Green Eggs & Ham

To: Assemblymember Swanson, Re: AB 999

2009-04-03T02:08:00.000-07:00

For adult prisoners, rehabilitation and education consistently does more to reduce recidivism rates than does incarceration and punishment. The same is true for juveniles, but not in degree. As youths form their personalities and individuality, the time they spend incarcerated is arguably much more damaging than it is for an adult. By continuing to keep them incarcerated for longer than absolutely necessary, opportunities for true growth and development of contributing citizens are squandered.

I am currently attending San Francisco State University, in pursuit of a BA in child and adolescent development. As part of my coursework, I have had a lot of exposure to psychological research, and even in my limited study it has been apparent that psychologists have known for many years that punishment does not actually increase favorable behaviors.

While alternative placements for youth may be more expensive in the short term, the long term savings both for the individuals and the community at large more than make up for them. As my representative in Sacramento, it is your job to enact and support state programs that will lead to a better California in the next twenty years; not just in the next two. I believe that by passing this legislation you can be a part of that movement.

----------------

I strongly support AB 999 (Skinner), a bill to enhance incentives for youth in California's notorious Division of Juvenile Justice ("DJJ"), and I am writing to ask you to sign on as a cosponsor of this bill.

AB 999 replaces the ineffective system of punitive discipline in DJJ with a system providing youth with incentives to participate in their education and programming in a positive manner. By earning program credits, youth are given the opportunity to appear before the Juvenile Parole Board at an earlier date. AB 999 also eliminates the DJJ's use of "time adds," a practice that contributes to disproportionately long sentences for youth in California. AB 999 aims to bring youth prisons in line with adult prisons, where individuals may earn time credits for desired behaviors. The incentive-based system will encourage youth using positive reinforcements rather than punitive practices, which studies have discredited as ineffective.

Youth in DJJ currently spend an average of nearly three years behind bars. Over a third of that time is due to "time adds." Time adds are a disciplinary sanction that delays a youth's eligibility to appear before the Parole board. While an appearance before the Board does not guarantee release, AB 999 will provide youth with more opportunities to demonstrate their readiness for release.

DJJ's misuse of time adds is a primary reason that California has the longest average period of incarceration for youth in the nation. California holds a young person longer in the state prisons than do other states for comparable offenses. This results in long separations from work and family for the youth, and enormous costs to taxpayers. Longer periods of lockup in our state's failed youth prisons do not result in increased public safety or better outcomes for youth.

Currently, DJJ spends $234,000 per youth, per year, and has an extraordinary recidivism rate of 72%. In this economic climate, time adds are a costly and harmful practice that just does not make sense. AB 999 by Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner is a better-balanced approach, offering both incentives and consequences. I urge you to co-sponsor this critically important bill. Thank you for your work.

---------------

A rough guide to finding your district

The text of AB 999

The status of AB 999, as of 4/2/09

Information on Ella Baker Center's "Books Not Bars" Campaign

Preschool Desired Results (including information specific to literacy educators)

2009-03-01T23:06:00.000-08:00

While the State of California has yet to develop content standards for pre-kindergarten curriculum, the Department of Education does have a collection of Desired Results standards used to "document the progress made by children and families in achieving desired results and by which they can retrieve information to help practitioners improve child care and development services." A complete description of the Desired Results system can be found here, and clicking on the link at the bottom of the page will bring you to materials and forms related to the program, where you can find the Desired Results Developmental Profile: Preschool Instrument*, among many other useful sources. While the form the California Department of Education provides is an evaluation rather than a prescription, I think it's really very helpful to early childhood educators for several reasons:

1. A LOT of examples are provided, so you don't have to figure out on your own how the abstract skills apply to your kids. You can just read the examples and decide which one seems more appropriate.

2. You'll notice that a very large proportion of the evaluation is focused on personal and social competence. This reflects the recognition that these types of skills are at the forefront of preschool education - if you feel sometimes like you're focusing on these skills it's not necessarily because you're doing something wrong, it's because preschool students are primed to learn them. Delays in social development will inhibit students' learning when they get to kindergarten.

3. Pages 34 to 38 contain the evaluation for preschoolers' effectiveness in literacy learning. You can look at the examples to get ideas for supportive teaching. I really recommend that, if nothing else, you take a look at this. It can also help you figure out how to most appropriately engage students in "rich language."

4. You'll notice that the evaluation presents skills as a progression: For example, a child exploring language "produces phrases and simple sentences that communicate basic ideas and needs," and a child integrating language skills "uses more complex language or vocabulary to describe events that are imaginary, to explain, or to predict." If a child you are working with is only using language in an exploratory way, they may be frustrated if you insist on prompting them to use more complex language. Skills are acquired incrementally, and frustrated students connect that frustrated feeling to school (or, g-d forbid, reading).

I hope that seeing things like this can give you some guidance for what your students are capable of so that you can feel more comfortable with how you teach. When you have an understanding of the developmental levels of students it is much easier to teach in a way that will help them to learn best.

*Clicking on this link will reroute you to File DEN, a website I have been using for about two and a half years to host files. I can attest to the safety of their site: I have never experienced any problems with them, and definitely recommend their service. They allow hotlinking for all allowed file extensions, including videos and music files; and provide 1GB of personal storage space, a 50mb maximum file size limit, and 5GB of monthly bandwidth. All this is part of their free account - they offer additional services for those who are willing to pay for the service.

Nevada Preschool Content Standards and Literacy Teaching

2009-03-01T21:39:00.000-08:00

Confident understanding of cognitive and social development is essential for effective teaching; Teachers who routinely teach above or below their students' "levels" will experience frustrated and embarrassed students who, instead of learning curriculum content, are learning that school is a place to feel confused and useless. I work in an early literacy supplemental preschool program and so literacy education is at the forefront of my interests at the moment. This post is useful to anyone who is involved with children, but it is written for early childhood educators who are unfamiliar with developmental standards.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

The following are the standards for skills preschool students should have by the end of their pre-kindergarten education that specifically apply to literacy. A complete description of all areas of curriculum can be found here.

I would really recommend going to the site and looking at listening and speaking standards and social-emotional standards - these can give you ideas of what sort of skills you can expect of your students and also what behaviors you need to support. Honestly, for preschoolers, most of the valuable learning that takes place is in social-emotional development; preschoolers’ brains and bodies are made for playing with their friends.

Teaching skills more advanced that those outlined here are not BAD, per se (challenging students is a good thing), but if students appear frustrated and resistant behaviours increase it may be an indication that students are not ready to learn those particular skills.

READING:

Content Standard 1.0: Students know and use word analysis skills and strategies to comprehend new words encountered in text.
-Recognize environmental print and symbols (print and other symbols, other than books, found in the physical environment, such as street signs, billboards, cereal boxes, beverages, commercial logos, etc.).
-Identify some letters in own name.
-Identify the initial sound of own name.
-Demonstrate an awareness that print carries a message.

Content Standard 2.0: Students use reading process skills and strategies to build comprehension.
-Use pictures to aid comprehension.
-Ask questions or make comments pertinent to the story being read.
-Identify the front of the book and know how to turn the pages when reading.

Content Standard 3.0: Students read to comprehend, interpret, and evaluate literature from a variety of authors, cultures, and times.
-Retell a story with the aid of pictures, props, or a book.
-Predict what will happen next in a story and respond.
-Listen and respond to rhythm or rhyme.
-Listen and respond to age-appropriate material for a variety of purposes.
-Listen and respond to poetry and prose.

Content Standard 4.0: Students read to comprehend, interpret, and evaluate informational texts for specific purposes.
-Demonstrate an understanding that printed material provides information.
-Recall information from an event, text, or picture.
-Respond to or ask a question about an event, text, or picture.
-Follow, with teacher assistance, a simple pictoral direction.

WRITING:

Content Standard 5.0: Students write a variety of texts that inform, persuade, describe, evaluate, or tell a story and are appropriate to purpose and audience. (All children this age are not developmentally ready to produce representational work.)
-Experiment with writing tools and materials in response to information.
-Experiment with writing tools and materials to communicate.
-Experiment with writing tools and materials in response to a familiar experience.
-Experiment with writing tools and materials in response to literature.

Content Standard 6.0: Students write with a clear focus and logical development, evaluating, revising, and editing for organization, style, tone, and word choice.
-Share ideas for class writing.
-Organize ideas, through group discussion, with teacher assistance.
-Dictate words, phrases, or sentences to an adult recording on paper.
-Share drawings with others.

Content Standard 7.0: Students write using standard English grammar, usage, punctuation, capitalization, and spelling.
-Attempt, with a model, to write the first letter of first name.
-Attempt to spell own first name.
-Use letter-like approximation to write name and/or other words or ideas.
-Demonstrate beginning techniques for using various writing materials.
-Trace and progress to copying basic shapes (eg horizontal line, vertical line, X, plus sign, circle, etc).

Student Resistance

2009-02-26T22:29:00.000-08:00

Review of “Johnny won’t read, and Susie won’t either: Reading instruction and student resistance”

In the Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, Rebecca Powell, Ellen McIntyre, and Elizabeth Rightmyer published a study which evaluated literacy activities (like Jumpstart) in which students engaged in off-task behavior at least 25% of the time. In my review of their report, I will forego their own constructions of meaning from the results in favour of one which is simpler and more applicable to a setting like Jumpstart. To begin, I will define two important concepts in classroom management and curriculum development: off-task behaviour and engaged time. Then I will go into the actual findings of the study, which evaluated teaching style and qualities of instructional tasks. The purpose of this review is to provide a background of good teaching practices to those who have limited classroom experience.

Before any evaluation is done, it is important to be clear about what is being evaluated. In the case of this study, classrooms were selected for extensive review when off-task behaviour was observed for more than 25% of activity time (this does not include transition time). Off-task behavior was treated as a pre-defined term in the study and not explicitly discussed, but a brief overview and a few examples will clarify what is meant by it. Off-task behavior is behavior which interferes with learning - as will be discussed later, it can result from a variety of different circumstances. Some examples of off-task behavior cited in the article are: students talking instead of listening to the teacher, lying on the floor and rolling around, interruption with unrelated questions and comments, going to the bathroom or getting water during activity time, etc. The presence of these behaviours does not mean instruction is ineffective, but if they are taking up a significant portion of your teaching time it may be difficult to teach effectively.

One aspect of effective teaching is the amount of time students are engaged. While they are off-task, they are obviously not engaged. But just because a child looks like they are on-task, it does not necessarily mean they are engaged. Students are engaged when they are actively attending to the learning task, and the more time your students are engaged the more successful they will be. There are several obstacles to student engagement, however. First, students tend to perceive the educational process negatively. They do not see how it is relevant to their daily lives and their family values. If the instruction they receive lacks real-world validity, minimal engagement will result. Second, students may resist engagement when they have a lack of control over their own learning or when they have the perception that a task might lead to failure and/or embarrassment. Obviously there may be emotional or temperamental reasons for low engagement, but there are things that you can do as a teacher to encourage it.

At this point in time, we are moving beyond qualification of terms and into practices that will actually help you in the classroom. In the study, particular teaching styles were found to be more effective than others. Ineffective practices were: adherence to procedures, scripted models, tasks being too difficult or easy, and students being unable to self-regulate. In my opinion, these practices can partially be the result of inexperienced teachers - teachers who are new to teaching and are too reliant on procedures and models rather than relaxing into their own teaching style, teachers who are unaware of developmental appropriateness and so cannot determine whether tasks are the right difficulty, teachers who have difficulties balancing student choice with classroom chaos. Teachers are faced with a choice, too, and the study showed that some teaching choices were more effective: providing appropriately challenging tasks, encouraging peer collaboration, providing opportunities for student choice, and encouraging self-regulation (independent application of reading strategies) were all aspects of effective teaching styles. This study seemed to focus more on older students (about grade 3), but these practices can still be implemented in a preschool setting: the Jumpstart curriculum is a good starting point for keeping the teaching appropriate to your students’ abilities, you can encourage your students to tell each other their favorite parts of the book they just read, students can choose what colors to write their names in and which center stations to go to first, and you can encourage rich language when students tell stories back to you. Having an effective teaching style is as much about knowledge as it is about flexibility - you have some important tools for teaching literacy, but few people know your students better than you. It is up to you to create a classroom environment that is responsive to the unique needs and strengths of both your students and coworkers. The following table is a layout of the above information organized in a way to help clarify how you can make your teaching practices more effective:

Finally, in implementing teaching methods, the study noted two significantly different qualities of instructional tasks: closed tasks and open tasks. Closed tasks are things such as worksheets or simple questions - activities where there is only one right answer. Closed tasks such as these were found to be directly related to higher incidence of off-task behavior. The study found that where there was a high degree of off-task behavior, tasks were often found to be closed.

However, the study defined several core components of open tasks - those which allow children to complete activities in their own way and come up with answers that are unique to them. Turner and Paris (1995) found six critical features of open tasks. These ‘six Cs’ are: choice, challenge, control, collaboration, constructive comprehension, and (positive) consequences. The following table provides illustrations of these instruction qualities in the classroom:

Especially in a preschool environment, students must be encouraged in all aspects of learning. It may be counterintuitive to tell a child that every answer they give is the “right answer,” but remember that you are helping to formulate how they view education for the rest of their lives. Jumpstart students have usually been identified as students struggling with literacy skills. They often are dealing with circumstances and environments at home that can make learning difficult. This can lead to difficulties in the classroom, but the practices described above will help ANY TEACHER with ANY STUDENT. The findings of this study were based both on previous studies as well as a sample of over 70 literacy activities. Off-task behavior can inhibit learning, but engaged behavior as well as open teaching styles and utilizing the ‘six Cs’ can both address off-task behavior as well as increase student performance.

Watch your perspective

2009-02-12T08:13:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I see this movie about a severed corpus callosum (okay, I didn’t actually watch it - I simply saw the web page title and started thinking willy-nilly with no thought for decorum), and it makes me think about how with genes, for example, we define their effects by what the organism is like withOUT them - that is how we define their functionality. And I think "Wow, it's so damaging, that this is science's approach to discovering things. Why can't they just observe whatever it is?" But obviously you can't (or, we don't know how to) observe a gene, for example. so then I thought "Well, you can observe an arm."

Imagine if someone wanted to figure out what an arm did, and to do so they cut it off and watched the behavior of the organism afterwards. The interesting thing is that the organism would begin to compensate immediately - by perhaps a redistribution of weight, by simply "making do" with their whole arm instead. To make an equation of their behavior, it would be: Body & Behavior with 2 arms - 1 arm = Body & Behavior with 1 arm + Compensation. There is something NEW in this equation: Compensation. So, the question is: How do you separate function from compensation when you are practicing this science-by-deletion?

On top of that, you STILL need the observational component - a lot of compensation behavior of course is directly related to the missing component and you need a control to compare.

This, in turn, makes me think of the Behaviorist/Holist debate - do we learn about the world around us by breaking it up or by looking in great detail (at one thing at a time) or in a wider-perspective kind of observational way?

Of course the answer is: a little of both. It really pretty much always is, but people get so caught up in what their training is that they find it difficult to switch their perspective back and forth.

So here’s a friendly public reminder: don’t be an extremist.

To Abort or Not to Abort?

2009-01-18T17:37:00.000-08:00

I've read a few places that 80% of foetuses diagnosed with Down Syndrome are aborted. This figure horrifies me because:

1. of the implicit cultural priority of neurotypicality
2. abortions are never cause for a party
3. I don't have such an attachment to giving birth myself - I don't see the point in carrying a child if you're just going to abort it if it isn't "what you want" - I'd just adopt if I wasn't comfortable enough with my odds of having a healthy child
4. I have worked with children with Down's, and indeed those with many "special needs" (ah - a phrase that should be the subject of another post) who were: funny, bright, loving, compassionate, etc. etc. etc.
5. I think parents are selfish. Well okay - not ALL parents. And not ALL the time. But I wanted to get your attention.

In my field, there is a lot (a LOT) of talk about supporting parents and families. We focus on strengthening and empowering parents, pretty much at all costs. There are those who say that it is actually the parents, and not the children, who are our clients. This perspective is practical, useful, sensible - teachers are on the front lines. Ours is not a position of prediction and prevention; we go into class each day and deal with the fact that Johnny bit Sally. Our time frame is right now, and right now we have kids in our classes, and they have families that will be with them long after us. Our concern is dealing with what IS, not what is BEST.

But that doesn't mean we don't think about it. Okay - so Johnny bit Sally. I am telling you - it's probably due to the same reason he's always late for school and often has a runny nose: Maybe Johnny's mom shouldn't have freakin' had another kid. And I'm not just talking about lower-income, high-birth-rate populations. Actually, all of my jobs have been in middle-to-upper-middle-class areas. People - parents - think it is a right, to have children. That is just as much true as this: it is a responsibility to have children.

These things are both true - both equally true. But many people feel one way more strongly than the other, and this attitude leads to some moral dilemmas. If you think that having a child is a right, what else do you think you "should" have when it comes to children? Do you think your child should be good at sports? So would you force.... I mean... encourage your child to stay on a sports team even when they protest vociferously? Will you reject your child if they aren't attracted to the right gender? You may contest that these things cross a line - that you can have reasonable expectations of your children (they will be physically fit) and also let them be themselves (my son takes ballet classes).

I contend that you begin to draw that line when you choose to have a child and, when you conceive, you decide to have screening done for things like Down Syndrome. I think that starting to draw the line there is a dangerous, dangerous thing. It is drawing the line at "I want my child to fit in to my society and culture easily." "I don't want to deal with large medical expenses." "I want this to be easy." These sentiments are very easy to understand. Everyone wants these things. But life happens to everyone, anyway. Your child dies at 13. They are in a terrible car accident at 15 and severely brain damaged. You learn they have autism and slowly realize they will never love you the way you want to be loved. They become an addict and throw their life away, homeless by 21 and overdosed by 29.

Expectations are normal. They are human. But if we predicate our love on them then we have already done those we love a grave disservice. And it is our responsibility to give our children the very best love we can.

To: The Last Psychiatrist. Re: Your blog about Kerouac’s ‘On the Road’

2008-12-05T14:41:00.001-08:00

The third sentence in your post is “Has anyone actually read this book? Nine people total, all literary critics?”

Let’s assume, for a moment, that I stopped reading there. There are a lot of blogs like this - people rant about things which they may not be able to express fully to the people around them, and really all it is is that they have a lot of bad things to say about something they don’t really understand. Me, I have been tempted to rant about: coworkers whose pedagogy differs significantly from mine, people who leave grocery carts in the parking lot, restaurant managers who try to say that “organic” may mean “tastes bad.” It’s fine - ranting is okay I guess, as long as you don’t pretend you’re actually making a point. Your sarcastic remark was enough to clue me in that this was all you were going to say, so I really didn’t need to read on. So I didn’t.

I started reading your blog because ‘On the Road’ was a bit of a seminal read for me. It ranks with

“Cancer Ward” by Solzhenitsyn
“One Hundred Years of Solitude” by Marquez
“Madam Bovary” by Flaubert
“Sexing the Cherry” by Winterson
“Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me” by Farina
“The Fountainhead” by Rand, and
“The Crossing” by McCarthy

What differentiates these books from many others I have read is that the authors took a fundamentally different approach to writing and the art of fiction. They combined refined skill and really definitively unique perspectives to create a work not of fiction, not of writing, or social commentary, or self-aggrandizement, but of life. They revealed the ultimate truths of relationships, identity, passion, despair, loss. They were creations of art, not public health pamphlets.

I also read all of these books with absolutely no preconceived notions; I didn’t know about “Atlas Shrugged” or “The First Circle.” I’d never heard about how important the books were. They were recommended by friends whose literary tastes I couldn’t know I agreed with, and by those whose tastes I KNEW I disagreed with. They were stolen from school libraries and picked up from the 50¢ box outside a budget bookstore. I read them out of curiosity and boredom. I had no idea what I was in for.

You thought ‘On The Road’ was narcissistic and spiritually shallow. You call Sal “a passive guy who needs to be lead,” and say that “Dean isn't an antihero, or even amoral, or a free spirit-- he's simply a jerk.” You go on to say that “not only does he do nothing of any value to anyone, he does nothing with purpose.”

It’s so very interesting that you obviously “got” the book, and yet somehow managed to convince yourself there was nothing to get. You say that your problem is with people who misunderstood the book, and yet you go on to rant about how stupid the books characters are (yes, I did eventually read what you wrote. It was just as much of a waste of time as I thought it would be, but if I hadn’t I couldn’t fairly respond to you). You don’t discuss why people may have misunderstood the work, or why they review it the way they do. I see that kind of analysis in the comments, but not in your own writing.

I don’t know what people say about ‘On The Road,’ and I can’t really be bothered to look it up. Your argument that so many people have “got it so wrong” seems fruitless in that you don’t even seem to be concerned about what getting it right would be about. You say that “even when someone actually sits and reads the primary text and finds it is different, it doesn't replace their existing (wrong) information, it only supplements it.” You did the same thing - rather than experiencing the book for yourself, you looked at it through someone else’s eyes - you looked for “young, potent men, lost in a growing commercial society, two coiled springs ready to pop, looking for adventure-- America style.” And when you didn’t find it, instead of finding what it was REALLY about, you only looked at all of the things that were OPPOSITE your expectations. You speak of two “On The Road”s. Speaking as an artist, I am nonplussed at this obvious false dichotomy.

I wanted to write something in response to your post, because I believe the book is wonderful. I’m not really interested in spouting praise like “it’s wonderful that there are so many interpretations of the work” or “it changed my perspective on life.” What I want to say is that it would be great if people were more honest. I don’t really expect my wish to produce results, but then did you expect your rant to keep already closed-minded people from picking up this book? I do think it’s a shame that you practiced this kind of manipulation. I think it’s more a shame that you, yourself, are a victim of it.

Paprika

2008-11-24T02:47:00.000-08:00

This is one of the best movies I have seen in a very long time. I mean, this movie......... I don't want to say much, because it's late and I need to go to bed. But when it was over I said "That was the best dream.... I mean movie. Ever."

When we first looked at it, I wasn't really put out when we decided on something more mainstream - it looked like the sort of thing where I would be saying "But I thought..." and "Wasn't she the one who..." and "What is going on?" every few minutes. But a couple months later we remembered it and picked it up again. And, sure enough, two minutes into the film I was completely confused (I know I know, not really that much of a statement for me, but I'm telling you: !!!). The point when I realized that I was watching something great and not something merely confusing and interesting was when not one of three (mostly conscious) people in the room had any idea what was going on, but we were all breathlessly watching a scene with very little going on in the frame.

This movie turned my mind inside out and then told a cohesive story in the form of a Mobius Strip.

2008-11-24T00:47:00.001-08:00

When I was in Virginia

2008-11-23T20:08:00.000-08:00

I had this secret place in my neighbor's backyard. They hadn't cleared most of it, and what remained was a wonderful, tangled forest - uninteresting for adults and hours of fun for kids. Along with the boys next door, I had created a small clearing, completed with a few logs for seats (there were fewer logs than there were in our group, but you can bet I never sat on the ground).

We would keep secret things here from time to time - a praying mantis in a jar, a candle and some matches, candy, etc. But there was something there that my friends didn't know about, something I wouldn't share even with them. Behind where our seats were arranged there was a box, disguised by leaves and scratched into the soil. It was mine - my secret box in my secret place. It was mine more than anything else - I consulted no one else about its contents, showed them to no one. Even if someone else had found it, they would have been nonplussed - odds and ends, broken dirty things, sad lonely orphaned things. Small pieces of wholes.

I haven't been there in a long time. The box is there, forgotten by those who pass over it, cobwebbed and dusty, hinges rusting. Holes appear and grow; slowly.

But I'll never forget. It's there for me still.

I'll never forget.

Pirating music

2008-11-23T19:09:00.000-08:00

I wrote that title, and then wondered - am I setting myself up? But, oh sigh, I'm sure I do that in so many other ways I really shouldn't worry that much about it.

So, a while ago my friend and I disagreed about copying albums we owned and giving them to other people. (Among other things), she felt it was an important way to share a precious resource that might not be easily accessible - after all, CDs are pretty expensive. And then there's the fact that artists don't really make that much money off of them, anyway. When it comes to supporting an artist financially, the sale of CDs doesn't really help out much. My response was that CDs (and recording contracts) serve other purposes - visibility, advertisement, a guage of how popular the artist is. And these things truly have value.

However, I got to know many of my favorite artists throught illegal sharing of music. I have been to shows, bought CDs, and made other people fans, all directly as a result of being given music I most likely would not have found on my own. So sharing music is very important, too, and can expose us to music we might LOVE, but was prohibitively expensive (before we knew we loved it).

So, at this point in time I have decided that it's okay to give people music from bands when you also buy tickets to see them perform (I intend to buy tickets, but not always attend - I hate crowds, and music is not always good enough of a lure). And for other stuff, I have a 30% rule - I will copy or accept 30% of any album - this way I can get a good idea of the artist, and decide if I want to support them myself (and so be deserving of more of their music).

This is a really important question for me, because I think that it is really important for artists to be supported, and that their fans should be able to show them appreciation. If we want a society that supports the arts, that values them, then we need to create an environment where people can work on them - that means they need to be able to make enough money to earn a living. And I think playing music is quite a deserving way to make a living.

VOTE RESPONSIBLY OR NOT AT ALL

2008-11-03T01:32:00.000-08:00

i will only say this once, because i'm so passionate about this i probably can't even talk to you in person about it - i may appear rude or judgemental, and that is absolutely not right of me.

as your blogger friend, as a fellow citizen, i IMPLORE you to not only vote, but to be informed about the consequences of your choices.

for example:

if the proposition you're voting for requires money, where will it come from? and should we be spending money on it when our state budget, and indeed the national economy, is in such disarray?

is what you are voting for simply a good idea, or something that is SO NECESSARY we should pursue it despite the challenges our state already faces?

do you know how the person you are considering voting for has voted/made decisions in the past? is their platform clear enough to understand and specific enough to hold them accountable for?

so far i am:

1a: no
2: yes
3: no
4: no
5: yes
8: no
11: yes

if you want to know how/why i have come to a particular decision, please ask me! i absolutely will tell you clearly. if you have opinions AND thoughts about any of the propositions, please tell me!

- your fellow citizen, who also wants a better future

grass

2008-10-30T14:29:00.000-07:00

When I went to type in the title of this post, as usual I had no idea what to say. Okay, that's not really usual, but it does happen often. That is, when I am writing something which I'm starting in a web browser and not on .pages, I usually don't know exactly where it's going to go. In fact, at this very moment, I know I had some sort of idea in mind for what to write about when I clicked "new post," but it has since floated, unnoticed, right out my ear.

Oh, lookie, that wasn't a boring sentence! Woo!

So, NaNo is coming up. Yay, NaNo! And that explains my above excitement - fasten your seatbelts, because my writing for the next month is going to be SO AWESOME.

I have NO IDEA what I am going to write about. I partly haven't thought much about it because I'm lazy. But I also... I want to see what happens. I was listening to..... hm..... that woman..... on NPR...... Terry something? It's really silly that I can't think of the program, but anyway she interviews people. Haha, I just remembered, because I played the opening ... thing... in my head: "I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air!"

I always think about how she says "Fresh Air." She always says it in the same, very obviously affected, way. I wonder about how she feels about saying it in this same silly way, everyday. I wonder how it was decided that she should say it just so. I wonder if she'll ever say it any differently, and would be quite disappointed if I missed it.

Anyway. So, Terry was talking to the guy who wrote House of Sand and Fog, and he said that everytime he tries to say something in particular with his writing, every time he tries to force it, it comes out... unnatural. Inorganic (my word). I feel the same way. But plus, uh, 50,000 words is a helluva lot! And I reserve the right to write porn if I can't think of anything else!

---------------------------------------

P.S. Actually, it wasn't Fresh Air I was listening to. It was KQED's City Arts and Lectures

P.P.S. The OTHER point that got lost as I wrote this - "grass" came up when I accidentally hit "G" on my keyboard (or U, in actuality I hit U, but my computer interpreted it as G, because I'm extrafancy like that), and that is why it is the title of this post. And I will unabashedly blame the pointlessness of this post on that accident of circumstance.

P.P.P.S. Vote! And I really will put up the breakdown of the ballot, promise. Some things are important.

Blank Pages

2008-10-14T01:36:00.000-07:00

I'm doing the same thing with this blog that I try to do with my journal - I say to myself, "You can't post that! It's not interesting/long/thoughtful/passionate enough!"

Well, this is what I say to that voice inside my head: Shut up.

*Deep breath*

But no, really, it's too late for me to write anything of substance. I have a class to skip in the morning, and dishes to look at in the sink. Busy busy.

Subjects of upcoming blogs: Hormonal birth control, disability advocacy, duct tape purse, responsible capitalism, and balanced information about the upcoming election (with information specific to the City of Alameda).

Stay tuned (oh all right already, watch something else during the commercials).

I'm moving to Blogger

2008-09-21T11:58:00.000-07:00

Because it's by google, and I heart google. Because I've been using myspace's blog since I use it for social networking, but it's a crappy blog server (if that's the right term to use). Because NaNo is starting again soon, and I need to take my writing seriously anyway.