Well that was somewhat scary

Son called me last night to tell me his right side has been hurting since Thursday night when he walked home from the service station after his car broke down. It's been getting worse, and not better--so of course my first thought was appendicitis.

This whole issue of finding health care and car care in an entirely different state is incredibly frustrating. Thank God for the Internet, where I quickly found a walk-in clinic not far from his workplace. Son is still covered under our insurance, so I figured it would be no big deal--I'd just give them the info over the phone, and we'd get him taken care of. Uhhhhh not so fast there pardner--the clinic would not take the number over the phone. Son doesn't have the new card, and although he has his own insurance now thanks to his library job, he doesn't yet have the ID cards for that either. That meant we had to pay up front. So no, they wouldn't take my insurance ID card over the phone, but they'd take my credit card if I scanned both sides and faxed the scan to them along with a scan of my driver's license and a written consent to charge me $150 plus any lab fees.

Again, thank God for the Internet. I have a scanner but no fax machine, so I found an online e-fax site and sent the document off.

Thank God a third time that Son didn't have appendicitis, only an inflamed rib joint. He's on ibuprofen for a week and hopefully feeling better today.

As for the rest of the family, Youngest Daughter is touring Arequipa today. Tomorrow she leaves Peru for the long trip home, arriving in HomeCity at 3 p.m. on New Year's Day. I cannot wait to see her! I've been able to talk to her via Gmail chat, and it sounds like she's gotten a lot of souvenirs and a lot of photos. Eldest Daughter has cleaned up the mess we left behind and gotten a chance to rest a bit after the onslaught of her family :-)

Workwise, I was assigned a session to chair at my professional conference in Vancouver this coming May. I guess that means I have to go, ha ha. My abstract was obviously accepted, so work must begin on the paper for this conference. I'm also picking at a train-the-trainer proposal for my boss, and working on learning R via an online course at my uni. Feels nice to work on things at a leisurely pace.

In whatever state you find yourself, be content

"I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do everything through him who gives me strength." Philippians 4:11-13, NIV.

When I get frustrated about finances and where we are or aren't going in the quest for a debt-free life, I have to stop and read that passage. There are lots of people worse off than we are (and lots who are better off, but who cares about that? Good for them! I hope I get to that level at some point, too!), so I am trying to not let money issues worry me. That includes unexpected car repair bills (Son's). I'm thankful we have the funds to take care of that kind of thing, even if I have to juggle stuff to cover it.

Christmas was wonderful, and Eldest Daughter did herself proud. She worked so hard to make things nice! Her apartment looked festive! We brought the star for her tree from home, and darn it, the thing didn't work. So we ran over to Walgreen's and found the exact same star (bought two!). I had unearthed Son's missing ornaments while trying to find ED's cross-country ski boots, so I brought his box with me and we put them on the tree for him to find. His flight was late and it was 3 a.m. by the time he got to ED's apartment. ED showed him the tree and he saw his long-lost Rudolph ornament hanging right in the front. It was a great moment.

We had planned to go ice skating on my birthday, but it was too warm so we just hung around ED's place for the afternoon watching our football team lose, and then went to her boyfriend's parents' place for dinner. We had a nice evening with them. It was so thoughtful of them to do that!

Christmas Eve was spent making cookies and chili for Christmas Day. We watched a movie and some cooking shows, then read A Visit from Saint Nicholas and sprinkled the obligatory Santa glitter out ED's window.

Christmas morning was beautifully sunny. We had presents under the tree! Santa found us after all! After we opened our gifts we had our chili but were too full for dessert (I think ED planned it that way so she would get all the cookies to herself, ha ha). The boys tried to get tickets for the movies, but there was a huge line so they went to Blockbuster instead and rented one.

Wednesday morning EAAAAAAAAAAARLY we got up to take Son to the airport (sniff). We were so early, we beat security! Spouse and I ventured out again around 7:30 a.m. to look for a breakfast place that wasn't a doughnut shop or McDonald's, but none was to be found. We finally settled for Burger King and a truly awful meal. Then we picked up ED and went to see the new National Treasure movie. A good time was had by all. Afterwards we said goodbye to our precious girl and headed home.

Now I'm easing back into work in preparation for the next seven weeks of this quarter and the spring semester at my alma mater, where I am teaching a grad class on Mondays. Good thing I checked my work e-mail, because I'd totally forgotten about the four recommendation letters I needed to write for one of my students. Got those done this morning, whew!

I did three loads of laundry this morning. Kitty Son, who has been my shadow since I got back, decided to check things out to make sure everything was in working order. He gave the dryer his sniff of approval and finally got out so I could put the clothes in. Nice of him.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Going on hiatus until after the 26th. Have a wonderful holiday--I know we will!

A sloth?

My kid wants a baby sloth. Her reasoning: They are cute. They only go to the bathroom once a week. They are cute. They bury their doodoo, so the baby could use the cat litter box. They are cute.

But baby sloths grow up, and sloths get BIG!

Yes, they are cute (the babies, that is). But I think it would seriously freak me out to see a sloth hanging from the ceiling fan.

Anyway, YD seems to be having a wonderful time, and I got to talk to her via Google IM which was wonderful. Sounds like she has made a lot of purchases...

I am feeling virtuous because I've made cookies for my department. Of course, I still have 12 data mining assignments and 12 stats assignments to grade and a database to update. But the cookies are made!

We had a big grant meeting today at 11 a.m. and I totally and completely forgot about it. Didn't put it on my calendar. Went in to the office in jeans and a sweater. Then Boss called to see where I was, and I ran over to the student union where the meeting was. Ack. All was okay, though, they had just started and no one noticed the jeans (I hope!).

Saturday I get to see Eldest Daughter and Son!! Spouse and I will drive to the City Too Very Far Away to spend Christmas with ED, and Son flies in from the State Too Very Far Away around midnight. Sunday is my birthday, and plans are to go skating and then watch our Favorite Football Team in the afternoon. I cannot wait!

Piranha and blow guns

It seems my sweet little daughter has learned to shoot a blow gun and fished for piranha. I am betting she wanted to bring both the gun and the fish home. Son asked if YD and Pretty Niece whacked the piranha with a wrench (reminiscent of an Adirondack vacation in which both sweet little girls took fiendish pleasure in dispatching rock bass and perch in that manner) but I guess the kitchen help took care of that. College Friend says the fishies were tasty.

I told him to tell my kid to write me or I'd spend her money.

That wasn't so bad, and news from Peru

We didn't get nearly as much snow as they forecast, somewhere around 10" total. Of course, our house in HomeCity is blessed because the neighborhood snow somehow gets blown right into our driveway...time to dig out.

Last night I got an e-mail from Best Friend saying that they are having a great time in Peru. She also said that Youngest Daughter had a touch of heat sickness while they were visiting a Yagua Indian village but has completely recovered. She said it was endearing to see the chief of the village fanning YD--I hope they took a picture! (Although if YD was looking sick, she probably wouldn't appreciate being photographed) Today they take the Canopy Walkway over the rainforest. Maybe it will be a bit cooler so many feet up in the air. Poor baby!

I am grading the first set of assignments for this quarter. When I gave the assignment (three short paper reviews) I emphatically told them to write the paper summaries in their own words; that they were not to use chunks of text directly from the author without enclosing the text in quotes and properly citing the author. The second student paper was just skating --this close-- to plagiarizing. His paper didn't get flagged on Turnitin, but I looked at the original papers and he was too closely paraphrasing for my comfort level.

Checking for plagiarism is a time-consuming and annoying effort. I sure hope the other 18 papers aren't like that one.

Well, here it comes

It started snowing around 7:30 p.m. and we already have about 3 inches on the ground. Should be interesting!

Waiting for the Big Storm

Wow, it's been a while since I blogged! The beginning of the week was horribly busy, getting Youngest Daughter ready for her trip. She had to have a Hepatitis A shot, her last set of weekly allergy shots (hurray!) and we needed to get a bunch of little things for the trip, including mosquito repellant wipes. While we were at the sporting goods store YD spotted a pack of "travel-size" duct tape. As we are great fans of all things duct tape, we just HAD to buy that. Who knows, it might come in handy!

Wednesday morning we went to the Original Pancake House with my sister-in-law to have Dutch Babies. Yummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Then we brought YD to the airport at 4:30. Luckily, there was no line at security and she got through in minutes--although they had to put her carryon through the X-ray machine twice. Must have been the box of cookies she made to take with her!

YD stayed overnight in DC, since her plane for Peru didn't leave until Thursday morning. She called me before they left, which was really nice. Thursday evening she called from Panama, where she'd toured Panama City and the canal, but the call came during my class so I missed talking to her. Apparently Pretty Niece took her computer along, so YD e-mailed me later in the evening. They were heading off to take a cruise on the Amazon. Kitty Son misses YD very much. He has been running around trilling and meowing and jumping up and off the bed and tables and generally being a pain in the butt, although a cute one.

After class Thursday night Dad and I put tube sand in the back of my truck and installed a board across the bed to hold the sand in place. Just in time, too, because we are supposed to get 12-18 inches of snow this weekend. Everyone is stocking up on milk, bread, and other necessities since it looks like we may be snowbound Sunday. I'm glad I got the tonneau cover on the truck so I don't have all that snow in the bed.

Yesterday I went to dinner with my mom and she and Dad gave me an early birthday present--a blue cardigan sweater. It's gorgeous! We were hungry early, but it took some looking to find a restaurant that was open at 3 in the afternoon. Most were closed until 4:30 or 5:00. But, we finally found an Italian place close by that had great food and delicious bread.

So today I am in grading jail with the first set of assignments of the winter quarter. Too bad there's no Grading Fairy. But I have "The King and I" on TV, puffy MamaCat on my lap, and a steaming hot cup of tea to keep me company.

Getting ready for the big trip


Youngest Daughter is leaving this week for a three-week trip to Peru with Auntie and Uncle and Cousin from Virginia. We have shopped until we dropped for all the necessities she needs to take with her. Tomorrow she gets shots and new asthma meds to take with her, and starts packing in earnest.

Today we are going to Little Town Halfway Between UniTown and HomeCity for a chamberpot singer concert. Then we'll to go to HomeCity and stay overnight. I need to come back to UniTown on Tuesday to check on the kitties and for a meeting and class. After class I'll drive back to HomeCity and then Wednesday will be spent in a flurry of preparation. YD's flight leaves at 6:35 Wednesday night. Then I have to drive back to UniTown for class on Thursday.
Whew!

So, the snowflake. I have not heard from her all weekend, and on Friday she promised to keep in touch with me as she hammered out a suitable topic for an independent study. I shot down the one she had, because it was too vague and not grad level. We shall see. I have snowflake's "cousin" (similar story to snowflake's, minus the suspension--but she is not doing well in her program either, and she ran afoul of me in class last quarter) also wanting to do an independent study. I am requiring a conference paper submission as part of the independent study, so it's not a trivial thing.

Speaking of conferences, the check for the hotel fiasco finally came. The outcome from this frustrating affair? We are $152 poorer, since the bank, the hotel, and my uni refuse to reimburse us for the NSF fees that resulted from this mess. That sure makes me want to go to more conferences, yes it does.

The snowflake won

Dang.

Remembering Pearl--the day that lives in infamy

Photos and commentary from the Naval Historical Center


















































































































USS Bennington (CVA-20)

Passes the wreck of USS Arizona (BB-39) in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on Memorial Day, 31 May 1958. Bennington's crew is in formation on the flight deck, spelling out a tribute to the Arizona's crewmen who were lost in the 7 December 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Note the outline of Arizona's hull and the flow of oil from her fuel tanks.

Official U.S. Navy Photograph.




Army Day Ceremonies, 6 April 1948

The U.S. flag which flew over the U.S. Capitol at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack is returned to the Capitol during Army Day ceremonies. This flag had been raised over the three defeated Axis capital cities, Rome, Berlin and Tokyo.
In this photo, men of the Third Infantry Division, all World War II veterans, are presenting the flag at the Capitol Plaza, Washington, D.C. It is being accepted by Senator Arthur Vandenberg.

Photograph from the Army Signal Corps Collection in the U.S. National Archives.




Rest in peace.

A cautionary tale for students

A grad student came in this morning to talk to me about doing an independent study. She was in my class last winter, and was one of those high maintenance students who always have some problem that prevents them from completing their assignment on time, or making it to the exam on time, or working with their teammates on the term project.

The chickens came home to roost for her, and she was bounced out of her program. So, she transferred into another program that allowed her to design a unique course of study. This program requires students to develop a plan consisting of two concentrations. The plan must be supported by a literature search and a written proposal; then the plan is approved (or not) by a committee of professors across the university. For some students, it's a last-ditch opportunity to salvage their graduate career.

Well, our little snowflake was true to form and flaked out last quarter, producing nothing for her proposal although she expended great amounts of energy pestering professors to let her into their courses. Problem is, she's suspended and can't register for anything.

I made her sit through my tough-love lecture on not using up one's good vibes all in one swell foop. Of course, it's too late for her unless she sweet-talks the grad coordinator into lifting the suspension. My money is on the snowflake. She is pretty, and smiles a lot, and is extremely persistent.

But, could be, the chickens are going to stay put and she will be out of this program for good as well. We shall see.

Yup, I was right

I got a response from the online learning person:

The purpose of this forum is to increase the professor-student relationship. It is our hope that instructors will read the postings of students and improve their teaching (or start a dialog with the students) and vice-versa.

I just caught the posting that generically referenced a course (although it didn't say when it was offered or who taught it) and edited it the posting to remove the reference. We've been checking/reading the forum pretty regularly, so I don't know how we missed that.

Yes, I agree students need to work with their instructors directly, then the department chair. Unfortunately, many students are apprehensive about speaking to their instructor or going to the department or even filling out the course evaluation, because they are afraid of repercussions to their grade.

We hear over and over again that quality can deteriorate in an online course, so this is one attempt to help build awareness for instructors. Some instructors may not know what aspects of an online course students really like or dislike. Faculty are welcome to do the same to help shed light for the students who might not be aware of their poor online etiquette.

If you would like to discuss this further, please feel free to call me.

And my counter:

Thank you for your response. I respectfully disagree. The way the forum is presented invites negative comments such as the one you had to edit. I doubt you will get any comments from instructors at all, and I am betting more than a few feel the same way I do about that forum.

If you really want constructive remarks, then 1) don't pit instructors against students and vice versa, and 2) ask for positive ideas about ways to make the online environment more useful to both students and instructors. There are better ways to get the feedback you want than to set it up from the start to be antagonistic. For instance, referring to instructors as "turkeys" (as one poster did) isn't going to foster a good relationship or encourage professors to participate, no matter how justified a student may feel in expressing that view.

Just my $0.02.

Poor online etiquette, my eye. Let's talk about cheating. Let's talk about not doing the work and then grubbing for a grade. Let's talk about whining over expecting students to write coherent sentences. Let's discuss snit fits over non-instantaneous response to e-mail or complaints about that horrible requirement that e-mail messages be properly spelled with meaningful subject lines.

"We all know who the turkeys are and this forum will help keep the honest ones honest."

Oh sure, this is for mutual benefit....yeah, RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT.

Taking it a bit too far

My school is very student-centered, and I've written before about the tendency to assume students are little angels and all their complaints about evil instructors are legitimate. Well, here's another example of this lopsided viewpoint. In September the online learning center inaugurated a community for online students in our course management software (sort of like Blackboard but not quite). The idea is to provide a central "student lounge" for distance students. I have no problem with that.

The part I have a problem with is the section on "Pet peeves." There's a discussion forum for students with pet peeves about instructors, and one for instructors with pet peeves about students. The forum description says "The purpose of this forum is to let instructors and students politely and anonymously vent about specific behaviours that don't encourage an optimal learning environment. Anonymous postings are allowed, but inappropriate postings or postings containing names will be deleted and further action may be taken. This discussion is meant to encourage best practices and dialog regarding the ideal learning environment for both students and instructors."

Not surprisingly, there are a number of messages complaining about instructors, some with content that makes it easy to identify the offending instructor. Also not surprisingly, there are no messages complaining about students. If I were one of those instructors I would be upset and would surely want the chance to rebut what was said.

The place for students to voice their displeasure is first with the instructor and second, if the complaint is serious enough, with the department chair. Thirdly, the students can bash instructors freely in the term-end evaluations (also a place where instructors have no chance for rebuttal).

Last quarter we saw incredibly insulting posters about professors hanging up in the student union, touting the Student Association's rating site. It seems to me that allowing students to anonymously complain on this online community site is yet another way to blindside faculty and erode the professor-student relationship.

The other thing that disturbed me about this site was the repeated requests to have online staff monitor faculty logins to courses. I log in to mine several times a day, and I respond very quickly to student questions and concerns, so that's not an issue for me. But that doesn't mean I want someone monitoring whether or not I log in every day.

I wrote to the director of online learning outlining my concerns, but I'm not hopeful they will remove that section.

Well, that was stupid

I usually wait several weeks (months) before reading student evaluations. I find I need to distance myself from the just-completed quarter in order to have the proper perspective on these things.

Stupid me, I looked.

The course I usually teach was fine; most were in the good-very good range. The course I picked up midway through the quarter--oh man. Not good at all. In my defense, there wasn't a whole heck of a lot I could have done at that point in the quarter, and the class setup stunk (it's obvious this guy just mailed it in for this course) but it's my name on the evaluation and not his. Crap. Can't wait to hear what my director has to say when we meet next week. Double crap.

Oh well.

Break is almost over and I've finished about a third of the stuff I wanted to do. Also not good.

It's a grey, grey day all around.

Back to work Monday

The Thanksgiving holiday is over. Eldest Daughter is back in the City Too Very Far Away. Son is on the last leg of his journey to the State Too Too Very Far Away. Spouse is in NYC for work. Youngest Daughter is still asleep. I am working on lectures for next week and watching The Fellowship of the Ring.

Son and I got up early (5 a.m.) to get him to the airport for his flight. The lines were horrendously long, and two guys tried to cut in line by sneaking under the ropes but the security guard caught them and made them go to the end. Son and I both thanked him. Another man came up and asked if he could cut in front of everyone because his flight was leaving soon. The guard told him he should have gotten there sooner, and sent him to the end. The line moved pretty fast, though, and soon Son was through the metal detector and on his way to his gate. I sighed, turned around, and made my way out to the truck.

God bless the parents who waited impatiently on Wednesday, with signs and balloons, for their children and came back a few days later to tearfully wave goodbye. Our hearts are divided into little pieces, scattered all over the country with our kids.

Took Kitty Son to the vet this morning to get his rabies shot. He sure was not happy. The vet said we have to start thinking about his dental health; with his liver shunt, it's risky to anesthetize him. I guess I'd better start brushing his teeth (there's a lovely thought) to see if we can put off the procedure for a while. KittyMama needs it done now, but she hasn't got his health issues.

It's raining and that's going to turn to snow tonight. I guess YD and I will head back to UniTown later this afternoon so we beat the snow showers. KittySon will REALLY not be pleased.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Everyone arrived safely and we had a wonderful family dinner (12 of us!). Now it's Pinky and the Brain reruns, leftovers, and finally relaxing.

Many thanks to God for this blessed country, this blessed day, and the blessings of family.

Waiting, waiting...

Son flies in tonight from grad school in the state too, too very far away. He was supposed to arrive around midnight--but he called and said the plane was delayed. Delayed so much that he would miss his connecting flight. So he found someone who helped him change flights and now he will arrive at 10:30 instead! I am so excited, because I miss him so terribly. It will be so great to see him. We brought KittyMama and KittySon to HomeCity so he would be able to spend time with them.

Tomorrow night Eldest Daughter arrives for the holidays. Thursday will truly be a sweet, sweet day of thanksgiving.

Last night I made four loaves of gluten-free bread for stuffing, finishing up at about 1 a.m. I went to bed around 2-ish, once I'd cleaned up from the breadmaking. For some reason I woke up at 7, so I got up and took my thyroid medicine and laid back down to read for a while. I fell back to sleep and woke up at 9:30 to a knock on the door. Turns out it was the landlady coming to have the furnace serviced. Yikes! I threw on a pair of jeans and a sweater, found my glasses, and let her in. Ack. At least the place was fairly neat.

So at the moment I'm watching a documentary about Tokyo Rose and waiting for Son's plane to come in.

Numbers Tuesday

Number of classes taught this quarter: 4
Number of students caught plagiarizing: 3
Number of students asking to have their grade bumped up before grades were posted: 2
Number of students asking to have their grade bumped up after grades were posted, just because they tried hard: 1
Number of students asking to have their grade bumped up after grades were posted, so they could keep their scholarship: 2
Number of students asking to "see their project report" after grades were posted, which really means, "I want you to bump up my grade": 1
Number of minutes elapsing from the time grades were posted to the first "bump up" request: 20

I have strange students.

One came in yesterday and asked to hug Jean-Luc.

Another, who will be in one of my winter courses and who I've spoken to for a grand total of 20 minutes when he stopped in to ask about the course, sent me a Thanksgiving poem and inquired if I enjoyed the snow showers and if I've prepared for the holiday.

The cheater spent an hour making an IT tech look for an old assignment she likely never sent me.

A fourth paged me on the course management site to tell me he would talk to the owner of our hometown hockey team about turning the season around.

Why do I get the weird ones?

Something that has been bothering me

Academia is mostly made up of people who are more liberal than me. Way more. Like light-years more. Normally I can take that. But some things are really hard to understand, and this week I bumped up against a couple of them.

I'm a moderator at a website for graduate students. One of the regulars wrote a post asking people what jobs they would not take under any circumstances. The list included the gambling industry, the porn industry, legal system in countries with the death penalty---and the armed forces.

Ooooooooooooooookay.

Given human nature, and the propensity for countries to go to war against one another, I'm betting this person would be one of the first shouting for soldiers to help repel invaders. As a matter of fact, if it weren't for soldiers and sailors and pilots from her country and the US, she'd be speaking German.

Smacks of 1) extreme naivete, 2) insufferable self-righteousness, and 3) appalling ingratitude.

Soldiering is an honorable profession and even more so as the people she would not deign to work with would, without question, defend her to their death. And they'd be polite to her no matter how much she shuns them. Shame on her.

The second thing was "multicultural diversity awareness training". I had to sit through an hour of this travesty yesterday (thank GOD it was only an hour!). First off, it was insulting. We had to read a stupid skit loaded with ponderously obvious prejudicial statements. Then we were praised for recognizing the obvious. There was a very REAL issue that we should have discussed, but of course the dead horse of our supposedly rampant bias against women and minorities had to be beaten. Of the 17 attendees at this session, 6 were women (two faculty, two staff, two deans) and 6 were minorities (5 faculty, 1 staff). This whole sideshow was mandated by HR, which is rapidly gaining a reputation for stridency and obstructionism. The faculty recruitment process is totally constipated by HR's requirements and stupid mandates.

An interesting thing I noted--political affiliation was not included on any of these "don't ask" questions. Maybe because it's assumed that one is a loving, tolerant, liberal Dhimmicrat ;-) (A few of us horrible, war-mongering, conservative Repuglicans have managed to confuse their sensors and slip by--but shush! Don't tell!)

Two in one week, or the black hole of plagiarism

In the course of correcting homework this week I found a cheater in my online class and a cheater in my data mining class.

Cheater #1 is taking his zero like a man, without complaint. Cheater #2 is whining and kicking and crying all the way, insisting it's not her fault and she just made a mistake and sent me the wrong file, etc. etc. etc. I've spent a goodly amount of time this morning being DetectiveMom instead of DrMom and I resent the waste of my time and energy.

Plus the bank was nice and gave back $38 of the NSF fees from the hotel debacle, then turned right around and charged an additional $114.

It's been a REAL GOOD week. Yup. And it's only Wednesday.

One down! Plus bunny sightings

I have finished one course. Grading is done, grades are entered. Three more to go. The end is in sight!

We have a bunny who hangs around the condo. Maybe he's friends with the chipmunk...but I digress. Anyway, when I come home after class at night, the bunny is usually sitting on the lawn close to the condo wall. He watches me warily and then runs off into the field. I wish he would stay and visit a while, because I would love to ask Mr. Bunny a question. Why, Mr. Bunny, with all the grass around and that lovely field with its bramble thicket, do you have to poop on the sidewalk?

Little bunny pellets, strewn up and down the sidewalk like miniature doodoo grenades, just waiting for a unsuspecting, deeply-ridged sole to collect them and bring them inside where it's warm and dry.

Thank you, America's Veterans

AP photograph, courtesy FoxNews.com

“The LORD bless you and keep you;

The LORD make His face shine upon you,
And be gracious to you;

The LORD lift up His countenance upon you,
And give you peace.”


If you haven't said thanks yet, please visit this site and fill out a card for our troops.

Conference disaster

It's the in-between paychecks week for both Spouse and me, and since we had two major activities this pay period (my conference and our friend's daughter's wedding) we're coming down to payday again with less than $100 in both checking accounts. That would, normally, be fine as we don't have any big expenses to pay between now and Wednesday. Well, not this time.

Yesterday when I logged on to the bank website to schedule some payments for next week, I saw we had a hugely negative balance in our joint account. At first I didn't panic, because this bank (which we have decided to leave after 10+ years) has started putting large holds (sometimes as much as four times the actual amount) on non-check transactions such as ATM withdrawals (even from its own machines) and debit card-as-credit purchases. Twice in the past few months we've thought we had some problem when our balance dropped dramatically (always on weekends!) and it turned out to be these holds.

Not this time.

It seems someone in my department who shall remain nameless didn't fill out the form properly when paying for my conference hotel. As a result, the hotel charged ME for the three-day stay, to the tune of $600. Color me surprised! I called the hotel three times before I got through to a person in the billing department, then had to call my department to get the proper form faxed, and it's going to take a while to get this charge off my account. In the meantime, we are incurring about $150 in NSF fees unless the bank grants my request not to assess them (not bloody likely).

Argh. I have transferred money from other accounts but those will take a couple days to arrive. In the meantime, we are making preparations to switch banks and close out this account. Grrrrrrrrrr.

Time to get Youngest Daughter up for skating. Then it's grading jail for me.

Great news from Michael Yon: THANKS AND PRAISE!


You'll find this dispatch at http://www.michaelyon-online.com/wp/thanks-and-praise.htm

Thanks and Praise: I photographed men and women, both Christians and Muslims, placing a cross atop the St. John’s Church in Baghdad. They had taken the cross from storage and a man washed it before carrying it up to the dome.

A Muslim man had invited the American soldiers from “Chosen” Company 2-12 Infantry to the church, where I videotaped as Muslims and Christians worked and rejoiced at the reopening of St John’s, an occasion all viewed as a sign of hope.

The Iraqis asked me to convey a message of thanks to the American people. ” Thank you, thank you,” the people were saying. One man said, “Thank you for peace.” Another man, a Muslim, said “All the people, all the people in Iraq, Muslim and Christian, is brother.” The men and women were holding bells, and for the first time in memory freedom rang over the ravaged land between two rivers. (Videotape to follow.)

Catching up after the conference

I'm way behind on lots of work, so these are short little items from the past few days:

• Conference was okay. I have never seen so many tall, skinny guys with prominent Adam's apples.
• Seattle looks like Portland where my hotel was. A few blocks down, it looks like HomeCity.
• I walked to the Pike Place market Monday morning, had a mediocre breakfast in a restaurant overlooking Puget Sound (great view, lousy--and expensive--pancakes), then managed to see the guys at City Fish fling a three-foot-long fishie. Amazing.
• There's a Starbucks on nearly every street. Across from the Starbucks, a Seattle's Best Coffee.
  
• My hotel internet access was terrible.
• A man sitting behind me in one of the sessions was clicking away madly on his computer, getting his presentation ready(I turned around to see what he was doing). It took all my willpower not to say "Hey, dude--I am 99% sure that the Enter key will work even if you don't whack it as hard as possible." It was really LOUD, all that whacking. Then he took out the 250-page conference guide, loudly riffled through the pages, slammed it shut with a bang, noisily gathered his stuff together, and hustled out of the room. How rude! I felt really sorry for the presenter.
• I got asked tons of gotcha-type questions (all of which I countered) but no one else in my session did. One guy asked me a question that had nothing to do with the topic of my talk. Grrrrr.
• NSF had great promotional giveaways--rubber balls that looked like Earth. I scarfed two.
• Chocolate promotional giveaways were more common this year. We've evolved beyond Hershey kisses to little Dove dark chocolate squares. Yummmmmmm.
• Northwest Airlines has the tiniest seats scrunched close together. On the way to Seattle my seat was getting kicked by the kid sitting behind me. On the Seattle-Detroit leg the woman in the middle seat kept leaning over on me to read her SkyMall catalog, very closely and very carefully. I finally told her I'd gladly climb out on the wing to give her more room, but the airline frowns on that. Between her elbow in my side and the guy in the seat ahead of me, who reclined completely and kept pushing back on his seat, I sat in about a 2 ft by 2 ft space for 3 1/2 hours. So much for doing work during the flight. I couldn't hardly even find the room to read my book.
• Northwest also doesn't even give out pretzels. Drinks, yes--but no food. I bought a bag of nuts to snack on, but forgot the essential element: one must have scissors to open the bag, and scissors are prohibited on airlines now.
• I'm never flying Northwest again if I can help it.
• Got to the Seattle airport quite a bit early Tuesday morning for the flight back East. It must have been Musician Day at the airport, because there were several guitar-toting passengers holding up the security lines. One couple had a guitar and two bags. They held up the x-ray line for several minutes while they fished things out of their bags. One bag was full of sound equipment, all of which they removed and put in totes. Then the woman tried going through the metal detector with her purse. The man ahead of me (also toting a guitar) was so interested in looking around at the long line of passengers that he wasn't paying attention to what was going on in front of him. I had to ask him to move along a couple of times. He spread his stuff out over a 6-8 foot range, and by the time he was ready to move the first of his things toward the x-ray machine, the entire length of the counter and conveyor to the machine was bare and the man ahead of him already had his shoes and suitcoat back on. Sheesh.
• Once I finally made it back to HomeCity, Spouse and I went to vote. After we did our civic duty (our candidate won! yay!) we walked out to the car and nearly got run over by a man backing out. I should have pounded on his trunk, he didn't look at all before he started moving. Obliviot.
• Conferences during the academic year are a royal pain because there's just too much that gets backed up and put off.
  

Blogging from the airport

I've been here since 5:15 a.m. and still have another hour and forty minutes before my plane takes off. Spouse needed to drop me off here early as he is off to State Capital for a wedding (college friends' daughter--I am SO bummed that I am missing the festivities!). Made it through security with no problems, then as I was walking to my gate I heard a siren going off. Turns out that a man in one of the other gates had a heart attack or something--they were working on him, intubating and IV-ing and getting him on a gurney for transport to the nearest hospital. He didn't look good. I prayed for him while they moved him to the waiting ambulance.

Normally I like traveling but this time I just wanted to stay home. Maybe it's because I'm really really tired, or maybe it's because Youngest Daughter is having a hard time with her Italian class, or because Son is having a hard time with his new job, but it just feels like a bad time to be winging to the west coast. Sigh. I come back on Tuesday. Tuesday can't get here fast enough.

The other bummer is that my computer is going to run out of battery power before I get to Seattle. There used to be electrical outlets here at the terminal but there don't seem to be any now. I hope I can score some power at Detroit, because the leg from Detroit to Seattle is four hours and I wanted to get some work done en route. Guess I'd better shut down now, while I still have about an hour of juice left.

Week Nine and hanging in there

Despite being tired and frazzled and generally lost in the endless to-do list, I am managing to get through the quarter.

Some funny/weird/annoying things:

I gave one class an essay to write on encouraging business ethics. One student spent half the essay on the ethics of dress codes. That's right, if you wear hot pants and a T-shirt to work, you're being unethical--unless you work at Hooter's. I wonder, is it unethical for Hooters employees to wear suits?

When I came home tonight, I saw the mailbox was absolutely stuffed. Usually I only get Son's mail and the annoyingly daily local ads. This was a huge wad of envelopes and magazines, bound with a rubber band. Turns out more than half of it was for other condos in the complex. Hm. Did Mr. Mailman get tired of walking around, and just dump everything in my mailbox?

Last month's DC conference hotel bill reimbursement is being held up because some bureausnot in accounts payable wants more verification. I gave them the credit card statement with the charge on it and the pre-payment voucher I got from the conference housing site. The bureausnots are in a snit because the voucher doesn't have the dollar amount on it. I CANNOT HELP THAT! THAT'S WHAT I GOT FROM THE CONFERENCE SITE! I am getting very very annoyed over this snafu.

Saturday I fly out to a conference and will return Tuesday. Is my presentation ready? Of course not. I don't present until Monday afternoon. Sunday night is PLENTY of time to get it ready. :-)

Kitty Son has been very vocal the past week or so. He talks so much, you'd think he had some Siamese in him. I confused him by turning the bedroom around and putting the bed against the opposite wall. He is still trying to figure that one out.

Three weeks until my kids come home for Turkey Day and the annual infusion of pumpkin pie into their bloodstreams. Can't wait! They are going to get some serious hugs.

It's Saturday!

So why, then, am I up at the crack of...wait, it's not dawn yet.

Rhetorical question: Why does Youngest Daughter's all-nighter (finishing an Italian paper due this morning) have to result in a broken night of sleep for Dr.Mom?

Yeah, don't bother answering that one. Yaaawwwwwn.

In which I avoid work and feel only slightly guilty about it

I spent most of today refining a lecture I've given twice before, instead of grading the essays and homework assignments that are on my to-do list. I don't know why I bothered, because the lecture had about as much life in it as our 10-year-old Neon. "Now, recall the standard normal..." Blank faces...much paging in notebooks...more blank faces. Ooooooookay.

However, I did spend some time this morning going over a graduate student's statement for her MS degree proposal. Sigh. I think it's probably the third time I've told her to remove the "I feel...this" and "It seems that" from her essay and support her argument with citations from the literature. Not a company web page, but real honest-to-goodness research articles from--gasp--the LIBRARY. Goodness knows we can't go THERE!

Yeah, yeah, she is a distance student. Well, that's what electronic databases are for. I really hope she fixes this thing, because if the grad committee kicks it back because it has no legs to stand on, I think I'd launch myself through the window rather than read that statement again. I don't think I could stand to correct, for the fourth time, her spelling of "assess" and "possess" (in each case, missing the final 's') or her continual confusion of the usage of "to", "two", and "too."

Argh.

I opened one of the essay files for my online class and closed it immediately. Too late, though, to avoid the instantaneous realization that the essay is full of grammatical errors and I'll want to immolate my mouse by the time I've waded through it.

Kitty Son likes maple spice cookies. He sits and stares at Youngest Daughter and me until we share with him. He is cross-eyed. Having Kitty Son stare intently at you is just a tad disconcerting.

Ack: random bullets recounting ways I ain't doing so well on many fronts

• I'm in grading jail. I have 41 assignments to grade by Thursday. Ain't gonna make it.
• Because of the way our paychecks are scheduled, it will be nearly three weeks from my last paycheck to my next one. The money ain't gonna stretch.
• The dishes need doing, the floors need vacuuming, everything needs dusting, and the bathroom needs cleaning. Ain't gonna get done any time soon.
• Time for the truck to have its 15,000 mile checkup and an oil change. See bullet #2.
• Youngest Daughter's skates need sharpening. I ain't got enough time on Saturday to drive to the shop and back. Also, that ain't helping with bullet #2.
  
• Big conference starts next weekend. My research ain't ready for prime time yet.
• Oh heck. I ain't got time to list any more, and this list ain't helping me feel better!
  

An important message from Michael Yon

Reprinted in its entirety here. Read it all. It will be good for you.

Resistance is Futile

October 22, 2007

Resistance is futile: You will be (mis)informed.

A gulf.

A gap.

A chasm.

A parallel universe.

All describe the bizarro-world contrast between what most Americans seem to think is happening in Iraq versus what is really happening in Iraq. Knowing this disconnect exists and experiencing it directly are two separate matters. It’s like the difference between holding the remote control during the telecast of a volcanic eruption on some distant island (and then flipping the channel), versus running for survival from a wretch of molten lava that just engulfed your car.

I was at home in the United States just one day before the magnitude hit me like vertigo: America seems to be under a glass dome which allows few hard facts from the field to filter in unless they are attached to a string of false assumptions. Considering that my trip home coincided with General Petraeus’ testimony before the US Congress, when media interest in the war was (I’m told) unusually concentrated, it’s a wonder my eardrums didn’t burst on the trip back to Iraq. In places like Singapore, Indonesia, and Britain people hardly seemed to notice that success is being achieved in Iraq, while in the United States, Britney was competing for airtime with O.J. in one of the saddest sideshows on Earth.

No thinking person would look at last year’s weather reports to judge whether it will rain today, yet we do something similar with Iraq news. The situation in Iraq has drastically changed, but the inertia of bad news leaves many convinced that the mission has failed beyond recovery, that all Iraqis are engaged in sectarian violence, or are waiting for us to leave so they can crush their neighbors. This view allows our soldiers two possible roles: either “victim caught in the crossfire” or “referee between warring parties.” Neither, rightly, is tolerable to the American or British public.

Today I am in Iraq, back in a war of such strategic consequence that it will affect generations yet unborn—whether or not they want it to. Hiding under the covers will not work, because whether it is good news or bad, whether it is true or untrue, once information is widely circulated, it has such formidable inertia that public opinion seems impervious to the corrective balm of simple and clear facts.

In fact, the trend across the country is clearly positive. Further, each new development can be seen to set into motion other additional developments which are combining kinetic forces faster than even the best reporters can keep up with.

Anyone who has been in Iraq for longer than a few months, visited a handful of provinces, and spoken with a good number of Iraqis, likely would acknowledge that the reality here is complex and dynamic. But in the last six months it also has been increasingly hopeful, despite what the pessimistic dogma dome allows Americans and British to believe.

I wasn’t back in Iraq three days before this critical disconnect rocketed up from the ground and whacked me in the face. There I was with British soldiers, preparing for a mission with a duration of more than ten days in the southern province of al Basra, when someone asked me about the media reports alleging that Basra city had collapsed into violent chaos. Not wishing to trust solely to my own eyes and ears, I asked around and was able to quickly confirm what I’d already noted: conditions in this region had improved dramatically in the months since my previous embed with the Brits.

When “Maysan” was published, that milestone event had to compete with bad news coming from a college campus in Virginia.

That month-long experience was marked by “Jaish al Mahdi” (Mahdi Army or JAM)-related attacks on British soldiers. These attacks were further fueled by enemy media operations which distorted the long-planned draw-down of British troops in Basra city, something I noted in the dispatch “Maysan”:

As the British increase their forces in Afghanistan, they are drawing down in Iraq. Although the drawdown in Iraq is based on pragmatism, the enemy apparently is attempting to create the perception of a military rout. So while the British reduce their forces in southern Iraq, they are coming under heavier fire and the enemy makes claims of driving “the occupiers” out.

In reality, the Brits were about to transfer authority over the Maysan Province to the Iraqi government. Thus, the day’s purpose, although seemingly more ceremonial in nature, was to counterpunch in the perception war, by focusing on the progress being made by the Iraqi Security Forces in the region. Some of the biggest battles in Iraq today are being fought not with bombs and bullets, but with cameras and keyboards. For whatever reasons—and there are many—today, when Western media is most needed here, it’s nearly gone.

Several upcoming dispatches will focus on how the situation in Southern Iraq has dramatically improved over past months. Ironically, the character of this improvement is distinguished by the lack of violence, as well as the increasing order and normality as Iraqi Security Forces step up to greater responsibility for security in the region. Though the local leadership picture in downtown Basra is fuzzier now that British forces have pulled further back to begin performing their long-planned overwatch phase, it is clear that this natural progression in turning Basra over to Iraqi control has not catapulted the city into chaos.

Nic Robertson of CNN was recently down here. I saw him out on the Iranian border. When Mr. Robertson and I appeared jointly on CNN, his reporting was accurate and in context.

No one who’s actually been to this area in the last month could honestly claim it was swarming with violence. I’ve been with the Brits here for more than two weeks, during which time there have been only a few trivial attacks that could easily have been the work of an angry farmer with extra time on his hands and a mortar in his backyard. As to serious attacks on British forces, in the last eight weeks, there have been exactly zero. So, any stories that make it sound like Basra is in chaos are shamefully false.

Sadly, this is not a new phenomenon. I’ve written often about the near complete failure of most media reporting—as the craft is most typically plied over here—to capture the truth of Iraq and accurately portray it in an increasingly commercial news environment.

I came to Iraq in December 2004 specifically because friends in the military had been telling me about the disconnect between the situation on the ground and the media coverage about it. This is partly why I have remained focused enough on this problem to write about it dozens of times, beginning with an early dispatch about how many news reports “from” Iraq are generated . Later I described the expensive and exasperating embed process that makes long-term on-the-ground reporting next to impossible for most small or medium media outlets, and just plain impossible for most freelancers and independents.

I called it “Catch-22 Redux” in a dispatch earlier this year, writing about how “my new work space has no internet capability, no surface for work, not to mention the obvious problem with secure storage for the heavy pile of incredibly expensive gear needed to cover this war the way it should be covered. Can’t run a mission AND keep an eye on it, and can’t do the work the way it needs to be done without running missions to see and hear it firsthand.”

I’ve written about the small and petty ways the military’s Public Affairs Offices can sour even the most earnestly and positively-inclined reporters. I’ve written about how the military’s entire approach to media has failed utterly to serve both the particular mission in Iraq and the greater cause of an informed and vibrant democracy. I’ve written about reporters who got the story right, about those who got it all wrong, and also about those whose reports, good or bad, never saw the light of day.

I’ve written about why an effective and engaged media is especially crucial for the kind of counterinsurgency strategy only now being applied comprehensively in all areas of Iraq. I’ve written about how the current system of over-reliance on questionable sources creates a pressure to rush to judgment.

I’ve written about how dangerous this war is for reporters who claim there is no real consumer demand for articles about Iraq that would justify the risks. The internet erosion of the mainstream media subscriber base and advertiser support doesn’t reduce demand for news from the ground in Iraq, but it does dry up funds for anything but local stringers with spotty notions of accuracy.

But it wasn’t until I spent that week back in the States that I realized how bad things have gotten. I believe we are witnessing a conspiracy of coincidences conflating to exert an incomprehensibly destructive force on the free press system that we largely take for granted. The fact that the week in question also happened to be when General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker were delivering their reports to Congress makes me wonder if things are actually worse than I’ve assessed, and I returned to Iraq sadly convinced that General Petraeus now has to deal from a deck clearly stacked against him in both America and Iraq.

I’ve called it The Green Gator Phenomena. This tendency for average people to put unwarranted stock in any information—including an outright falsehood—that is reported as true by many sources, seems now to dominate both the mainstream media and a majority of the consumers of its Iraq product line.

Clearly, a majority of Americans believe the current set of outdated fallacies passed around mainstream media like watered down drinks at happy hour. Why wouldn’t they? The cloned copy they get comes from the same sources that list the specials at the local grocery store, and the hours and locations of polling places for town elections. These same news sources print obituaries and birth announcements, give play-by-play for local high school sports, and chronicle all the painful details of the latest celebrity to fall from grace.

To illustrate the absurdity to which this conceit of the collective has grown, I’m tempted to borrow from the boy in the fairy tale, only this time pointing to and shouting at the doomsday-sayers parading by: “Hey, they aren’t wearing any clothes. . . . ” Except in this case, I realize I am not a lone voice. Furthermore, with the help of other clear-eyed individuals, I may actually be in a unique position to do something to remedy this, if the experience I had with the AP response to my challenge to investigate and report on the disturbing gravesites in the Al Hamira village is any guide.

Although I can’t answer to the cause of the problem, I humbly offer permission to media outlets to republish excerpts of the dispatch or the dispatch in its entirety, including my photographs from the story (if used as they are in the dispatch) at no cost during the month of July 2007. I only ask that the site receive proper attribution and that any publication taking me up on the offer email the website with the details.

That offer was dying on the vine until Bob Owens at Confederate Yankee took the Associated Press to task for their bungled reportage of a different mass graves news story, using my dispatch as a comparison. Although it took a little back and forth, and some additional pressure from all the other bloggers who started tracking on the topic, the AP finally dispatched a reporter to the scene. The resulting article was picked up by at least one other major media outlet, reaching thousands more people. This got me to thinking: what if I made a similar offer on a more permanent basis to a large media syndication, say, the National Newspaper Association?

Very few of NNA’s 2,700-member daily and weekly papers around the US can afford to send their own reporters and photographers to Iraq. But if they had a source of news and photographs they could tap into that did not cost anything, there would be one fewer obstacle to their running more firsthand news from the ground in Iraq.

Using the lessons learned from “Bless the Beasts,” it probably won’t be enough just to make the news I am reporting available to NNA-member publications at no cost. There may need to be a little irritating sand in order to get a pearl out of this oyster.

This is where my readers come in, at least those among them who share the concern that the distorted picture most Americans have of the situation in Iraq has strategic (and disastrous) implications for this war, our national security, and the stability of one of the most volatile regions on the planet.

Those readers can first check to see if their local paper is a member of the NNA . Because only NNA members will be able to

” . . . print excerpts of Michael Yon’s dispatches, including up to two of his photographs from each dispatch. Online excerpts may use up to 8 paragraphs, use 1-3 photos, and then link back to the full dispatch on his site saying ‘To continue reading, click here.’”

If their local paper is a member of NNA, readers can contact the editor, urging their participation. [If Bob Owens’ experience is a reliable indicator, this might take several, uh, prompts.] By encouraging their local daily or weekly newspapers to reprint these dispatches in their print editions, more people without internet access can begin to see a more accurate reflection of the progress I have observed and chronicled in dispatches like “Achievements of the Heart,” “7 Rules: 1 Oath,” “The Hands of God,” and “Three Marks on the Horizon.”

There is a cost to this. By making these stories available to NNA members at no cost, I have to forego any license fees they might otherwise generate. Although the newspapers who participate in this venture won’t have any additional costs, that also won’t reduce the expenses I incur to continue producing work that many commenters say needs to reach a wider audience. But it certainly gives those same commenters an easy way to put some walk behind all their talk.

Reader support is critical and highly appreciated, because I depend on my readers for all the funds required to do this work. I have been trying to thank each and every person who has helped—something of a feat in itself—but I want to say it clearly: Your support is hugely appreciated. In addition to setting up a support link to Paypal, we now also have a page on Blog Patron, and we have added more than 50 new photographs to the gallery.

In a related effort, we are completely reworking the underlying architecture of the website. This is very expensive, but the current configuration makes it difficult for readers to find archived stories, and for us to host a lot of video and audio. This creates an opportunity to also take a giant step forward in reaching a wider audience with these dispatches. In the past two days, readers have come from at least 84 countries: Portugal, China, Japan, Indonesia . . . and on and on. Some days readers come in from over a hundred countries.

In many places where I have traveled in the past year—like Kuwait, Qatar, Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, United Kingdom, Iraq and even the United States—all seem to have large portions of their populations who think we are just running amok around the globe. Even our close allies have a distorted view of Americans.

As I travel around the world, I see that even many of our close allies have a false impression of American soldiers as brutally oppressive towards people. Even our great friends in Singapore and the United Kingdom, and the pro-American people on the island of Bali, Indonesia, think we are savaging people. This loss of moral leadership will be costly to Americans on many fronts for many generations to come.

The media memes put us on par with the old Soviet Union.

The only antidote for this toxic press is a steady dose of detailed stories about the amazing men and women who serve in the United States military. People like Lieutenant Jeffrey Pettee, Iraqi Army Captain Baker, USMC SSG Rakene Lee, and LTC Fred Johnson. Each of these soldiers is a credit to every human being.

It is important that Americans let their best and clearest voices be heard around the world. If the world contained only twenty people, only one would be American. We represent about 5% of the world population. What those other nineteen people think about America is truly very important to each one of us. We cannot afford to let the media around the world continue promulgating so many recycled misconceptions about our soldiers and the character of our nation.

Since this website already has a vast foreign readership coming from over ten dozen countries, I’ve decided to try to truly penetrate into these countries by translating the site content into 16 other languages, for a total of 17: English, Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Turkish.

These languages can reach most of the people in the wired world. As importantly, many journalists visit this website, and frequently reference and quote from it in print, on television and radio around the world, helping the website “radiate” beyond the cyber world. Translation of the site content will also invite commentary from those other nineteen people which can lead to people around the world connecting to exchange information and ideas.

The ill-will being generated against the United States and Britain costs us hugely and in unfathomable ways. Words such as “Made in the U.S.A.” increasingly carry dark undertones. We will never know how often a bottle of fine wine produced in California is bypassed for grapes, perhaps inferior, grown elsewhere. We are allowing our grapes to be soured and our enemies to define us.

As with the syndication project, there will be costs. The total reworking of the website including accrued bills, and the initial translation from past and up to about six months in the future, is roughly $100,000. One thousand people supporting the effort with $125 contributions would make it all happen. And the combined power of the widespread syndication of these dispatches in newspapers across America, with a retooled website reaching a global audience, might just have the thrust needed to break the truth free of the inertia that keeps so many people clinging to so many false assumptions.

Now some people turn up their noses at organizations and individuals who solicit reader or viewer support, but these forms of support have been essential to organizations such as PBS, NPR, and the church I attended growing up. Asking Americans for help is one of the few economic models that always seems to deliver results. More importantly, reader support is the only thing that grants me true editorial freedom.

Other people, especially “professional” journalists, will question the wisdom of placing such faith in my readers, pointing out—correctly—that it is a big gamble. But here again, I don’t have to rely on think-tank studies or media projections. I have direct experience that tells me this is a safe bet. Every time I break a lens, wear through the soles of another pair of boots or need to fly home to attend to a family member’s failing health, my readers step up to the plate. When I need them to help me make my voice heard, they pick up the phone or man the keyboards. It’s humbling, but I am not suffering a conceit that their support is for me, personally or per se, but rather it is an indication of how much value is placed on reports from the frontlines. After all, my readers are funding that effort as well.

To find out more about the NNA syndication project, go here. For more information about how to encourage your local NNA member newspaper to participate, contact our project administrator here. It’s easy to complain about the state of mainstream media coverage of the War in Iraq. Now, it’s also easy to do something concrete to improve it. The hardest part is the work our soldiers and the Iraqi people are doing every day; even the work I do in getting the stories about their efforts out to my readers pales in comparison.

Michael Yon does not receive funding or financial support from Fox News, or from any network, movie, book or television deals at this time. He is entirely reader-supported. He relies on his readers to help him replace his equipment and cover his expenses so that he may remain in Iraq and bring you the stories of our soldiers. If you value his work, please consider supporting his mission.

More special snowflakes

I've had two instances this quarter where a student not just fails a test, the student fails to TAKE the test. Both instances are in my inherited online class.

The first student claimed some sort of family medical emergency that kept her offline for the three days the exam was open. The only thing is, our course management software shows when students log in, and she had logged in during the exam period. When I asked her twice to call me so we could discuss the problem further, I got no response. So, finally, I gave her the zero she had earned. I've not heard another peep out of her.

For the second exam, I made sure to post a huge, flashing red "ANNOUNCEMENT" news item on the course home page a week before the exam period was to start, giving the dates and times-also in red-and stating if the students had a problem with the time period I had to be notified before the exam began. No way anyone could miss it. Except maybe, the second special snowflake in this class.

The exam ended Thursday at midnight. I got an e-mail dated early this morning that this student had an "unexpected trip south with no internet access" and had just returned to UniTown. Okay. Except that the student logged in twice after I posted the announcement, the last time less than 12 hours before the exam opened. So he has known for seven weeks that the exam would be held this past week, and he has known for another week exactly when the exam would be available. He has also known that he needed to contact me if there was a problem with the exam time. Okay, no e-mail. Did he also not have access to a telephone?

Sigh.

On a brighter note, Youngest Daughter is in the final countdown for her weekly allergy shots! She only has seven more weeks to go. That brings her to December, right before she goes to Peru with Best Friend and Old College Friend and Pretty Niece. Yay!

Friday shot day

I've finally made some headway on my to-do list (work list, that is. Home list, that's another story). I still have a proposal to comment on, a homework assignment to write up, and two assignments to grade. That's for this week.

Almost time to leave for Youngest Daughter's shots. It's rainy and windy, and I can hear the our little chipmunk friend building a nest near the door. I don't blame him for wanting to stay inside and cozy!

I just don't get it

I teach four classes this quarter. Each one of them is just...well, weird. I have 9/11 conspiracy theorists in one class, non-talkers in another, and the online class--oh my.

Three of these classes I have taught several times before. I've used the same basic assignments (data and small details changed) several times. Why is it this crop of students has such a hard time understanding and following directions? They just don't get the simplest things. Weird.

The 9/11 conspiracy theorists, they just depress me.

Me? Tired? Nah, not me

I went to bed at 2 a.m. and got up at 7. Why? Well, I watched a movie we had rented from Blockbuster that has been sitting around waiting for me to get to it. That accounts for the 2 a.m. deal. Waking up at 7 was not my intention.

Somewhere around 5 or 6 a.m. one of the cats puked someplace. I heard it, but didn't get up to investigate. Then at 7 Kitty Son, who was curled up next to me, uncurled and spent about 3 minutes coughing up a hairball. I was up anyway, so I thought I'd go clean up the puke.

Note to self: put on glasses before walking around barefoot looking for cat scrack.

I have survived Week Six, and tales of snowflakes large and small

Week Six had some residual nastiness left over from Week Five, an online student who inexplicably went sort of postal on me because I didn't put the dropbox up for an assignment that was due THE FOLLOWING WEEK. Ooooooooooooooooooookay. I took the precaution of sending the entire increasingly bizarre e-mail exchange to her on-campus adviser. Then I met with the adviser, who told me the Postal One called to complain that I was ignoring her (!?!), and who had sent the same exchange minus the very last, not-so-nice snit fit she had sent me. Adviser and I had a good laugh over Postal's weirdness. Adviser agrees there was no need for the snit fit, and that I was more than polite in the face of escalating rudeness on the part of Postal. Whatever.

Even more drama this week from the Special Snowflake with the 4% average. SS suddenly began posting in the discussion forum, albeit with no explanation for the 2+ weeks he went AWOL, during which time he missed two assignments and a team project. Tuesday he posted in the public forum that he missed the deadline for the third assignment and wanted to know where to send it in.

I replied via private e-mail that he could not pass the class whether he turned the third assignment in or not, and that he should withdraw before he got an F in this class a second time. Then I told him to find a course he'd be more interested in. Hey, dude, if you take a course twice and still can't manage to do the most minimal work in it, there's got to be something else that you can waste your time on.

The biggest snowflake of the week is my problematic adjunct. I got this message from him this week: "DrMom: Send me the solution for the final in the X class. Thanks. Clueless Adjunct."

I suppose I should be grateful that he said "thanks." He'll get the solution when I get a request that includes the word "Please."

On a good note, Youngest Daughter finished the 13-chapter workbook for her Music Theory class this week. The actual class is on Chapter 4. Teacher and I decided YD will move into AP Music Theory, starting tomorrow.

On another good note, I was nominated for a teaching effectiveness dinner. Free food! Yeah!

I think I shall spend $5 tomorrow and go to the public skate while YD is taking her lesson. I need to work off some of this week's stress.

Found a cheater,

Found a cheater,
Found a cheater just now
Just now I found a cheater
Found a cheater just now.

Gave him a zero
Gave him a zero
Gave him a zero just now
Just now I gave him a zero
Gave him a zero just now.

He didn't like it
Didn't like it
Didn't like it just now
Just now he didn't like it
Didn't like it just now.

Gave it to him anyway
Gave it to him anyway
Gave it to him anyway just now
Just now I gave it to him anyway
Gave it to him anyway just now.

I find this to be disturbing


Steal and destroy classified documents, get hired by a presidential campaign. Niiiiiiiiiice.

Report: Sandy Berger Advising Sen. Hillary Clinton

Monday, October 08, 2007

AP

Former national security advisor Sandy Berger

WASHINGTON — Sandy Berger, the former national security adviser to President Bill Clinton who was convicted for stealing and destroying top secret documents, is now advising Sen. Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, according to a news report.

The (Washington, D.C.) Examiner reported the connection Monday. The Clinton campaign did not provide comment to the paper.

The Examiner reports that the arrangement with Berger is similar to one with Sen. John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign, for which Berger provided foreign policy advice. Kerry, however, severed the relationship with Berger once charges that he stole the classified material became public.

In 2003, Berger took sensitive national security documents from the National Archives in the lead-up to the 9/11 commission hearings, at times stuffing them into his socks, and one time hiding papers under a construction trailer near the archives building in downtown Washington.

Berger, who at first denied any wrong-doing, later pleaded guilty and was fined $50,000 and sentenced to two years probation. He also lost his security clearance for three years.

Good morning from Ronald Reagan National Airport....

Well, not really. That was Wednesday. A very interesting Wednesday morning.

But first, Tuesday evening.....

When last we "talked", we were chuckling over the spelling-challenged co-facilitator at the so-called working group session. I say so-called because the facilitator took over the session and essentially answered all the questions under consideration. He pretty much disparaged any input from the rest of us, so we had nothing else to do but be entertained by the spelling sideshow.

After that interminable session ended, I checked my voice mail and found that Best Friend and College Friend wanted to meet at the White House and then go to dinner at a restaurant nearby. So, I went back to my room and checked e-mail, then hopped on the Metro. A few minutes later I was strolling down Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the President's house.

I sat in front of the White House and waited for my friends, texting Eldest Daughter. Thought I'd try to get a picture of the place on my cellphone, and turned around to take a shot but there was way too much glare. ED told me to wave to the Prez, so I did, and when I turned back to sit down one of the DC cops was watching me very, very closely. I messaged ED and told her, and she said to tell the cop I'm a Republican. Hahahaha.

BF showed up, and then CF, and we set off to circumnavigate the White House before going to the restaurant. I remember visiting the White House in 1973, but we didn't go see the south side of the place. It's beautiful. The monument to the 1st Division is gorgeous; CF wanted to know who polishes the statue on top, because one arm was kind of tarnished.

We wandered past the Treasury building, an absolutely gorgeous piece of architecture, with its statue of Alexander Hamilton (the north side has Albert Gallatin), visited Barnes and Noble down the street, and finally walked over to the Old Ebbit Grill. Son would LOVE this place--they have something called the Orca Platter that features a one pound lobster, one dozen Jonah crab claws, one dozen clams, one dozen oysters, and one dozen shrimp for nearly one hundred dollars. I am not kidding. It's $94.95! I had the chicken.

After dinner (it was really LOUD in there) I said goodbye to my friends and went back to my hotel to get ready to leave the next morning. It took a while to get to sleep, and then at 2 a.m. my phone buzzed--Youngest Daughter sending me a pic of Kitty Mama and Kitty Son sleeping (!) next to each other on the sofa. At least SOMEONE was sleeping!

I got up at 6:30, washed up quickly, and left the hotel at 7 for the Metro to Reagan airport. Once through security, I went to get a croissant and tea for breakfast, as my plane wasn't leaving until 10 a.m. When I got to my gate, I noticed it was full and overflowing with people. This gate is where the regional jets are, and there were multiple flights leaving all within a 10-minute period. I found an empty seat (hurrah!) and pulled out my computer to see if I could score a wifi connection. Surprisingly, there was none to be had. So I read a couple pdf articles I had stored in my "Must Read" folder, and listened to my MP3 player. At first, I wasn't listening to the ongoing announcements, but this one caught my attention:

"Passengers, this gate serves several regional aircraft. The lower level is for boarding only. Do not go down there. It is very congested and there is no seating area. Do not go down there until we announce your flight. If we find you down there and your flight has not been called, the airline will send you to a destination of its choice. Do not take this risk."

Huh? What did he just say? I looked around to see if anyone else had noticed the unusual announcement. A couple people looked perplexed, but most had just ignored it. I put away my MP3 player and started listening to the agent. I was soon rewarded with these gems:

"Passengers flying to Indianapolis, in the Hoosier State. Home of the Indianapolis Colts. GO COLTS! WIN THE SUPER BOWL! Passengers going to Indianapolis, please go to the lower level. Go down the stairs and turn left. You will be in Indiana."

"Passengers flying to Charlestown. Wild and wooly. Almost heaven, West Virginia. Go down the stairs and take a hard left, also known as a U-turn. You will be in West Virginia."

"Passenger X, flying to Providence--your plane is ready to take off but you are not there. The other passengers are asking where you are, they want to go. DO NOT MISS THIS FLIGHT! You will have to drive many hours and get stuck in traffic."

Then this gem:

"Passengers, we fly regional jets only from this gate. If your luggage has wheels, it will not fit in the overhead compartment and it must go in the cargo bay. You must come to the desk and get a yellow tag for your luggage. Do that now. Put the tag on right now. It will be the second-best thing you have done today."

He never did say what was the best thing...

Then, once we boarded the plane, the pilot got in on the act:

"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to X airline express to Y city. If you are not going to Y city, now would be a good time to get off the plane."

Altogether, a delightful morning. I never laughed so much in an airport.