Hi There. It's been over, what, two weeks since I last wrote? My apologies. As if my life, what I do, or what I have to say actually strikes a chord with anyone, anyway.
No, really, I know that it does matter. But I'm having a hard time thinking that I'm not sounding so pretentious right now. OK, enough with that, the reason that I haven't had time to update is twofold. The first is the same old, the triple duty of school, student teaching, and work. There's finally light at the end of the tunnel with two plus weeks to go, but before that the construction of a novel sized work of text has to be done encompassing all of my classes. I'm actually excited about one of them and not about the other. The excitement lies upon coming up with a community action plan against stealing and vandalism within a low SES (social-economic status) community/school neighborhood. We're to ground our plan on principles learned in class (relating to the idea that school is an agency of socializing students into their adult role and in essense keeping the status quo) and to involve all pieces of a community such as teachers/administrators/parents/etc. So - I'm working on an after-school community action plan. Not as easy as it sounds - but, the idea is to avoid direct-cause/effect actions such as installing metal detectors in schools because of weapons brought onto campus. The idea is that there are overarching engrained reasons to why something like that is happening. The other reason I've been unbelievably unavailable is that I went through my first major car accident, one in which I'm not sure if I'm fully recovered from - Massive amounts of guilt ensued after it happened, as I had three passengers involved, and countless questions concerning what if??? came as a result for the next few days, even after knowing that, really, there was nothing that I could do about it. Fortunately, no one was hurt, and ironically, I got over it quicker than most because of the massive amount of work I had piled on-There was just no time to wallow in self-pity! Something like that does bring you back to earth, though. I had the pleasure of realizing how great most of my cohort was in that many of them offered rides (my car was out of commission for a week) the entire week even though they lived on the other side of town and our classes ended at ten pm. I wonder, however, that once all of this work is over in the next three weeks if I will feel the weight of the accident over me mentally?
That's the personal side. What else has been up? Let's see.
-Arnold lost all of his propositions in California. Great job, people! Now to make you feel better, here is a gem I found courtesy of mblog, it will make you laugh, scare you, and make you say words in your language that you may not be able to translate in english at the idoicy of our state. click here for the video (quicktime)
-Ugliness at De Anza protests leads to charges of racial profiling -- I have been so out of touch with reality that I just found out about this recently - Read the article, I am really stunned. Well, not really. But just disappointed. Still believe we live in a land of milk and honey? This occurred at a community college near my area.
-Sean Watkins of Nickel Creek surprisingly without much notice released his latest -- blinders on -- online for purchase! The album comes out on cd format early next year, but you can purchase it at www.seanwatkins.com -- It's a headphone album, imo. A lot of great tracks like runaway girl, roses never red, starve them to death, and no lighted windows. A few "what was he thinking?" songs, but, hey, that's what solo records are for, right? Speaking of solo records, Sara talks about her upcoming as well as Sean and Chris talking about upcoming here. Sean's latest also features Jon Brion, Sara, Rashad Eggleston on cello (he's amazing live-saw him with darol anger's republic of strings band), and wilco's drummer, Glenn Kotche, and also Dan Wilson of Semisonic. The full band actually will hit San Francisco's Warfield on Dec. 10 for locals reading this.
-some new favorite cds to listen to: wilco's new live cd "kicking television", broken social scene's self titled album, fiona apple's latest-- enjoy.
2 comments:
Hey Johnny!
I am flipping out with the news article on race profile. I am suprised (well, not a lot) that of any states in Americam it has to open in CA. There is no hope for your country...
About Arnold's video, still downloading it and saving it on to my disk, so I will comment on that later.
And about the accident... I agree that it is a good thing you had to keep yourself busy so that your mind was not on that. I doubt that it will hit you any harder once you are off for the holidays. But if it does, do yourself a favor and don't think about the "what-ifs"... because they are useless. Not only will they not help you get over it, but they won't change what happened either. Just be happy it was only a little scare.
Ok, both your brother and I saw the clip, and I have had too long of a day to make any comments, other than "he is lame, but ever more so He who votes him". Seriously, keep linking the good stuff like this and there is a chance I might not go to The States in the end...
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