Isn’t like a 1/4 to 1/3 of the blogpocheh in this damn thing?
Fumes
One of several signs of sleep deprivation is irritability. I can’t listen to the news or read the local paper, or even an online paper, or be around people without my skin nearly splitting in rage.
When the form says Monday but what they mean is Wednesday–Mistakes are made, I know this, I make them all the time, more each week as my sleep debt gets bigger and bigger, but I also follow up, apologize, compensate and spend an inordinate amount of time quadruple-checking my work because I know what kind of deficits I’m running under. (Most of the time I know, or think I do.) Can anyone else own up to an error or at least pretend to make an effort to get the right information out in a timely manner? Answer: apparently NOT.
People expecting ass-kisses for doing their jobs–One possible reason I have a desktop computer that is impossible to work with–I think I could deal with Windows 2000 if I had more sleep at night and a student assistant or 3–is that I, unlike other people, especially women, in my division, do not go out of my way to compliment, grease, soothe, kiss up to or otherwise ego-stroke the men who come to my office to work on my computer. More often than not, I never leave them alone in my office, ask questions, keep working and avoid chitchat–just like them, I have more work than I have time to do and stopping my class prep for idle chitchat with someone who expects me to praise him for installing a program I could’ve installed myself 2 or 5 weeks ago in half the time–I wouldn’t've doled out praise for that shit even before my chronic insomnia. No one praises me for making my classes each day. No one praises me for grading stacks of paper, stopping my lunch to conference with a student or leaving The Girl hanging around at school because a student needs to talk to me about an assignment, grad school, another professor, or one of myriad personal issues. Honestly, where I am, hardly anyone gives a shit. The past year I’ve done a lot of stuff that makes the real me look good on paper and it has predictably made no difference to anyone. I work sick, in pain, in distress, without food. And for what? Not for the paycheck. I still can’t make ends meet. So I’m supposed to ego-stroke someone who makes more than I do and has more slack and prestige than I do? NP*.
Rewarding failure–I noticed the trend in the 90s though I’m sure it started earlier [and I could be wrong--one thing extreme sleep deprivation deteriorates is your memory, short and long] and it has finally trickled its way down to my workplace. Or maybe it was already there and I didn’t notice. Another failure rewarded–Nagin. After a lackluster first term, he Went Black, got re-elected and then went back to his same old same old–enriching himself, his family, his connected friends. It’s Nagin’s friends who wanted to greenspace the Ninth Ward, Broadmoor, New Orleans East and other parts of town they felt were irrelevant or nonviable because [they thought only] poor black people lived there. And what has “Our” Mayor done for “us”? Don’t hurt yourself trying to make something up.
___
* N*****, please.
Thank You, Mr. Cerasoli
New Orleans Inspector General Robert Cerasoli quits post, citing health issues
Temporary replacement named for Inspector General Robert Cerasoli after sudden resignation
Dear Mr. Cerasoli,
I’m one of the many folks in New Orleans who met you only once but got a thrill every time I heard, read or said your name. We had very high hopes, a large burden that you bore as long as you could. I want you to know that I, and many others, am grateful for what you did while here but nothing is as important as your health and time with your family. Thank you so very much, very, very, very, but please go without a heavy heart. You’ve given us hope. Take care of yourself now. Please be well soon.
G Bitch
Hugs Needed
Ethel Williams of It’s Definitely Not a Hug and the update (which is lost in my corrupted database for now) died Saturday. She never quite got home:
“She definitely believed that she was going to get her house back to where it was,” [her son, Freddie] Williams [Jr.] said.
“Being on the outside looking in, I guess I’d say he (Bush) fell short of that, but she never wavered. Even to the end, she said, ‘He said he would do that. I trust that he will do that.’ ”
Major work on the property was finished about a month ago, Williams said, though Mrs. Williams was too ill to move in.
During his last conversations with her, Williams said his mother talked about how she planned to furnish and decorate her rebuilt home.
“The main thing I remember her saying is, ‘I want to go home,’ ” Williams said.
A memorial service will be Friday at 11 a.m. at New Home Family Worship Center, 411 Opelousas St. in Algiers.
Scores, Scores, and Scores
Schools’ scores better since Katrina by Sarah Carr [you should read her lovely front page story]:
Taken as a group, the current assembly of public schools in New Orleans significantly out-performs the Orleans Parish School district’s pre-Katrina results, according to a new report by the Scott S. Cowen Institute for Public Education Initiatives at Tulane University.
The report notes that while the district’s pre-Katrina performance score — based largely on test scores — was 56.9, the performance score for all the public schools in the city last year, many now under new administrative structures, would have been 66.4, a jump of more than 15 percent.
The wording leads you to think, without any evidence of such, that it is the “new administrative structures” that have something to do with this “jump.”
However, today’s school landscape is significantly more complicated than pre-Katrina, with the state-controlled Recovery School District running 33 schools, only five schools remaining under the auspices of the local School Board, and dozens of independent charter schools.
Is it really that hard or problematic to say how many charter schools there are? If 33 and 5 are okay, why so fuzzy on charters? Hm….
The real story about the new “landscape” is how little is known and how difficult it will be and has been made to be to analyze and therefore evaluate and revise if necessary this school systems we have:
The report’s authors are quick to point out that any direct comparison between public school performance in the city before and after the devastating 2005 storm is all but impossible, — partly because half of the students have not returned.
It’s “a very different context,”said Michael Schwam-Baird, research manager for the Cowen Institute. “We don’t know a lot about who is back, and who isn’t.”
Data showing the percentages of students who receive free and reduced lunch — an indicator of income — is not always accurate, he added.
Accurate? On what? About what? Why? I don’t understand that. Is something missing or am I missing something? [A Google search was inconclusive. I'll chew on it more later.] So instead, Schwam-Baird refers to
census data showing that while the vast majority of public school students in New Orleans still come from low-income households, the percentage of families living in extreme poverty has dropped significantly since before Katrina. That suggests that some of the poorest and most challenged New Orleans students might not have returned after the flood.
So the success of the experiment depends on the poorest of the poor not being helped and brought up from the floor but shipped off, unpatriated? So the schools are better because these kids are not in our schools systems now or because their schools and they and their scores are gone?
Then Leslie Jacobs chimes in to assert that the apples can be compared to today’s crop of oranges. Go read her yourself. A surprising dose of reality rounds it out:
BESE member Louella Givens agreed that the New Orleans public school population is similar in its demographic makeup to the pre-Katrina pattern. But she said the current data is too incomplete to make apples-to-apples comparisons. She pointed out, for instance, that several of the schools do not have full school performance scores, which require two years of test score, attendance and drop-out data.
“I take issue with (anyone) saying scores are going up without explaining what they are looking at,” she said.
Indeed, mother fuckers.
Dysfunction Junction
Both of these in one day:
- CC’s on Magazine–while I was waiting for my tea, a police car parked across the street and 2 young black women officers got out and crossed the street to CC’s, uniforms looking smart and they themselves looking alert, engaged, observant. I felt so proud.
- A friend of Mister’s fell off his skateboard. Being just this side of 30, he hurt himself (concussion, a couple staples) and had to walk a few blocks home, blood pouring down the sides of his head onto his shirt. A police car passed slowly and the officer inside looked him up and down but didn’t stop. Mister’s friend said he decided against flagging the cop down. I say, it was the cop’s duty and responsibility to at least see what was going on, if he needed help. I guess he figured that the odds of this friend being shot were low since he’s white.
It’s tough to be a cop around here. Today’s Times-Pic front-page story [and one from Saturday and another dated 1/26 and the Adolph Grimes case] doesn’t help. At the same time that cops need to get out of their cars and walk around–how many petty and seemingly-petty-at-the-moment crimes might be prevented shouldn’t be rhetorical–they are only one part of the whole, a single tool that is limited in scope and that has to be supplemented. What to do? We’ve been asking ourselves that question and the attendant ones for most if not all of my adulthood. We do know we need to do a lot. And there are no quick fixes.
We’ve had these conversations and outcries before. Now what this time?
Happy Anniversary, Roe v. Wade!
Roe v. Wade in Wikipedia
And it looks like a great present—repeal of the global gag rule:
Called the “Mexico City policy,” the rule prohibiting federal aid for such groups was announced by President Ronald Reagan during a population conference in that city in 1984. Critics call it the “global gag rule” because it discourages family planning groups from discussing abortion.
Since its implementation the policy has been alternately revoked and re-instituted, depending on the party controlling the White House.
Bill Clinton rescinded the policy on Jan. 22, 1993, two days after he was sworn in and on the anniversary of Roe vs. Wade.
George W. Bush re-imposed the rule eight years later, also on the Roe vs. Wade anniversary.
from Foreign policy first item on Obama’s agenda, Press Democrat (CA), 01/22/09)
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For my take and story on abortion, see A(nother) title I wish I’d thought of first (1/23/06).
Sat., Jan. 31: Beyond Jena: A Forum on Bloggers of Color, Education & Social Justice in NO
The 2007 demonstrations in Jena, Louisiana, were “a civil rights protest literally conjured out of the ether of cyberspace, of a type that has never happened before in America” [Chicago Tribune]
Nearly a year and a half after these cyber-driven protests, this forum will explore the convergence of social media and social justice. Convening diverse panels of bloggers of color, faculty, students and activists, the forum will focus on the rise of the blogosphere in New Orleans and the unique ways that grassroots media can be utilized to enhance pedagogical practices as we seek to realize the Xavier mission of a more just and humane society.
How can we merge new technologies, pedagogy and grassroots media to realize the Xavier mission in unique and innovative ways? We’ll address this and other topics through two exciting panels:
PANEL ONE: The Rise of Blogging and Grassroots Media as Tools for Social Justice in New Orleans and Beyond
PANEL TWO: Using Blogging and Grassroots Media as an Educational Tool to Realize the Xavier Mission: A Discussion of Best Practices and Student Reflections
New: View the list of speakers and panelists.
Beyond Jena: A Forum on Bloggers of Color, Education and Social Justice in New Orleans will be held Jan. 31, 2009 from 9:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. in the University Center Ballroom at Xavier University of Louisiana. A continental breakfast and lunch will be provided. Admission is free and open to all, but registration is required.
Coordinated by:
- Dr. Kimberly J. Chandler, Communications Department
- Mr. Bart Everson, Center for the Advancement of Teaching
Quote for Wednesday, Jan. 21
People discover, to their dismay, that the desire to exploit an energy resource as cheaply as possible can lead to something like war.
Crain, Caleb. “There Was Blood.” The New Yorker, 19 Jan. 2009: 76.
Randomized thought #1:
Imagine “energy resource” not just as coal, as in Thomas Andrews’ Killing for Coal, but as any resource, such as food, water, services, humans. The extreme and bald capitalist view is to wring as much as possible from workers while giving back the very least. And to be oblivious to the detrimental effects since humans/workers/employees, are seen as Its that can be replaced. In practice, it costs far more than that but on paper, it looks pretty good. If a worker can’t tolerate corrupt or inane or inept management, disengaged or clinging-to-the-edge colleagues, and/or foul or just Kafkaesque conditions, there’s always someone out there who will, at least for a few months or years. Too often, that is true. So war is harder to wage and becomes a series of isolated skirmishes rather than “a contest carried on by force of arms, as in a series of battles or campaigns…active hostility or contention;… a struggle.”
Randomized thought #2:
Work did my ass today.
More Spot Woes
It gets stickier—the files I thought I could extract my posts from, all of them, are hopelessly corrupted, so much so that the admin functions can’t be accessed at all. I may not get my 2007 posts back at all. Any ideas?
