The Cure...

It's interesting to me that the cure for feeling overwhelmed and stressed out by too much work and too many commitments is... to drop it all and go out dancing!

In honor of the halloween weekend, the girls put on party dresses with kitty ears and devil horns and went downtown! I REALLY didn't want to go because I couldn't shake the feeling of having SO much work to do - but having already cancelled most of my other weekend plans in the name of busyness I decided not to bow out of this too.

We had an awesome time! Just exactly what I needed to get my equilibrium back and feel on top of the world again. I went to church this morning feeling that God is so good!

Ironic - but true. What a cure. :)

Freedom

“Freedom is the awareness of alternatives & the ability to choose.”
– Alan Wheelis

I wish my students understood the extent to which they curtail their own freedom with lackluster academic performance! They don't get deferred gratification - the way their hard work today will pay off in the future. They are not only NOT aware of all the alternatives out there, but they don't see that they DO have the power to choose - IF they lay the foundation now...

Sigh.

Since When is Social Justice "PC"?

I was both amused and disturbed by Mona Charen’s column this week about Columbia Teacher’s College and the politics of education.
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/MonaCharen/2006/10/13/letting_the_pc_slip_show

I have long suspected that one of the real reasons for the attacks on public schools since the 80’s is the realization by the right that the empowerment of the underclasses happens predominantly through the schools! It is teachers who say “you can become anything you want, and I’ll show you the path to get there.” Poor parents are not all going to either know the path or to believe in it. Hence, if they can decimate the schools, they can preserve the upper class as is into the future.

So Charen attacks Columbia’s statement that “we see teaching as an ethical and political act” as totally inappropriate, and the notion that teaching is part of “a larger struggle for social justice” as just wrong. (Then of course she goes on to blame the teacher’s unions for schools offering less than great education – typical.)

Because I can see through her rhetoric, I can afford to be amused by it. But given that much of her readership may not stop to think about public schools as the foundation of the democracy (and that democracy itself has been under attack in recent years) her column is still disturbing.

Gen X on Sex

More from “I’m Not a Feminist, But…”
> Why did Viagra hit the market before a male oral contraceptive?
>If women suffer from penis envy, why do men have more sex changes?
> When men complain that wearing a condom is a hardship, are they comparing it to giving birth, or having an abortion?

The Old Scout Goes Off!

I don't usually think of Garrison Keillor as especially political or fiery, but this week's "Old Scout" column is serious! I often scan his columns in the Sunday Strib - and am sometimes bored - but not this time.

He begins: "I would not send my college kid off for a semester abroad if I were you. Last week, we suspended human rights in America, and what goes around comes around. Ixnay habeus corpus."

Turns out that Congress in its wisdom has determined that an "enemy combatant" is simply any noncitizen that the president declares to be an enemy combatant - and that person can be arrested and held for as long as authorities wish without any right of trial. Imagine now that your brother or sister - an American citizen - were suddenly arrested & held in another country - and you could not contact them, and they could not even contact a lawyer. For years. Oh, and it's up to the president how much torture is OK while they're imprisoned, too. Yup - America 2006.

We'd do well to remember - what goes around comes around...

"I was a Republican..."

"I was a Republican until they lost their minds."
- Charles Barkley

In his Oct 2 New York Times column, Paul Krugman includes this quote as an example of how the "right-wing coalition" of religious and economic conservatives seems to be crumbling. He argues that because the alliance was never one of shared goals, but rather of utility, it was always vulnerable to the kind of stress it feels today.

No shock there...

The Foley scandal cracks me up - the hypocrisy is nothing but amusing. And now that the Republicans are bringing their convention to the Twin Cities in 2008 (great strategy to push our purple state a little redder!) it makes me wonder how the cities will like playing host to all that! I found extensive coverage of their last convention still archived on New York Magazine's site: http://nymag.com/rnc/index.htm - some very funny stuff!