tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-70528596689606099432024-03-19T04:47:16.168-05:00goatspeakGoatish ramblings.goathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05561013052425473687noreply@blogger.comBlogger462125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7052859668960609943.post-210124935436739592021-10-22T11:29:00.004-05:002021-10-22T12:09:18.354-05:00A SHIPPENSBURG AREA SCHOOL DISTRICT BOARD OF DIRECTORS 2021 ELECTION PRIMER*<div class="separator"><div class="separator" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img alt="SAIS building 019" src="https://www.shipk12.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/SAIS-building-019-300x200.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Shippensburg Area Intermediate School. I like this building.<br /></span></td></tr></tbody></table><p style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: left;"></p><p style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"> <br /></p> </div></div><div class="separator">The SASD Board of Directors is comprised of nine members, each serving a four-year term. <br /><br />The geographical area of the School District is divided into three parts—confusingly also called “districts”—each of which elects three school directors. These districts have been given the rather bland official names “District A,” “District B,” and “District C.”<br /><br />District A is comprised of that area within SASD that is in Cumberland County, except the Borough of Shippensburg**. <br /><br />District B is comprised of that area within SASD that is in Franklin County, _including_ the Franklin County portion of the Borough of Shippensburg.<br /><br />District C is comprised of that area within SASD that is in the Cumberland County portion of the Borough of Shippensburg. <br /><br />School directors are elected for four-year terms. However, terms overlaps such that every two years either four or five seats are up for re-election***.<br />On Tuesday, November 2, 2021, registered voters within SASD will elect candidates to fill four seats on the Board.<br /><br />In District A, voters will fill one seat. Michael Lyman, the incumbent, secured the Democratic nomination in the primary earlier this year. Steph Eberly, running as a Republican, is the challenger.<br /><br />In District B, one seat is open. The seat that is presently occupied by Erica Burg has no official ballot candidate. Erica, the incumbent, has chosen not to run again. As no candidate filed a petition to be on the ballot, the seat will be filled by the write-in candidate that receives the most write-in votes IF that candidate secures at least 10 votes. If no write-in candidate wins the election, the board will solicit letters of interest for the seat and appoint someone from those that do so. That person would then serve a two-year term.<br /><br />In District C, voters will fill two seats. Dwyane Burt and Nathan Goates, the incumbents, each secured both the Democratic and Republic nominations (in Pennsylvania, a candidate can cross-file) and are running unopposed.<br /><br />On Thursday, October 28, at 7:00 pm, the Shippensburg Area Senior High School Student Activism Club is hosting a candidate forum. The SASHS Student Activism Club, “a non-partisan student group with a mission to empower students to make meaningful change in their communities,” has invited all SASD school director candidates on the official ballots of Cumberland and Franklin Counties to participate. <br /><br />The forum will be conducted via Zoom and live-streamed to the public. Each candidate will be asked several student questions as well as some from the broader community.<br /><br />Details on how to view the forum and submit questions are forthcoming.<p></p><p style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><br /><br />-----<br /><br />*Based on my understanding. If you believe I’m mistaken in some detail, please let me know. Likewise, if you’ve questions, please ask.<br /><br />**How do you know if you live in the Borough? If there are sidewalks in front of your house you most likely live in the Borough. Also, if you google “shippensburg,” google maps will draw a boundary line.<br /><br />***When a seat is vacated due to resignation, the board appoints a replacement, but that seat comes up for election in the next two-year election cycle, regardless of how much time was left in the term by the candidate who resigned. So, it’s possible that, in some elections, more than five seats may be up for election.<br /><br /></p></div><div class="separator"></div>goathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05561013052425473687noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7052859668960609943.post-25992446996535900572021-05-17T10:00:00.000-05:002021-05-17T10:00:22.247-05:00tiny book reviews.2021.n9 -- joseph anton by salman rushdie<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkPeqpUcIDIVqLTsHvWkG-ArpdkPp36A1_ULCJzV2zajdqHzuP7zedb6slr9m0Z0dmZQX0vFQuLQSoCED7YGoujKG03qkXEMUs6wZkOOupmMTake0mtowthOPLuGArEY1fLwJVSSykDUdk/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="324" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkPeqpUcIDIVqLTsHvWkG-ArpdkPp36A1_ULCJzV2zajdqHzuP7zedb6slr9m0Z0dmZQX0vFQuLQSoCED7YGoujKG03qkXEMUs6wZkOOupmMTake0mtowthOPLuGArEY1fLwJVSSykDUdk/" width="156" /></a></div><br />Spurred in part by my enduring curiosity about the man, but maybe mostly because the title was available in audio from my library, I jumped again into the ocean of Salman Rushdie. <p></p><p>I guess the water was ok, because I've since secured copies of "Midnight's Children" and "The Satanic Versus" and they're on my summer reading list.</p><p>Anyway, Salman Rushie... </p><p>I watched the news a lot as a teenager. Partly because it's what was on TV in the late afternoon after school, but mostly--I like to think--because I really enjoyed it. I remember when I came to the realization that national news was interesting and local news seemed contrived and gimmicky, and stopped watching the local news. (It's been years since I've been able to stomach either, so, you know, different layers of contrivance, I guess.)</p><p>Anyway, I remember hearing a lot about Salman Rushdie and "The Satanic Versus" when watching the news in high school. The book (which, for those of you don't know, is just a novel) was published in late 1988. In mid-1989, Ayatollah Khomeini, Iran's "Supreme Leader" (a title that suggests a deep lack of appreciation for irony; I can't even say it without using air quotes) issued a fatwa (as I understand it, a sort of religious legal edict) for Rushdie to be killed. Ostensively, he was put off by passages which he believed to demean The Prophet. More probably, he was looking for something to rally the masses and help consolidate power after experiencing some embarrassing political setbacks. The threat on Rushdie's life was considered viable and serious by the government of the UK (Rushdie was a British citizen), and Rushdie was then assigned protective detail and essentially went into hiding. For nine years.</p><p>"Joseph Anton" is the name Rushdie chose for himself while in hiding. It is also the name he gave to the memoir that he wrote about his life, with most of the emphasis put on the period of his life in hiding.</p><p>There is so much here. So much to think about. So much to talk about. So much to have opinions about. But these are supposed to be tiny book reviews...</p><p>So, I'm going to offer just one line of thought, something I posted on Facebook a couple weeks ago:</p><div class="kvgmc6g5 cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="background-color: #242526; color: #e4e6eb; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">I've been reading Salman Rushdie's memoir "Joseph Anton" and it's left me with two related feelings of near panic-inducing anxiety:</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="background-color: #242526; color: #e4e6eb; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">(1) Holy. Cow. That man's career has been so incredibly prolific, both in the sheer volume of production of meaningful fiction and non-fiction AND in the tremendously admirable political work that he's taken on over the decades under the most excruciating of circumstances that I'm left exhausted by awe. While surely our talents are not comparable, I'm left feeling a deep pit of guilt for all I have NOT accomplished with my comparably paltry ones.</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="background-color: #242526; color: #e4e6eb; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">(2) Reading Rushdie's fiction is difficult for this white-bread American boy as I don't have anything approaching the cultural knowledge to understand, for instance, references to Indian or Islamic history and culture (at, frankly, any level of subtly or nuance). I mean, I don't know what it means to be Indian, and I certainly don't know what it means to be an Islamic Indian. I don't know what that means in the context of Islamic Pakistan and the conflict over Kashmir. Other than some facts and figures and basic geographic and economic information, I don't really know ANYTHING about that world...and that is a very. big. world.</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="background-color: #242526; color: #e4e6eb; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">(I know so little that it feels a bit stupid to try to catalog the extent of my ignorance.) </div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="background-color: #242526; color: #e4e6eb; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Relatedly, a year or so ago I read "One Hundred Years of Solitude," which is by all accounts one of Latin America's greatest pieces of 20th century art, and most of the time was just completely lost. Again, knowing nothing more than the most trivial details of Columbian history and culture, every meaningful analogy, parable, or allegory was just shooting right past me.</div><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">What bothers me about all this is knowing--having it made so plainly and painfully manifest--that there exists this whole wide, deep, textured world of culture, history, and politics that I am so completely divorced from that I can't even read a popular work of literature and have any idea of what it all should mean.</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="background-color: #242526; color: #e4e6eb; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">(When it comes right down to it, I've lived in south-central PA for about 15 years and I _still_ feel like I'm a stranger in a strange land.)</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="background-color: #242526; color: #e4e6eb; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">So, I know that I could never _really_ know what it is to be Kashmirian or Columbian or really any other -ian. Worlds upon worlds exist in all their textured beauty all around me and I simply cannot know or relate or understand. And I might try all the rest of my life and I still wouldn't _really_ be able to scratch the surface of knowing.</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="background-color: #242526; color: #e4e6eb; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Sometimes, this realization fills me with terrifying bouts of anxiety.</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="background-color: #242526; color: #e4e6eb; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">Like, I can feel it right now. A knot. Right there. In the pit of my stomach.</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="background-color: #242526; color: #e4e6eb; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">In elementary school, I bought a poster with a picture of a sloth hanging from a tree branch and one of those sort of parody motivational quotes:</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="background-color: #242526; color: #e4e6eb; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">"Thinking of all I didn't do yesterday, haven't done today, and won't do tomorrow...completely exhausts me."</div></div><div class="o9v6fnle cxmmr5t8 oygrvhab hcukyx3x c1et5uql ii04i59q" style="background-color: #242526; color: #e4e6eb; font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, system-ui, ".SFNSText-Regular", sans-serif; font-size: 15px; margin: 0.5em 0px 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><div dir="auto" style="font-family: inherit;">At the time I thought it was funny and clever. Now, like prophecy, the passage haunts me.</div></div><p>I'm very glad to have read this book. In a sentence, I believe it has helped me become a better global citizen. In a second sentence, the book has left me with more questions than answers--more realizations of things I don't know than confidence in what I do know. By both counts--or by having achieving these ends--the book is a <i>good</i> book.</p><p>4 of 5 stars.</p>goathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05561013052425473687noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7052859668960609943.post-74362271881391971522021-04-26T08:07:00.000-05:002021-04-26T08:07:07.053-05:00tiny book reviews.2021.n8 -- the vanishing half by brit bennett<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHNRZL9CgLSfLSKH-FfkH5CPm1_HUkEl1Etzvdy0xGccORVwOCk8VZD11_UVd8VEQUQczWVutPdYO3WahhDxfdo0ksb3BATvT0fjEdX0aqzSXKN_27eWDpI6aQ9__ChllkXaa3DNe7V2jl/s346/the+vanishing+half.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="346" data-original-width="229" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHNRZL9CgLSfLSKH-FfkH5CPm1_HUkEl1Etzvdy0xGccORVwOCk8VZD11_UVd8VEQUQczWVutPdYO3WahhDxfdo0ksb3BATvT0fjEdX0aqzSXKN_27eWDpI6aQ9__ChllkXaa3DNe7V2jl/s320/the+vanishing+half.jpg" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p>Of the New York Times list of five best works of fiction in 2020, this is the third I've reviewed. </p><p>It's a popular book; it took some time for it to become available at my library.</p><p>I liked this book. It's sort of about being the thing you choose to be rather than the thing everyone around you would have you be, and about the hard consequences of those choices. But it is this on a profoundly deep level, centered around those elements of identity that are probably the most core--race, gender, sexuality, daughter, sister--and around which we experience the heaviest cultural inertia. It's about passing. <br /></p><p>I liked the premise. I liked the characters. I liked how the story developed. </p><p>I'm not sure I liked how the book ended. </p><p>There seemed to be more in the story than what we got. Or there <i>could </i>have been more. I guess I felt, from the beginning, that I was going to be led through a John Irving-type saga of a narrative, only to have the back 3/4 of the story condensed into a few dozen pages. Like good food at a good restaurant that, in the end, doesn't really really fill you up. Characters that I wanted to know more about, that I wanted to see go on adventures to make their mark on the world (or have the world leave their mark on them), just sort of...didn't do that.</p><p>Tasty. Meaningful. Unsatisfying (which is to say, in my opinion, bordering on incomplete).</p><p>4 of 5 stars.<br /></p>goathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05561013052425473687noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7052859668960609943.post-53072744888181723412021-04-26T07:42:00.001-05:002021-04-26T07:42:13.051-05:00tiny book reviews.2021.n7 -- a spool of blue thread by anne tyler<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiU-apiYU_q3a57bUcbY3WKMgdH2uWsD5oRlN0EWphTO23Wmc2FXUXlOf7AIHDaPRTTGJF7-Xc6nWSP1XmvIBPBwX2SzQYnYHtMm9En8E891U3BtSCrahNQj3aHa5eFp9Q2Juv4k7IhD4Zs/s293/a+spool+of+blue+thread.webp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="293" data-original-width="191" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiU-apiYU_q3a57bUcbY3WKMgdH2uWsD5oRlN0EWphTO23Wmc2FXUXlOf7AIHDaPRTTGJF7-Xc6nWSP1XmvIBPBwX2SzQYnYHtMm9En8E891U3BtSCrahNQj3aHa5eFp9Q2Juv4k7IhD4Zs/s0/a+spool+of+blue+thread.webp" /></a></div> <p></p><p>Valerie's been trying to get me to read Anne Tyler for ages. I'm not sure why I haven't. <br /><br />I needed something to read. I asked Valerie for an Anne Tyler book. This is what she gave me.<br /><br />I don't really know what this book is about--a house, a family, a woman, a man, a child, ambition, class, migration, belonging... It's sort of about all of those things and not really any of those things. I'm not sure it's really <i>about</i> anything. But it's a lovely story. Anne Tyler--if this one book is anything to go by--is a stupendous storyteller. </p><p>It's a light book. It's fun. There are laugh-out-loud moments. </p><p>And, I guess, there are bits that one might consider moments of profundity--about the inevitable indignity of growing old, I think. About life cycles. But this is a light book. Which is to say not heavy. Tyler lays her profundity down like goose feathers rather than a lead blanket. <br /><br />4 of 5 stars.<br /></p>goathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05561013052425473687noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7052859668960609943.post-5827408738429762512021-04-05T07:59:00.003-05:002021-04-26T07:41:36.029-05:00tiny book reviews.2021.n6 -- undaunted by john brennan<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2r5w-T2z2mhUerWo99EdbK-wUGSVtK69OM9N9AjSQtyc_Q8DJxA-d1ZWy2EZYWWunG3snvgMnfwsZyoUHWMy7Pw-mQviPJ6O-5NuQn4d5EppzqvgbE5dxjqTWPdKj_iP6CuoXPy2IDhk8/s499/image_2021-04-05_085758.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="329" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2r5w-T2z2mhUerWo99EdbK-wUGSVtK69OM9N9AjSQtyc_Q8DJxA-d1ZWy2EZYWWunG3snvgMnfwsZyoUHWMy7Pw-mQviPJ6O-5NuQn4d5EppzqvgbE5dxjqTWPdKj_iP6CuoXPy2IDhk8/s320/image_2021-04-05_085758.png" /></a></div><br /><p>If you don't know, John Brennan was CIA Director during Obama's second term. He also worked in the White House during Obama's first term as Assistant to the President for Homeland Security. All of that after a full 25-year career with the CIA. </p><p>This tiny book review comes in the form of four brief takeaways.</p><p>(1) The CIA is interesting, and reading about the experiences of a career CIA man was interesting. John Brennan's career in particular is interesting, but I imagine the memoir of any "company man" (or woman) would be similarly interesting.</p><p>(2) I enjoyed the insights Brennan's memoir provided regarding a host of geopolitical conflicts. He certainly prioritizes contemporary issues over historical ones, but, as it is a memoir, his career provides some historical context. Terrorism. Russia. Cyber security. China. North Korea. Middle East conflicts of many flavors. </p><p>I love this stuff. More than once in reading the memoir I felt the familiar pangs of regret that I did not pursue a career with the State Department or similar.</p><p>(3) The country simply did not know how good it had it with President Barak Obama. The more I learn of Obama's presidency, the more I'm struck by the sense that he is, in every way, <i>exactly</i> the sort of person we should want as the country's chief executive. Smart. Thoughtful. Hard-working. Kind. Even ("no drama Obama"). Moral. Empathetic.</p><p>It's absolutely fine to hold differences of opinion regarding policy priorities and a vision for the country, but the personal attacks and questioning of his intentions during and after his presidency is just so dumb. He is a better person and was a better president than our country deserves.</p><p>(4) On the other hand, it might not be possible to find a person less qualified for the position than his successor, Donald Trump. I'm not sure there's much point to writing more. I guess I'll just say that Brennan's interactions with Trump once again highlight how pathetically ill-prepared and ill-suited he and his circle were for the presidency. </p><p>I'm so glad that chapter has closed.</p><p>4 of 5 stars. <br /></p>goathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05561013052425473687noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7052859668960609943.post-53710892363145170552021-03-26T06:29:00.000-05:002021-03-26T06:29:16.247-05:00tiny book reviews.2021.n5 -- less by andrew sean greer<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrWL9j8piDPXKZyxmvhF-pqTWri-SmzblgEPqP6nnZIWxkWXcQw0tJv8_utXxaS_DKluyeKk4gx1N35LW3UsmQh6FANXNp-3nrOOiPQ91m4H6lOfixf3qWrayFyYDcL40D6qwYeNRKkagK/s500/less.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="333" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrWL9j8piDPXKZyxmvhF-pqTWri-SmzblgEPqP6nnZIWxkWXcQw0tJv8_utXxaS_DKluyeKk4gx1N35LW3UsmQh6FANXNp-3nrOOiPQ91m4H6lOfixf3qWrayFyYDcL40D6qwYeNRKkagK/s320/less.jpg" /></a></div><p></p><p>I think I've been awed by every Pulitzer Prize winning book I've ever read. Except this one. </p><p>There are books that at first don't impress, books that you kind of have to trudge through, do the work, put in the investment, only for everything to unfold wonderfully toward the end, making every page worth it. This is one such book, only the payoff wasn't <i>quite</i> worth the effort.</p><p>That's not to say that this was a hard book to read, because it wasn't. It went down easy, like a Fresca. But, also like a Fresca, I just didn't finish it feeling like there was much nourishment there, just a fleeting, momentary reprieve from thirst--it was good, I wanted more, but there was no more to be had. </p><p>It just seemed sort of...empty. </p><p>3 of 5 stars.<br /></p>goathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05561013052425473687noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7052859668960609943.post-68092445204092503132021-03-25T07:50:00.002-05:002021-03-25T07:50:46.534-05:00tiny book reviews.2021.n4 -- uncanny valley by anna wiener<p style="text-align: left;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjR0B9A9XN43kifOwwFUrTpgA0j0lLWEfCSYFZSeTWHx1Alc3HEOX0qXBngjtzsK9OrK6NAsVL0KKGzMI3WGPNkikfLO6FT0wGXouuh3fthd1lr_MWwncCYuodO1TpbiB_rfvhs7jwlTzMO/s499/uncanny+valley.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="326" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjR0B9A9XN43kifOwwFUrTpgA0j0lLWEfCSYFZSeTWHx1Alc3HEOX0qXBngjtzsK9OrK6NAsVL0KKGzMI3WGPNkikfLO6FT0wGXouuh3fthd1lr_MWwncCYuodO1TpbiB_rfvhs7jwlTzMO/s320/uncanny+valley.jpg" /></a></div><br /> In the spring of 2001, I was finishing a two-year, full-time MBA at the University of Utah, interviewing for jobs, and applying to doctoral programs--which is to say that I was managing my chronic indecision regarding big, life-defining decisions by attempting to keep as many doors open as possible for as long as possible. Analysis paralysis masked with the respectability of productivity.<p></p><p style="text-align: left;">I never really liked choose-your-own-adventure books. I'd build up too
much anxiety over the choices not made, running out of fingers
attempting to follow <i>all</i> of the paths forward. It felt a bit like that.<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;">One of the jobs I was interviewing for was with Accenture. They were hiring for their offices in San Francisco (mostly private-sector clients and lots of travel) and Sacramento (mostly public-sector clients and less travel). Eventually, I was offered a job in the Sacramento office. I also, eventually, turned it down, taking, it seemed to me at the time, the more noble road by delaying employment and continuing with school.<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;">Since then (and it only now occurs to me that I'm writing this almost exactly 20 years later), I've often entertained flights of fancy imagining an alternative universe where I take that job.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><i>Uncanny Valley</i> is fuel to those flights.</p><p style="text-align: left;">The Silicon Valley that Anna Wiener writes about is half a generation removed from what I might have found, had I moved to California, completed a stint at Accenture, and then (as seems probable) moved on to some tech-oriented company in northern California...somewhere. So I looked for myself in her story, a decade, or a decade and a half into my career. Well, I looked not so much for <i>my</i>self as for the alternate universe self had I made a different decision in 2001. </p><p style="text-align: left;">So, who <i>would</i> have I been? </p><p style="text-align: left;">I imagine myself as one of those anonymous mid-career tech guys with a resume of diverse experience (all good jobs, but nothing amazing) that is hired by startup firms in a hire-anyone-that-breathes mode, and given a mid-management supervisory role with the assumption that my age and the diversity of my experience qualify me for that role. Once hired, I would maneuver and jockey for options and buyout deals that, should our company win the IPO or acquisition lottery, I'd make out well enough to retire away from "real" work or (more likely) survive long enough to get another, similar job with another, similar company.</p><p style="text-align: left;">But who would I <i>be</i>? </p><p style="text-align: left;">Would I be kind? Would I ride bikes? Would I have embraced the sometimes ugly, hyper-masculine, bro-ethic culture of tech? Would I believe in the products of the companies I worked for? Would I believe in the companies? Would I feel like the tech innovations I worked on inched the world toward something more just and egalitarian? Or would I wallow in self-loathing and contempt for being part of a machine that existed only for itself--growing, innovating, multiplying, and perpetuating itself for no other reason than the creation of (or the illusion of the creation of) wealth? Would I care about such things?<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;">Well, that's where <i>Uncanny Valley </i>took me.</p><p style="text-align: left;">Also, a lot of thinking about how much the house my parents bought in Palo Alto around 1967 would be worth now had they kept it. Or, if they hadn't been scared off by the cosmopolitan pulse of progress and retreated to Colorado a year later as they did. </p><p style="text-align: left;">The decisions around which lives pivot... </p><p style="text-align: left;">As I said, I never really liked choose-your-own-adventure books. Too much anxiety.<br /></p><p style="text-align: left;">3.5 of 5 stars.<br /></p>goathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05561013052425473687noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7052859668960609943.post-38448742551426091572021-03-04T22:40:00.000-05:002021-03-04T22:40:10.953-05:00tiny book reviews.2021.n3 -- deacon king kong by james mcbride<p style="text-align: center;"><img alt="Review: 'Deacon King Kong,' By James McBride : NPR" class="n3VNCb" data-noaft="1" jsaction="load:XAeZkd;" jsname="HiaYvf" src="https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2020/02/26/deaconkingkong_esn-14a489c6acbe8e4f24d910ec4c279eafd3dcb254.jpg" style="height: 395.25px; margin: 0px; width: 527px;" /></p><p style="text-align: left;">The second work of fiction on the NYTimes list of 2020's top ten that I took on, Deacon King Kong was a delightfully fun read.</p><p style="text-align: left;">It wasn't what I thought it would be. It wasn't what I thought it would be a chapter in, and it wasn't what I thought it would be halfway through. It just sort of got more and more fun the further I read. </p><p style="text-align: left;">And now I find myself thinking of what more to say about the book and I'm just not sure... Partly because I wouldn't want to give it away--I think the book will be all the more fun a read for someone who doesn't have any idea what's coming. Partly because the deeper stuff, the sort of deep stuff that any meaningful work of fiction has to offer about some shady corner of the human experience, is transmitted in the best way fiction can do it, accidentally--that is to say that the book covers some fairly heavy territory, but you maybe don't realize you've been there until you stop to reflect. There's no bashing us over the head with thick morality tales or long-winded speeches in this one. So, if I were to go on now, giving label and definition to that deeper stuff, it seems I'd be doing the fine art of the story a disservice. </p><p style="text-align: left;">Anyway, if you like fiction, and you like fun, give this one a read. Strongly recommend.</p><p style="text-align: left;">4.5 of 5 stars.</p>goathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05561013052425473687noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7052859668960609943.post-10587644823192495142021-03-02T22:46:00.002-05:002021-03-02T22:56:53.302-05:00tiny book reviews (2021): two years eight months and twenty-eight nights, by salman rushdie<p style="text-align: center;"> <img alt="Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights (Rushdie novel).png" class="mw-mmv-final-image png mw-mmv-dialog-is-open" crossorigin="anonymous" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/71/Two_Years_Eight_Months_and_Twenty-Eight_Nights_%28Rushdie_novel%29.png" /></p><p>Sometimes you're in the middle of a book and it's just so good that you don't really want to pick it up again because you know the more you read the less of it you'll have. </p><p>Sometimes you're in the middle of a book and it's just good enough that you can't wait to get done doing whatever you're doing that's keeping you from the book so you can get back to it.</p><p>Sometimes you're in the middle of a book and it's interesting enough, but maybe not quite the right thing for right now so you pick something else up instead. You know you'll finish it, just not right now.</p><p>And sometimes you're in the middle of the book and you hate it. And you hate that you hate it, but you still hate it. And you're fully committed to finishing the book, because that's who you are--<i>you're a person who finishes books</i>--but holy. cow. this. book. is. just. so. bad.</p><p>For me, Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights was that book. </p><p>...</p><p>Honestly, I'm sure <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salman_Rushdie" target="_blank">Salman Rushdie</a> has written good stuff. He's a super well-respected author. One doesn't just _become_ that for nothing. But this particular book, for this particular reader, had nothing.</p><p>I read this book because Rushdie got a lot of mentions in <a href="https://goates.blogspot.com/2021/03/tiny-book-reviews-2001-homeland-elegies.html" target="_blank">Homeland Elegies</a>. And I've never read any Rushdie. And I'm old enough to remember the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Satanic_Verses_controversy" target="_blank">controversy</a> over The Satanic Verses (though I didn't really know any more about it or him than that). So I figured I'd read some Rushdie.</p><p>Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights was what was available at my library. </p><p>It's fantasy, I guess. Maybe you'd call it magical realism. Or someone might. A bit more magical than real, I think.</p><p>I got the sense that it was a parable of sorts. Or a retelling of some real history through myth. I think that's the point of magical realism. I didn't much care for <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Hundred_Years_of_Solitude" target="_blank">One Hundred Years of Solitude</a> because I didn't understand enough real Columbian social history to get it. I felt the same way reading this, except I didn't even know what continent I was on. </p><p>And so I finished thinking that the book wasn't really written for me. It might be a great book...for a different reader. </p><p>Then again, it may just be a crappy book.</p><p>It'll be a while before I can give Rushdie another try, but I will (probably with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight%27s_Children" target="_blank">Midnight's Children</a>). </p><p>I feel like there's something here I need to know, like a dirt road you see meandering up that one particular draw--you trust there must be something up there and it's probably pretty awesome, but for whatever reason you've just never gone. </p><p>Though, that might be the wrong metaphor--it might be that there's a whole other forest that I know next to nothing about, and that I've got to learn quite a bit more about that particular ecosystem before I can come to appreciate Rushdie trees.</p><p>I don't know. But I'll find out.</p><p>1 of 5 stars.</p>goathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05561013052425473687noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7052859668960609943.post-54988408781690938882021-03-02T21:43:00.002-05:002021-03-02T22:55:37.285-05:00tiny book reviews (2021): homeland elegies, by ayad akhtar<p style="text-align: center;"><img alt="With 'Homeland Elegies,' Pulitzer winner Ayad Akhtar cements himself as one of America's most vital writers | The Seattle Times" class="n3VNCb" data-noaft="1" jsaction="load:XAeZkd;" jsname="HiaYvf" src="https://static.seattletimes.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/09142020_Ayad-Akhtar-Book-Cover_105331-1020x1572.jpg" style="height: 782px; margin: 0px; width: 507.4045801526717px;" /></p><p>At the end of last year, The New York Times published a list of its ten best books of 2020--five non-fiction and five fiction. This was the first of the ten I picked up. </p><p>(Also, I may have actually finished it in 2020, but library records show that it wasn't returned until Jan 2, so I'm counting it for 2021.)</p><p>I <i>really</i> enjoyed this book. </p><p>I'm not sure how much more I want to say about it than that. Still, I'll try.</p><p>It's a novel, but written as a memoir. I don't know enough about Akhtar to distinguish between what is autobiographical and what is not. I'm not sure that matters. What matters is that it <i>reads</i> true, as a memoir, so that you believe that you are reading stories about real people and true events. </p><p>It's also about the relationships between fathers and sons. It's about politics. And it's about "making it."</p><p>It's also about what I would call a uniquely <i>American</i> life, in that the author is almost definitionally American, yet so much of the book is a narrative of the struggle of figuring out what that means, for him, as his identity bumps into his parents', who are immigrants, and his people, to the extent that his genealogy and national background define what "his people" means, and others' notions of an <i>American</i> is or should be.</p><p>Anyway, I loved it. And recommend it strongly. </p><p>5 out of 5 stars.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>goathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05561013052425473687noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7052859668960609943.post-17717050238426010812020-10-14T23:45:00.000-05:002020-10-14T23:45:20.066-05:00on SASD's scuttling the plan to go hybrid<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: verdana;">On Monday, October 12, the Shippensburg Area School District Board of Directors made the difficult decision to reverse plans to transition to hybrid schooling for grades 6-12 on November 10th. Instead, the district will continue to offer an all-online delivery model through the second marking period, with exceptions for some students in special education.<br /><br />I know this news comes as a considerable disappointment to many parents and students. <br /><br />On the other hand, I know a large number are relieved by the decision, as the move to open schools has been viewed with skepticism and apprehension by many others.<br /><br />I’ve received numerous communications from parents and other community members expressing both viewpoints.<br /><br />As for me, I'm heartbroken over not being in school. I want to send my own kid back to school. And, frankly, telling him that he won't be going back--even for two days a week at the beginning of November as we had planned--was really hard. He wants to go back. Still, I believe it was the right decision.<br /><br />While I certainly cannot speak for the entire board, I want to try to explain at least this one board member’s reasoning.<br /><br />First, if we were to transition to a hybrid system in the beginning of November for the upper grades as planned, we would be doing so AGAINST the recommendations of our superintendent, the principals of the middle and high schools, and what appears to be a plurality of our teachers. This is not a small matter. If we were to direct our administrators to move to a hybrid system, I’m confident that they would do it as well as they could. I’m also confident that our teachers would do their very best. However, with a decision of this consequence, to go against the recommendations of the professionals that live and breathe the ramifications of these decisions daily is a heavy ask. <br /><br />It should be noted that this recommendation did not come all-of-a-sudden. Planning for a hybrid-schooling model of some kind began even before the end of the last school year. I’m confident that the administrators, teachers, and staff involved in that planning have turned the matter around every which way. I know they’ve wanted to make it work. And I know they are disappointed they could not find a solution they felt comfortable recommending, as am I.<br /><br />So, why has administration recommended against transitioning to a hybrid system for the upper grades? For a more detailed explanation, I strongly recommend listening to the presentations of the principals of the middle and high schools from Monday’s meeting. You can find a link to the meeting from the district website; click “School Board” —> “Recorded Meetings" (or just click <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bea9PHLzXY" target="_blank">here</a>).<br /><br />For me, the reasoning for maintaining an online-only delivery model for the upper grades can be summarized into two categories of concern: logistic hurdles and educational outcomes. <br /><br />To understand the logistical issues, please watch the principals’ presentations in Monday’s board meeting. For me, it was eye opening. Some notable examples: scheduling complexity resulting in class sizes that would exceed CDC social distancing requirements, position vacancies that we have been unable to fill, a substitute shortage that the COVID moment has only exacerbated, the reverberating consequences of a teacher needing to quarantine or isolate, and complicating teacher job duties to the point of absurdity.<br /><br />But the educational outcomes piece is also critical. I have long assumed—and I know I’m not alone in this—that for most students any time in school would be better than no time in school. That while a “normal,” five-day, face-to-face model is preferred, a two-day hybrid model would be better than all online. For the lower grades, I still believe this to be the case. However, for the upper grades, this no longer seems at all clear. And as our public health professionals have strongly advised against going back to a "normal," five-day-a-week, in-person model until we dip below the 10 active COVID cases per 100,000 residents threshold, that really leaves us with only one choice. <br /><br />(Cumberland and Franklin Counties have bounced around between 20 and 50 cases per 100,000 residents for the past three months. How other districts can make decisions that stare CDC and Pennsylvania Department of Health recommendations in the face is beyond me. I wish them luck, but I can't help but believe such decisions border on malfeasance.)<br /><br />We could, of course, change our expectations as to what school is. In our present online model, kids get four days of live instruction from each teacher and one day of unsupervised, self-paced activities. In a hybrid system, I think the best we can expect is two days of live instruction, and three days of self-paced activities, but those two days of live instruction would be in-person rather than online. (I realize there are other hybrid models, but from what I understand, what I’ve described here is the least likely to break the backs of our teachers and therefore the most realistic—without teachers, we will have no school.)<br /><br />Maybe, eventually, we will need to change our expectations. But, for me, the extra days of live instruction of an online delivery strategy coupled with the logistical entanglements of maintaining CDC guidelines with a hybrid system, are enough to convince me that at this point it would be inappropriate to transition our upper grades to a hybrid model.<br /><br />Some will say that what the district needs to do is provide choice—hybrid for those that want it, an online option for those that prefer that strategy. By necessity, going hybrid requires both, because if a student needs to quarantine or isolate for whatever reason, they’ll need to move from hybrid to online and back again. However, in offering both delivery methods, we’re putting an expectation on teachers that they manage both. That is, both, simultaneously. In essence, we’d be requiring that each teacher now do two jobs. In the lower grades, we’ve been able to deal with this problem by assigning some teachers all-online duties. In the middle and high schools, because of schedule complexities, this just isn’t possible for a district our size.<br /><br />A reasonable person would certainly be excused if they were to ask why, if the hybrid system is so problematic, had the board recently approved a hybrid start for grades 6-12 at the beginning of the second marking period? <br /><br />Well, why <i>did</i> the board move toward a hybrid opening? Strong demand from the public, for sure. Wishful thinking on the part of the board, too. But also the assumption that a hybrid model would be educationally superior to a fully online model, and a misunderstanding of logistical issues at play. <br /><br />So, to me, Monday night we corrected an error of judgment that we had earlier made--an error of judgment that went against the recommendations of the professionals we have employed to manage our community's schools. Furthermore, in the time that has passed, we’ve learned more about the challenges and shortcomings of hybrid schooling from those doing it. <br /><br />For this flip-flopping, I am very apologetic. I deeply regret the confusion and frustration in the community that is an understandable result of this reversal of plans. <br /><br />Finally, I absolutely recognize that reasonable people will disagree on the right way forward. I certainly do not have all the answers. I wish I did. In the end, as always, I vote in a manner that I believe is in the best interest of the children of our community. I have no other incentive. <br /><br />I welcome your comments.</span></span></div>goathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05561013052425473687noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7052859668960609943.post-1430810639275029792020-07-28T11:31:00.000-05:002020-07-28T11:31:10.010-05:00some (incomplete and unordered) thoughts on school reopening(1) I’m frustrated by so many public comments in defense of face-to-face learning. No one is arguing that face-to-face isn’t preferable to virtual learning. That just isn’t the conversation. <br /><br />(2) The decision as to how schools should reopen in the fall is bigger than the students and faculty and parents directly impacted. It’s a decision with very real public health ramifications, and (unfortunately) must be considered in that light.<br /><br />(3) The fact that these decisions are being made by local school boards represents a massive failure of state and federal leadership. I support local governance, but a pandemic is not a local issue, and your local school officials do not have access to the same tools and expertise that state and national governments do. <br /><br />It’s a pandemic… It should be self-evident that local action should be coordinated at the broadest level possible.<br /><br />(4) I’m again and again struck by how terrible we (humans) are at evaluating risk, and, by extension, terrible at evaluating the efficacy of any risk mitigation strategies or protocols. We are terrible naive statisticians. I know this, and yet it still does not help me in making decisions, it just makes me more wary of anything that I think I know. <br /><br />(5) While I believe that public schooling is an entitlement program that every American should embrace and even express pride in, there is a kind of ugly selfishness in the way some talk about their entitlement. <br /><br />An illustration: When faced with the possibility that schools may reopen something close to virtual only, many respond, “WTF. Is the district going to compensate me for my childcare?!” Whereas a person embracing a paradigm of responsibility might say, “Shoot, this stinks. I do not like this, I do not agree with it, but I’ve gotta figure out a way to make this work.”<br /><br />(6) Where is the teachers’ association in this discussion? I have not heard anything, neither directly nor indirectly, from our local teachers’ association.<br /><br />I understand that teachers are divided in their positions and preferences, but helpful guidance might look something like this:<br /><br />“If you go face-to-face, here are some concerns we’d like addressed.<br /><br />“If you go virtual, here are some concerns we’d like addressed.”<br /><br />(7) Related to the previous comment, any discussion of reopening MUST consider the health and safety of our teachers. As their employer, that is the district’s responsibility.<br /><br />If even a minority (but significant number) of teachers do not feel safe in returning to face-to-face instruction, that poses a serious structural problem for the district. If, say, 10 teachers decide at the last minute that they can’t risk coming back to school and choose not to return, that puts the district in a serious pickle. <br /><br />Furthermore, for those teachers who would return, but still do not feel safe doing so, one has to ask what impact that feeling of insecurity has on their ability to effectively do their job.<br /><br />(8) Administration and faculty committees have been working on plans since before school let out. We’ve been discussing school reopening plans (not a complete plan, but bits and pieces) at board meetings for over two months.<br />
<br />
Prior to last night's board meeting, grand total of public participants in those meetings? Maybe 25. <br /><br />Prior to last night's board meeting, grand total of public comments during this planning period? 0.<br /><br />(9) In public comments last night, one person suggested that the members of the board have already made up their minds so they might as well just vote. I’m not at all sure that’s true. I certainly don’t have things all figured out. My thoughts go all over the place on this. And I am very much swayed by new information or analysis (though hopefully not disproportionately). <br /><br />(10) Personally, I am super frustrated that it’s taking us (as a board, as a district) so long to make a decision for the fall. It’s not only just really irritating, I also think it’s a pretty significant administrative failure. And I’m sorry.goathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05561013052425473687noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7052859668960609943.post-48478958271623524262020-07-27T16:28:00.002-05:002020-07-27T16:28:27.495-05:00reopening schoolsTonight, at 6:00 pm, the Shippensburg Area School District directors will meet to (hopefully) decide on a plan for school reopening. While the past months have been full of work and planning and a lot of hand-wringing, the board has yet to approve a course of action.<br />
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In the build-up to this decision, I've received quite a few letters and calls from concerned citizens. I appreciate their input and feedback.<br />
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Yesterday, I received one such email from a Shippensburg Area High School student. While this student sent their comments to the superintendent and all board members, I was not given permission to make their comments public, so I won't reproduce the letter here. However, I do want to share my response. It's not perfect, but it's not bad, and it gives a sense of where my head is in making this decision.<br />
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Also, it will be interesting for me to return to these thoughts in a month, six months, next year, five years from now, and so on. Likely, I will think differently about many of these things.<br />
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...<br />
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Hi _____,</div>
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I really appreciate you taking the time to write this letter and for sending it. It is very much appreciated.</div>
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The district has yet to make a final decision on our re-opening strategy. There is a public board meeting tonight, at 6:00 pm, and I encourage you to attend (it will be broadcast publicly--you can find the link on the district website).</div>
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However, I wanted to respond quickly to a few of your points.</div>
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First, I know EVERYONE would like to be able to go back to school as we're used to doing school. I would like that. Your school administration would like that. So would your teachers. However, that's just not possible. So we have to find a way to do the best we can under the circumstances.</div>
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A few thoughts on some of the points you've made.</div>
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I'm afraid you're very much mistaken on the negative health effects of wearing masks. I suggest you check your sources, and research this a little more completely. Your blood oxygen levels absolutely do NOT drop by 5-20% when wearing a mask. It's just not true. But imagine if it were...imagine if a surgery team of 6-10 people, all wearing surgical masks, for sometimes well over eight hours straight, were experiencing blood oxygen levels 80-95% of normal. Would you want that surgical team operating on you? Of course not. Because there is no such disability. Sure, masks are uncomfortable, but so are pants, and we've all got fairly accustomed to wearing them.</div>
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You are right that children get sick from COVID19 much less often and experience milder symptoms than do adults. However, older children (think 10-19) can still carry and transmit the virus. So, while the district must be concerned for the health of children, we also must be concerned about how the virus can be transmitted within the school, and then carried from it to more vulnerable demographics. School children do not live in a bubble. They interact with each other, then go home to mothers and fathers and grandparents, etc. Children can become the vectors for disease which can debilitate a community.</div>
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Furthermore, kids aren't the only ones in our schools. There are teachers, administrators, and all manner of support staff. These people matter too. Their health matters too. And, as you're already aware, these individuals are at much higher risk of suffering serious negative health consequences should they contract COVID19. Any decision the district makes regarding reopening schools must also consider their health and well-being.</div>
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The herd immunity argument you offer is compelling, but unfortunately it just doesn't seem to work quite that way with COVID19. In March, when we first realized--as a country, and beyond--that there was a global pandemic at play, we thought herd immunity would be the eventual answer. But what we're learning about how COVID19 is contracted and how our bodies build antibodies to it suggests that it may not be that simple. You're thinking (as I used to think) that once you get C19 and get over it, you're good. But we're learning that's probably the wrong way to think about it.</div>
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I appreciate your thoughts on a culture of fear, and I am sympathetic. Still, I don't let my children cross the street on their own until I know they are capable of making smart street-crossing decisions. I can't just say, "Don't live in fear; just send it!" when I know there's a high probability that "sending it" will result in serious injury or death to my child. There are limits and lines. I wish I knew what those limits and lines are in the present case, but I do not. I do not think anyone does. But I do know that doing nothing--pretending that COVID19 is just another flu--is dangerously irresponsible behavior for making either personal life decisions or decisions for the public good.</div>
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As to your comments on freedom, I'm afraid that argument falls on deaf ears here. Going back to my pants analogy, do you also feel that we should be "free" to go to school not wearing pants? Would you feel comfortable sitting next to someone not wearing pants? Or how about sharing a chair with another student who was not wearing pants? No? Well, what of that person's freedom to dress (or not dress) how they like? Should they not be free to not wear pants as you are to wear them? </div>
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Freedom isn't getting to do whatever you want. Our freedom is curtailed everyday in myriad ways by powerful (and usually quite functional) cultural norms. That is a good thing. Personally, I'm quite glad that my freedom to drive is moderated by traffic signals and right-of-way laws. It's makes things work. It keeps us safer on the roads than we would be if we were "free" to use them however we like. </div>
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Like it or not, you live in a community. You share space with thousands of other people. They also have rights. And your ability to exercise your freedom cannot infringe on their ability to exercise theirs. In civics, we call this idea "the social contract." I encourage you to look it up, and perhaps rethink your paradigm of what it means to be free.</div>
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Thank you again for taking the time to write and express your concerns. Again, it is very much appreciated. I hope this letter helps clarify some of the issues the district must consider in deciding to reopen schools for "normal" operation. </div>
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Again, I encourage you to attend the virtual school board meeting this evening. 6:00 pm. Link on district website.</div>
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If you have any further questions or comments, I welcome them.</div>
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Take care,</div>
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ng</div>
goathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05561013052425473687noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7052859668960609943.post-86205787120481940992020-03-27T09:05:00.000-05:002020-03-27T09:05:01.220-05:00"That’s all of ’em, Uncle George!"<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
A story about George Goates, little brother to my great-great-grandfather. It's a story I grew up with. A story that's had an outsized impact on my world view.</div>
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This version is a retelling of something Les Goates' wrote. Les Goates was a career sportswriter for the Desert News, and George's son.</div>
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It's 1918, in the midst of the Spanish Flu Epidemic. George would have been 55 at the time. Francis was 20, Charles 35.</div>
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“Winter came early that year and froze much of the sugar beet crop in the ground,” writes [Les] Goates. “My dad and brother Francis were desperately trying to get out of the frosty ground one load of beets each day.” One day they received a telephone call that George’s nine-year-old grandson Kenneth “had been stricken with the dread ‘flu,’ and after only a few hours of violent sickness, had died.” George was asked to go to Ogden and take the boy to Lehi for burial.</div>
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When George arrived at the home he found his son Charles was also sick. Charles asked his father to take the boy and return for him the next day. “Father brought Kenneth home, made a coffin in his carpenter shop, and … with [my brother] Franz and two kind neighbors [dug] the grave...</div>
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“The folks had scarcely returned from the cemetery when the telephone rang again.” They learned that Charles had died and four of his young children were also sick. Charles’s body was sent to Lehi by train, but the next day George had to return to Ogden to get one of the grandchildren, seven-year-old Vesta, who had since died. Before he returned to Lehi with Vesta, a call came again that one of her sick sisters, five-year-old Elaine, had also died. So George made yet “another heartbreaking journey to bring home and lay away a fourth member of his family, all within the week.”</div>
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The next day George told his son Francis, “‘Well, son, we had better get down to the field and see if we can get another load of beets out of the ground before they get frozen in any tighter.’ …</div>
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“As they drove along the Saratoga Road, they passed wagon after wagon-load of beets being hauled to the factory and driven by neighborhood farmers...</div>
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“On the last wagon was...Jasper Rolfe. He waved a cheery greeting and called out: ‘That’s all of ’em, Uncle George.’ “My dad turned to Francis and said: ‘I wish it was all of ours.’“</div>
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When they arrived at the farm gate...there wasn’t a sugar beet on the whole field. Then it dawned upon him what Jasper Rolfe meant when he called out: ‘That’s all of ’em, Uncle George!’</div>
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“Father sat down on a pile of beet tops--this man who brought four of his loved ones home for burial in the course of only six days; made caskets, dug graves, and even helped with the burial clothing—and sobbed like a little child."</div>
goathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05561013052425473687noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7052859668960609943.post-34851915031753205862019-06-25T22:07:00.001-05:002019-06-25T22:24:55.448-05:00#thelobsterroll, day 5I read a line in a novel the other day that struck a cord. The cord is still resonating.<br />
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“People feel pain, and it shrinks their souls.”<br />
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Context: There are parents. Their baby dies. Unexpectedly. They just find him, cold and lying unnatural in his crib. Nearly two decades on and these parents still hurt. The author offers this observation, that pain is a given, and that we are the worse for it.<br />
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It is a melancholy truth. Life is full of melancholy truth.<br />
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I read something the other day—someone posted a link on FB—and unfortunately I don’t remember the title or the author so I can’t look it up and cite, but, in it, the author made a point about relative social closeness to someone suffering from some sort of illness, like cancer. It had to do with license to complain. The point, I think, was that the person who is ill gets to complain about whatever they want, to whomever they want. Then there are those who are super close to them—say a spouse, or children, or parents—they get to complain, but only to others, outward, but not to the person who is ill. Then you go out a bit more—close friends, say—and they can complain to folks that are still further removed, but not inward. They don’t get to complain to the person who is ill, or their spouse, etc.<br />
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Anyway, imagining these people grouped in concentric circles by relative social distance was a helpful mental image for me. Not so much in thinking about who gets to complain to whom (which I didn’t really find that interesting), but rather in who <i>feels</i> the thing. A diagram of the relative domains of sorrow, maybe. Or something like that.<br />
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I don’t know what it’s like to be suffering from a life-threatening illness, but I can imagine. And the thing that I imagine is the emotional toll such a thing would have on those close to me. I’m sure I would complain and whine, such is my nature. There would be good days and bad. I might curse my luck and genes and the stars—“Is it even so? then I defy you, stars!” But I think (I <i>think</i>) that I would worry most about how my being sick hurt those I have been lucky enough to have loved me.<br />
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It seems, to me, that the lion’s share of the emotional pain associated with serious illness lies with those who love those who are ill. And this, I think, falls into the category of what I would call a beautiful tragedy—tragic, for obvious reasons, but beautiful, because if we could not love we would not feel pain, but to love is to suffer. But love is also beautiful, maybe the most beautiful thing. Thus, a beautiful tragedy.<br />
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What a terrible irony, no? Born of a terrible paradox…<br />
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Well, here’s another paradox (sort of): Riding bicycles to promote a cancer-hating charity. <br />
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But it works for me. Doing hard physical things, pushing bodies to new limits…there is beauty in this. A celebration of life. Or, as Eric Liddell put it, “God made me fast. And when I run, I feel His presence.” (God didn’t make me that fast, but I still feel my most human—like I am most fulfilling the measure of my creation, when I am at my most fit, and doing a thing at my very capacity.) <br />
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The effects of cancer, or any serious illness, are the opposite—it is our bodies betraying us.<br />
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So it makes sense to me to promote a cancer-hating charity by pushing personal physical boundaries and celebrating what it means to be alive. It makes all the sense in the world.<br />
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If you haven’t yet, <a href="https://www.classy.org/fundraiser/1891693" target="_blank">please consider tossing a couple dimes</a> to the Flatwater Foundation, which works with therapists to provide mental health services to folks impacted by a cancer diagnosis at a fraction of the market rate. <br />
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Mmm… Smell the salt in the air. We’re in Maine now, and tomorrow, our last day, we’ve 96 miles of coastal riding and then we’re done. It will be a celebration of life.<br />
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...<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoKy2vVXmJ2IDXZaL_yae6RhIQdfRItO73bCPwXIqe7y_eipUsk67qnkR3DRwtXIwxTwwhsYfL1JZjqyu7agxXkkmiixNCsTA5L5a4576Zipg_QLDc9rt7ROuWOWVpDiNP0WRamLdXcYXe/s1600/Screen+Shot+2019-06-25+at+10.52.17+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="875" data-original-width="946" height="368" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoKy2vVXmJ2IDXZaL_yae6RhIQdfRItO73bCPwXIqe7y_eipUsk67qnkR3DRwtXIwxTwwhsYfL1JZjqyu7agxXkkmiixNCsTA5L5a4576Zipg_QLDc9rt7ROuWOWVpDiNP0WRamLdXcYXe/s400/Screen+Shot+2019-06-25+at+10.52.17+PM.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Maine! We made it! So we can stop now, right?<br />
Another front-ended day...these small, fairly steep climbs took a toll.<br />
Full ride details <a href="https://www.strava.com/activities/2479726485" target="_blank">here</a>.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This cool little store came at mile 33 today. It's apparently famous for being a regular campaigner's stop. The backroom is full of old political campaign posters. Some Thompson guy with the catchy slogan "No Drugs" (I failed in my picture taking). If only we had elected that guy, I'm sure all our drug problems would not be problems.</td></tr>
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Below, a number of unfinished shots from our professional photog, Tyler Northrup. You can follow him on the 'gram: @tylernorthrup (no shots from this week yet, but hopefully we make the cut).</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAY2w9L6kUI6J6yFtUE0Yeanj3HbzMdhdUdDMqdsgYxipOPXvj3pPTMDCGVPz0GdxFt-vRHwZKVKoSzamHuaShdHmXsmXNU9SAObDRafVYlas39OWJjXGHt4Z2xGTbXVsBV796vMWRoIQa/s1600/IMG_0894.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAY2w9L6kUI6J6yFtUE0Yeanj3HbzMdhdUdDMqdsgYxipOPXvj3pPTMDCGVPz0GdxFt-vRHwZKVKoSzamHuaShdHmXsmXNU9SAObDRafVYlas39OWJjXGHt4Z2xGTbXVsBV796vMWRoIQa/s400/IMG_0894.jpg" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(CJ photo cred for the shot of this tall drink of water.)</td></tr>
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Oh, and don't miss my second guest appearance on <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BzJ-y4Pl014/" target="_blank">Pie Guys</a>!goathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05561013052425473687noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7052859668960609943.post-40764306410890563762019-06-24T22:02:00.000-05:002019-06-24T22:09:48.021-05:00#thelobsterroll, day 4Woke in the middle of the night with this distinct thought: God is numbers. <br />
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Also the realization that CJ (our support driver) won’t be able to drive if there’s pulled pork involved. (Involved with what? I'm not sure.)<br />
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And somehow this shed light on the problem of getting the small girl and her cute pink bicycle--complete with handlebar streamers--over the curb and onto the sidewalk. This, apparently, was a problem too difficult to deal with without knowing that, indeed, God is numbers.<br />
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Is it weird that I slept very well after day one, but rather poorly the last two nights? Perhaps having worked out what God is I'll be more settled this evening.<br />
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... <br />
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Today was new kit day. Which is always a joy.<br />
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New kit day means photo ops. Lots, and lots of photos.<br />
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We stopped at this lovely outlook for photos...and drone filming fun (no picture of drone included, unfortunately.)<br />
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A lot of the photography (and videography) was done from this white van, either with side door open or back hatch. We were, I'm sure, very handsome.<br />
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And there were a few segments of gravel travel, which is also joyful. (As it watching Brian descend the gravel roads with reckless abandon.)<br />
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But then Tim destroyed a rim. This was not joyful.<br />
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Pictured above is the offending hole, which really seemed a nothing. All of us were left scratching our heads over that one. (We had a spare set of wheels in the van, so it wasn't long before we were rolling again.)<br />
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You'll all be quite happy to know that I have now finished my grading, summer class grades have been submitted (at 10:30 pm), but the threat of rain tomorrow has prompted plans for a 6:00 am departure, which means bed. Now.<br />
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For tomorrow, we ride.<br />
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...<br />
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A reminder of what we're doing this for--please support The Flatwater Foundation, which provides mental health services to folks impacted by a cancer diagnosis, by supporting us. Click <a href="https://www.classy.org/fundraiser/1891693" target="_blank">here</a> to donate now. <br /><br />Thank you.<br />
<br />goathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05561013052425473687noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7052859668960609943.post-13685547876025737732019-06-23T21:38:00.003-05:002019-06-23T21:40:13.184-05:00#thelobsterroll, day 3I’ve had tremendous difficulty composing a blog post for today. I’ve written a couple thousand words, but haven’t been able to sort them in the appropriate order.<br />
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And now I’m very tired. And I’ve eaten too much. And I need to grade papers (because I do actually work for a living).<br />
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So, instead of lots of writing, I’m going to send you to my guest appearance on Pie Guys (just go with it). <br />
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Follow <a href="https://www.instagram.com/tv/BzEwuSSl_Jh/" target="_blank">THIS LINK</a>, click play. Enjoy.<br />
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...<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTk3AwAl6MSAfuwDIHpbAcxmWZPfEYYenIwfAqYNCiA3o11UsaIDqcJWwaL2il15YbFXf1jmD2DnwB7j_gNJUIuCbDa_5Rwzvb43XSOxJLy0NzmloQ8lXIQx2iw39b7_oEYrSCngVLXDVz/s1600/Screen+Shot+2019-06-23+at+10.28.07+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="793" data-original-width="1173" height="270" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTk3AwAl6MSAfuwDIHpbAcxmWZPfEYYenIwfAqYNCiA3o11UsaIDqcJWwaL2il15YbFXf1jmD2DnwB7j_gNJUIuCbDa_5Rwzvb43XSOxJLy0NzmloQ8lXIQx2iw39b7_oEYrSCngVLXDVz/s400/Screen+Shot+2019-06-23+at+10.28.07+PM.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Our long day. 114 miles, 8,200' of climbing. The route today was 100 percent.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Early on. Spirits high. Actually, I think they stayed pretty high all day (we started slower and it made a huge difference).</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">These New England towns are just adorable. </td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Crossing the Hudson. (Ok, so the last picture wasn't technically New England, but I think close enough.)</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A delightful surprise. Brian's family waiting for us at our lunch stop.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSRcf71B1n0oWOMWg_W7XoFhaeiRN2lkTluAqVv068zRvYXaPnXM6A1llYvQ-X8X2GNK1oxX4QnW9TFaYCYtX0Jm68PMvWmTG5D8ZOZo9qYssVkxcSRcW3CiuNivWMYF321e7-c3h8HOXK/s1600/97D80D7A-F9DE-4605-82E5-4515449051BB.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1080" data-original-width="1440" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSRcf71B1n0oWOMWg_W7XoFhaeiRN2lkTluAqVv068zRvYXaPnXM6A1llYvQ-X8X2GNK1oxX4QnW9TFaYCYtX0Jm68PMvWmTG5D8ZOZo9qYssVkxcSRcW3CiuNivWMYF321e7-c3h8HOXK/s400/97D80D7A-F9DE-4605-82E5-4515449051BB.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">More New England delights.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFwg9tQMHtCyteL3yluRE2uq9mfS9Ii-Oa71pUoxvSg65lo2IQ-QK27VOm2V0Di3E-2XAZdsLz8kPzkF2rtYkQCMBJGQo7JsJlbjRTm0IN1fYNwO79ApKY1dso68mpHdegHC8c5mEVP4oD/s1600/IMG_5342.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFwg9tQMHtCyteL3yluRE2uq9mfS9Ii-Oa71pUoxvSg65lo2IQ-QK27VOm2V0Di3E-2XAZdsLz8kPzkF2rtYkQCMBJGQo7JsJlbjRTm0IN1fYNwO79ApKY1dso68mpHdegHC8c5mEVP4oD/s400/IMG_5342.JPG" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">No more Clif bars for me; I've taken to just eating pie at our rest stops. </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9RV91CuhXyTu1FMiNWW7fIpEe5fzjnjaQuJlb2p16Z4FK8zWoAznUN1sNB9IvCs00iTS1VzY1xM0_n6TqIh0g8htIDPOA-_HMf6VStDFqpLLtKsU25QGdYSFKS0fLbQn7Jd_ZVRY863-C/s1600/IMG_5346.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9RV91CuhXyTu1FMiNWW7fIpEe5fzjnjaQuJlb2p16Z4FK8zWoAznUN1sNB9IvCs00iTS1VzY1xM0_n6TqIh0g8htIDPOA-_HMf6VStDFqpLLtKsU25QGdYSFKS0fLbQn7Jd_ZVRY863-C/s400/IMG_5346.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgFsyYaNr4Fei2bZqyM3Qw4GCe01uBzDEycWAd6N3ksAp2RUwgry78lJDFPnoZrBiwOSbxoBKMMn0iMrfsg9Fk5dIg1Tw5mXnr40NOLLX0IlM0-TbQBIthqrrMgCNtxU0hJabD5zxbO42L/s1600/IMG_5356.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgFsyYaNr4Fei2bZqyM3Qw4GCe01uBzDEycWAd6N3ksAp2RUwgry78lJDFPnoZrBiwOSbxoBKMMn0iMrfsg9Fk5dIg1Tw5mXnr40NOLLX0IlM0-TbQBIthqrrMgCNtxU0hJabD5zxbO42L/s400/IMG_5356.JPG" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Generally how I feel after six hot hours in the saddle. </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFK7FetMenvI9f9hE6_JDZO1mc8035EQKoc-g-Hnx6SjO_Pz40ltzhvULoyyyxl0BngYSU1QqlZzAV_h6AD39JFfvKzYWkM9uK5phPkLQFH4156U4t9jdnMB5FCSmLZ0pKpqBd7SNebrMS/s1600/IMG_5358.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFK7FetMenvI9f9hE6_JDZO1mc8035EQKoc-g-Hnx6SjO_Pz40ltzhvULoyyyxl0BngYSU1QqlZzAV_h6AD39JFfvKzYWkM9uK5phPkLQFH4156U4t9jdnMB5FCSmLZ0pKpqBd7SNebrMS/s320/IMG_5358.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFtCZNZDcVVqt_MaB-0vJCBjFb_pEF__pUmgKnoejqPxaTp6eR7cTxueqJXI7Wh-zBig21daMsoe8Hnt64tAziIWsZgUjiaV0X9D2JESiMJp4kCEWPhZ0wcLlE8b9a1ph5oc7vKg78Biwa/s1600/IMG_5357.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFtCZNZDcVVqt_MaB-0vJCBjFb_pEF__pUmgKnoejqPxaTp6eR7cTxueqJXI7Wh-zBig21daMsoe8Hnt64tAziIWsZgUjiaV0X9D2JESiMJp4kCEWPhZ0wcLlE8b9a1ph5oc7vKg78Biwa/s320/IMG_5357.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This place was everything I could have hoped for. A+.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
goathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05561013052425473687noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7052859668960609943.post-47370767630965187842019-06-22T21:17:00.000-05:002019-06-22T21:22:32.914-05:00#thelobsterroll, day 2When cyclists meet, and start to get to know each other, they often ask for the cycling version of an origin story.<br />
<br />
<i>When did you start riding bikes?</i><br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfCty37pMrFIRS6sR-dn-GiJ0IfDNsJ3Zae9ADhIYGAjR7C3ItOgzohWi3rQ8pzjLnyvyXwHAmbgU6KBgDuyvbEe4MpdmtMOVzqfCn0-AEolWWmecGVvUkPmZgO4XAdxd_2OhbyOkt-4MX/s1600/Screen+Shot+2019-06-22+at+5.16.58+PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="749" data-original-width="929" height="321" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfCty37pMrFIRS6sR-dn-GiJ0IfDNsJ3Zae9ADhIYGAjR7C3ItOgzohWi3rQ8pzjLnyvyXwHAmbgU6KBgDuyvbEe4MpdmtMOVzqfCn0-AEolWWmecGVvUkPmZgO4XAdxd_2OhbyOkt-4MX/s400/Screen+Shot+2019-06-22+at+5.16.58+PM.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mostly north today. North, and into a headwind. Tomorrow, mostly east. More ride details <a href="https://www.strava.com/activities/2472154630" target="_blank">here</a>.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
In the answer, you learn a lot about a person. At least, I like to think you do. A bit of history. Maybe something of their values. <br />
<br />
The question we don't ask, but maybe should, is this:<br />
<br />
<i>Why do you </i>keep<i> riding bikes?</i><br />
<br />
I think the answer to this question is a bit harder to answer.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLf44ciRuDzfuqD9eFt-Sd1wL780KoJyWvy2fF-woRO0UQQZ0FKkUNNJ1T2hYETEVXxCGEdrHuCADJuIb5yL3Uv_G1gV4TXHRrNg_5Hj6crFO2rktwm8PRITWOfPP4yjANC7HVVNqG1l3y/s1600/IMG_5271.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjLf44ciRuDzfuqD9eFt-Sd1wL780KoJyWvy2fF-woRO0UQQZ0FKkUNNJ1T2hYETEVXxCGEdrHuCADJuIb5yL3Uv_G1gV4TXHRrNg_5Hj6crFO2rktwm8PRITWOfPP4yjANC7HVVNqG1l3y/s400/IMG_5271.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Early in the ride. Spirits are high, and so are the watts. We started slower, but at 70 miles in had averaged just under 21 mph. At the finish, still over 20 mph. (Did I mention we were battling a headwind?) We're all committed to riding a more reasonable pace tomorrow.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
In the cyclocross documentary "Transitions" (watch the trailer <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWxuDZL_420" target="_blank">here</a>), you hear a disembodied voice answer the question this way, "It's just that I like it. I'm good at it."<br />
<br />
Fair enough. <br />
<br />
What the disembodied voice does not provide is the answer a sociologist might give, which, perhaps, would be to discuss the cultural tapestry of privilege that even <i>allows</i> him to do such a thing. I think about this a lot. I mean... A. LOT. I often dislike where the train of thought takes me.<br />
<br />
All the same, as with the person behind the voice-over, I like it too, this riding bikes thing. Whether I'm good at it or not depends on who you ask, I suppose. That is, if you're looking for an objective response. Subjectively, though... Sure, I think I'm good at it. I like how I feel when I do it. I like what it does to my body. I very much like the sense of personal empowerment cycling affords. To me, it is of unquantifiable psychic value (see Nietzsche quote in right sidebar). And I like the machines. They're beautiful. Some of them, I could stare at all day.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvVRDFNbjraf5sFd4rnVUKY1f-wI_EON-iFicQZG7EAIBj9zLJbgk8uljRitqHbI0a_V27oiMvURJGHGluRpuL_MS-JiA67c9awBtf_dH6W4MJW2Q9P3Pt35ECviSZQyPeX7p4VEEzQu8u/s1600/IMG_5275.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvVRDFNbjraf5sFd4rnVUKY1f-wI_EON-iFicQZG7EAIBj9zLJbgk8uljRitqHbI0a_V27oiMvURJGHGluRpuL_MS-JiA67c9awBtf_dH6W4MJW2Q9P3Pt35ECviSZQyPeX7p4VEEzQu8u/s400/IMG_5275.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ashokan Reservoir provides New York City with 40 percent of its drinking water. It provides me with a stunning backdrop for one of my favorite machines to stare at.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
I teach my students that people do their best work under conditions in which they are given autonomy, the opportunity to master skills that they value, and where there is a clear, meaningful purpose to the work they're doing. In fairly obvious ways, cycling ticks the first two boxes. How I find meaning in the sport is a question I've stewed over since I began doing it.<br />
<br />
There's a kind of life cycle arch to the cycling career of most serious cyclists. A <b>flirtation</b> stage, as they're getting to know themselves and the paradoxically delicious and repulsive cultural nuance of the sport. A stage of deep <b>infatuation</b>, as they immerse themselves into the culture and spend nearly all their time and more than all their money creating a cycling self. A stage of escalated <b>commitment</b>, as cyclists reach the initial boundary of their natural talent, realize the commitment it will take to be excellent and begin to make that commitment. Then, sooner for some and later for others, <b>resignation</b>... Better understanding their physical, mental, emotional, and lifestyle constraints (i.e. the <i>cost</i> of the sport), cyclists decide how much they can give to the sport and then proceed to give it less...every year, a little less.<br />
<br />
There are some of us, quite few really, who resist resignation. Terminally. We can feel it. It's there. It's the hungry lion that, were we to stumble, would close its angry jaws around our fleshy shaved thighs in a heartbeat.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3JomSHi6LyENwuDXT-83woD1zZoQOEdxFEd2nwnZMPvhscbDpv2Oqmy6wSfXwWlpw_iD8Exmyhq1j-RpXh7lmzugK4UrHqOShqtjVjsKk9Xp467wpfNuBB-hxHHd3mH8DiXrHSFRwIWwG/s1600/F074D08A-CD02-4DD7-972F-5BF9A03265EC.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1479" data-original-width="1600" height="368" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3JomSHi6LyENwuDXT-83woD1zZoQOEdxFEd2nwnZMPvhscbDpv2Oqmy6wSfXwWlpw_iD8Exmyhq1j-RpXh7lmzugK4UrHqOShqtjVjsKk9Xp467wpfNuBB-hxHHd3mH8DiXrHSFRwIWwG/s400/F074D08A-CD02-4DD7-972F-5BF9A03265EC.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">We're <a href="https://www.teamihatecancer.com/" target="_blank">Team I Hate Cancer</a>. Please consider a donation to the <a href="https://www.flatwaterfoundation.org/" target="_blank">Flatwater Foundation</a> on our behalf. The Flatwater Foundation provides mental health services to those impacted by a cancer diagnosis. Which is most of us. Help the helpers help those that need the help. Click <a href="https://www.classy.org/fundraiser/1891693" target="_blank">here </a>to help out.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<i>Why do you </i>keep<i> riding bikes?</i><br />
<br />
Tomorrow (as I expect day 3 to be the most difficult of the 6), the answer may have as much to do with stubbornness than anything else. Will. Determination. <i>Grit</i>. Proving a thing to myself (because no one else really cares). Because I can. Because I <i>choose</i> to.<br />
<br />
Every December, as I begin to ramp up the miles and plot out the next year's training goals, I reflect on the places cycling might take me. Every year. And cycling has taken me to some amazing places. Here's to the new places that tomorrow will bring.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5HQgIsKZYIUk4rYLphdZcTAqKp2NUaCmE7mDA0nL7F2np-nMsO-vL1QCXl_qO2IiOXRAHwuvYmzP-A0ZG1xCjEPcW4ybbvbMEV5zBVqiGsTmzWpvYfs8fkwG7_Tl1OKgEaAX5L6-9q3Zr/s1600/IMG_5281.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5HQgIsKZYIUk4rYLphdZcTAqKp2NUaCmE7mDA0nL7F2np-nMsO-vL1QCXl_qO2IiOXRAHwuvYmzP-A0ZG1xCjEPcW4ybbvbMEV5zBVqiGsTmzWpvYfs8fkwG7_Tl1OKgEaAX5L6-9q3Zr/s400/IMG_5281.JPG" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">And here's to many more cheery cycling-related ice cream stops.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Why do <i>I</i> keep riding bikes?<br />
<br />
What else would I do?goathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05561013052425473687noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7052859668960609943.post-20358869972541897362019-06-21T21:47:00.002-05:002019-06-21T21:56:25.658-05:00#thelobsterroll, day 1<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
What is this <a href="https://www.teamihatecancer.com/the-lobster-roll-1" target="_blank">Lobster Roll</a> thing, you're asking. Well, some may be asking...those that haven't been bombarded by my social media blitz over the past several months.<br />
Well, this is what it is:<br />
<br />
Five guys, six days, riding bikes from Philly to Maine, 625 miles...to raise money for <a href="https://www.flatwaterfoundation.org/" target="_blank">The Flatwater Foundation</a>, which provides mental health services for folks impacted by a cancer diagnosis. <br />
<br />
The five of us, we are <a href="https://www.teamihatecancer.com/" target="_blank">Team I Hate Cancer</a>. Well, we're <i>part</i> of that team. You can be on that team too. It's easy. Buy a shirt or something. Take a picture. Post it. Hashtag teamihatecancer. You're on the team.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTC9WL4BogB6sXhEzZgetK3nasxjX_BDSupXOG3_WgNDLkrp1brnRcBazfmXhHZvyqIsLEFtSbSZYnx7xCylegXnvViTxXdUolAzVlCIqG-lYCHZwWFdl1LgVD9dyAJ9nglgmUEikZp2Ml/s1600/IMG_5229.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTC9WL4BogB6sXhEzZgetK3nasxjX_BDSupXOG3_WgNDLkrp1brnRcBazfmXhHZvyqIsLEFtSbSZYnx7xCylegXnvViTxXdUolAzVlCIqG-lYCHZwWFdl1LgVD9dyAJ9nglgmUEikZp2Ml/s400/IMG_5229.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Five riders require five bicycles. Notably, though not purposefully, all have mechanical rim brakes and mechanical shifting. Even with expensive carbon hoops this, in 2019, constitutes old school riding.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Raising money... Our goal is $50,000. We're over halfway there. Me,
personally...I'm not doing so well compared to my buddies. You can see
how well <a href="https://www.classy.org/campaign/lobster-roll/c222435" target="_blank">here</a>. You can help me (but you're not really helping me...I'm not getting paid) <a href="https://www.classy.org/fundraiser/1891693" target="_blank">here</a>. <br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaeuFTD1KrbNFMjm_90VoNEE8uSROdstOzta2GUeosO0EN2d8Rvg96Mtn0kRiit8DycVCJgZYv9jbPUuCc3Lfs1f4wcrszOJsUknVYirqWz95yGPjUiAuHA1-CBPyDAn7iZ2Ll8SGBld_Y/s1600/A4E9FFBE-1CAA-46F9-A776-3D33CF14E04F.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1274" data-original-width="1600" height="317" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaeuFTD1KrbNFMjm_90VoNEE8uSROdstOzta2GUeosO0EN2d8Rvg96Mtn0kRiit8DycVCJgZYv9jbPUuCc3Lfs1f4wcrszOJsUknVYirqWz95yGPjUiAuHA1-CBPyDAn7iZ2Ll8SGBld_Y/s400/A4E9FFBE-1CAA-46F9-A776-3D33CF14E04F.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Look at these poor, befuddled middle-aged men. I mean, they <i>need</i> help.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Anyway, the Lobster Roll... Today, Friday, June 21, was day one. One hundred five miles from Philadelphia to Newton, NJ.<br />
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I pretty much get overly excited about any long point-to-point ride, but this route had some true gems. The 5-10 miles of road (including some priceless gravel travel) prior to crossing the Delaware, for instance. And the last 20 miles into Newton. Roads that leave you doing a little double-take every once in a while you're so excited to be doing what you're doing. The scenery. The camaraderie. The feeling of being overwhelmingly blessed to be physically capable of such a thing.<br />
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I'm not super into charity rides. I'm not super into fundraisers. Several reasons for this. I'll save that discussion for another day. But I <i>am</i> into this. Over the next few days, I'll try to explain why.<br />
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Let me start with this. I was asked to write a "This is Why" post for the Team I Hate Cancer blog. You can read it (punctuated by cute pictures) on teamihatecancer.com right <a href="http://here./">here</a><span id="goog_182363218"></span><span id="goog_182363219"></span>. But you can also read (the text version) below. It was hard to write. I hope it's easier to read.<br />
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Enjoy.<br />
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<span style="color: #660000;"><b>This is Why </b></span><br />
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<span style="color: #660000;">In April of 2008 I went for a bike ride. I’d had a rough day. An emotional day. I needed a release.<br /><br />My six year-old daughter was a patient at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. We were prepping her for a bone marrow transplant. Trying to save her life. Or that was the narrative.<br /><br />When seen from a distance, it’s an easy narrative. Kid is sick. Kid goes to the hospital. Kid has a procedure. Kid recovers. Kid comes home.<br /><br />But the easy narrative arch that distance affords is far from the lived experience. The lived experience is excruciating.<br /><br />Imagine this, for instance: As parents, you’re weighing the decision to treat your daughter’s unnamed illness by bone marrow transplant. You’re told, by the appropriately credentialed authorities, that if you opt for the transplant, there’s about a 33 percent chance your child’s health will improve substantially, there’s about a 33 percent chance that she will experience no real improvement, and there’s about a 33 percent chance your child will die from complications. How does a parent make such a decision? How does anyone make such a decision on behalf of another human being?<br /><br />Or this: Having chosen transplant as the treatment option, you watch as the “medicine” slowly weakens her, takes her energy, her hair, her pep. Because the reality of the thing is that to prep her tiny body—a body which has been its own worst enemy thus far—for this potentially life-saving treatment, we’ve got to weaken it to something that looks very near death. It’s part of the protocol. It’s called treatment, but it feels like something very different. And then there are surgeries for PICC lines. And delays for fevers because of worrisome infections. And really a hundred small tortures en route to this thing call “treatment.”<br /><br />It was in the midst of all this, on a lovely spring day in 2008, that I went for a bike ride.<br /><br />I’m not from Philadelphia. At the time, I didn’t know the roads well. I was told there was a trail that followed the river northwest out of the city. I found the trail, but as it dissolved into the city streets of Manayunk I lost my way. Wandering around I saw another rider, who I followed, and we began to talk. First, of directions. He was going where I wanted to go, I could just ride along with him. Next, of other things. Noting that I was unfamiliar with the area, he wondered if I was new to town. I explained why we were there. I explained that it was a rather hard day. I explained that I needed a moment to myself, to get out, to sweat, to ride my bike. I found it was easy to talk. I felt like maybe I shouldn’t, but I also needed to. I couldn’t help it. I needed to unload.<br /><br />The next day, a care package arrived at my daughter’s room. Cookies.<br /><br />It turned out this random bicycle commuter I’d met the day before was a physician. He worked at the children’s hospital. I’d given him just enough details for him to figure out who my daughter’s oncologist must be. He got in touch. He shared the story. He didn’t know my name (and didn’t ask; you know, HIPAA). But he left the package with our doctor and our doctor did the rest.<br />Treating cancer is an expensive enterprise. It seems impossibly expensive. And I’m so thankful for the avenues of funding that developed the procedures, medications, treatments, facilities, and expertise that allows for its treatment. Cancer is a betrayal. A cellular uprising. We may treat the betrayal by quelling the uprising, but the effect of the cellular treachery transcends the corporal and wounds the soul, as betrayals do. Wounded souls also require treatment.<br /><br />During the months and years of watching our daughter descend into illness and then, slowly, miraculously, climb out, our souls were wounded by a thousand small daggers. But these weren’t left unattended. By countless acts of kindness and compassion of family, friends, and strangers—like a bicycle-commuting physician to whom I just happened to ask directions—our souls were healed. Well… A little. Some. Eleven years on and I’m not sure one ever really heals from such a thing, but we do get better.<br /><br />A dollar spent on treating or researching the physical treatment of cancer, while still sacred, seems hardly a drop in the bucket given the enormity of it all. However, a dollar spent to care for wounded souls of those impacted by cancer… Well, that can go a long way.<br /><br />The Flatwater Foundation provides mental health services to people impacted by a cancer diagnosis. It’s a cause I believe in. It’s such an important, beautifully compassionate service. I believe it’s a cause worth a buck or two. </span><br />
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goathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05561013052425473687noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7052859668960609943.post-1992936619005105832019-05-03T22:00:00.003-05:002019-05-03T22:25:26.623-05:00O'dell Anderson Frandsen (1925 - 2019)<div style="line-height: normal;">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Last week, Valerie's grandfather died. O'dell Anderson Frandsen. He was an old man. He lived a good life. And he had a family that loved him.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I only knew one of my grandfathers, and he died when I was quite young. So, when I married Valerie, I acquired a new grandfather. A cowboy grandfather. Maybe we could say something of a cowboy intellectual.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">A one sentence biography: After WWII, he went to school on the GI Bill, earned a degree in range science, then spent his career looking after the Utah and Idaho BLM rangelands, raising five kids with Ona, and then becoming a beloved grandfather and great-grandfather to more than I'm comfortable guessing.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I loved Grandpa Frandsen an awful lot. We hung out quite a bit when I lived in Utah. I asked him a lot of questions. He told me a lot of great stories. Stories no one else had seemed to have heard. I liked that. I was the outsider that had a special insider relationship. Or at least I liked to think I did. (I mean, he trusted me enough to let me drive his truck. Actually, it was his suggestion. On a rutted dirt road, even. Just to see the sights. Those of you that know Grandpa, you know this was no small thing.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Anyway, the funeral is in Utah, tomorrow, and while Valerie is there I am not. So I'm going to remember Grandpa by posting something I wrote to him nearly 14 years ago. I don't exactly remember the context, but I'm guessing it was for his 80th birthday. Probably we were all asked to write a memory. This is what I came up with.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">...</span></div>
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<span style="color: #660000; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">September 6, 2005</span></div>
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<span style="color: #660000; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Dear Grandpa,</span></div>
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<span style="color: #660000; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Sometimes memories are like spiderwebs. Spanning time rather than space, they seem to collect scattered thoughts and impressions and conclusions and ideas that stretch out across our consciousness. Bits and pieces of reality, real and imagined, all tangled up and connected to a single event. The event isn't meaningful in and of itself, but mean is given to it by the thoughts that cling to it.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #660000; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I've one such memory--a memory littered with the debris of stray thoughts which, over the years, have given it meaning.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #660000; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">The day before Val and I were married was a Friday. May 16th. Idaho Falls. I was nervous. I was anxious. I was wearing out the carpet with my pacing.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #660000; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">I remember walking all over that house. Upstairs. Downstairs. In the mudroom. In the dining room. In the living room. I remember worrying about things that seemed pretty important. Tuxes. Rings. Shoes. Family.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #660000; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">While I was walking around aimlessly, I remember that you were sitting comfortably on a living room couch. You were wearing a smile as big as a truck. The kind of happy and satisfied smile that starts at the eyes and works itself outward from there, so that your whole face reflected a sort of joyful, content, curious appreciation of what you were watching. While I wore a path in the carpet from pacing, your expression and posture seemed to say that you knew something that I didn't. A secret. A joke. Something happy and sad but on the balance good that you'd like to share if you could but I wouldn't understand so you didn't. You just smiled.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #660000; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">So while I worried about trivial things to keep from worrying about important stuff, you just smiled. While I was blinded by a kind of temporary insanity, you just smiled. While I remained convinced of my invulnerability and infinite wisdom, you just smiled.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #660000; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">See, with this memory, it isn't so much the event or the players or the punch line, but the thoughts, collected over time, that are now all caught up in that night of pacing and smiling. It seems to me now that I was worried because I didn't know anything (though I didn't know it then) and that you were happy and content because you knew maybe two more things than I did: that I knew nothing and (this you at least hoped) that it would all somehow be okay. I like to think you had more confidence in us than I had. And you hardly knew me. But you were okay having me around (I didn't yet smell of three-day old fish) and you seemed to believe that perhaps Valerie and I really did love each other. Well, maybe not <i>really</i> loved, but maybe we had just enough optimism and blissful naiveté, coupled with perhaps just enough responsibility and desperate stubbornness, to make of our marriage a humble success. And that maybe over the years, as we come to know in each other people completely different than who we thought we were marrying, that maybe, with a bit of luck, we'd be happy and content too.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #660000; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Phew... That's a lot of meat to hang from a teeny, tiny memory. But I've found a great deal of motivating goodness in our teeny, tiny conversations. Even in just a smile. you're my kind of people.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #660000; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Love,</span></div>
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<span style="color: #660000; font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">Nathan</span></div>
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goathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05561013052425473687noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7052859668960609943.post-78807184490307838002019-04-24T20:16:00.002-05:002019-04-24T20:27:57.112-05:00some thoughts on yesterday's school board meeting...Some (sort of lengthy) thoughts on our school board meeting yesterday evening (Tuesday, April 23):<br />
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(1) In a 7-2 vote, the board passed a budget that does not call for increasing local property taxes while earmarking funds for additional personnel and capital investments. This hasn’t happened in a while. It’s a good thing.<br />
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Why were there two objections? I can only guess. (And I'm afraid the answer has more to do with politics than policy.) One of the objectors was making a recorded comment to a News-Chronicle reporter as I left, so perhaps we’ll get to read about it tomorrow.<br />
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The budget calls for dipping into the fund balance (which is a kind of district savings account that accumulates, primarily, from one-off revenue--real estate transaction fees like from a warehouse sale, for instance) for some much needed capital improvements, including long overdue renovations to the high school auditorium. However, it is only a dip. Our overall budget is around $50 million. Remaining fund balance (though some of it is already earmarked for specific projects) is about 16 percent of that. To me, that’s a pretty healthy rainy-day fund (especially as this fund continues to grow through these one-off revenue sources; in other words, we don't have to actually set money aside to still grow our savings account).<br />
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Which brings me to this point: I believe this is a fiscally responsible budget. However, fiscal responsibility is not the only or even my primary concern as a school director.<br />
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It puzzles me that some would criticize the budget as being too aggressive (too spendy), and in the same breathe complain about the lack of resources to adequately fund this or that program.<br />
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Quality public services and infrastructure require spending. Without spending, infrastructure collapses and services simply don’t meet the end for which they were intended. Fiscal conservatism as a value to the exclusion of other values does not make for responsible government. It also does not make for communities that anyone wants to live in. I understand the duty of public institutions is to provide value for investment. Underfunded services are of poor value and therefore reflect poor governing. (Though, to be sure, sometimes those who govern are hampered by the tightfistedness of their constituents.)<br />
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In short, our schools don’t get better by not spending money.<br />
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I’m happy we’ve passed a budget without having to raise taxes. But I’m happier that we’ve passed a budget that will result in hiring three new teachers, an intervention specialist, and a much needed secretary (to deal with some state-mandated data reporting requirements), as well as upgrades to facilities (auditorium, student computers, classroom tech, and various deferred maintenance projects and equipment). These are not earth-shattering changes, but they will make our schools better—BECAUSE we chose to spend rather than save.<br />
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(2) From time to time I’ve heard grumblings about the time the board spends in executive session. The implication is that the board is conducting business in private that should be conducted in public.<br />
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I can’t speak to practice before my time on the board, but since December, 2017, I can say that this charge is unequivocally false.<br />
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If the board is meeting in executive session, then we are discussing a matter that CANNOT, by law, be discussed in public. Which means it’s a personnel matter or a student disciplinary matter.<br />
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I don’t think any board member enjoys these meetings. We’re often discussing matters that weigh heavy. We all feel it. We all take it seriously. And, as annoying as it is to the public to see the board disappear behind a closed door—and in some rare cases for an hour or more—you should take the length of absence as a sign of our diligence in trying to fully understand the issues and engage in good-faith debate on the consequences of any particular action.<br />
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Personally, I’ve been impressed with the tone of compassion and demonstration of good will I’ve experienced in these meetings.<br />
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(3) The budget passed yesterday earmarks $100,000 for hiring a school resource officer. No decision has yet been made to hire a resource officer, but the money is in the budget should the board reach that decision.<br />
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There are several resource officer models. For instance, an armed security guard that pretty much is just that. Or, the district could fund the salary of a borough police officer who is specifically trained as a school resource officer, but is not a district employee and reports, ultimately, to the borough chief of police. The board is just beginning this discussion. Neither has the board made a decision to hire a school resource officer, nor on what model the district would choose should we decide on one.<br />
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However, based on the research I’ve reviewed, and given what I understand of the district’s needs, I am NOT in favor of hiring a school resource officer of any kind.<br />
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Presently. Which is to say my mind can be changed.<br />
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My review of the literature on school resource officers suggests that their presence tends to result in at least two negative consequences: (1) Ordinary disciplinary matters tend to escalate from the administrative to the criminal. (2) Reliance on school resource officers in managing disciplinary matters tends to contribute to what’s called the ‘school-to-prison pipeline’.<br />
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I’m less concerned about the later (in Shippensburg) than I am the former. However, I’m mostly concerned that (1) the desire to have an officer in the schools is a knee-jerk response to the fear of an event (school shooting) that having an officer most likely wouldn’t do anything to prevent anyway and (2) that the salary of a school resource officer would better serve our students’ needs invested in some other way—hiring a couple of social workers, for instance.<br />
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I look forward to what I hope will be productive debate on this matter in the coming months.<br />
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…<br />
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If you’ve comments, questions, or insight on any of the above, I welcome them.<br />
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(Did you really read all of that? Should I be impressed or alarmed?)goathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05561013052425473687noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7052859668960609943.post-67491634288273181022018-02-07T19:13:00.000-05:002018-02-07T19:13:26.073-05:00school "choice" and Senate Bill 2In the last board meeting of the Shippensburg Area School District, the board voted unanimously to approve a resolution in OPPOSITION to Senate Bill 2 (you can download and read the resolution <a href="https://app.agendamanager.com/sasd/meeting/view/28821/30541/278015" target="_blank">here</a>). We asked our representative in the Pennsylvania Senate, <a href="http://www.senatoralloway.com/" target="_blank">Richard Alloway</a>, to reverse his support for the bill.<br />
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Yesterday, I, along with (it would appear) all the county commissioners, borough and township officials, superintendents and school board directors in his district, received an email from Senator Alloway suggesting that we must have passed this and similar such resolutions because we misunderstood the bill. I don't believe we did.<br />
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Below, I've posted Senator Alloway's email and, following that, my response (sent today). Enjoy.<br />
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February 6, 2018<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span></div>
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Dear County Commissioners , Borough Officials, Township Officials, Superintendents, and School Board members, </div>
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A number of local school districts, boroughs and townships recently passed resolutions in opposition to Senate Bill 2, legislation that would help students in underperforming schools pursue other educational opportunities. Based on the content of these resolutions, I believe a great deal of the local opposition stems from misinformation that has been intentionally spread by those who want to see the bill fail. I have enclosed a fact sheet that includes additional information on this proposal for your consideration . </div>
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Most importantly, I feel it is critical to reiterate that Senate Bill 2 would not have any effect on funding for our local schools in the 33rd Senatorial District. The legislation only applies to schools that rank among the lowest 15 percent in terms of academic achievement and performance across the state. <b>No schools in our area meet that criteria, meaning the bill would not affect local students or schools in any way. </b></div>
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The legislation only seeks to help students who are trapped in consistently failing schools. In those cases, students and parents would be empowered to redirect a portion of the money the state contributes for their education toward programs that better meet the student's unique educational needs. </div>
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For example, the Harrisburg School District currently spends more than $18,000 per student. A student withdrawing from that district receives just $5,700 in their Education Savings Account (ESA), while the remaining $12,000 stays in the district. Essentially, the ESA model will allow the state money to follow the student instead of the school. States that have followed a similar approach have seen improved student performance both in public schools and among students who opt-out of public schools. </div>
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Ensuring accountability for the use of ESA funds should be a priority, and measures included in the bill are designed to protect against fraud and abuse. Participating education providers would also be required to meet strict standards to measure learning gains in key areas. </div>
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The goal of the legislation is not to take anything away from public schools or school districts. Instead, the bill seeks to meet the educational needs of all students in the most efficient and effective ways possible. That is a goal I believe we can all support, and I will continue working toward that objective as a member of the Senate Education Committee.</div>
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I hope that you find this information to be useful. Please feel free to contact me if you need additional information or would like to discuss this issue further.</div>
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Sincerely,</div>
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Senator Rich Alloway</div>
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Dear Senator Alloway,</div>
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I appreciate your email. I appreciate your effort to attempt to clarify your understanding of Senate Bill 2. However, I do not believe that I, nor any director of the Shippensburg Area School District, misunderstood the bill.</div>
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You claim that the bill would not affect any local schools. That may be true, now, but only because none of our schools fall in the bottom 15% of districts. Presently. They have in the past and, while hopefully not, they may very well fall into that category in the future. So, your contention is misleading, because, in fact, the bill _might_ affect local students or schools.</div>
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Furthermore, you also contend that the goal of Senate Bill 2 is not to take anything away from public schools. Well, that may not be the goal, but it will surely be the effect.</div>
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Consider: if one family in a qualifying school (Harrisburg School District, for example) elects to take the option to leave the public school, the money allocated to that student ($18,000) leaves the district, but the district still has the responsibility of educating all remaining children...with $18,000 less in their budget. Their burden has not been significantly decreased, but the resources allocated to fulfill its mission have. It seems obvious to me that such a system would only do further harm to already struggling districts and put the most disadvantaged students in these districts at a further disadvantage. Why would you support a bill that will only serve to HURT those who most need help?</div>
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Even if you believe that there is no hope for these failing districts and that the best hope for children is to have an affordable "choice" to leave the public school, that move will, at best, only be taken by those families whose parents take the most interest in their children's education, but will further handicap those children whose parents are not sophisticated enough to navigate such a system. Again, Senate Bill 2 would only HURT those who are already the most disadvantaged. This is not good social policy. </div>
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Senator Alloway, please retract your support for Senate Bill 2. The "school choice" movement is not good for our schools, and it is not good for children. (But it is good for the corporate interests that profit from "choice." Don't let them buy your vote. Do what's right for PA.)</div>
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Sincerely,</div>
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Nathan Goates</div>
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Director, Shippensburg Area School District</div>
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P.S. In regard to your "fact sheet," I suggest you revisit the evidence you think you have that supports school choice. By my review of the scholarly literature, the evidence to support the efficacy of school choice in lifting the quality of education is thin at best. By my reading, the scholarly consensus is that the market ideology of "choice" improving educational outcomes overall simply does not pan out.</div>
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goathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05561013052425473687noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7052859668960609943.post-68580888137514279392017-02-22T10:43:00.003-05:002017-02-22T10:48:33.246-05:00on creativity and power and resistance to change<div style="color: #454545; line-height: normal;">
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">From your friendly neighborhood applied social psychologist and b-school prof: Some free advice for managers, administrators, elected officials, parents, and anyone with supervisory (or really any kind of) influence over other human beings...</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">When folks come to you with ideas or suggestions for change, the stuff that drives those ideas is energy. Creative energy. And creative human energy is perhaps the most valuable thing on the planet. It's the stuff that moves mountains and gets spacecraft to Mars. Creative energy should not be squandered.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', serif;">In the face of a new idea, the worst possible response is to shut it down completely. In other words, to say no. "No" kills creative energy. It kills it in kids and it kills it in employees and it kills it in constituents.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">When folks come to you with ideas, with creative energy, I believe it's the responsibility of those in power to harness that energy. Direct it. Channel it for good. With creative energy comes opportunity. This </span><i style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', serif;">is</i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;"> the hard work of management--reconciling the varied and diverse interests of varied and diverse stakeholders.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', serif;">*** Maybe you can't say yes, but you can say yes to something else. ***</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">So, in the face of an idea, suggestion, critique, or complaint, take advantage of the situation, see it as an opportunity to harness creativity to do something cool. This will likely require some humility. Perhaps </span><i style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', serif;">a lot </i><span style="font-family: "georgia" , "times new roman" , serif;">of humility. You will likely have to give away power. You may lose some control. But you also may be able to do much more than you would ever be able to do alone.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: georgia, 'times new roman', serif;">Relatedly, beware of those who always say no. It comes from a place of fear. A place of weakness. It comes of apprehension over losing what little power the nay-sayer believes they enjoy. And when you hear no, realize that, often, what you're actually hearing is a response driven by fear. Fear of losing control. But understanding the origin of that fear may lead to a way forward.</span></div>
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goathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05561013052425473687noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7052859668960609943.post-46277761971208087242017-02-02T10:47:00.000-05:002017-02-02T10:47:07.467-05:00a brief essay on markets, competition, and the role of government in protecting libertyIn conversation with a conservative-minded friend, I realized that he was operating under a pretty fundamental misunderstanding of my beliefs about markets and the role of government. It also occurred to me that probably a similar misunderstanding extends among many conservative minded-folks regarding many liberal-minded folks. So, in an effort to clarify, and maybe build a bridge, I offer the following:<br /><br />I absolutely believe in free markets. I believe in competition. In principle, I support the risk/reward dynamic inherent in capitalist commercial entrepreneurism. I believe really awesome things happen when folks employ their creativity and ambition and start businesses and build things and innovate to satisfy needs and wants we have and sometimes didn't know we had. I am in love with creativity. I admire productive innovation and ambition tremendously.<br /><br />However... I also believe in rational checks to the free-ness of markets. Because individual interests must be held in check less their execution infringe on the liberties of others.<br /><br />I am a civil libertarian.<br /><br />To illustrate my point, I think pollution offers a poignant example.<br /><br />Imagine a firm. Maybe this firm makes paper products. Paper products are good. I believe in paper. I buy and use paper. I think there should be firms that make paper. <br /><br />But a byproduct of paper manufacturing can be a lot of nasty gluppity-glup. For simplicity's sake, let's imagine two options for disposing of the gluppity-glup. The first option is just to pour it in the river. Easy. Convenient. Economical. And absolutely profit maximizing. Good for shareholders. Good for customers (who get cheaper paper products). The second option involves investing in costly controls which reduce the toxicity of the gluppity-glup, and flipping the bill for the transportation of it to some location where it can be disposed of in a way that minimizes its impact on the natural environment and other human beings, which probably also involves paying someone else to take it and further process it. That's costly. And will undoubtedly have the effect of decreasing shareholder value, increasing the price of paper products, or both.<br /><br />Unchecked by regulation, the firm has little incentive not to dump their waste in the river. (I say "little." There likely will be some push back from folks downstream, and maybe they get some bad press and stuff, but these incentives, ultimately, have proven not to be sufficient to induce firms from dumping their gluppity-glub...or engaging in all kinds of other social ills in the name of profit maximization.) But what's wrong with polluting the river? Well, in doing so, the firm has pushed off the cost of producing paper onto others. Economists call this an externality--meaning that the firm has externalized, or pushed off some of the costs of production onto others, without the consent, will, or even necessarily the knowledge that they have been thus burdened. The farmer downstream who relies on pure water to feed her crops. The fishermen who rely on the river to extract a living by harvesting healthy fish. On the recreationalist, who swims in the river. And so on.<br /><br />Of course, the consequences of polluting the stream go far beyond that. The interconnectedness of all things is a central tenet of biology (if not all the sciences). Screw up the river, and you screw up all sorts of stuff, including the animals you know best and maybe care about most--those that wear clothes and walk around on two legs.<br /><br />It's not clear to me what people mean when they talk of big government versus small government. I think that means different things to different people. But if by "big government" people are referring to the world of regulations that they perceive as a hindrance to business or whatever else, I challenge those folks to think of regulation not as restricting liberty, but protecting it.<br /><br />One man's liberty ends at the next man's nose, as the expression goes. Regulation exists to protect your nose from my elbow, so to speak.<br /><br />One way to think of any regulation is as a response to someone, somewhere, having been an asshole. Someone (or a group of someones) was unable to check their self-interest through personal morality and, in its execution, imposed a significant cost to the liberty of another. Thus, government must step in. Acting to protect individual liberty. Creating stronger incentives for individuals and organizations to act in the public good than existed previously.<br /><br />Now, of course, there will be inefficiencies and redundancies. Sometimes (often?) well-meaning regulation has unintended and even disproportionately harmful consequences. It is absolutely rational to review, critique, and challenge the logic of specific regulations. And when errors can be shown, we should correct them. <br /><br />But... To argue against regulation on principle is to argue against the role of government in protecting individual liberty. And I believe protecting individual liberty is. the. primary. responsibility of government in the first place.goathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05561013052425473687noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7052859668960609943.post-48985769616553379842016-05-30T13:56:00.000-05:002016-05-30T15:46:43.471-05:00happy memorial dayFor your Memorial Day wiener roast, here's a playlist. Enjoy.<br />
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goathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05561013052425473687noreply@blogger.com0