maybe next year
As much as I hate to admit it…
the Cubs are lousy. Which makes September a considerably less interesting month for me.
As much as I hate to admit it…
the Cubs are lousy. Which makes September a considerably less interesting month for me.
I have no memory of my first day of college classes. I sort of remember my first day of freshman orientation. I think that’s because they made us play those goofy “get to know you” ice-breaker games in the gym, and I really hated games like that when I was eighteeen.
Tomorrow is the first official day of college classes for about 400 freshman at Bethel. Twenty-eight of those will be in a class I co-teach. If my experience is indicative of anything, twenty years from now they won’t remember anything about this day. Unless they save the journal I make them write.
Or,unless something horrible happens.
So I’ll try not to let something horrible happen.
State Champions
Michigan Men’s Fastpitch
2009
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHVpJGXZ21o&hl=en&fs=1&&w=425&h=344]
In a way, each of us has an El Guapo to face. For some, shyness might be their El Guapo. For others, a lack of education might be their El Guapo. For us, El Guapo is a big, dangerous man who wants to kill us. But as sure as my name is Lucky Day, the people of Santa Poco can conquer their own personal El Guapo, who also happens to be the actual El Guapo!
--Lucky Day, The Three Amigos (1986)
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Article published Jul 30, 2009
Teacher licensing rules eyed
Schools chief wants changes; board slows plan.
By DEANNA MARTIN Associated Press Writer
INDIANAPOLIS – A state licensing board put the brakes on state Superintendent Tony Bennett’s plan to revamp teacher licensing rules Wednesday after some complained the changes would downplay the importance of learning how to teach.
Bennett wants to eliminate some requirements for teacher licensing and says the process should ensure potential teachers have a deep understanding of the subject they will teach. He said current requirements focus too much attention on teaching methods.
“We need folks who understand rigorous content,” Bennett said.
Under the proposed changes, elementary education majors would take no more than 30 college credit hours in teaching methods and would have to have a minor in a content subject area such as science, math or English. It’s unclear how the limit on credit hours would work, and members of the Professional Standards Advisory Board said they wanted to clarify that and other issues before voting on whether to move forward with the changes.
The proposed rules also would allow anyone with a bachelor’s degree to become a teacher if they pass a test from the American Board for Certification of Teacher Excellence. Currently only seven states allow teachers to be licensed with that online program, according to the group’s Web site.
Opponents of some of the changes said future teachers need to understand teaching methods, not just be brilliant in their respective fields.
“How you teach does make a big difference,” board member George Van Horn said. “The ‘how’ is critical."
Bennett also wants to allow anyone with a master’s degree to become a district superintendent if they pass a school leader’s license test and get state approval.
Bennett said school districts need the flexibility to hire people from outside traditional education channels. The change would give local school boards more options, he said. If a board wanted to hire someone with a traditional educational background, they could do so, but if they needed an acute business manager to handle district financial problems, they could choose someone from outside the education field.
Opponents said not anyone can become a superintendent.Stephen McColley, the superintendent of Wes-Del Community Schools in Delaware County, said he was a teacher before becoming a bank executive and later a superintendent. His experience in business helped him understand the financial side of running a school district, but that was just a small portion of his job, he said."
Can I be a brain surgeon because I want to be a brain surgeon? No,” McColley said. “School superintendents must be educational leaders, not a business person who looks at the bottom line.“Several board members complained they had little time to read and review the proposed changes. Some said they got the extensive proposals 4 p.m. Tuesday, and a revised copy was given to them shortly before the meeting Wednesday afternoon.
Pat Mapes, director of the Office of Educator Licensing & Development, suggested the board meet again later to discuss the proposed changes and tweak them before voting on whether to advance them. The changes are subject to approval by the board, the Office of Management and Budget, the attorney general and the governor. If the proposals are approved, they would take effect next July.
“They’re trying to kill me,” Yossarian told him calmly.
“No one’s trying to kill you,” Clevinger cried.
“Then why are they shooting at me?” Yossarian asked.
“They’re shooting at everyone,” Clevinger answered.
“They’re trying to kill everyone."
“And what difference does that make?”
the Cubbies are in first place…
“For we are as tree-trunks in the snow. Apparantly they are merely resting on the surface of the snow, and a little push would be enough to knock them over. No, that’s not the case, for they are firmly attached to the ground. But see, even that is only seemingly the case.”
Yesterday I hit Morgan in the eye with a golf ball sized wiffle ball–a line shot from about fifteen feet away, as I practiced batting using my little wiffle ball pitching machine. He typically goes berserk, running to and fro, barking frantically, every time I turn that stupid machine on. I’ve hit him with line drives many times and he hardly reacts; he just keeps barking and running. But this time, he yelped a little and scratched a bit at his eye, and then went back to running back and forth and barking. Last night, though, once the adreneline high wore off, he could scarcely open that eye, and I could tell he wasn’t feeling well.
Can you imagine the guilt I felt? This creature has given me more joy these past eight years than I could ever document. And now I’ve blinded him with a wiffle ball?
Is it misguided for me to pray earnestly for healing–to lay hands upon a dog and ask God to make him well?
No sir. For the breath of life is in him even as it is in me.
The good news is that Morgan is a quick healer, and today, his eye, while still a little bloodshot, seems much better. I trust that all shall be well.
The first record album I ever bought for myself.
That’s a little more like it.
The U.S. Open on Thursday, day one, was virtually a washout. They did play three hours worth of golf. But people paid to see twelve hours. Many of these people wanted to come back Friday, and they were not happy that they were told that would not be an option nor would they be getting any cash refunds.
The USGA announced this morning in a sane move to appease ticked-off Thursday ticket holders that those tickets would be honored Monday, if there's Monday golf.
Last year there was Monday golf, and it (too) was priceless.
Morgan has an ear infection in his right ear. Not the first time. Common in Labradors, in part, because of their floppy ears and their love of the water. So we give him some ear drops a couple times a day for the next week and keep the ears nice and clean and all will be well. Ear medicine, office visit, heart worm medicine for 8 months, flea and tick medicine for 7 months, epi-otic ear cleaner: $196.09.
Healthy Morgan playing ball in Lake Michigan all month of July: priceless.
“But the whole point of God, at least in the viewpoint of us human beings, is that He does not stand above or apart from the world. He inspires men to fight when attacked and for justice and freedom, sustains them in trouble, and consoles them in days of defeat. Indeed, the God of Our Fathers took sides and played favorites. He wiped out the Egyptians pursuing the Hebrews, to give just one example. He made a covenant with the Children of Israel; then He made a covenant with the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which turned in 1776 into a covenant with the entire United States of America, as it expanded across the continent, and even to places beyond."
As the kids say when they text or instant message: WTF!!!
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/016/616mwpgh.asp
Sydney, singing at full blast from the other room:
“What’s gonna work? TEAMWORK! What’s gonna work? TEAMWORK!"
Amen.
Smalltown Fastpitch, winners of the “Ed White Memorial Fastpitch Softball Tournament” in Petoskey, Michigan; June 5-7, 2009.
Online Publication, Copyright © 2007, Petoskey News-Review · 319 State St., Petoskey, MI 49770 · (231) 347-2544 · Fax: (231) 347-6833
Softball: Smalltown Fast Pitch wins White Memorial
Monday, June 8, 2009 3:12 PM EDT
Smalltown Fast Pitch of Riverside defeated the Cheboygan Merchants, 8-1, Sunday to finish undefeated and win the Ed White Memorial Men’s Class D-E fast pitch softball invitational at Bayfront Park’s Ed White Field.
Smalltown pitcher Browning Chabot tossed a two-hitter, striking out one and walking one, in the championship game.
Lance Northstine, who was named the outstanding hitter in the tournament with a .571 average, had three hits including a double in the final to lead Smalltown, while Robby Prenkert homered and doubled.
Ben Schley’s RBI double and Mike Barber’s single were Cheboygan’s lone hits. Barber allowed seven hits and struck out one in taking the loss.
Smalltown finished 4-0, while Cheboygan and Flynn’s Excavating of Petoskey each finished 3-2. Priority Mortgage of Grand Rapids finished 2-2, BASES of Charlevoix went 1-2 as did Hadeed Dentistry of Ludington. Quizno’s and B.C. Pizza, both of the Petoskey league, finished 0-2.
Chabot was the winning pitcher in all four of Smalltown’s games and was named the tournament’s outstanding pitcher. allowed five runs, 12 hits, struck out 22 and walked four in 21 innings.
Schley and Barber were also named outstanding players. Schley hit .545, while Barber hit .500.
Smalltown opened with a 3-1 win over Flynn’s; then downed Hadeed, 8-5; and topped Cheboygan, 11-3, in a semifinal game. Cheboygan downed Flynn’s in the elimination-bracket final, 11-5, to reach the title game.
Other tournament scores: Cheboygan 10, B.C. Pizza 9; BASES 11, Priority Mortgage 7; Hadeed 7, Quizno’s 6; Priority Mortgage 9, B.C. PIzza 5; Flynn’s 6, Quizno’s 5; Flynn’s 13, BASES 6; Priority Mortgage 10, Hadeed 7; Flynn’s 7, Priority 2; Cheboygan 5, BASES 0.
The NBA’s uncool rule
By Dan Wetzel, Yahoo! Sports
Jun 1, 11:26 am EDT
Derrick Rose is a hell of a basketball player.
Over the past four years he’s won two high school state championships, reached the NCAA title game and was named NBA rookie of the year.
Derrick Rose is, by all accounts, a good person.
He’s never gotten into any serious trouble and is known as a quiet, hardworking and unassuming guy. His teammates swear by him and the fans who know him best, in his hometown of Chicago, have flocked to him for the way he’s carried himself on and off the court.
Derrick Rose is the American dream.
Rising from humble South Side roots, at age 20 he’s already a self-made millionaire with the Bulls. Barring injury he should make more than $100 million by the time he’s 35. He’s building a reputation for charity back in his neighborhood.
Derrick Rose isn’t much of a student.
This is what the NCAA alleges. It claims he had someone stand in for him on his SAT because he couldn’t manage to make the relatively meager score he needed to play college ball at Memphis (his qualifying test was a “740 or 750,” according to a source with knowledge of the situation). Then, as the Chicago Sun-Times reported, one of his high school grades was changed from a “D” to a “C” in order to help his college eligibility chances.
For the record, Rose denied all of this to the NCAA although he hasn’t spoken publicly since the allegations broke last week.
The fact we know his score, the fact that Rose is dealing with embarrassing questions, the fact that the NBA has another young star wrapped in scandal and two universities are fretting about Saturday’s NCAA infractions hearing, is the latest testament to the NBA’s wrong and ridiculous 19-year-old age limit.
This isn’t to absolve the people involved, but the question shouldn’t just be did Derrick Rose cheat on his SAT?
It should be why the heck did he have to take it in the first place?
If Rose sang or danced or wrote computer code, even if he hit forehands or curveballs and not free throws, his acumen at standardized questions concerning probability, diction and critical reading wouldn’t matter.
They do in basketball because NBA commissioner David Stern wanted to control long-term labor costs and use college ball to market his young stars. In 2005, his league began requiring American players (but not Europeans) to be at least one year out of high school to be drafted.
That essentially sends them to college ball, where outdated and hypocritical amateurism and academic rules exist not because they have any moral basis, but so the NCAA can avoid billions in local and federal taxes.
As a result, young players have to play pretend before they can play ball. They have to pretend that amateurism rules can stop the wheels of capitalism. They have to pretend that an arbitrary thing like a minimum SAT score – which is never how the test was designed to be used – is a fair hurdle they need to clear to pursue their professional aspirations.
They have to pretend because the NCAA long ago figured out how to use its rule book as a tax haven.
And so into this round hole gets slammed the square peg of young players – Rose, O.J. Mayo and pretty much every other one-and-done star who lit up the college season before bolting to the NBA.
And, too often, they wind up with the NCAA slamming them for potentially not following rules that have no real world validity.
How is this helping Stern market his players?
Is it good to have Rose arrogantly ripped by the NCAA for failing “to deport himself in accordance with the high standards of honesty and sportsmanship normally associated with … intercollegiate athletics”?
Is it a positive to have rival fans mock him with “SAT, SAT” chants for years to come? Or have Mayo embroiled in his own NCAA investigation into payments from an agent while he did his mandated season at Southern California?
All this is doing is playing up the same outdated stereotypes of young, black players that Stern usually fights so hard against. He’s sold these guys out to shorten careers and, more importantly, career earnings.
Deep down he knows they should have the right to turn pro out of high school the way Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Dwight Howard, Kevin Garnett and so many other stars did.
A semester or two in college isn’t the worst thing, but it also has nothing to do with playing basketball, being a good citizen or the ever-stated “protecting their futures in case of injury.”
There is no statistical evidence that players are better on or off the court after a stint on campus. There is, however, a century of win-at-all-cost proof by coaches and boosters that the NCAA’s “high standards of honesty and sportsmanship” are a complete joke.
For the sake of argument let’s assume Rose did have a high school friend stand in and take his SAT. He was desperate to qualify because the clear path to his dream and the fortune that comes with it was on the line. Any other route (Europe, junior college) is unproven.
So facing a system rigged against him, he instead rigged the system.
He kicked down the door, clearing an academic hurdle that bears no relation to his character as a person or his ability as a performer.
In Hollywood they make movies about people who do that.
In basketball, they vilify them and humiliate them, although not before they cash in on them.
We hold this standard almost exclusively for teenage basketball players, mostly African Americans, many from disadvantaged backgrounds and broken school systems (Rose’s Simeon Career Academy isn’t exactly Choate Rosemary Hall).
No one cared when Danica Patrick went pro as a race car driver at 16. No one tried to prevent Shawn Johnson from winning an Olympic gold at the same age or Miley Cyrus from making millions singing and acting with her dad even younger than that.
And no one ever required them to recognize analogies before doing so.
So why do we make Derrick Rose?
Dan Wetzel is Yahoo! Sports' national columnist and author of “Resilience: Faith, Focus, Triumph” with the Miami Heat’s Alonzo Mourning. The book details Mourning’s rise from foster care to NBA stardom before kidney disease changed everything. Send Dan a question or comment for potential use in a future column or webcast.
Updated Jun 1, 11:26 am EDT
“Men vs. Wild”
Tuesday, 10 p.m. on Discovery
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=453WwRG265I&hl=en&fs=1&w=560&h=340]
Family axes wedding plans, Egyptian cuts off penis
By SARAH EL DEEB, Associated Press Writer
Sunday, May 31, 2009
(05-31) 14:48 PDT CAIRO, Egypt (AP) –
A 25-year-old Egyptian man cut off his own penis to spite his family after he was refused permission to marry a girl from a lower class family, police reported Sunday.
After unsuccessfully petitioning his father for two years to marry the girl, the man heated up a knife and sliced off his reproductive organ, said a police official.
The young man came from a prominent family in the southern Egyptian province of Qena, one of Egypt’s poorest and most conservative areas that is also home to the famed ancient Egyptian ruins of Luxor.
The man was rushed to the hospital but doctors were unable to reattach the severed member, the official added citing the police report filed after the incident.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak with the press, added that the man was still recovering in the hospital.
Traditionally, marriages in these conservative part of southern Egypt are between similar social classes and often within the same extended families — and are rarely for love.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/05/31/international/i135406D17.DTL
“A good sermon is one side of a passionate conversation. It has to be heard in that way. There are three parties to it, of course, but so are there even to the most private thought–the self that yields the thought, the self that acknowledges and in some way responds to the thought, and the Lord. That is a remarkable thing to consider.”
- The narrator (Rev. John Ames) in Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
I don’t think I can name a single individual player in NCAA Division I college softball, but I still manage to spend hours upon hours every year watching the women’s college world series. Watching my fourth game of the day right now. I love this game.
Sydney and I sang this song, radio blaring, on the way to the park. Lyrics way ahead of their time, dude.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyCCTgk0Y60&hl=en&fs=1&w=425&h=344]