Alpha to Omega

I wanted our 8th grade students to write using a blog. I envisioned it as some type of journal writing assignment. Then I wanted the English teacher to give a topic and have the students respond to it. My Spanish teacher wants online portfolios for the kids (eFolios). I found a number of tools to do each; but I was looking for a solution that solved blog+portfolio+discussion board. I got Movable Type, but it’s pretty limited for aggregation. (I also had a hell of a time getting it to run on Windows Server 2003 and IIS; then once working, it kept mysteriously breaking). Then I found   Drupal . It is an amazing open-source “… dynamic web site platform which allows an individual or community of users to publish, manage and organize a variety of content, Drupal integrates many popular features of content management systems, weblogs, collaborative tools and discussion-based community software into one easy-to-use package.” If your in education and looking like I am, you owe it to ...

I sit in a smoke-filled room, engulfed in second-hand smoke that my wife Mary will surely notice tonight, while 74-year old Dorothy wheezes and strains with each breath. Cigarettes are killing her, but she would rather die than not smoke, Edith confides. Dorothy’s labored breathing sounds like an iron lung (I saw these when young–polio) that needs ball-bearings replaced. A short talk (“I love to talk” she says) exhausts her. She slips away, her eyes mostly closed while she struggles for oxygen. I sit and look at her thinking of Susan Sarandon’s character in the movie “Shall We Dance”, explaining how we are here to witness each other's lives. I witness Dorothy, witness conversations about her, her life and her children– “three ducks lined-up along the west coast; San Diego, San Francisco and Seattle”. What work it is for her to breath. The will to breath, to live, centers in her throat, contracting, pulling in air, chest rising up. Then the end of the intake, and silence fill...

I have left the world. Television/cable is gone (my 19 and 26 year old sons are starting to wonder how they will get their SF Giants fix; it was something we all enjoyed last year together). I have stopped reading newspapers. I refuse to listen to the news on radio. My window on the world (I just realized) is http://news.google.com. I am in the world but not of the world, waiting for the justice of karma to correct the good old USA. I know it will be a long wait. I pray not too many more will suffer and die while the madmen inside the beltway have their way.