A Day in the Life of a Would-Be (But Will-Be?) Retiree

A Day in the Life of a  Would-Be (But Will-Be?)  Retiree

 (What is the penalty for an attempted retirement, if you don't successfully commit one?)

            "What are your plans after retirement?"  people ask, and you say, "Oh, First I'm going to close Guantanamo Bay.  Then I'm going to do away with factory farming.  And then, I guess I'd better take on climate change."

            But --besides going to a lot of retirement mini-celebrations given to you by thoughtful friends who think you've retired-- what you really do after your official retirement is try to retire.  You have to be retired to have the time and energy to go through those steps and those missteps, which are about equal in number, with the missteps slightly ahead.

            You were rumored to have retired on May 24, 2014,  the day after you gave your final exam and attended--in the bleachers on the spur of the moment instead of in cap and gown as you once did at the Masonic Auditorium--the graduation ceremony that showed why your college--threatened with closure--should continue even though you hope you won't have to.  The student commencement address was given by Latonia Williams, who was featured as one of the 5 success stories that Nanette Asimov did on CCSF in February 2014 "Students tell how City College of S.F. has given them hope."  When you  graduated from college (and maybe that’s why you skipped your graduation ceremony), student speakers didn’t begin by saying, “After witnessing your father kill your mother and being so high on heroin that your baby is taken away from you…” But that was  her back story before graduating with honors. As she said, she went from “a hopeless dope fiend to a dopeless hope fiend!”  Tammy Vitai, one more articulate speaker and one with roots in Tonga, where you went shortly after your own graduation,  was someone in the community you learned about from a friend who plays the saxophone in a jazz group at The Old Skool, a restaurant run by "youths at risk" where you went to eat the night the place was featured on ABC World News with Diane Sawyer as heroes in the news.   The Old Skool is in an at-risk section of town, the Bayview-Hunters Point district, near the Southeast Campus of your college.  The National Anthem was sung by a student from Turkey, and Dustin Lance Black, the Oscar winning screenwriter of Milk, was the commencement speaker.  You had been drawn in by the music, the Pomp and Circumstance you know is from a British hymn all about world domination, but it still chokes you up because you associate it with something loftier.  This seemed like a fitting commencement to your retirement, and sure enough your retirement was just commencing.

            It's also significant that this is the month of the World Cup, something that's starting to interest you more because you love and are loved by (though perhaps not as much as soccer is) by a World Cup fanatic, and you can also identify people longing to reach a goal when there are so many interferences and the referees don't always seem to make the right call.  Two days ago, you got an e-message on the subject of the World Cup from a former student who's a professional soccer player and soccer coach:

"It is great event and I am trying to get each game.  I wish USA team a good luck tomorrow.  If they will so energetic and powerful us you was on our classes they'll win.  But I am upset little bit because Russia is playing so bad in Brazil and that you was retired and I won't to see you more."

           

            That charming student--the one who took three of your classes and never learned to finish in the time limit--is one of your favorites.  He's the one who, presenting on SLOs, the Student Learning Outcomes your college has been asked to emphasize, showed his usual good sense of humor, beginning his final oral presentation saying, "SLO stands for Student Love Obama."  You were the only one who laughed.  Getting the students to respond always demanded overtime, and there was a penalty for that.  Now he  thinks you've retired!   But here you are on June 23, and  you have a month between the date you've given as your retirement date, May 24, and the submission of the paper work the will provide your pension and your medical and hospital coverage. So much for Guantanamo Bay, factory farming, and climate change.  

The Online Version of the Obituary for Karen DeCrow Uses Ms.

I looked this up online.  William Yardley is given as the write of the obituary, and Ms. appears in every place that has Mrs. in the SF Chronicle:

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/obituaries/2014/06/07/karen-decrow-former-president-now/d0v7GvgtAiSbDmZBFgiJAK/story.html

Whatever Happened to Ms? The NY Times uses Mrs. even for Karen DeCrow, 1970s President of NOW

In the New York Times obituary for Karen DeCrow, the president of NOW in the 1970s, there are 8 uses of the title "Mrs."  Whatever happened to Ms?  (We don't use it in our info cards at City College either--or rather it's given as a choice along with Mrs. and Miss, which totally defeats the purpose of making Ms the female equivalent of Mr).  I think the use of Ms. was a fair, progressive idea, and I wonder why no one seems to care that it has been killed off.

Two years ago France moved forward.  Here's an excerpt from that report:

In Britain and the US, the term 'Ms' was available, in Portugal, Denmark and Germany only the madame form is used, and in Quebec it is seen as rude to use the term mademoiselle, she said.
Ms Muret added: 'France was practically the last country where women have been obliged to reveal if they are married, and we welcome the concrete results of our campaign to have this changed.'
The feminist groups were now calling on companies and private organisations to follow the move by removing the terms from their own documents, she said.

The nationwide changes come after two towns, in Britanny and Normandy banned the term 'mademoiselle' two months ago after pressure from a local women's groups.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2104826/Au-revoir-Mademoiselle-France-bans-word-Miss-official-documents-suggests-woman-available.html#ixzz35poxrn00
Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

So why is the United States moving backwards?

Algeria Ties with Russia and Goes on to the 8!

Yesterday the Spanish channel I get with basic cable showed South Korea and Belgium, but I watched for the score for Algeria vs. Russia, and it turned out to be a tie.  Russia needed a win to go on, but Algeria's tying put the team into the eighth.  (They started with 32 teams!)

Here's something from a report about an epidode in 1982 that kept Algeria from progressing as might have been fairer:

On Monday, the Algerians will meet Germany in the Round of 16 in Porto Alegre.

The teams haven't met since 1982 when Algeria beat West Germany, one of the tournament favorites, with Lakhdar Belloumi memorably stroking home the winner. Though it went on to win another game in that tournament, Algeria failed to qualify for the second round of the World Cup after West Germany and Austria played out a result that suited both of those teams.

The European teams, meeting a day after Algeria had won its last group game, knew that a 1-0 win for West Germany would put both through to the second round at Algeria's expense.

Qualification for the second round in Brazil finally allows the team from north Africa to move on from one of the World Cup's most contentious episodes.

US Team Plays Solar Powered Germans in the World Cup!

I sent messages to Jutta, Andreas, and Jan Brockaus with cc to Javier and even posted on Facebook:

I'm thinking about the World Cup and my German friend Jutta (who was my penpal back in 1963)!

I will be watching the World Cup in an hour as Germany and the United States play!    I told Javier the US isn't fairly matched with Germany because the Germans are solar-powered!  I'm getting really interested in this game that Javier loves so much, and I'm even learning to understand it better than in Tonga in 1970, when we in the village of Ha'ateiho made sandwiches for our soccer team and the King of Tonga was driven to the Pangai Lahi (right next door to his Gingerbread Palace) to watch from his limousine.

This morning I read that there will be Germans from two continents playing soccer on a third--in Recife, Brazil.  I see that Jurgen Klinsmann, the U.S. coach, has German roots as do 5 of his players, so as sportswriter Ann Killion says, some of the key players on the US side will know the words to "Das Deutschlandlied" better than they know "The Star Spangled Banner."

This should be very interesting!!!!

Another day we can talk about the inequities in Brazil, where many are protesting against the expenditures and economist Lena Lavinas reminds us (through Jon Carroll's column today)   that we shouldn't confuse the formation of a society of mass consumption with the expansion of the middle class.

Retiring My Office Bulletin Board

My Office Mate, Rivera's Daughter, and What Came Off My Corkboard

            Today, after a healthy (life-giving) dose of Roz Chast's Can't We Talk about Something Pleasant? I made myself deal with some of what I have dumped into storage boxes because, like her parents, I can't get rid of anything. 

            I decided to start with the bulletin board I carried down from my sixth floor office in Batmale Hall.  Most of the things I'd put on with thumbtacks or staples had fallen off on the way to the car--where I was helped by a very kind young political science teacher (who knows the power of graphic comics and videos) He helped me get with the storage box and bulletin board I was carrying all in one trip.  (As far as we know, only one collage fell through the elevator shaft or whatever that thing is in the elevator that lets things drop down six floors and never be seen again.)

            I decided it was time to use that board for the World Cup and put into my retirement scrapbook the remnants of office postings. I'd put up a photo of my office mate Bob and some other colleagues at an Asian Coalition Dinner, and Bob had put a pumpkin face over his head and given me a crown.

  I'd put THAT in my retirement album along with a couple of other things representing him on a bulletin board he rarely used.  He had been one of the teachers to go to Baltistan to deliver and use books at the school Greg Mortenson (and the person who really wrote the book) describes in Three Cups of Tea, so there's a photo of the little girls there wearing white hijabs that look a little bit like artfully draped sheets--twin size.   (I just looked up Three Cups of Tea and see all sorts of details beyond the suits that were filed against Mortenson for making $5,000,000 and using so little of that to build schools.  The co-writer committed suicide!)

Then there's a Home & Garden front page spread from April 22, 2012 that quotes something Bob wrote:

I am a lazy and inconsistent recycler and worry about my carbon footprint only when I'm in the market for new shoes.  Like most San Franciscans, I have the requisite green recycling bucket under my sink though I am never quite sure how to line it.  I know I can buy mass-produced biodegradable liner bags, but buying something simply to recycle it seems backwards."   The editor Nancy Davis Kho responded with a full-page spread on how to use the comic strips to make a compost in liner. 

           

Bob also put up a letter he wrote to himself from the ESL Department asking him to dress in a more up-to-date fashion but saying that his hair was okay.

            I've liked having Bob as an office mate and will write more. 

The World Cup and International Relations

My first introduction to what Americans call soccer (even though FIFA stands for Federation Internationale de FOOTBALL Association) was in Tonga, where my village of Ha'ateiho made sandwiches for the Ha'ateiho team, and a student priest (somewhat like a student prince) was the star player.  The other team complained that it wasn't fair because he had God on his side.   Games were on the palace grounds--or so it seemed.  The king was driven from the palace in a black limousine so he could watch the game from the back seat.  I think he and Langi  or maybe Mike Monti introduced the game of soccer to Tonga.

So now, with the World Cup, I think of how this sport connect with people I know.  I just wrote to 'Ana to ask about the name of the field.  I wrote to Mike in New Zealand to find out who introduced the game to Tonga. (I also acknowledged the death threats the New Zealand referee got for apparent errors he made in the match between Bosnia-Herzegovina and Nigeria--not good for international relations.)   I wrote to Daan in the Netherlands to wish him both a happy birthday and a FIFA win when he played Chile.  (In 2006, I had friends here to watch the match between the Netherlands and Spain before going to Stern Grove to hear the SF Symphony, and besides serving Dutch cheese and beer and Spanish cheese and tapas, I decorated a cake to look (a little bit) like a soccer ball.

I wrote to a former student who's a soccer coach to get his impressions and got a charming response.
I wrote to a former student who's from Algeria to congratulate Algeria on its win over Portugal.  I even wrote a few things on Facebook for Algeria and Mexico.  "Se se puede!" responded a former student.

And of course, I love a man who loves soccer.  After deciding the game between Croatia and Mexico was going to stay 0 to 0, he turned off the TV at a friend's house, but he had to pull over when I, on my iPhone, saw a different score as he was driving us back to San Francisco.

More on Neurons and the Printed Word

Caille Millner's Saturday column was "Short list of benign tech firms in the area."  She began by discribing a fight she had with "some guy on a digital barstool."

I'm not quite sure what the "concept of disruption" is, and I've only a slightly better notion of hashtages, as in #changetheworld, #evilluddites, #nerds-rule, #movefastandbreakthingsinc.  She says that some people in the tech industry think that anyone who "offers pushback against thier ideas is not only categorically wrong but stupid."  She goes on to herd thinking and the new mobile app called Yo that let you say Yo to your friends with just two taps on the phone.  It just raised $1 million from investors.  So she says some good things about the tech world and their good-doing:  BeGoodClothing...


C.W. Nevius says that it's "Time for the disabled to pay for parking" since there are 60,750 placards issued in the city and only 28,000 metered parking spaces.    The people who can issue the placards are optometrists, podiatrists, chrropractors, physicians and midwives.  California is one of 15 states that don't charge disabled drivers for parking.  When Philadelphia went to paid parking, the placard parking dropped from 65 percent of available spaces to 2 percent and on-street parking availability went up 11 percent.  (He doesn't point this out, but even paying, it provides the opportunity to park closer to where a person wants to be.)  The reason for NOT charging was that puttin the coin in and turning the handle of the meter was thought to be hard for some with disabilities, but now they can pay with smarphones or credit cards.

Also on the subject of parking is "SFpark program touted as success/Now it will expand throughout the city" by Michael Cabantuan.  Meters will charge according to demand.

With a different meaning for the word park, "Drones will be outlawed in U.S. parks.

Sasturday is also the day that Kamiya's Portals of the Past appears, and today it's "Spanish street names set off western San Franciscans."  Interesting that Mayor Edward Taylor appointed a historian, Zoeth Eldredgge, who favored Spanish names--after the Spanish-American War.  Some San Franciscans weren't so happy about that..  Irving was named after Washington Irving and Judah after the engineer who masterminded the first railroad to cross teh Sierra.  Kirkham and Lawton were generals.

Then there's "medical technology Worth a seal of approval."  A robotic stuffed pinniped soothes seniors and costs only $6000.00.  It was invented by the Japanese company AIST and first sold in Japan in 2005.  Paro (for social interaction, stress reduction, anxiety reduction and to combat self-isolation by giving seniors someting to engage with) made it to the US in 2009.  This about dementia:  "If every time you go someplace it seems unusual to you, it brings on fear...we use paro..."

Feeding the Soul to Stop Brain Mush

This is how I began the day--with a column by Mark Morford from 2007--something Victor Turks gave me.  "Reading Shakespeare prevents brain mush and feeds the soul."

I miss Mark Morford, but at least I still have Shakespeare for those moments when "a giant mallet made of sponge cake and road tar and death" hits me.  Morford began his column (and resorting to Shakespeare) in front of the TV with its dribble "loud garish inanity" that he said "would make a small monkey hit itself in the face with a brick.  But I've got to stop quoting from Morford and get back to my brain and soul--and the kind of breakfast I provide them this morning.

The front page of teh SF Chronicle has headlines like "Projects capture Octavia's renewal/Retail, residential space to fill void on boulevanrd" by John King (urban critic) and "Parents get support--kids get to school."  (Parents sometimes say the school is too far away--or they don't know where it is.  Overall they are "overwhelmed with life.")  I read "Google redoes rules to keep its 'Googliness.'"  What can we say to substitute for cleanliness in "Cleanliness is next to Googliness?"  "Crises uproot 51 million--the most since World War II."  "House votes to curb NSA surveillance of American" but foreigners are fair game, and the Repulbican HOuse approved a $570 billion defense bill that halts any Guantanamo transfers for a year.

I was really interested in Joshua Kosman's "met allows a hijacking of artistic integrity" about Metropolitan Opera's Peter Gelb, who decided not to Simulcast Klingoffer because of pressure from the Anti-Defamation League, who calls it anti-Semitic "one of the most glib and reductive epethets available in our discourse.  More after I get back from our KAST party in PH.

How Newspaper Articles Affect You if You're Neuro-Diverse

Continuing with the newspaper...You put off reading the chronicle's front page Sunday profile of Thomas Keller, the chef of the French Laundry because you thought it would be too chic-chic.  (I just looked up this term for pretentiousness and see that it is of French origin, but they spell it chichi.)  

But you saved the June 8th newspaper just in case your curiosity overcame your better judgment.  You learn that there's very little space in his kitchen...that it opened in 1994, the year you finally got a full-time job...So as you retire, he is celebrating 20 years.  he has a kitchen that's immaculate, which yours is not...Herb Caen wrote about French Laundry in 1995.  The tasting menu is now $295.  "I've always been more about emotional cuisine," Keller says.  Me too!

He bought it from Don and Sally Schmitt and used the Louvre has a model!  "When I.M. Pei added the pyramids on top, it re-energized the entire property...but it didn't change the actual museum."

The French Laundry was build in 1890s and used as a French steam laundry in the early 1900s.  

top toques?  Toque is a hat?  A chef hat?  

Also on that saved front pages was an article by John King, urban design critic, on the rising seas, which are the waterfront's bigger issue, and Michael Cabanatuan's article on why Muni operators see sickout as crucial.  blue flu=when police call in sick

red rash=when firefighters call in sick

chalk dust fever=when teachers call in sick.  

Getting back to the rising seas, the Republicans don't see this as something that should be considered if considerations interfere with economic gains.  Low-lying South Florida is a retirement Mecca built on drained swampland.

SF's Tom Steyer may step in with $100 million to influence the national elections in favor of environmentalists  like Charlie Crist against the Business as usual approaches of Gov. Jeb Bush and Sen. Marco Rudio

But you still have to learn more about those Lyft rides that let passengers sing Karaoke.  

It is VERY hard for you to throw away unread newspapers.  But--hey--you've got to get that kitchen immaculate...or at least clean enough that the Health Department won't have to close it down.

Reading the News News and Neuro-Activity

“With handwriting, the very act of putting it down forces you to focus on what’s important,” he said. He added, after pausing to consider, “Maybe it helps you think better.”

I am a hypergraphiac.  I learned that from The Midnight Disease:  The Drive to Write, Writer's Block, and the Creative Brain by Alice W. Flaherty.  (That came out in 2004, so I've called myself a hypergraphiac for a decade now.  She never uses that form of the word, but she speaks of hypergraphia.

Now, just as an article in the SF Chronicle on Marian Diamond, neuroanatomy professor at UC Berkeley said back in December 2010,  she "lectures the old-fashioned way - by writing on a blackboard. She expects her students to take notes with pen and paper so they can better absorb the information."

As I was telling Jonathan during our discussion on Musicophilia, reading the newspaper gets my brain into gear.  It also fuels me (to mix metaphors).  I interact with the newspaper the way that Daddy did with his red pencil but I use pen.  I underline and sometimes make margin notes.  So... here is a Day in the Life of a Hypergraphiac.

The night before you, who usually fall asleep the minute your head hits the pillow, didn't fall asleep last night.  So you read some pages bout lines from Shakespeare's Much Ado about Nothing--the next book for discussion in the JoMama Book Club--and ate the big glass storage bowl of arugula with brussel sprouts, balsamic vinegar and walnuts.  Before one you fell asleep and rose again before 5:00.  You prepared your ritualistic liquid breakfast tray--hot Earl Grey loose-leaf tea from Parkside Market, warm milk, orange juice--and settled down to read the rest of the introduction of Much Ado from the big text book you used in 1967 or so--the one Hardin Craig edited, published in 1961.  (He died, I see, in 1968.)  Then you devote your usual two hours to the SF Chronicle.  Today's headlines are "Google, Microsoft will install kill switch."  You also see that Obama has sent 300 troops to Iraq--even though you specifically asked him not to--and Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz have written a Wall Street Journal critique of Obama's false statements.  (The SF Chronicles gives a few of Dick Cheney's own statements that took us into Iraq in the first place.)   France has the third largest Jewish population in the world--right after Israel and the US.  But lots are leaving France for Israel.  You will look that up later in French to get ready for View and Chew (Déguster, Visionner et Converser),  the Francophile/francophone group you join once a month.  You also see an article dating the Neanderthals to and you learn that the Sima de los Huesos was in the news even 25 years ago, when it was first discovered.  What were you doing in 1989, that you failed to learn about this?  Dating your second husband-to-be?  Surviving an earthquake?  You will look that up in Spanish, as well as King Felipe VI, who took the place of Juan Carlos right after Spain failed to win in the World Cup.  Someone named McCarthy is rising in the House of Representative--since Cantor lost in Virginia to tea party David Brat.  A college named Corinthian may have to close because it's lied to perspective students about rates of employment and falsified grades and other matters.  You really want to read about the diminishing blackbird population, but there just isn't time.  

More on Brain Development and the Connection with Writing by Hand

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/03/science/whats-lost-as-handwriting-fades.html?_r=0

Brain Development Needs Writing by Hand

http://www.gocomics.com/doonesbury/2014/06/08



I'm almost brain dead myself at this point, so I'm letting a Doonesbury cartoon from June 8, 2014 speak for me as a teacher (just retired) whose students seem to have abandoned the practice of taking notes by hand, which has been shown to be important to their brain development.

Good Week, Bad Week

I'm not going to get too personal here.  I had a wonderful bruch by Beth and walk with her and Shehla along the Tennessee Valley Trail yesterday, so even though the rest of the week has been devoted to retirement snafus, and even though my computer keeps saying "Word could not create the work file" so that I can't access or send e-mail or open any of my Word documents, I'm not talking about MY bad week.  But here's what got put on Insight's back page June 8, 2014.  (Yes, I know that there's been a more recent Insight.)Bad week for democracy in California because four in five voters skipped the June primary due to "lack of drama," the SF Chronicle speculates.  But I was among the 1/5 who showed up, and I saw some drama:  Leland Yee, indicted and suspended as a state senator because of felony charges against him (money laundering, murder for hire) was on the ballot for Secretary of State!  The SF Chronicle designated a good week for him because he finished third in the race!

Now here's one more thing:  The Chronicle put labor unions in the Good Week (for them) because "They spend big money to successfully stop their  No. 1 target:  Assembly candidate Steve Glazer, who wanted to ban BART strikes."  I, in fact, think that BART strikes should be banned, just as MUNI strikes are.  But I also think workers should be given very good pay and benefits so there would be no need to strike.

SuperEco, an anti-hero

I have an idea for an anti-hero modeled after me--or at least my impulses.  (I don't ALWAYS give in to my impulses.)  SuperEco intervenes every time someone is in danger of harming the environment, so she lands when a person is about to buy meat.  "Don't you realize how many more of the earth's resources it takes to provide meat than to provide vegetables for consumption?  Don't you know we're in a drought?  Haven't you heard of climate change?  Don't you know that every moment in a factory farm is torture for animals?"  You get the idea.  Flying to the rescue and ruining everybody's fun.

Retiring as a Work Out

I went to the Y two hours later than usual today. (I needed to call my representatives in Congress to voice my concern about still more deployments to Iraq. Both Sentator Feinstein and Rep. Speier had someone live there answering the phones at 6:00 AM.) When I arrived at the Y, I found my 5:00 AM group still there at 7:00, getting dressed. "Now I know how long you all work out, and I'm impressed," I said, and they said, "Join us!" I said, "No! I won't!" (The Wimp of the Y doesn't mince words.) And as I fled, I heard laughter that was both hardy and hearty, thanks to their rigorous cardio-vascular exercises developing lungs and heart. I love the Y and the people there, but I go only every other day because I want to have those days I don't go to look forward to. Besides, I get enough exercise trying to finalize my retirement. I went to the City and County Health Services System twice this morning and walked to the district office between visits and still have to go again. I already had blisters on my feet from walking in the wrong kind of shoes, but I went on to City Hall, where there was a big screen out in front broadcasting the World Cup game between Mexico and Brazil. I took pictures for Javier and Walter. I'd already heard Charlie Rose say that just as some players fake injuries to get penalties for the other team, some people fake watching the World Cup! I didn't fake it. I just took pictures!

Dreaming Diane Ravitch's Reign of Error on iPod

iPod dream:  In reality I’d fallen asleep with the Audible version of Reign of Error in my ear.  In the dream, I was talking to Susan and Pat, two classmates from our Columbia High School graduating class of 1964 with whom I've been in contact recently.  Susan was talking about the privatization of education, and I told her that what she was saying was very much like what Ravitch says in Reign of Error.  (Of course it was EXACTLY what Ravitch was saying!)  I looked at Pat to see what he thought, and I could tell he wasn’t interested.  I thought, “Ah, yes!  I’m always more interested in the lessons than my students are.  Pat’s normal.  I’m not.  I’m a low-budget indie, and most people like action-packed Blockbusters.”  Does Ravitch ever write about that?

The Fantastiks in Diane Ravitch's Reign of Error

Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America's Public Schools

by Diane Ravitch is a very good book because, among other things, it quotes from a musical--The Fantastiks with lyrics by Tom Jones,  half of the Harvey Schmidt-Tom Jones team.  Diane Ravitch points out that teachers can't be blamed for not getting predictable and satisfactory results from children because in addition to being less than a third of the determining factors in a child's learning (most of which is family and neighborhood), children in and of themselves are unpredictable.  I'm listening to this on tape on my way back from West Portal, and I know what a scholar Ravitch must be when she quotes the whole song: 

Plant a radish.
Get a radish.
Never any doubt.
That's why I love vegetables;
You know what you're about!
Plant a turnip.
Get a turnip.
Maybe you'll get two.
That's why I love vegetables;
You know that they'll come through!
They're dependable!
They're befriendable!
They're the best pal a parent's ever known!
While with children,
It's bewilderin'.
You don't know until the seed is nearly grown
Just what you've sown.
So
Plant a carrot,
Get a carrot,
Not a Brussels sprout.
That's why I love vegetables.
You know what you're about!
Life is merry,
If it's very
Vegetarian!
A man who plants a garden
Is a very happy man!
Plant a beanstalk.
Get a beanstalk.
Just the same as Jack.
Then if you don't like it,
You can always take it back!
But if your issue
Doesn't kiss you,
Then I wish you luck.
For once you've planted children,
You're absolutely stuck!
Every turnip green!
Every kidney bean!
Every plant grows according to the plot!
While with progeny,
It's hodge-podgenee.
For as soon as you think you know what kind you've got,
It's what they're not!

Finger Food. The San Francisco Chronicle Wants to Wean Us

I've kept the full-age ads the San Francisco Chronicle, my early-morning companion, has had since close to the beginning, when they showed a smartphone, a tablet, a laptop and a computer and Leah Garchik or the Bay Bridge--and I've kept them in the binders of the second half of my life, usually filled with personal photos and articles because this is very personal.  No I have the full-page picture from Wednesday, June 4, 2014  "FINGER FOOD.  Touch the NEW SFGate mobile site...SFGate Always at your fingertips."

Am I like a four-year-old who wants the breast when his mother is showing him the nice, new bottle?  All I know is that this weaning--however wise it is to use paperless technology instead of trees--is causing me a certain stress.  Reading a paper newspaper is like taking a walk and taking in everything along the way.  Reading a newspaper online is like reaching a destination by subway and seeing nothing.

It was on page A10 on Tuesday, April 2, 2013 the Leah Garchik modeled for 'Introducing SFCHronicle.com" with those four devices I mentioned later, it directed us to "Sign up for the ultimate news experience available wher you like, on any device you choose..."  On the back was an editorial about "a boom in fish stocks at last," letters to the editor about the SF Symphony, the new bridge, energy options:  solar or fracking, , "Posey safe at home."

The second design was "Did you know" letting us know that as a Chronicle print subscriber we already had access to their content across all digit devices...Once again the images of these new devices.    On the back there's an article politicians including Jackie Speier who were considering the plight of the working poor--Jackie Speier had slept in a shelter.  Others had picked strawberror or tried to live on food stamps. 

Every morning for years my eyess have taken a two-hour walk through the SF Chronicle--with me comfortably on my recliner with tea at my side. 

Finger food will not feed my soul!

Causes My Deceased Father Is Asked to Support

I'm a little bit late for my father's June 6th birthday.  I was in Sacramento with other teachers from all over the state asking the the ACCJC not privatize education.

But in honor of my father, I'm thinking of making a donation from the Martin Trust (turned over to me in 2005) to The Southern Poverty Project in honor of Morris Dees.  (At first, when I saw that they were having this legacy campaign, I thought that Morris Dees had died.)

I think that mailing came directly to him even though he died in 1999.  He also go something from Nancy Pelosi at the Democratic party Headquarters:  Dr. Elmore A. Martin:  You have been selected to represent San Francisco, CA regarding key issues as the Democratic leadership advances its legislative agenda in the 113th Congress.  Please complete the enclosed Official Survey registered in your name and return it without delay.  We need full participation from all of our loyal supporters in California.  Thank you.

(I remember when Mom, in a year of dementia and agoraphobia, got something similar and was brave enough to leave the house  with me to get her check in the mail.  She didn't want to let Nancy Pelosi down.)

Also in honor of Daddy, here's a message I got on his birthday from Bob Milling, our long-time family friend who considers Daddy his mentor:

I recall your Dad telling me of his memory of D Day.  He was a naval officer with naval intelligence on a ship in the English Channel and he said that, truthfully, he never expected to live through the day.  Many men of courage died on that day that the evil empire of Nazi Germany could be destroyed.

I interrupt my swan song to sing praises to Musicophilia

I knew right away that this book related to my mother's Alzheimer's, which robbed her of much of her memory, most of her self-confidence, and even her ability to knit and sew on buttons.  But it also relates to every other aspect of our lives and even my teaching and learning language.  I tried to convince my students that the silly songs could help them remember, but if they ever understood, they soon forgot, and I gave up on songs...sort of. 

On page 335, Oliver Sacks relates a story about a dying man who 'gathered his last bit of animation and sang for me--{Down in the Valley" and "Goodnight, Irene"--with all the delicacy and tenderness of his earlier days.  It was his swan song; a week later he was dead.'

I hadn't realized that Oliver Sacks wrote about Temple Grandin--An Anthropologist on Mars.

Someone describes a man who could perform the needs and tasks of the day if they were organized in song.

"He does everything singing to himself.  But if he is interrupted and loses the thread, he comes to a complete stop, doesn't know his clotheees--or his own  body.  He sings all the time--eating songs, dressing songs, bathing songs, everything.  He can't do anything unless he makes it a song."

Oliver Sacks says "Music has the power to embed sequences and to do this when other forms of organization (including verbal forms) fail."    As examples he gives the ABC song and Tom Lehrer's song to remember all the chemical elements!

YOUR Swan Song continued

Now, though, you’re very much in the moment, and the moment requires that you get into your office, which requires one of keys on the chain you couldn’t find that morning, so you ask the wonderful-in-all-ways-you-are-not administrative assistant who’s supplying the tests, and in a matter of seconds you’ve got the key and are heading towards your office around the corner.

            There you see your office mate, who’s left the door open.

            “Oh!  It’s open!  I didn’t have to admit that I had lost my keys!”  you say, and he says, “We were just talking about you.”

            No time to find out what they were saying, but you repeat the comment about your “swan song.”  Then you get a couple of Longman dictionaries—the big, bulky kind you used to teach the students how to use before no one in their right mind wanted anything but electronic devices.  They’re not allowed to use electronic devices in their comp writing, so you put the hefty dictionaries in your trunk-on-wheels.  The students have been asked to bring pencils, pens, and writing paper, but you know that some will have forgotten, so you pack a few extras. 

            You sign for the packet of tests enclosed in plain brown envelopes of the inner-office kind, and you pack them into your trunk-on-wheels, which you don’t even try to close.  Then you head to the building on the northwest side of campus, where you find the door locked.  Somehow, though, there are students inside, so they let you in, and you call Buildings and Grounds to ask that the front doors be open.