Coffee heat rising

Month: December 2011

Bye-bye, Mr. Postman

by
Postal Carrier, Argentina

We’re told that the U.S. Postal Service is taking another step down the road to extinction: not only will they raise the price of a first-class stamp to 45 cents, they’ll no longer even try to deliver first-class mail in a timely way.

But never fear: all that junk mail they chuff into your mailbox for you to haul straight to the recycling bin will get to you on time!

{sigh} I’d like to say this is a real loss to America. And over time, the slow degradation of the USPS certainly has been a loss. I can remember when I used to wait with bated breath for the postman to show up. Now I just groan every afternoon at the prospect of having to retrieve and throw out another big wad of trash.

Does anybody other than junk mailers still do business with the USPS on purpose? I have only one client who persists in sending hard-copy checks. Not that I don’t appreciate the payment ( 🙂 ), but it’s a a bit of a nuisance, forcing me to waste time either scanning the check to e-deposit it or traipsing across the city to drop it off at the credit union.

Granted, I still get paper statements from the credit union, AMEX, and MasterCard. But none of those is necessary. I check my credit union statements online a lot more often than once a month, and if the credit-card issuers sent me statements by e-mail, I would bestir myself to hassle with their online sites to check charges. Truth to tell, there’s really no need to have that data printed out and mailed to me.

Now, I do love getting The Economist, Sunset, and The New York Review of Books in the mail. There are some circumstances in which little glowing letters on a screen just do not substitute for the real thing. But…as a practical matter, these days I get most of my news online. You’ll note that today’s news flash came from Bloomberg’s website, which I read three hours before the Times showed up with the same story on the front page of its business section.

The big, genuine regret here will be the loss of our postal carriers. Having these cheerful and friendly workers tooling through the neighborhood adds to the quality of our lives, at least in big cities…it’s one of the few pleasant traditions that have survived the gritty dystopianism we’ve seen over the past 50 years. Me, I haven’t been inside a post office in years—the service is so slow and the overworked staff are so unhappy, I’ll pay a little more to ship a package through UPS or FedEx. But when the day comes for the postal service to close down, I sure will miss the mail carriers.

Image: Rosarinagazo. The Postal Carrier, sculpture by Erminio Blotta y Pedro Cresta, Palacio de Correos, Rosario, Argentina. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Glorious Sprouts!

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Shortly before Thanksgiving the choir had its annual silent auction. This rather swell event is the big fund-raiser of the year, and people go all out to make it fancy and fun. It includes a very nice catered dinner.

Well, among other amazing things, the decorating committee adorned the dinner tables with a fantastic array of beautiful and colorful fresh fall produce. Mile on mile of dinner tables…

After the event ended, guests were invited to take the veggies home with them. So much free food!

I grabbed an armful of gorgeous Brussels sprouts on their stalks. On the stalk is absolutely the best way to get them: they stay fresh forever and are soooo succulent!

Day after Thanksgiving, M’hijito and I had some of them with a lamb dinner I cooked up—at that time, we tried a recipe I’d spun off a magazine article, and it worked incredibly well. This, to be described later as part of this year’s not-a-turkey holiday meal plan.

RedPeppersThe rest of them…a lot of them…sat in the produce drawer until I realized I’d better cook them before they spoiled. In the meantime, I came across a giant bottle of roasted red peppers at Costco, the Home of the Lifetime Supply of Everything. So here’s what became of the sprouts and the peppers.

This combination is incredibly delicious!

Brussels Sprouts that Taste Great

• fresh brussels sprouts, cleaned and quartered
• a handful of pecans (more than one handful, if desired)
• sprinkling of herbes de Provence (or other herbs, as available or desired)
• one or more large canned roasted red peppers
• dollop of olive oil
• a little butter, if desired
• salt and pepper to taste

If the sprouts come on a stalk, pop each one off the stem, wash them and as necessary discard any wilted outer leaves. Cut each sprout in quarters. Cut the pepper(s) into bite-size pieces.

Skim the bottom of a frying pan with some olive oil and heat gently over medium to medium-high heat. If you’re using butter, add this, too, so it will melt into the olive oil. Add the pecans and stir them around for a few minutes to begin browning (don’t overdo this step). Then add the sprouts and herbs, stir well to coat with cooking oil and distribute herbs, and cook over medium-high heat until the veggies are nearing the “done” stage to your taste. IMHO, they’re best served al dente—still a little crisp. Shortly before you’re ready to serve, add the peppers and stir around so they will be warm and will add their flavor to the dish. Season to taste with salt and pepper.

This is so incredibly simple and so incredibly delicious!

Not only that, but once cooked, the sprouts seem to last forever in the fridge. I used them in three or four more meals, occasionally adding more of the yummy roasted peppers. One particularly handy variant is to reheat a bunch of them and serve them over a little pasta, sprinkled with Parmesan.

Oh…and there’s more. It turns out dogs like Brussels sprouts. Not only will certain golden retriever puppies scarf up pieces you carelessly drop on the floor, the stem makes an awesome chew stick for your pup! Charley, who’s now verging on 50 pounds and is sprouting (heh) all his adult teeth, made off with the thing and chewed at it for quite a while, until his attention wandered. He came back to it several times—never was able to pull it apart, and unlike other chew toys, it did not splinter or peel off pieces that might choke him.

If it's on the ground, it's mine!

Image of sprouts on the vine: Wikipedia; no artist given. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

The Frost Is on the Palm Tree

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Every time it rains in the low desert and snows in the high country, we know it’s gonna freeze come the first clear, cloudless night.

Welp, as we scribble we are enjoying that first clear, cloudless night. It as, as my daddy used to say, colder’n a bygod out there! I just spent a chunk of time covering stationary plants and hauling movable pots into the house.

Exactly what a bygod is, I never could figure out. His rustic turn of phrase (he had many, because by birth and temperament he was pretty rustic) always conjured up that metal idol the raging pagans used to incinerate infant sacrifices to their gods. You know…from Sunday School?

Okay, maybe your Sunday School was somewhat less rustic.

More recently I’ve come to think it’s a variant of bigod or by God, as in “by God, it’s cold out there!”

So as we sit in front of the cozy little space heater, let us count our bloggish blessings:

One of our favorite bloggers posts, on Facebook, that she’s in far colder climes than lovely uptown Phoenix, which will only reach about 32 degrees tonite: Talkeetna, Alaska, where she’s watching a competition of wilderness women. Somehow she’s managed to fill the pages on Surviving and Thriving, though (the woman must do nothing but travel and write!). Presently she’s offering a TSA-friendly travel bag as a giveaway and reporting entertainingly on her Black Friday adventures (oh god, am I glad I’m too broke to do that!).

Belatedly I’ve managed to get around to adding Frau Tech’s site to the blogroll. She gnashes her teeth about many of the same things that make my teeth grind: the state of American education, the inanity of the American workplace, the status of women in any place… Not only that, but my friend KJG’s daughter is a fine young engineer, requiring me not only to acknowledge FT’s site but to forward the link to her.

Nicole and Maggie want to know: Would you pay more to live in a good school district?

Over at Budgets are Sexy, J. Money has about had it with Black Friday, and so he offers a much more interesting topic for the day. Heh heh heh heh heh….

Take a look at the “Reader Story” guest post buy one Joe Z, at Get Rich Slowly. Joe addresses the issue of moving your family overseas for work, something that the current generation is calling “geographic arbitrage.” My seagoing father called it “taking a shore job for Standard Oil in Saudi Arabia,” but the effect was about the same as it is for young people today. And IMHO, it’s something every young American with a marketable skill should consider.

What with the current enthusiasm for raising your own chickens (La Maya and La Bethulia have got a clutch of chicks nesting in a back room!), Mrs. Accountability tells the tale of the time she and Mr. A decided to raise their own Thanksgiving turkeys. Pretty amazing!

At My Journey to Millions, Evan writes a letter to his son, celebrating son’s first birthday. Cute photos, too! LOL! The old man has to allow that all those smug friends and relatives who used to cluck “you’ll understand when you have kids” may have been right.

Money Beagle advises on things to consider before buying a condo—thoughts that could apply to any HOA that’s in a position to charge an assessment.

Well, the pork roast is cooked and I hunger. Later!

 

End in sight…but apparently not the end of teaching

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Only four more sets of papers to grade! Then, thank God, this semester will be over.

I was amazed to see that Mr. Boxankle’s final paper is something of a tour de force. Holy macquerel! He must have gone to the writing center. It’s totally reorganized, plumped up with new cited and documented sources, and decently edited. Whatever his strategy, let’s hope he can transfer it to his other courses. 🙂

The gent who’s already writing at the publishable level was not content to let good enough be. He also has produced a new, edited version, which I haven’t read yet because at two this morning I was busy plodding through his colleagues’ drafts.

Fell asleep around 7:00 or 8:00 p.m. last night and so naturally awoke in the wee hours. Finished the last set of drafts. Fell back in bed around 6:30. Slept until 8:30.

LOL! Maybe that’s the trick to getting a decent night’s sleep: go to bed at dusk!

Today I need to read the 101 students’ papers. Have to get through that by 2:00 p.m. so I can go to La Maya’s art exhibition in Scottsdale along about 3:00 p.m. That will leave only two sets of 2,500-word monstrosities from the 102 students, plus a set of brites from the magazine writers.

The brites should only take an hour or so. A brite by its nature is very short, and the feature-writing students are in that class because they want to be there. Although a few are a bit tone-deaf, by and large they all can write with some competence. And as for the endless 102 papers: final grades aren’t due until the 16th, so we have some time.

Making them turn their final monster papers in a week before the end of the semester, while it leaves me having to occupy them with busywork for three days, was a stroke of genius. It means we don’t have to do the marathon horror show on an impossibly tight deadline.

Well, having heard nothing from the church, I assume the hiring committee figured out that I was not the job candidate of their dreams. No doubt the line formed at the left, with hordes of unemployed accountants muscling each other aside to get in the door. Our pastor remarked that he’d like to get someone in place by the  middle of this month, which would be…yes. A week and a half from today. So, by now if they haven’t made their choice, they must at least have lined up interviews for everyone on their short list.

My application for the f/t job at Paradise Valley is still in the hopper. That closes on January 15, so it will be mid-semester (at best) before they’re interviewing. Realistically, there’s no way they’re going to hire anyone past retirement age into one of their plummiest jobs. But nothing ventured…

And I have one other scheme, besides the effort to hustle $60/hour business for the Copyeditor’s Desk: get a Realtor’s license, which will make it possible to get a scutwork assistant’s job in a real estate agency. Like the church admin job, pay would be poor and the job would be mostly clerical and bookkeeping, but at least it would be year-round.

Well, speaking of bookkeeping, in addition to a raft of papers to read, I have bills to pay and Quicken to update. And so, to work…

I Love My Students, but….

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{sigh} It’s 5:30. For the third time today, I think I’m done reading the current raft of travesties student papers that are pouring in as the semester ends. Most are still in the draft stage, so I will have the privilege of reading it all over again in the next week—much of it unchanged from the so-called draft.

You know, I really do enjoy students. They’re invariably interesting human beings. Most of them seem to be fairly bright. Some are funny, some are sweet, some are teeny-bopper obnoxious, some are scared, some are bold, some are earnest, some are full of beans. As a group, they possess a great deal of charm.

There’s that about teaching.

And I really do hate wasting my time. Few things annoy me more than feeling that I’ve devoted a great deal of time and effort to something for naught.

There’s that about teaching.

And therein lies the fundamental conflict. Few activities can delight an instructor more than dealing with students, and few things can waste more of an instructor’s time than dealing with students. It is a pursuit that at once pleases and infuriates.

A bouquet of comments (in blue, so as not to evoke blood by writing in red ink) from today’s readings:

Mr. Boxankle:

A college-level paper is organized into blocks of copy called “paragraphs.” Each paragraph treats one and only one topic. In the block above [which comprised the entire jumbled 750-word essay, except for a couple of sentences], you’re trying to deal with a bunch of different topics. Try making a topic outline. A “topic outline” is organized like this:

A. Thesis

1. A paragraph discussing a topic related to the thesis, containing the thesis statement.

a. Detail supporting or developing this point
b. Another detail supporting or developing this point
c. And so on, for as many details as are needed

2. A second paragraph discussing a topic related to the thesis

a. Detail supporting or developing this point
b. Another detail supporting or developing this point
c. And so on, for as many details as are needed

3. A paragraph discussing a closely related issue, and so on, to accommodate as many points as needed

B. A major issue to discuss relevant to the subject

1. A paragraph discussing a topic related to the issue

a. Detail supporting or developing this point
b. Another detail supporting or developing this point
c. And so on, for as many details as are needed

2. A second paragraph discussing a topic related to the issue

a. Detail supporting or developing this point
b. Another detail supporting or developing this point
c. And so on, for as many details as are needed

3. A paragraph discussing a closely related issue, and so on, to accommodate as many points as needed

C. Another major issue relevant to the subject

1. A paragraph discussing a topic related to the issue

a. Detail supporting or developing this point
b. Another detail supporting or developing this point
c. And so on, for as many details as are needed

2. A second paragraph discussing a topic related to the issue

a. Detail supporting or developing this point
b. Another detail supporting or developing this point
c. And so on, for as many details as are needed

3. Another paragraph discussing a closely related issue, and so on, to accommodate as many points as needed

 The items marked with capital letters (A, B, C) represent major sections of your paper. In some instances the items marked with capital letters might also represent single paragraphs; items marked with Arabic numerals (1, 2, 3) would always represent paragraphs.

So, let’s see how this might look as applied to your subject:

 A. Thesis: Public high schools should provide condoms to students, by way of preventing the spread of disease, forestalling unwanted pregnancies, and lowering drop-out rates. [PARAGRAPH]

1. Need for condom distribution

a. About 10% of girls aged 15 to 19 become pregnant
b. Many such children drop out of high school or perform poorly in school.

2. Acknowledgement of & summary of response to controversy

a. Even though the issue is controversial, more harm is done to teenagers by ignorance of safe sex and by unwanted pregnancy than by exposure to sex education and availability of contraceptives.

 B. Condoms protect their users from sexually transmitted diseases [PARAGRAPH]

1. These diseases include (name them)

2. Rates of STD among teens are (find out what these are, discuss)…

a. Syphilis
b. Gonorrhea
c. Chlamydia
d. HPV
e. HIV

3. Condoms have proven effective at preventing the spread of these diseases

a. Studies show that condom use cuts disease rates by x, y, z (look it up!)

 C. Condoms protect against pregnancy [PARAGRAPH]

1. Success rate is comparable to hormonal pills

a. Pills fail at XXX rate (look it up)
b. Condoms fail at YYY rate (look it up)

 D. Clearly young women who avoid pregnancy have a brighter future than those who give birth at an early age [PARAGRAPH]

1. XXX % of teen mothers do not complete schooling

2. High rate of pregnancy childbirth complications among teen mothers (get figures)

3. High rate of health problems for infants of teen mothers (get figures)

 E. Objections to condom distribution: Moral  

1. Some religions forbid use of contraceptives [PARAGRAPH]

a. Catholicism
b. Judaism (particular concern about condoms, as opposed to pills)
c. Extreme conservative Muslims

2.  Rebuttal: not all followers of these faiths agree with this [PARAGRAPH]

a. Percentage of Catholics who practice birth control (it’s something like 90% — look it up)
b. Exceptions in Judaism
c. Islamic thinking (http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/islam/islamethics/contraception.shtml)

3. Rebuttal: The U.S. Constitution strictly separates religion and secular government institutions, including schools; thus religious dogma should be kept out of public school policy. [PARAGRAPH]

 F. Objections to condom distribution: Practical

1. Some secular conservatives believe making condoms available will promote promiscuity. [PARAGRAPH]

a, b. Quote a couple of pundits holding forth on this idea

2. Rebuttal: a large percentage of teenagers are already sexually active, whether or not condoms are easily available [PARAGRAPH]

a. Show statistics proving this
b. Try to find stats showing that the absence of condoms has little effect on teen sexual activity

 G. Objections to condom distribution: educational

1. Many secular and religious conservatives believe teenagers should be taught abstinence, not informed about sexuality or given tools to control the consequences of sexual activity. [PARAGRAPH]

a. Explain their point of view; provide a quote or two from these people

2. Rebuttal: abstinence-only has been proven ineffective [PARAGRAPH]

a. Provide statistics (look it up!) to show this.

 H. Conclusion [PARAGRAPH]

1. Summarize pro’s and cons

2. Reiterate or emphasize your point of view

This is why outlining your ideas and facts is important! Whether you do so before you start to draft or after you’ve barfed out a draft on paper, you should always outline your material, so that you can organize it into coherent paragraphs.

Can you believe this? A graduate of 13 years of Arizona’s fine public schools does not know how to organize a three- or four-page essay into paragraphs. Or maybe,  like Bartleby, he prefers not.

Poor little guy doesn’t stop  there, though:

Works Cited

“Condom Conumdrum: Should condoms be available in schools.” Health Psychology Home Page. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Nov. 2011. <http://healthpsych.psy.vanderbilt.edu/condomConumdrum.htm>.

Why do you think there’s no date on this? When I go to the page, I see this, right at the top:

Condom Conundrum:  Should Condoms be Available in Schools?

Michelle Reising

Date: 11/16/2005

Note that this information includes the author, the date, and the title, correctly set in caps & lower case (In MLA style, we don’t type titles in all lower-case).  Another glance at this page reveals that there is indeed a publisher: Vanderbilt University. Please look up MLA style at the Purdue web page. This is another issue that a writing coach at the Learning Center can help you with.

Emihovich, Catherine. “Condoms in Schools: Debatabase – Debate Topics and Debate Motions.” IDEA: International Debate Education Association – Debate Resources & Debate Tools. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Nov. 2011. <http://www.idebate.org/debatabase/topic_details.php?topicID=235>. What’s this? No reference to it appears in-text.

FOR REVISION: Organize the paper into paragraphs; get enough research data to support the points you want to make.

FOR REVISION: Make sure all in-text references appear in the Works Cited and that the only things that appear in Works Cited are items to which reference has been made in the text.

FOR REVISION: Get MLA style right for both in-text citation and Works Cited.

FOR REVISION: Check facts; be sure your assertions are accurate.

Moving on… Ms. Wallbanger submits a paper advocating euthanasia. She neglects to mention that some people might object to practice.

Ms. Wallbanger:

Okay, now you need to add to this a consideration of THE OTHER point of view. And there are some good reasons to oppose euthanasia. The one that makes the most sense, if you’re not the religious type, is that some people are suicidal not because their ailment couldn’t be treated and made bearable but because they are pathologically depressed. In these cases, when the depression is treated, the patient often changes her or his mind.

For people who are religious, suicide (assisted or not) is a mortal sin. It condemns you to eternity in Hell. Thus we are morally obliged to discourage our fellow human beings from committing suicide, even if the person doesn’t subscribe to our religion (which we know to be the revealed truth).

Another issue you could address is the question of whether assisting a person to commit suicide makes the person who does the assisting a murderer. Under our present laws, it does. How exactly are the laws of 50 states and the U.S. government to be rewritten? Or should they be? There’s always the possibility that someone who stands to profit from a sick or elderly person’s death will choose to hasten things along. Same could be true of people who simply don’t like a relative.

 [Peer Reviewer A] and [Peer Reviewer B] question the strength of the thesis statement (or even what it is). I see it as this: “Not practicing euthanasia at the request of the dying person is violating a person’s rights, creating an economic burden, interfering with a doctor’s job, and increasing suffering.” It’s OK for a thesis statement, I think, tho’ the wording is a little clumsy & verbose. Try something like “Denying a dying person’s request for euthanasia violates the person’s rights, creates…, interferes with…, and increases….” Whenever possible, use strong verbs and write tight.

 FOR REVISION: about a third of your essay needs to respond to the thinking of people who have a different point of view. You can accomplish that by cutting some of the polemic, presenting the points in favor of euthanasia in an objective way, considering the other point of view and responding to it in a reasonable way, and then winding up with a satisfactory conclusion.

Heh heh heh heh… See, this is why we call it an “argument”…

And of course, this is why we call them “students”: They’re still learning.

🙂

It would be nice if they would learn from some of the things we’ve discussed in class.

Every now and again, a surprisingly good piece of writing surfaces from these characters. One young man has written an essay that verges on publishable. The topic is powerful, the content is well organized and well researched, the style is excellent for a writer at this level…or for any writer.

The thing that’s amazing about these community college classes is the enormous variety of skill and preparation among a student body that mostly consists of alert, bright, and motivated people. I would be very surprised if the author of the paper that shows no sign of instruction in basic organization were dyslexic, learning-disabled, or at all stupid. The author of the second effort is not unthoughtful. And the writer of the startlingly excellent paper is really no brighter than his classmates.

What is the explanation?

Some are numbed by boredom. Some have managed to slide through 12 years of Arizona’s version of K-12 education without having to develop any study skills (an IQ in the very low triple digits will allow that), and so they don’t know how to read effectively, they don’t know how to take notes, and they have no clue how to base a piece of writing on even the simplest research. Some spend so many hours working that they have neither energy nor time to do more than triage their classes. Some are immature and are simply goofing off.

About 80 percent of them have been shortchanged at the education check-out counter. Maybe 10 to 15 percent of them shortchange themselves. And another 5 to 10 percent arrive fully prepared and fully engaged.

I don’t know…maybe that just reflects human nature.