The annual trek to Kings Island took place on arguably one of the hottest days of Summer with heat indices above 100 degrees F. That really didn’t seem to slow down the group of 12-14 year olds who were determined to ride a certain number of roller coasters by the end of the morning.
I have to back up a bit to say that 3 of the 4 kids were not roller coaster riders to begin with. They were, however, virtual roller coaster designers. Using the Roller Coaster Tycoon series they learned how to make roller coasters that: made guests hurl; plunged underground; reached impossibly high heights and ridiculously steep declines. So they approached this trip to Kings Island a bit differently than I would have 30 + years ago. They used 21st Century skills (or Skillz) to vet the coasters and rank the order in which they planned to ride them based on level of intensity and location. The week before we made the trip they had already examined each coaster they intended to ride using POV videos found on YouTube.
Today’s coaster kids have an extreme advantage – the POV. On YouTube anyone can watch a video taken from the front seat of most popular roller coasters.
I remember the thrill of our first trip to Cedar Point the year they opened The Corkscrew. My brother and I had spent months talking about the first vertical loop coaster to open. All we could do when got to the park was stare in wonderment and speculate what happened to the stuff that flew out of the coaster as it looped over the walkway underneath it. We stood in line for hours that day for our first chance to ride this new style coaster. I remember that I had barrettes in my hair and that, during the ride, my head shimmied so hard between the over-the-shoulder harness that they both unclipped and flew out somewhere along the path of that ride. I had tender bruises above my temples for days. By today’s standards, the Corkscrew is pretty tame. But back then it was a leap of our faith in coaster engineering – coupled with the shouts of glee emanating from riders disembarking – that we would survive the ride with lunch intact.
All in all, I think the POV video, along with her comfort level in the process of virtual discovery, gave my 12 year old the courage to ride a roller coaster she probably would have been too intimidated to try without having had the virtual experience first. The combination of intellectual curiosity and ready access to technology – (The RCT III software requires a pretty sophisticated graphics card) along with collaborating with her cohorts who were equally curious and adept at using technology to answer questions- made for a nice package of 21st century skillz.
It’s a hot, humid Monday in Cincinnati and I have a houseful of children ranging from age 9 to not quite 16. They are all happily ensconced in our basement – three of the youngest have been building with Legos all afternoon. The older ones are probably annihilating some alien force on X-Box. While everyone was enjoying the day off I made the mistake of perusing the NYT and came across “The Pitfalls in Identifying a Gifted Child” on the Room for Debate blog.
New York has been wrestling with the definition of gifted children for some time – most recently with a decision to begin testing for some children as soon as age 3. And because my home state of Ohio has actually spent some time and effort researching this topic (see 2002 Ohio Gifted Task Force and Learning Supports: Gifted Education) I have found the failure of New York to do the same puzzling. Academically gifted children have an ability to learn at a much faster pace than typical students. Broad identification through the administration of group ability tests – although certainly not perfect – at least catches more high ability students than less objective methods. The question shouldn’t be what test to use – but what the ability score cut off for service is. Education experts agree that providing appropriate educational experiences for children of high ability is the right thing to do.
In Clara Hemphill’s response “Wait Until They’re Older,” she asserts that the skills learned in Kindergarten are pretty much the same “whether you have Downs Syndrome or an IQ of 170.” Nothing could be further from the truth. It is disheartening to read a response so steeped in mythology – a response so narrowly informed of best practices in the education of high ability students that it makes even a marginally informed outsider to the world of gifted education cringe.
The most troubling statement Hemphill makes? “Children need to learn that hard work is more important than being born with a high IQ.” Such venom! And such an incredibly wrong-headed thing to say. There is so much that is wrong with Hemphill’s response that I am simply at a loss as where to begin. From the moment she couches the term gifted in quotation marks – as if to express her scorn of the label itself – to suggesting that testing and service be delayed until middle school. I’m tossing this one out to the community. I need to find an aspirin.
The BP disaster in the Gulf forced us to reconsider our annual family retreat to the white sands of the Florida Panhandle. Multiple daily check-ins to the GeoPlatform mapping site of the disaster, building concerns about potential air quality issues, the heartbreaking fear of finding dead, oil covered fish and marine mammals on the beach, and BP’s inability to cap the damn thing culminated in the withdrawal of our reservation within days of our scheduled arrival. Sadly, and with no small regret, we cast about for a substitute vacation plan that would satisfy the majority of our family party of four and decided to visit friends in Gainesville followed by a few days in Orlando. In June.
No, not Orlando Bloom. Although I wish.
Orlando Bloom
At no other time could you have convinced me to travel to the hot interior of Florida in late June. But I had an ace up my sleeve – a last minute score of a hotel room on property at Universal Studios. We were going to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter.
“He’s been acting a little like a Vatican observer here. When is he actually going to do something? And I worry; I know he doesn’t want to take ownership of it. I know politics. He said the minute he says, ‘I’m in charge,’ he takes the blame, but somebody has to. It’s in our interest.” ~ Chris Matthews on Obama’s response to the Gulf oil spill disaster.
Last night President Obama addressed the nation from the Oval Office to say that the BP’s contamination of the Gulf of Mexico is, well, a bad thing. But all the king’s horses and all the king’s men would be working hard to rectify the situation. Nobel prize winners. Scientists. Important people.
Jason Linkins rightly asks in “Obama’s Oil Spill Speech: What Was the Point?” ” were you looking for something that resembled a fully-realized action plan, describing a detailed approach to containment and clean up? Or perhaps a definitive statement, severing the command and control that BP has largely enjoyed, in favor of a structured, centralized federal response? Maybe you were looking for a roadmap-slash-timetable for putting America on a path to a clean energy future? Well, this speech was none of those things.”
This arm’s length treatment of the BP assault on our shores is really quite frightening. And as Robert Reich so ably stated in his column last week: “the administration has not used legal authority to order BP to do a thing, because it hasn’t asserted any legal authority.” Instead, this administration is sitting in the balcony like a Vatican observer, powerless by choice, scanning the horizon for smoke. In the public galleries below, the “small people” are searching for answers, too. But any visibility they might have of the disaster unfolding has been tightly controlled by the very perpetrators of the catastrophe! And the one entity that could and should protect the role of the fourth estate as watchdog, our federal government, is noticeably silent on the matter.
There will have to be a point when we are willing to admit that perhaps BP is not working in the best interests of the people impacted by this contamination of the Gulf of Mexico, but in the interests of the shareholders they serve. And their interest, I believe, is to let it flow until a relief well can be put in place. I can think of no other reason to excuse this level of incompetence and unwillingness to accept assistance from other nations, other oil companies (and the containment and collection ships they have offered to send) and experts in the field. There has to be a point when we will sever the “command and control that BP has largely enjoyed” at the expense of our environment. I had hoped that moment would have been last night.
For a good number of years my father kept his boat at Whiskey Island, a marina located directly at the mouth of the Cuyahoga River in downtown Cleveland. Whiskey Island was a very convenient marina, especially since my dad’s business was downtown and a boat outing at lunchtime could be a real option on summer days. The downside to having a boat at Whiskey Island was having to wait in a flotilla of other boats in a no wake zone for the Conrail Bridge to rise or for an ore tanker to clear the shipping lane before you could to gain access to Lake Erie. One day I was complaining to my dad that my boating party of 4 had had to wait an hour for the railroad bridge. As soon as one train would pass, another came along. And we sat, in that unlucky flotilla of other boats, in the hot sun waiting to get out into the lake. “No, no, that’s a good thing,” my dad said. And he patiently explained that the steady stream of railcars meant that goods were traveling to and from port. That each ore ship drawing up the Cuyahoga (a sight to see if you’ve never experienced it) – was a load of steel to be smelted. That the crushing recession we had been living through in the early 80’s was coming to an end. He was right and, by that fall, the recession was officially over.
This weekend I drove my son to a summer camp somewhere near Paducah, Kentucky and on the way home I started to run out of gas. Let me say right now that I am not the sort of person who drives on an empty tank of gas. I know those people exist (I am, in fact, married to one of them) but I usually am compelled to fill up as soon as the needle on the gauge reaches the last quarter mark. My on-board computer told me I had 40 miles before the tank was dry, but I had been driving on this road all day and there really wasn’t a regular array of available exits with gas stations. I plugged in “Fuel” in my navigator and wound my way through back roads until we came to a service station. The only service station for miles.
It was a BP Station.
All the smugness of driving a hybrid and eating organic, locally grown food and eschewing high fructose corn syrup and reducing my carbon footprint was negated the moment I listened to my navigator and followed this breadcrumb trail to the nearest gas station. Now I had no choice, I could not make it back to the highway and on to the next exit. I had to buy my gas from BP. The irony of the situation was not lost on my traveling companion who bravely suggested I consider my purchase a donation to the clean-up effort in the Gulf of Mexico. To add insult, the piped in music playing at the pump was “Good Vibrations,” the Beach Boys classic. I bought $10 worth of gas, enough to get us back on the road and within range of gas and food. But the irony of the situation was not lost and it reminded me of my dad’s admonition so many years ago.
For me the Gulf of Mexico is the lake waiting beyond the railroad bridge – where the horizon meets the water and time endlessly marches on. It teems with life and generous space. But to the fisherman, the oil drillers and charter captains, it is a rich resource to plumb. The fact that there are oil deposits in the Gulf is a good thing. It is because of the rich natural resources it holds that the states fronting it have been able to grow and prosper. That doesn’t begin to excuse the enormous lack of judgement on the part of BP, Transocean or the federal government agency that was in charge of monitoring this, and other, deep ocean sites. But it does make feel a little bit sheepish to think of that young girl stamping her foot at the indignity of having to wait for the train to pass.
For 19 years my husband and I have travelled to a patch of sand on the “redneck riviera,” the panhandle which encompasses Alabama and Florida. From Gulf Shores to Seaside, the white sandy beaches are amazing, the blue and green waters of the gulf mesmerising and the Apalachicola Oysters stuff of legend. Today I sat in a local coffee shop here in Cincinnati thinking about the sandy paths that run through Seaside, the white picket fences and wide front porches. The rosemary and pine. And I wondered about our upcoming pilgrimage to our favorite place on the planet. Where time slows down and the only errand you might entertain for the day is a visit to Sundog Books with it’s old itchy black lab padding around the wood planked floors amidst stacks of books by southern writers great and small.
This is a place that lets us all exhale. It is where we shake off great clumps of care and worry and dig our toes in the sand. We eat fried chicken and fried hushpuppies and cheese grits and hot dogs and shake the crumbs off onto the floor to rest with the sand our towels brought in. We ride bikes everywhere. A good day is a day when the car doesn’t leave it’s spot in the shade and we tromp off after a day at the shore to cocktails at the Tarpon Bar where there is a daily contest to guess the exact moment of the sunset. Then on to dinner with our cheeks and shoulders radiating heat from the day’s sun.
View From The East Ruskin Pavilion at Seaside
We have swum with dolphins and, unfortunately, sharks. Protected turtle nests and smiled at geckos and bright green frogs with suction cup toes. All manner of birds and bugs and scrub pine and the nicest smell of sandalwood (even though I know it doesn’t grow there I swear I can smell it). My children have grown up to the sights and sounds of Seaside and I have grown there too. I worry, deeply, what will happen to this place, this beautiful place. Will we get there soon enough this year to see it’s glorious mornings and spectacular sunsets? Hunt crabs on the beach with flashlights? Slide into the canvass deck chairs with a stack of books and peer into the shallows from time to time looking for sharks inside the sand bar? With less than a month to go we are counting the days. I’ll keep you posted.
Whan that Aprill with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote,…
So do the Pilgrimaes go afoote
No really, that isn’t how it goes but that is how my addled brain remembered it the other day. The real Canterbury Tales: Prologue (just in case you have misplaced your compliation of Middle English tales) can be found online at Bartleby.com.
My memory isn’t what it used to be.
I think I remember close approximations of things – and my mind fills in the blanks – usually with silly or irreverent placeholders. It may be a habit I picked up from a wonderful book called Shrinklits. Still gives me the giggles. “Beowulf: Monster Grendel’s tastes are planish. Breakfast? Just a couple Danish.” I get the essence of the thing – it’s just that the details are a bit fuzzy.
I don’t know if it was the late morning double-non-fat-latte-two-splendas I enjoyed on Tuesday or the allergy/sinus medication I had with my Greek yogurt for breakfast but by 3:00 in the afternoon I was starting to feel the whoosh whoosh sound of blood rushing through my veins, reverberating in my ears. Bringing two fingers to the pulse point in my neck to measure how fast my heart was racing (an approximation I know – who has a second hand at the office?) feeling slightly nauseous I mentally ticked through the symptoms – tightness in chest, a burning feeling like after a fit of coughing. Heart? Mind? Body? No overwhelming sense of doom. Good. No pain. Good. Deep cleansing breaths. Calming deep breaths. In through the nose. Exhale. Eyes closed.
Phew. Merely a momentary wash of panic born of a tight project schedule, tax preparation, and a quick visit from my mom.
On the heels of my post about managing the re-entry to a full time/over time occupation (Decisions, decisions) I thought it would be appropriate to talk about the dark side of stress. Stress has been a constant companion of mine and I am unusually good at layering it upon myself. Only recently have I begun to understand the physiological ramifications of that burden. Our hormone chemistry changes. Our blood profile changes. Our heart rate changes. When in deep adrenal fight-or-flight mode our reflexes are heightened – our senses are on high alert – we max out.
The thing is we aren’t supposed to live that way. Living in stress mode all the time will kill you. And because I have been trying to fit “being a mom” into my schedule of project management I have been neglecting to employ even the simplest stress reducers like taking the dog to the park for a long walk, a hike in the woods, a good work out session, gardening. I have, in a word, neglected to manage myself and my stress. Luckily I had a gentle reminder this week.
The big problem with being a moderate is that it is hard to get worked up about the rhetoric from opposing parties. On the subject of healthcare reform the vitriol reached a fevered pitch this week with the Rush and Beck routine and doomsday viral email scenarios of golden toothed, welfare cheating, jobless population (some of them not even American) milking the proposed taxpayer-financed system dry.
What does get me worked up though is not abuses of the system (in any program, privately financed or not – there will be abuses of the system) but how abusive the current system is.
My family had a small business employing my dad, mom and brother – and my exposure to health insurance didn’t really start until I began my second full time job back in the early 80’s. I must have really been a rube during my first full time job out of college because I don’t remember making a claim for anything. But in my second job I have a distinct memory of listening to a co-worker describe how she planned to have some plastic surgery done since she knew a doctor who would do it and claim it was a medical necessity so it would be covered. During that same period of time my father was diagnosed with esophageal cancer (it was in its earliest stages) and our family journey into a vastly changed healthcare system began. For 10 years after his treatment concluded he was ineligible for health insurance at any price.
As far as my dad was concerned he felt a small measure of security. As a veteran of the Korean War he always had access to some care offered at the VA hospital – so we knew that if the cancer came back or he got really sick he had a place to go. I was working for a Fortune 500 company at the time so health benefits were plentiful and cheap for me. But our family business faced rising premiums (which would be a bargain today) providing coverage to my mom, brother and other full time employees. My father simply stopped going to the doctor. And every year when he had to submit to an exam to see “if the cancer came back,” we would all hold our collective breaths knowing that if even the smallest speck of malignant cells appeared the clock would be reset another 10 years.
The thing is that most people know someone like my dad. The changes in healthcare wrought in this nation during the past two decades changed the way we all view medicine: with a resigned abdication of will. We are helpless to push back because we fear retribution. We are helpless to push back because, for the working, taxpaying population who are self-employed or working for a small business (defined by the health insurance industry as having less than 200 employees), there is no real other option. We pay exorbitant premiums on high deductible policies and hope we don’t get sick – strangely not because we fear illness but because we fear financial ruin. Hello! Isn’t that why we have insurance? And every year we have to fill out annoyingly detailed new applications for health care designed to uncover any pre-existing condition which can be used to hang up our coverage. This point was driven home to me this past week when I watched the blogger/friend Kim Moldofsky at a press conference speaking about her $ 65,000 deductible. For those of you who missed it you can see her WHRRL story or catch the clip on CSPAN.
As a moderate I want this system to change. I want it to be fair and reflective of the need and ethically administered and I know this won’t always be the case. But I’m okay with that because the system as it now stands really stinks.
Back to work full time and away from home:
Let me crystalize this for you. Although I have spent a good bit of my life as a SAHM (wait, is it “a” SAHM or “an” SAHM?) I have always worked in some capacity. And for the past several years I managed my own business from home. Still, it was easy for me to take an afternoon off once in a while to mow the lawn or make a Costco run. Now that I am “back to work full time AND away from home,” these simple tasks are huge deals. I am hyper-scheduling my time, mentally anyway, to take advantage of every moment of daylight during my non-working hours. And I am fighting a constant battle to maintain the seamlessly run household I had balanced during 15 years of child-raising. So when the weekend rolls around I have already filled each hourly slot on my imaginary daily tasks calendar – along with a vague value attached to each item. Today my mental A-1 list includes: 1) buying and loading tax software so 2) I can begin the process of entering the data I have been accumulating over the past few weeks 3) taking my daughter shopping for a Spring wardrobe she desperately needs since she’s grown about a foot since last year 4) paying bills and 5) picking up the yard and cutting back the tall maidenhair grasses that line my driveway.
Mind you, there are lots and lots of other tasks that could be filtered in to this list – but none of them have the high priority (A-1) that these do. These are the “must see to” items which, barring the unexpected, will NEED to be accomplished today. And number 5 most probably will be the first one to drop off the list if I run out of time or daylight, but it is the most visible task on the list and, as such, will bug me all week if left uncompleted. I can forgive myself not cutting back the plants and perennials behind the house – those I do not see everyday when I leave for or return from work. But the ones that line the driveway? They are brown and bent over and smashed from heavy wet snows – a far cry from the airy feathery grassy-ness they should soon start to be again. Seeing them in this state makes me feel sad because I know that they can’t grow into their new greenery with all that old nasty stuff holding them back.
Secured by