For Peace and Freedom

So they dug out this ash heap in Queens and built all these pavilions. They had cars already driving around in 1939. Cars were not yet drudgery and traffic jams and Jiffy Lube– they were leisure and freedom. They had an early television. Television was not yet aesthetic assault and battery everywhere you turn. You could see the Magna Carta. They had a dishwasher, which was about to make everyone’s life better (except for people who insist on living in minimally renovated pre-1935 housing like stupid, stupid me). They had a robot who smoked cigarettes. He was seven feet tall, spoke 700 words from the record player in his belly, and I would definitely go out on a date with him if his reconstruction goes as planned.

Getting A Grip

Slipping standards, slipping standards” will always be with me. It does sound like a prophesy from a robed, scraggly figure. I’ll probably find it laid out there in my cup, next time I check out my tea leaves. Like most prophesies, it has a seed of truth: standards are always in danger.

Courting Corporations

There is just no way to fund public education without the help of corporations. Many American voters feel that if you are really, really trying, you can pull yourself up by your bootstraps in your chaotic middle school where your math teacher never shows up and work summers at a minimum-wage job and study on […]

Feets

My first year teaching, someone bought and delivered chairs, rugs, bookcases, and blinds to my public school classroom. What began as the set for a cut-rate Soviet public service announcement began to look more like a pleasant learning environment. Books by the dozens also appeared, the most popular of which is definitely Parenthood by Bill Cosby (it reads well in 30-minute bursts), and then Do Fish Drink Water? , which I haven’t read, so I don’t know if they do.