My dear cat, Chloe, has brought me immeasurable comfort. I got her from a student of mine, who used to help me with technology in the school. So I'd drop him off at home, even though he lived within walking distance. It was in June 2006. As I pulled up to his house, one of his sisters came up to the car with this little white ball of fur about the size of my hand, their last kitten of a recent litter. I asked if I could hold her, so she passed her to me. She nestled upon my chest inches from and a certain future connection to my heart.

The sister said, "Do you want her?" and a voice inside of me, the one that didn't know I hadn't planned to have any more pets and the responsibility attached to one, said, "Sure I'll take her."

I don't have to tell anyone who has a pet what a joy she has been. We talk to each other and play. And, of course, she keeps me warm at night.

My Reeboks are very comfortable, too!

It is so easy to give your all to something, like this blog for instance, and then move on to something else, transferring the passion to the next object or project or design. I have been working on this blog since 2003, sharing impressions and thoughts, adding some media now and then, but there has been no entry or post for four months. What's up with that? I don't know.

My years generally run from one school year to the next. They have since I was a child, and so as a teacher I continue to think in terms of what I do from one school year to the next. My energies are focused primarily on my career, even when I was married. But lately, I've been distracted and seem to "fritter away" my time. I've been out of sync, and have been since September 2007 when I was removed from my Tech Coordinator position by a new principal, who thought she did not need a TechCo. She placed me back in the classroom, where I spent most of the school year "dealing" with bored, disaffected freshmen, trying to teach 9th grade English in the lowest performing high school in Chicago.

I spent 75% of my teaching time dealing with discipline problems, constant disruptions of instruction, and intrusions from students walking into my room from the hallway, which did not have enough security to monitor and contain the ongoing problems. And there in that capacity, I languished until the violence of the drastic unwelcomed and undiscussed change in my career, paired with dealing with the most difficult students in the school, pushed my blood pressure to levels that precipitated my taking a medical leave of absence for the last eight weeks of the semester. As the school year progressed, it was clear that this new administration was in way over their heads, and instead of taking the lead from and consulting with their veteran teachers, they chose to ignore or harass us.

I came back for the second semester to the news that our CEO and the Board of Education decided to Reconstitute the school, which meant that the entire staff would be replaced after the end of the second semester. That really pushed morale at the school to an all-time low and helped create more discipline problems for all of us. Students would tell us blatantly that they didn't have to listen to us, because we were fired. Thank you Chicago Board of Education: you didn't support us and when standardized test scores continued to stagnate, instead of addressing the problems that you created by your policies, you blame the staff!

During last school year, I watched as every technology initiative I helped develop and bring to the school, and the network itself, crumble, the new principal bent on disassembling anything that she had not designed. Once again, reinventing the wheel and washing the baby down with the bath water seemed to be the prevailing policy that precluded all management decisions at the school.

Finally, I stopped fighting the insanity (I perceived most of these policies and subsequent actions, including the Reconstitution of the school, as insanity, and certainly something I had no control over) and finished the school year, focusing as much as I could on teaching the best that I could. But, undoubtedly, this had been The School Year from Hell.

I went out of town on three occasions since my last entry. My first trip was to New Orleans for a Shorts Reunion, for a long weekend before school let out. The Shorts are the group of guys from college, most of whom lived on the second floor at one time or other during the late 60's at Farwell Hall at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb. Our last reunion marked the 50th birthday for most of us, so this coming ten years later marked the 60th birthday for most of the guys.

In July, I drove to Tennessee to visit my cousins Blair and Monica in their Smokey Mountain vacation home, and on the way back to Chicago, visited Sal in Louisville for the weekend. Sal is one of my college buds, who I roomed with the previous month in New Orleans.

In August, my oldest friend Don, who I've known for the past 56 years, met me in Denver. We rented a car and drove to Breckenridge for a three day break before returning to work. The highlight of that trip was our bike ride from Breckenridge to Frisco and back. The high altitude, beautiful scenery, and rigorous mountain bicycle path left me gasping, sometimes for air. This was a three day rendezvous, as Don lives in Oakland and I in Chicago. He had to return to his teaching job before the end of the week, and I had to return to my job of looking for a job, which I will continue to do until the end of next week. At that time, I will be substitute teaching four days a week with Wednesday as my designated job search day. Unless I find a job that synchronizes with the direction I have focused my career on, technology integration and professional development, I will retire at the end of this school year.

One thing I've done this past year to manage the external turmoil in my life and create more balance in my emotional environment has been to listen to New Age and Meditation music making it the backdrop to my home. One person in particular whose music brings me peace and harmony is Dean Evenson. I, also, continue to work necessary Steps of my CoDA Program.

Dean and Dudley Evenson

[via FoxyTunes / Dean Evenson]

I just happened upon Music Box, a Tokyoplastic Production. It's an animated jazz piece. Watch it and let me know how it strikes you?

The Operation

My colleague had this operation
To remove some stones
Said it wasn't too bad
Except for the in-flight movietones
Of his operation.

Giving Thanks

JEOPARDY ANSWER: Gone South for the Winter

JEOPARDY QUESTION: Where have you been?

In 1983, I saw Miles Davis at Orchestra Hall in Chicago. That place is usually reserved for classical music -- Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, which is why I made the special effort to see the master perform. The sound would have been pure in a garage or a speakeasy, but this venue offered Miles trumpet unadulterated by clinging ice in mixed drinks or the murmur of whispered conversation. And Miles, with his back to the audience most of the time, was just too cool. The following video reveals a very young Miles Davis and John Coltrane. But the focus is mostly on Coltrane.

Miles Davis & John Coltrane video on FoxyTunes Planet

Miles Davis and John Coltrane: listen / feel / be

[via FoxyTunes / Miles Davis & John Coltrane]

Dee Alexander

During this past summer 2007, I had the good fortune to see Dee Alexander on several occasions, the last in early September for her tribute to Dinah Washington and Nina Simone. These were sponsered by The Jazz Institute of Chicago, which I finally joined. The following video shows how talented this young lady is.

Of the soft things in life, the pink pads of catsfeet, a baby's bottom, the feathery crowns of dandelions, and the sweet succulent pillows of your lips --- all were made for kissing.

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band

What do you remember about the album, how it affected you, how you listened to it, why it was important to you, and so on? Did you wonder about the various persons featured on the cover and why they were included?
It was significant in the same way Kurt Vonnegut novels were. There was something profound about it, something meaningful to discover about it. It helped us glean an understanding of ourselves.

I just watched the last 24:38 of Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey


set to the soundtrack of Pink Floyd's Echoes. I had downloaded it from Google Video. It made me realize that we are the last generation with imagination. We wanted to expand our minds, which we did through innovative and expansive music, literature, visual arts, and psychotropic drugs. Even experimentation with mind altering drugs was more exploration than it was for the physical effect of getting high. We explored inner space, seeking transcendental experiences and altered states of reality. We were excited by the latest books by our contemporary authors and by those timeless classics. We enlarged our world by seeking knowledge, through learning and experimentation, and with self-expression and creativity. We have traveled in time and thru time to find ourselves running out of time.

If you are a teacher, and you want to create your own web site for your students, then this is the greatest tool since the xerox machine:

I do what I do
because
I must
Have meaningful connections
Touch the hearts of those
I am entrusted to teach.

I do what I do
because
I must
Let my children know
They are important to me
That they are special.

I do what I do
because
I must
Fulfill my mission
It is always personal
And more than just a job.

I do what I do
because
I must

because
I care

because I am a teacher.

This is too cool

Click to play | Make your own Smilebox

Inspired by Nicole Mitchell's Black Earth Orchestra: Tribute to Alice Coltrane

#1
For the disenfranchised, here's a song for you
Alice Coltrane's discordant jazz
Set against the backdrop of a city
That doesn't care whether you freeze
Your ass in winter or can afford
The rent for the two bedroom apartment
For you and your three children.

Here's a song where each musician
Counterpoints the others
Playing as if he or she
Had amphetamine cocktails or ADHD.


#2
You crawled inside the sax
And closed your eyes
Content to drift away
Like a little girl climbing
Onto her father's lap
Shielded from the world
And there you wrapped the wailing tones
Around you like a blanket of sound.

I'm testing out http://www.clipmarks.com/ application, which is free and allows you to clip parts of articles for later reference. You can save it to your Clipmarks personal site, add it to a blog (as I've done here), or email it. For example, I've inserted my own comment (below in italics). This is a very handy tool.

clipped from http://www.crucialthought.com/ Principal support is critical. My observation is that without the principal's buy in, technology integration will remain a sporadic individual teacher preference, rather than the prevailing method of delivering instruction at the school. If we can understand who every child is we can target technological resources (because of their flexibility) towards them to meet them where they are. The website for all this is www.school2-0.org

My right eye keeps twitching. It's not a serious blink of a twitch, so that people think I'm winking at them, but a stacotto movement of the corner of the upper lid. It's been doing this periodically for a couple of weeks, and it's getting on my nerves, which only makes it more difficult to control. I've had bouts with this twitching before and it drives me crazy, especially while I'm face to face with someone talking, wondering if they can see the little twitch.

Yesterday morning I received an email from my professor, who was reviewing my Masters Portfolio. It was acceptable, which means that I am officially a recipient of a Master of Science in Education with a Focus in Technology Integration in the Classroom degree.

I will now devote more time to posting my observations and reflections in my blog, reading the numerous books I have not been able to finish or even start, and watch some videos that are not produced by Laureate and used in the Education Program at Walden for distance learning. I feel as if I am liberated, once again.

This video is back by popular demand. It's my Mom and Aunt Rose at Karen's 2005 Memorial Day get together. Video by Stephen Latman.

Last night my cat searched my library

for reading matter

and found herself a copy of Thoreau's

All Nature Is My Bride

and Whitman's Leaves of Grass

or so it seemed,

as I found both books

on the bedroom floor in the morning.

"So you were reading Thoreau and Whitman?"

I asked her when I woke up and found the books.

She just yawned, probably still sleepy

from all of that reading.