Tag End

2009-05-18T05:01:00.000-07:00

Monday Morning

Just something for Monday morning. It comes from Metropolitan Diary in today's New York Times.

Metropolitan Diary

Dear Diary:

Now that it’s not there anymore I can tell a story of why I don’t use travel agents.

I was planning my first and only trip to Israel, so I went up the stairs to a little travel office on West 73rd Street to consider using them for parts of my trip. I got a pleasant greeting from the receptionist and asked her, “Is anybody in the office an expert on Israel?”

She said: “I wouldn’t say experts, but we’re all very familiar with travel to Israel. What can we help you with?”

And I said, “Well, my first question is, am I going to need to rent a car?”

And she said, quite confidently: “Oh, no. You just take a boat from island to island.”

Edward Belling

2009-05-15T15:10:00.000-07:00

BRYAN PATTERSON

Friday morning at Popejoy Hall, his name — Bryan Patterson — was there on the eighth page of the small booklet — "The University of New Mexico School of Medicine Convocation 2009."

The graduation ceremony took in an array of medical specialties — emergency medical services, medical laboratory sciences, radiologic sciences, dental hygiene, biomedical science, occupational therapy, physical therapy, public health.

His name appeared on the page with those receiving a masters degree in public health. That it was there in the booklet at all sat in my mind like a small wonder, a miracle of some kind. When the graduates began the march from the rear of Popejoy to the seats near the stage, the audience stood and turned to watch them approach.

I had an aisle seat and I could see him when he made the turn into the aisle. When our eyes met, we smiled. By the time he reached me and held out a hand, all we could was laugh. No words came. Only laughter at the disbelieving wonder of it all.

That he could walk was miraculous enough. That he was alive to walk even more so. By rights, by any reasonable medical assessment, Bryan should not have been in the building, should not have been alive, let alone the recipient of a master’s degree in public health.

I first met him in 1996. He lay in a coma in the UNMH intensive care unit, his shattered body host to tubes and IVs and electronic measuring devices sending out a steady stream of information reflecting his terrible condition .

On Halloween night, about a week before, he had walked into a Downtown alley toward his parked car. A gang of 15-20 people described by witnesses as “skinheads” attacked him.

Why? No one knows. Who knows anything about mindless violence?

They beat him with their fists; they kicked his head, repeatedly, until they sheared the brain stem and left him for dead in the alley. At the hospital his family gathered around him — his father, Bob; his mother, Sharon; his brother, David, his then-fiancé, Tyrrell.

The outlook was grim. The doctors didn’t expect him to survive the coma, but after nearly a month, he somehow made his way out of the darkness, made his way back, bursting into semi-consciousness with a loud profanity that sent his father into a delirious joy.

I wrote a column for the Albuquerque Journal back then. His family allowed me into their circle so I might chronicle how a small group of loved ones finds their way through the kind of unspeakable nightmare that began for all of them that Halloween night. He was 29, a scientist, and his life ended that night. Oh, he survived, he lived. But the life he had known came to a sudden end. A new one took its place, and the newness was not bright and shiny.

The brain damage was permanent, despite his miraculous recovery. One of his doctors said he’d never seen anything like it. Nonetheless, the Bryan Patterson who walked down an alley on that Halloween night disappeared forever. The new one would struggle with all the obstacles strewn in the path of the severely brain injured. He had to learn how to speak. He had to learn how to walk. He had to learn how to function in society.

He married, but the marriage didn’t survive the brain injury. The pressures crushed the marriage. Over the years, he secured victories and suffered losses -- one step forward, two back, that sort of thing.

Then Friday morning at Popejoy Hall, there he was on the eighth page of a convocation booklet, the holder of a new master’s degree in public health. I sat in the audience watching him climb the stairs to the stage to be hooded by his UNM mentor and I remembered the day he fell down in his kitchen trying to walk no more than six feet.

A string quartet played classical music on the Popejoy stage. Janet Napolitano, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, was the commencement speaker. Like all commencement venues, Popejoy buzzed with the sound of joy, the celebration of achievement, the pomp and circumstance that had dignitaries and scholars in colorful robes on stage; and families whooping and hollering in the audience at the sound of a daughter’s name or the ascendancy of a son to the stage.

I like commencements, regardless of the level of education. I like the happiness in the air. And when I heard Bryan was getting a master’s degree, I had to see it. I wrote columns about him and his family for more than year. They were all there at Popejoy on Friday except for his dad, Bob, a man of wit and intelligence and great spirit. He died last year of a heart ailment. He would have been a deservedly proud man Friday morning.

In school at UNM, Bryan agreed to tests to measure his deficits. It had been many years since he had undergone such tests. The results were not encouraging.

“My short term memory was terrible,” he said. “I had great difficulty multi-tasking. But somehow I dragged myself across the finish line.”

It took him six years. Friday morning, the finish line came into sight.

2009-05-15T05:28:00.000-07:00

Getting Geeks To Talk

Just because you know communication doesn't mean you can communicate.

2009-05-15T04:43:00.000-07:00

Bodies on the West Mesa

The New York Times arrives at the West Mesa.

2009-05-12T08:58:00.000-07:00

Duke City Fix

I don't remember how many years it's been since I first wrote about Duke City Fix while I still wrote a column for the Albuquerque Journal. But I do remember saying something to the effect that as community blogs go, it would be difficult to surpass the continual high quality of DCF. It regularly does exactly what a community blog should do.

So kudos to Chantal Foster and Sophie Martin and all the rest.

Here's a post to DCF that caught my eye this morning. Nothing inflammatory, nothing outrageous -- just a nice little bite-sized piece of Albuquerque.

2009-05-12T08:48:00.000-07:00

Homer Simpson, Rabble Rouser

If it isn't one thing with Homer, it's another.

2009-05-12T04:12:00.000-07:00

They All Do It

Public money undergoes some kind of transformation when it falls into the hands of public officials. This time it's the Brits, not the usual suspects on our side of the Atlantic. I don't know what the time period is -- a week, two weeks, a month -- before public officials start believing public money is actually theirs, and theirs to do with as they please, thank you very much.

My favorite in today's example is the grandee who used public money to have his moat cleaned. I mean ... his moat?

2009-05-11T15:51:00.000-07:00

FRONT LINES

Grunts have a way of getting to the nitty-gritty that the faraway generals (armchair or not) don't. In this case, the grunt is a chemistry teacher at a Midwestern high school. He's following in the footsteps of his mother, a retired Albuquerque teacher.

He asked that identifying information be removed. I agreed to do this, as there's no telling the ramifications of truth-telling should the local generals get wind of it.

So, with that out of the way, here's a brief report from the education wars. There's nothing earth shattering, no seismic activity of note, just a few days of journal entries in the life of a young teacher:

(September) Truly this experience is about the students, and my students are amazing. I've got students from Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Darfur, Somalia, from my neighborhood, and from the neighborhood of the school.

About the 2nd week of class there was an epidemic of "this is too much work" and I got asked by at least one student in every class if I was the only chemistry teacher (in hopes that they'd be able to switch out of my class). Fortunately, I am the only chemistry teacher, so it was an easy answer, and fortunately, we're past the growing pains and I'm continuing to work them rigorously without complaint.

One of my favorite whines from early on was, "UGH, everything in here is so organized." The growth/progress has been astounding; if only they could have seen themselves a mere 5 weeks ago!

As amazing as the students have been, the administration has been completely irrational and outrageous. Truly, our students are being left behind not because of any lack of will, but because of a lack of good teaching and district leadership. For example, on Monday, students arrived and received completely new schedules, including new courses and new teachers.

As a teacher who taught 5 periods of chemistry, I'm now teaching 5 periods of chemistry, and a 6th period of Earth Science. I also have new students in each of my chemistry courses who will be starting their years with me already behind.

During passing period one day, my vice principal pulled me and my student, Harold, (not his real name) aside to say:
"Harold is in the 99%."
"Oh, that's great! Good job Harold."
"I mean the 99% for failing. He's got straight F's. He's our Afghani refugee. Our first one, making a real name for himself."

(November)
Caught a student with a knife on Friday. It was concealed in a pen. Another student pulled off the cap, revealing a really nasty blade. As I took it away, she said, "Don't take that, it's my fucking shank!"

I called security and she said that she had no idea it was a knife and that her friend gave it to her a few years ago . . . The worst part is that 10 minutes later she was back in my classroom (to the applause of other students, who were saying that what I did was a "bitch move"). She was saying that she had pretended to cry and there would be no punishment.

(April)
Oh the irony . . . I couldn't believe it! Fourth period today (my tough class, but I've been growing on them!): One of the management policies I've been working on is if a student is disruptive, I will ask him/her to step outside and have a conference with me. If it is a frequent misbehavior, oftentimes I'll have him/her sign the referral that I was going to submit, and say, "Ok, fair warning." However, often the student won't step out in the hall. This time, the student put on headphones to ignore me . . . a violation of our beloved electronic devices rule #9 :) Because the student was completely non-compliant and disruptive, I decided she needed to leave. On the referral I put that she refused to step in the hall, and had an electronic device. (Big mistake).

A few minutes after the student left, five safety officers were in my room with the principal. He said, "All right, I'm going to be straight with you. Anyone who puts their cell phone out on the table will have their parents come pick it up. No questions asked. If you don't put your cell phone out, and we find it when we are searching you, it's going to be a 10-day suspension, and I'm keeping your cell phone." In the end he got 20 cell phones in a 22 person class. (The only school supply kids bring!!).

Kids, of course blamed it on me and after the 15 minute commercial break, I had completely lost control. Investment went WAY down, obviously, because kids who responsibly keep their cell phones in the upright and locked position got them taken away. To me, it's almost a human rights issue!

2009-05-11T04:35:00.000-07:00

Eat Your Veggies

I saw this the other day, thought about posting it, didn't do it, then it showed up in an e-mail from a friend and I can take a hint. It's a kind of license plate Rorschach.

Which way did I go at first? Oh, you know which way I went first.

2009-05-10T05:04:00.000-07:00

DR. DAYTON'S BREAKFAST IN A BAR

Coming soon to a grocery near you (if you live in Corrales, where everything is near you): DR. DAYTON'S COMPLETELY NATURAL, DELICIOUS AND NUTRITIOUS BREAKFAST IN A BAR (SMARTER TIL NOON).

I'm not sure about the ALL-CAPS because I've never written ad copy before, but Dayton and his wife are friends and I said I'd blog the breakfast bar. So there.

I my own self have tasted the good doctor's breakfast bar (he's a family practitioner). I have stood in his very kitchen, where the man's avocation, baking up a storm, is practiced.

The store in which his Breakfast Bar will be carried is the FrontierMart in Corrales. You can't miss it. It's the only store in town. And remember, it's near you.

Also rememer it's Sunday, when everything moves slower except you, because you will be powered by Dr. Dayton's Breakfast Bar, guaranteed to make you smarter til noon. (Thats what his wife said, anyway.)

Life in Corrales is always a little different.

2009-05-09T06:18:00.000-07:00

Voice Mail Wars

I haven't been counting, but it seems that every two or three days now, somebody is saying Voice Mail is dead, and that Voice Mail is one of the most awful plagues inflicted upon mankind, and that Voice Mail deserves to die because ... well, you get the idea.

So when did Voice Mail become such a threat to society? Or am I just behind yet one curve?

2009-05-08T05:07:00.000-07:00

It's Only Fair

It's early in the morning. I like to start the day with something that demonstrates democracy is alive and well. At least the two-ply version is anyway.

2009-05-07T14:11:00.000-07:00

CNM and GM ... uh ... UNM

In today's Journal, the paper's first-rate UNM beat reporter, Martin Salazar, has a story ($ sub. req.) showing that for the first time CNM -- Central New Mexico Community College -- has become the state's largest higher education institution, surpassing UNM's enrollment by 172 students.

After I read Martin's story, two people came to mind, each retired from UNM after long and distinguished careers -- David Stuart, former Associate Provost for Academic Affairs; and his wife, Cindy Stuart, former Director of Admissions.

I was curious to know their thoughts on the notion that CNM had surpassed UNM in student enrollment.

Here's what David Stuart had to say:

"What it means to me is that CNM is meeting community needs, being efficient, being practical, being inexpensive -- in other words, CNM is doing all the things UNM isn’t doing right now," he said.

He elaborated a bit: "Even though it’s (CNM) not the same kind of institution, it’s meeting a lot of basic educational and community needs and it’s doing it very, very well.

"I don’t know why UNM can’t do that. If UNM hadn’t gone into the tank with so many high-priced administrative positions and PR campaigns that are sometimes just downright goofy, UNM would still be ahead of CNM. But it’s not. And it’s by its own hand.

"UNM is not offering enough courses to undergraduates; it continues to trim the number of sections offered to undergraduates, so kids are having a harder and harder time getting their basic classes; and I personally know quite a few kids in the coffee shops around campus who take a lot of their required courses at CNM. They’re enrolled at UNM, but they just transfer them in (from CNM) because it’s so much cheaper."

His wife, Cindy, said: "I was on the phone with a UNM senior tenured research faculty member when all of a sudden he said: `Oh, my God, what are they are trying to do? Turn this (UNM) into a teaching university?' I was stunned. I had no response. He wasn't joking. He meant it."

David Stuart then concluded the conversation: "This is a big story and it’s not a sign of the economic times. It’s a sign of the hubris times at UNM. UNM is behaving like General Motors: “This is what we think you should have and you’re going to buy it."

"It doesn’t matter that it’s not needed or outmoded. UNM has a tin ear to buyer preferences, which is to say, student preferences.

"UNM says to its students: “You’ll take what we give to you," he said.

2009-05-07T13:06:00.000-07:00

In the News ... or Not

I'm having a conversation (e-mail) with an old news pro, a guy who has been around the block more than a few times. The topic is Manny Ramirez, an odd creature formerly playing left field for the Boston Red Sox and now doing the same job for the Dodgers. He has been suspended for 50 games for testing positive for ... something. I stopped reading the story before it reached that point. I just didn't care what he had tested positive for.

Then an e-mail from the old news pro just happened to show up: "Are we all tired of Manny Ramirez? I am."

He'd struck a nerve and I wrote back: Funny you should ask if I'm tired of Manny Ramirez. Yes, I am. I'm tired of A-Rod, too. I'm tired of the repetition, the 24/7 news cycle that demands news whether it's there or not, the endless analysis and all the rest that comes with what we call "news" today. But I sure don't know what to do about it. Any suggestions?

He had one:

"We need an automatic television editor. You punch in "Manny Ramirez", and the minute the words "Manny Ramirez" are spoken by the announcer, the television switches channels to the nearest Yogi Bear cartoon, Clint Eastwood movie or whatever you program it to do. I choose Yogi Bear because he is slightly more relevant than Manny Ramirez."

Are the two of us jaded? Worn out? I don't know. But it does seem to me that an awful lot of what passes for news isn't. It's not so much the Manny story itself that ran today that bothers me. That's a legitimate news story. What I have in mind is the next 72 hours of non-stop analysis that surely will follow today's story.

Then of course there's the perpetual A-Rod saga and ... Oh, let's not go there.

2009-05-06T11:58:00.000-07:00

News

From Reuters:

Afghanistan's only pig quarantined in flu fear

2009-05-06T11:40:00.000-07:00

Jon Carroll

Jon Carroll writes a column for the San Francisco Chronicle. He writes five columns a week. If the thought of that doesn't fry your brain, you need to try it sometime. In public. (It doesn't count unless you do it in public, you know.)

In today's column, he confesses that he is the Zodiac killer. (I don't know if this was planned or one of those deadline things. In the column business, your plans and deadlines often are in conflict.)

If you do not read Jon Carroll, you need to make this important change in your life and start reading him today. As Carroll himself has written, and as all columnists know (but not necessarily their editors), if you write multiple columns a week, it is guaranteed at least one will be a stinker. It's a natural law or something and can't be helped.

But Jon Carroll doesn't write too many stinkers. I've been a fan for a long time. I thought I'd toss one of his columns your way. Give him a week or two. Read him every day. You will smile, you will think (he encourages it), you will notice fine sentences being built. Watching a fine sentence being built is one of life's better pleasures, no?

2009-05-06T11:15:00.000-07:00

The Commies (NCAA Division I)

This morning the Journal sports section ran a commentary by Blair Kerkhoff of the Kansas City Star. The subject was the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) schools and how they get the lion's share of college football money. In the course of the commentary, there appeared a partial quote from Joe Barton, a Republican congressman from Texas. (Oh, you silly goose, of course Congress is involved in college football. Where else would we go for answers to such vexing questions?)

Anyway, in the course of listing the sins of the BCS, the Republican said the system that's been in place since 1998 is "like communism."

I need someone to explain to me why conservative Republicans go down the "communist" road at every opportunity. I understand it when they're talking about Barack Obama, that well known communist/socialist/fascist. Everyone understands that.

But college football? BCS Communists? Times have been tough for Republicans, but still ... Why do they say these things?

Help me out here. I really do want to know. Why do they do this?

2009-05-05T08:26:00.000-07:00

Reaping What You Sow

Haley Heinz, a good, young police reporter has a story that needs a new headline in today's Albuquerque Journal ($sub.req.) Here's the Journal headline: "Run on Ammo Leaves Cops Short."

I'm thinking a more correct headline would go something like this: Right Wing Yay-Hoos Reap What They Sow.

The reason for the ammo shortage is -- wait for it -- Barack Obama. But you probably already knew that.

Remember when Obama was a secret Muslim, and then a socialist, and then he played nice with Hugo Chavez, and then there was that birth certificate thing, and then he bowed too much to ...? Well, they all kind of run together after awhile and I have a hard time keeping all the conspiracies straight.

Anyway, the same yay-hoos who bought into all these rumors (one often hears some of them on KKOB, prattling on about the latest secret government plan to take away their "rights") are running around America buying up all the ammo because Obama is going to take away their guns -- and their ammo, too, I guess.

Of course, Obama is going to do no such thing. Nobody is coming to get their guns. Nobody is coming to get their ammo. Oh, there might be a lefty or two out there who wants some kind of common sense in gun control, but we all know that won't happen because the NRA bought Congress a long time ago.

Of all that ails America these days, guns and ammo don't make the cut. They're not on Obama's to-do list. But they do make for fertile rumor soil. So the yay-hoos are out there making ammo scarce and making life difficult for ... Obama? No.

Liberals? No.

Democrats? No.

They're making life harder for police officers.

Now, if they can just "prove" that Obama secretly imported swine flu so he could get all the ammo when they were laid up coughing and sneezing ...

2009-05-04T07:59:00.000-07:00

God Talk

My friend, John Fleck, the veteran Albuquerque Journal science writer, has introduced me to a couple of physicist pals of his who regularly take on the evolution debate, which of course always leads to a religion debate.

In today's Times, Stanley Fish, writes an essay on a book by the British critic Terry Eagleton. It sounds to me like Eagleton does a pretty good job of describing what science can and can't do; and what religion can and can't do. The book is “Reason, Faith and Revolution.”

Here's a small bit: "

By theological questions, Eagleton means questions like, “Why is there anything in the first place?”, “Why what we do have is actually intelligible to us?” and “Where do our notions of explanation, regularity and intelligibility come from?”

The fact that science, liberal rationalism and economic calculation can not ask — never mind answer — such questions should not be held against them, for that is not what they do.

And, conversely, the fact that religion and theology cannot provide a technology for explaining how the material world works should not be held against them, either, for that is not what they do. When Christopher Hitchens declares that given the emergence of “the telescope and the microscope” religion “no longer offers an explanation of anything important,” Eagleton replies, “But Christianity was never meant to be an explanation of anything in the first place. It’s rather like saying that thanks to the electric toaster we can forget about Chekhov.”

2009-05-04T05:58:00.000-07:00

Headline

It's just a headline -- Despite Recession, Fearful Brazilians Keep Armored Car Sales Booming. I suppose it's a serious issue in Brazil, serious enough to buy that armored car if you can afford it, but not all headlines are created equal, and this one stopped me in my tracks. Here's the link to the story if you want to read the whole thing.

2009-05-04T05:49:00.000-07:00

Sold Out

If there is a better teller of America's story than Dan Barry of The New York Times, I can't imagine who it might be. He writes a column called This Land, traveling the country to tell its stories. Today it is a story of being sold out, a family who has sold Pontiacs since they first began in 1926. They talk about betrayal by GM. There will be no more Pontiacs to sell.

2009-05-04T05:33:00.000-07:00

The Blog -- Tag End

I've Twittered, I've Facebooked, I suppose I might as well Blog. I got together with Dave Thomas, a physicist who knows his way around a computer and we got the thing off the ground. I just now noticed that in my hurry to post something -- anything -- grammar took a dive (an apostrophe in the wild, floating around where it should not be). "Oh, well," as my longtime friend, the late Tony Hillerman might say.

Speaking of Tony, the name of the blog -- Tag End -- is shamelessly stolen from him. He wrote once that the Sandia Mountains were the "tag end" of the Rockies. For some reason the phrase stuck in my head over the years. So Tag End it is.

Actually, I began experimenting with it some time ago, but I was working at the Journal then and didn't feel too comfortable going off the reservation. Now, after working there for about 31 years and writing a column for 28 of them, I am "retired," whatever that might mean and I no longer have a reservation to go off of.

What will the blog be? I'm not sure. That remains to be seen. A commentary here and there, I suppose. A few links to stories and essays that catch my eye. I'm forever sending these things to friends, so I might as well post them here and be done with it.

I'm still working on the basic nuts and bolts of the blog and much learning needs to be done. So you can expect many mistakes. I am, after all, something of a newbie.

Suggestions (without flames if possible) would be most welcome. If you have links to blogs you think I need to check out, send them. The blog roll is in its infancy.

All right, enough of the noodling around. I think I'll start clicking on Blogger tabs and see what happens.

2009-05-02T12:11:00.000-07:00

OLD STORY, NEW TWIST

In The New York Times, an old story -- bigotry -- comes with a new twist -- swine flu. I am always at a loss when it comes to bigotry's ability to change with the times.

2009-05-02T11:48:00.000-07:00

Hello, World!!

Here is a link to my friend John's blog. Since I am in the habit of blaming him for all things that go wrong with my foray's into cyberspace, I thought the least I could do is start off this blog by linking to John's excellent science blog. (He's the veteran science writer at the Albuquerque Journal.)