Christmas these days!

One of the watershed moments I remember is when an old friend who had gone 'fundy' sent us a Christmas card, full of all sorts of religious stuff, and some text about stopping the murder of innocent fetuses by abortion. Just what I wanted to read during the holidays!

This season, a group of right wing Jesus freaks is trying to boycott Macy's over some rumor that employees there have been told to say "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas." In North Carolina, a church recently took out full-page newspaper advertisements urging the faithful to patronize shops that include Merry Christmas in ads and displays. That's right, the holier-than-thou crowd has officially linked shopping to Jesus. This is a proper and pious thing?

Oy!