Underneath It All

I spent my entire teaching career in a compact, self-sufficient school district. For most of that time, it seemed like we didn't care how anybody else was doing anything; we had our own way. It didn't matter, for example, when neighboring school districts started, scheduled breaks, or called off for weather; our central administration made their own calls. We were relatively small, affluent, and independent.

All that changed gradually over the decades I worked there. Starting at the turn of the century, with the Bush administration's No Child Left Behind Act, there was a big push toward standardization, and individual schools and their policies became more centralized at all levels —nationally, statewide, regionally, and within the district. We were all supposed to be doing pretty much the same thing and measuring our success with high-stakes tests.

But I digress. I sat down to write about how I used to only have to check one district to see if my day would be affected by school cancellations or delays, but, ironically, now that I'm retired, I have to check three: one for my wife's schedule, one for my bowling league, and one for my consulting gig. Some things can't be standardized.

I thought that was kind of funny, but now I see I still feel some kind of way about NCLB and all its unintended consequences. All these years later, I still resent the loss of responsiveness and independence that came with uniformity for uniformity's sake.

Magic AI Ball

I can't even remember why I wanted it. 

Something made me think a button that randomly pulls a post from my blog archive would be a fun addition, so I put an AI site on the task and asked for the HTML code I needed to create such a widget. 

Oh my lord! What followed was an hour or so of cutting, pasting, saving, and testing. I will say that AI is a cheerful, confident collaborator. In addition to reassuring me that I wasn't at fault after every failed attempt, it offered a perfect "final solution" (its words, not mine) at least seven times. 

I almost believed it would work before I ran out of free queries, but alas, no such button currently exists. According to the chatbot, the breakdown is a result of several factors-- the sheer number of posts in the archive, the clunkiness of "Blogger being Blogger," and some sort of indexing issue with Google. 

By the end? I almost expected it to say, Reply hazy, try again later.

Barky McBarkster

Maybe it was the fact that, in the next breath, after telling us that Lucy barks for hours when we're not home, our neighbor offered, "It could be ghosts, though. We have at least two down here," that I did not believe it.

"When is she ever even alone?" I asked Heidi, indignantly, "I'm here almost all the time."

"That could be part of the problem," my reasonable wife suggested. "If it's the separation anxiety we've seen in the past, the fact that someone is here most of the time makes the times when she's alone worse."

I was still very skeptical. So much so that I found an app and downloaded it to both my phone and my iPad, turning the iPad into a bark monitor. "Now we'll see about this," I said firmly as I locked the door behind us on our way to see the Oscar Shorts.

The barking started on my phone before we even got to Bill and Emily's to pick them up, and throughout the movies, I received dozens of silent notifications on my watch that Lucy was barking. Even so, I held out hope for false positives, but when we got home, and I checked the activity log, it broke my heart to hear Lucy barking almost constantly, and often desperately, for close to an hour on two occasions.

Assuming it's not ghosts triggering her, our attention turns to solutions. Stay tuned.

She Showed Me

I took Lucy for a long walk this afternoon, passing through the little local shopping center near the end of our sojourn so that I could stop at the pharmacy. Dogs are allowed in there, and in fact, if Lucy had her way, we would go through those aisles every time we were in the area. I also had a library book on hold that I needed to pick up, and since you can check materials out with your phone, I thought it would be easy to sneak in and out the side door with Lucy.

Oh, was I wrong! We were only a few steps into the library, next to the hold shelf, when we ran into two little girls who politely asked if they could pet my dog. As they were exclaiming over her, their dad came over, complimented me on my good dog, and thanked me loudly for being so accommodating. Next thing I knew, a librarian was at my side. 

I gulped, but before I could offer my apology, she pointed to the book and phone in my hand and offered to check it out for me. I stood uncomfortably by the door until she returned and informed me that there was actually another book on hold for me. 

Would I like her to find it on the shelf and check that one out for me, too? 

"Yes," I shrugged awkwardly and waited a bit longer. "I'm so sorry for the inconvenience!" I told her as she handed me my book. "Thank you for your help."

"You're welcome," she answered.

"I'll never bring her again," I promised.

She nodded and walked away.

Lose Lose

Declutter! I wrote on my to-do list yeaterday. Get rid of 10 things! And I did. I found ten things in my closet that I hadn't worn in some time, and I added them to the donate bag. 

Putting away the last of the winter decorations was also on my list, and as I prepared to climb down from the attic after stowing the gnomes, lighted tree branch, and window candles until November, my eye fell on another item that I decided it was finally time to dispose of.

I loved the small wooden rocking chair from the moment I saw it in the thrift shop back in 2018. The price was right, too; I walked out of there only $9.99 lighter in the wallet. It was painted a chipped powder blue, but I paid my grad student neighbor to redo it cherry red, and I took it to school. Everyone wanted to sit in that chair! And I didn't blame them, but I was partial to it myself, so there weren't many opportunities for others to enjoy it.

It was only a few months later, when I returned after a few days' absence, that I found it broken. The sub left a note that he had leaned forward when one of the rockers was under a cabinet, and it cracked in half. He was sorry, but there was no offer of replacement. I tried to fix it over the years: glue, screws, and metal mending plates all worked for a while, but it was unusable by the time I retired in 2024. 

I brought it home anyway, certain that in my retirement I would find the time to mend it permanently, but it has languished in the attic ever since. I took a hard look at it yesterday and, wiggling the arms and back, concluded that it was time to let go. As I wrestled it down the pull-down stairs, it pivoted in my hand and swung hard into the closet door, smashing a hole in the hollow panel. 

I cussed myself out soundly, took the rocker downstairs, and knocked it to pieces for the garbage. Then I sighed and ordered new doors for the closet, because that's another thing that I can't fix.

No Protest Here

There were so many high school kids on the streets when I was walking Lucy this afternoon that I checked my watch to see if I had somehow lost an hour. And I almost asked one of them if school was out early, but he crossed the street before I could. I was even more confused when a carload of kids drove by, and rolled down the window to address a boy walking down the sidewalk. 

"Dude!" one shouted. "Stop skipping!"

The young man smiled and placed his finger to his lips.

I had almost forgotten the whole thing by the time Heidi got home, but then, as she was telling me about her day, she mentioned the walkout that students in our district planned to protest ICE this afternoon, and it all made sense. Clearly, these kids were exercising their right to free speech by taking a free afternoon; today, they walked out and kept going.

To be honest? Given the demographics of that high school, many of the students I saw are likely directly or indirectly affected by the crackdowns. They could well be the people their classmates are organizing to support. And if so, I hope they had a nice afternoon off.

Holiday Collab

"Ramadan starts tonight, dear," a friend of mine told me this afternoon, and we commiserated briefly about the challenges of fasting, especially from smoking, for her.

It wasn't until later, when I was planning dinner (lucky lo mein noodles!), that it occurred to me that the Lunar New Year also starts tonight. And a little while after that? I realized that it's Mardi Gras, so Lent starts tonight, too. Such a convergence delighted me, and I had to find out how rare it was.

A little research revealed that the last time these three events intersected was 1863. Somehow, I don't think many people back then were in a position to even realize such a coincidence; the world was divided into much more homogeneous places, religiously, at least.

The next time? It will be 2189, and by then, maybe the world will be down to celebrate together.