The Story of a Monday, Part 2: Farewell to NBPE

They don’t have graduation ceremonies for fifth graders here in Our Little Town.  Or promotion ceremonies, either.  You just go to school one morning as a fifth grader, walking into the same elementary school you’ve attended for years by that point, and you leave at the end of the day as a rising sixth grader, headed toward middle school, and that’s all there is to it.

It seems kind of anti-climactic, really.

Kim took Tabitha home after her promotion ceremony on Monday, while I headed over to Not Bad President Elementary to pick up Lauren from her last day of fifth grade.  I sat there in my car, in my usual spot, reading my book the way I always do.  It was a lovely day.  Eventually the bell rang and Lauren came out with her friends, walking up the street and talking as they have done most afternoons for years now.  She got into the car, and we drove off.

And thus, after two children and nine years, we left NBPE behind.

Our daughters weren’t even supposed to go to NBPE.  We live in what is called a “choice district,” almost exactly halfway between two other elementary schools, and we could have sent them to either of them.  Instead, one decision made years earlier sent them to NBPE.

We put Tabitha into daycare when she was a toddler so that I could have a couple of days a week to write up my dissertation.  It was a friendly place with a name something like “Creative Kids,” and she enjoyed going there.  Then they got bought out by evangelicals and the place became “Born Again Babies” or something equally ridiculous.  We had a long talk with the new owners on the subject of who was responsible for the spiritual well being of our child (i.e. not them) and what we expected of them when our daughter was in their care (i.e. to keep that first point uppermost in their minds at all times).  And for a while it seemed to work.

But at six months and one day after the new people took over every single one of the old staff left, and within a week Tabitha hated the place, so we left too.  We found a Montessori school right on the way to Home Campus, and Tabitha soon grew to love it there.  Lauren did as well, in her turn.

When it came time for elementary school, NBPE was right down the block.  The Montessori folks would walk them down and then pick them back up.  It was ideal.  So we transferred Tabitha – and eventually Lauren – over.  And, it turned out, we came to be very glad that it worked out that way.  NBPE is a great school, with wonderful teachers and a caring staff, and both of our children thrived there.

Lauren started there even before she was old enough for kindergarten.  They had a program called Early Childhood, which in the year she was there ended up being a class full of hearing-impaired girls and a couple of non-hearing-impaired girls who served as peer mentors.  Lauren loved the experience, and was always proud of her sign language skills.

Once, when we were at a restaurant and she noticed a family signing at each other, she rushed over to them and began madly signing away.  We have no idea what she said.  “Fish!  Bicycle!  My hovercraft is full of eels!”  Who knows?  But they were gracious about it, and she was so happy.

Through the years Lauren has wrung just about everything she could out of NBPE.  She has had speaking roles in multiple plays.  She has been a safety, served on the student council, played in the band, and stayed after school as an art helper.  She has learned a great deal from some very talented teachers, and has made some close friends.

And now it is her turn to move up to Mighty Clever Guy Middle School.

It’s a big step, but she’ll do just fine. 

It will be strange not to have to report to NBPE anymore.  We’ll miss the place.  But new things are on the horizon, and they will have their own charms.

Congratulations, Lauren!  I’m proud of you.

The Story of a Monday, Part 1: A Graduation at MCGMS

Time is nature’s way of preventing everything from happening all at once.

By that standard there has been a breakdown in time recently, as pretty much everything has been happening all at the same time.  The theoretical physics folks need to know about this, because as space and time collapse toward singularity there will be ample opportunities to convert this into large grants for those who are on top of things.

A lot happened on Monday.  I thought about putting it all into one big post, but then that seemed kind of unfair to the various events and the people in them.  So I’m going to parse the three biggest events out into their own posts, because it’s my blog and I get to do that.

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I’d never spent much time in the gym down at Mighty Clever Guy Middle School before Monday. 

There are good reasons for this.  For one, there was never any real call for me to do so.  None of the events that I attended or volunteered to help at required me to be there, really, and for a middle-aged man to hang out at a middle school gym without being required by some outside force to do so is just way too creepy.  For another, well, imagine stuffing a finite space – even a large finite space – with dozens of unwashed 13-year-olds and telling them to run around for 47 minutes, eight times a day, 36 weeks a year and see how much the thought of wandering in there appeals to you on the last day of school.

But when the event is important enough, you go. 

It was a lovely day – a bit on the warm side, but with a nice breeze that was amplified by several large ventilation fans the size of draft horses.  The bleachers were rolled out, most of the basketball hoops were pulled back toward the ceiling, and the floor was covered with plastic deck chairs, for today was the Promotion Ceremony for the 8th-graders.

They don’t call it a graduation ceremony anymore.  I guess that’s reserved for high school and college these days, on the theory that it implies that you’re headed outward, toward new institutions and systems, whereas a promotion ceremony is more for moving up within the same system.  I suppose it makes sense.  So do we call them “promoteds” now instead of “graduates”?  Nobody ever thinks about things like that when they make those changes, so now it’s my job.  You’re welcome.  I’ll get back to you with a decision eventually.  In the meantime, enjoy the ceremony.

The ceremony began at 1pm and parents began filtering into the bleachers sometime around noon, I think.  At any rate, I got there about 12:30 and the place was already about half full.  I found myself a spot in the bleachers, and Kim joined me not too long afterward.

The 8th-grade band serenaded us while we waited.  They were pretty good, actually.

Then the graduates marched in and took their seats.

Tabitha said they only practiced this troop movement once, and given that I have to say they did a nice job of it.  It’s hard to move that many people into rows of deck chairs with any kind of grace, and they managed it well.  Nobody fell over, at any rate, and that’s always the hallmark of a successful procession as far as I am concerned.

Next there were a couple of speeches.  The principal gave a very nice – and refreshingly succinct – welcome.  Two students talked a bit about their experiences and some of the teachers.  The academic and athletic award winners stood up and were recognized.  The whole thing moved along nicely.

Then came the moment we were all waiting for – the awarding of what was, in accordance with the whole “Promotion Ceremony” aspect, being called a “promotion certificate” rather than a diploma.  They called each kid’s name individually and let them walk across the front of the room to shake hands with the two student speakers and the principal and pick up their certificate, which was a nice touch.  So many times in your life you get lumped together with everyone else that it is nice to have one thing where they actually call your name for everyone to hear.

The students walked across.  They bopped and jived.  Some of them practically danced.  Others hurried along as if anxious to get back into the safety of the crowd.  They all got applauded.  Some were wildly cheered, none more so than the one learning disabled girl who seemed so overwhelmed by it all.  It was a lovely sort of ceremony, really.

Eventually it was Tabitha’s turn.

They’re a lot more casual about these things than they used to be, really.  Back in the Paleolithic, when I was graduating from 8th grade, we had to dress up – jackets and ties for the boys, dresses for the girls.  Since I had exactly one suit, bought for the spate of bar mitzvahs that I attended in 7th grade, and since the gap between 7th and 8th grade is fairly significant for boys, clothing-size-wise, I looked like your basic scarecrow.  It’s much more comfortable now.  Some of the kids were dressed up, but most were wearing nicer versions of what they always wear.

Tabitha chose to wear her Mondrian/Doctor Who shirt, which I felt was an excellent choice for an event that rewards learning.

I don’t really have any photos of her accepting her certificate from the principal, since she was a long way across the room and the shutterspeed was simply too slow to catch anything in focus, but trust me it happened.  You can see the basic set up here, a few moments later.

And then it was over, as quickly as it began.

If that isn’t a summary of Tabitha’s whole time down at MCGMS, I don’t know what is.  It’s the essence of parenthood.  The story of life.  Pay attention, folks – don’t blink, or you’ll miss it.

Next year she will attend Local Businessman High School.  Having climbed to the top of one ladder, she will find herself at the bottom of the next one.  There will be challenges, of course, and new people to meet.

She will do just fine.

It took a lot of hard work to get to that ceremony, and I’m glad that they called her name.  I’m proud of you, Tabitha.

Wolf et al v. Walker et al

So, apparently the Constitution applies to the State of Wisconsin too.  Who knew?

Has anyone alerted Governor Teabagger (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Koch Industries) about this?  It’s probably something he’d want to know.  That knowledge might even inspire him to change a few of his practices and policies, though my guess is that he is so far gone in ideological fantasy that this revelation will make little difference to him.  It will certainly make no difference to his cronies, minions, and lackeys in the legislature, political termites burrowing into the joists of the American republic who have made their contempt for Constitutional restrictions and the rule of law in general vividly plain over the last four years.

It’s been interesting, having a ring-side seat at the subversion of an entire American state from within, in the liberal arts sense of the word, the way three-headed frogs are “interesting.”

For those of you who missed the news out of Baja Canada yesterday, a federal judge has ruled that Wisconsin’s laws and constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage are in direct conflict with the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution, which requires both due process and equal protection under the law for all American citizens.

The State of Wisconsin has reacted the way you’d think a one-party dictatorship unused to challenges to its prerogatives would act when suddenly faced with opposition.  In comments worthy of disdain from toddlers, our attorney general – a man so nakedly partisan it’s almost refreshing in its lack of pretense – has simply decided to ignore the court decision and declare that “current law remains in force.”  While this is of a piece with the past actions of Governor Teabagger (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Koch Industries) and the rogue regime he commands, all of which have been predicated on the Teabagger legal principle that “rules are meant for other people, not people like us,” it is nevertheless not a viable legal strategy in a republic based on the separation of powers and the rule of law.

Part of me hopes that they will continue to deny their responsibility to obey the law and get themselves jailed, except that they control all three branches of the Wisconsin government and such consequences will never happen (vide supra: legal principle, Teabagger). 

I said most of what I wanted to say on this issue five years ago.  Nothing has changed except that the rest of the country seems to be catching on to the idea that human rights apply to all humans, regardless of appearance, orientation, or other supposedly important qualifier.

It’s nice to be ahead of the curve sometimes.

In case you’re wondering, I have actually read the decision.  It’s 88 pages long and freely available online from any number of places.  If you’re thinking about complaining about it, my advice is to read it first.  Otherwise, you know, people may think you’re a bit of an ass for complaining about something you know nothing about.  Just saying.

It’s a fairly cautious decision, really, one that grounds itself most in the simple principle of equal protection under the laws.

Or, as Judge Barbara Crabb put it, Governor Teabagger (a wholly-owned subsidiary of Koch Industries) and his regime “are making the same mistake as the [US Supreme] Court in Bowers when they frame the question in this case as whether there is a “right to same-sex marriage” instead of whether there is a right to marriage from which same-sex couples can be excluded.  … The question is whether the scope of that right may be restricted depending on who is exercising the right.”  (pp.32-33)  A right given to some citizens may not be withheld from other citizens without a compelling state interest in doing so, and no such interest has been demonstrated.

The fact that laws have been put into place to deny the rights of American citizens is irrelevant.  Nor is it relevant that the good citizens of the State of Wisconsin approved an amendment to their constitution enshrining such denial into that constitution.

The thing about rights is that they are not subject to such actions.

“The very purpose of a Bill of Rights was to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and to establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts.  One’s rights to life, liberty, and property, to free speech, a free press, freedom of worship and assembly, and other fundamental rights may not be submitted to a vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.”   (West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 US 624 (1943), cited in Judge Crabb’s decision on p.19).

Or, as a friend of mine once said, “If they can vote to take it away from you, then it isn’t a right.”

So for the first time in years, there is good political news coming out of Wisconsin.  The government of this state is being forced to acknowledge that they are not the only power in existence, that there are greater and more powerful forces at work than their mere ideological whims. 

And more importantly, thousands of Wisconsin citizens can now marry those they love.

That, most of all, is what matters.  I have been married for 18 years now.  I cannot imagine how impoverished my life would be if that had been denied by the small-minded bigotry of others.

I am glad that marriage in Wisconsin has now been strengthened through the inclusion of those previously shut out.

It’s a good day in the Dairy State.  A good day indeed.

Throwback Thursday: South Philadelphia, 1995

It’s been so long since I’ve seen a Major League Baseball game in person that that last three stadiums I paid to get into are no longer there.  I don’t miss those stadiums, really.  They were dumps, especially Veterans Stadium – a concrete bowl in the middle of South Philadelphia that had about as much charm as you’d think it would, as well as its own fully functional criminal court.  They’ve all been replaced with much nicer stadiums, from what I hear, even in Philadelphia, and perhaps someday I’ll see a game inside one of them.

You have to see baseball games in person.  It’s not really a sport designed for television.

I’m not the baseball fan I used to be, growing up.  I lost interest after the strike in the early 90s, and while I’ve slowly gotten back into it bit by bit – the Phillies’ World Series victory in 2008 being pivotal in that regard – it’s still fairly low down on my list of sports these days.

The fun part of baseball games, though, is that you can bring a lot of people to them and hang out together.  They’re not like football games, where you only get eight of them in your own stadium and thus it costs roughly the equivalent of the GNP of a small third world nation to go to a game (not including parking).  No, you get to choose from more than eighty home games per season, many of which are on Tuesday nights where nobody really wants to be out anyway.

Seating is not limited, in other words.

This photo is from 1995.  Someone in the seats in front of us volunteered to take it, so we’re all in it together.  We’re somewhere in the middle seats of the stadium – not down by the field, not up in the upper deck – and on the third base line, if I recall correctly.  The Phillies are playing the Astros, and if my note on the back of the photo is correct they will lose, 6-5.  We’re used to that, being Phillies fans.  Kim and I are about five months from being married – she’s been out to see my extended family twice before this trip, so she knows full well what she’s getting into.  My dad’s on the left, with my brother next to him.  And there’s my grandfather in the middle.

My grandfather was the real baseball fan in the family.  We enjoyed the games, but they were his passion as far as sports went.  If a game was being broadcast, he had it on.  He even played the game himself, way back in the early part of the last century - usually somewhere in the infield, on neighborhood teams with names like Mayo A.C., Kimball A.C., Penrose, Passyunk Square, or Cresmour.  We have a scrapbook of some of the highlights of his career.  The newspapers used to report that sort of thing.

He’s in his early 80s here in this picture.  I’m guessing this is the last Phillies game he ever went to, since his health began to fail not long after this was taken.

That’s the thing about photographs – they freeze one moment in time, and you can look at the people in them and see that they don’t know what’s coming next, but you do.  The game hasn’t been lost yet.  We’re all happy and healthy, enjoying each other’s company on a nice summer evening in South Philadelphia.  It’s a moment to remember.

The guy in the sunglasses waving at the camera, though – who’s he?

If My Call Were Important To You, You'd Have Answered It By Now

There are moments in your life when you truly understand the Luddite desire to raze modern civilization to the sub-basement level, set it on fire, and then urinate on the ashes.  It is amazing how many of these moments follow hard on the heels of attempting to contact a major corporation and getting lost in its voicemail system.

We are attempting to make a Major Purchase these days, one that will involve a certain amount of financing.  Ordinarily, this would not be much of a problem.  Our credit scores are solid.  The financing plan is in place and simply awaits our signatures.  We have the down payment money in hand.

Except a few years ago we got a call from one of the telecom giants out there demanding to know why we hadn’t paid a rather substantial cell phone bill.

Now, we had had a contract with this company for all of three weeks, some years before receiving this call.  Their service stinks.  So we canceled it and forgot about it.  But in this data-driven world that we live in, nothing is ever forgotten and as we later discovered nothing is ever really secured.  So one of this company’s employees decided to farm out our information to his buddies, who apparently did nothing but talk on their cell phones 24/7 for several months – we got copies of the bills (which had originally been mailed to a vacant lot in Milwaukee) and were utterly astounded at how little time these folks had to do anything other than talk on the phone.  Since this was the only breach on our credit we figured this was the telecom’s own fault and they could damn well pay for it.

It took several months, two police reports, and an incredible amount of loss of goodwill, but eventually the telecom giant just dropped the whole thing and we never did pay them a dime.

The net result of this was that in order to avoid this happening again we now have a credit freeze on our accounts.  Any time we want a new form of credit, such as when we refinanced the house last year, it requires blood sacrifices to the gods of bureaucracy to get it temporarily lifted so the creditor can get our information and give us the financing we need.

Which brings me up to today.

Apparently you have to contact all three of the credit reporting agencies when you seek a temporary thaw in your credit reports, not just one.  Why this is so is an interesting question, since they collect all of this information about me without my permission from all over my life and you’d think a bit of coordination with their peers wouldn’t be beyond their capabilities.  You'd be wrong about that, of course, but there you go.  Two of the agencies were reasonably accommodating.  They had systems in place for you to make the necessary arrangements, fill out the proper information and secret code numbers, answer quiz questions to make sure you are who you are, and so on.  It was tedious and annoying, but no more so than one would expect and generally not all that hard.  One company was actually pretty hospitable about it, all things considered.

Then I got to the third one.

There is no way to contact this company.  They have a website and a phone number, but neither of them will work unless you have a magic code number, and there is no way to get a magic code number unless you have gotten their website or phone number to work.  They have no way to speak to a live human to straighten anything out. 

For all I know they are a pyramid scheme, a shell company, or simply a work of performance art masquerading as a financial services corporation, which frankly describes a lot of such companies these days.  All I know is that they have our information, they have taken steps to make our lives difficult, and there is no way for us to change this.  After going around and around with this outfit for the better part of an hour, I finally gave up. 

I’m not sure how we will work around them when it comes to our current Major Purchase situation, but we’ll figure it out by and by.

And when this company does get razed to its sub-basement, well, that will be a good day.

Chicken Wrangling

Sometimes the chickens win.

This is a powerful lesson, really.  There you are, with your opposable thumbs and your technology and your vastly superior intellect, assured of eventual triumph in the eternal struggle between poultry and primate.  You’re feeling pretty good about your odds.  But that’s the thing about statistics – they’re really good at telling you what is going to happen over the long haul, but individual encounters are much more chancy.

And the fact remains that those birds are pointy.

I spent this morning over at our friend’s farm, hauling chickens from one side of the coop to the other as a sort of one-man bucket brigade of poultry.  There are a lot of things I never thought I would say in my life, and I have found that Lauren’s poultry project is a continual source of new ones.  But if you want to show chickens at the 4H fair, you have to have them tested.

Tested for what, I’m not really sure.  Mathematical aptitude, for all I know.  The bottom line is that they had to be tested, so tested they were.

Fortunately, the guy who actually did the testing knew what he was looking for.

It was a grey and rainy morning here in Baja Canada when we all gathered at the farm.  There was an air of anticipation, or was that just the general funk of the chickens?  Who knows.  There should have been a tumbleweed drifting by, but no such luck, dramatically speaking.  We gathered up our equipment and set to work anyway.

Lois was in charge of gathering chickens.  They were her birds, after all.  Lauren’s are too young to need testing, it turns out, but Lois’ birds were old enough and the testing requirement applies to all birds on the property, not just 4H fair birds, so we were not excused.  She shooed them from the coop into the enclosed area on the south side, shut the little door between the two, and then corralled the birds with a handy fishing net, one at a time.

They don’t like to get caught, those birds.  Sometimes they’d escape.  Fortunately only one made a break for the outside, where a lifetime of playing defense on team sports served me well enough to nip that little plan in the bud.  That’s the joy of playing defense – I don’t actually have to do anything in particular.  I just have to stop the other guy from doing something in particular.

Score one for high school gym.  Mr. Kratzer, wherever you are, thanks.

I was on the outside of the enclosure.  When Lois would catch one of the chickens I’d open the big door and take it from her.  Chickens, it turns out, are mostly docile when you do this – they just sit there in your hands, clucking enquiringly, their little hearts beating staccato rhythms against your palms.  Most of the time.  Some of them were determined to go down fighting, or at least trying to escape.  They make quite the kerfluffle when they go down that path.

The slow, soft rain only added to the atmosphere.

Bird secured, I’d walk it over and hand it to Dale, who sat in the main entryway of the coop.  He’d pluck off a couple of feathers, take a blood sample and mix it with a reagent, which would turn from blue to purple.  This was a good thing, apparently.  Then he’d set the bird loose.

We went through 67 birds in about an hour.  They all seemed healthy.  So the farm is clear for a year, and then we get to do this again next summer if Lauren is still in the 4H Poultry Project.

Of all the things I thought I’d be when I grew up, “chicken wrangler” wasn’t one of them.  And yet, here we are.

Sports News

So apparently I get to keep watching hockey for a little longer.

I like hockey.  It’s my favorite of the four major sports in the US, which only goes to show you just how far out of touch I am with my own culture since most Americans wouldn’t think to list it as a sport until well after competitive eating or people driving around in circles at high speeds.

Don’t even get me started on what my newfound appreciation for soccer means.  Most Americans don’t even know soccer exists, which is why the fact that there is indeed a professional soccer league in the US – two, in fact, one for each gender – is frankly odd.  But the rest of the world enjoys it immensely, and I have begun to understand why.  World Cup in two weeks!

The nice part about watching soccer is that unless I’m watching international play where I know the countries involved I really don’t have any idea who to cheer for.  They broadcast the entire English Premier League season here last year and while I watched quite a few of the games (excuse me – matches), I never did develop a particular fondness for any individual team.  Lauren liked Chelsea because their uniforms were blue and they seemed to win a lot, but I tend to have a hard time cheering for Goliath.  I have no favorites, not yet, so I can just relax and enjoy the game. 

In hockey, I have favorites.

First on the list, of course, are the Flyers, my home team.  They are the coolest team in American professional sports, and it is just my bad fortune to be cheering for a team that hasn’t won a championship since Nixon was still in office. 

There are a number of other teams that I like and cheer for.  The Pittsburgh Penguins, from when I lived there and used to watch Mario Lemieux do things that even now I would swear are physically impossible.  The New Jersey Devils, because I like their name and logo – anything that ticks off the Religious Right is fine by me, and really how can you not like a successful team from New Jersey that actually advertises that it is from New Jersey?  Take that, “New York” Giants, and stick it in your Meadowlands.  I’ve long had a soft spot for the Carolina Hurricanes, mostly because I went to a game where they played the Flyers and their goalie just seemed like a decent guy.  I also like the Minnesota Wild, for no particular reason that I can discern.

Then there are teams I don’t like.  

Most of those teams are on that list because of things they’ve done to the teams I like, though the Boston Bruins are there just on principle.  I’ve never liked the Rangers, for example, and I still haven’t forgiven the Detroit Red Wings for their ruthless destruction of the Flyers in the Stanley Cup Finals a few years back.  Neither have I forgiven the Chicago Blackhawks, for much the same reason.

Which brings me to this year.

The Rangers – who eliminated the Flyers in the first round, only adding to their nefarious nature as far as I am concerned – are in the Finals.

The Blackhawks had fought their way back from a 3-1 deficit in the Conference Final to tie up the series at 3, heading home for Game 7.

My continued interest in hockey this season rested on the Los Angeles Kings.

Now, the Kings are another team that I like.  It has always struck me as faintly ridiculous that there should be a professional ice hockey team in Los Angeles, for one thing, and ridiculous things appeal to me just for their sheer absurdity.  Further, given the player moves of the past few years, they are essentially the Flyers West and it feels like cheering for my own team sometimes.

They had to win.  A Blackhawks-Rangers Final would just be a dismal end to a great season.

And so they did.  In overtime.  After clawing back from behind three separate times.  It was an exciting game to watch, for the four or five dozen of us tuned in.

Meanwhile, vastly elongated men were tossing a large orange ball into a bucket half a mile in the air in front of large television audiences.  This is why the nation is in decline, I’m sure of it.  Any sport where good defense consists of limiting your opponent to double-digit point totals is clearly a travesty, and the fact that it is inexplicably popular just confirms the imminent fall of the republic as far as I am concerned.

So I’ve got at least four more hockey games to watch – possibly as many as seven – which should tide me over to the World Cup quite nicely.

Life is good, sporting-wise.