Gettin’ close. . .

. . relatively speaking. I’m in Bellingham, Washington, ready to turn south and head for home. With a couple of stops along the way.

Actually, “relatively speaking” is a bit of a pun

Fast Forward trip update

Having figured out that I can either do stuff or write about doing stuff, this will be the short version.

Iris and I spent 3 muggy/wet/hot/rainy days in/around DC (Smithsonian, monuments, some food), then headed for Amish country (Lancaster, Pennsylvania) for a day, then

Quickie trip update, no pics

I may never get to do any real blogging on this trip.

Anyway, I am now just outside Williamsburg, VA.

Trip update: Rough Rock Part 1

I did make it out finally, late last Thursday. It was 5:30 PM when I pulled away from the house, all loaded down. It almost didn’t feel worth leaving at that point, but I figured even though I’d only get maybe 90 miles before stopping for the night, at least I’d be committed and gone, so go I did.

Getting to Rough Rock was no picnic.

Quick update

Well, all systems are now go. I have official clearance from all doctors to do as I will. The cardiologist is sticking by his story that he’d be happy to have my arteries. (Turns out that one of the false positives may have been the result of, ahem, excessive frontal female tissue. The other one–I guess I’m just part of the lucky 5% of positive results that turn out to be false. Somethimes being in the minority is a good thing.)

So I’m trying to pull things together to get it all loaded tomorrow. I should be far from here the next time I post something. Keep your fingers crossed . . .

Trip update: Best-laid plans of mice and (wo)men. . .

Well, contrary to plans and expectations, I’m still sitting at home.

This week has been a bit of a roller coaster for me.

On the road again

Or I soon will be.

I’m about to head out for a couple of months. The plan is to make a large circuit of the country, heading out across the south, then north to Connecticutt where a couple of my brother’s grandchildren are (they are the main draw), then west across the north to Bellingham, WA, then back south to CA and home.

After my tent adventures a couple of summers ago (which you can read about by clicking on “travel” from the pop-down menu on the right. The first one that’s really about the trip is “Tent stories 3″, and the next ten posts cover the rest of the trip) I decided I needed access to air conditoning in the future (the temperature hit the hundreds nearly everywhere I went on that trip.) Even though I’m getting out earlier in the season this year, AC will be needed in the South, I’m sure. Tents being not amenable to air conditioning–and a pain to put up–I have acquired a trailer that’s probably the world’s smallest RV. It’s interior square footage is about the size of a double bed.

99 meme, or “In lieu of content”

There are at least three good, solid posts I want to get done, but found this on Nickelbee Notes, and decided this would be more fun. And it’s easy.

If you want to spread the meme, copy, paste, and bold the things you’ve actually done yourself. Adding notes optional.

1. Started your own blog (duh)

A few reasons I’m not a Christian

I’ve been poking around on BlogHer recently, and ran across this post, which got me musing about Christianity. Most of these ponderings occurred to me many years ago, back in the day when I hadn’t yet rejected Christianity for myself. I was raised Methodist, in a small town, and around this time of year often get nostalgic for when the religious side of Christmas meant more to me. But–well, whatever. On to the ponderings. Which I decided to post here instead of in a comment on SandyHov’s blog because they will seem blasphemous, and possibly offensive, to many Christians, and I have no desire to offend her.

Absolute Truth??

(I started this one a long time ago, and browsing through old drafts decided it’s close enough to being coherent to publish. At one point I probably thought I had more to say about it–but thanks to memory loss, I no longer know what that might have been.)

People, particularly religious conservatives, often assert that truth, to be true in any meaningful sense, must be absolutely true. In keeping with my tenet that

We learn most from those who are different from us; they help us walk around our piece of reality and see it in new ways,

my discomfort with that assertion inspires me to write the following.

How to get a good teacher: the sink or swim model, Part 2

(Continued from the previous post.)

The nature of teacher education and of the teaching profession

In his column, Gladwell goes on to make some policy recommendations based on the contention that we can’t predict who will be a good teacher and who won’t (”good” defined by student gains as measured by standardized tests):

How to get a good teacher: the “sink or swim” model, Part 1

A recent post over at Kevin’s Walk, one of my regular stops, was about teachers and teacher effectiveness. He cites the following paragraph from this article in The New Yorker by Malcolm Gladwell:

Woohoo!

I don’t know about the rest of y’all out there, but I’m saving my voting stubs.

First rain

We had our first rain of the season last night. Around here, that’s like the first day of spring. This year, it hasn’t rained since some time last March, I think it was. It was short–a burst that lasted less than a minute, then a light rain for another few minutes, and that was about it.

But it definitely signals a turning of the seasons.

Politics makes strange bedfellows

I can hardly believe this, being a liberal Democrat and all, but during the recent furor over the apparent collapse of the worldwide capitalist financial system and the proposed bailout, I find myself in periodic sympathy with the conservative Republican members of the House who have apparently blocked it’s adoption, at least for now.

Standing by a tree in summer

(I’ve had this experience, and these thoughts, many times, but let me tell it as one, not many.)

I stop, halfway up the mountain, in a pullout made for this purpose. A ponderosa pine has inspired me to stop: the desire to say hello, to smell the sun-warmed vanilla smell of it. I turn off the engine and step out into the warm summer day.

Listening to the summer silence, the pings of the cooling engine, bird calls, hum of insects, light wind in my ears, I walk over to the tree, put my hands on it, lean close, and sniff deeply.

CA’s misguided Algebra I policy, or “Here we go again”

Recently the California State Board of Education, egged on by the Governator and business bigwigs, decided to require that, starting in three years, all CA 8th graders shall take Algebra I, regardless of their state of prior mathematical knowledge, understanding, or ability. The move was in response to a NCLB-related demand from the US Dept. of Ed to align CA’s 8th testing practices with their curriculum standards. More info can be found here. In this post, I discuss rationales given in favor of the policy, arguments made against it, and my own reasons why I think it is both morally wrong and likely to prove to be a big fat mistake extremely misguided.

Ha! Take that, Universe! Or, In praise of stubbornness

I could also have headed this as “The virtues of one’s vices.”

I just finished installing a new garbage disposal. My old one conked out some time last year (I don’t even remember when), and I decided last week I’d had enough of living without one. First, I had to decide what to replace it with, which took several days and trips to different hardware stores. I finally settled on a .75 horsepower Kenmore–the old one was a one-third HP Kenmore, so it’s a bit of an upgrade. The Kenmore was a good price, and by sticking with the same brand the installation promised to be simpler. So far so good. I even got it on sale by dithering around so long.

Ths sentence contains three erors.

Tee hee.

Found this here. Ordered the book–it looks more entertaining than the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, which I’ve dipped into recently.

I’m working on a post about the recent decision by the CA State Board of Education’s decision to require ALL 8th graders to take Algebra I starting in three years*. It’s clearly going to take awhile–I have too much to say, which is making it hard to get started. And I don’t just want to rant, tempting though that is. So I figure if I publicly commit myself to doing it, it’s more likely to get done.

*Actually, the decision only mandates that they all be tested in Alg I, but given NCLB and the consequences thereof, that’s a distinction without a practical difference.

Why I’m not a philosopher

I’ve been following, sort of, a conversation here that started out to be about meaning, delved into questions having to do with “is there anything more/other than the physical universe?”, and recently turned to the basis of morality and our sense of morality. This led me to this post, which discusses the matter of consciousness and feelings (qualia of consciousness).

I’ve posted a few comments in these other conversations, but decided to save my snippier comments for my own blog, so here goes: