Election Guide 2008

In case you missed it, as I did, yesterday the NYT offered this useful guide to the issues and where everyone stands.

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50 Most Loathsome

Warning: This will make you laugh until milk shoots out your nose. Unbelievably vicious riff.

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December Morning

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Too Close to Call

Although I question the usefulness of a caucus that polls the desires of 100,000 white midwesterners, it's fun to think that three Dem candidates are in a statistical dead heat there, with Edwards (maybe) beginning to pull ahead.

Of some concern is the fact that the Dem candidates have spent about $23.7 million on campaign advertising alone, with some estimating $150 per caucus-goer in Iowa. To put that in perspective, $23.7 million was the amount authorized last year by the DOD for defense-related projects to benefit the Hudson Valley. It was the amount offered by the Department of Human Services to help children and families with HIV under the Ryan White AIDS Resources Emergency Act. And in a funny kind of coincidence, it was the amount of money given to the University of Iowa by NIH to conduct clinical trials of vaccines for infectious diseases over the next seven years.

In other words, there are more meaningful uses for that kind of money.

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Talk Time

The NYT has this fun graphic depicting the amount of time each candidate spoke during debates this fall. Not really fair to the second tier candidates, and it clearly pays to have fewer candidates running in your party.

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R.I.P.

Wondering whether Benazir was a good guy or a bad guy? Here's an analysis from someone in the know.

She was a bad guy -- not because she was evil per se, but because she, of ALL the people who played a role in the politics of the region, had the best chance of rising above the tribalism and sectarian bullshit and moving her country forward into the 19th century, at least, if not the 20th or 21st. She went to Harvard, and Oxford, or maybe Cambridge, but you get the idea. She was smart, and had a world vision, and commanded respect locally and globally, and talked the talk.

But instead of walking the walk, she and her husband stole $684 million and built castles all across England while giving crap back to her starving countrymen and tacitly encouraging the psychopathic two-party (two tribe, really) political system that has now taken her life. So be it.

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The x Files

PZ sends this Washington Post article about a quick fix for math teachers who don't have the skills they need to teach algebra to elementary students--a math consultant in the school who works with them so that they understand the concepts before they teach them. Sounds like a good idea, especially if it's paid for with an NSF grant. Here is the study cited, which says, among other things, that

Future U.S. middle school teachers' mathematics knowledge was generally weaker than that of future teachers in South Korea, Taiwan, Germany, and in some areas, Bulgaria. Taiwanese and South Korean future teachers were the top performers in all five areas of mathematics knowledge.

Bulgaria?

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One Chopped Himself in Halves, I Wish

Tancredo's out, leaving the rest of the field to protect us against whatever the hell he was protecting us from.

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Home Again

We're back! Global warming sent us running from the ski vacation to Bill's house near Akron a day early--one day of not-so-great skiing followed by rain. Our housesitter left a note saying that traveling down our driveway was hazardous and heart-attack-inducing at least one day while we were gone--sheet ice all the way down. Four-wheel drive does nothing in such conditions. . . .

Tomorrow we host DZ and family for a holiday dinner, with a brunch for friends and family Friday. I'm incubating a virus that I'm fighting off with sheer bravado. It was a fun trip with lots of socializing, much good food, late bedtimes, gray skies.

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Holiday Fun

Before we leave for Holiday Valley, Gail Collins has a fun quiz, and I have the rest of the Republican Holiday Song.

Republican Holiday Song
On the twelfth day of Christmas,
my Party sent to me
Immigrant apartheid,
Shades of Willie Horton,
Christian-nation fat boy,
The guy who married Jeri,
Ann's buddy Duncan,
The ghost of Terri Schiavo,
Nativist Tancredo,
Mad. . . Dog. . . McCain!
Gay-basher Keyes,
Gold-standard Gyno,
"Big-Lovin'" Mitt,
And. . . a fem-bot named Giuliani!!!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

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Day Seven

Republican Holiday Song
On the seventh day of Christmas,
my Party sent to me
The ghost of Terri Schiavo,
Nativist Tancredo,
Mad. . . Dog. . . McCain!
Gay-basher Keyes,
Gold Standard Gyno,
"Big-Lovin'" Mitt,
And a fem-bot named Giuliani.

Tomorrow: The Whole Pie.

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Day Six

Republican Holiday Song
On the sixth day of Christmas,
my Party sent to me
Nativist Tancredo,
Mad. . . Dog. . . McCain!
Gay-basher Keyes,
Gold-standard Gyno,
"Big-Lovin'" Mitt,
And a fem-bot named Giuliani.

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Day Five

Republican Holiday Song
On the fifth day of Christmas,
my Party sent to me
Mad. . . Dog. . . McCain!
Gay-basher Keyes,
Gold-standard Gyno,
"Big-Lovin'" Mitt,
And a fem-bot named Giuliani.

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More Lists

It's the end of the year and time for Top Ten Lists. Here are some from TIME that were fun. Some are only online and not in the magazine itself.

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Another Day, Another Nut

Republican Holiday Song
On the fourth day of Christmas,
my Party sent to me
Gay-basher Keyes,
Gold-standard Gyno,
"Big-Lovin'" Mitt,
And a fem-bot named Giuliani.

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The Third Day

Republican Holiday Song
On the third day of Christmas,
my Party sent to me
Gold-standard Gyno,
"Big-Lovin'" Mitt,
And a fem-bot named Giuliani.

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Day Two, Nothing Changes

Republican Holiday Song
On the second day of Christmas, my Party sent to me
"Big Lovin'" Mitt
And a fem-bot named Giuliani.

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Choices

Is it just me, or is this year's crop of Republican candidates the worst ever? They make Reagan look brilliant and Nixon sound honest. There's not one that I'd want selling me a car, much less running my country. On the flip side, the Dems seem a pretty viable bunch, with occasional lapses. Granted, I'm biased. But OMG.

Republican Holiday Song
On the first day of Christmas, my Party sent to me
A fem-bot named Giuliani.

To be continued. . . .

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Buck

This one has both antlers. The one-antler guy has vanished, perhaps due to hunting season, perhaps not.

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Consensus v. Majority Rule

I've written before about the difference between the political board and the professional, or corporate, board. In NYS, and perhaps in most states, school boards are encouraged to work toward consensus, which is a management model, not a democratic one. Interestingly, it is also a Quaker model, and a model historically used by the Haudenosaunee people of upstate NY.

Consensus decision-making is egalitarian and requires universal participation, both of which are good things. The main issue for school boards (and businesses), though, is that it builds commitment to a decision--if everyone agrees to a greater or lesser extent, then everyone is automatically behind the decision and must (in theory, anyway) therefore support it publicly.

The negatives, as I see it, are that consensus building is time-consuming, that it often results in halfhearted decision-making, and that it tends to lead to groupthink, which is not necessarily the same as genuine thought. (One classic example is the so-called "Abilene Paradox.")

I think consensus decision-making does not fit with a political model of board governance. If a board member truly represents a constituency, he or she cannot reasonably alter that to suit the whim of the group. That's a paradox all of us on BOEs face as we try to make decisions for the districts we serve.

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Just Another Pretty Face

SAZ writes the following:

I thought you might like to regret with me this scientific paper from PNAS last month:

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Vol. 104 page 17948
Predicting political elections from rapid and unreflective face judgments

Charles C. Ballew, II* and Alexander Todorov*

*Department of Psychology and Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08540

Edited by Edward E. Smith, Columbia University, New York, NY, and approved September 25, 2007 (received for review June 10, 2007)

Here we show that rapid judgments of competence based solely on the facial appearance of candidates predicted the outcomes of gubernatorial elections, the most important elections in the United States next to the presidential elections. In all experiments, participants were presented with the faces of the winner and the runner-up and asked to decide who is more competent. To ensure that competence judgments were based solely on facial appearance and not on prior person knowledge, judgments for races in which the participant recognized any of the faces were excluded from all analyses. Predictions were as accurate after a 100-ms exposure to the faces of the winner and the runner-up as exposure after 250 ms and unlimited time exposure (Experiment 1). Asking participants to deliberate and make a good judgment dramatically increased the response times and reduced the predictive accuracy of judgments relative to both judgments made after 250 ms of exposure to the faces and judgments made within a response deadline of 2 s (Experiment 2). Finally, competence judgments collected before the elections in 2006 predicted 68.6% of the gubernatorial races and 72.4% of the Senate races (Experiment 3). These effects were independent of the incumbency status of the candidates. The findings suggest that rapid, unreflective judgments of competence from faces can affect voting decisions.

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Afghanistan

Lisa sends these photos from Afghanistan, where her Alliance runs an armchair ESL program. Pretty remarkable. Kabul is not exactly Baghdad.

Women faculty members leave their burkas at the door outside of the computer lab.

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Mitt Romney, You're No Jack Kennedy

I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute--where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishoners for whom to vote--where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference--and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.

I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish--where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source--where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials--and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.

For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew--or a Quaker--or a Unitarian--or a Baptist. It was Virginia's harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that helped lead to Jefferson's statute of religious freedom. Today I may be the victim- -but tomorrow it may be you--until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped at a time of great national peril.

Finally, I believe in an America where religious intolerance will someday end--where all men and all churches are treated as equal--where every man has the same right to attend or not attend the church of his choice--where there is no Catholic vote, no anti-Catholic vote, no bloc voting of any kind--and where Catholics, Protestants and Jews, at both the lay and pastoral level, will refrain from those attitudes of disdain and division which have so often marred their works in the past, and promote instead the American ideal of brotherhood.

That is the kind of America in which I believe. And it represents the kind of Presidency in which I believe--a great office that must neither be humbled by making it the instrument of any one religious group nor tarnished by arbitrarily withholding its occupancy from the members of any one religious group. I believe in a President whose religious views are his own private affair, neither imposed by him upon the nation or imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office.

I would not look with favor upon a President working to subvert the first amendment's guarantees of religious liberty. Nor would our system of checks and balances permit him to do so--and neither do I look with favor upon those who would work to subvert Article VI of the Constitution by requiring a religious test--even by indirection--for it. If they disagree with that safeguard they should be out openly working to repeal it.

I want a Chief Executive whose public acts are responsible to all groups and obligated to none--who can attend any ceremony, service or dinner his office may appropriately require of him--and whose fulfillment of his Presidential oath is not limited or conditioned by any religious oath, ritual or obligation.

This is the kind of America I believe in--and this is the kind I fought for in the South Pacific, and the kind my brother died for in Europe. No one suggested then that we may have a "divided loyalty," that we did "not believe in liberty," or that we belonged to a disloyal group that threatened the "freedoms for which our forefathers died."

And in fact this is the kind of America for which our forefathers died--when they fled here to escape religious test oaths that denied office to members of less favored churches--when they fought for the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom--and when they fought at the shrine I visited today, the Alamo. For side by side with Bowie and Crockett died McCafferty and Bailey and Carey--but no one knows whether they were Catholic or not. For there was no religious test at the Alamo.

--JFK, September 12, 1960

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His Future's So Bright, He Has to Wear Shades

Here's Andy Cuomo's new website, designed to tell all NY'ers exactly to whom their elected officials are pandering--oops, I mean for whom they are bringing home the "bacon"--and who is filling their coffers at the same time. It's a work in progress, but the potential is there for it to be quite useful and educational. There's a lot of information here that's available elsewhere, but here it's all nicely combined and easy to access.

And of course, we all notice that AC is getting a lot more favorable press than ES. Loved his dad; that's the best I can say for the guy.

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Snow Day

We had our first snow day yesterday, mostly due to blowing snow and whiteout conditions. I get no days off, but I managed to come down with some horrible stomach bug with fever and headache, so after a halfhearted morning of work, I took the rest of the day off. Paul and I watched Netflix movies. O had neighbor Quinn over for the whole day--they sledded, played computer games (in tandem, with O on her computer and Quinn on mine), and made a godawful mess in the kitchen mixing up various concoctions, none of them edible. Today it's business as usual--O sledded down to the bus stop, Paul plowed and drove off to Newfield, and I'm at my desk.

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More on Texas

The NYT editorial weighed in today on the de-evolution of Texas standards. I checked the Austin paper, which reported on this when it happened, November 29, ending this way:

Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education, which sent the original e-mail to Comer announcing the event, said Comer's situation seems to be a warning to agency employees.

"This just underscores the politicization of science education in Texas," Scott said. "In most states, the department of education takes a leadership role in fostering sound science education. Apparently TEA employees are supposed to be kept in the closet and only let out to do the bidding of the board."

You can't imagine the power of the TEA board over the education of children nationwide. Think you have local control? Think again.

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Required Reading

Jonathan Tilove, who usually writes about race, writing about misogyny and its connection to Hillary hatred. Everyone, pro or con HRC, should read this.

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As Texas Goes, So Goes the Nation

Well, not entirely, but in the world of textbooks, where Texas wields a mighty dollar figure, it's always haircurling to read something like this. It seems that the TEA's Director of Science has been pushed out of her position due to her stance on evolution.

The [Texas] standards, adopted in 1998, are due for a 10-year review and possible revision after the 15-member elected State Board of Education meets in February, with particular ramifications for the multibillion-dollar textbook industry. The chairman of the panel, Dr. Don McLeroy, a dentist and Sunday School teacher at Grace Bible Church in College Station, has lectured favorably in the past about intelligent design.

The ramifications for the textbook industry are ramifications for the states as well.

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Follow Up

When I signed off on November 30, we had no heat, my car wouldn't start, and I'd killed my computer. We have heat now, although our bedroom is iffy (it's the highest point in the house and the farthest from the boiler/furnace, and it tends to get the most air in the pipes). My car starts every time thanks to the Sears battery I had put in on Friday. And Paul rescued the computer by giving me a new user name and moving everything laboriously over to the new site. So things are looking up.

We do, however, need to replace Paul's car, which needs more work than it's worth to pass inspection. He's looking at Hyundai Elantras (a complete circle for us--my first car was a Hyundai), having determined that gas mileage is more important right now than all-wheel drive.

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Obamarama, Once More

As Iowa approaches, the worm has turned, and all kinds of people who couldn't imagine it before are considering the possibility of an Obama win. Frank Rich talks about what a disaster that would be to the GOP, which doesn't even seem to have a plan B. And Robin Toner talks about his appeal to women.

Electability is a huge part of all this. Although I fear the horror of a Clinton-Giuliani or Clinton-anybody campaign, I think she's tough enough to survive it. I'm not so sure about the soft-spoken Obama, plus I'm worried about what a brutal and ugly fight will do to race relations in this country. But maybe the GOP won't dare to get ugly. Yeah, right.

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Combatting Fraud

In 2004, the worst case of fraud and theft in any school district in the United States was uncovered in Roslyn, NY, by a school board member who worked for Home Depot. The scandal dragged on for over two years and involved the superintendent, the business official, account clerks, board members, and who knows how many others, to the tune of $11 million.

Now, in a district like Dryden, you would be fairly likely to miss $11 million right away. Be that as it may, the state's answer to this is to mandate a six-hour workshop on finances and fraud for every BOE member in New York. That's what I did today, in Horseheads, having put it off until the very end of the year.

The workshop leaders were game and pleasant, but the information could not have been duller, and I cannot get past the sheer injustice of requiring any kind of all-day training of a volunteer. BOE members already go to New School Board Member training, which is not required but fairly useful, by which I mean that assuming you're new, you might learn perhaps one piece of information per hour. And I don't doubt that the message of today's workshop, which was approximately "You are the stewards of the taxpayers' money," is one we should repeat to ourselves more often around budget season. But this new joyful mandating of training for volunteers (Paul has "required" training for ZBA, which he has thus far ignored) is just another way for the state to spend taxpayers' money, provide consulting jobs for people who have paid their dues in other ways, and justify the existence of arcane departments in Albany. Do you suppose now that we're attending six-hour sessions that there will never be another financial scandal in the schools? It's kind of hard to assess the usefulness of this, don't you think? But, then, assessment isn't really Albany's strong suit.

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A Cautionary Tale

Every once in a while, a client will send me a file I can't open. Ignoring the warnings from my system, I usually try at least once to open it in another program. If that doesn't work, I request that they send it to me in a different form. Yesterday, I received an email from the school that had an attachment with an unfamiliar suffix. As usual, I tried once to open it. What a mistake. It wrapped itself around every program on the computer, replacing every shortcut I had with itself. This was neither a worm nor a virus; just a basic program I didn't happen to have, but my computer was extremely interested in helping me open it, to the extent that it tried, literally, everything.

So now I still have every program I've loaded, but I can't get to any of them except through extraordinary backdoor means.

Paul has never seen this before. After sitting and staring at it for a while, he thinks he may have a solution that doesn't involve dumping and rebuilding the hard drive, but it's gonna take all weekend.

I have learned a valuable lesson, pretty much at the cost of my sanity.

And because these things come in threes, yesterday we had no heat, and today my car won't start.

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Required Reading

Krugman on how Obama's health plan is timid and how his arguments for it are basically right-wing. Fierce!

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Required Reading

Gail Collins on the absolutely horrible decision Republicans have to make among a bunch of wackos. I suspect most will stay home--the voters, that is, not the wackos. As tough as our decision is on the other side, at least we have a sprinkling of candidates I can honestly see holding the office.

I have now officially stopped watching the debates. I used to tune in briefly, but now I spin right by. Too painful.

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Holiday Travel

Assuming it snows, here's where we're staying for our winter ski vacation pre-Christmas: the aptly named Holiday Valley in Ellicottville, NY. We'll share with Bill & Lela and the kids. We may host DZ/PZ and families in Freeville after the holiday. PZ and Lisa, of course, are off to Kabul Friday for two fun-filled weeks. What could be more festive than a Taliban-flavored Hanukkah?

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Living Seasonally

In the 13 years I lived in NYC, I barely noted the passage of seasons in my everyday life. I put on boots when it snowed; I took my winter coat to the dry cleaner's in springtime. Nowadays, I'm tied to the seasons. I know winter's coming because I have to bring in wood every day and keep the fire stoked. Paul put up the clothesline of bird feeders across the side lawn; I got my snow tires put on. The chickens aren't laying as often. Turkeys march across the back yard every morning. I dug up and replanted the wayward bulbs from down the driveway so they'd get in before the ground got hard. I ordered the 750+ gallons of oil we needed to refill the multiple tanks in the basement. Paul drove the lawn tractor around to our garage on Goodband Road and got the patio furniture ready to go. We're stocked with staples, and our generator works. As I write, it's just starting to snow. I guess we're ready. . . .

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Ghost Buck

Seen through the mist. . . he only has one antler. Did he lose the other to a fight? Snag it on a tree? He appears regularly at the top of the mountain, posing like Bambi's dad, only smaller. He's probably a couple of years old.

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Required Reading

Paul Krugman, explaining why I feel so poor. We, of course, already paid for a winter's worth of heating oil--it looks pretty serious when you see it in one bill. It now costs over $40 to fill up the Subaru, and the truck has to sit in the driveway while we shop at Tops to get their 10 cents a gallon rebate. (Since I'm pretty convinced that Tops costs more than Wegman's as a rule, this is probably a wash.) And although we don't buy meat most weeks (we buy half a pig and half a cow and raise Cornish hens biannually), my weekly grocery bill has increased by about 10 percent this year. Meanwhile, I haven't been able to raise my rates in maybe a decade, and DZ can attest to the fact that rates have often declined precipitously.

So I'm working more to earn less, and spending more at the same time. Kinda sucks.

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RIP

He was one of only two socialist mayors in the country. For years, he had football tix for CU right behind (in front of?) the Big Zs. He was a big personality who was far to the left even of the city he served. As Carrie said this morning, he always fought the good fight, right up till the end.

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My Czech and Swedish Friends

I've been getting an inordinate number of Swedish and Czech hits, all of them searching "Kaz Wow." The best I can figure is that they're looking for a character named Kaz'rogal in the game World of Warfare, AKA "WoW." Judging by the number of hits I've received, it's pretty popular. And of course, this post will up the number for a while. . . .

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Say What?

This editorial by a former school psychologist was in the IJ yesterday. Although usually I'm happy to comment on their Story Chat, this one required more thought than most, and not just because it's written in the most convoluted and cryptic style imaginable.

The writer claims that there are only three reasons a child fails to learn, none of which are the child's failure at all. One is because the instructions she receives from a teacher are "poorly shaped." The second is because the task she is given by a teacher is not adequately reinforced, which appears to mean "rewarded" rather than "retaught." The third is because the instructions she receives from a teacher are ambiguous.

Although I believe the writer when he says that we're too quick to diagnose kids with ADHD and even to assume some kids can't learn, I think this attempt to remove all blame from (for example) the home environment, or immaturity, or incompatible learning styles, or any of a thousand other possible causes, is vapid and dangerous mumbo-jumbo.

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Post-Holiday Languor

There's a lot to be said for having a quiet holiday at home. I barely had to cook, so I napped in front of the Packers-Lions game. And boy do we have leftovers.

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Voodoo Economics?

The NY Senate Dems propose to reduce the enormous state deficit by (gasp) cutting spending and reducing state jobs. Needless to say, this radical proposal was met with derision.

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Thanks-giving

Giving thanks for their freedom, and the fact that it's deer season, not turkey season, a small flock parades past the peacock cage.

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Lansing Scores Supt

As we begin our own search in Dryden, I'm interested to see how other local districts fare. Lansing hired a Dr. Grimm, lately of Greece. He's been through a couple of very large and wealthy districts but has not been a superintendent before. However, he has been a senior administrator, has 9 years administrative experience, and has a doctorate. People are already commenting that he's moved around too much. It's a delicate balance--if you stay in one place, you don't get the varied experience you may need. If you move around, you look flighty. It took Lansing three months to go through the process. I wish Dr. Grimm luck.

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Campaign Fallout Continues

The ugly 2007 campaign is not entirely over in Dryden. Cheryl Nelson posts a pleasant diatribe on Simon's blog, and over at the IJ, a vet continues the neverending Pledge of Allegiance flap. On the other hand, Dave Makar and I had a nice chat with John Bailey at the Chili Cookoff, proving that civility is possible, even after a divisive season.

Note to Cheryl: After losing a nasty school board race in 2003, I was quoted on the front page of the IJ saying, "In a democracy, the people get the representation they deserve." Although I do believe it, it probably wasn't the nicest thing to say, and even my friends saw it as sour grapes. Perhaps it's better to be silent at times like these.

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Required Reading

Henry Louis Gates, Jr., on a surprising statistic involving class differences in African-Americans pegged to historical land ownership.

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Arcuri and Chili

I went to Dryden Town Hall this afternoon for Congressman Arcuri's "Congress in Your Corner" Q & A. It was not an unfriendly crowd, although his handlers seemed to think that it was. Lots of praise for his voting record, lots of questions about Iran and impeachment, a smattering on health care and his support for Hillary, and I asked about grants for alternative energy for middle class citizens, and another guy asked about CAFE standards. He talked a bit about immigration, in light of his refusal to support Spitzer's plan to license illegals. I would say that his answers did not entirely appease the audience. The majority of the folks there clearly wanted him to lead on impeachment, which he is just as clearly not going to do. The most interesting parts of the discussion as far as I'm concerned revolved around whether his job is to represent his constituents or to lead and whether the president's job is to keep us safe or to safeguard the Constitution.

Afterward, Dave Makar and I skipped over to the Community Cafe, which was holding a grand chili cookoff with apple pie on the side. I voted for my favorite chili out of eight, which was not easy to do (I picked the very first one I tried, which may say something about the importance of ballot order), and we schmoozed pleasantly with Drydenites of all political flavors.

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First Real Snow

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No Rifles, Please

So far, despite neighboring counties' acceptance, Tompkins County doesn't allow the use of rifles in deer season; hunters are restricted to shotguns and bows. I hope it stays that way. As O comes up our quarter-mile driveway after school, the sound of shotguns aimed at targets is all around, as locals pattern in their guns. With a shotgun, you can pretty much see where your bullet will land. With a rifle, if you miss your target or prey, the bullet can continue for hundreds of yards.

The first couple of days of deer season, I'll probably drive O down and up. If rifles come to the county, I'll keep the dogs inside. There won't be a minute of the season where I'll feel entirely safe.

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Swift Kids for Truth

The best part is how many Ben Smith forum writers thought these were real attack ads. Here's my favorite.

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Plague

PZ writes that a U Mass acquaintance of his died this month in his Grand Canyon home of pneumonic plague. A rare and not-nice way to die, and not the danger you expect when you study cougars.

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What If You Held a Meeting, and Nobody Came?

Today's Journal remarks that only one person attended the County's last budget hearing. He/she can join us in McLean, where the only people in last night's audience were invited there for recognition and left shortly thereafter. And there was much good news to report, but no one to hear or publicize it. I don't think anyone can object if I give the highlights:
1) We're well on the way at last to mapping the entire curriculum.
2) For the most part, we're keeping class sizes where they should be.
3) Our adaptive PE program is a great success.
4) We have the basic tenets of a strategic plan.
5) We are revising our policy manual to update and correlate it to new laws.

I hate to b*tch, but it does sometimes feel like all of us are working in a vacuum.

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Nature, Here and Abroad

The dogs and I just chased a hawk away from the chickens; it was down on the ground, running around a tree after a chicken nearly half again its size. The peacocks and guinea hens cheered us on, loudly.

Meanwhile, PZ was on NPR this morning, talking a bit about his adventures in Afghanistan.

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Required Reading

Jay Gallagher, on how we all talk endlessly about property taxes but apparently don't really care enough to do anything about them.

DiNapoli's report pointed out that one reason school costs are escalating faster than hikes in the overall cost of living is because the price tag of fringe benefits for teachers and other school employees shot up an average of 12.2 percent a year from 2000 to 2005.

But who wants to force those workers to pay more for these benefits — chiefly health insurance and pensions — as many workers in the private sector have been forced to do?

Certainly not school boards, apparently, who have OK'd hundreds of contracts in the past seven years that don't address the issue.

And apparently not voters, who for the most part don't even vote in school elections. Those who do pass school budgets and select school board members who negotiate and approve the contracts.

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Working the 20th Century Way

I know I'm not keeping to my daily blogging schedule, but I am overwhelmed by a job for a Major Publisher Who Shall Remain Nameless, a job that has inundated me with paper and is killing me with Too Much Information. Fifty-page guidelines! Two sets of them, much of the information contradictory! Not to mention weekly revisions of guidelines! Tearsheets a la 1980! Piles and piles and piles of paper, and Fed Ex boxes lining every wall of the office! All for a pretty meaningless revision of a perfectly good series.

If anyone cares to attend, there's a BOE meeting tomorrow at Cassavant School (McLean) at 7:15. I'd link to the agenda, but it's not on the website yet.

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RIP

Just yesterday, I noticed his 2007 novel on the shelves of the library and wondered, "Just how old is this guy anyway? 80 something?" Well, he was 84 when I asked, but now he's dead.

As far as I'm concerned, this is the one worth reading. Maybe the only one, but I never got too far into the oeuvre. Although he's been mythologized as the voice of an era, I'm not sure he ever spoke for anyone other than himself. Nevertheless, he had an eye for what we cared about in mid-to-late-twentieth-century America, and that makes him worth remembering.

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Darth Vader in Dutchess County

Phil sends along this angry missive to the Poughkeepsie Journal, which amused me:

Subject: Dick Cheney's Traffic Jam

To the Editor:

I was surprised (but skeptical) when law enforcement officials predicted no significant traffic delays would result from Vice President Cheney’s recent visit, but I was mystified when they later reported that none had occurred. Apparently, the closure of the Taconic Parkway, north and south of Route 55, for twenty-five minutes during the Monday morning rush doesn’t qualify as a delay or an inconvenience. I beg to differ: I delivered my son to school fifteen minutes late and, judging from the active cell phones I saw in nearby cars, it appeared that many drivers were calling in to postpone or reschedule appointments at work. Had the state police announced the full extent of road closures in advance, motorists could have found alternate routes. This failure of notification is regrettable in itself, but it seems both absurd and disingenuous to pretend that an extensive backup on the county’s largest north/south artery simply didn’t occur. One has come to expect such denials of reality from the Bush/Cheney administration, but surely the state police need not share in such fictions. If, in the future, Mr. Cheney wants to stalk farm-raised pheasants (native to China, not North America) on an enclosed game preserve in Dutchess County, one can only hope that he will do so on a weekend. At present, two wars, skyrocketing energy costs, a falling dollar, and a deadlocked Congress seem insufficiently compelling to keep him in Washington during the work week.

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Cross-references

I'm always curious about what kinds of searches take people to this blog. Lately, I've had a handful of hits from Turkey and Pakistan (Islamabad and Karachi), all searching for "Dryden style." I have to think that's a reference to the British poet, in which case the style would be as he himself described, "plain and natural, yet majestic." Although he set one play in India, I don't think of him as much of an Orientalist, and I don't know why Turkey and Pakistan are so interested. Or perhaps they really are looking for fashion advice from a small upstate town.

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Snow in the Boondocks

Although we've had a smattering, today was the first day where we woke up to a white lawn. It's gone now except in the corners of the yard.

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Tune In, Drop Out, Turn On

O came home from the bus stop the other day puzzling about the fact that a neighbor didn't know whether he planned to go to college. Turns out, O didn't know that was an option. So we had a nice talk about how what people know colors what they think their options are; if none of your relatives have gone to college, you don't necessarily think it's an option for you. If all of your relatives have gone to/taught in college, you don't even consider not going yourself. She is just beginning to tune in to class as it affects the people she knows.

At the NYSSBA Convention, graduation rate, or drop-out rate, was the topic of the day. With the state possibly considering raising the age from 16 to 18 (nice intentions, but potentially devastating results), Paul's been thinking about this a lot, too--looking especially for a way to turn on disaffected students. It's absolutely evident that the usual preK-12 path is not for everyone, whether you're Robert, who was too smart for high school and dropped out to go to Simon's Rock, or Bob, who was too bored in high school and dropped out to work at his uncle's garage. So we need some alternatives, and I am convinced that GED programs are not the alternatives we need--GED diplomas are not equivalent to high school diplomas either in material learned OR in earning power.

One of the sessions I went to at NYSSBA was by a former teacher at a wealthy North Shore school, where they had a graduation rate of 87% (equivalent to ours in Dryden, and better than many) but wanted to do better. By pulling two students out of BOCES and back into the school, they paid for a program through which this teacher absolutely dedicated herself to retaining the 20 students most likely to drop out. She meets with them daily, talks to parents weekly, goes on home visits if kids are absent, follows up on homework and other assignments, holds group talk sessions, and so on. In the first couple of years, the graduation rate zoomed to 99%. She is sure that dropping out stems from poor relationships, not from problems with academics.

One of the many problems with graduation rates is that no two districts seem to calculate them the same way. You would think with all of the matrices forced onto districts by the state, this would be one area where we were consistent.

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Required Reading

Gail Collins on the strange bedfellows of 2007: Pat and Rudy. And this well-written article in TIME, which dissects the way we subsidize farms, in the process rewarding the causes of obesity, ensuring the death of small U.S. farms, and making poor African farmers even poorer.

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Wow.

Last night came as a complete shock to me, showing why I must never bet money on political races. The Democrats scored a perfect six out of six in Town Supervisor races in Tompkins County, returning Don Barber in Caroline and Ric Dietrich in Danby, and electing Frank Podufalski in Enfield, Scott Pinney in Lansing, Herb Engman in Ithaca, and our own Mary Ann Sumner in Dryden. If that's not enough, we won both town council seats: Dave Makar returns, and Joe Solomon starts his term in January.

Mike Lane said, and I concur, that 2006 represented a sea-change, and that the national disgust is trickling down to the towns. I think the towns will benefit, as most of them look toward controlled development, retention of open space, improved communication with constituents, and greening the towns through wind ordinances and other initiatives.

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The Politics of Fear

"Vote for Democrats, and they'll take your flag away."

And Cheryl Nelson's son had some choice, unprintable, threatening words for Simon when he made them move from in front of our signs at 366/13.

What they don't seem to understand is how this behavior will radicalize their opposition. People who have been cross-voters won't be doing much of that anymore. And peaceful moderates will leave the fray, allowing real partisanship to thrive.

Bad idea in a small town.

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Vote Today

Well, two out of three ain't bad.

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Vote Tomorrow

Here are the polling places in Dryden, complete with map.

For a better rundown on our candidates than I could provide, see Simon's blog for today's date.

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Reading List

Paul and I are, coincidentally, both reading about Iraq. He's reading this biography of the Victorian woman who was deeply involved in the creation of the modern Iraq and founded the Baghdad Museum, tragically looted during the escapades that I'm reading about. The "One-Percent Doctrine" refers to Cheney's statement that if there's even a one-percent chance that a threat is real, we need to respond as though it's a certainty. Lots of new-to-me information, especially about torture.

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Small-Town Politics Stink Bigtime

I'm writing this as the three girls giggle in the basement. We went to the "Bee Movie," which they loved and I thought was unfunny. Then we ate at O's favorite, Ho Ho Buffet, which she pronounces to rhyme with Yo-Yo Tuffet. Paul is off at CU hockey, and I'm catching up on the bazillion emails for the day.

Anyone who reads this knows my fondness for small-town politics, the politics that most affect us where we live. I've been deeply involved since I moved back to town 16 years ago, and win or lose, it's always been fun.

Not this year, though.

I ran into Tom Hatfield at Clark's. He's the former GOP chair in Dryden. I amused him greatly by telling him how much we Dryden Democrats missed him. He's out of GOP-land now, having formed his own third party a couple of years ago (to escape the national scene? or the radical religious right in town?), and he's concentrating now on business rather than politics. He and I were on the same side of some school issues, and he's always been both upfront and respectful with me, as I hope I have with him.

I think the fallout from this year's ugly campaign will linger with us much the way the fallout from the ugly small-schools debate did a few years ago. We're just picking up the pieces from that one, and in fact, there are many residual issues that remain. If some of the key personalities hadn't left town, I despair of where we might be today. (It interests me that a couple of the key personalities in both cases bubbled up from the same spiritual cauldron. I'll have to think about that.)

During the few brief weeks of this year's local campaign, I have felt personally threatened, my beliefs and concerns challenged, my love for this town where I'm bringing up my daughter severely compromised. And I wasn't even running for office.

I can't imagine how we're going to field local candidates when they know that they might be lied about, bullied, and disrespected in a public forum. I can't imagine wanting to search for candidates that meet the narrow-minded sector's qualifications: Christian, white, homegrown, placid, unthinking.

I wrote directly to the GOP candidates and their chair to say "Shame on you." They did not understand. They took offense. They said uncivil things about me to my neighbors and friends. Now I'll repeat it more publicly. Shame on you for bringing out the evil in your friends, for making it less possible for people to run for office, for acting with malice toward good and honest candidates who only wanted to make things better (indeed, some already have). The fact that you think you've run an above-board campaign shows only how skewed your "Christian" values truly are.

I Pay Attention, And I Vote.

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Required Reading

Krugman again on the baffling lameness of our media, in this case focusing on Giuliani's lies about health care.

Memo to editors: If a candidate says something completely false, it’s not “in dispute.” It’s not the case that “Democrats say” they’re not advocating British-style socialized medicine; they aren’t.

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Red-Letter Day

November 1 is an important day in our family history. Fifty-five years ago today, the Big Zs tied the knot in Chicago, Illinois, she in a wheelchair and a pillbox hat, he looking dapper and very very young. Forty-four years after that, at Cayuga Medical Center in Ithaca, their granddaughter was born.

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No Time to Blog

. . .But I wanted to post something in honor of the day, tho' it's sure to convince some Drydenites that I'm a witch. Oh, right, some already think so, and I have the letter from Williamson, Clune & Stevens to prove it.
Tonight we're trick-or-treating, singing at the Community Cafe, and returning next door for a party. I'll have to tell my neighbor that the guy whose sign they posted is threatening me with a lawsuit.

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Required Reading

Paul Krugman on the "crazy talk" that's bringing us to the brink of war with Iran.

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The Frost Is on the Pumpkin, or Wherever

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Love/Hate

I've had a love-hate relationship with NYC for some time, and it was magnified this weekend. I love seeing the spires rise out of the fog as I drive in; I hate the looming blankness where the twin towers once stood. I have no problem navigating the crowded streets and can even calmly maneuver along the unmarked lanes and pitted pavement of the Cross-Bronx after nightfall, as I did to reach PZ's and Lisa's place on City Island, where I spent Thursday and Friday nights. However, I hate navigating the crowded sidewalks, and I hate the cabbies who always manage to hit the nearest puddle with a WHOOOSH just as I enter the crosswalk, and I hate the van that rear-ended me not two minutes after I exited the tunnel and turned up 8th Avenue. I love being able to view the Dutch Masters, as DZ, Phil, and I did Friday night after having a glass of wine in the balcony of the Met. I hate that the Met now suggests a $20 donation and charges close to double digits for a glass of wine, and that you have to be strip searched just to enter the building. I love grabbing pastrami on rye at the Stage Deli (tho' no one could eat the whole thing alone), or a knish across the street at Lindy's (where a nice woman from Houston asked, "What is that?" and then was so grateful that I took the time to talk to her), and having Turkish meze split three ways on the Upper East Side or cute ravioli stuffed with acorn squash in brown butter at Gabriel's on West 61st. I hate that people who can't possibly live anywhere nearby shop in the ridiculous bigger-than-Wegman's Whole Foods below the new hideous capitalist-pigs-on-display Time Warner building that practically encloses Columbus Circle and is guarded by a phalanx of police.

DZ wondered if I ever want to move back--she thinks about it with fondness from time to time. I don't.

I'll blog a bit about the convention later.

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Bright Lights, Big City

I'm off to NYC for the NYSSBA Convention. Back Saturday late, and it's back to the campaign.

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Watch It Burn

Here's a remarkable Google map (I can't post it, unfortunately) that shows hour by hour what's up in the area right around the Big Zs' place in Cardiff-by-the-Sea. The new fire in Fairbanks Ranch is just about 9 miles from them.

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Politics, Dryden Style. Not.

Last night's meet-the-candidates event disintegrated into the ugliest display of mindless partisanship I've seen since I was slammed for staring at my fingernails as people lamely rambled on and on about Freeville School at a BOE meeting back in 2001. GOP veterans planted in the audience blathered about the POW/MIA flag (the issue is more clearly explained on Simon's blog), and John Bailey called Mary Ann's faith into question, based on comments she'd written in the past on her own blog. Since John and I have gotten down and dirty over evolution (he once told me that perhaps I had emerged from primordial ooze, but he was the product of a loving God), that didn't surprise me. But I am seriously considering moving our business elsewhere. I mean, I'm godless, so surely my money is, too.Although I mentioned both red-baiting and swift-boating in my response on radio and TV, the WHCU webpage just mentions my pleasure at getting a female supervisor. I should have been more specific. Although I admire her ability to spin and be glib, I think Cheryl Nelson would make a fairly terrible representative of our town.

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