I am so sad to say that we lost a great friend today.

I still remember the first time i ever talked to Bob Brownlee,
he called me about the voting machines.

I forget if the commissioners had already bought the machines
or were about to, but I had given up. I was frustrated and tired.
I said, "Sorry, it is too late, it is over, we lost the battle."

But, Bob was not going to give up the fight!
He was determined!

I think this is interesting (and very recent) news. I wonder who his ground teams will be?

Dumas Circulating Petitions for Democratic Party nomination for the US House of Representatives, 5^th Congressional District of Pennsylvania.

Charles Dumas is circulating petitions for the Democratic Party nomination for the US House of Representatives, 5^th Congressional District of Pennsylvania. Dumas is a Professor in the School of Theatre, Pennsylvania State University. He is also a visiting professor at the University of the Free State in South Africa. He writes a monthly column for the Centre Daily Times called Under the Baobob. Dumas served three years as Chair, Human Relations Commission of the State College Borough and has worked actively on many Democratic campaigns during his seventeen years in Centre County. Dumas earned Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science from State University of New York (SUNY), Juris Doctorate from Yale University, was the first Hendler Fellow in Screenwriting at the American Film Institute and a Fulbright fellow at Stellenbosch University, South Africa.

Prior to Law School, Dumas was a Congressional intern in Congressman Charles Rangel's Washington office. He was a legal researcher for the United Nations Centre on Transnational Corporations (UNCTC) and worked for two years in the corporate law offices of the IBM Corporation. Dumas served as Chairman of the Board of Directors of Mid-Hudson Legal Services in New York, taught Constitutional Law at SUNY and ran for NY State Senate before moving to Pennsylvania.

“Scholarship implies the possession of learning characteristic of the advanced scholar in a specialized field of study of investigation (a first –rate literary scholarship).” This explanation comes from Miriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. The quotation comes from a useful section which differentiates among knowledge, learning, erudition, and scholarship.

My experience with scholarship comes from classes at the Hebrew Academy of Greater Miami where I was taught, in grades one through eight, the distinction between the word of God and scholars interpreting the word of God.

For example, in Grades one and six we read Genesis in Hebrew. Our text dated to the 7th and 10th centuries CE era when the Masoretic text was codified, the earliest and most authoritative Biblical text available. Each letter in the book of Genesis we read, the publisher counted and proofread to make sure it was identical with the original and the publisher reproduced the word count to Genesis at the end to the book.

Distinction was made between the Bible and its many distinguished interpreters. The word of God was authoritative. Rashi and Maimonides both were scholars, high-respected as were other scholars, but no one presumed, including the scholars themselves, to distinguish between interpreting God and the word of God which we believed the Bible had given us.

I am not equating Hemingway with God (although reading George Plimpton’s interview with Hemingway in the Paris Review might cause the reader to conclude that at times Hemingway thought he was God). The point I am making is that the most important scholarship comes from the primary texts.

“That makes no sense whatsoever,” said Hutchinson.

That statement begs for an explanation, which, to be honest, I was not fully prepared to give at Monday's board meeting. I did not anticipate having to defend a practice widely used by school boards in the era of Act 1, and I certainly didn't expect to have to defend the ethics /morality of that decision.

A little history on school budgeting is in order. Once upon a time, although school budgets were developed over a period of months, the actual tax rate wasn't determined until fairly late in the process - usually not until June - by which time you would have a much clearer picture of the most important factors impacting the budget, such as:

Dylan Ratigan (that's the guy's name, right), get's fired up and lays down a fine rant about how the money in politics is destroying the american leader's ability to govern...  Yes it's old, yes nothing not one thing has changed, and yes we are still pretty much screwed.

It's old - 2011 - but it has been reappearing netsam (net flotsam) for some reason - election season I guess.

Ratigan blamed not only both houses of Congress but also the president for failing to address the root of the country's economic problem. He said of President Obama, according to an MSNBC transcript:

Dear Voices,
Wallis "Wally"Lloyd (1929-2011) was a prominent member of the State College Community, as his obituary in thr CDT described. As a longtime friend and neighbor, I want to honor Wally's memory with the brief piece below. I hope you find it of interest for Voices.
All best for the New Year!
Robert

Dr. Robert Lima, OIC
Knight Commander, Order of Queen Isabel of Spain
Academician, Academia Norteamericana de la Lengua Española
Corresponding Member, Real Academia Española
Enxebre Orde da Vieira

REMEMBERING WALLIS “WALLY” LLOYD (1929-2011)

By ROBERT LIMA

On January 15^th, family and friends of Wally Lloyd commemorated his recent death at a memorial service in the Fireside Room of the Nittany Lion Inn. Wally was my longtime neighbor and friend and we joined the large crowd honoring his memory.

It was 1970 when Sally and I moved to Orlando Avenue. We knew people on that street: Jo & Jack Searles and Pat and Wally Lloyd. Our house was four from the Searles and diagonally across from that of the Lloyds. New friends, the Lavins and the Petersens, were only houses from ours. We were all to become very close friends and would go to dances at the Elks, where Gary and Wally were members.

I had met Wally several years earlier. He was a prime mover of the recently-founded Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts and in 1968 I was invited to chair that year’s event. I formed several committees to organize the Artists-in-Action, the Sidewalk Shows, the Juried Crafts, the Film showings, the Music events, the Poetry readings, and the Juried Art … It was in this last context that Wally’s engineering know-how shone for he arranged a pulley system to lift heavy paintings from behind the HUB, over the balcony and into the exhibit areas; he was the X-factor in making the Juried Art exhibit a success.

better than hollywood

Back before I joined the school board, my first education conference was Bill Daggett's Model Schools Conference.  He made an impression on me, as did his mantra - which he still uses: "rigor, relevance and relationships".  A recent interview in Education Weekly gave me reason to think about it again.

It's hard to find an education 'reformer' today who isn't advocating for greater 'rigor' in our education curriculum - everyone seems to be calling for 'higher standards'.  (It's no surprise that not many people are calling for 'lower standards'.)  The problem is that most of the rhetoric has it backwards.

As Daggett reminds us in the interview, "relevance makes rigor possible - when students find their studies relevant, teachers can increase the rigor to meet the needs of students."

For generations (at least) we've heard calls to make education more relevant. But in the decade since I first heard Daggett, a fair amount of research has been produced that backs up Daggett's thesis.  As pointed out by John Medina in "Brain Rules", human beings do not pay attention to boring stuff.  Allow me to repeat that:  human beings (including kids) do not learn that which is not interesting to them.

And how do we know what is interesting to kids?  Daggett's third R, relationships.  "It's important for educators to know their students. Educators need to know what is interesting to them... those are the ways to engage students."

I came across something nice on the net today, and wanted to share it. This image was released by NASA recently, and is supposedly the most detailed image of the earth ever taken - and it happens to be a direct view of our continent and country. Click the picture to see it full size.

Now, I have modified this image a bit, to make it the right size for a computer desktop background. The full size image is 3000 pixels by 2000 pixels, and fits nicely on my desktop. You can click this thumbnail above and save the full size image and use it on your desktop, or pass it along to some science geek you know, they are sure to appreciate it.

Here's one of the places this photo was released, with original links. You can get more info there and look at the supersized lossless TIF image.

http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view.php?id=57723

"This spectacular “blue marble” image is the most detailed true-color image of the entire Earth to date. Using a collection of satellite-based observations, scientists and visualizers stitched together months of observations of the land surface, oceans, sea ice, and clouds into a seamless, true-color mosaic of every square kilometer (.386 square mile) of our planet. These images are freely available to educators, scientists, museums, and the public. This record includes preview images and links to full resolution versions up to 21,600 pixels across."

I always liked Jethro Tull - just not a kind of music the corporations will make anymore...

And here are a few more... Locomotive Breath

Aqualung

Christmas Song

The House Republican Caucus announced today that they will perform “A Tea Party Christmas Carol,” for contributors on the Mall this Saturday night.  The production will be directed by John Boehner.  Starring as Scrooge will be the versatile Eric Cantor, who candidly admits, “except for my performances in the House and with the Media, I have not acted since High School.” Eric says that in the play, “Scrooge wavers in his belief that the “one-percenters”, as job producers, should not be made to pay for anything.”  To convince him of the error of his ways, Scrooge is visited by four ghosts on Christmas Eve. In the Tea Party version, however, Scrooge is not visited by his decreased partner, Jacob Marley, but by the ghost of Ayn Rand--- and here, we have been told, unofficially, she is to be played by the great Sara Palin.  Ghosts of the past, present and future are replaced, in the production, by three robber barons (actors are to be announced, but rumor has it all three parts are to be played by Glenn Beck).  Boehner guaranteed that the part of the inept and inefficient, Bob Crachit, will be played by Barack Obama, while his crippled son, Tiny Tim, will be played by Harry Reid.  Although spokesmen for Obama and Reid have both denied that they will act in the production, Boehner assures us that “they will play their parts.”   
Fox News is already calling the production “A triumph of American ingenuity---a capitalist manifesto,” although they do admit to not having seen it yet.  Fox also advises that you bring lots of tissues to the production on Saturday night as, “in spite of the best efforts of compassionate conservatism, Tiny Tim cannot be saved.”