Time to go

Travel day. For the logistically inclined, it's a bit nerve-wracking. It's one thing to get to your home airport and if things mess up then you can go home. To get stranded in the away place means you'd have to find someplace to stay and whatever else bad that can happen. It's weird. You'd think I had this kind of thing happen to me a lot, but I can't really think of a time that it's ever happened. I guess one time in Russia in 1977 a flight got canceled and our group had to sleep on the floor in the airport. But you'd think I'd be over that by now.

Parasailing

I had an employee once who was an avid skydiver. He was apparently quite accomplished, a fact which he attempted to show off to celebrate his 40th birthday by doing a fancy landing. He bungled it and ended up in the hospital for a month. I regret that I never learned to fly a plane, but I never really had a great desire to sky dive, I think today was the closest I'll get.

Parasailing always looked like fun and it is. It all seems routine when you're doing it. You get strapped to a parachute, the boat starts moving forward and instead of moving forward you go back and up. It's almost startling smooth and quiet. I went with one of my kids. It's always nice to have company when you're floating a couple of hundred feet in the air. Eventually they reel you back in and you land on your butt on the boat. Highly recommended if you're not afraid of heights.

Yesterday, we did our traditional Christmas on vacation activity, which is to go to a movie. It took less time than usual to choose a movie because I've thrown up my hands and stopped resisting seeing chick flicks. I live with a bunch of chicks, what can I do? Over the summer we saw Julie and Julia. Yesterday we saw It's Complicated. I've not seen too many of this director's movies (which I make up for by having seen The Parent Trap, which she also directed, about 30 times) and I think that's okay. Even though this movie is "unusual" in that it has an older female protagonist, everything about it was completely conventional and, to my eyes anyway, formulaic. At times it's painful watching good actors trying to sound heartfelt and original when the scenarios are not.

The most outstanding characteristic of this experience was the number of commercials that were played before the movie started. We got into the theater about 10 minutes late because of the persistent lack of useful road signs around here, and there was a preview on. This was followed by, and I'm not exaggerating, 10 or 12 commercials. Then, 3 more previews followed by 8 more commercials. I've never been so happy to see the dancing popcorn and soda.

Clothes make the man

Vacation clothing is not the same as home clothing. For some people, the packing rpocess is painful, as you feel your outfit options shrinking at factorial speed. I don't know if anyone actually makes this kind of calculation, but if you have 12 shirts and 5 pants and add one of each, you go from 60 to 78 options, and some version of that realization is somewhere in the mind of people concerned with such things. Girl note: I am told that sometimes wearing one thing can disable an entire set of outfits, and I am not equipped to dispute this point.

Once you arrive at your destination it's a countdown. Do I have enough clothing to make it through? Aside from the obvious running out of underwear problem, there are other pitfalls- on vacation you tend to do more things that get your clothes dirty than in your day to day, but your clothing supply is more limited, leading to difficult choices.

The starkest choice really comes down to this- how many times am I going to wear this not-completely-clean thing? This pair of shorts I wore yesterday- I wore them to breakfast and from 3PM to 6PM and again from 11PM until bed. Do I put them on again this morning? How about this t-shirt? I didn't put it on until the afternoon but it got a little wet around the bottom. Wear it again or not? Or workout clothes. You can't bring a fresh pair of workout clothes for every day (Girl note: Well of course you do!).

I used 'kerfuffle' in a sentence.

Traveling at holiday time is an intense experience by any measure. I have a personal history of mixed trauma and bemusement stemming from my father's behavior when we used to go away as a family when I was in my teens and early 20s.

My father is a big guy and not afraid to take an approach to life based on intimidation. We used to all ride to the airport together in a hired car and the moment we entered the airport he would turn into a raging lunatic. He would lash out at the slightest provocation and he wasn't choosy about targets, excepting my mother, who he wouldn't tangle with. But the driver, luggage carriers, customer service agents and, of course, us kids, were easy targets.

After we'd arrived at our destination he would relax and we could make fun of his behavior and he would laugh along. And though I was always a prime target, being the smarty pants that I was (but not any more of course), but I did realize after a while that it wasn't about me. I mean, you don't really have to yell at someone for standing 2 feet to the right of where you want them, or sliding a bag a few inches across the floor without being told to do so.

WIth this in the background, I try to moderate my own airport behavior, even though all sorts of things annoy me. I try to leave early to the airport and attempt to keep things calm. Of course, "calm" and "two teenage daughters" are not necessarily the most compatible things.

The main hitch on this trip was when a child who packed late at night and completely independently comes downstairs 5 minutes before we were supposed to leave and asks, "Do I need to pack anything else?" My response, which can be summarized as saying that was a silly line of questioning because I didn't know what she had already packed, was not met warmly. The ensuing kerfuffle lasted about 15 minutes so by the time we left for the airport the taxi meter was already over $10.

The drive went smoothly, but once inside the terminal everything changed. On most mornings, and airline terminal is businesslike, with everyone acting in a directed manner. Today it was a mix of bewildered and frustrated adults and bored and cranky kids all trying to figure out what line to stand in. The lines were ridiculous, and people standing in line with piles of suitcases are the most uncomfortable people anywhere.

The one thing the terminal seemed to lack was airline employees, but I finally found one and asked what line I should join. She said "Right here. There's a sign over there but nobody seems to see it." Well, duh. Have you ever noticed how many signs there are in an airport? There must have been 100 of various shapes and sizes within reading distance. And too many signs is only slightly better than no signs at all.

The rest of the trip was pretty routine. I'll check back in later.

Ugh

I like a good cultural stereotype as much as the next guy, but do they really have to put "we ship to prisons" in an ad for a gangsta rap album?

Snow Day

A heavy snow sets off a predictable flurry of activities, some universal, some peculiar to myself. I like snow very much. It can be a pain but I like watching it fall and I like seeing it on the ground. I also like to venture forth into the snow, as I always put it, either on foot (there's always a trip to the grocery store on the agenda) or by car.

Last night, one of my kids said they wanted to sleep over at a friends's house about a 20 minute drive from here and could I pick her up in the morning. I said okay knowing what I was getting into. This morning, I cleared off the car and ventured out into the white. I did a lot of my early driving when I was in college in upstate New York, so I'm a pretty skilled driver in these kinds of conditions and I kind of enjoy it.

Driving in the snow is all about friction. Actually, all of driving is about friction, though friction is boring and so nobody ever talks about it. I think one of the reasons people drive too fast is they don't really think about the massive force that's necessary to bring a one ton object moving at 60 miles per hour to a stop. And all of that force is provided by friction between the tires and the road. Fortunately, most tires and most roads are designed to maximize the coefficient of friction between them. In the snow, however, you've still got the tires but the road surface is missing and 4 wheel drive or even 40 wheel drive if there was such a thing is going to change that.

It's a little unnerving if you haven't done it much, but the key to driving in the snow is to not expect the tires to grab the road. This is a pretty foreign idea, and it means driving as if you can't stop and you can't turn. So when I drive in the snow I go at a speed such that I can stop without skidding and control both my speed and angle of approach to a turn to minimize the skid. I also try to keep breaking and accelerating to a minimum. Rolling with my foot off the accelerator pedal is best.

Skidding is bad, but you can (usually) live with it if you know what you're doing. The key is that you can only control the car when your wheels are turning and in contact with the road. This means that if you skid, you must turn in the direction you're skidding. Most spins happen when people try to straighten the car out by turning against the skid, but that only makes it worse. If you have a car with antilock breaks you can keep your foot on the break. If not, you have to take your foot off immediately because it's the breaking that's causing you to skid.

And however hard you try, you will occasionally lose control of the car, and while it's perfectly appropriate to react with a succinct "I'm f#@&ed.," sometimes you have to sit back, enjoy the ride, and hope the car behind you doesn't do the same thing.

Besides skidding, the other dangerous thing about driving in the snow is other drivers. There are few things scarier than driving along in the snow and encountering someone who does not know what they're doing- the back of their car swinging wildly back and forth. This is the main argument against recreationally driving in the snow. I've had terrifying experiences on the Turnpike when people who assume 4-wheel drive makes you perfectly safe start changing lanes suddenly at high speed only to lose control halfway in between.

OK. Time to light a fire and fall asleep on the couch.

19 Whiteboard Markers, 15 Binder Clips, 3 Ricola and 4 Rubber Earbud Thingees

Question: What was at the bottom of my bookbag?

More gas

Here's the response to my gas station directions:

2 questions:

Do I press the inside level the whole time it's filling or does it just start filling after i press it and i don't need to press it anymore?

Also, i'd like to just fill the whole tank up, but im going to do debit and i dont know when to take the nozzle out i don't know how it's supposed to stop and i dont want the tank to overflow

And my response:

Sometimes you have to hold it, but some of them have things that will let you prop the handle in the pressed position. It has to stay pressed the whole time either by you or the thing propping it. It shouldn't take more than a minute or two.

Every gas pump has an automatic mechanism that make the pump stop when the tank is full. As long as you've put the nozzle in the hole it will stop itself when it's full and it will not overflow. It'll make loud click and if you're holding it it'll suddenly feel limp- like it takes no pressure to press it. If you've propped it it will stop itself. Either way, you won't have to do anything except put the nozzle back.

So there. And now, for your viewing pleasure:

From Life's Instruction Book

In case you have never had to put gas in a car by yourself before, here are instructions (I wrote these out for a new driver I know who has cash and a debit card)

1. Pull up to the right side of the pumps.

2. Find the button in the car that opens the outside gas tank cover and push it (if you can't find it look in the index of the owners manual for gas tank or fuel tank or whatever)

3. Unscrew the top of the gas tank

4. Take your debit card and slip it in in and out of the slot on the gas pump. It's usually magnetic strip up and to the left.

5. I haven't used a debit card so I'm not sure here, but you probably have to push a button that says DEBIT and then enter your PIN on the keypad.

6. If at this point it isn't working, find the number on the pump, lock the car and go inside and tell the attendant you want to pay for gas with either a (for example) $20 bill or the debit card. He will ask you what pump number and how much gas you want. If you use the debit card, say "fill it" and if you use the $20, say "$20 worth"

7. Go to the pump, lift the nozzle out of the holder (don't touch the inside lever) and insert it in the gas tank, (just like in Health Class), press the button on the pump that says "Regular" (or 87 octane). The numbers on the pump will go to 0. Squeeze the inside handle to start dispensing gas.

8. You can stop whenever you want or wait for it to stop itself if you told the guy "fill it." If you gave the guy the $20 and you let it keep filling, it will automatically stop at $20.

9. Pull the nozzle out (keep the end pointed away from you, they can drip a bit) and put it back in the pump.

10. Screw the tank cover back on until it clicks (don't worry if it clicks more than once, it's supposed to) and close the outside cover

11. The display will ask if you want a receipt and you can say yes or no.

I made this up sitting in traffic. It's probably funnier if you're a beer drinker

Two bacteria walk into a bar. The bartender says, "Get out. We don't serve your kind here." And the first bacteria says, "why not, isn't this a microbe brewery?"

Endangered Species

One of the sad trends of 2009 has been the rapid disappearance of bubble wrap as packing material. It has been crowded out by cheaper (those big plastic pillow kinds of things) or more environmentally friendly (any kind of paper-based substance) cushioning products. But clearly nothing else adds to the pleasure of receiving a package like a nice sheet of bubble wrap.

Bubble wrap is yet another of the marvelous products invented during my lifetime, but now all we're left with is this.

Saturday Morning Lynx

Time for the Saturday morning lynx.

Anyone with a Facebook page should read this and check your settings. Everything that's not checked as "Just friends" is pretty much public (and I include "friends of friends" as pretty much public- if you have 500 friends and they have 500 friends, that means 25000 people can see your stuff)

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/GadgetGuide/facebooks-privacy-settings-things/story?id=9312771

On a more fun note, if you like astronomy, or even just looking at the stars, check this out.

Squatter's Rights

In a meeting yesterday we were discussing creating a faculty lounge. This let to a brief discussion as to where such a thing might be located, which then led to a discussion of how to make the necessary changes in the schedule to make it work. This sounded like a recipe for inaction to me, so I suggested that we just pick a room and start using it as our lounge, regardless of whether there are classes scheduled there. My theory is that if the teachers are sitting around drinking coffee or chatting or playing ping-pong or whatever in a room, the class that's trying to meet there will have plenty of incentive to relocate themselves and will almost certainly do so if we make it clear that we're not leaving. That way there's no need for the administration to get involved.

Sometimes simple solutions are the best.

Don't read this while you're driving

The New York TImes has been running a series called Driven to Distraction about driving while doing other things, like talking on cell phones, texting, reading, etc. Everyone knows people who do this kind of stuff (and probably worse) and I, for one, am extra careful around cars when I can see that the driver is not he phone. Reminds me of an old comedy routine about how it's better to be on the road with someone who's drinking and driving than someone who's eating and driving, because at least the drunks are trying to drive.

Today's article is about how everyone thinks they are capable of driving safely while talking while others probably are not. There's a lot of chatter about how biased people's perceptions of themselves versus others are, but I personally think the whole discussion is beside the point.

If you want to convince people that it's dangerous to drive while talking on a cell phone, you first have to make them understand that the most dangerous thing they do on a daily basis is drive. Over the course of a lifetime, your probability of being killed in a car crash is 1 in 100. The only more common causes of death are heart disease, cancer and stroke (more details here- scroll down for the grim details). I think the next most common accidental cause is falling in the bathroom, so definitely don't drive in the bathroom.

But seriously, even if you accept only that talking on the phone only makes you, say, 10% more likely to die in a car crash, why would you want to take the most dangerous thing about your day and make it even more dangerous? It's just stupid. But people assume that because they've all driven in cars lots of times and haven't died that it's not dangerous. That's stupid too. You sit in a metal box traveling at 30, 50, 70 miles per hour and you're surrounded by other boxes moving just as fast. And some of them are going in the opposite direction from you without any physical separation. And some of them are driven by people who are tired, distracted, dim-witted, drunk or otherwise. And you don't think that's hazardous? How could it not be?

I think I'll dredge up my old How To Drive Safely essay, but in the meantime, please try to recognize how important it is to do everything possible to minimize, rather than increase, the danger.

Deep Cleansing Breaths

I was in Starbucks this morning, doing my usual buying coffee for everyone except me (that's because I don't go out until after I've had my own coffee). The woman behind me asks for a large tea and the guy behind the counter says, what kind of tea and she says, "Calm." and the guy behind the counter says, "I'm sorry, but we're all out of Calm."

This sounded like a terribly sad state of affairs, and the woman looked as distraught as you might imagine anyone might look if they had been told they couldn't have any Calm. As much as I wanted to help, I decided not to point out that the new seasonal tea was on the shelf, because someone who didn't get the Calm they wanted was probably not in the mood for Joy.

Results versus Process

My dog is a good example of valuing process over results. Every morning I take her out to "relieve herself" as they say, and even though she really needs the relief, she will sniff and sniff and sniff until she finds just the perfect spot. I'm not really in a position to judge the priorities of other species, but in lousy weather this can be kind of infuriating. But for the dog, finding the right spot is what rules, not what happens once she finds the spot.

One of the consequences of our "hurry up and get it done so we can get on to the next thing" culture is that we often lose sight of the process when we put a singular focus on results. I see it all the time with students of all levels. The idea of math class is to learn math, not to do well on math tests. The learning is all the stuff that leads up to the test. The test is just to make sure the learning took place. So what happens in school turns the whole thing inside out.

I was thinking about this because of something I heard, Mike Krzyzewski say on the radio. I'm not a huge Coach K fan. Not for any major reason, I just think he's kind of full of himself (although after listening to Bono on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame concert I think the idea of 'full of yourself' has been taken) and his players are floppers and whiners. But what he said in this instance was pretty interesting. He was talking about several basketball greats, Larry Bird and LeBron James and some others, and said that what allowed them to elevate themselves to a championship level was that they learned to love the process. They learned to love going to the gym and taking 100 shots from the same place, love lifting weights, love running sprints, love all that practice stuff that lies behind being a great ballplayer.

So I ask myself if I love the process of what I do. It's kind of a funny question for me, because what I do is process. Teachers don't actually accomplish anything for themselves, they are there to help the students accomplish something. But the answer is yes anyway, because I love the process of being a process, the reading, the lesson planning, the getting up in front of the class, the one-on-one work. I have nothing tangible to show at the end of the day, but if I edged my students toward their goals, I've been a successful process. What other jobs are like that?

Over Easy

My brain is fried at the moment. At school to see the show last night (great!) so home late. Up since 6. Today I think was the first day I was both the first teacher in and the last to leave, at least on my floor. Lots of old school cutting and pasting and photocopying. And I think the scramble to regain some sort of post-strike normalcy and order (not that I'm such a fan of either) and the need to draw the trimester (or whatever kind of mester we're left with at this point) to a conclusion has worn me down a bit.

There's probably also the fact that I'm teaching Calculus for the first time. I know the material just fine, but the first time you teach something you can't anticipate the questions the class will come up with. In my other classes I've heard 95% of the questions before, so it's just a matter of referencing something I've said previously, but in Calculus I need to formulate the answers from scratch, which is very stimulating but much harder.

Enough for today.

Seasons Greetings

I don't usually pay that much attention to seasonal gifts, but I must say I was taken with one thing I saw today- Sunoco Gift Cards! Yes, give gas, candy, cigarettes, snacks and maybe a propane tank refill to the ones you love. Available in denominations of $25, $50 and $100 (!), or as they say on their ad, Regular, Midgrade and Premium. Can't you just feel the love behind such a gift?

Quick link

If you're not checking on this blog regularly, you're seriously missing out.

Soaring Harmonies

I just came from watching a friend perform with his choir. I've been to lots of kinds of concerts, but I think this was my first choral concert. It was a good show; some of the pieces were beautiful and sounded quite difficult, and I, along with a decent portion of the audience, joined them onstage for the Hallelujah Chorus. Here are a few observations for the road:

• I've always been intrigued by how sopranos in particular are able to mostly avoid singing perfectly on key by doing more vibrato than note
• You can tell a choir is well trained if nobody is mouthing the words along with the soloist
• It's a good thing there's the word "hallelujah," because "yay," which means basically the same thing, just doesn't sound as grand when you sing it.

Visiting the Old Country

Yesterday, we drove up to New York, Queens actually, to visit my wife's mom and sister. We see them 3 or 4 times a year and I'm quite fond of them. My mother-in-law (this takes too long to type so she will now be known by her initials AJK) is a teacher (of course) who retired from the NYC public schools about 20 years ago and started working part-time at a school for Orthodox Jewish girls. She still teaches there, and her warmth and encyclopedic knowledge of literature make her class exciting for the students, in spite of the strict limits on content (did you know Ethan Frome was too racy?).

AJK lives alone in the house where she's lived for almost 60 years. My father in law, who was not a nice man, died several years ago. It doesn't smell like an old person's house, which is unusual in my experience, and the only thing that's really old about her manner is that she keeps talking abut how old she is. She was telling me a couple of stories, unusual in that I hadn't heard them before, about how when she was a young woman still living with her mother, she was presented with opportunities to advance herself and her mother forbid her to pursue them. She has a practiced wistfulness when she talks about these things, as if she's trying to convince herself that she has no regrets, which is how she always closes these kinds of stories.

And at this point, that's healthy, I guess. A life's path is full of things done that can't be undone and said that can't be unsaid, and you can't worry about what might have happened. In general, I think people are often scared to act because they're afraid of the consequences and they limit themselves in the process. Well I'm here to tell you that not acting is a decision with consequences too. You can trick yourself into thinking you haven't made a decision, but you have made one and all the tricks do is keep you from learning from your mistakes. There were plenty of times in my life when I might have taken decisive action and changed my course but too many (I think?) times I didn't because I was unsure or cautious or scared. My life would have gone some different way- better, worse, or both- and it makes no difference how I came to this path; it was my decisions or lack thereof that led me here.

I'm fortunate in that I'm happy where I've ended up. My life's not perfect but it's pretty darned good. I think for the most part AJK feels the same way too, but I do hope I can avoid that wistfulness when I'm older and focus on my goals of being eccentric and cranky.

My current dilemma

I just got a bag of mushrooms that say they are "pre-cleaned." What does that mean? Are they clean or are they ready to be cleaned?

No Thank You

I am officially not reading anything published today because everything is bound to include the phrase "thankful for." If you need to have a special day designated to be thankful for what you have, you are living an emotionally deprived life. Every day brings things to be thankful for (and irritated by and attracted or offended by and lots of other things) and if you're missing them it's kind of sad. It's like Tom Lehrer's classic line in his song "National Brotherhood Week," which he first rhymes with "National Everyone Smile at One Anotherhood Week" and then concludes, "It's only for a week so have no fear, be grateful that it doesn't last all year."

I guess I'm particularly sensitive to this post-strike, because I missed doing what I do every day, while simultaneously gaining a whole new affection for the people I was striking with. Everybody deserves to have something or someone uplift them every day, but no matter how deserving you are, if you don't recognize or appreciate it, it's as if it's not there.

So instead of meditating on what you're thankful for today, make yourself a promise to be thankful for something every day. This is actually kind of scary, because it requires you to open your heart and open your mind at least a little bit. Maybe it'll be like a New Year's resolution and you'll forget it in a week, but maybe it'll feel good enough that you'll keep at it.

The countdown begins

Here is the 3rd annual survey of Black Friday opening times, based on the newspaper inserts delivered with Thursday's Inquirer.

3AM - 1

4AM - 2

5AM - 9

6AM - 9

7AM - 1

8AM - 1

9AM - 1 (both mattress stores- you'd think people who needed a new mattress would be up extra early)

No hours listed - 8

Bonus survey: Sales described as "Doorbusters" - 8, beating out "Early Bird' which had 4. And "Black Friday" with 3. Black Friday is a term that was originally used to describe a stock market crash in the 19th century, but was first used in this context in the 1960's by the Philadelphia police to describe the heavy traffic in the city that day.

The big change this year is that 5 stores are open on Thanksgiving. I thought that Walmart had announced that they were doing that this year to reduce the Friday morning casualties, but the circular I have says 5AM and says nothing about Thursday. If stores were trying to stop the violence I would think they would stop using terms like "doorbusters."

And finally, in 1939, President Franklin Roosevelt moved Thanksgiving a week earlier to try to give stores more time to sell stuff for Christmas. This disrupted many people's plans and they either ignored the change or celebrated twice, on the original Thanksgiving and the new date, not so affectionately referred to as "Franksgiving."

I just saw on TV that Penelope Cruz can identify pretty much everyone she's ever been in a movie with by seeing pictures of just their lips. I've struggled to put this into some kind of meaningful context but have failed.

Beating the holiday rush

Here are the various stylings of my kitchen counter- the Retro espresso machine, the Vintage coffee machine, and the Classic tomato.

From Stuff

Also, here are the fantastic instructions for the espresso maker:

From Stuff

From Stuff

Here's a conversation that took place about 30 minutes ago, between two people whose identities have been cleverly disguised as person A and person B

A: Will you be able to drive me in a couple of minutes?
B: OK
A: Oh, I thought you could, but if you don't want to I can drive myself.
B: What?
A: I thought you said you were going to drive me but it sounds like you really don't want to.
B: ...
A: I mean, I'd like it if you could drive but if you won't I can drive.
B: Do you want to drive?
A: No, but you don't seem to want to drive me.
B: Well if you want me to, I can drive
A: Well I want you to drive but you don't have to.

I kind of lost track of it at this point. And person B did end up driving.

Is it too late to say I'm thankful for something? I mean I know it's not literally too late, but is it close enough to Thanksgiving day that being thankful for anything becomes mawkish? (and yes, that's the first time I've actually used that word in a sentence).

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm ready for a break.

Goodness knows it's time for a retrospective

Since this is the age of instant analysis, I'm going to indulge myself in a bit of it here.

The big question that remains unanswered is "why?" Why did this happen? How did we end up with a result that nobody claimed to want. Well, people are strange creatures who are forever getting caught up in their own thing and forgetting what's important. Having been both blindsided by my own reactions to this and overly pessimistic about the outcome, I can't really criticize anyone else, but there were clearly miscalculations in the run-up to the strike.

I'd like to examine the larger point of how a bunch of smart people can make dumb choices. There are a number of ways this can happen, but the most common one is often described as an echo chamber. This occurs when there is a lack of dissent. Everybody in a group working together either sees the situation in the same way, or if they don't they are either too timid to bring it up or shouted down when they do. I don't know if that's what happened here, but it's a distinct possibility that everyone on one side thought the strike would play out in a certain way, and never considered any other possibilities. The lesson here is if you are in a group decision-making process and everyone is agreeing, especially about predicted outcomes, alarm bells should be going off in your head.

It took me a long time to learn to listen to those alarm bells, long enough to delay my progress in my business career. I was already in my 5th or 6th job before I realized I was only hurting myself by going along with what everyone else thought. It takes a lot of self-confidence to go against the group, but it can often be the most valuable role that anyone plays.

The other thing that happens is people confusing the three key elements of an action plan, those being objectives, strategies, and tactics. When I was running my little ad agency, I used to describe my job as follows: All day long, I sit in my office and people come in speaking quickly and excitedly and sometimes disagreeing with each other, and then I stop them and say, "Okay, what are we trying to accomplish here?" That's your objective, and you will rarely succeed if you forget that the objective is the most important thing. After that, you get your strategy, which is the planning part of achieving your objective, and then finally your tactics, which are the doing part of it. Do those in the wrong order or forget their relative importance and their interrelatedness and you are in big trouble.

Next comes, how do you react when you realize you were wrong and have gotten yourself into a tough spot? The Chinese are very big on the idea of saving face, where the situation has to be maneuvered so that even the person who screwed up is able to escape shame. This makes the Chinese infuriating to deal with, even for other Chinese, and we're better off accepting the that we've erred. It's almost as important to be able to recognize your errors quickly and correct them as it is to make the right decision in the first place. But you can't get caught up in fearing the consequences of being wrong. I've never had a situation where accepting blame made things any worse for me (because you can't control who other people will blame anyway, so you might as well be honest about it), and it has the effect of shielding the others on your team who might have been blamed, so then they like and respect you more.

I'm not sure how the error recognition and correction got accomplished in this instance, and even if I knew I couldn't share it because it's not mine to share. My hope is that someone or ones accepted the blame for miscalculating, because they surely did. But it may have been nothing more than a common desire to avoid having a couple hundred or more demonstrators showing up at the school on Tuesday. And keeping my own objectives in mind I will leave you with a passage from the great philosopher, Winnie-the-Pooh.

Well," said Owl, "the customary procedure in such cases is as follows."
"What does Crustimoney Proseedcake mean?" said Pooh. "For I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and long words Bother me."
"It means the Thing to Do."
"As long as it means that, I don't mind," said Pooh humbly.

As long as it means I get to teach tomorrow and the days that follow, I don't mind.

First thoughts

I woke up this morning to find out that the board and union had reached a tentative agreement and that we were going to be voting on it that day. Let me say that I am much quicker to engage intellectually that I am emotionally. But on this occasion, having found the whole strike to be a much more emotional experience than I'd anticipated, I felt a flood of emotions.

I always knew that I loved spending time with my students, but I had no idea how much until they were suddenly taken from me.

I always felt that we had a special bond with our students and their parents, but I didn't really knew what that meant to me until I saw and felt them support us so fervently.

I always had a fondness for the people I work with, but I had no idea what kind of bond I had with them until I walked with them on a picket line for a week.

I was fearful about the fallout from a strike, and though there certainly are some negative feelings remaining, the positives far outweigh them.

So I sit here now, home after our meeting, almost choked up. And I can't wait to get back to work.

I'll write some more later...

Bad night, better morning

I slept as badly as I usually do when I have to go to bed when the outcome of a game I've been watching is still in doubt. But it was nice to wake up and see the good news.

Waiting game

At the moment we're all sitting around waiting for some report from negotiations. It's not the most productive thing to do, since there may be no news for hours and even at the end the only news might be that there's no news. It's a little like the waiting after labor pains begin, when you know it could be anywhere from a few hours to a few days before there's a baby, but this seems easier on my wife and less certain in its conclusion.

For me, aside from anything else, not working has taken the fun out of helping my kids with their math homework. It just doesn't feel right somehow.

A couple of things

A correction to the espresso maker instructions- the warning reads:

• This appliance is designed to "make espresso coffee" and "hot drinks."

BTW, there is a website devoted to such things

This article about tutoring is kind of frightening

I don't have the energy yet to dissect the instructions of the new espresso maker, but I will make a few quick observations.

1. According to the box it has "Retro Styling," which I'm concerned is going to class with the "Vintage Styling" of the new coffee maker.

2. The instructions include a half page on the Short Cord- first explaining their reasoning behind putting a short cord on the thing, then explaining how you can defeat the short cord by using an extension cord.

3. It can apparently be used with ground coffee or something called pods. I saw Invasion of the Body Snatchers and am leery of anything with pods other than peas.

4. I'm encouraged by the liberal use of unnecessary quotation marks just on the first page, as in: This device is intended for making "hot drinks." Not sure why that's in quotes, but it's very promising.

Before I get to what happened today, let me take a minute to review how I got here.

I come from a family of teachers. My parents both taught, my mother's sister and everyone in her family (including grandchildren) are or were teachers, and my mother-in-law is still teaching at 83. Many in my family veered off into business, but when that part of my life ended, the first thing I came up with as something I would like to do was to teach math. I got that idea in part because I almost failed Calculus in college, but that's another story.

I ended up at Akiba by a happy accident. I had decided to get a Masters in education at Penn, and they told me I needed some prerequisites for a math teaching degree, but advised me "don't take those courses here, it's too expensive," so I took I think 7 math classes at Temple while substitute teaching at several area school, including Friends' Central School, where I was under the impression that the head of the math department was a friend.

One day in December 2002 (I think) there was an ad in the paper to teach one class for one semester. I came into Akiba, had an interview and taught a demonstration class, and was offered the job. I had been told I was getting a better offer at FCS, but my supposed friend screwed me, I took the Akiba offer, got a full time job the next fall and that's where I've been ever since. There are actually many more twists and turns to it, but that's the abridged version.

So now after 7 years working here, I found myself part of a group that was backed into a corner and pretty much forced to strike to maintain our pensions and I had no idea what it would be like. It was very lonely on the weekend leading up to first day and I was terribly upset, but now after a week out on the picket line with my colleagues, lonely is the last word I'd use to describe how I feel.

I've been through strikes before on the management side, and the union rep said that's the "nicer place to be" during a strike, and I suppose that's true on a financial basis, you're still getting paid and all, but I found the emotional toll to be very heavy. And I suppose if you're on the union side it depends on the situation. If you're striking coal miners, like in Billy Elliott, or omg Matewan by John Sayles, it's way worse (and again, you have no idea how much worse unless you watch Matewan or something along the same lines) that what we have now.

There are always people caught in the middle of strikes, and their reaction is key, because they are what we business types like to call stakeholders, as in they hold a stake in whatever sort of thing the striking workers do. In many cases, like coal miners and transit and even public school teachers, normally the inconvenience that the stakeholders suffer overwhelms their sympathy for the strikers. That's because there's not any kind of connection between the workers and the inconvenienced (sorry, I'd have to shoot myself if I had to use the word 'stakeholders' again in that paragraph- Augh!). I can say with reasonable confidence that that's not the case here. As much as people who run the school like to trumpet the close bond between the students and their parents and their teachers, I'm not sure they really understand it. It's not necessarily a criticism; how could they, really?

The rest of the day was a Shabbat celebration, with food and blessings and singing and togetherness.
Nope, not feeling lonely at the moment.

Except these people really are great

To quote Fred Willard from the movie Roxanne, I'd rather be with the people in this room than with the finest people in the world!

New Stuff!

Our old coffee maker is starting to not work so well. It's a combination regular coffee maker and espresso machine and first the drip coffee part started sending the hot water out in a thin stream so it was pretty much going right through the filter without touching the coffee. Yum! Now the espresso side is starting to leak, and I can tell you, there are few things as exciting as an appliance that might shoot boiling hot water or steam into your face at any moment.

So even though this was a wedding present (over 23 years ago!), we have decided to part company with it. The first step in the break-up arrived today, a new drip coffeemaker. I haven't even opened the box yet, but it promises to be very exciting. Why? Well let me tell you. Here are all the great things about this coffeemaker, based on the outside of the box.

1. It's part of the Premier Coffee Series
2. It offers The Ultimate Coffee Experience (to 'satisfy the most demanding coffee lover,' which is a reasonable description of me)
3. It is the Next Generation of Coffeemakers, yet has Vintage Styling, I guess like the electric coffee makers of yore, taking us all the way back to their introduction in 1972.
4. It has Easy Operation, though from the picture on the box it has 7 knobs and buttons and a clock. Our current coffee maker has one button, so color me skeptical.
5. It's Fully Programmable, Easy To Clean, makes the Hottest Coffee (is that coffee I smell, or a lawsuit brewing?) with Pure Flavor, an Easy-To-Fill Reservoir (I know for a fact that that's a lie) and a Spill-Free Carafe (Ha! They clearly have not been in this house), a Comfort Grip Handle and a Brushed Steel Band, the purpose of which I am anxious to learn.
6. It has a Lift Up Reservoir Lid and I can't think of a single thing to say about that.
7. It says you can Sneak a Cup, but now they've blown that by putting it on the box.
8. It has an Easy to Read LCD clock, which is nearly Impossible to Read even on the box and Industrial Switches, the purpose of which will hopefully be explained along with the Brushed Steel Band, though I'm guessing neither will be mentioned in the instructions.
9. It has All the Best Features, including Simple On/Off button operation.

My one concern is that the box also says it will 'become the centerpiece of your kitchen,' while I wanted to put it on the counter next to the toaster oven. I hope it still will work over there.

More to come after I open the box.

Day Four

My kids don't go to the school where I teach (not for any particular reason- they were settled before I started teaching), but getting back to the social networking aspect of it that I mentioned yesterday, they are aware of what's going on because, well, as my daughter said, "I saw your picture on Facebook."

I love having the students come to visit and stand with us. The kids and parents are the ones caught in the middle here- they're being seriously inconvenienced or worse, so it's especially gratifying in that nobody asked them to get involved. In fact, we were all told explicitly not to involve the students, but this is a motivated, curious, action-oriented group and they don't want to be just sitting at home pretending it's a snow day. It would be inconsistent with what we see from them every day.

Aside from moral support, the kids bring a break from the tedium. I'm not big on jumping up and down holding signs urging cars to honk their horns, but it's probably the most stimulating of the activities available to us. Plus, and this is the same reason I like teaching in the first place, kids have a whole different perspective that adults do and they ask challenging questions.

Unexpected Consequences

Before I forget, check out this important update.

As some of you may have noticed, I've laid off commenting much on what's been happening at school. I've posted pictures and made some general observations, but otherwise have kept my head down. At some point, though, I realized that pretty much all of the rules that we thought we were playing by, at least in regard to dealing with the rest of the community, have gone out the window.

As much as the initial direction was to avoid mentioning the strike on social networking sites, talking to students and parents, etc., I think the people who gave that direction were unaware of how inexorable the flow of information can be if you have a motivated group of seekers and disseminators.

I think unions and management types should consider that this will probably become the norm in future labor relations. In our particular case, it seems to have been favorable to the union, and I tend to think that will usually be the case. In past labor battles, management has had a huge advantage in its ability to communicate to the interested public, because they had the big money and the communications departments. I can't help think that this has helped create the anti-union sentiment that has been prevalent in recent years. Now, however, a few individuals on the union side can take advantage of a wide variety of tools to get their side of the story out to the people who most care about it. It's similar to the trend toward citizen journalism.

Nonplussed

That's always been one of my favorite words. It means to be at a loss or bewildered. I can't really think of a better word to describe how I'm feeling at the moment. I've had some strange jobs in some strange places, but I've never found myself in a position like this before.

It was interesting having students around today. They had a lightheartedness about them that I think lifted everyone's spirits, but at least for me it also highlights how solemn adults allow themselves to become. I try as hard as I can to avoid it, but being an adult, or grown-up if you must, can be a real pain in the butt. I got out of the house late this morning because I got a dent in my (parked) car. This is not a fun way to start the day. On the bright side, my car is approaching being an ellipse, as 3 or its 4 corners have now been bent in a bit. I think an elliptical car would feel cool and futuristic, but this seems a very slow and unpleasant way of going about it.

It has been especially cool to hear from students in Israel.

The most oddball character in the whole drama playing out at the school is the "watcher." I don't know what is name is, but he's from the Federation (like those Star Trek guys) and his job seems to be to sit in his car and watch us. The only things I've seen him do are honk when someone is trying to come in the driveway, usually after we've already gotten out of their way, and he gets out of the car once or twice a day to come and tell us to move something (for example, some chairs) off the pavement. He sits there all day doing this and I think he must have done something terribly wrong to be given this job. He's very vigilant about the horn honking though, so he must be trying to impress someone.

We're back at it again tomorrow. We enjoy company and snacks and if you don't want to bring snacks you can have some of ours. And I've noticed that my pictures are all starting to look the same so tomorrow I'm bringing a real camera and I'll try to be more creative.

My Future

I always tell my kids that God doesn't drive parked cars, so we'll talk about getting on the next road and gearing up for the hard work down to travel down it to reach new goals.

Actually, that's a quote from Sarah Palin's book, but I sure wish I'd said it, whatever it means.

Done for the day

The whole scene today was really heartwarming. When you're in a difficult situation it's always gratifying to feel like you're part of a supportive community. I decided a while ago that it's more important to be a good person than to try to make people like you. And if you approach things that way you can't really count on anything in return, so it makes it all the more satisfying when you get support, because you know it's genuine.

Monday 11/16

Updates (or at least pictures) today on Twitter@justfrankt

I don't get Shakespeare stuck in my head often, but he's there now.

I have of late, but wherefore I know not, lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises: and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition, that this goodly frame the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most excellent canopy the air, look you, this brave o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it appeareth nothing to me but a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours…

What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god: the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals; and yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust?

HAMLET, II,ii

The musical version in Hair is good too. And no, I'm not that bummed out (though some Shakespeare scholars believe those lines to be optimistic in nature- I tend to think that someone who has lost all their mirth is not feeling optimistic, at least at that moment).

Serious Business

Two Woody Allen bits are in my head this morning. The first, which relates to nothing is:

The people appeared to be divided into good and bad. The good slept better, while the bad seemed to enjoy the waking hours more.

And more to the point, he had a bit in his standup routine about how he used to work in his father's store and that he unionized the stock boys and they struck and drove him out of business.

Anybody involved in a labor dispute thinking they're going to "win" has to go in understanding that the ultimate extension of their actions is disastrous. The extremes are 100% job loss and the end of the enterprise as a going concern. Not that that usually happens, but you have to keep that potential in mind if you want to be smart about what's going on.

Updating update.

Over the course of the week or more I will be doing most of my moment-to-moment updating via Twitter. My address is @justfrankt. At the moment I have to approve followers, but I will probably relax that for the moment. I will blog when I have the time and when I have something to say that requires more than 140 characters and a picture.

Strike One

I was looking through some boxes in my attic and found some old letters that I'd sent to a friend many years ago. My friend died about 10 years ago and his family returned the letters I'd written to him to me. The letter had been written when I returned to New York after a trip, and the city was evidently in the midst of a sanitation workers' strike. It was not hard to tell that this was going on because there were 6-10 foot-tall piles of garbage bags in front of every building. The smell was pretty hard to miss too.

I only bring this up because it's important to understand that strikes are inherently messy things. One of the problems with the way people perceive strikes is that because they are 'us versus them' kinds of things, and because people are necessarily inconvenienced by strikes, their reactions tend to be emotional and black/white/right/wrong in nature. This is unfortunate, because the reality is far more nuanced.

I've been in and around a number of strikes, as management, labor and innocent bystander. My main observation is that there are never any winners in strikes, only survivors and victims. Everyone suffers. Management can lose revenue, customers, and reputation. Labor can lose reputation, money, and jobs. Bystanders lose anything from a convenience to a necessity.

On the management side, the concerns vary. If the customers have alternative providers of the product or service they provide, they have incentive to at the very least try out the competition. This is not at all what any business wants. In the case of a transit strike, the fallout is usually a drop in ridership, as people find other ways to get where they need to go. For labor, paychecks are the first thing to go, but clearly there's potential for more serious downside. For the bystanders, again, it depends on whether they have alternatives and whether or not the product is a necessity.

Above and beyond that, the organization as a whole invariably loses big time. Whatever the nuance in the situation, for those within the organization, strikes are a black and white choice. You work or you don't work, there is no in between. You have to choose sides. There is always a loss of collegiality; supervisors and workers never look at each other the same way again. Every worker has their own issues that often don't fit into stark choices. Often coworkers never have the same feeling of teamwork and shared purpose. Organizations and organisms sound alike for a reason- they both depend on a variety of processes working together smoothly, and this becomes far more difficult after a polarizing event like a strike. There is simply no knowing in advance how serious the damage is and whether or not it can be repaired.

Another victim in a strike is the truth. Both sides have no choice but to spin the truth, because strikes are often resolved as much based on public opinion as anything. There are always people caught in the middle and where they place the blame is of critical importance. So appearances are just as important as reality.

Whether you view management as penny-pinchers or unions as a bunch of thugs, it's important to not get caught up in the stereotypes. The union movement grew up to protect the weak from the powerful. Labor disputes are always one-sided battles. Management has almost every advantage. They have more resources at their disposal, and as much as their side in the dispute insists that there's only a finite piece of the pie available for labor costs, the pie's recipe is completely under control of management. Labor has one resource- its people, and it's a blunt instrument. Because they have fewer options, labor almost always has to take the more drastic approach. Lockouts, the management equivalent of strikes, are relatively rare. This is consistent with any kind of dispute resolution when the balance of power is one-sided. The more powerful side has the greater ability to generate a long, varied and sustained attack. The weaker side necessarily has to take the more extreme action.

I, like everyone, have to be on one side or the other in the dispute. I will report in as factual a manner as possible on what's going on, but will not venture into the specifics of the dispute and the relative rightness or wrongness of anyone's position. This is nasty business from whatever perspective you view it and I will simply attempt to present it as it appears to me.

New York Trip

I know there are other things that I should be commenting on, but I need to mention my experience last night. My mom has ALS and has been completely paralyzed for the past 5 years. Last night was the New York ALS Association sports dinner and I always try to go and this year I brough one of my kids. The dinner was fun, but we had to catch a 10:00 train, so we left a bit after 9:30. It was in a big hotel and by the time we got our coats and to the lobby, time was already tight and then there were no cabs, so just on the spur of the moment we hopped in one of those pedicabs- like a bicycle rickshaw. It was great. This Turkish guy (he said he'd been in the US for 4 months) was weaving in and out of traffic through TImes Square and all the way down to Penn Station. My daughter and I were laughing the whole way, and we even made ouy train.

Say what you really mean

I left school the other because I was nauseated. I was not nauseous, which means that I would be making other people sick to their stomachs.

Reminds me of the famous (and almost certainly fictional) story of Noah Webster, the dictionary guy. When he was caught by his wife doing some hanky-panky with the maid, she exclaimed, "Mr Webster, I'm surprised!" To which he replied, "No, my dear, I am surprised, you are astonished."

Sunday Randoms

As usual, nothing random about the so-called random thoughts...

I watch Project Runway occasionally and I'm not afraid to admit that my favorite part is hearing Heidi Klum pronounce the word 'out.'

We've been discussing music around here a lot, and when I was listening to some older songs in the car I was reminded of sitting in our dorm room, putting on an one side of a vinyl album which we had chosen after a thorough discussion, and just sitting and listening. Do people still do that? Hard for me to imagine that they do.

On a related (and therefore non-random) note, whenever I talk about music with students they often ask me who I like, so here's a few that maybe give some ideas about the dozens of bands that I like. Current bands include Rilo Kiley, New Pornographers (A.C. Newman's band that also includes Niko Case), Fountains of Wayne, Death Cab for Cutie and others that I hear on the radio and don't always catch the name. I think one of them is called Cake but I'm not sure. I was very into the New Wave thing back in the late 70's with my favorites being Talking Heads and Elvis Costello. Other bands like Steely Dan and artists like Paul Simon, Tom Waits, Randy Newman and Springsteen weave their way in and out as well and there are many, many others.

In the aftermath of something that I will only describe as involving challah french toast, I just vacuumed my toaster oven.

Not meaning to offend anyone, but

I know some people who consider themselves to be thoughtful, intelligent Republicans. All I have to say to them is that you can't have it both ways anymore. You are either a rude, ignorant, intolerant, truth-challenged far-right winger or you are not truly a Republican, (though you might be what they now call a RINO, 'in name only'). Might be a nice time for a 3rd party to arise.

A request

Should any of you hear me utter the words "I'm going to Suburban Square" on a Saturday between now and Christmas you officially have permission to slap me silly and/or physically restrain me from going.

I was there for about 45 minutes, visited 4 stores, was almost hit 3 times at four-way stops, twice in the car and once on foot.

My My, Hey Hey

My 81 year-old father went to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Concert at Madison Square Garden this week. I called him on the phone and he told me all about it. All the amazing people, like Stevie Wonder, Billy Joel, Sting (his comment on Sting- "I saw Sting. I don't know his last name. I guess I don't know his first name either."), and his favorite of the bunch, Bruce Springsteen. He went on and on about all of them, kind of summing up by saying, "You know, I hate all the music these days, but that older stuff is pretty good." To which I replied, "Uh, perhaps this isn't the moment to remind of what you used to say about all of these people back in the day."

So there's something good you can say about pop music today. It makes older rock music sound good even to my dad.

One more thing

Only 110 days until pitchers and catchers report.

Quick post-mortem

The Yankees won fair and square. They deserved it. Most World Series have some blowout games and some games that are up for grabs. You have to win the winable games, and games 3 and 4 in Philly were up for grabs and the Yankees won both of them. Are they a better team? Yeah, maybe a tiny bit, but not much. I'm kind of bummed out now, but the Phils gave us lots of great moments this year and made it a very successful, memorable season. No parade, but no tears.

A couple of notes

1. In the previous entry I talk about knowing what your principles are, but it occurred to me that newer readers haven't seen what I mean by that for myself. Here's a short statement of my principles:

I will treat other people the way I would want to be treated.

I will strive to leave every situation I encounter better than I found it.

That's it, really. Clearly, both of those things can be expanded greatly, but that would require a multitude of platitudes, which is not nearly as much fun as it sounds (think endless paragraphs explaining things like what I mean by "say what you mean and mean what you say."), and way too much detail to be appropriate for this space. And you really don't know the detail to apply it. They work just fine as they are.

2. I am actually working on part 2 of my post about having too much to do, but it's not done yet.
No jokes about not having time for it, though.

More Awesome Teaching Techniques

Because a number of people are working with ATT program and consider it valuable, I'm usually not going to use real names for the people and stuff that make up the program. However, one of the things I'm supposed to be doing is, and I quote, "Establish a presence on the Ning," which clearly needs no further explanation.

What follows is an excerpt from my Ning presencing, talking about whether people really use all the social networking stuff that's out there. I had made the point that, unlike people in my generation, it never occurs to kids that they will ever lost contact with anyone they want to stay in touch with.

It's also a matter of what technologies you have and what you prefer to use. My kids and their friends all use Facebook, but most of their real communication is by texting and IM. My older daughter does a lot of collaborative schoolwork using IM, which is a relatively old technology but one that does what it does very easily and very well. I've been blogging and reading blogs for several years now, and the only reason I don't use Twitter much is that I have an old cell phone, so I can't really take full advantage of it. That'll probably change when I get an iPhone or a Droid or some such thing. I'm not sure if Twitter is the pulse of the Internet (someone else with Ning presence had made that statement) or the flavor of the month. It's way too early to know.

Going back to my original point about not being concerned about the ability to stay connected to people, as you can see, I have a bird, Eric the bird for you Monty Python fans. (Non-Ningers will need to look at my Facebook page to see what I'm talking about) Eric can be frightened by many things, blue file folders inexplicably being among them, but the one thing he is definitely not afraid of is falling. He's a bird and he can fly. It just doesn't occur to him that he could fall.

Finally, on another point, anyone who feels inclined to jump headlong into the pool of information would be well advised to read Amusing Ourselves to Death, by the late Neil Postman. I think I might re-read it myself.

The Postman book is terrific but not easy reading. One of the points he makes is that most of the information we get now is devoid of context and unconnected to anything else (for example, news about some kidnapping in California or political events and speeches done to look good on TV rather than to contain anything useful).

I'm kind of rambling all over the place here, but overall my point is that, given the risks and rewards inherent in the medium, the principles with which you guide your use of the Internet should be consistent with your principles as a human being. Note, this means actually knowing what your principles are, a piece of self-knowledge well worth seeking. For me, that means knowing what's private and what's public (easy to do because I do it in the classroom every day), and being able to discern the difference between the things that are important to me and those that are not, and to dismiss the latter as meaningless noise.

Only a little bit about baseball

I have to wonder what I'm going to write about after the World Series. I'm not sure if I'll have the time and energy to think of new and interesting things, or if escaping after weeks of sleep deprivation will make things seem less funny than do now.

Yesterday I had extra tickets to the game and did my usual bit to sell them- StubHub plus temple listserv. They sold on StubHub, but the first responses to the listserv weren't about buying the tickets, they were asking if I could drive their kids to the game. I was caught off-guard by that, but I actually did drive a couple of kids that I know slightly whose parents couldn't go (one's sick and one's running for office and just a tad busy the night before Election Day) and couldn't drive. It was very helpful to them and they were excellent company, as it turned out.

Going into the Series I was looking for drama, and the last 2 games certainly delivered. Two teams that never give up and always assume they can overcome whatever deficit they face.

I now have 7 little white towels.

There's a guy with no shirt on with his body painted red and a rainbow wig a few seats away from me.

I like how pitchers wear jackets when they're on base. It's very dapper.

Now that was a baseball game

Sure, I'm disappointed that the Phillies lost, but (1) the Series isn't over yet and (2) that game exemplified why I love baseball so much.

The Yankees scored 4 runs off Joe Blanton despite not hitting the ball hard more than once. The Phillies made much better contact against Sabathia- the two batters up before Utley in the 7th hit the ball just as hard a he did, just not as high and right at someone.

Leading 4-3, Joba Chamberlain comes in throwing 97 mph, strikes out Werth and Ibanez, gets 2 strikes and then makes a mistake to Feliz and wham, the game is tied. Then in the very next inning, Lidge burns through the first two batters, gets what looks like strike 3 on Damon to most of us in the park, then Damon fouls off a few more and then gets a hit and all hell breaks loose. Amazing stuff.

I really like the Phillies, probably more than any team I've ever followed. They're a terrific team, but this is the 9th World Series I've attended and the truth of the matter is that you lose some of them. Who knows which team is better? They're both excellent, but only one of them can win. That's just the way it is. I'll be back there tomorrow rooting for the Phils, but don't expect to see me crying if they lose then or any other night. They did us proud and gave me a lot of joy and excitement and sometimes that's gotta be good enough.

A few notes from a late night before the next late night

I'm sure Major League Baseball is patting themselves on the back for how smoothly and efficiently they handled the rain delay last night. I should just mention that, while they clearly have more important things on their minds than the people who are actually attending the game (we're not watching TV so we don't help ratings), it would have been nice to have a bit of information for the first hour of the delay. Especially when it didn't rain for 20 minutes and they didn't unroll the tarp. Finally after an hour they announced a start time. They pulled the same crap last year during the last game of the Series. Never said a darned thing to us.

If I don't get "swined," as the kids say, from the subway ride I don't know when it'll happen.

As hard a some people tried, there just isn't the same level of hatred for A-Rod as there was for Manny.

They quietly raised the price of a beer by a buck between the LCS and series. And do people really like Campo's cheesesteaks? Ugh. Back to the grilled cheese stand for me tonight.

I have a 95 year-old uncle in California who's been a Yankee fan since Babe Ruth. I'm collecting stuff to send him. Wish he could be here.

I just found a program for the 1980 LCS and a ticket stub from the 1993 Series. I don't want to lose sight of how amazing it is to be going to the World Series here 2 years in a row. The Yankees are a great team and there's no shame in losing to them. If the Phillies are going to lose I'd almost prefer it be here so I can give them a standing ovation for their season.

Safety is our first concern

We bought a new telephone. Our phone in the kitchen was just a crappy phone. It was hard to read the display and the range and battery life were awful. So I bought a new cordless phone. What I found what that when you buy a cordless phone, most of them are called "dual handset" phones. I wasn't sure what that meant, but I forged on. Now that it's here, I open the box and inside are two phones. What does it mean that this is dual handset as opposed to two phones? The only difference I can see is that only one of them plugs into the telephone cord on the wall. Is that what makes something a "phone" as opposed to a "handset"? Since when? I think people consider a phone to be something you use to talk to other people, not something you attach to the wall.

As for safety, the warnings here are minimal, but there was one about not using the phone during a lightning storm because of "a slight risk of shock." First of all, if you look at the wire that attaches to the phone it's not even capable of carrying household current. If lightning went through it you would just have a molten mass on the counter. But even more to the point, we're talking about a cordless phone here. You're not even physically attached to the wire. How are you going to get shocked? Maybe they mean don't use it outside under a tree during a lightning storm. Sounds like a plan.

You may be to busy to read this (Part 1)

I always feel like I'm too busy. And I am busy, but what's weird is I feel that way even when I'm not doing anything. I guess it's because no matter what I'm doing (or not doing) there's always something else I could (or should) be doing at the same time.

For example, I'm now sitting and thinking about whether I should be doing something rather than actually doing it. In fact I'm writing about thinking about what I should be doing. And thinking about writing about thinking about what I should be doing and then writing about it. Wait a second. Now not only am I not doing anything but my head is starting to hurt.

Logical traps aside, I do wonder (1) why people fill up their to do lists with more than they can possibly do, and (2) was it always like that?

Number 1 is the bigger question, and I'm not even ready to think about starting to think about it, if you know what I mean, so let's start with number 2. I've read things like Little House on the Prairie and Pride and Prejudice and it appears to me that those people spend a lot of time doing virtually nothing. But is that how they felt? Were they calm, or did poor beautiful and perfect but blind Mary and that feisty Elizabeth Bennet feel like their days were too full to keep up? It seemed to me that things were slower when I was younger. There were fewer interruption because phone calls only happened at home and in offices and they were expensive (everything in the house would screech to a halt if someone called "long distance") and there was no other way to communicate except by mail or face-to-face. Most of the modern life accelerators were invented or introduced during my lifetime- FedEx (1971), fax machines (around 1975- here's a photo of 3 of them- the white thing is a rotating cylinder on which you placed a sheet of paper. It also had a phone receiver that you put in an acoustical modem to send the signal. It took a mere 6 minutes per page), e-mail (early 1970s), personal computers (early 1980s) and cell phones (late 1980's).

There were certainly fewer things to do. I lived in New York where there were 7 TV channels, the most anywhere. Lots of people had no TV at all. So I guess we did whatever we were doing for longer periods of time [let me interject my mother's favorite 'little Frank' stories. I was allowed to watch 30 minutes of TV on school nights, so I told my mom I wanted to watch 8 minutes of one program, 5 minutes of another, 4 minutes of another and so forth. She said no. I guess I was always a multitasker.] It definitely took a lot longer to prepare dinner before frozen food and microwave ovens. I know I always felt too busy to clean my room, but beyond that I don't remember.

Enough ancient history, but it seems hard to argue that all of the present day's communication immediacy doesn't make things, well, at least seem more immediate. Whether the immediacy is actually necessary or whether things are actually more urgent than they used to be is a bigger question that I will look at in part 2 of this post.

Suprastitious

I have concluded that what I say, what I do, what I have to eat, what I wear and the way I sit in my chair have no noticeable effect on the baseball game that's on the TV.

Mauvin' On Up

I did not know what mauve was for the first half of my life and I was okay with that. Then a relative who shall be nameless, who considers his or herself to have excellent taste, replaced their bedroom carpet with a new one that was very much mauve. The rationale behind mauve is that you would be embarrassed to have a pink rug, so you add a bit of grey to it and call it mauve, but it's still pink. We made fun of the mauve carpet when we were out of the relative's earshot.

Fast-forward about 10 years and we're re-doing our bathroom. I don't want to go into home renovation detail, but we basically took a little-used room and combined it with a teeny bathroom to make a big bathroom and dressing area. Being an adult causes you to do this kind of thing from time to time, especially when you have a small, ugly bathroom. The new bathroom is almost blindingly white and very pretty (for a bathroom), but we didn't want a tile floor in the dressing area- we wanted fluffy carpet. So guess what color we picked?

I don't remember the process by which we got the mauve carpet. I'm guessing somebody suggested it and I said okay. It's fine, really. The dressing area is about 4 x 8 feet and it's mostly just like a closet. It does have a window, but we always keep the shade down because it's a dressing room. It has a full-length mirror and places to keep all of our clothes. It's nice.

So why am I bothering to mention this? Because I have discovered a serious problem with the dressing room. We have regular lights in that room. Most indoor lighting has what they call in the color business a "warm" tone. It's a bit reddish and a bit yellowish. "Cool" light is more blue. Light color is actually measured in degrees on the Kelvin scale. Warm light is in the 1500-3000 degree range and cool light is 4000 degrees plus. The color of objects is based on the colors of light that it reflects. Warm light is more pleasant, but it makes every color look warmer than it really is.

This would not pose a problem if I never left the dressing room, but I do on a daily basis. I can tell you with absolute certainty that all colors look different in a mauve dressing room than they do either outdoors or in fluorescent lighting like we have at school. The result is that on any occasion when I want to see if things will match when I get to work, it ends up being a completely wild guess. Things that seem to match perfectly in the mauve room look ridiculous in fluorescent lighting. My reaction to this is to wear black, blue and grey most of the time, along with outfits that I've worn several times before. This is boring and not my preference but is better than looking silly.

Not too many people can pull off a Snuggie as a look.

Is it possible to understand that you lack perspective about something? Or does that imply that you indeed have perspective? Now I remember why I hated philosophy class.

Notes from the weekend

We had dinner tonight and one of the dishes had orange peel in it. I don't spend a lot of time anthropomorphizing fruit, but that poor little orange looks so sad without its peel.

This was another one of those weekends where I know I was really busy but if you asked me what I did I have no idea. I know I filed some papers, if by "file" one means to put them in a box and put the box out of sight. I also watched "I Love You , Man," which was fun. I drove a lot in the rain on Saturday night, which was way too entertaining- nothing like Lincoln Drive during a flood...

Is there some reason we need 11 different kinds of paper towels? You shouldn't even be using paper towels in the first place except on rare occasions.

You know what else is sad? A sports page with no baseball games to talk about.

Sorry to repeat myself, but

If the worst thing about this time of year is pumpkin overload (anybody for a nice squash smoothie?), the best thing is that you have a couple of weeks to use the word, "spooktacular."

Tough choice- beer or cotton candy. Not both.

Tough choice- beer or cotton candy. Not both.

Good news: phillies up 6-2. Bad news: 10:00 in the top of the 5th

My Promise

I resolve to not shave for as long as the Phillies keep winning.

Actually, I pretty much haven't shaved since the first time the Phillies won the World Series.

Stern Warning

As we come into the autumn holiday season I need to repeat my annual warning against accidentally eating something that's pumpkin flavor. If pumpkin is so good, how come we don't eat it all the time?

I'm not talking about pumpkin pie. In spite of pumpkins being the last thing in the world I'd think to make a pie out of, it has this traditional thing going, plus you can substitute sweet potato pie, which actually tastes good, and get away with it. What I'm warning against is things like pumpkin latte's and pumpkin brownies. Why? Why, I ask, would you create such a thing?

Ryan Howard. un f-ing believable

Seems weird tn take my hat off for the Hooters

Oops. Not h&o. Just some guy with a bad haircut.

Hall & Oates singing national anthem? What year is it?

Couple of baseball notes

I really enjoy going to games at Citizens Bank Park. It's a very nice place to watch a baseball game, and I love the energy of the crowd. Last night I really loved the "You take steroids" chant with rhythmic applause. Pretty funny. I could easily do without any chant that ends with the word "sucks." I will plead guilt to being part of crowds in Yankee Stadium whow started it all with their classic "Boston Sucks" chant. But it's enough already. It's boring and unpleasant and not focused on the game. In the beginning, when we chanted in New York it was never during the game. It was something to do on the way out of the stadium after you won. So I'll stick with "Beat LA" and "cheater."

Regarding the baseball itself, I think that there's now tremendous pressure on the Dodgers to win both of the next two games. Even if they split and get back to LA, they still would have to beat Lee in game 7 and they didn't look quite up to that task last night. And don't think he wouldn't have stayed in the game if it was 1-0.

This Program Brought to you by...

It's always been kind amusing to me that sports programs always have advertisements that I'm not interested in. I'm too old for their target audience, but still, am I going to buy beer, razors or cars based on a commercial? Don't think so. Or cell phones. Or financial services.

So this year so far, a few things have stood out. First is the endless repetition of the Fergie and Will I Am Direct TV commercials. We're not even halfway through the baseball playoffs yet and I must have seen that spot 50 times already. Stop it! Next, I want to know what the woman in the Symbacort commercial actually looks like. I know she exists only in silhouette and that she has glowing lungs and that medicine makes them change color, but I want to know if she has a face. And finally, I have grown to despise any commercial that has things talking that don't actually talk- animals, babies and the like, but I do love the Geico commercial with the talking pothole. I think it's the voice.

I've also decided I'm going to pretend that the commercials are the first few scenes of a movie and figure out what the rest of the movie will be like. So far I like the one where the harried housewife gets a putting green to walk on from Fidelity, and we then cut to a man, (her boyfriend or husband?), talking to his reflection about whether to take drugs for his ED, as they call it these days. Then a woman joins him. Is it the same woman? Hmmm. Hope they don't hit a pothole on their way home.

Hotel news

We have blue water in our hotel office bathroom toilet. We never get blue water at home...

One more thing about the webinar

My experience is that any person or thing that calls itself "Awesome," or any other superlative, isn't.

Crimes against the language (or, Adventures in Jargonland)

I've now heard that thing I did today was called a "webinar." This is exactly why I don't like this kind of thing very much. The word seminar is defined (among other things) as a meeting of people to discuss a particular topic. It says nothing about the venue. Should we have called it an audinar if we had it in the auditorium? Or we could do it outside and call it a lawninar.

So the purpose of the program is to help teachers use 20th century techniques, specifically web-based social media tools, but anything that, according to the moderators, moves us away from our current paradigm. This is a problem for me because my brain is set to automatically shut down if someone ever uses the word paradigm. Look it up and tell me if you know what it means after reading the definition. Nobody knows what it means, which makes it extremely useful if you want to sound impressive without actually saying anything.

This is kind of how things went. The program is called something along the lines of Awesome Teaching Tools, or ATT (it's not really called that, but that's the spirit of it) and they keep talking about all the awesome things we'll do and using lots of impressive-sounding buzzwords, but nobody ever actually tells you what those things are. The one time someone asked about a specific thing they said they weren't going to tell us for a few weeks.

You can look at this two ways, certainly an Awesome teaching technique is to let everyone figure stuff out on their own, to have a voyage of discovery. Of course the cynical view is that there really isn't anything and that we'll just make it up as we go along. It reminds of an obscure Monty Python bit where this woman comes on a talk show to discuss her theory about the brontosaurus. She goes on and on and on about how wonderful her theory is until the interviewer finally has to stop her and ask, "So what is it?" And she responds, "What is what?" At which point you can't help but assume that there is no theory, she just likes talking about having a theory, (that's actually an incorrect assumption because there is a theory and it's brilliant in a Python kind of way, but that's beside the point)

So I spent 2 hours doing I have no idea what, and I guess there are worse things. But I'm not sure I want to manage transformational change around the new literacies in order to grow as a f2f professional learning team. But that's just me. Or maybe I'm already doing it and I just don't know yet. My head hurts.

Webconferencing

I just did a web conference. We had a computer screen and audio and chat. It felt kind of like watching something muted on TV and carrying on a phone conversation while 100 people around you are talking among themselves and to you the whole time.

Interesting article

Anyone interested in making connection between and within branches of science might find this article interesting. If you read through the first few paragraphs, make sure you read the last one.

54

I am now almost exactly 3 times as old as my oldest daughter. Here's what it's like to be 54 years old. It feels pretty much exactly like being 53 years old. Hmmm, that probably doesn't help much. I guess you have to split it into physical and mental.

Physically, I still feel reasonably strong and fit and energetic. Stuff hurts pretty much every day. I have a chronically sore left shoulder which hurts, according to my doctor, because I'm not dead yet. I can ease it with exercises and it doesn't stop me from doing anything, but it's annoying. And typical for someone my age. It always makes me chuckle when kids say they feel old because they woke up and their neck or their back hurts. See how you feel when that happens for about 2000 days in a row.

Mentally, the only even halfway bad thing I can think of is that I have too many stray facts stuck in my head, like what kind of Mike and Ike's my students like. It's like my brain still knows where to go but there are more obstacles to getting there.

Like any milestone, a birthday makes you reflect and think ahead. I was discussing what I want to be when I grow up with my younger daughter (she thinks it's funny but I think she's kind of used to hearing me say stuff like that), and she thinks I should be the old guy whose house kids are afraid to go near on Halloween.

My birthday itself was pretty uneventful. I went out to a wonderful dinner with friends which was a lot of fun, and that was about it. I'm impossible to buy presents for because I don't want anything, so you have to find something I'd never thought of. That gets harder at this age because every year I've had more time to think of things.

And now we've moved on to where my daughter is now 18. Time doesn't fly (and for you catching typos at the last second fans, Tim doesn't fly either); it feels like it's been a long time and a lot has happened since she was born. But still, something about birthdays makes you compress time somehow and in ways 18 years seems really short. Not 54 years though. That's a long time.