otoh

Today was the first day of classes… and tomorrow the schools will be closed. Tropical Storm Fay is tracking its way toward Central Florida.

In a way, it’s like deja-vu for the hurricane season of a few years ago. This time the storm is not expected to reach hurricane status before barreling over top of us. But it IS expected to barrel over top of us. Even if it had stayed in the Gulf and made landfall further north (as it was projected to do for a while) we would have been subjected to high winds, lots of rain, and a good chance of tornadic activity.

As I write this, the eye is less than 300 miles away. It will probably be right over us late tomorrow night. So there’s a pretty good chance we will miss more than just one day of school. [The calendar already has several days identified as make-up days; we have learned a thing or two about scheduling around the unpredictable....]

At this point, all we can do is hunker down and hope that the damage is minimal. And, as long as I have electricity, I guess I’ll get to watch some more of the Olympics….

Back in June [when I was going to post this...] I saw Sally Field [Yeah, I like her!] on The Tonight Show. Among other things, they discussed the infamous Miley Cyrus photos in Vanity Fair.

Ms. Field explained that all young people in the public eye have requests to which they should probably say, “No,” but that it takes experience and maturity to do that. As an example from personal experience she told about an appearance around the time she was starring as The Flying Nun. [I think she said she was a presenter for the Emmys when this happened, but I have searched in vain for any documentation or a copy of the clip they played.] Anyway, they had asked her to fly onto the stage and, just learning to assert herself, she agreed but refused to do so in costume. She would wear her own clothes — a pink pants suit that her mother made for her as I recall. And Jay Leno [super mogul that he is] actually had the clip of that event!

The next day, I happened to see a video of [country music phenom] Taylor Swift’s performance on the ACM Awards show. Now, I don’t watch awards shows. If you watch the video, the vocal performance isn’t very good [they never are on awards shows...] but the visuals are… interesting. Mute it if you have to to make it to the end. Here:

When I saw it I immediately thought about Sally Field’s comments and was sure that this performance was dreamed up by the show’s producers [because it seems that producers always have the sensibility of adolescent boys] and perhaps this was something that Ms. Swift should’ve said no to. After all, the very tall, very thin, and very young Taylor Swift is the embodiment of many young boy’s [and several dirty old men's] dreams. And this… um… might be termed a wet dream. [smirk]

A week or so later I learned that the idea for the waterfall was something that Taylor came up with when she was in middle school [well, I got the adolescent part right anyway] and that she had asked the producers if she could do it. Hmm.

Oh, and [if you've stuck with me this far] you may be wondering what reminded me of all this. One of her other songs is part of a soundtrack “created to inspire and support U.S. Olympic Team athletes as they pursue their Olympic dreams in Beijing”. Of course.

I like watching the Olympics. I’ll often watch sports that I would not watch at any other time (if they’re even broadcast) just because they are Olympic games. [Becky made a similar statement in her recent post.] And this year I’ve found a new twist.

It turns out that in addition to the coverage on NBC, MS-NBC, and USA my cable company has an Olympic Korean channel and an Olympic Mandarin Chinese channel. [There are other premium and HD Olympic channels that I'm not willing to pay for....] So over the weekend I channel-hopped mercilessly and watched a good bit on the Korean channel. [I'm not sure why, but the Chinese channel only broadcasts 2:00 pm to 8:00 pm or I probably would have watched more of it.]

Let me be clear, other than hello, thank you, and a few other odd words [most of them food-related] I do not read, speak, or understand the Chinese or Korean languages. But it matters little. Most of the Olympic games are not very complicated. If it’s a race — whether on foot, on a bike, in or on the water — they’re all trying to get from point A to point B first. If it’s a game — basketball, tennis, soccer, badminton, etc. — I already know the basics. Archery or pistols? Aim. Shoot. Add up the points. Judo, Tae Kwon Do, Wrestling, Fencing — all battles of a sort. Weightlifting — they’re gonna try and pick that thing up. And then they’re gonna try and pick up a bigger one….

I don’t really like watching sports on TV much as a rule. The drivel of the commentators drives me nuts. And I’ve discovered that it’s easier to ignore commentators that are speaking a language I don’t understand anyway! I can read the scores [maybe math really is a universal language]. The names of the athletes and countries are usually recognizable if I’m listening. Besides, they’re often displayed on the screen in English. Plus, the Korean channel has far fewer commercials!

Tonight I’ll be watching the Olympics. And remembering…

13 August 2004. Friday the 13th [not that I hold to any such superstitions]. I was watching the opening ceremony for the Athens Olympics on TV. A storm raged outside. Really. [It was a dark and stormy night....] Hurricane Charlie.

As I recall, it was about quarter after nine pm when my electricity went out. I got it back… a week later.

I was luckier than many — I lost a couple branches from the trees in my yard, but not my roof or any other essential parts [except that electricity part, of course]. As a result, I didn’t get to watch nearly as much of the Olympics as I had planned.

That was a really bad storm season. We had been hit by a tropical storm just one day before Charlie. A couple weeks later we were hit by Hurricane Frances [three days w/o electricity for me that time]. Another couple weeks and we suffered Hurricane Jeanne [only 15 minutes w/o electricity -- woo-hoo!]. those are just the high low points!

Tonight I hope all the excitement is on the tube. I’ll be watching….

P.S. What a spectacular opening ceremony! Do you have a favorite part?

I am always sometimes critical of the blocking software used by school districts. [Recently here, for example.]

Imagine this:

I’m at work. I go to Google and search for “Magna Cum Laude”.

Imagine my surprise. The search results are blocked.

The reason?

Porn.

Yup.

You gotta love the system!

I made one of my semiannual treks to Louisville a couple weeks ago. The whirring of the cicadas filled the air. There are lots more cicadas where I grew up than where I live now. Their song is part of the soundtrack of my youth. [There are more lightning bugs there too, but that's another story....]

Elizabethtown is about an hour south of Louisville. [We always call it E-town, not that it matters....] The Cameron Crowe movie [supposedly] based there was pretty mediocre in my opinion. I found the errors in geography especially distracting.

[rant]Yeah, I know… movies require suspension of disbelief. I suppose exit 60-B was intended to be a comic device. (And it’s really exit 94 anyway; you can even see that in the film.) But Drew (Orlando Bloom) didn’t miss an exit so much as he drove in the wrong direction! I guess taking a wrong turn out of the airport is not as funny as missing an exit later…. And cute young flight attendants that give out their phone numbers to help with directions? Now that’s southern hospitality! I would say that I clearly fly the wrong airlines but you could as easily point out that I am clearly nowhere near as good looking as Orlando Bloom….[end rant]

Anyway, when Drew stepped out of his car after [finally] making his way into E-town the cicadas were there in force. It sounded just like home. “Wow. He nailed that,” I remember thinking at the time. And then… well you’ve probably seen it already. At least it had a good soundtrack.

When spring yields to summer, insects renew their annual concerts. Warm evenings bring cricket chirps — their frequency an unofficial, but accurate, thermometer. June bugs and bumble bees buzz around sunny days and katydids chime in with their urgent tirades. “Katy did… Katy didn’t….”

Come the dog days cicadas are in full “voice”, their whirring almost constant. Their cacophony is truly deafening. Ounce for ounce, I suppose they must be the loudest creatures on earth. Anatomy is all that keeps the bullfrogs from hanging their heads in shame…. [A few species of cicadas are notorious for a 17-year life cycle. After all those years underground they emerge to mate and die in a few short weeks. But there are many more species with life cycles of only one year or a few years.]

At dusk, the light show starts. Lightning bugs blink in the failing light. Deepening shadows fill in and before you know it the show has moved higher — stars peer down and chase away the last outrageous rays of the sun. And still the cicadas insist, “Here here here here here here here here here here….” Pick me.

Photographing dogs with mostly black fur outdoors in the sunlight is challenging. There is so much contrast that they tend to look like big black blobs. Still, I try it every couple years or so. And occasionally I get a shot that I don’t hate:

She’s a little easier because she has some grey and white mixed in and her wiry hair has more texture.

She’s really tough to get a decent shot of.

Adding to the challenge is the slight delay between pressing the shutter and the actual image capture. And then there’s the fact that the pups really don’t understand what I’m trying to do….

Look over here, pup…

Puppy…

Hey, pup…

Up here, baby…

Puppy…

I giggle like an idiot every time I look at this one….

A school district in southern Mississippi [a state which, let's face it, has never been considered a leader in education...] recently adopted a new policy prohibiting teachers from texting students or communicating with students through social networking sites like Myspace or Facebook. What I found intriguing about the policy as reported here were the statements:

No incident led to the policy, which was enacted at the suggestion of the school board attorney. The board has yet to set penalties for violating the policy.

OK. So they’re trying to be proactive, getting a policy in place before a problem develops. I can’t really fault them for that. [Especially in light of the recent spate of reports of sexual misconduct between teachers and students.] But prohibiting communication? …I’ll come back to this.

How stupid is it to have such a policy without clearly stated consequences? [Just wait till your principal gets home....] Supremely so. Maybe that lawyer really didn’t have enough to do [as suggested in the comments to the article] and is expecting an avalanche of challenges from teachers, parents, and students.

Another [important] point not addressed in the article [but asked in the comments] is how they plan to enforce the policy. [It's only wrong if you get caught....] Furthermore, while the nature of teacher-student communication must always be professional, do they really have the authority to control the form of that communication outside of regular school hours and off school property?

Besides, don’t they know that those electronic communications can easily be copied and backed up so there is a record of exactly what was said by whom and when? [Probably not] Wouldn’t it make more sense to encourage documenting all exchanges with students?

Unfortunately, it’s typical of school systems all over and not entirely their fault. Large bureaucracies like public schools tend to be slow to change. Add hysterical media reports of online predators and legislation [like COPA which tried to restrict online access by minors and a more recent proposal to block social networking sites in libraries] and prohibition becomes the de facto course of action. Even when it runs contrary to other goals.

The district where I teach has [among others] these Technology Standards for Students:

• Students use telecommunications to collaborate, publish, and interact with peers, experts, and other audiences.
• Students use a variety of media and formats to communicate information and ideas effectively to multiple audiences.

And yet they routinely block access to blogs, wikis, webmail, social networking, and interactive media sites. Some standards are more challenging to achieve than others….

Prohibiting text messages from teachers to students eliminates legitimate uses of the technology too: verifying homework assignments, for example. Shouldn’t we be trying to reach students through technologies they are comfortable with and are therefore likely to use? More importantly, shouldn’t we be teaching students how to use technology safely and appropriately?

Finishing the story I started here, here, here, here, and here:

On Friday we returned the RV and checked into a hotel. We walked around the nearby airport and rented bikes for 24 hours. I rented one with an electronic assist — I had banged up my knees a bit on the ice and the motor helped even though none of the hills were especially steep.

The city has a decent trail system, especially the Tony Knowles Coastal Trail. We rode out to Earthquake Park and back before supper.

When we were in Anchorage two years ago we were directed to what I’m sure is the best Italian restaurant in town, Fiori D’italia. It was within walking distance and we made a point of returning to it. I had a halibut parmesan, one of the house specialties that was too yummy for words.

We tooled around the city for a while with a friend-of-a-friend. We visited Alaska Wild Berry Products, home [they claim] of the world’s largest chocolate waterfall. Sadly, it is just for show; no dipping or samples. But they did have free samples available of many of their confections. Yummy.

After returning to our hotel we took a midnight bike ride from the Coastal Trail partway across the Chester Creek Greenbelt. We had time for another brief ride in the morning (in a light drizzling rain) before returning the bikes and heading for the airport.

All in all it was a good trip. Alaska has a rugged beauty that I find very attractive and even a “big city” like Anchorage has a small-town feel to it. The state is so large and I’ve seen just a small part of it, but I’ve had a good variety of activities. This has been just a summary of the trip, of course, and given half a chance I still have stories to tell. Just not today.

Where would you like to go?