Return of The Bread Man

For the three of you and cat who follow this blog regularly, I have decided to bring back another story about "The Bread Man". I'll link to the first one at the end of this one, for those of you who have never met him before. My grandmother convinced me that this guy really lived, so I am going to take her word for it.

It was a cold day in April, windy from a rain that had fallen an hour ago. The Bread Man had closed the bakery early. Nobody shopped when it was raining. The mothers of the town bought their food supplies with an eye toward plenty and it would take a disaster (as it later did) to drive the families of the town to starvation. Certainly, they would not starve in one day. So there was never any need to shop in the rain.

Sophie had left school early, escaping through the window before geometry. She hated her teacher and her father had arranged for a math tutor at home, so she didn't worry about missing class. She bent down to clean off her scuff knees and also to pull out her journal. To the aggravation of nearly everyone, Sophie had a habit of stopping mid-walk to stare and then write slowly in her journal. Either that, or to take out a book of English poetry. She had just finished the poem, "Leaves of Grass" and she loved to copy down lines from the poem, especially the lists of kinds of people who existed in Walt Whitman's "America". Butchers, shopkeepers, boys who bagged groceries. In the tiny town she lived in, one thing was usually done by one person. Bread was baked by The Bread Man. There was no Bread Boy learning at his knee. It wasn't the proper time for it.

The air was beginning to dry as the light of the day settled down toward a bright grey. Sophie was turning the corner at which she knew he would be sitting. Always at this time of the day, if it rained, The Bread Man would be sitting on the corner eating a loaf of bread and a salami. One in each hand. He never made a sandwhich, except in his mouth, which he said was, "the best kind". Sophie sat next to him and took out her Walt Whitman, her high cotton socks catching a bit on the cleanly paved street. The Bread Man looked at her and said, "Are there any bakers in that poem, Sophie?" Sophie thought a minute and said, "If there aren't any, it sure feels like there are. He's got practically the whole country in it. He loves absolutely everybody." The Bread Man thought a bit and said, "That's why you like the poem?" Sophie's hair lifted a bit in the wind and she bolted forward, "No. Absolutely not. The truth is, I like the fact that he says that America is singing. I think that everybody sings in his own way and I've never met anyone who thought the same way. Even you sing." The Bread Man's eyes opened wide, "You've heard me?" "No, no, no," said Sophie. "It's in the way you move and walk around. It's very much like Lord Byron or Tennyson." "Byron?" said The Bread Man. "Byron wasn't such a nice man. He tried to make a show of himself, but he wasn't so nice. He talked too much about things. I make beautiful things." Sophie's eyes watered, "I didn't mean anything insulting by it. You just carry yourself like you are a big Romantic person. Like the singers at the opera when the story is about love or danger. It's very pleasant to watch you. You have a rhythm like the Polish folk songs do." At that, The Bread Man smiled. "People think I don't know anything. That's why I only talk to you. In fact, I always have a song in my head when I work. But, it is nothing big and phoney like those big poems of Byron. I do like the Polish folk songs. The woman who gave me my job used to sing them every day. Do you remember her?" Sophine looked down because she did not. "You were a baby when she left here. She left here for America, you know. Like you, she had a marvelous singing voice. Every time she sang, I felt like I turned into a big pearl." Sophie started to laugh. "It's true. I felt big and shiny and smooth. And like I would float into a cloud." Sophie's face filled with sun and softness. "You make me feel that way when you sing, too. And someday you'll go off to Hollywood and be a big star."

They sat together for a while, Sophie reading and The Bread Man finishing his food. Then, taking a deep breath, Sophie turned to The Bread Man and looked as straight into his eyes as she had ever looked at anyone. "Will you come with me when I go? You can protect me and you can make my meals. You would make me laugh, most of all." The Bread Man was very moved and his face turned the pink of a new rose and he wiped all of the crumbs off his hands and face. "Everyone in this town will go with you, and I will be first in line, Sophie. We will be in your heart. But, a person like me cannot go with you. My job is here. I am the only Bread Man here. In a big city, there are a million bread men, each singing louder than the next one. You cannot sit on an empty street and talk to a friend, either."

Before she could stop herself, her lungs heaved with tears and her body shook hard. "Then I don't want to go," she insisted again, and again. She knew that her parents had invested time, energy money and their hearts on the idea that she would leave her town. One sister and one brother had done so and they wrote about amazing things. Her brother Al fixed watches for a famous jeweler in New York City and studied law. Her sister Deborah planted trees and built houses in the middle of the desert in Palestine. But, Sophie loved her street and she loved things just as they were. Except when she started to sing. When she sang she saw nothing but the clouds and the trees and crowds and crowds of people as if she had turned into her Parakeet, Chipper, who loved to stand and sing at the top of her balcony.

They sat together that afternoon in silence. Just as he left, The Bread Man pulled a roll from his pocket and handed it to her. "You're not going so fast, little girl and you need to eat regardless." She took the roll and before she could ask he said "Yes, yes, I put raisins and honey in it and no, I won't tell your mother." She smiled as he walked away. Then, like him, she took a big bite out of the roll and concentrated closely on the sweetness and the falling of the night.

For the first Bread Man story go to
http://saddleshoe.blogspot.com/2006/10/bread-man.html

What is considered not-hireable

Here's an excerpt from a post on Education Notes.

....I'm a Music teacher.Masters plus 30 credits.20 years longevity in NYC school system.Biggest Chorus for about a decade in Manhattan middle schools.Full S ratings throughout career.Great letters of satisfaction, commendation, awe, and thanks through entire career.Full of energy, full of skills -- pianist, opera singer, know many languages, accomplished music historian, directed theater, playwright....Before teaching, was for years a Senior Staff Editor of the largest and most prestigious music encyclopedia in the world - 24 vols. Was responsible for some of the largest bibliographical articles in it, international reputation in music bibliography.Problem: Am 61 years old with relatively big salaryRepeat. Would you hire me? If so when?You're not the only one who wouldn't.Applied to 10 schools through the Open Market. Though clearly one of the most experienced, educated music teachers in the system, did not get called for a single interview....

The author also notes that he knows lots of Grad students without degrees who DID get interviewed and hired...

Read the full posting on Ednotes online http://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/2008/05/tim-daley-do-you-want-to-hire-me.html

What I think about while my city is thinking about firing teachers

The first time I heard the tenor Carlo Bergonzi was 1978. I was ten years old, and like now, thought I had the right to express a respected opinion about everything. Unlike now, when I know what a schmuck I am for thinking that (and how bad it is that this knowledge doesn't stop me), I had absolutely no idea how dumb I could really be.

In the honest part of me, which is in my silence and in my writing, I always knew that there's no reason at all to have any kind of judgemental opinion about a performance because any interpretation could be valid. Of course, I wasn't paying for the opera tickets that night. My mother was and she was furious and seeing death. Carlo Bergonzi was way past his prime and in the latter part of his career. Anyone could see and hear that, even people as new to opera as we were then. He had obviously been a great star because he got applause when he came on stage and because, no matter how forced he sounded, there was a steady stream of respectful applause. But, I knew that the train ride home was going to be murder. My mother was going to have absolutely nothing good to say, everything was going to be painted in bones and maggots and the number of hours it took her to earn the money for those tickets was going to be emblazoned on my forehead. Meanwhile, what did the two of us really know about the performance we were so condemning? We'd listened to a recording of the opera a couple of times and were in our first year of attending live performances.

In many respects, my mother was absolutely right. Carlo Bergonzi was not the best tenor in the world ever, and that The Metropolitan Opera was serving him up in a lead role for top dollar seemed shameful. Inasmuch as one believes that just being able to pay for the price of the ticket and cramming some listening in before the show made either of us an expert on what great or very good singing was, she was very right. If that were true and she was right then The Metropolitan Opera House and the Department of Education should let anyone with bus fare and a certificate from a three hour course decide how they do their business.

But, as I know now, she was absolutely wrong. And I knew it then, too. Without the pressure of my mother's sense of injustice to the American blue collar worker and her feeling that every attack was personal (and increasingly, that there was a team specifically assigned to torment her) --left to just breathe, I actually enjoyed hearing him. He still had a beautiful sound to his voice and he was artful. That he was a tremendously artful tenor is much clearer to me now and I have also heard recordings of him from 1960. But, really: who is to say that his performance was not world class and that it was not, worth far more than bringing out a younger, more robust but ordinary tenor. Listening to what I can remember of it now, and later recordings of his that I have also heard, there is a great deal of passion, art -- the latter of world class quality. And I can say that I heard Carlo Bergonzi live. The way I can say that I saw Lauren Bacall in "Waiting in the Wings." Yes, she missed lines and it was a boring play. She still had terrific charisma, a fabulous face and to see her and Rosemary Harris go at it was still wonderfully charming and sexy. I got the tickets to that one, so no, my mother didn't bleed iron. She scoured my skin in several repetitions of that half-Yiddish/half English "Ech..." which translates in my late grandmother's words into "I was not enthused." All I could think of was, "Why the F-- are you complaining? I got the tickets and you got to see, in at least Rosemary Harris, one of the best actresses to ever grace the stage and a pop culture icon in Lauren Bacall. And those women had incredible stage presences before they even opened their mouths."

Deep, deep down, my mother knows all this. In later performances at the Met, when we found ourselves without a choice but to see Bergonzi once again, my mother pointed out several moments of beauty. And, given the baritones of the period, we had already found ourselves indulging in the decent acting, half-baked imitation of Leonard Warren that was Sherrill Milnes. For those of you who don't know opera, think Robert Goulet. Or think Usher. He was handsome, he was a pretty decent actor with a lovely sounding voice and the brains to steal brilliant choices from the greater singers who came before him. To show just what I knew about opera then, I was a big fan of his. I still have umbilical chord ties to his recordings and keep a few arias of his on my Mp3 player. No, he's not magnificent as a button I have of him pronounces. He was smarter than he was good and he put together strong performances until 1981 when he became ill and probably should have retired. And yes, I was part of the respectful applause in the years that followed. Listening to Milnes had lead me to Leonard Warren -- think someone on the level of Domingo in baritones or Barbara Streisand or Celia Cruz or Sarah Vaughn, Janis Joplin, Bob Dylan, Jay-Z or Nas. He was excellent enough to have taught me how to listen for more excellence. I had seen and heard all of Warren's phrasings before (because Milnes was, by his own admission in interviews, an excellent thief), so what might have been the initially jarring woody darkness of his voice, was easy for me to attend to, take in and enjoy beyond words. It was like having having seen the movie before reading the book. I could visualize and had a context for something otherwise difficult and alien to me which was better than anything I had ever seen.

I imagine that you heard the "bell" in that last sentence. You recognized the moment where the moral of the story is about to come in. It had the tone of your parents, which they stole from their parents or someone else's parents, or, in my case, a friend whose didactic skills and instincts are impeccable.

No one is impeccable. My friend is as close to the platonic form of the word as a human can be.

If I hadn't tried to imagine what it would be to be "impeccable" I wouldn't be able to recognize it in my friend. If I hadn't had so many friends and teachers who also aimed to be beyond reproach, I'd've never been able to see it in his every motion and to recognize how far above he is everyone else I've ever known.

So, this is what I think about as my city looks to fire teachers who have either been accused of everything from being late to being lecherous but have been convicted for nothing at all or who had the double misfortune, like I've had, of being at a school that is being closed and being 40 or over and making a salary that most principals find prohibitive -- they can get two young teachers for the price of me. And that given the angst that comes with not having enough money in your budget to hire all the teachers and guidance counselors you need, and the general feeling that you don't know what economy you're bringing your students into, I can almost see how my commanding the salary I do, which, by the way is much LESS than that of a close friend who sells phone services, seems daunting. Even if I am AS GOOD as Leonard Warren or Jay-Z, why is it necessary to have someone so good? Does a school necessarily need a fantastic teacher when it can have two serviceable ones? That's a real question, actually, and I'd also bet that thought is very much a part of the climate in which principals make their decisions. After all, they are coming to schools and finding their budgets continually slashed. The atmosphere is not one which encourages one to think about giving the best to your students. It's one where you think about being able to give, at all. In other words, if the Mayor and Governor and everyone involved in the Department of Education's budget doesn't want to fight hard enough to get public school kids in this city MORE THAN THE MINIMUM, what's a principal to do? In the principals' minds, anyway, even if they think about spending their pennies in my direction they'll pause thinking I'm more likely to be like Carlo Bergonzi in 1978 -- not in my prime, though very much a great artist. Or, I might be Sherrill Milnes -- a take-off of other great artists who was very durable, but then broke down.

First of all, anyone who has been in a NYC classroom knows that students do not supply the respectful applause of an opera audience. After 14 years, I had to be at least as good as a durable Sherrill Milnes. I had to be able to command students' attention and get decent test results. Or they would do worse than throw tomatoes at me. Plus, I have mostly good reviews, and most of my fellow colleagues who have lasted as long, have even better ones. Those who have some bad reviews also have excellent ones. Do you know how many sorely bad performances Luciano Pavarotti gave? Besides the times he was caught lip synching? I sat through, at least, five of them. Five out of thousands which were excellent, ten of which I heard. What is the balance of the careers of all of us ATR's -- Assigned Teacher Reserves? That's the important statistic? We have actual track records you can point to -- what are they? Do those teachers who have two U ratings have them in succession and are they both from the same principal -- and were there none from any other? And again, is it two U's against 13 S's. And are there letters of praise in the file?

We are in this position because we are teachers unlucky enough to be made full-time substitutes instantly when our schools closed or because their positions were cut, or because, perhaps, we had the misfortune of having a student accuse them of something they didn't do? Most, if not all of the teachers in the Rubber Rooms who are either NOT FOUND GUILTY or who were found to have done something worth punishing with something as small as a letter in their files, will return to work as ATR's. This is even true of individuals who have had their charges dismissed. It's just easier to pull the person out of their position rather than return him or her to a place where he or she was unwanted enough for someone to have told a lie about them or for them to have been a mild misunderstanding --say, a teacher thought he/she was doing something the principal agreed with and actually the principal NOW SAYS he/she did not.

So, the vast majority of ATR's are in that position through no fault of their own. I didn't say that ALL of them were. But, I'd take a bet that the percentage would be 80 or 90 percent, if only because so many are teachers whose schools just happened to close. The schools' closing does not indicate anything about their abilities. In the corporate world, if a project fails, you don't fire the individuals who carried it out -- or not just them. You fire the director or vice president who was in charge. Many principals have been fired for other reasons, but a great many of the principals of schools which are closing will go on to lead other schools. That doesn't trouble me because I know that you cannot place the blame for an entire school's failure on the back of any one person. I also know that many excellent performances in the arts and in schools have gone unappreciated. My school wasn't closed for poor results. We had especially poor attendance after we were moved to a dangerous neighborhood. Some years, we had poor attendance because the students who were coming to us had a history of poor attendance. They got better. That didn't count. When they graduated, we had to start again, sometimes with similarly bad attending groups. And they got better and it also didn't count.

In 1978, most of the audience applauded for Carlo Bergonzi. He gave a world class performance that showed artistry, knowledge of tradition and an ability to use his resources to their best use. It was far better than the early performances of the young, and later to be very interesting, Neil Shicoff. I learned a lot from it, and I always learn something when I listen to his recordings wherever they are in his career.

On that night, however, I sat enraged the way many people do now when they think about teachers making more money than they think they should, for whatever reason. I learned fairly quickly to think with my whole brain, not just the part of it that was responding to immediate anxieties, and to listen much more carefully. In my platonic ideal of a classroom, my students learn to listen, read and write as carefully as possible with all the knowledge which is required for them to take on the hardest and best literature in the deepest way.

Maybe that's not worth the price of admission to the vast majority in this city. Maybe they would rather my students met minimum competencies very well. Certainly, it is easier to count smaller accomplishments than larger ones.

So, now I know why so many of my students do poorly at math. They live in a city where a large percentage of people are counting in very small, digestible quantities.

I hope that most of them have better taste in music.

The Daily News and the Rubber Room

On May 4 and May 5, The New York Daily News printed two articles about NYC's Rubber Room. In brief, a "Rubber Room" is a holding pen in which teachers, paraprofessionals, school aides, secretaries -- almost all school related personnel -- who are accused of violations wait to be tried. They can wait there for months into years. Because the city claims they are dangerous to kids, the individuals accused aren't given anything to do. The punishment is a la Sartre's play No Exit in which individuals are trapped with nothing to do but be in close confines with other trapped people.

You can look up the articles. It's not that I don't want to give you the links, it's that I am so disgusted and so tired of hearing about this issue in the way that the Daily News presented it, that I don't want to look for the addresses again. They're not hard to find. Go to http://www.nydailynews.com/, type in "Rubber Room" and they come up.

They were yet, two MORE articles that talked about how much money this system cost. And, of course, the paper claims to have gotten volumes of emails which basically called for the teachers to be drawn and quartered.

What everyone forgets is, no one in that room is proven guilty. If you've been proven guilty, you've either received a fine, suspension or termination. If you've been proven innocent, you will be placed back in your school.

Suppose we applied this to our general legal system -- would we shoot all detainees? I realize that some of our prisons, like Abu Ghraib, make it seem that way. But, I thought the consensus in this country was not to destroy the Constitution entirely.

In my very, very nebbishy consternation, I wrote a letter to the author of both articles. Depending on what she does, I'll print it here in a few days.

At this moment, however, I wish to remind all who read this that
1) No teacher chooses to be accused of anything
2) An accusation does not equal guilt
and, a very sad
3) Many of the accusers -- students, parents and principals -- have motives for their actions which have little to do with what has actually occurred. I met a teacher who was accused by a parent of possibly giving an answer to a test to another student in that paren't class. Nobody corroborated the parent's story. The teacher spent the year in that confinement cell waiting for it to be determined that she could be released. What do you suppose the accusing parent got out of it? His/her son didn't have this tough teacher for the rest of the year. Now, there's an ugly way to keep your grades up.

Think back: imagine you were given the chance to get a teacher you hated pulled from the classroom in one, fell swoop. No more awful assignments. No more boredom. No more criticism. It's tempting, isn't it? Maybe you wouldn't do it, but you know someone who might. The way you might not destroy the teacher's desk, car or room, but students have done. And now they can take it one step further. They NEVER have to see that teacher again, if they plan it right....

Furthermore, it is a fact that our current DOE actively creates disincentives for keeping senior staff. Before this administration, the DOE supplemented school budgets so that they could retain older, more experienced and YES more costly teachers. Don't teachers have a right to be paid for their experience? Regardless of what you think on that question, with this administration the DOE no longer does this. So, you can get two younger teachers for the price of one older teacher. I don't know, Walmart is one of the most popular stores in this country. What do you think the principal's are shopping for in teachers these days, as a result? As you would expect, the average new teacher doesn't last three years -- just the way the average bottom priced item at Walmart doesn't.


Be well, everyone.

Let's just say I like the smile on this kid

14 Reasons Hillary Clinton Should Quit

http://thepage.time.com/halperins-take-painful-things-hillary-clinton-knows-%E2%80%94-or-should-know/

HEAVEN IS ADOPTED

My friend who was fostering her couldn't resist her!!!!!

A happy ending. Whee! (with homage to Henry)

As if Bill Clinton's bozo comments weren't bad enough

Check out David Sirota's latest piece "Pennsylvania and the Persistence of the Race Chasm"

http://action.credomobile.com/sirota/2008/04/pennsylvania_the_persistence_o.html

Heaven

That's her name and my friend just adopted her after fostering her!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

An interesting letter reprinted from New York Teacher

CHANCELLOR'S REGS ANTI-TEACHER
The following was sent to UFT Vice President Richard Farkas and forwarded to the New York Teacher (5/03)
To the Editor :
At a well-attended chapter meeting this morning the staff loudly voiced its concerns about a rash of corporal punishment allegations that have been made against teachers at our school. All of these allegations proved to be unfounded but teachers have been removed from the classroom for protracted periods of time while the allegations were being investigated. This not only demeans the teacher, but also disrupts the education of our students. I explained the Chancellor's Regulations to the staff and stressed caution in all dealings with children, but many felt that the regulations are ludicrously unjust to teachers. On the other hand, when students curse at or abuse teachers, little happens. Recently, for example, a teacher's aide was physically assaulted by a student. There was a superintendent's suspension as well as police charges. Even before this case was heard in court, the student was returned to our school as if nothing had happened. District 6 would not transfer the student. Such incidents undermine the school's disciplinary code and destroy staff morale. The Chancellor's Regulations are clearly anti-teacher. Teachers are considered guilty until an outside investigator gets around to determining that the charges were unfounded. In one current case, even after a teacher was cleared, he is still waiting for authorization to return to his classroom. We have had cases where teachers were removed from their classrooms for weeks before being returned. Another unfortunate result of this process is that children have learned that they can get back at a teacher by making a single allegation. Some have even turned it into a game of trying to get a teacher fired. In addition, there seem to be forces outside the school that are influencing parents to make frivolous complaints against staff. All of this has created a climate where teachers have to think twice about enforcing discipline or coming to the assistance of a colleague.We understand and support regulations that exist to protect children. However, the current regulations are grossly out of balance. The regulations are being used to attack teachers for ulterior purposes. The effect of this is damage to teachers' well-being and morale, disrupted education and wasted money for coverage of the classes of teachers removed from duty. Teachers deserve and are entitled to the same legal principle that all Americans enjoy : innocent until proven guilty, and a fair and quick hearing.
John Eichele, IS 52, Manhattan

Delta

If you have taken this rubble for my past raking though it for fragments you could sell
know that I long ago moved ondeeper into the heart of the matter
If you think you can grasp me, think again:
my story flows in more than one direction
a delta springing from the riverbedwith its five fingers
Adrienne Rich. Copyright © 1989 by Adrienne Rich.

John McCain: The greater of the evils

10 things you should know about John McCain (but probably don't): 1. John McCain voted against establishing a national holiday in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Now he says his position has "evolved," yet he's continued to oppose key civil rights laws.
2. According to Bloomberg News, McCain is more hawkish than Bush on Iraq, Russia and China. Conservative columnist Pat Buchanan says McCain "will make Cheney look like Gandhi."
3. His reputation is built on his opposition to torture, but McCain voted against a bill to ban waterboarding, and then applauded President Bush for vetoing that ban.
4. McCain opposes a woman's right to choose. He said, "I do not support Roe versus Wade. It should be overturned."
5. The Children's Defense Fund rated McCain as the worst senator in Congress for children. He voted against the children's health care bill last year, then defended Bush's veto of the bill.
6. He's one of the richest people in a Senate filled with millionaires. The Associated Press reports he and his wife own at least eight homes! Yet McCain says the solution to the housing crisis is for people facing foreclosure to get a "second job" and skip their vacations.
7. Many of McCain's fellow Republican senators say he's too reckless to be commander in chief. One Republican senator said: "The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine. He's erratic. He's hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me."
8. McCain talks a lot about taking on special interests, but his campaign manager and top advisers are actually lobbyists. The government watchdog group Public Citizen says McCain has 9 lobbyists raising money for his campaign, more than any of the other presidential candidates.
9. McCain has sought closer ties to the extreme religious right in recent years. The pastor McCain calls his "spiritual guide," Rod Parsley, believes America's founding mission is to destroy Islam, which he calls a "false religion." McCain sought the political support of right-wing preacher John Hagee, who believes Hurricane Katrina was God's punishment for gay rights and called the Catholic Church "the Antichrist" and a "false cult."
10. He positions himself as pro-environment, but he scored a 0—yes, zero—from the League of Conservation Voters last year

from moveon.org

Bernie DeNiro

EVERYONE SHOULD READ

THE CORPORATE SURGE AGAINST PUBLIC SCHOOLS
http://normsnotes2.blogspot.com/2008/02/corporate-surge-against-public-schools.html

Since we no longer have Edwards

I move to the more beatific speaker of the two Democratic party candidates left to me and the one who has not been on the board of Wallmart nor supported the Iraq war from the start.

John Edwards Leaves with a challenge to the Democrats

Thank you all very much. We're very proud to be back here.During the spring of 2006, I had the extraordinary experience of bringing 700 college kids here to New Orleans to work. These are kids who gave up their spring break to come to New Orleans to work, to rehabilitate houses, because of their commitment as Americans, because they believed in what was possible, and because they cared about their country.I began my presidential campaign here to remind the country that we, as citizens and as a government, have a moral responsibility to each other, and what we do together matters. We must do better, if we want to live up to the great promise of this country that we all love so much.It is appropriate that I come here today. It's time for me to step aside so that history can blaze its path. We do not know who will take the final steps to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but what we do know is that our Democratic Party will make history. We will be strong, we will be unified, and with our convictions and a little backbone we will take back the White House in November and we'll create hope and opportunity for this country.This journey of ours began right here in New Orleans. It was a December morning in the Lower Ninth Ward when people went to work, not just me, but lots of others went to work with shovels and hammers to help restore a house that had been destroyed by the storm.We joined together in a city that had been abandoned by our government and had been forgotten, but not by us. We knew that they still mourned the dead, that they were still stunned by the destruction, and that they wondered when all those cement steps in all those vacant lots would once again lead to a door, to a home, and to a dream.We came here to the Lower Ninth Ward to rebuild. And we're going to rebuild today and work today, and we will continue to come back. We will never forget the heartache and we'll always be here to bring them hope, so that someday, one day, the trumpets will sound in Musicians' Village, where we are today, play loud across Lake Ponchartrain, so that working people can come marching in and those steps once again can lead to a family living out the dream in America.We sat with poultry workers in Mississippi, janitors in Florida, nurses in California.We listened as child after child told us about their worry about whether we would preserve the planet.We listened to worker after worker say "the economy is tearing my family apart."We walked the streets of Cleveland, where house after house was in foreclosure.And we said, "We're better than this. And economic justice in America is our cause."And we spent a day, a summer day, in Wise, Virginia, with a man named James Lowe, who told us the story of having been born with a cleft palate. He had no health care coverage. His family couldn't afford to fix it. And finally some good Samaritan came along and paid for his cleft palate to be fixed, which allowed him to speak for the first time. But they did it when he was 50 years old. His amazing story, though, gave this campaign voice: universal health care for every man, woman and child in America. That is our cause.And we do this -- we do this for each other in America. We don't turn away from a neighbor in their time of need. Because every one of us knows that what -- but for the grace of God, there goes us. The American people have never stopped doing this, even when their government walked away, and walked away it has from hardworking people, and, yes, from the poor, those who live in poverty in this country.For decades, we stopped focusing on those struggles. They didn't register in political polls, they didn't get us votes and so we stopped talking about it. I don't know how it started. I don't know when our party began to turn away from the cause of working people, from the fathers who were working three jobs literally just to pay the rent, mothers sending their kids to bed wrapped up in their clothes and in coats because they couldn't afford to pay for heat.We know that our brothers and sisters have been bullied into believing that they can't organize and can't put a union in the workplace. Well, in this campaign, we didn't turn our heads. We looked them square in the eye and we said, "We see you, we hear you, and we are with you. And we will never forget you." And I have a feeling that if the leaders of our great Democratic Party continue to hear the voices of working people, a proud progressive will occupy the White House.Now, I've spoken to both Senator Clinton and Senator Obama. They have both pledged to me and more importantly through me to America, that they will make ending poverty central to their campaign for the presidency.And more importantly, they have pledged to me that as President of the United States they will make ending poverty and economic inequality central to their Presidency. This is the cause of my life and I now have their commitment to engage in this cause.And I want to say to everyone here, on the way here today, we passed under a bridge that carried the interstate where 100 to 200 homeless Americans sleep every night. And we stopped, we got out, we went in and spoke to them.There was a minister there who comes every morning and feeds the homeless out of her own pocket. She said she has no money left in her bank account, she struggles to be able to do it, but she knows it's the moral, just and right thing to do. And I spoke to some of the people who were there and as I was leaving, one woman said to me, "You won't forget us, will you? Promise me you won't forget us." Well, I say to her and I say to all of those who are struggling in this country, we will never forget you. We will fight for you. We will stand up for you.But I want to say this -- I want to say this because it's important. With all of the injustice that we've seen, I can say this, America's hour of transformation is upon us. It may be hard to believe when we have bullets flying in Baghdad and it may be hard to believe when it costs $58 to fill your car up with gas. It may be hard to believe when your school doesn't have the right books for your kids. It's hard to speak out for change when you feel like your voice is not being heard.But I do hear it. We hear it. This Democratic Party hears you. We hear you, once again. And we will lift you up with our dream of what's possible.One America, one America that works for everybody.One America where struggling towns and factories come back to life because we finally transformed our economy by ending our dependence on oil.One America where the men who work the late shift and the women who get up at dawn to drive a two-hour commute and the young person who closes the store to save for college. They will be honored for that work. One America where no child will go to bed hungry because we will finally end the moral shame of 37 million people living in poverty.One America where every single man, woman and child in this country has health care.One America with one public school system that works for all of our children.One America that finally brings this war in Iraq to an end. And brings our service members home with the hero's welcome that they have earned and that they deserve.Today, I am suspending my campaign for the Democratic nomination for the Presidency.But I want to say this to everyone: with Elizabeth, with my family, with my friends, with all of you and all of your support, this son of a millworker's gonna be just fine. Our job now is to make certain that America will be fine.And I want to thank everyone who has worked so hard – all those who have volunteered, my dedicated campaign staff who have worked absolutely tirelessly in this campaign.And I want to say a personal word to those I've seen literally in the last few days – those I saw in Oklahoma yesterday, in Missouri, last night in Minnesota – who came to me and said don't forget us. Speak for us. We need your voice. I want you to know that you almost changed my mind, because I hear your voice, I feel you, and your cause is our cause. Your country needs you – every single one of you.All of you who have been involved in this campaign and this movement for change and this cause, we need you. It is in our hour of need that your country needs you. Don't turn away, because we have not just a city of New Orleans to rebuild. We have an American house to rebuild.This work goes on. It goes on right here in Musicians' Village. There are homes to build here, and in neighborhoods all along the Gulf. The work goes on for the students in crumbling schools just yearning for a chance to get ahead. It goes on for day care workers, for steel workers risking their lives in cities all across this country. And the work goes on for two hundred thousand men and women who wore the uniform of the United States of America, proud veterans, who go to sleep every night under bridges, or in shelters, or on grates, just as the people we saw on the way here today. Their cause is our cause.Their struggle is our struggle. Their dreams are our dreams.Do not turn away from these great struggles before us. Do not give up on the causes that we have fought for. Do not walk away from what's possible, because it's time for all of us, all of us together, to make the two Americas one.Thank you. God bless you, and let's go to work. Thank you all very much.

All through the night

For the past two years and a few months, this Cole Porter song has been all too useful for me. The song, which can be heard as referring to an imagined or lost love who is never there "when dawn comes to waken" the singer of the tune has been for me and, I'm sure a billion others like me, a refrain used when facing an actual loss of a romantic partner. For the past week, however, on and off, at differing times of day and night (because my sleep cycles have been completely disrupted) I've gone back to the memories of a different time, place and...job. I've been remembering as best I can what it was like to have worked at Brooklyn Comprehensive Night High School when Malaika Bermiss was principal and many of my colleagues and I were even younger than we are now. The more I go back, the more I want to, and in fact, a great deal of yesterday was spent just doing so in my own head while not doing anything else except tending to my cats all day. Whenever I tell people about Malaika, I always start with how she hired me which she actually did twice in almost the exact same circumstances. I'm only going to write about the first time here.

I had been working for a year and three months at an adolescent teaching facility on Rikers Island. Although the students were some of the most brilliant people I have ever met or taught (as a rule, the worse the crime, the better the brain), the job wore on me. The prison system added to the educational system is a lot of quagmire to be involved in at once, the program itself was kind of a factory and I was being asked by the principal, regardless of my skills as a teacher and the fact that my classrooms were comprised entirely of imprisoned 18-21 year old males to start putting on dresses and look prettier when I came to work. Needless to say, it wasn't the kind of place you imagine throwing the energy of your early 20's wholeheartedly into in order to change the world. Nothing more was going to be done for the students than what was being done, and no student took the GED who wasn't very likely to pass. It was a good statistics machine. All the principal was asking me to literally do was ease up and be "Vanna White". Moreover, she wasn't going to release me from my job because I was too good. I needed someone really, really smart, politically savvy, trustworthy and most of all, who actually cared about education to get me out of this. Someone at WBAI where I worked in the Arts Department told me they had just interviewed with this really interesting principal but that they couldn't take the job because of the hours -- they were at night. Night didn't bother me -- I was only a year away from college and endless all-nighters.

Malaika Bermiss was sitting at her desk in her very overcrowded office, still working in the late afternoon, on the day I met her. Calculating with my very rough math skills, since she turns out to have only been 17 years older than I am, she was probably about 40, the age I will be in a week and a few days. I told her when I called that if she wanted to interview me that day then I didn't have time to change into my interview suit and I'd be in jeans because that's what I had worn to work. She said that was fine. I think she was wearing either a denim shirt and skirt--her clothes were elegantly loose and comfortable as I learned they would always be whether they were cotton or silk, high fashion or a sweatsuit. So that I don't get overwhelmed and so that I can take small readings first, I glom onto a person's initial gestures only and maybe one or two facial characteristics. With students, I am much the opposite, but I want to confine adults to a few controlling variables. Malaika was a firm handshake, a commanding and intelligent mezzo-soprano voice, and big-brown-no-b.s. eyes. She turned around in her chair and looked straight at my face. There was no up-and-down of my clothing, my weight or my bearing. I think I smiled and I know we looked straight at each other during what was not a short conversation. That sounds like nothing, perhaps, but there's almost no one I will look directly at for more than three minutes at a time and usually not even that in an initial meeting. I can do so with students because I need to. Usually, I fidget, look at my shoes, the sky, my fingernails or just away. It's not that I mean to be rude to adults I've just met, but I need time to trust them and like to do so in bits and pieces. Malaika Bermiss could be trusted instantly because she meant what she said.
We agreed on a lot, at least in spirit and having taught at Rikers made it easier for me to articulate how I felt about giving people second chances and the fact that I didn't want to judge those students or the students I would meet at her school based on what they had done in their past. By then, I also knew how to bluster about "having control of my classroom" as well as anyone, which I'm sure she saw through, but I did have a fairly decent technique for teaching essays and I liked doing it. What was clearest from what she was saying and the way the school was already running was that this was going to be a school designed for this population and we were really going to work with that in mind. She's the only person I've ever met who has ever recognized in practice that growth means you have to be allowed to make some mistakes-- and who knows how to look at something other people call a mistake and find what is useful in it.
I can hear people chiming "those mistakes are happening with children" -- and I'm afraid I will have to tell you that more mistakes happen when you don't try to fix problems than when you do and you still have to work out the fine tuning. Ours was a school where test scores and graduation rates got better and better. We're being closed because it's cheaper to run a GED program for the population we serve than an intensive high school. And the program won't even be run by the DOE -- it will be run by a non-profit organization and the students' statistics won't be counted in NYC public school numbers.

The woman I met that day, was most importantly, accountable. She wasn't going to let the school remain a "program" -- it was going to be a regular "high school" and not an "alternative high school". These students were not going to be cut off from the mainstream more than they had been. They were going to get a solid high school education which could serve as preparation for college. And somehow we were going to figure out how to do it. The same somehow, sort of, that she used to get her superintendent to call the superintendent in charge of the program I was working in and tell my principal to let me go which she finally did on the last day she had to do so.

It's 5:23 am. Soon it will be daytime. Confound it.

In Memory of Malaika Holman-Bermiss

Ad astra per aspera -- To the stars despite the difficulties. January 14, 2008.

In lieu of flowers, the family has established an endowment fund at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, one of Malaika’s favorite institutions. The goal is to endow a chair in the Opera house on the mezzanine level that will have a plaque that bears her name. More importantly, the endowment helps BAM to continue bringing world class performance art to the people of Brooklyn. Please send any donations to:
Brooklyn Academy of Music

Attn: Endowment Office

30 Lafayette Avenue

Brooklyn, NY 11217
Please note on the check "In memory of Malaika Bermiss."

Some of Mrs. Bermiss' last published thoughts about Brooklyn Comprehensive Night High School are in the article below from CITY LIMITS, March 19, 2007.

GOOD NIGHT, NIGHT SCHOOL:BROOKLYN COMP TO CLOSE
When this nontraditional school closes next year, only one other similar school will be left for students who are busy from 8:00 to 3:00. > By Matt Sollars


Ladonna Powell, 19, lives on her own, works at a bakery in Manhattan to pay the rent, and attends high school classes at Brooklyn Comprehensive Night High School because they fit into her schedule. Powell says the school, one of only two night high schools citywide, is important for struggling students who can’t make it to a day school but want to earn a diploma.
“Each person has their own problems,” she said. “We need this school to stay open. It’s a second chance.”
The public school is slated to close, however. The city announced in December that Brooklyn Comprehensive, which opened in 1990 to help students who had trouble in a traditional high school setting, would close this June. Teachers and students said they felt stunned and betrayed. The teachers’ union mounted a lobbying campaign, and by late February the staff was told the school would remain open until June 2008.
The city says five new "transfer schools," designed for “overage, under-credited” students, will replace Brooklyn Comp’s services. But while they will have some nighttime classes, it looks like they may not have an after-hours curriculum as complete as Brooklyn Comprehensive, which has the full high school curriculum except art and P.E. The other similarly complete nighttime school in operation is the Manhattan Comprehensive Night and Day High School, located on Second Avenue near Stuyvesant Town. The Department of Education cites “low demand” as the reason for closing the night school.
“Attendance has dropped significantly in recent years,” said Melody Meyer, a department spokesperson. She pointed specifically to an abysmal 33 percent attendance record at Brooklyn Comp last year.
The school’s former principal, Malaika Holman Bermiss, says “attendance was always horrendous.” But she and some current teachers counter that the attendance rate dropped precipitously after the school was moved from Midwood High School to South Shore High School in Sept. 2004, due to space constraints at Midwood.
Indeed, school attendance records seem to support Bermiss’s argument. Brooklyn Comp had a 66 percent attendance rate in 2003-04, its last at Midwood. That’s not too far from the 72 percent average for transfer schools in the city. But in the next school year – the first at South Shore – attendance fell to 49 percent. Then it dropped to 33 percent last year. Meanwhile, attendance at traditional high schools citywide is 90 percent.
South Shore, which itself suffers poor attendance and is slated to close, is a large white building at the intersection of Flatlands and Ralph Avenues in Canarsie. A 20-minute bus ride from the nearest subway stop, the school is remote to reach even by car. In addition to the long commute for a student population scattered throughout Brooklyn, teachers and students do not feel safe, particularly at 10 p.m. when the school day ends. The day begins at 4 p.m.
“Muggings have been bad,” according to English teacher Sharon Pearce, in an observation echoed by several others. “Some parents won’t allow their kids to come to school any more,” says the 14-year Brooklyn Comp veteran.
Current principal Catherine Bruno-Paparelli did not respond to requests for comment, and officials declined to show a reporter around the school.
Charles Turner, Brooklyn district representative at the United Federation of Teachers, called moving a night school to such a remote location “a thoughtless decision.” He believes Brooklyn Comp has become “collateral damage” of the decision to shutter South Shore, one of five schools that DOE announced in December would close.
Pearce finds it ironic that the city decided to close Brooklyn Comp and send students to transfer schools, which accommodate up to 250 students. “We were one of the new ‘small schools’ before there was the expression,” she said.
Bermiss fears that a new school, even one that looks like Brooklyn Comp but meets during the day, will miss out on helping a certain sliver of students. “It’s a time frame issue,” she said. “Some of our students had neither children or jobs, but what they needed is what we offered them at 7 p.m. in the evening.”
She believes Brooklyn Comp was hampered by not ever having its own facility. Before she retired in 2005 after 34 years in the city school system, Bermiss did propose an expansion of Brooklyn Comp that would have included a dedicated facility. Now she hopes that the extension through next school year will allow the teachers and staff at Brooklyn Comp to keep the school going in a different format and location.
“My concern is that there be a full-time night school in Brooklyn to meet the needs of students,” Bermiss said.
Student Natalie White, 19, certainly agrees. White started at Brooklyn Comp in September after she “messed up” at Erasmus Hall High School in Flatbush. Close personal attention from teachers quickly helped White gain confidence in herself.
“I never got an A in any class before,” she said. But after getting help from teachers in English and Spanish and A’s in both classes, she said, “I kind of knew I had some kind of potential.”
However, White knew she would not have enough credits to graduate by June 2007, so she stopped going to school. “I thought it was the end,” she said. “I was kind of thinking of giving up or going to another school.”
Now that another school year has been added, White says she will return and hopes to have enough credits for her diploma by January 2008.
- Matt Sollars

Work?

I urge everyone concerned about work, getting it, keeping it, etc. to read this post.

http://nyceducator.com/2007/12/work.html

Let's hope Sirota's right and Happy New Year!

December 31, 2007 7:38 AM
Gauging the Fear Inside the Palace Walls by David Sirota
A pretty reliable gauge of Establishment fear is how far away from factual reality its chief spokesmen stray at election time. With economic populism now driving both the Democratic and Republican presidential contests, professional political pontificators in Washington are attacking candidates for being crazed and angry - when in fact their own rhetoric shows it is the pundits who are the angriest of all. An uprising is on - one against the hostile takeover of our government by Big Money interests. And inside the walls of the Washington palace, the elite are freaking out.
Here's Time Magazine's Joe Klein, claiming that presidential candidates who attack NAFTA are "wildly irresponsible on trade":
"NAFTA has been a wash, creating as many jobs as have been lost."
According to government data, NAFTA has cost America at least 1 million jobs. This is not new information - nor is it even much debated among economists on either side of the trade debate. But because it offends the Washington Consensus in support of lobbyist-written trade policies and because the realities of trade are finally taking center stage in the presidential primaries, Klein - a loyal Establishment soldier - has taken to the ramparts to lie.
Klein's silliness is eclipsed only by Stu Rothenberg - who reliably hands us the old adage that any candidates challenging the status quo will destroy America. Here's his take today:
"[John Edwards] is also portraying himself as fighting for the middle class and able to appeal to swing voters and even Republicans in a general election...His approach to problems is likely to frighten many voters, including most middle class Americans and virtually all Republicans...Given the North Carolina Democrat's rhetoric and agenda, an Edwards Presidency would likely rip the nation apart - even further apart than Bush has torn it."
Rothenberg's entire career is predicated on his supposed ability to analyze polling data - which is stunning in juxtaposition to his statements today. After all, polls show Edwards performing the best of any Democrat against any Republican presidential candidate. More importantly, polls also show the vast majority of the country - including Republicans - behind his populist economic positions.
For instance, Edwards has staked his candidacy on guaranteeing health care to every American and on raising the minimum wage - two positions the majority of Americans - and a huge chunk of Republicans - strong support. As I noted in a 2005 Washington Post article, a 2005 public opinion survey by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center showed that about half the GOP's core voters support the "government guaranteeing health insurance for all citizens, even if it means raising taxes" and an astounding three-quarters support an increase in the minimum wage. Pew recently updated these numbers to show that 4 in 10 Republican voters nationally "favor universal health coverage, even if it means higher taxes."
Trade? Same thing. Edwards has been demanding an end to Washington's lobbyist-written, job-killing trade agenda - a demand that the majority of Americans (and Republicans) support. The Wall Street Journal was only the most recent publication to note this fact. "By a nearly two-to-one margin, Republican voters believe free trade is bad for the U.S. economy," the Journal noted, adding that voters in both parties want our trade policies reformed.
Knowing these number, it is difficult to understand how a professional poll-watcher like Rothenberg could say that an economic populist platform "is likely to frighten many voters, including most middle class Americans and virtually all Republicans." It is even more difficult to understand when you consider that the leading Republican candidate right now is Mike Huckabee - a guy being grossly outspent but who is nonetheless surging among Republican voters on the strength of his campaign's economic populist themes. In short, all of the actual facts point to exactly the opposite of Rothenberg's conclusions: That power-challenging economic populism is exciting most voters, including most middle class Americans and many Republicans.
But, then, the rhetoric from the Kleins and Rothenbergs is less surprising when you consider how the rise of economic populism fundamentally indicts both the system they have long defended and, more personally, their individual relevance as supposed political oracles.
Most Washington pundits have reached their positions by defending the system they cover as fundamentally good. Doing that, in their minds, validates their own value and worth - because if they acknowledge that the system is corrupt, it means they are admitting that their work bolstering that system is corrupt, too (which, of course, it is).
And so elite reaction to the populist uprising is swift. As respected pollsters tell us that "if Americans have ever been angrier with the state of the country, we have not witnessed it," Washington pundits tell us candidates representing that anger are doomed. These pundits desperately claim that candidates' support for majority positions will somehow "rip the nation apart," and that such candidates who take up the populist mantle are "wildly irresponsible" for doing so.
Sadly, the caucuses and primaries look like only the opening act of a more full-scale Establishment backlash against America's populist tide. A group of has-been politicians are pushing Wall Street billionaire Mike Bloomberg to run as an independent if these has-been politicians do not approve of the nominees of both parties. We are told that Bloomberg is the one who can restore "unity" and "bipartisanship" in the face of the uprising. That the populism represented in both parties' primaries right now is supported by both Republican and Democratic voters has somehow escaped these supposed crusaders for "bipartisanship."
The fledgling Bloomberg candidacy says all you need to know about the difference between actual bipartisanship in America, and Washington bipartisanship. A cursory glance at the New York mayor's positions show an egomaniac wholly out of touch with the country on issues from the Iraq War, to civil liberties to economic policies. But because he is a Wall Street billionaire with the corresponding respect and love of Big Money, he is promoted as a deity by Washington."[A Bloomberg candidacy would] be intended as punishment meted out by the Establishment," writes Salon's Glenn Greenwald. "That, more than anything, seems to be the oh-so-noble and trans-partisan purpose...To find a way to stifle the populist anger at our political establishment after 8 years of unrestrained Bush-Cheney devastation."
Still, on this New Years Eve, I remain an eternal optimist. A few weeks ago I finished up my new book, entitled "The Uprising: An Unauthorized Tour of the Populist Revolt Scaring Wall Street and Washington" (due out in the Spring of 2008). I spent a year reporting firsthand from the trenches of the populist movement that I have been a part of for the last decade - an uprising against the hostile takeover of our government that I documented in my first book.
In my reporting over the last year I learned that things are - finally - starting to change. The Joe Kleins, Stu Rothenbergs and Mike Bloombergs still have influence, because they have lots of money behind them. But an uprising is on - one that has already impacted the 2008 presidential race, and one that will continue to seethe well past the upcoming caucuses and primaries. It is that simple fact that truly frightens the defenders of the status quo who have gotten used to the good life inside the palace walls.

Peace on earth

Bernie hugs Larry in Brooklyn, New York

Cousin Cassie in Wheeling, Illinois being her Greta Garbo self

WE WANT HEARINGS

GO TO THIS WEBSITE AND TELL THE HOUSE YOU WANT CHENEY TO START ANSWERING SOME QUESTIONS AS PART OF HIS IMPEACHMENT PROCESS



http://wexlerwantshearings.com/

Schools Klein gives an A do poorly with State, meanwhile those that get a D, do fine....

NEW YORK POSTCITY SCHOOLS FAILING
33% FALL SHORT OF FEDERAL STANDARD
By YOAV GONEN Education Reporter
December 21, 2007 -- One in three city public elementary and middle schools are in need of improvement - a significant increase since last year, state education officials announced yesterday. The percentage of city schools failing to meet federal academic benchmarks climbed from 29 percent to 33 percent, while the statewide total climbed from 14 to 16 percent. Sixty-four city schools were added to the state's list of so-called "failing schools" this year, including one charter school, Harriet Tubman in The Bronx. Eighteen city schools were removed from the list, bringing the city's total to 318. Education officials were quick to point out that the jump in schools unable to meet student-progress goals stemmed from the larger pool of youngsters, from grades three to eight, now tested by the state. Until 2005, only fourth-graders and eighth-graders were tested annually in English and math. Schools make the state's naughty list by missing targets for particular groups of 30 or more students - such as special education, English-language learners, or racial/ethnic minorities - two years running. They get off the list by making targets for two years. Coming six weeks after the city released its own grading system for schools, the state's assessment pointed to many instances where schools were given conflicting feedback. At least two schools that the city Education Department will close for poor grades after this year - PS 79 in The Bronx and PS 183 in Brooklyn - actually met the state's standards and were considered "in good standing." "This discrepancy serves as a big red flag showing that there is something wrong here and that these schools should get another look before they are closed," said United Federation of Teachers chief Randi Weingarten. And an additional 66 schools that got D's or F's from the city are in good standing with the state, while 170 A or B schools failed to make enough progress by state measures, according to the city Education Department. "A mixed message? It's outrageous!" said the principal of a D school in Queens that fared just fine with the state. "We're still trying to reconcile [the grade] with the fact that we did so well with the state." A spokesman for the city Department of Education acknowledged there were discrepancies between the two systems, but said there was also a significant correlation. "As a school's grade gets higher, it's much more likely to be in good standing with the state," he said. http://us.f620.mail.yahoo.com/ym/Compose?To=yoav.gonen%40nypost.com

If he walked into my life...

There's a song which opens, "If he walked into my life, would I feel this way again" which thinks through what a person would do if someone they love just walked out on them and then later walked back in. On various days of foolish and unfathomable feelings, I've played it and sung it. Tonight, however, I wonder it about good ol' Roger Clemens of whom it is suggested that his steroid use parallels that of Barry Bonds'.

As a Yankees fan over the last three years, its been impossible for me to not fall for "The Rocket" legend, even as I joked that if we bought him and David Wells then we could be assured that the game would be fully pitched through since what I remembered of both of their last visits was that they mostly couldn't make it past four innings. As I recall they were about even, Wells without steroids, apparently. But in his last return, there was something of the "Cowboy Up" appeal -- which should have told us all we were in trouble as this was a Red Sox gimmick. I did look forward to him going out there and grinding out innings with spit and forethought. Well, that's what I thought, anyway.

Somewhere in the song, the question is asked that if the object of affection returned, "would I look the other way?" Or, in this case, would I just plain, "look the other way" and still see Roger Clemens. Another question is also asked: "Will I feel the same again?"

Let's see where and when he walks in. I don't want to see him as a Yankee, but I don't think anyone did even before this scandal.

But, I mind my feelings, whatever are left of them. I'll let you know what they tell me.

My little prince

Karen B. Hunter

Nov. 23. 1951 - Sept. 2. 2005

I will always remember how beautiful the world looked when I was looking at it with you.

John Edwards On The Hostile Takeover of Our Government

Election '08 Meets The Great Education Myth
By David Sirota on November 15, 2007 - 3:53pm.
Regular readers know my frustration with what I previously deemed The Great Education Myth in an op-ed for the San Francisco Chronicle. This myth, omnipresent in our media and political debate, states that America's problem with stagnating wages, job loss and benefits cuts is a problem of education. If only workers were better educated, the myth goes, their economic problems would be over.
This myth, which is a lobbyist creation designed to divert political pressure away from reforming labor, trade and economic policies, was most recently vomited up by a top editor and "expert" at one of the largest magazines in America - and then obliterated by government data and at least one leading presidential candidate.
That's right, the latest regurgitation of the myth comes from none other than U.S. News & World Report's chief financial reporter, James Pethokoukis. In the midst of an article asserting that "income inequality may actually be a good sign," this brave defender of royalism flippantly claimed "It really is all about education." He went on to state:
"Advanced economies, whether America's or Denmark's, are knowledge economies. And knowledge economies reward education. Get a degree, expand your skills, and you will do just fine."
Pethokoukis, in a non-sequitur, cites one macro unemployment stat, but offers up no actual data to support his central claim that if you just "get a degree and expand your skills you will do just fine." This is one of the top editors of one of the supposedly most Serious magazines in America regurgitating lobbyists' Great Education Myth without even bothering to check the most easy-to-find data - data reported in publications that are not exactly bastions of anti-capitalist sentiment.
Fortune magazine, for instance, recently reported that economic data proves that "the skill premium, the extra value of higher education, must have declined after three decades of growing." Specifically, "the real annual earnings of college graduates actually declined 5.2 percent, while those of high school graduates, strangely enough, rose 1.6 percent." Similarly, Businessweek has reported that "real wages for young Americans with a bachelor's degree have declined by almost 8% over the past three years" and "economists suspect that global competition has something to do with it."
That's an understatement, as shown in a stunning new report out today from the good folks at the Economic Policy Institute. Using government data, the think tank finds that "the educational group most vulnerable to offshoring are those with at least a four-year college degree." That vulnerability helps drive down wages for better-educated workers because they know that if they try to demand good pay, their employer could simply pick up and leave.
Obviously, this has everything to do with America's corrupt NAFTA-style trade policy - a policy that the U.S. House ratified last week in its vote for the Peru Free Trade Agreement, and that now awaits Senate ratification. This trade policy without enforceable labor, wage, environmental, human rights or product safety standards encourages large corporations to manufacture a race to the bottom in which workers have to keep accepting lower and lower wages (or other standards) in hopes of keeping their employer in their country.
This ain't rocket science to understand. Sure, we should all support improving our education system, because better education is just a good thing. However, it is not a cure-all to our economic challenges - not even close. No amount of education and retraining can overcome the effects of unfair trade agreements. And no amount of "customizing", to use Clinton administration jargon, by an American worker can beat an equally "customized" Chinese or Indian worker, particularly when such workers earn pennies, rather than dollars, per hour.
As I said to start, the Great Education Myth is a corporate creation. It exists to distract the public from demands to change our trade and economic policies so as to raise up all workers. If Big Business can get us all to be mad at the education system alone, then theoretically we won't demand serious populist reforms of an underlying economic system that is currently benefiting the Big Money players in Washington, while crushing the rest of us.
Now, the whole Great Education Myth is hitting the presidential campaign trail. Both Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama have announced their support for the NAFTA-expanding Peru trade deal all while - rather shockingly - engaging in a true Theater of the Absurd by continuing to tell union audiences that they oppose the NAFTA trade model. John Edwards, by contrast, has come out strongly against the Peru deal, and yesterday issued a statement tying the upcoming Senate vote on that trade deal to the Great Education Myth and the Economic Policy Institute's report. Here are some excerpts:
"Today, the Economic Policy Institute issued a report that should come as a clarion call to everyone concerned about the impact of unfair trade agreements and practices on America's working families. In their report, the EPI concludes that between 25 to 30 million American jobs -- about one in five American jobs -- in states all across the nation, are at risk for being offshored over the next decade. And it's not just manufacturing jobs - the report shows those jobs that require at least a four-year college degree are actually the most at risk. This report makes clear what the labor community has known for far too long: bad trade deals, cheap foreign labor, illegal foreign subsidies and foreign currency manipulation are having a devastating effect on American workers...Given this reality, I find it alarming that Senator Clinton and Senator Obama have chosen to support a flawed Peru Trade deal that will only further expand the NAFTA-model that has already cost us well over a million jobs."
How this plays out on the campaign trail is anyone's guess. As we see from Pethokoukis's piece and from many other political pundits like him, the Great Education Myth is such unquestioned orthodoxy among our elite media and politicians that it has become an assumption that is flippantly forwarded without even a flinch toward basic factual substantiation.
That means candidates like Edwards (or anyone other such populist) who dares to challenge the Great Education Myth and the Washington Consensus in support of NAFTA-style trade policies face not only hostility from other candidates chasing down Wall Street cash, but hostility from what is supposed to be an objective political press corps.

Still hope for Edwards!

John Edwards and Mike Huckabee are both doing well in Iowa. Edwards is my candidate of choice. Why is Edwards doing well. David Sirota writes in this week's column "It's the populism, stupid." Read the whole column at http://www.creators.com/opinion/david-sirota/the-huey-longs-of-iowa.html

My second choice is now Joe Biden, the only candidate who knows anything about the issues and what he's talking about. Sure, Herculean ego. But he has plans for what he would do right now. Check out his most recent interview with Bob Schiefer -- I am going to see if it is posted anywhere.

Not so spooky

Bernie likes to sleep on my laundrybag which is nestled in the hallway. It's full of clean clothes I just pull out as I go. Where the bag is, is close to where Henry used to sit on similarly poorly placed blankets and empty boxes. Like Henry, Bernie likes to tear up paper and he likes to get my attention mostly to himself. Food is also his favorite topic of discussion and he has a broad palate, including broccoli -- a favorite of Queequeg's.

Larry sits on one of Karen's chairs, waiting for me to come over and snuggle, very contented and at ease. He climbed that chair in her apartment and it's an old friend with good memories. Like Queequeg, he is very self-contained, except for those moments he spreads out flat on the chair with his paw hanging over, as if reaching for me. Queequeg did something similar, but it was to prepare to scratch me when I wasn't looking for something I had done (such as crossed over him or in his path without proper acknowledgement or permission). Larry monitors my movement throughout the house like Fred, did. He worries about me, though he pretends to be nonchalant. Fred covered his worries with a big appetite.

So, this Halloween is filled with good and many spirits. We three, Larry, Bernie and I, carry many good memories.

Swimming to my MP3 player

For two days straight, at lunch with colleagues whose political knowledge far surpassed mine, I gave up my usual attempt to learn on the fly. I listened to my MP3 player through the whole meal. At one moment, one of my colleagues leaned next to me and said, "Irish music?" "Karen liked it." He nodded. There, I got a lot done:
Avoided showing my ignorance about several politicians I looked up when I got home.
Held my ground on sentiment, romance and bagpipes. Karen usually liked the more adventurous and vocal, but the tone was right. She would understand.

It was a musical pause at lunch with homage to a close friend.

I couldn't take the picture fast enough

Larry and Bernie stood on a piece of furniture. Together. No negative energy. Just sharing the view. And tonight they returned to sharing my bed, sleeping a few feet apart.

BUY NOTHING ON NOVEMBER 6, 2007

It's the national strike against fascism. You can do it. Just buy nothing that day.

Fifteen year old African American girl sentenced to seven years in prison for pushing a hall monitor in Texas

By Tracy Stokes, BET.com News Staff & Wire Services Posted March 28, 2007 -
In Paris, Texas, last year, a 14-year-old White girl burns down her family's home. Her punishment? Probation. In the same town three months later, a 15-year-old Black girl, Shaquanda Cotton, is sentenced to seven years in prison for pushing a hall monitor at her high school. Shaquanda had no prior arrests, and the monitor, a 58-year-old teacher's aide, was not hurt, according to Black leaders in the northeast Texas town of about 26,000 residents. But in March 2006, the same judge, Lamar County Judge Chuck Superville, who let the White teenage girl go on probation, convicted Shaquanda of "assault on a public servant" and sent her to prison at least until she turns 21. Officials at the Texas Youth Commission declined to discuss the case with BET.com, citing Texas law. "State law forbids us from acknowledging whether we have any youths are in our system, despite the 50 million issues of print that's been run," said Jim Hurley, a spokesman for the Texas Youth Commission. "We'd have to break the law to talk about it."

Civil Rights Uproar

While the U.S. Department of Education is investigating the incident, the case has civil rights groups in an uproar. "I don't understand the judge's rationale for his decision," Dr. Howard Anderson, president of the San Antonio Branch of the NAACP, told BET.com. In highlighting what he called an egregious miscarriage of justice in a town with a long history of civil rights abuses, Anderson pointed to the case of the 14-year-old convicted arson (whose name was not released because of her age), who was slapped with probation, and the case of a 19-year-old White man in Paris, convicted of killing a 54-year-old Black woman and her 3-year-old grandson with his truck. The latter, he said, was also sentenced to probation and told to send the family a Christmas card every year. "Then you have Shaquanda's case," Anderson said. "She pushed a hall monitor, and she gets seven years confinement? If I look at all three of these sentences, and I'm not a lawyer, I have to wonder what the judicial system is doing. In this particular case, what is this judge doing?" Gary Bledsoe, an Austin attorney who heads the state NAACP branch, told BET.com that Shaquanda was merely trying to defend herself. "All she (Shaquanda) did was grab the aide to prevent a strike," Bledsoe said. "It's like they are sending a signal to Black folks in Paris that you stay in your place in this community, in the shadows, intimidated."
Sad History

And keeping Blacks in their place is nothing new in Paris, say leaders, who remind that it's the site of the first highly publicized lynching of a Black by a large White mob. In 1893, fugitive Henry White was captured in Arkansas and brought to Paris, where he was tortured and burned alive on a train bed as more than 10,000 angry townsfolk cheered and jeered. Activists say that the Shaquanda sentence is nothing more than a modern-day lynching. Cotton has been incarcerated at a youth prison in Brownwood, Texas, for the last year on a sentence that could run until her 21st birthday. But like many of the other youths in the system, she is eligible to earn early release if she achieves certain social, behavioral and educational milestones while in prison. But according to The Chicago Tribune, officials at the Ron Jackson Correctional Complex repeatedly have extended Shaquanda's sentence because she refuses to admit guilt and because she reportedly was found with contraband in her cell - an extra pair of socks. "She's not admitting any guilt, because she doesn't feel that she did anything," Anderson told BET.com. "Not to mention, who saw the pushing, if it did occur?" Cotton's mother, Creola, who Anderson describes as "strong-willed," said her daughter was singled out because she accused the school district of racism on several occasions. In fact, 12 discrimination complaints have been filed against the Paris Independent School District in recent years. District officials dispute the charges, but the U.S. Department of Education, which is still investigating the case, has reportedly asked the U.S. Department of Justice to get involved.

In 1998, Paris, Texas, was named the "Best Small Town in Texas" by Kevin Heubusch in his book The New Rating Guide to Life in America's Small Cities.

*****FORWARD THIS ON TO AS MANY PEOPLE AS POSSIBLE!!! WE NEED TO BRING THESE INJUSTICES TO LIGHT***** Are you interested in reaching out to Shaquanda? You can write a Letter directly to her at the address below: She also receive mail here:Ron Jackson Correctional Complex,Unit 2, Dorm 4P.O. Box 872Brownwood, Texas 768041125308

The Campaign Subway Ride #1

Most teachers ride the subways to get to work in NYC. Trains go on "rides" as if they were for amusement. I'm not distant enough -- yet -- from believing in the importance of the election to not put my messy shoeprints into this subway car. Overworked metaphors aside, calling anything a "trail" feels fuzzy to me. People are traveling by trains, busses, cars. It's more like an "expedition". Since that is even less visceral to me, I'll stick with "virtual subway ride through the nation." Very New York, but since I can't have the "Have mores" group that George Bush does as his base, I'll stick with the "Have New York" group as my base.

The UFT and the AFT -- our local and national teachers unions came out in support of Hillary this week. Since our unions have proven themselves to be more allies of corporations than the corporeal bodies in their classrooms, this adds to my skepticism of Mrs. Clinton.

Also this week, no viable Democratic candidate -- Hillary, Barack or John E. could promise the troops would be out of Iraq by 2013.

Essentially, on the larger issues, the more visible candidates grow more similar and more disappointing.

I'm sure they will say the requisite things about results, results and a little bit about class size when the time to talk Education comes.

So, I am now opting to look at candidates for "the little things". Who is polite, who is concrete and pragmatic and who seems to run a good campaign.

So far, my vote is for ...Barack Obama. I wouldn't have thought this months ago when I was a staunch Edwards supporter. People have pointed out how Obama makes slightly better linguistic choices in his speeches and seems to connect a bit better than Edwards. I am most convinced by his ability...for what reason I do not know...to understand the "on the ground" pragmatics of the campaign. His grassroots background has made him and his campaign very good and bringing in local support along his virtual subway ride. He has his methods down to personally pointing out where you can sign up to volunteer. See this cleverly written piece by Roger Simon for more details http://www.creators.com/opinion/roger-simon.html

Sounds of a room full of teachers

"Middle school kids will really get you. They'll come right up to you."

"She would dance to teach them conjunctions and they listened. I liked her. She was different."

"Not in my class."

"You have to be patient with kids."

"You can't let them walk all over you."

"In my class, that doesn't happen."

"And the Principal walked in and they pushed him and I didn't like that and I told him so and he laughed it off. I would never allow that."

Everything is an axiom. We're not just defensive. We're downright prophetic. Perhaps we've been so pushed to the wall that we ARE the aged prophets, near blind, coming out of our caves to warn the city of storms ahead.
Or, we've just been banished and are continually hollering from over the city walls.
Or, we feel as if we are about to be.

Where is everybody?

Over the past two years or so, I've gained friends, lost friends, gained friends...

I picked up the phone tonight and thought of a few people I could dial, but the list dwindled rapidly. One I had just spoken to yesterday, one I had seen this afternoon. One's phone was not working.
And there was my mother whom I called and the conversation was brief because we disagree on a great deal.

Five minutes later there was just one friend I have technically borrowed from another friend because he is the roommate of that friend. I mean, he is my friend....

He was at a friend's.

My cat's are sleeping off a round of playing.

I've sent out two cover letters and resumes and am listening to Mike Malloy. The radio will get me through the night and the cats will wake up in an hour.

When did the bus leave?