4) Protecting consumers from faulty products
An area of deep importance to every American is the area of food and drug purity. The dawn of industrialism coupled with increased transportation options meant a great variety of new and helpful products such as packaged foods, canned goods, and medicines. Unfortunately, there was little to no regulation on these products at the local or federal levels. This resulted in adulterated food products, both foods that were diluted or polluted in order for manufacturers to get more money for less product and foods that were adulterated with toxic chemicals or heavy metals. (Notice that this penchant for adulterated foods and drugs occurred during the heydey of unrestrained capitalism. Market forces are not capable of controlling everything.) Of course, in any trade or buying scenario, the principle of caveat emptor, but reason suggests it is supremely unethical for a government to turn a blind eye to intentional food or drug adulteration. Even those skeptical of FG involvement in general understand that ensuring consumer protection from dangerous products is a social good. Particularly in the case of faulty food and drugs, it becomes important to have a strong set of consistent standards along with the means and wherewithal to enforce said standards. State governments do not have the resources, ability, or jurisdiction to accomplish this in a meaningful way. Roosevelt recognized this and passed the Pure Food and Drug Act in response. This became the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the need for which has only grown as the market for processed foods, pharmaceuticals, and imported food and drugs has grown. A secondary example in this area is the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). The role of the USDA is limited to agriculture, but it still provides consistent and resource-ready protection from faulty products. This protection, while not directly outlined in the Constitution, is a positive and necessary part of ethical and welfare-promoting government.

Having thoroughly discussed (to the tune of two lengthy bog posts) my first premise, I am now moving on to the second: it is not the designated role of government to run health care.

The argument that the federal government should not involved in any way, shape, or form in the health care market/system is often predicated on the point that providing for or over-seeing health care and health coverage is not one of the 18 Constitutionally designated roles of Congress--which get applied broadly to "federal government." (The fact that this stance ignores the very broad--purposefully so, I would submit--applications of "making all laws..." notwithstanding.) I would agree that health care is not a specifically designated role of Congress or the federal government as a whole (the FG). Like the premise that health care is not an inalienable right, this premise could be hotly debated. Also like the previous premise, whether it is true or not is no reason that Congress or the FG cannot or should not get involved in an area of commerce or industry. There are five main reasons I wish to address in which government (state and federal) involvement is a positive, and largely necessary thing:
1) to facilitate simplicity of trade
2) to bolster private investment in risky/capital heavy endeavors
3) to facilitate consistency of coverage or quality
4) to protect consumers from faulty products
5) to protect consumers from unscrupulous behavior

While the ability to receive health care may not be considered an inalienable right, I submit that it is greatly beneficial to our nation as a whole to insure that every citizen has access to health care. Furthermore, I deem it beneficial to insure that said access is affordable. I have noticed a break down of the debate around this point. I emphasize that access should be affordable for good reason. When it is noted that every American should have access to health care, the discussion becomes disingenuous. Those critical or skeptical of HCR that reply that every American does indeed have access to health care. This is true. Any and every American can find a clinic in their area or a hospital emergency room. A hospital emergency room is required to provide care regardless of ability to pay. Every American does have access to health care. But this response is disingenuous because that is not really the point being raised. True access to health care requires affordability. This is why I emphasized at the beginning the difference between health care and health coverage. When proponents of HCR contend that every American should have affordable access to health care, they are really contending that every American should have affordable health coverage. " Why should they?" you might ask. "If they can't afford insurance, who says they should have affordable access health care? Why is it better?" It is better for several reasons:

As I mentioned in my last post, I began with three basic premises about health care that I believed necessitated a certain stance on the issue. Through my journey, I discovered that while my premises weren't necessarily false, I had made them more narrow than necessary. I had determined the end to which I thought they pointed without examining whether that application was indeed the only application.

I was going to attempt to deal with my first two premises at the same time, since they are applicationally related, but the post was long. Really long. Therefore, this post will simply deal with the idea that that receiving health care is not an inalienable right. This premise was my reason for determining that it was needless, and possibly dangerous, to force our current system of paying for/providing health coverage in order to insure that every citizen has health coverage or even health care. Now, many of my readers may agree with this premise, some may disagree. Whether or not you subscribe to this premise, my point is this: it is really a reason to walk away from the proposed models of health care reform (HCR), or even going so far as having a government-run, single-payer system. I will admit that I'm not convinced of the superiority of a single-payer system at this time, but I will note that holding to this premise does not make the a single-payer system illegitimate. At this point, you might be wondering how I justify this position. Well, here goes my explanation:

I hope I've covered everything. haha. If not, I retain the right to add to the list in the future.

Now. On to the topic at hand. I suppose the simplest way to explain my journey is to walk it again, but truncated. Trust me, you don't want to belabor your way through my hours of confused thought hashing. I began my journey with three main beliefs regarding health care: 1) receiving health care is not an inalienable right, 2) it is not the designated role of government to run health care, and 3) this country would be not only ill-affected itself while also ill-affecting others were we to find ourselves in the midst of a limiting and narrowly run system. I finished my journey still basically holding to those beliefs. You may find that surprising. The difference in my stance did not necessitate a change of those positions, you'll find. Nevertheless, I will address the second one with several examples to show that believing it is not the designated role of the government to do something is not the same as believing they should not do it.

When I began to ponder the bill, I was convinced that my three premises necessitated a stance against the bill. I had many concerns about the effects of the bill on individuals, health care providers, the economy, taxes, quality of care, and availability of care. I discovered fairly soon that in order to get counters to these concerns, I was going to need to branch out beyond my usual circle of information sources. To be honest, my usual circle of information sources weren't really disseminating or discussing information. I have sadly discovered that a great deal of vocal conservative reaction to these bills is, "This is socialism," "It's a big, fat tax!" and "Look at Medicare! Do we want government running health care?" Granted, there is some of that type from the other side: "If you're against health care reform, you're sentencing millions to death!" and "Insurance companies just want to rape and pillage for the bucks! Government cares enough to want people to live!" You get the idea. (I'll probably right a post about the incredible devolution of political debate in this country in the last few years, but it has to wait. I get too snarky about it currently.) At any rate, I branched out. I read a lot of statistics about health care and health coverage systems world-wide. I read a lot about national deficits, how they affect economies, and how much is too much. I read a lot about what the bills proposed, what they required, what they would change, and what they would cost. And I graded papers and did homework whilst all these things roiled around in my brain. I was really struggling to figure out what the bills were really about as well as how to align it with my political and ethical ideals.

Up to this point in the process I had one, and only one, sounding board: a British friend that I acquired over the summer. This had advantages and disadvantages: while he could ask the interesting questions, listen to my frustrated questions, and offer his perspective on the NHS (and a transient experience with ours via short personal experience and the anecdotes of meeting people as he traveled the US), he couldn't really offer the comparative analysis for which I was looking. Granted, what I really wanted (and would still like) is a side-by-side, comprehensive comparison of multiple aspect of our system, the Canadian system, the British NHS, and the anticipated results of these bills. I know, I know: my desires are extensive, which is why I have yet to realize them. haha. The greatest advantage here was having someone with which to discuss my thoughts. Unfortunately, too many of the people I know are either unable to discuss the issue for various reasons (no knowledge, confrontation-avoidance) or unwilling to engage outside of their ideological comfort zone. Ultimately, an even greater help was that he was able to steer me to those who could answer or at least address the main questions I was having.

Thus, I began working through my questions and concerns. To make it all short, what I intend to do is address my stance and its development through my three premises. I will also (probably when I address the role of government in the health care debate) address this rampant use of the word "socialism" in regards to any government move to subsidize coverage premiums or offer a so-called "public option." At any rate, this could be quite interesting or profoundly boring. Consider this point the "Intro." Get set for the coming parts.

Instead, I'll say this: I hate giving tests.

Seriously.

I haven't figured out, yet how to teach Language without them, but I hate them. I'm working on how to either get rid of them entirely or change the format of the ones I'm using to be more advantageous to my goals for my students. Perhaps I should specify more particularly the context in which I hate tests. I hate the Language tests that accompany this curriculum. I also don't like giving Language tests to elementary level students. At the high school level, I gave numerous tests to my Literature students, don't get me wrong; but I feel that tests, especially unit tests are of little use in an elementary Language classroom. And here's why, parts I and II.

I: Why I don't like the tests in this curriculum.
I dislike the tests in this curriculum for three reasons:
A) They are too spaced out, which means they end up weighing too heavily in the grading structure even with the weigh modifications I make. This also means that they cover a great deal of material. More on that in my third reason.
B) Many sections have multi-step instructions. While this may seem like a minor problem, for 5th grade students it isn't so minor. Especially when said students are tremendously concerned with making a good grade/not forgetting the information they need. So what happens it this: They read the first instruction, and eager to insure they manage it right, they move directly through the exercise completing step one. At this point, many of them might remember that there are more instructions. These students go back and read instruction 2. Again they immediately go through and just complete step two. The ones who felt a sense of completion after finishing step one have already gone on to the next section without realizing they missed an instruction. The students who did remember will usually complete step two, but rarely remember that there was a step three. To make it worse, these instructions are not divided up, they are in a single paragraph with numbers like this 1) placed before each step. I rarely used multistep instructions with high school students. Doing so with elementary students, who are just beginning to grasp critical thinking and application of processes, is really making things unnecessarily difficult.
C) While the units in the book are generally confined to small groups of skills (modifiers or punctuation use or prepositional phrases), the tests tend to be vaguely cumulative. If every lesson contained review skills, this would not be a problem. Instead, review skills are relegated to a couple of review pages at the end of the unit. During the unit they've been almost exclusively focused on a single skill or closely related group of skills. Now, I do review in class, but the written work does not typically contain review. 5th grade students are barely at a level where they are able to easily recall past information and apply it to a new set of circumstances (different sets of exercises). This is compounded by the relatively long length of time between the tests.

II: Why I hate tests in elementary curriculum in general:
Frankly, as noted above, elementary students aren't at a cognitive level to perform well on tests. They are also starting to develop a certain level of test stress that can impede strong performance. Like I've mentioned previously, I have tested and would test (were I still teaching at that level) high school students. The reason for the difference has much to do with the developmental difference between elementary and high school students. High school students have a deeper ability in test-taking situations to take acquired knowledge and apply it. Elementary school is where they need to develop this knowledge, and in my experience, this is better done through written work and quizzing rather than outright tests. I also find that parents tend to place far more weight than necessary on test grades, leading to teachers' tendency to review/put on the study guide problems that are identical to the test problems. I would far rather offer them multiple ways to learn/express the skill and give small, focused quizzes on that material. This would alleviate the stress of tests from students and parents while still allowing me to evaluate knowledge/skill acquisition. Tests just seem to create an atmosphere of higher stress and unreasonable expectations with little more benefit than other evaluative approaches at the elementary level. At any rate, that's where I've come to stand on the issue of tests in elementary curriculum. I think there are just better ways on a regular basis to achieve student evaluation.

Conclusion?
Having used several 5th grade grammar curricula, I feel this one's method of using tests is deeply flawed. A curriculum that I have used before and truly enjoyed pedagogically, reviewed all necessary skills almost every day and tested weekly or bi-weekly. Further, the tests were, in essence, just another worksheet page that happened to count as a test. This, in my experience, rendered a much better result: tests were less stressful and were a better representation of what the students actually grasped on a day-to-day basis. I have a feeling I'm going to be spending some time reconfiguring these tests and how they work in the curriculum. Right now, I feel like I'm handing a lot of my students a huge mountain to overcome two or three times a quarter. That's not really advantageous for them in showing what they know or for me in evaluating it. Tests have a place, but maybe not in the form with which we are familiar. The way they currently exist, I hate them. Time to re-evaluate, I suppose.

When I mentioned this topic previously, I connected it in kind to the problem with adult inability to deal with unexpected or out-of-the-ordinary emotion in that it is a problem of rearing and education. In order to become adults who value the opportunity to personalize but do not require it, in fact, sacrifice that desire when it's for the best, children must be taught how. For example, I will give you a scenario: parent takes child into a fast-food restaurant and says, "You can have anything you'd like." This happens over and over until the child expects to get what they would like every time. There is no guidance to the child's decision, no instruction teaching them that their choice is a privilege to enjoy rather than right to demand in every circumstance. Now comes an instance when, for whatever reason, the child is unable to order whatever he wants. We all anticipate the result: an attitude, a tantrum. New scenario: a parent offers guided choices. "You may get a hamburger meal. What side would you like: apples or french fries? What drink would you like: lemon slice or iced tea?" On another day: "Today Mommy needs to choose. Let's get chicken fingers and apples, ok? I'll let you choose next time." On another day: "Today is special, you may order what you'd like from the menu as long as you get a sandwich or chicken with it." And so on, offering the child guided choices when appropriate. Now comes an instance when the child may not choose. I think we will all anticipate a much more pleasant response from this child. Child A has become a creature who expects every desire and whim to be fulfilled. Child B enjoys the personalization of his order, but understands that he can't always have what he wants.

(And I do not think this type of scenario is limited to a home experience. I believe there are numerous classrooms and curricular experiences that cater to children's whims and limit their experience to only what they know or want to know.)

The key here is that adults allow children the opportunity to choose while not indulging their selfishness. When we indulge a child's selfishness behind the justification that we want them to be happy, we actually set them up for discontent and unhappiness. A child reared to expect to have things exactly the way he likes every time will end up being a sorely disappointed adult when he discovers that rarely in life do things actually conform to our every personalized whim. Except of course, for my [redacted] sets of icons. :-P (I'll never divulge the information that hints at my selfish weakness for computer individuality. haha) The thing is, individuality can be an incredible strength. Americans revel in the freedom to be individual, to seek their individual well-being and happiness. This isn't a bad thing. We must, however, remember that the primary weakness of individuality is selfishness. Unchecked self-interest is not a good thing for an individual or for society. It is an incredible gift to be able to choose things that fit us, to have the options to listen to the music we like, to have the color car we enjoy, to choose from a plethora of desktop icons and wallpapers. The problem lies when we are unwilling to concede our desires for something better; when we fail to acknowledge that our ability to choose injures someone else; when our determination to have what we want becomes a selfish grasping, when our desires have devolved into petulant whims. Henry Ford is famous for saying, "Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black." Amazingly, he sold plenty of just, plain black Model T Fords. His customers knew that if they wanted his affordable, available automobile (alliteration unintentional) they would need to sacrifice their desire for individual color. I am skeptical that his car's colorful limitations would do so well in today's market. The viewpoint has changed. We've allowed our sense of and desire for individuality to become our excuse for self-service and selfishness. It isn't pretty. If we want to restore the nobility of the Individual, Rugged or otherwise, we must purpose to teach children the balance of desiring personalization and deferring to what's best, that using discretion in our choices sometimes means sacrificing our individual desires (particularly those of the whim strain) for what's best, that having a choice placed in boundaries for that best (eg. uniforms in school) is not a removal of some fundamental right to which they are entitled and can therefore express their discontent in any way they choose. When we expect every aspect of our life to fit our personalization plan, we have become petulant creatures of selfish whims. This is not the American spirit of individuality at all; it is something far uglier and even sinister.

This is a long post, and I failed to offer warning. I'm not even sure I managed to say everything I intended. haha. Perhaps that put some readers off. I feel it is important, though. If we wish others, those looking in on us, to see the nobility of the spirit of individuality rather than its pitfall vice, we must, as parents and educators, imbue upon children the understanding of discretion, of care for the best, of sacrificing selfishness for kindness. To me, a significant part of this process is teaching them how to handle their desires for personalization in their lives. The home and the classroom are excellent training grounds for this process. The Individual can be a noble figure when the Individual is taught to look out for his brethren even in the way he views personal choices.

So the reason this topic came to my mind was...myself. About four months ago, I bought a new MacBook to replace the iBook that was constantly full. 50G of space just isn't what it used to be. :-P As I pondered which to get and what to add to it, I was also pondering something else: Colorware. For those who don't know, Colorware provides a fantastic personalization service for the owners of certain electronics: they will take your product and custom-color it by applying a polymer-based coating. It's awesome. And $500. And yet, my desire to have a significantly unique MacBook found me with my mouse one click away from "Purchase." At which point I stopped myself. $500 dollars to give my lappy a custom color-coating when I could satisfy my need for a unique, personalized lappy with an amazing decal for a hundredth of the price? I did, however, discover another way to personalize my computer: one candybar purchase and [redacted] hours later, I have [redacted] sets of options with which to personalize every icon used by my computer. As the reality that I had spent [redacted] hours hunting down just the right icons for my lappy set in, I began to ponder the phenomenon of self-centeredness that seems to pervade society today. I have some ideas as to how it happened, mostly beginning with doting parenting, but nevertheless, we have a large group of people who do not merely desire to have things their way, but expect it. In fact, in some/many cases has become an extreme: my way, or else. These are the types who send back their hamburger because it came with pickles despite being ordered without when they could just take the pickles off. So the question becomes raised: Is the problem having the freedom to have things uber-personalized? I don't think that's the problem.

***To be continued in a second post...

*I mentioned some copywrighted and patented things up there. Those companies own that stuff, k? :-P

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce hear amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

The first thing has been on my mind for a few weeks. It started with a friend's tweet regarding the way some people responded to a rather horrific event and was further fueled by a similar reaction on the part of a television audience to an unexpected and serious admission. In both cases, the response was highly inappropriate: laughter. A knee-jerk reaction to these responses would understandably be, "What's wrong with people? How can they find this entertaining or humorous? They must be inhuman or completely base." I do not think this is the problem at all. Bear with me as a tell an illustrative story. Back in my college World Drama class, we viewed a recording of a college performance of Cyrano de Bergerac. The performance was really quite good, and the duo scene of Cyrano and Roxanne in the convent garden was quite moving and tragic. Near the end of the scene, Cyrano leans against a tree. Being a stage tree, this tree was equipped with wheels. Unfortunately, the stage hand who had placed the tree failed to lock said wheels causing the tree to move a visible distance when Cyrano leaned against it. The audience, in the midst of this tragic, heart-breaking scene, responded with laughter. My World Drama professor proceeded to lead the class in a discussion of how emotionally immature audiences (in this case, about 85% required-to-attend college students) will often react with laughter when they have no idea what else to do. In other words, when we as humans are met with something emotionally unexpected, something for which we are unprepared, something we don't know how to process properly, we laugh. It isn't that we lack compassion, empathy, or humanity. It is that we lack tools to appropriately process emotionally heavy or embarrassing moments. Like a horrific event caught on video. Or an unexpected admission of moral and ethical failure. So what does this have to do with education? This: as high school classes and curricula have moved toward factual coverage of large quantities of material and catering of said material to only the experiences of the students, we have moved away from teaching them to think critically and process their responses to things outside of their experiences. Granted, you cannot teach emotionally maturity; that takes time and experience to fully develop. You can, however, teach students (using subject material to do so) how to understand, relate, and respond to both ideas and emotional reactions. By teaching them to think and ponder, we give them the tools to aid their emotional development as well. We can expect teens and college students to respond bluntly and immaturely to emotions they don't understand how to process yet. Part of becoming an adult, however, is learning how to respond, or not respond, to overwhelming emotions. Properly constructing pedagogy is a part of that process. If we as educators, parents, and mentors are not teaching these things, we are failing the next generation, not just personally, but socially, culturally, and politically, as well.

The second point is not fully developed in my mind, yet. It concerns the way we as Americans, as Westerners, too often find ourselves expecting to have things "personalized," and how our educational experience enhances or discourages this need to have every thing we own or do personalized. It isn't ready for press, yet, though. Therefore, you may considered yourself teased. :-P

There you go. Short, simple, and sweet lesson in the use of objective case. So what brings this up in my blog today? This:

Now I realize the quality is rather awful as I was using my cell phone and had the setting such that I couldn't zoom. I apologize. The sticker says: Who freed who? Suddenly I understand why my students grapple with simple grammar concepts: adults surround them with ignorance. The end.

Now that I have that out of my system, on to other tidbits.
* I'm in the middle of Season 3 of Lost. I'm very, very confused and completely addicted.
* You shouldn't drive too fast in a raging downpour. This is not because of any visibility issues, mind you, but because water splashing up into your engine is a bad thing.
* The school where I teach uses ABeka for the main portion of the Reading program. We also supplement using the Houghton Mifflin Reading series because it involves more critical thinking skill development, and it's the curriculum the state schools use for Reading at the lower grades. Last year, because I was catching up with myself all year due to coming in at the beginning of the second quarter, I only used the parts of the HM workbooks that stood alone (ie, didn't require reading the selections from the HM readers). This year I started using the HM readers as well. They're really quite nice. The stories are engaging (albeit a little dated at times--a problem that's inherent in some ABeka stories as well, so no biggie), there are many pictures to aid in teaching predicting skills, and really excellent summary questions that include writing connections. I really wish I had been able to integrate this more into the curriculum last year. Of course, I did integrate other comprehension and critical thinking exercises. It will be much easier and better with this particular resource, though.
* Toe socks are fun.
* Funny story: Yesterday, I was bustling about the classroom as usual. I had finished the Language lesson and walked over to my desk, set down my Language book, and picked up my Spelling book. I then taught the Spelling lesson and the Reading lesson. About 25 minutes later, I walk to the door at the back of the classroom to line up the students to switch classes before PE. I can see my computer monitor and notice that my open document is currently scrolling up and up and up. I look at it for a moment and realize that it's been scrolling up and up and up for 25 minutes. I realize that when I set down my Language text, the corner of it had landed on the "Enter" key of the number pad. When all is said and done, I had a Word document that was 1497 pages long. Yes, 1497 pages. Needless to say, I went to the top, copied the two pages I was supposed to have into another document and just deleted that one. Hahaha. What a day!

I supposed that's plenty enough for now, all. Have a great weekend!

timeline

names

first responders

memorial service 09

That is all.

Typically, I reach this point and brace myself to soldier through. This year, however, I stumbled upon a better plan. More accurately, a friend slipped a thought into my brain, and I latched on. Rather than soldiering through, I should find some other person to complete my work for me. I should, in fact, capture an elf! Yes, the more I thought it through, the more it made sense. After all, elves do beautiful work. Their quality is unmatched; their ardour to complete a task unquenched. The idea of hiring one did, I will say, cross my mind, but was almost immediately stymied by the realization that elves do not typically advertise in the “job wanted” section of the newspaper. Furthermore, I suspected that money was not an object of their desire, and I could think of nothing that I possessed that elves might find a fit trade for their labour. No, no. The more I pondered the situation, the more I was left with only a single path: I must capture an elf if I wished to avoid my work.

The first question raised was, of course, what could I use to capture an elf? This proved to be problematic for my brain at that moment, so I pushed the question aside for later examination. Instead, I turned to the next question at hand: where to begin looking for my elf. Of course, it is common knowledge that the elven kind prefer greenery and poetic scenery, so I began my search in the gardens.

I looked into the rose vines first, thinking that although the blooms were spent, the nature of the rose would be attractive to the elves. Yet, I found none.

I turned next to some obliging daylilies.

Again, there was no elf to be found.

I checked among other flowers and plants that seemed conducive to housing or hiding elves.

I even ventured to look into a particularly intriguing tree.

Yet all my efforts were to no avail.

They pointed me in the direction of a clump of rushes near the pond.

Although I looked quite carefully, I still had not found my elf.

At this point, it began to rain, so I was forced to postpone my search for a time. The rain was lovely, and I crossed my fingers in the hope that it might cause the elves to venture out afterward in search of after-storm beauty.

I began poking around behind the back shed, but my search was abruptly halted by a canine constable who advised me that trespassing in the area of the shed was “highly discouraged.”

I obligingly removed my search to another location.

After having exhausted every place I thought likely to house an elf, I began to feel my quest a lost one. Out of places to check, I decided to sit by the pond and wait for inspiration.

It was lovely. Frogs were singing. Mist was rising from the pond. The sun began to set in rare form. I paused, contented, to watch for a moment.

As the stars, and the mosquitoes, began to come out, I decided I had better be content to abandon my quest and finish my work on my own. My grand scheme for capturing an elf and save myself some trouble had fallen to ruin around me as I had been completely unable to even find one. I suppose it was all good and well, however, since I had never quite figured out how I might capture one anyway had I managed to find it. “Perhaps another year will bring success,” I thought as I returned to the house and my laptop and my meticulously saved lesson plans.

Aside from the lack of a comma in her compound sentence, I am bothered by this sentiment. I would brush it off as joking (which the exclamation point would support), but I have read her review-ish statements regarding Twilight, and her joke is only partial. It's why she rather doesn't like the book she is discussing in the review in which this statement appears. I just want to say that I certainly hope at no age to lose my tolerance for romance in its many and varied forms. I don't wish to be so jaded/cynical that I dislike a book or a film or a song or a story because it happens to be a romance. That is all I have to say this barely morning. You may return to your regularly scheduled activities.

A couple of my students have already decided to try and fix me up. It occurred in this manner:
girl: so are you married, Ms. D?
me: i am not.
not-a-shy-bone boy: you should be; you're one gorgeous woman!

Next day:
not-shy boy: Ms. D, can I totally hook you up with a guy?
me: I don't know. It depends on your idea of taste.
not-shy boy: *gasp* Ms. D, I have awesome taste! You doubt me?

Yeah. It's amusing. It might become obnoxious, but we'll see. Students are awesome. Totally awesome.

In other news, two more grad classes are down. I'll be embarking on the next two beginning tomorrow. I suppose I could begin them today, but why? :-P

Working my way through season two of Lost. Oh man.

I also watched for the first time Bridget Jones's Diary and Nick and Nora's Infinite Playlist. I enjoyed them both. The first is moderately a girl movie. I found myself rather unempathetic to Bridget at times, but overall, I definitely got her. And the movie was quirky in the fun way. Nick and Nora is an odd little indie flavoured film with a fantastic soundtrack. It's unexpectedly laid back so the when you get to the end, it's just...there. You wait for the moment, and you smile when the pieces fit.

Well, off to input lesson plans. The previously promised fairy capture tale will be arriving as soon as I capture the final picture. So if you're waiting in anticipation, it won't be long. :-)