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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