Bad News in a Good Way

Prince John:  I don't want to hear any bad news. So, what kind of news is it?

Sheriff of Rottingham: Well, to be perfectly frank, it's bad.

Prince John: [shouts] I knew it! I knew it would be bad news. Wait, I have an idea. Maybe if you tell me the *bad* news in a *good* way, it wouldn't sound so bad.

Sheriff of Rottingham: [thinking] The bad news in a good way. Yes, I can do that. The bad news in a good way. Well, here it goes.

[hysterically]
Sheriff of Rottingham: W-wait till you hear this! I just saw Robin of Locksley, he's back from the crusades. 

[laughs]
Sheriff of Rottingham: You know, he just beat the *crap* out of me and my men.

[laughs]
Sheriff of Rottingham: He hates you and he loves your brother, Richard!

[laughs]
Sheriff of Rottingham: And...

[laughs]
Sheriff of Rottingham: ... he wants to see you hanged!

[laughs] 

Sheriff of Rottingham: We, we're in a lot of trouble! 

[laughs and snorts loudly]

Prince John: [furious] What, are you crazy? Why are you laughing? This is terrible news!

So, let me give this a try....

Well, we're getting a temporary additional six hour aide!  Hooray!  How awesome for us!  Finally.

(in tiny, quiet voice)

We also get the kid who has several fall-to-the-floor seizures a day, who can't be outside if it's over 90 degrees (which royally screws up APE, which he gets), and who requires injections to stop some seizures that Nurse P won't train us to do, so we get to call an ambulance if he's seizing for more than 5 or 8 minutes (different documents say different things) and we can't get ahold of dad.

Yay us?

Delayed Reactions

Superhero is known for having delayed reactions to things.  Some big things take a couple of days.  Small stuff can take a few minutes to an hour.

Despite Aide J being out (again) and having no sub (again), Superhero handled the day fairly well, until after recess when Bulldozer hit him for no (apparent) reason.

It took 10 minutes for Superhero to realize what happened, so he turned and hit me.

Sigh.

I think I have everything done for New Boy B, though I still have lingering concerns over our ability to keep him safe and adequately supervised.  I doubt anything will be done about it, though I did mention to Principal S that if he does come, it'll be imperative that, if at all possible, someone covers any openings I have.  None of this "Oh, J is out and there's no sub" stuff.

Incidentally, she has missed 15 days of this past school year.  If she were a kid, she'd have gotten an excessive absences letter.

Know what's scary?

That's three weeks.

She has missed three weeks of work.

That's half of what Aide T missed after having surgery.

I have missed two days this year.

Pictures and Suspicions

This is my favorite of the bunch (darn the hazy sky, though).

At Seasons of the Vine, in CA Adventure.  Right now, I'm enamored of playing with the aperture in order to blur backgrounds and such.  It's also very much hit and miss right now, but using the zoom lens seems to be a quick shortcut.

Yes, Patrick, putting your hand up will stop the giant wave of water about to crash on your head.

The full album can be found here.

In other news, Aide T was out today.  We (or at least I) knew that.

So when Male Aide J walks in (the space cadet one) and says, "I'm here for Aide J," I stared at him for a minute.

"You're here for...who, now?"

"Aide J."

"No way.  Are you sure?"

"Uhh...."

So I call the office and they confirm that, yes, he's there for Aide J.

A few minutes later, who walks up to the door but Sub Aide C, who has the unfortunate tendency to annoy many students just by her very existence.

"I'm here for Aide T," she said.

Good, I thought, because if you said you were here for Aide S, I was gonna go home.

We actually...survived okay.  I plopped myself down with Elastigirl on one side and M on the other.  Aide S sat with M on one side and Superhero on the other.  Essentially, I had Elastigirl, she had Superhero, and we shared M.

Mr. Voice had a happy morning because he got breaks unless one of the two of us (who have been DT trained) was available to work with him.

Space Cadet I sat with Princess and Sleeping Beauty, because C tends to set off both of them, and after the Sleeping Beauty Incident on Friday, that was the last thing I wanted.

So I put C with Angel, PH, and Bulldozer.  It was...interesting.

But, we did make it, with some reshuffling of lunches (the last thing I could do was News-2-You, which tends to be a troublesome time anyway, without ANYbody who knew either the kids or how to do News-2-You).  Funnily enough, we began with the familiar refrain from last year:  "Aide S, do you want Elastigirl or everybody else?"

Today, she took Elastigirl.

Anyway, that's the fourth or fifth time that Aide J has managed to be absent on a day when someone else was going to be out too.  Hmph.

And yet, that's not even the...best part...of the day.  I'm getting another new boy -- this one has multiple disabilities (no worries), hemiplegia (also no worries), and seizures (some worries).

Why some worries?  Apparently, noise level can be a trigger for them.

Err...y'all who made this decision (namely, Program Specialist SBS)...have y'all heard Mr. Voice lately?

Then, I spent 20 minutes arguing with my printer for printing blank pages, when it was a teeeny, tiny Boardmaker margin error where it really thought there was another page that happened to be blank.

Happy Monday!

Busy Busy Busy

Eesh, that's what I get for sleeping away most of last week in a double-dose-of-Zyrtec-induced fog.  I just now finished the stuff that needed doing for the coming week.

Of course, this was the weekend that Patrick decided he wanted to go to Disneyland to ride his birthday rides by himself.  I should have protested more, except that after a very, very warm week, the temperature was pretty decent.

Plus...Food and Wine Festival.  :-)

I had a lobster lollipop -- and, coming from someone with huge texture issues with most seafood, I must say: yum!  (It could be that I will eat anything that's been fried and covered in panko, but who knows?)

But, knowing that I'd be stressed as the time ticked slowly by, I did something I haven't done in a really long time -- I rode absolutely no rides and just wandered around with my SLR, with 75-300 lens attached, and took lots and lots of pictures (which are very SLOOOOLY being transferred over to poor Data, because my old card reader does not fit with my new computer -- a situation I must remedy forthwith, because it already drained one battery...which is what I get for shooting about half the pictures in RAW because the stupid camera kept popping up the totally unnecessary flash).

Ahem.

Anyway, took lots and lots of pictures, some of which I will upload three months from now when the camera is done importing them.  I had so much fun, I'll probably go back in a few weeks with the kit lens (35 - 70ish, I think) attached to get some of the wider shots.

Sleeping Beauty

Primary teacher M has a staff member in her class, Aide A, that has the unfortunate tendency to cause people to get in trouble.  M has a system similar to mine (which, for the record, I stole from 4th Grade Teacher KC) where the kids are on color-coded sections of a chart and earn things for staying at the top.  Many kids, when they work with Aide A, end up having to change their card.

In my class, Sleeping Beauty and Angel are the only kids who have never had to change their card.  Or, rather, until today.

When she first started at our school last year, I commented that Sleeping Beauty could dig her heels in deeper than her little body would reach (she is of quite short stature; if it weren't that her facial features have matured to make her look like a very small sixth-grader, she'd look like a 2nd grader).

She's a bright, very happy, generally willing student, though she requires a lot of prompting to work -- especially in the mornings (she is not a morning person, hence the nickname).

So, we're doing News-2-You today.  I have a very small group due to Superhero having a mostly good day but being five seconds away from losing it, Mr. Voice having a difficult day, and PH  being about three seconds away from losing it.

Aide T put a few kids on the computer, and rotated with the rest.  M, Angel, and Sleeping Beauty were with Aide J.

Oops.

"Find 'baseball.'"

I heard that phrase probably a hundred and fifty times.  No encouragement, no 'let me show you the first one' no checking for understanding (which, to be fair, should not have been necessary), no nothing.

Brick wall, meet immovable force.

(Sleeping Beauty is, in fact, partly responsible for this because she was, of course, the immovable force.)

Eventually, Aide J took Sleeping Beauty's green card.

Except that Sleeping Beauty used to be known for planting herself in one spot and not budging.

Aide Mrs. B and Aide S had both come at that point.  Aide S stayed out of it (I think because she knew if she said anything, Sleeping Beauty would go right to it).  Aide Mrs. B tried to get Sleeping Beauty to walk over to her green cards, but when Sleeping Beauty plants her feet, she is going nowhere until she wants to.

Given that it's almost lunch time, I ask somebody to keep an eye on Superhero, who has simmered down quite nicely, and take Sleeping Beauty aside, telling everybody that I am going to explain to her in Spanish.

"What happened?" I asked (in Spanish).

"No se...trabajar," she said.  (I don't know work -- either 'I don't know how to work' or 'I don't know what happened with my work.')

Her lower lip is trembling.

"Are you sad?"

"Si, triste, trabajar," she says.  (Yes, sad, work.)

"You have to take off your green card, but you can earn it back if you listen at lunch."  (Like she wouldn't....)  "Should we walk together to take it off?"

She nods, but balks when I try to take her hand.  "Juntas?" I remind her ("together?").  She walks over and takes it off, and goes to put her jacket in her backpack.  She walks over to get in line and buries herself in Aide S's side.

So here's the problem, and it's come up with Teach M and her Aide A as well.  I couldn't just say, "Never mind, Sleeping Beauty can keep her green card."  And, in fact, Sleeping Beauty was partly at fault.

But here's the other thing.  A freaking adult -- with three teenaged and pre-teen daughters -- started it.  Poor Sleeping Beauty.  :-(

Meanwhile, both Bulldozer and The Boss (girl J) were way into everybody's business today.  Sooner or later, they're going to get in the face of the wrong kid, and they're gonna get smacked.

And -- speaking, of course, not at the teacher who would have to discipline both parties to this -- they would so freaking deserve it.  Le sigh.

Watch Your Language

I've talked about the R-word before, but read this anyway.

(Also?  The practice scripting in the car?  I totally do that.)

Pet Peeves

Language evolves; I know that.  So I know that what I am about to be grumpy about may be completely wrong five or ten years from now, but please indulge me.

Everyone is all of a sudden up in arms about Microsoft forcing computer manufacturers to stop selling computers with Windows XP pre-installed.  Vista has been out since...what...last Novemberish?

Believe it or not, I'm with Microsoft on this one -- and that from the person that just bought a fresh copy of Windows XP for Lore.

However.

Computer companies have limited resources.   Yes, even Microsoft.  There are only so many geeks who can write operating system code.  So when you work to develop a new OS, sooner or later, you have to shift your resources away from the old OS.

Anyway.

When you have lots of people chatting about computer things, you hear some interesting stuff, and it reminded me of a few pet peeves of mine.

1.  Downloading is taking something "down" (from a network) TO your computer.  The image is that the Internet is in the wires and the air floating above you and you are taking it out of the sky and putting it down onto your computer.

So, you download movies from iTunes to your computer.

You do NOT -- NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT -- download a program from a CD.  You install (see #3) a program from a CD.

2.  Uploading is when you take something from your computer and put it UP into that imaginary network in the sky.

So, you upload your video to blogger.

You do NOT NOT NOT NOT NOT upload a program to your computer from a CD (or ever, that I can think of).

3.  The following are all acceptable variants for putting software on your computer to use: install, load, putting XYZ on my computer.

Downloading software is NOT making it usable.  Downloading software is simply taking the file from the Internet and putting it on your computer.  Installing software is when you make it usable on your computer.

4.  You do not have "an iTunes."  It is a playlist or a library.  "Hallelujah" is in three or four playlists and is in my iTunes library.  It is NOT "in my iTunes."

5.  Windows XP is the operating system.  It is the stuff that is running on your computer ALL THE TIME.  Office XP/2004/etc. is an office suite.  It's a group of programs you use.  THE TWO ARE NOT THE SAME.

And finally...

6.  It drives me absolutely frelling bat**it insane when people say "I used my Word" or "I used my Works" or "I used my Outlook."  Yeah, you bought it...but you just don't say it that way. 

Testosterone and Pollen

Mix the two above, add in a dose of constipation, and possibly dad issues (the quote is "Dad go away" which either means "Dad, go away!" (I'm mad at Dad) or "Dad went away" (I miss dad)), and you have a not-very-happy Superhero.

Add in a double-dose of Zyrtec (one at 11:00 last night and another after waiting for the buses proved too much) for me, and you have one exhausted teacher.

Oh, yeah, and the middle school teachers from SMS came to observe Angel and Sleeping Beauty today....

Hmmm

Okay, I admit it -- I used to be a big fan of Mariah Carey, until her third album...so I sold out and watched all of American Idol tonight to see what would happen, and -- quality of singing aside -- something struck me.

I knew every single song, which means that everybody sang songs from her first albums -- including (yay me) one of my absolute favorites of hers (from her first album), "Vanishing."

But what does it say about her career that everybody chose her early songs?  I know she's released albums since Music Box.

(Googling has revealed that one of the songs was from the album that succeeded Music Box, Daydream.  My bad.)

But still...Daydream was 1995.  13 years ago.

No one could think of a Mariah Carey song they wanted to sing that was less than 13 years old?  Yikes.

Appearances Can Be Deceiving

When I was about twelve, I rode my bike to our local Hughes Market for something.

(Hughes, sadly, is no more, but the same people founded How's, which was the only place other than Gelsons where you could buy Patrick's mandarin orange yogurt -- until they stopped making it, but I digress.)

As I was locking my bike up, a...voter registration guy (surely, there's a name for that, and I'm just having a retrieval problem, right?) stopped me and asked me if I was registered to vote.

Being 12, and not so much with the social skills, I have no idea what I said, but I remember being a bit flummoxed.

I only mention that because it provides a lovely contrast for what happened today.

Aide S is six months or so younger than Patrick, and has been working at our school since Novemberish of the year after she graduated high school.  Despite some rough patches here and there (like the beginning of the year, when she forgot what "attention-seeking  behavior" was) she has matured nicely and is someone I can really count on.

I mention this to put what I am going to say next into context.

Aide S used to go to the school where I teach.  Her name is on a mural painted on the side of the building where 4th Grade Teacher KC's room is.  Her sister's name is painted on the mural on the side of our wall.

So imagine my surprise when I was examining the school's all-students portrait thingie.  This is a picture that shows, from preschool to sixth grade, all of the students.  I was, of course, looking for my kiddos.  Somehow, I found the sixth graders first (Superhero and Sleeping Beauty were right next to each other because their names just fit that way alphabetically but it made it easier to find them for someone who can't see the trees for the forest -- there is a word for that, but I can't for the life of me remember what it is) and was working my way backwards.

Elastigirl...check.  Mr. Voice wasn't here yet.  Check.  Ms. Walking Exposed Nerve, check and check.

I'm working my way back into the fourth graders, when I stop.

There, amidst the other fourth graders, was Aide S's face.

I haven't stopped chuckling since.

Good Ol' Science

Apparently, Southern California will have a big earthquake someday!

Gee, thanks, scientists.  I live maybe 20 miles from the interchange they keep rebuilding in exactly the same way after the every-20-years-or-so earthquakes knock it down.

And I bet the people who did this study got a huge grant for it.

Eesh.

What a Difference Some Levels Make

Soooo, just like the other day, when I made my histogram discovery, I've been going through old photos and re-rating them in iPhoto '08.

And I've been correcting some of the ones I'd deemed uncorrectable in iPhoto '06.  While iPhoto '06 did have some rudimentary levels correction and some hack and slash brightness/contrast (I know better than to use those), so any images that needed real work needed the work to be done in Photoshop.

I do have Photoshop (CS), which means I can't fix some of the lens distortion in buildings (that came in CS2), but obviously its color correction abilities far surpassed iPhoto '06.

'08 still does not have curves, but it has a highlight/shadows correction, much more responsive levels sliders (that could be the much more powerful CPU, too, to be honest) and better color correction.

The result is that some images that I thought were beyond fixing are actually looking...okay.  Many of the skies are still blown-out messes (to correct them enough with the highlight/shadows command would make the rest of the image look ridiculous) but a lot of the dusk and early evening shots are looking much better, and, obviously, tweaking the black levels of the pictures shot with the point and shoot (versus the Rebel) makes them look much better.

At some point, when I'm done, I'll take down the Picasa Album as it exists now and re-upload the newly-minted 5 star images.  (There are so many 4 star ones now, it'd break the account if I uploaded them.)

Ow

I'm lucky (if you tilt your head and squint really hard and remind yourself that there is something about a tendency to migraines that is "lucky") in that I usually get an aura before a migraine -- I nearly always get photosensitivity, I frequently get sparklies in my field of vision, and once in a while, I get this weird echoy feeling to my hearing.

I'm also lucky in that if I catch a migraine early enough and either medicate it or sleep it off, it usually goes away without getting too excruciating, which makes the auras a useful thing indeed.

So having one come on full blast without an aura as I was getting agenda books ready for next week?

I am not amused.

After a nap, I feel good enough to be bored (hence this post), but I've got the laptop screen (Data's big beautiful bright screen, even dimmed to its lowest setting, would be torture) dimmed to one notch above "off" and it's still too bright, so g'night all.

So, It's NOT the Simple Things

So, apparently, I don't fail at measuring.  I fail at mind reading.

I went to exchange my capris today, and sheepishly told them that I'd like to try on a pair before I exchanged them.

I went and tried on the next size smaller.

Yeah, too big.

So I got the next size smaller yet.

A bit loose, but I like my clothes loose.  If I were the form-fitting type, I probably could have gone one more size smaller.

So I went to pay, and they asked what size I'd ended up with.  I told them, and they asked where I'd gotten measured -- at their Reseda store (which I didn't know existed) or at the Northridge store (which I hadn't known existed until I asked google for a closer place than Burbank to exchange them in the first place).

"I measured myself," I said.

"Oooh," the saleslady (who was...petite, shall we say, and not someone you generally see working at a plus-size clothing store -- which, of course, made discussing my larger size fun).  "See, when we measure people in the store, we tell them to buy two sizes smaller than what the measurements say."

Um.

** spoowriter raises hand **

If you consistently tell people to buy two sizes smaller...why not change your sizing chart?  Just sayin'.  I mean, what if I'd ordered them online?

Still -- very comfy, now that they fit.  They also look like capris, instead of just-a-bit-too-short pants, now that they fit.

ETA:  D'oh.  Apparently, I also fail at not-losing-Matilda.  So much for making homework tonight.  However, the kids are absolutely loving the book.

Not Bad for a Tuesday

Wow...it's a Tuesday and everything is taken care of for next week except agenda book stuff and homework.  Nifty.

Meanwhile, I'm going through my photos from the trip Patrick and I took to Disney World in January.  The goal for that trip was PACK LIGHT.  We shared one suitcase, one laptop case, and one camera (my point and shoot -- more on that later).

And I've discovered something interesting: nearly all of the uncorrected photos have no real blacks.  Observe:

Namely, the left side of the histogram; I've had to drag the black level over 5% or so on nearly all of the photos (it actually makes a huge difference in the overall appearance of the photo).

Now, what I think -- correct me if I'm wrong, someone -- this means is that the camera tends to overexpose, as I don't generally have the same drop-off on the white side of the histogram.

I have no idea if that's common with this camera or not -- it got decent reviews when I bought it, though the SD 900 had been released at that point.  In point of fact, the SD 900 was not much more expensive, but the 800 had a nice selling feature for me -- a slightly wider-angle lens.

Real wide-angle lenses for SLRs cost a bundle.  My dad had some, but of course not for Canon digital SLRs (digital photography was in its infancy in early 2000), so even if I could find an adapter, they wouldn't manually focus -- and with my eyesight, manual focus is difficult.

(Not impossible, mind you, but difficult.)

Anyhow, real wide-angle lenses cost an arm and a leg, but the point and shoot covered a bit more of the spectrum than either the kit lens that came with my Rebel (18 - 55 mm, I think) and, of course, the zoom lens (60ish - 200ish, I think).  So I figured that if I was ever in a "oh, I just need a bit more screen real estate" pinch, the P&S would help.

Anyway, I really don't want to have to manually correct every single image that comes out of the camera -- right now, I'm just correcting potential 4 and 5 star images. But I'm wondering if there isn't an exposure compensation trick I can figure out with the point and shoot.

(All of which is moot if I'm interpreting the histogram wrong, but it was a fun thought experiment.)

Oh Dear

Communicate: Symwriter rocks.

I mean, it ROCKS.

Importing pictures is painless.  You can also place pictures free on a page (useful for simple symbol-supported books).  It recognizes parts of speech, and symbolizes things like, "Can I have a drink?  Yes, you can drink a can of soda" with the "can as a question" for the first one and a picture of a drink for the first "drink," and then the second can is "can as a verb" and "drink is a verb," and...

...and it's all great.

Except that it says it can't run under VMWare.  So I booted into Windows directly, and then Windows wanted me to activate it...again...which VMWare said wouldn't happen if I installed VMTools as they asked during installation.

Plus, nearly $300.

But, oh, would it make life easy.....

I Can NOT Afford This

Long time readers will know that Writing With Symbols has been giving me fits of late, though it seems to be working well on Lore so far.

But a few months ago, I was browsing some of the sites that have nifty products for people with special needs and discovered that there is a successor to Writing With Symbols: Communicate: SymWriter.  At the time, there was a trial available, but only for people in the UK.

However, the lovely folks at Mayer Johnson now have a trial available for folks in the US.  I think the nicest feature, if it works, will be the intelligent symbol use (i.e., it can tell the difference between "drink" the noun and "drink" the verb, and uses the appropriate symbol in the appropriate place).

I cannot afford this.  I know the district can't.

Someday....

It's the Simple Things

I'm a math nerd.  I love math.  I think it's fun to sit down with a difficult problem and puzzle it through until I find the solution.

Of course, I'm also very likely to finish a whole calculus problem and divide wrong in the last step.  I've been doing that since junior high, when math first got interesting.

So it should come as no surprise that I fail at simple things like measuring my own waist and hips.

Y'see, I have a very difficult time finding pants that fit for reasons not really related to overall size.  I have a long waist and short legs (inherited from my dad) and my hips are wider than my waist.

Every once in a while, I find a brand that fits well.  For a while, it was K-Mart's Route 66 line, but the material in those tended to irritate the skin on my stomach.  Then, WalMart had a line of Smart something or other that had an extra layer of soft material inside the waistband, which was nice.  Of course, to get the waist and hips to fit, those pants were too long by several inches.

Then I discovered Catherine's, and their main store brand, which fit very well.  Except, of course, that to fit my hips, the waist was rather big.

So, after a pair that I had bought at an outlet store tore (likely due to a flaw in the fabric or from being a display pair and having the fabric wear out in the sun) when I got an email with a coupon, I decided to try their Right Fit line, which supposedly tailors their pants, so to speak, to fit three different body types.

Plus, they come in petite lengths, which you wouldn't think someone who's pushing 5'7" would need, but...yeah.

Anyway, not having an actual sewing type tape measure, I used a piece of string and then measured it against a non-flexible construction-type tape measure.  I did hips and waist (I do, indeed, wear a "blue") and inseam (yup, petite it is).  I took care to pull the string relatively tight, but as I prefer my clothes loose, I didn't pull it...tight-tight.

Yeah.

What could go wrong, right?  I measured every possible measurement.

Well, apparently, I fail at measuring.  I was at least a size too big, and probably 2 sizes too big.  So, I'll take them back and downsize.

On the plus side, I got a very pretty t-shirt (Patrick wanted me to get this one but I'd have had to try it on -- it could either look really good or really bad) and a pretty white blouse with pink pin stripes.  Both have reasonable sleeves.

(Sleeves are a sore point with me, especially right now, as the current trend seems to be miniscule length sleeves.  

I have pretty serious sensory issues -- in that area, and sleeves have to reach a certain point on my upper arm before I am comfortable...too short, and I am pulling at them and adjusting them constantly all day.

For the record, my ideal sleeve length would be more or less what you'd get wearing a traditional polo shirt.

I must add, however, that one of the suggestions in the article linked to above about tactile defensiveness -- namely, that the first step in a desensitization campaign should be to give your child massages with lotion -- illustrates without meaning to an important point on the subject.

Kids (and adults) with sensory issues are not all the same.  I find lotion -- all lotion -- absolutely disgusting.  It's all I can do to tolerate hand sanitizer -- and that only because it evaporates quickly -- and aloe -- 'cause my skin is naturally dry.  Now, desensitization campaigns can be good, but don't believe everything you read on the Internet.  If that had been step one with me, I'd have run screaming for the hills.

Well, no, I wouldn't....  You just didn't do that kind of thing in my family.  But I'd have been deeply, abjectly, horribly miserable and probably worse off than when my biggest clothes issues were that my socks were too tight and my sleeves too short.)

Ahem.  That was a long parenthetical.  Sorry 'bout that, but I figure that since I'm an adult who can actually explain what some aspects of sensory integration problems feel like, those who are interested in such things might benefit from the description.

By the way, in the second article, I just discovered this absolutely profound thought (I am absolutely not being sarcastic here):  "in the case of the person who just clipped their nails, the discomfort comes because the nerves that have been sheltered are now exposed making the person acutely aware of sensations he does not ordinarily feel."

Oh.  My.  God.  That's me -- I keep my nails short now (years of piano playing and typing) so I'm probably desensitized to it some, but even now after I clip my fingernails, things just feel...wrong...for a while.  The same was true of losing teeth, hair cuts...anything that changed the sensations I'd managed to become accustomed to.

How's about that?  Learn something new every day.

A Dream Deferred

Note:  I have been composing this in my head all day.  Whether that will translate to a good blog post or not, I have no idea.

When I was seven, we went to Walt Disney World for the first time and, though I was too young to really enjoy World Showcase, we (of course) visited every one, and every attraction.

We also bought the "soundtrack," which I listened to often after that, as a way -- I think -- to remember the trip itself (I often visually 'flash' to where I first heard a song when I hear it again).

On that song was "Golden Dreams," from the American Pavilion.  Amidst the lyrics, there are audio clips of important moments in American history.

(Interestingly enough, there are no recreations -- anything that happened before video is shown with Ken Burns-ified photos and dramatic readings are used before audio clips.)

In any event, among them are the usual suspects, including "the Eagle has landed" and JFK's "ask not" speech.

And, of course, this:  "I have a dream this afternoon . . . that the brotherhood of man will become a reality in this day . . . [a]nd with this faith."

I was seven.  I had no idea who Martin Luther King, Jr. was, nor did I have any real understanding of racism, the Civil Rights movement, nor even, really, what he was saying, except that something about the conviction in his voice told me he wanted a Good Thing.

I am in many ways a stereotypical white Valley Girl...so why would those words resonate so deeply with me?

Well...I'm a stereotypical white girl except...

...except that I'm semi-fluent in Spanish (and reactions to that are always funny)

and

...except that out of all the American poetry I've ever read, it was Langston Hughes that I ended up going out and buying (I much prefer English poetry) -- it's Langston Hughes that I borrowed from for the title of this post.

I'm sure other people have posted reflections on King's life and his dream, but I thought I'd share a slightly different perspective.

In his famous I Have a Dream speech, King referred to wishing for a future of equality of Catholics and Protestants, Jews and Gentiles -- but the primary focus of his work was Civil Rights.  That is, removing the systematic barriers placed in front of African Americans throughout society.

Or, as Angel, my sixth grade angel, said, "He wanted...the kids...to have the same school."

Being the stereotypical white girl, there are no people of color in my family (that we know about, at any rate).

But there are people with disabilities (cognitive and, more recently, physical), people of Jewish heritage, people who have converted to Judaism (one of these days, when go for Hanukkah, I will remember more than the first two lines of the candle lighting prayer), and people that are gay.

And I would suggest that for the majority of the groups listed above, King's dream of equality is a long way off.

How often do you hear people casually tossing about the word r*tard?  How often do you hear people using the f word (not the verb)?  Think of the 2000 presidential campaign, and how much hand-writing there was about the fact that Mr. Lieberman was Jewish.  How much incredulity there was that he -- gasp -- walked to Temple on Saturdays.

How often do you see someone using a wheelchair and immediately assume they are less capable than someone who does not?  I've seen that myself with Patrick at Disney World -- where he is treated with near universal respect at Disneyland (people speaking directly to him, etc.), that was very much not the case at Disney World when he was using his wheelchair.

This is not the place for a political rant, really, so I'm not going to get into my rant about gay marriage (other than to say that allowing the civil contract aspect of marriage as far as the government is concerned should absolutely be legal and denying two people a marriage license because they are both the same gender is sexual discrimination).

But the fact of the matter is that there is still a lot of discrimination and institutionalized inequality in America.  And while it's fine -- and necessary -- to take time on anniversaries like today to ponder race relations in America, it's just as necessary to, at some point, examine other areas of inequality as well.

King talked about his children going to school with other children.

I'm fortunate to teach at a school in a district where mainstreaming, if not inclusion, is the norm, and inclusion is not all that rare either -- but that's far from the case elsewhere.

Infinite diversity, in infinite combinations, as Spock would say.

Anniversaries like today prompt us to consider one kind of diversity, but I'd like to argue that we consider, that we reflect on, all diversity.

It's trite, but people often say that life would be boring if we were all the same.  But, you know, trite sayings become trite and cliched because they're true.  Of course, trite sayings become trite because we stop actually thinking about what they mean and just accept them as truisms.

Today's a day to remember Dr. King's dream, and to reflect on what we can do to make it come true.

In college, I took a class called the Holocaust in Literature and Film.  The class itself was fascinating, but one of the assignments was to write a paper on any aspect of the Holocaust.

I chose to write about the killing (euphemistically called the euthanasia) of people with disabilities in Germany.  Something like 98% of Germans with disabilities were killed.

The closing paragraph opened with a variation of the following: "The Holocaust was, to be certain, a Jewish tragedy, but it was not only a Jewish tragedy.  It is important to make sure that all victims of the Nazis are remembered and honored."

The professor took great exception to that notion.  She was fine with the paper, but she wanted the euthanasia aspect separated from the Shoah (I'm nitpicking linguistically here, but the idea was that the Holocaust itself, as an idea, encompassed only the killing of Jews, which is why I used the Hebrew term for the latter).

It was the only time in my school career that I refused to make a change in a paper requested by a professor, and I was graded down for it.

So it should come as no surprise that even on the anniversary of Dr. King's death, I choose to focus on broader areas of tolerance and equality.

Infinite diversity, in infinite combinations.

Some Progress

Okay, so, I still can't get Lore to connect to my network attached storage, but I managed to get both Boardmaker working well enough to get homework done for next week.  Writing with Symbols is still iffy, as it's making me re-import a bunch of graphics, so the "This Day in History" part of journals is just not going to get done (I'm squinting at a 24" monitor...this means it's time to stop) until the weekend, nor are the questions for the next two chapters of Matilda (the text itself is done, but the questions aren't).

But, really, it's not bad, given that I had to start from scratch over the weekend and re-install Windows.

Also, 4th Grade Teacher VS talked to Other 4th Grade Teacher KC, and found out KC is struggling with having a 2-year-old and a newborn, so good thoughts sent her way would be useful.

4th Grade Teacher KC is a very, very nice person, who is responsible for both 4th Grade Teacher VS and 5th Grade Teacher EW actually liking me.  She insisted (rather, dragged me by the hair, more or less) that I come along with them on their weekly Starbuck's run (I drink neither coffee nor tea).  Before that, VS and EW were...polite but a bit disinterested and incredulous.

Yesterday, I ran into VS in the parking lot after school, and she thanked me again for translating one of her conferences, and mentioned that it must be very hard.  I mentioned (without thinking that it probably sounded like fishing -- but you know me and social skills) that the ladies in the office had once talked about me getting a stipend for it.

And she said she'd plead my case during the leadership meetings.

Which, you know, probably won't happen, 'cause she'll have forgotten by then -- but that she volunteered was very nice indeed.

Meanwhile, Bulldozer slugged Aide J today, but according to Aide S, she had...ahem..."earned it."

Superhero has been edging closer and closer to meltdown-land as the week has gone on.  I anticipate drama tomorrow.  Which, of course, is when Psychologist JW is coming to observe Mr. Voice to begin working on his tri.

And, I learned something today.  We had an assembly this morning during morning journal time, which is when 3rd Grader P has been visiting, so he came with us to the assembly.  Nothing terrible happened, but note to myself: Keep PH and Bart (just came up with the nickname...he has a Simpsons backpack and, now that I think about it, reminds me of Bart) away from each other at assemblies...or, you know, most of the day.

Yeah.

Oh, and, 3rd Grade Teacher RE said she's considering sending her son to me for his sixth grade year.  He's a cool kid, but she strikes me as a Scary Parent.  We shall see...she talked about it for fourth grade this year and ended up changing her mind -- which is good, 'cause his drama would have been too much for us.