Rock On, Dude

Posted on April 20, 2007 by Frog

I went to a lecture this morning called “Component Skills in Reading: Linking Research and Practice”. John Strucker of NCSALL-Harvard Graduate School of Education was the speaker. He was introduced as the rock star of literacy research.

I don’t know anything about literacy except to know that illiteracy is a very bad thing. It cascades into less health care, less money, less community involvement, nearly less everything. I’ve also never been a reading teacher and like most professions there are plenty of acronyms which I had never heard of and couldn’t even pretend to decipher.

With all my deficits, I found his talk to be interesting and engaging. I don’t know that he was very rock star-ish but I am going to look up a few things he talked about to get a better understanding of the John Strucker fan club. I just wish I could figure out how to take what I learned and incorporate it into my own work. I’m not sure that a solution will readily present itself as everyone we teach has at least an undergraduate degree.

Some of the ideas discussed:

Invented Spelling: I don’t remember doing this because I really don’t remember not knowing how to read which means I don’t remember how not to spell. Which means I was too young to remember, I didn’t do this or I jumped into reading and writing pretty quickly.

Transparent Orthography (languages like Italian, Portuguese, Spanish)

English is an opaque writing system—it is a little more difficult to teach someone how to read English. There are 26 letters in the alphabet but something like 40 fundamental phonemes. Just goes to show you I should have spent more time paying attention in the Linguistics class I had to take as an undergraduate. It seems like linguistic concepts keep cropping up.

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Because I Have Not Sufficiently Bored You To Tears Yet

Posted on April 19, 2007 by Frog

After our massive success with taking someone else’s sausage and putting it through the Porkert, we went to the grocery store and got ingredients to make our own. I think we’re onto something now.

We made Hot Italian Sausage and here are some pictures that you will either love or hate, depending on whether or not you are sick of my pork stories. I love the pork. It’s the other white meat, you know.

Here’s the basic mixture after one pass through the grinder:

Here’s a test portion cooking so we could check the seasoning:

All full and twisted:

I didn’t like the way my twists were holding and we wanted to cut the long link string into smaller batches so I tied them with kitchen twine, I know, I’m an amateur:

In other news, the rosemary plant we’ve had for a few years and that has finally started to look hale and hearty, bloomed:

Everyone likes to eat out of the bird feeder:

Posted in Eating | 2 Comments

Peace. Love. Understanding.

Posted on April 17, 2007 by Frog

There’s a lot of discussion going around about what VT officials shoulda, woulda, coulda done to prevent more carnage on their campus. I think we all need to STFU and quit pointing fingers at regular men and women dealing with something that is so far outside of what anyone expects or anticipates.

It is very easy to be the armchair quarterback on Sunday and it is very easy to sit in the comfort of our homes and blame someone in charge for what happened on Monday. Who do we need to blame–we can start with the asshole who took guns on campus and started shooting people. I’m sure there will be tons of discussion about how to prevent people from snapping and turning to violence to resolve personal problems. That’s valuable information to have if you are ever witness to someone close to you who may be on the verge of harming himself or others.

What we really need to do is to quit second-guessing the VT officials and let them figure out what happened. Let’s hold off on the judgment for a little while. Can’t we expand our attention spans for more than the time it takes to listen to some sound-bites–before we’re ready to move on to another story? We spend months on a bleached-blonde train wreck and yet we jump to conclusions and finger-pointing as soon as we catch a whiff of something so tragic. Let VT have a minute to catch its collective breath.

For some disclosure:
I work for a very large urban university in Virginia. I’m also a student there. We spent a great deal of time watching teevee yesterday as the events unfolded. We spent a lot of that time in silence. Many of the people I work with have kids and many of them have kids who are either in college or about to go. Some of the people I work with also have grown children who work in a university system. My husband and close friends went to VT. This hits close to home.

Posted in General Spleen Venting | 1 Comment

It is the Year of the Pig

Posted on April 15, 2007 by Frog

When the better-half was at the Butchery the other day, they greeted him with “we’re glad you are here, because look what we have for you”. He came home with two chunks (I’m sure there’s a more technical term than this) of bacon soaking in a soy sauce mixture. They said they’d cooked up some rice, chopped some romaine and then lightly heated the bacon, chopped it and feasted on this dish for lunch.

We decided to give the dish a whirl yesterday. We didn’t have romaine on hand so I chopped up some green leaf and made some Texmati rice. We used one of the chunks o’ bacon and about half of the soy mixture. Oh, my sweet baby Jesus, it was good.

Yes, we have a thing for pork:

This didn’t last very long:

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Porkert Rules

Posted on April 14, 2007 by Frog

We had the crazy idea many, many years ago to make our own sausage. Flash forward more than 6 years and here we are finally breaking out the Porkert.

While the better-half was at the Belmont Butchery earlier this week, he got about a pound of bulk merguez. Last night we pulled out the Porkert, gave it a good washing, assembled and then ran the merguez through and into collagen casing. While technically we haven’t actually made sausage yet, we have formed sausage. We need practice twisting the casing into sausage pieces and making sure we get rid of air pockets, so naturally we’ll have to actually make the sausage from scratch next time just so we can practice our forming.

Here’s a photo of my hand and the first few links:

The long shot of the finished product and Porkert:

And, finally, just before we ate. Delicious:

Posted in Eating | 1 Comment

And So It Goes

Posted on April 13, 2007 by Frog

By now we all know Kurt Vonnegut died earlier this week. I’ve read some really great articles in the past few days about his life and work. I must confess; I haven’t read anything by him in years.

I still remember reading Slaughterhouse-Five when I was a young teen. I consumed that book like it was air. I feel like I carry some part of that story in my very fiber. Which sounds totally pretentious and crazy, but I think I read that book at exactly the right time. It opened up my tastes in books: it expanded my horizons.

Thanks Mr. Vonnegut.

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Take One Down And Pass It Around

Posted on April 12, 2007 by Frog

The new president of my alma mater was recently arrested for driving under the influence. He crashed his vehicle, drove on one of his rims for blocks with the cops following him and then refused a breathalyzer. I know this is a troubling time for him and his family and for the university as a whole, but I laughed heartedly when I heard the news this morning. I’m a bad, bad person.

I’m curious how this event will be handled…as we practically choked to death on all the “don’t drink campaigns” while I attended that school in the late 1980s. There’s a little secret about how much drinking goes on there (or did while I was there) because the kids who go there are upper-middle class and privileged and who also happen to be slightly smarter than the average bear.

I’ll be very surprised if the new president doesn’t become the old president soon. Keeping him around could be a good lesson in responsibility (major judgment error, go through treatment, come out humbled and better for it, continue to lead) but I think the Board will go into reputation protection mode and this will be the end of this president’s career at the school.

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My Eyes Bled

Posted on April 10, 2007 by Frog

I caught this article on Salon in the Broadsheet column:

A reader just alerted us to a controversy in London, Ontario sparked by a recent spoof issue of the University of Western Ontario’s campus newspaper, The Gazette. It included a so-called “satirical” article about a “Take Back the Nightie” march held on campus, supposedly organized by Western’s Women’s Issues Network (WIN).

In the hands of The Onion, this might actually have been funny. But unfortunately, the article fell far, far short of the humor it supposedly was aiming for. You can check out the full text here, but these are a few choice excerpts:

-”‘My vagina told me she hates thongs . . . they’re far too restrictive,’” said Jennifer Ostrich, a vocal WIN member. ‘”And what my vagina wants, my vagina gets.’”

-”Near the end of the march, chaos broke out when Ostrich’s vagina crawled from under her flowing white nightie, stole a loudspeaker, and went on a rampage. . . . “‘You don’t know me, bee-otch,’ it squealed. ‘You can’t even see me through all this hair you’ve let overgrow. Think of me. I can’t even breathe down here.’”

Laughing yet? Keep reading.

“Upon seeing the chaos, London Police Chief Murray Faulkner stopped greasing his nightstick and intervened. He grabbed the loudspeaker from Ostrich’s wild vagina and took it into a dark alley to teach it a lesson.”

It then continues: “To Ostrich’s dismay, the vagina followed, giggling as it said, ‘I love it when a man in uniform takes control.’”

Clearly the article was written by a dumbass, but the editor should be flogged for this sentence:
“He grabbed the loudspeaker from Ostrich’s wild vagina and took it into a dark alley to teach it a lesson.”

So which thing did he take down the alley? The loudspeaker or the wild vagina?

Posted in Reading | 1 Comment

Sweet, Sweet Quiet

Posted on April 9, 2007 by Frog

There are 3 people in the building today. I do not know how I got so lucky. I like my co-workers, I really do, but today is a GIFT. Thank you Easter Bunny.

Last week in my Adult Development class we received the results from our Meyers Briggs. I’ve been searching high and low at home for the results from about 8 or 9 years ago. I’m now typed as ISTJ but I’m almost positive I was a INTJ last time around. I’ve been teasing the better-half since the results pointing out that I can’t help being neat, orderly and responsible. If I didn’t behave that way, I’d be going completely against my personality and the back of my head would probably explode.

I’m a strong introvert with the ability to switch gears when the situation is necessary. I have stood in front of large groups and conducted training session after training session with little trouble. In situations like those, I have something to say. Put me in a group of people at a cocktail party where I don’t know anyone and I will be the one standing over in the corner watching everyone else. There are some people out there who can’t stand that behavior: “You must be miserable standing over here by yourself, quick, let’s go meet my huge group of friends.” Er, no.

I worked with a woman a few years ago and we became friends outside of work. We still talk occasionally and sometimes about her daughter, the introvert. My friend and her daughter are so different when it comes to this basic personality trait. My friend has never met a stranger. As her daughter was turning into a teen, the introvert trait got a little stronger. I had to reassure my friend that her daughter wasn’t falling apart, she just needed to stop the outside noise occasionally. And, that’s what it really is like…stopping the outside noise.

Sometimes it’s hard getting that quiet, so on days like this, I do feel like I’ve received a shiny gift.

Posted in Thinking | 1 Comment

Another Saturday Night Well Spent

Posted on April 8, 2007 by Frog

We, in the figurative sense, stayed up to listen to Live From Mountain Stage tonight. By we, I mean me. The better-half faked it through most of the acts but snored hard through Patty Griffin’s act. I’m sure he’s sorry, Patty. We saw Patty live several years ago at a “guitar pull” and she was described by her fellow performers as sounding like they all think they sounded like when singing in the shower. Patty has an amazing voice and I, for one, can combat fatigue to stay awake and hear her perform (heh). If you haven’t heard her live or on a CD, please check her out. She’s amazing.

Anne McCue performed as well and she’s always a treat too. The Last Town Chorus covered a David Bowie song and did a remarkable job. You should seek them out (or seek out Megan Hickey) and you won’t be disappointed.

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