No Thanks

I don't like celebrating birthdays. I don't know if I have mentioned it, but I think birthdays should not be remarked upon. As I wrote in that other post, the same holds true for other days of commemoration -- it is offensive to me that we need the reminder to thank our parents or our veterans, and the fact that people feel heartened by our setting aside this special time simply highlights our sorry state. Thanksgiving is no exception.

"Hey look," you say, "I want to make a list of all the things I am grateful for."

"Nice work," I respond, "but why didn't you make that list yesterday? Was something stopping you? Do you need a reminder? Thanksgiving is on the calendar every year so while you are counting days until your colonoscopy, you can pass through November, see that such a day exists, and maybe look up and take a moment to be appreciative on a random Tuesday in April."

I try to remind students that Jewish prayer includes an element of thanks in each of the day's central prayers. They respond, "sure, but that thank you is thanking God for all he has done."

"True," I explain, "but once you are in the habit of thanking, who stops you from expanding upon that once you are having a conversation with a person and not with God?" Jewish law has a notion of "hakarat hatov", recognizing the good that another has done. That's an every day thing, regardless of the presence of football, turkey or political arguments amidst too much Pabst Blue Ribbon.

That all being said, I do see the good in the day because we clearly, as a nation, have sunk to a level of depravity that, were it not for this one day, would not include a simple appreciation for the world around us. If we didn't have Arbor Day we would never say thank you to a tree. Without Grandparents' Day, we would drop the kids off and run to Olive Garden without even a mumbled "thanx." So I do take some time to stop and smell the Rosens today, and make a phone call, send an email, or just construct a mental list of those people, places, things and experiences which formed me and turned me into the sour, bitter, sometimes sweet and even occasionally salty but never umami dish of cynicism that I am.

And tomorrow, I'll do it again.

So for the record, I have two great siblings who have magically delicious families and an extended family who make me feel like family. I have a wife who embodies the 3 B's -- beautiful, brilliant and benevolent, and 2 kids who make me proud daily. I live in a community of strong and driven people whose warmth carries me week to week. I have a great job at a school which is top of a pretty impressive heap. Solid house in the suburbs, a dog who has yet to kill me, and food on the table. I was raised by parents who taught me to do more right than wrong and celebrate who I am all the time. I live in a time of miraculous technology and deepening understanding of the world. Heritage, and opportunity, culture, high and low. A car in every pot hole and a chicken in the garage fridge. We got this. And if I forget these gifts tomorrow, next week or next month, o reality, then I don't deserve any of it.

A Sparky post

I came home today in a foul mood. Between the COVID, the cold, the darkness settling early, the demands of the job, the myriad papers to deal with regarding this and that, I just wanted to curl up and kill everyone. A little depression. It happens.

Sparky came home a bit later and asked to be picked up. I held him for a while and it felt good. Eventually, as all good things must, it came to an end and I had to hand him off to do something less important. He was OK with that. He always is, good sport that Sparky.

Once I was done, I saw him give me the eye. He moved towards me, and I, to him. He saw my willingness to engage and he moved towards the living room and Captain James Tiberius Kirk. A few years ago, under circumstances which I neither care to divulge nor remember, we found ourselves owners of a poorly rendered Kirk stuffed toy. For a while, I propped it up over the in-wall air conditioner claiming "it just materialized there one day." Eventually, for lack of a more suitable alternative, Sparky decided to give it a taste. And it stuck. Now, many chomps later, Kirk has been the go-to toy for both Sparky and Princess, providing minutes of joy as they fight over him, rip him to shreds and do all the things that the aliens in the alpha quadrant failed to do to him, and all the females in the beta quadrant succeeded at.

But I digress.

Sparly leapt at the doll and grabbed it with what's left of his teeth. He had one removed because he wanted to prove that the tooth fairy was a dog, or because it was infected. I forget which. He growled. He thrashed. He did his best imitation of a dog with all of its teeth, growling and thrashing. He made it clear, through a series of grunts and growls that I was to fight his for this toy and make sure that he won. He mumbled something about Wookies ripping arms off so I decided to let him win.

That lasted for half an hour. I crawled on the floor. I wrestled with him. I even, dar I say it, tussled with him. Yes, tussling was known to have occurred! There was some scrapping and egos were bruised. Any time I walked away, reassuring him that he had successfully defended his owenership of said doll, he growled, insisting that I return to challenge him and, no doubt, lose yet again. So I did. I crawled, I growled, I grabbed. I put my fingers in mortal danger, my toes at eternal risk. I went there, oh yes, I did. There was a place to where I went! Going there was an option I exercised on more than one occasion. Dagnabit and such.

In fact, I could not leave the room without his whining and bellyaching about how I was leaving him alone, game unresolved. "Unresolved?" I queried. "You bit my hand and threatened the well being of my nose -- I concede! Kirk is your bee-atch! I shan't challenge you any further!" He was unfzed. No fazing was had by him. Fazeless he remained as he growled and whined and insisted that I appraoch, for he had mastered Kirk and who was I to breathe his air when he had attained those lofty heights and even worse, who was I to reject the challenge? So I assumed my position, facing the impossible headlong and continued the siege. I fought him, tooth and follicle. He threatened and I cowered hoping that each parry would be the last. Always disappointed.

Then Julie walked in with a bowl of beans. I repeat "beans." I just want to make that clear. We're talking beans. Frijoles Negros. Sparky went over to the sofa and inquired, regarding said beans. Julie offered them and Sparky jumped up, onto the sofa to indulge. I waited. Eventually, I growled. "I have your Kirk," I yelled. "This is your toy, your object of growlage" I insisted.

Sparky looked at me. He did not move.

"What the hell are you doing?" He said calmly. "I'm eating some goddam beans. Would you grow up?"

Oh, say...

 Next in the series. If you were following then this would be as easy as, um, pie. I sent this out to my students. We'll see if they get it.

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I just threw this list together. See if you can figure out what all the words on the list have in common. They are listed in no particular order -- I just wrote them down as I thought of them.

Love

Oat

Rust

Able

Rack

Lick

Hair

Hick

Hill

Hat

Hasten

Hart

Hum

Hunk

Hive

Hump

Lean

Lass

Lose

Raze

Lout

Limb

Ripple

Row

How

Hew

Over

Up

At

I don't know if this exists anywhere online, but try to figure it out without looking for the answer on the web. 

Divided we stand

 Sorry for an unpopular or uncomfortable post, but I gotta speak what's left of my mind.

I'll just start by saying that you don't know how I voted. I'm pretty darned sure of that. Heck, I'm not even sure how I voted. Probably by mail, but possibly female also. The details are cloudy; ask again later.

But now that the election is over (though sans fat lady, because of the practice of not body shaming anyone, who can be sure?) politicians everywhere are calling for unity.

I don't know what unity is and I sense that it is impossible.

Democrats and republicans have, if you boil it down, 2 different underlying views of the role of government. There are opposing notions of the US's position on the world stage and the diplomatic moves that we should be taking. If we all could find a way to agree, we wouldn't have the system that we have -- we simply see the structure, function and position of government and the country differently from each other.

Then the calls come for unity. But even if I am willing to accept person A or B as the president and I will do my best not to spit every time his name is mentioned, I still, on a deep and philosophical level, disagree with policies, practices or positions that person A or B champions. We cannot be unified because we are, at the deepest level, still divided. Are we supposed to act unified in some public forum for the sake of appearances? Or is the call for unity a call for "you lost, now compromise your values - I won so I don't have to compromise mine!"

I remember very little from Social Studies class in grades 6-8, but I recall that I was taught that the responsibility of the majority is to protect the right of the minority to disagree. If enough people find the disagreement position persuasive, then it will eventually become the majority, and will have to protect the new minority's position. Unity is NOT to goal -- partisanship is not only inevitable but necessary. What are we expecting other people to do -- abandon their beliefs? Suddenly concede that because a majority feels a certain way, it is meaningless to feel stridently otherwise?

Yes, I know, a house divided will not stand and all that, but a house built on a foundation of resentment and superficiality will collapse at the first breeze. I won't ask anyone to defend, support or condone moves that I feel, at my core, are abhorrent and destructive. I won't ask for unity. I'll ask for respectful division as protected by the laws of legal expression and the democratic process. Don't ask me for anything different.

Class where? For?

 

News has come out that Pfizer has a potential Covid vaccine, one which is 90% effective. If we assume that this 90% is enough to embolden those vaccinated, we are on the cusp of some sort of progress back to “normal.” But will we ever actually go back to the way things were before last March? In some ways, maybe, but the pandemic has fueled innovation and driven technology while making us reevaluate how we live and I think that in some ways, we will not take steps back. Companies will allow more workers to stay home and work virtually. Contactless check-out lines in supermarkets will become the standard. Restaurants that introduced delivery will not stop delivering. People who have concerns about their health will take more opportunity to wear masks, stay distant and not shake hands or hug. Telemedicine, once offered cannot be taken away. The same holds true in education.

Schools, like it or not (speaking as a teacher) have been operating on a distance model either entirely or in concert with live classes. Teachers who are in school buildings are still, simultaneously, teaching students who are at home. Whether or not a teacher thinks that the “Zoom” class is as effective or personal as a live class, it is an option that it will be hard to deny. Snow days, students who are a little sick but want to listen in, or who are on vacation but don’t want to miss content will be able to join their classes. Though this was available before Covid-19, it was rarely used. Students out for extended periods sometimes had a friend Face-time them in but the teacher, even if aware, made no accommodation for that mode of learning. Only schools that specialized in this method of delivery offered it. But now, I foresee that all changing.

I anticipate not only students’ opting to stay home more and yet still wanting to be “in-class” and teachers confronted with poor weather or personal demands not wanting to miss a full day’s salary teaching remotely. If we think that the platform is an effective mode of instruction, so much so that we continue to use it AT ALL after a vaccine appears, then we should be leveraging its advantages, the primary one being that we are free of geographical constraints. Colleges offering all their classes digitally (synchronous and not) have students going to Hawaii or elsewhere, figuring “I can attend the classes from anywhere, so why should I be where the weather isn’t perfect?”

Private schools, then, need not limit themselves when recruiting to students in their vicinity! A private school can offer an experience as academically rich to a student in a small town who, otherwise, would either have to move to take advantage of what the school has to offer, or would be out of luck, having to be satisfied by a (possibly less rigorous or specialized) public school. Students from anywhere can learn from the caliber of teachers that normally would be out of reach, or cover material and curricula that would never find its way to a building in every physical corner of the world.

True, the “campus experience” would be missing if the student was confined to a Zoom classroom, but the extra-curriculars (at least ones that can’t include a virtual participant as easily as a classroom can) are only one dimension of the time in school. Homeschooled students miss the same opportunities and have found ways to supplement their classes with trips or meetings that supplement the intellectual part of their daily lives. If we truly value the academics in our schools and the teachers are already making alterations to include the resident students who choose to be on Zoom, then offering that option to outsiders adds no additional prep work or financial investment. The trade-off for the student could be a reduction in tuition as the students gets only a part of the overall experience. Would there be some missed socializing? Yes. But there would also be some otherwise missed acculturation. A student who would not expect to have access to a religious school because of the lack of one in a community could become part of the intensive religious education that another community has to offer.  Affiliations via other facets of culture can be explored and a student can find himself virtually surrounded in both classrooms and informal meetings by likeminded students and faculty. Additionally, students whose families move would not need to abandon their social niche – they could finish their schooling in the school at which they began it.

This would change recruiting models, increasing certain aspects of competition, but it would increase opportunity in all directions. Marketing would shift as would economics since local students might opt for the same on-line experience, but class sizes and staffing could also be reconsidered with the school offering entire Zoom classes populated only by virtual students. Local, smaller communities could have students who band together and rent a local room and attend class as a group, creating a satellite campus in areas in which any particular style, mode or approach towards education would never have been available.

Unless we ditch virtual learning and assume that everything will truly go back to the status quo ante, we will continue to incorporate these parallel modalities of instruction. Once we are doing that, we should look ahead to see how we can parlay these innovations into a new model and eventually standard of educational offerings.

FE? FU!

 

So I was sitting down and tucking in to my dinner of cottage cheese and almonds, or as I like to call it, "sadness" and I figured I would review the health benefits of said food. I was sure that I was getting enough protein and even a smattering of fat, but I was curious about the amount of iron because I'm still working on growing a solid exoskeleton so I need to keep track of stuff, you know.

I looked at the almonds...1 milligram of iron in 28 nuts (or 1/28th of a milligram per nut, for those fans of fractions, or "franctions" as I like to call them) which accounts for 6% of what some fat cat in congress decided I need to eat each and every day. Politics...amirite?

Then I looked at the cottage cheese label (Friendship, 2%, small curd because I can't handle the big curds). Here's what I noticed when it comes to iron:

Yep, that's right -- zero milligrams in a half-cup serving. But don't worry, that 0 mg is 2% of the recommended daily allowance.

Let's review, shall we?

One milligram is 6% but zero milligrams is 2%. This, clearly, is why I failed math all those times I tried to not fail math.

And theoretically, while I only get 2% by eating half a cup, the zero milligrams I could get if I choose to eat a full cup would add up to 4%. If I eat 25 cups of cottage cheese, then I will get zero milligrams of iron that will be 100% of my daily allowance! The possibilities are endless. In fact, I can choose to eat all sorts of other things that also have zero milligrams of iron, and get my daily allowance that way, right? I'm hoping this works for other nutrients as well. Vitamins more honored in the breach than the observance, indeed.