Passing or failing is ultimately up to the learner

Today is the last day for Metro State students to withdraw from a course and avoid accepting whatever grade they have earned. For CSU students, that day is April 15. The good news for some is that they can "repair" their grades by retaking failed courses, but that adds expense and delays taking other courses (or even graduating on time).

And that gets me thinking about grading more generally and how to assess student work and how to best communicate how well a student is doing. I wrote a bit about class rank and valedictorians last week and both of those issues grow out of our custom of rating and ranking students.

Most early elementary grades avoid grades as much as they can, opting for more holistic assessments of growth and focusing on classroom culture and behavior. School, it turns out, is not very natural, and we all need to be "civilized" into finding how to work and learn and interact with large groups when we transition from "mom and me" or at least one adult and me.

Even later elementary students don't feel the weight of striving for top grades, though educators start the sorting process -- separating achievers from just OK from laggers -- ostensibly so each group can receive the educational challenges that will best help them continue to grow.

By middle school, grades get more emphasis, starting to increase the angst and sorting, ostensibly to get kids ready for high school (we already know the comparisons will be sharply increasing among all grades so we prepare kids for the pain).

High school, at least from afar, is the "final" academic sorting of our children. I say "final" because grades in college are increasingly bunched at the top, with the vast majority of students getting A's and B's. If a student does not earn at least a C or C-, most colleges don't accept that as being proficient. 

But various forms of sorting continue.

I have Metro students, right now, who are not likely to pass, though it has little to do with their intelligence, mastery of grammar and punctuation, logical thinking skills, etc. It has a LOT to do with not having the self-discipline to keep up with the (I admit it) not-all-that-challenging writing assignments. 

Some of this can be blamed on working full-time (often combined with parenting of young children) and some can be blamed on poor preparation in earlier years, and some can be attributed to mental or physical health issues that have plagued some students for years, or are more recent for others.

CSU students are not immune to these factors, though they have already been sorted since they have learned how to "do" school. Metro students often are Metro students at least partially due to not having past success "doing" school. 

The sorting is harsh and irresistible. We sort kids into various levels of post-secondary education, with some choosing junior college, some choosing schools that try to admit as many people as they can, and some taking pride in rejecting a large percentage of applicants. And some sorting takes place when kids opt for, say, the military or entering the work world immediately after high school.

So much sorting.

I heard a woman complaining the other day, within a small group of people who get together once a week, about the poor voices she is surrounded by in the church choir, and how that is a constant source of torment for her. She is likely correct as to her assessment of their musical ability, but maybe they just don't care as much as she does about excellence. Or maybe they joined choir for the community and for the chance to be part of a group that serves their church... or just provides support.

Singing in a church choir might be the one thing a person can contribute directly to a church. Anyone can join the church and anyone can join the choir (though I'm sure a director could nudge truly awful singers into other areas). 

Churches are not immune to sorting, of course, with "big donors" getting more attention and appreciation than non-donors. 

I remember when a nun teaching my fifth grade Catechism group that even in Heaven there was some sorting. Saints would sit in gold chairs (perhaps with plush cushions?), and, depending on your "goodness," the rest of us might find ourselves in the silver or lead or iron chairs. She hinted that a friend and I, constantly wriggling and giggling, might end up in straw chairs.

You won't be surprised to learn that the gold chairs were placed closest to God, while those in the straw chairs were off in the distance. Even in Heaven, status and accomplishment was important. See why I got skeptical about religion?

The bottom line is that this retired woman in the choir is still busily sorting people, at least in her own mind. We never really seem to escape all that categorizing and labeling and ranking and comparing.

I encourage college students to meet their deadlines mostly by subtracting a few points for those who are late with their work. That is not enough for some, of course. As we emerge slowly from the pandemic, my choice is to provide as much grace as a kid needs to succeed. I suppose I would accept late work right up to the deadline to submit grades, though most students have either gotten into the rhythm of the coursework or given up at that point.

In the end, teachers (or anyone who is assessing others) need to settle on what their main purpose for the course is. If it is to follow the rules and get things in on time (and show up to work as scheduled), that is OK. As long as everyone knows those are the rules.

My purpose is to support better thinkers, writers, and citizens, and exactly WHEN that happens is of less concern. If a student uploads an excellent report or discussion post or narrative essay a week -- or a month -- late, I always take it and always grade it.

Maybe I am enabling bad habits and what those students need is a reality check, similar to what fate befalls a kid who consistently shows up late to work. 

For Metro students, they already are well aware of job requirements and how people can be quickly sorted into "winners and losers." They don't need me piling on.

My sort, I suppose, is between those willing to engage in the thinking and writing activities that I devise and those who just aren't interested in engaging.

I long ago decided to accept their decision, either way. 

Will we ever stop "amusing ourselves to death"?

One thing that never changes with journalism is that attention and excitement is greater with reporting that highlights the out of the ordinary, the shocking, the provocative, and the transgressive. 

"Attention" applies both to readers/viewers, who love to observe human frailty and silliness and nobility and courage, among many characteristics, and to journalists themselves, who find it difficult to resist feeding audience interest and making a bigger "splash" than their rivals.

I don't blame readers or journalists. This is simple human behavior and has not changed in millennia. Technology has certainly changed, which mostly speeds things up.

The fascination with the Will Smith slap of Chris Rock produces reams of punditry and some of those experts find ways to label some states as "pro-Will" or "pro-Chris." Really? Aren't we divided enough? I have read thousands of words -- I couldn't resist -- on the incident and am amazed at how much can be read into a simple out-of-control moment. 

Here's what I saw: two rich guys arguing and posing. To try to read too much into such a weird and ultimately irrelevant event is silly. 

A better use of our time might be contemplate things that are not one-time unusual events, despite the combination of celebrity, violence (though not life-threatening), and gender roles, with a side helping of family history (Smith's father hit his mother when Will was 9 and at least some have claimed this was his moment to defend his mom, in some twisted way). 

More important would be stories on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his wacky wife, Ginni. She is clearly far down the conspiracy rathole, and he must know this. He may be there too, for all we know. He rarely speaks. They are self-described "best friends" and it's difficult to imagine them not discussing all those election fraud allegations and various attempts to overturn a legal election.

For some reason, most people are not calling loudly for Judge Thomas to retire. He clearly has to go. He has abused the public's trust in voting on Jan. 6-related cases and once a judge becomes suspect in one area, the judge loses credibility in all areas. "I only sinned this one time," is a weak defense.

There is a pattern of behavior in the story of the Thomas partnership, and patterns take lots of time to identify, develop, and analyze. 

They don't make quite the splash as a televised slap but their effects are much larger. 

The revelation that nearly eight hours of White House logs are missing from Jan. 6, is part of another pattern of law skirting or law breaking, or maybe just stupid behavior. Trump is a crook. My dad used to label pretty much anyone with power as "crooks," and he wasn't concerned with legal niceties. He was referring to bad behavior and a healthy skepticism (on his part, which I share) about the rich and powerful. 

Russia invading Ukraine is a huge story, but it is part of a pattern that only occasionally garnered enough energy and outrage for many journalists to report on. Putin has been a KGB thug all along, but as long as we could ignore most of his transgressions, we had pop culture fights and invented conspiracies to keep us busy.

Journalism loves a scandal mostly because readers and viewers love a scandal. NOT being involved in a scandal helps us feel morally superior even as our daily lives may drag along, plagued by petty injustices and disappointments and nobody really caring about those who were NOT in the Oscars theater or in a rich and powerful family of politicians. "Hey! At least I didn't slap a guy on national TV," we might think. And we might think, "Man, I wish I could slap someone on national TV."

Either of those reactions are not going to improve anyone's life.

Rome had formal circuses to entertain and placate the rabble. Too often, modern media functions as a circus.

Still, there are opportunities to change some of that in our student media programs. The key is to teach students that there are viable options to constantly shouting and hyperventilating.

Have you heard the news!?

The world is big and complex and frustrating and tragic and quirky and funny... and sometimes it's worth a few minutes to simply scan the range of coverage on a well-supported and researched paper like the Washington Post. 

Here is a sampling of the coverage on washingtonpost.com on March 29:

• There is some sort of break in negotiations between Ukraine and Russia, with Russia promising to reduce attacks on certain cities. On the other hand, Ukraine urges its negotiators to not eat or drink amid the talks due to poison concerns. 
• Reporters reveal that there is a 7-hour gap in White House logs from the Jan. 6 insurrection. Nothing to see there, I assume.
• Older than 50? The FDA authorizes a second vaccine booster shot, though it is not required.
• About 4.4 million Americans quit or changed jobs in February. That is a lot, historically.
• March Madness tournaments for both men and women are ending up with traditional powerhouses making the Final Four, despite all the upsets and Cinderella stories.
• Salmon are swimming farther out into the Pacific Ocean, and warming waters mean some will never come back.
• Will Smith's Oscars meltdown is being analyzed to death, which will shock exactly no one.
• America's percentage of people fully vaccinated is 65.5 percent. That leaves millions vulnerable to the newest variation of the virus: BA.2.
• President Biden has sent his budget plan to Congress but Congress won't be agreeing with most of the numbers and plans. Another complete surprise.
• Queen Elizabeth II made her first public appearance in months. For some reason, that was a big headline under international news.
• In 22 metro areas, younger women earn as much or more than men... but the wage gap returns as working women age. Child rearing is blamed by experts.
• "Moon Knight" brings a complex Marvel Comics superhero to Disney Plus.

Honestly, how many of those news items have much to do with my daily life? I'm properly outraged, surprised, appalled, optimistic, etc., when I encounter all these "big stories," but I'm not sure my life would be any better if I simply avoided reading the national press for a week.

For student media, this is a reminder that everything we do must directly affect our school communities. Failure to do that means we become irrelevant.

'Men to the rescue' often is unhelpful and even damaging

It was not a great joke and likely was not planned in advance, but the reaction of Will Smith slapping Chris Rock to, ostensibly, defend Jada Pinkett Smith's honor certainly was the sort of "live TV" moment that most award shows envy.

Professional comedians must have cringed as Will Smith simply going back to his seat without any repercussions for what, had it happened on a street, might have led to assault charges. Good for Chris Rock, BTW, for not pressing any charges. Ironically, he went from (perhaps) unintended boor to "the bigger man" in just moments.

I don't know much about Will Smith's wife but apparently she is open about her alopecia (and her choice to stop struggling with hair loss and simply cut it very short) but I also assume that Chris Rock had not heard or read about her medical condition. Even the most provocative comedians pull back from openly mocking people with an illness beyond their control.

Will Smith initially laughed at the joke, before looking over at his wife and realizing she was NOT happy. That prompted his irrational and over-the-top physical reaction, followed by loud and vulgar threats. It was all bleeped by the network but you can find the unfiltered version easily online.

I see that many in attendance rallied to Mr. Smith's defense, even praising his macho-adjacent actions and congratulating him for those, perhaps even more than for the Best Actor award he won minutes later.

It's all too bad and certainly must be causing a lot of conversations across the country as parents and teachers must reinforce society's hopes that we all find ways to avoid physical violence when we encounter insults or other discourteous behavior. 

I have already heard some women claim they would be quite pleased to have their husband deck somebody defending them. We have not gotten past the allure of the knight in shining armor image, coming to the helpful damsel's defense. 

Now, if Ms. Smith had marched up to the stage and slapped Mr. Rock, that would have been a striking (sorry!) statement of female empowerment.

What we got, unfortunately, was another example of a male "pissing contest" leading to, well, nothing.

Will Smith later appeared to not quite believe he had lost control on national TV and gave most of his award acceptance speech in tears. He also claimed that he had lately found his purpose, namely to spread love in the world.

Um... slapping a guy indicates that he has lots of work to do in fulfilling that purpose. 

This incident will fade in a few hours, replaced by some new indignity or outrage, but isn't the Russian invasion of Ukraine just another male pissing contest? One old guy, calling upon his pride and diminishing testosterone, "slaps" a rival country. Another old guy, our president, goes off script for a moment and mistakenly says out loud what everyone else is thinking: Putin cannot continue to lead Russia.

But it's poor diplomacy and unhelpful for all those Ukrainians being bombed and kidnapped and murdered as their homes are destroyed and hundreds of hospitals, schools, and churches are demolished.

If "role models" lose their cool, I'm not sure why we would expect a sophomore boy who has been bullied or teased to "turn the other cheek," or find alternatives other than fighting (or shooting). 

I would bet Will Smith and Joe Biden both wish they had chosen another option, but it's too late now. If we expect 16-year-olds to "act right," no matter the situation, we certainly can expect leaders to act right.

Can't we?

Media students mostly decide what NOT to cover

I ran across the following while reading a blogger's post today, and it struck me as applicable to student media:

The question of what to work on is under-discussed. There’s plenty of advice on getting work done: setting up good habits, creating productivity systems, project management and planning. Yet, there’s relative silence for the crucial decision of which projects to pursue.

Choosing what to work on is hard because you can’t know in advance how any project will turn out. If you knew what perspective was most worthwhile, the right choice would be obvious. It would simply be a matter of doing the work. But these choices exist outside of any particular vantage point. We don’t have this information, and we have to choose anyway.

A truth about journalism, and student journalism in particular, is that there is limited time and space for reporting and publishing and that most of our decisions involve what NOT to cover. We are curators, not stenographers. We pick and choose. 

Most of what happens in a typical high school class or activity or even passing period, MIGHT be of interest to someone, but we don't try to record each fact that we observe. 

It sounds great to claim that our publication will cover the entire school community and will strive to highlight a broad spectrum of life at our school, but that sort of breadth mostly leads to numbing readers and missing the significance of that most ubiquitous of American institutions: high school.

I was critiquing a magazine today for a state organization, and an editors' note made clear that the publication had abandoned its old "newspaper" strategy in favor of a magazine approach. So far, so good. And any transition is bound to be rocky.

But as I continued reading it became clearer that the staff has not fully embraced magazine style and relied too much on covering "topics," such as the history of our war in Afghanistan or unfair stereotypes of Asian students.

It sounds simple, but there really are NOT stories about topics. There is no volleyball story or physics club story, or biology class story. There ARE stories about volleyball players and coaches and spouses of coaches and managers. There are stories about physics teachers and students and their challenges and motivations. There are stories that Asian students can share that help "others" see challenges previously unseen.

I have written about Ernie Pyle and his "tell the story of one soldier" advice for reporters too many times for me to count (and did it again in the critique I wrote today). But the fundamental truth of "If you want to tell the story of physics club, tell the story of one club member" never varies. 

Back to those couple grafs quoted above: advisers and editors need to engage with the question of what to work on, and how to spend limited available time, every day and every issue or deadline. 

We can't do it all, but that should not be discouraging. Instead we are free to make choices that provide new insights and elevate people who might be overlooked or underappreciated or simply misunderstood.

When we begin our reporting, we might have only the most vague notion of what we might find. We just have to believe that we will find something if we spend enough time exploring and observing and questioning. 

 

War entertains and frightens, while heroism mixes with horror

Here is a trend that is so American: violent crime in some areas is increasing to level unseen for decades and citizens are arming themselves in record numbers.

The cause of the uptick in crime is likely complex but certainly starts with the pandemic and the grinding depression and feelings of helplessness that many people have been dealing with for over two years. Oh, and there is the torrent of violent rhetoric that politicians and media personalities have dumped on us all. And then there is the lure of fat profits for gun manufacturers, which leads to ramped up production and marketing and sales.

And, duh, there's a world war raging. Sure, it's not in our neighborhoods, but I suppose there is some comfort to be found in having a gun (or several guns) handy, just in case. You never know when the next Canadian incursion ("special military operation") will occur. 

And then there are all those liberal baby eaters and abusers... and they could be just down the block. Hey, one of their supporters is nominated for the Supreme Court.

That last graf is sarcastic, just in case there is any doubt, and an example of how the ability to create alternative realities has warped us. Thanks, social (or anti-social) media.

In a related trend, we are fascinated and gratified to find that people who are not Americans could be moved to defend their own country when it is attacked. "What? Do you mean that people all over the planet can feel patriotic emotions?" 

Every online and broadcast platform is filled with praise for the brave Ukrainian fighters, and all the Ukrainians who have willingly grabbed a rifle and are engaging the enemy. We are almost giddy to find that an estimated 40,000 Russian soldiers have been killed, injured, captured, or simply disappeared. Between 7 and 15 thousand is the estimate of the dead over the past month. 

It's March Madness, for sure. It doesn't seem all that different to cheer for a great basketball play in crunch time that decides the game and to cheer as a shoulder-fired anti-tank gun destroys a tank and everyone inside. 

“Every film about war ends up being pro-war,” Francois Truffaut, the famous director, once said. He exaggerated, but only slightly. War movies (and I include continual coverage of an ongoing war along with scripted films in this case) always feature good guys and bad guys, and the contrast is so vivid between the Ukrainians (classic good guys forced to fight) and Russians (classic bad guys choosing to fight). 

I assume that many of our friends and neighbors who love their guns, value their guns, and regularly train for conflict (or at least blow off steam at a shooting range) imagine themselves as potential heroes. They dream of the day they happen to be packing when their local King Soopers is attacked by a nut case. They take out the terrorist, at least in their imagination. 

As David Bowie sang, "We can be heroes."

Meanwhile, the nation is awash in guns and bullets, with estimates being that civilians (not police or military) possess nearly 400 million guns (more than one per American). Over 40 percent of households have at least one gun.

Perhaps the important question is why there isn't MORE gun violence in a country that idolizes weapons and becomes increasingly divided.

It's too bad journalism ever strayed from the idea that the best reporting is local

Many journalists (not to mention legislators and common citizens) are concerned about the rapid disappearance of local news reporting, and some publishers and editors are creating new mechanisms and relationships to rebuild reporting.

One of those new initiatives is called "deliberative journalism," which is a phrase that is not very clear on the face of it. I did find this brief explanation from a Colorado editor: 

The concept of deliberative journalism focuses on a particular form of journalism focused on helping communities engage their shared problems more effectively. It will focus both on engaging local issues, as well as building civic capacity to address issues better through public lectures, workshops and learning exchanges.

BTW: my first reaction to this definition was that we get some from of "focus" over and over. The good news is that "focus" is really the point.

Groups and committees and public meetings are being organized and no one really knows where this "new" approach may lead, but I'm certain of one thing: high school journalism is well-placed to expand on this idea and may offer some ideas about how a publication can serve specific populations.

My skeptical self immediately thought that this "new" initiative is actually just striving to return to the roots of local news, with hyper-local approaches to what is going on and with a clear loyalty to the community the medium serves.

The somewhat musty journalism ideal of complete objectivity and strict attention to "just the facts" seems almost quaint these days. Objectivity is an unattainable ideal, for instance. If I am a journalist in, say, Fort Collins, isn't it OK and even preferable if I care about my community and want to see it thrive. Is it really defensible to just observe and not participate in any way? Should a journalist find ways to clearly separate basic emotions from raw facts and reactions?

I don't know exactly what "civic capacity" means, but suspect it has to do with civil debate and discussion. Few could argue that those things are common. 

In a high school, "civic capacity" should be one major goal of the entire educational process. Name calling is immediately called out. People making claims MUST provide some sort of support for those claims. Critiquing various aspects of school should not be immediately labeled as disloyal or trouble-making, but instead thought of as desiring something better for the community, for the school, and for the students and faculty of the institution.

About 20 years ago, there was a short-lived trend in schools for the student newspaper to organize community events built around important issues, from school board elections to conversations about race, educational philosophy, or even the bell schedule or school start times. 

If those issues were easy, we wouldn't need to bring people together to discuss various problems or solutions or confusion. As pressures on schools to raise scores, reinforce basic skills, and generally avoid messy controversies, the concept of student media creating forums and conversations basically disappeared.

One of the unfortunate results of the Internet is that many of us spend more time contemplating national or world events than what is happening just down the street. Most people in my neighborhood are much better informed about Ukraine, for instance, than about how our school district recruits and retains quality educators. 

There's nothing wrong with being connected to the larger world, of course, but our foundation has to return to better understanding and better conversations about our cities and neighborhoods. 

So if a bunch of smart people want to explore "deliberative journalism" (really, could there be any other kind of journalism?), more power to them.

Let's hear what people have to say.

Time for the idealism and energy of the young to push us a bit

If I were a high school student, I would likely adopt the tactic of tightening my focus, sticking to my neighborhood, and trying to ignore the zeitgeist that bombards us with so much bad news and questionable information.

From the climate to WWIII, and from political mudslinging to gas prices, high school students can't be blamed for avoiding the news and maybe avoiding thinking too hard about the future.

How do I know this? I have no empirical data to rely upon, but I was a high school student in the '60s and I did my best to ignore the Vietnam War and the cultural upsets of the time. I was not an isolationist and certainly paid attention to the news, but I felt helpless to do anything about those big national trends. Why worry about things over which we have no control?

Then I read the following lead from a New York Times story today headlined "OK Doomer and the Climate Activists Who Say It's Not Too Late." 

Alaina Wood is well aware that, planetarily speaking, things aren’t looking so great. She’s read the dire climate reports, tracked cataclysmic weather events and gone through more than a few dark nights of the soul.

She is also part of a growing cadre of people, many of them young, who are fighting climate doomism, the notion that it’s too late to turn things around. They believe that focusing solely on terrible climate news can sow dread and paralysis, foster inaction, and become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

With the war in Ukraine prompting a push for ramped up production of fossil fuels, they say it’s ever more pressing to concentrate on all the good climate work, especially locally, that is being done. “People are almost tired of hearing how bad it is; the narrative needs to move onto solutions,” said Ms. Wood, 25, a sustainability scientist who communicates much of her climate messaging on TikTok, the most popular social media platform among young Americans. “The science says things are bad. But it’s only going to get worse the longer it takes to act.”

First, that "OK Doomer" is a nice play on the "OK Boomer" trend from the last couple years -- and as a Boomer I take no offense: we have not performed very well lately as a generation. 

Second, I vividly remember approving of the lyric in "My Generation," by The Who, that goes, "Hope I die before I get old." I am not such a fan as a 71-year-old, but I get the sentiment. Perhaps age really is "in our heads," and I can somehow overcome the calendar and maintain a youthful view on things. 

Nah. My feet hurt and my muscle mass has essentially disappeared. My memory is forever tugging at me and I find myself saying things like, "Argh! I know the answer but can't quite grasp it." Thank goodness for the Internet and devices to look up the answers in those "senior moments."

Thirdly, the elderly many times do settle for things like, "well, that's just life," and "there's not much we can do to change things at this point." The future is not so far off for Baby Boomers, and it also doesn't extend into the distance as it did when we were 18. 

I'm glad there are young people who are determined to not give up on making change, even if it is local and incremental. To simply abandon hope is not going to move humanity anywhere good.

Those sometimes complex and often tiny steps forward are what builds a better future. I hope our grandchildren will help produce some of those incremental changes as they enter adulthood. 

Plus, it's good to be reminded not to give in to cynicism.

Hope is a good choice, but taking even small actions is the better choice.

Has your high school class rank made a difference in your life?

I read local crackpot George Brauchler's latest column in the Denver Post yesterday, bemoaning the decision by the Cherry Creek School District to drop class rank and the title of "valedictorian" by 2026.

He sees it as the next step in a race to mediocrity, which is yet another example of this governor-wanna-be trying to establish his bona fides as opposed to all things liberal or even rational. After all, without demonstrating his willingness to take on those all-powerful educators what hope does he have for a political resurrection?

He bungles even defining what a "valedictorian" is or should be from the very start. And, of course, he can't resist mentioning that HE was the chosen speaker for graduation of his Colorado high school despite being firmly in the middle of this class in terms of class rank.

Well, good for George and ain't he something?! 

My dim memory of what a valedictorian was in 1968 was the person with the highest grade point average, usually by a hundredth of a point. The word itself is Latin and means "person who delivers the farewell speech," and most schools combined the highest class rank with this opportunity to give a speech to the class. 

I have absolutely no memory of either who our class valedictorian was nor whether she (and I assume it was a girl) gave a speech at graduation. I'm sure it was packed full of cliché and hollow advice about the world being ours to create/improve, if it happened. Being chosen as a graduation speaker is an ephemeral honor, at best. 

I will say that over four decades of teaching experience shows me that speaking ability has almost no connection to academic success, at least in such a formal setting. My last stop as a teacher, Rock Canyon HS, holds a competition among interested seniors to choose three different speakers for three different end-of-year celebrations. GPA is not a factor. But the school still names 40 or more valedictorians each year.

On the other hand, grade inflation has created a higher and higher mean for most schools when it comes to ranking. We are now at the point where a B-average won't get you to the top half of the class, which ought to be all we need to know about the importance of class rank.

Most schools now have so many students with more than a 4.0 GPA (with so many AP classes earning a bonus point in unweighted GPA) that they go with the Rock Canyon policy, with dozens of such honorees. 

The world is a competitive place, certainly, but few educators favor class rank as a useful tool. Just as good old George did OK for himself despite his mediocre rank in his class, most of us know all sorts of successful people who did not end up ranked #1 (or graduates of Harvard).

Brauchler just wanted yet another excuse to lob little rhetorical grenades at public schools. After all, what did they ever do right?

Well, in his case, I guess, the system worked. 

I put valedictorian in the same category as Homecoming royalty, where an elite few are honored while the vast majority are left to contemplate not being good enough, or popular enough, or wealthy enough, or tough enough, or pretty enough... 

Class rank is all about ordering the sheep and keeping everyone on the "right" path. Class rank honors test taking and not running afoul of the powers that be on campus. Class rank is about recognition and scholarship money and elite colleges. 

Class rank has little to do with "success," however that is defined.

No one in the Cherry Creek district will miss it when it's gone, and no one in the district will spend much time worrying about Brauchler's outdated and elitist views.

Logic has nothing to do with rooting for my teams

I became almost physically ill yesterday afternoon, all due to a single basketball game. My beloved Hawkeyes had laid an egg in the first round of the NCAA men's tournament after an unexpectedly fun and fulfilling regular season and Big Ten tournament championship.

The team had been expected to come in near the bottom of the conference, mostly due to four starters from 2020-21 leaving (two to the NBA and two transferring). But Keegan Murray played like a star and the team featured at least ten accomplished players, each of whom could bring something to the game. 

Then came the tournament and the high expectations that Iowa might make it to the Final Four -- wow! -- and I have been a Hawk fan long enough to know that such high hopes are similar to a character in a movie saying something like, "Man, things are going so great for me these days. I don't see any problems in my future."

Yeah, we know this is a heads up that things are soon NOT going to be so great and that major problems are about to arrive.

So I should have been prepared for inevitable disappointment, but here's the thing: I was not. Even after nearly seven decades of rooting for Iowa and all the disappointments and upsets and simple bad luck, I disregarded history and went all in. 

There was the familiar bad luck in the game, with shots that normally fall for Iowa clanking or circling the rim and falling out. There were some terrible calls by the officials, though that is true in every basketball game, and some came right at the end, with a tight game, so they seemed more significant. And the team just never seemed to demonstrate the energy and toughness and confidence it had developed in the previous month or so.

It was just a game, and not all that notable since upsets are precisely the reason the tournament is called March Madness. 

I am calmer today and looking forward to watching the Iowa women play their first NCAA tournament game. That team also caught fire in the last month or so of the season and won the Big Ten tournament. The team features Caitlin Clark, certainly the most dynamic women's player in the country.

In my head, I know that the Iowa women will likely not advance to the Final Four -- the top-rated team in the nation lies in their way -- but my heart whispers, "Why not Iowa?"

Disappointment looms, but I just can't turn away.

We won't recognize the true struggle

There should be one thing, beyond supporting Ukraine, that most Americans should agree about: corporations are using the pandemic and the Russian invasion to pad profits.

Starbucks is planning to raise prices, despite its profits increasing by 22 percent over the past couple years. Tyson's nearly doubled its prices as meat prices quickly rise. And Exxon had its highest earnings in seven years... and those gas prices are not reflecting any of that.

I'm not exactly anti-capitalist, and not every business or corporation is gouging consumers, but there are enough to remind us that the real divide in the world is between those who own the businesses and hoard the power and those who spend most of their income on necessities and who have little power.

Greed is one of our species' least attractive qualities, though it is certainly understandable. Why not grab a larger profit when people are clamoring to buy? 

The ugly side of that choice is that some goods and services are too essential for people to skip or ignore. Think concert tickets are too high? Fine, don't go. Think ballplayers are overpaid? Duh, but you don't really have to attend games or buy merchandise.

But gas and milk and break and assorted groceries? Sure, they're too high but the options to simply not buy are not attractive.

Even in the survey showing Americans' skepticism about corporations, our political divide was clear. Over 70 percent of Democrats favored the view that companies are padding profits, while only about 52 percent of Republicans agreed. When asked, most of those Republicans said they thought inflation was mostly due to the government and national policies.

Oh, those poor corporations.

I will simply add, "Oh, those poor Republicans." It's easy to see why corporations donate heavily to R candidates when they can rely on a large number of ill-informed voters to keep those profits ringing.

Many of those Republican who continue to believe that businesses are on their side, somehow, are among those suffering the most from artificial inflation, which is some percentage of real rising prices.

But the rich have always been able to rely upon the ignorance and apathy of the "lower classes." 

Russia is trying to exercise raw power in Ukraine, but we have our own battles in America, with corporations exercising their raw power over most citizens.

But let's continue to fight about critical race theory and tax rates. Just don't look behind the curtain.

The news item I never saw coming this week

Ukraine is in flames, our democracy is under constant attack by its own citizens, gas prices continue to soar (even as oil has declined by over 30 percent in the last couple days), and the pandemic looks to be readying another variant that will arrive from Asia and Europe quite soon.

So what did the U.S. Senate do yesterday? Why, of course, it passed a bill moving the entire country to permanent daylight savings time by unanimous consent. There was no debate.

A problem we have as a nation is our eagerness to forget history. We can barely remember last week, but it's too bad few remember 1974, when then-President Nixon enacted a temporary policy that mandated universal daylight savings time and that landed with a thud. It didn't help that the practice went into effect in January, during the shortest daylight exposure possible. But at least the move was supposed to save energy.

It did not.

The experiment ended within a couple months when so many Americans realized their children were standing in total darkness awaiting school buses in frigid temperatures.

This time around, the choice was to simplify life for Americans. That darn changing of the clocks twice per year was simply too much for people. As Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley said, "All I know is, constantly, every year, my wife wants it to be permanent.”

Far be it for me to criticize that ancient mariner, but relying on your partner's griping about the issue doesn't seem worthy of even the most addled legislator. 

Of course, the new plan would NOT make the sudden change in January, but rather in November of 2023 theoretically giving people time to adjust. This being the United States, I am skeptical that most citizens will make devote mental capacity to think much about it. We will simply blame the government each time some inconvenience arises.

Gas prices are like that, with polls showing that a huge percentage of Americans blame Biden for the swift rise per gallon. They don't want to get into how capitalism works and that oil companies, along with the global energy market, want to maximize profits. They are on THEIR OWN side, first and always. Heck, the Koch brothers, reportedly, have not divested their investments in Russia at this point and plan to continue their arrangements with a nation that is murdering innocents.

Screw the zeitgeist and "thoughts and prayers" for Ukrainians. But what did we really expect?

Now the permanent daylight savings bill goes to the House, and there is time to have SOME sort of discussion about the need for and the execution of the change. 

In Colorado, we have a bill in committee mandating Standard time be made permanent. There are some solid arguments in favor of THAT approach, which should not surprise anyone.

Some of our challenge lies in our desire to control nature. How can we get water to places that are arid? How can we reduce annual flooding? How can we overcome various diseases and infestations so that our human needs are met? 

Time is a human concept, but that doesn't mean it is unimportant or irrelevant. There really are only so many minutes of sunlight each day, though the number of minutes constantly changes. We can't control that.

I will be fine no matter the final decision about how we manipulate time. And, yes, we probably SHOULD choose one strategy for time and stick with it.

I would just like our leaders to engage in a robust debate, and here is one that would be nonpartisan.

It might become a habit.

Orwell would have had a field day with the Ukraine invasion

There are many surreal aspects of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, from the vivid images of destruction and death and pain to the reports of Ukrainians getting into heated arguments with their parents living in Russia over the very existence of the war.

I don't hear George Orwell's classic dystopian novel 1984 cited much in current coverage, which is its own puzzle. You may recall "newspeak," propagandistic language that is characterized by twisted euphemisms and inverted language enforced by Big Brother. 

Newspeak eliminated certain words or recast certain words with unorthodox meanings (e.g., uncold instead of warm and ungood instead of bad) or the creation of words for political purposes (e.g., goodthink, meaning “orthodoxy” or “to think in an orthodox manner”). The most blatant example of this is a law hurriedly passed by the Russian national legislature that mandates 15 years in prison for merely stating or publishing the word "war" to characterize their "special military operation."

Up is down, and war is peace in this alternative reality.

I am having a tough time imagining an entire nation being fooled by never-ending "fake news," and perhaps Putin's attempts to create a false narrative about "driving out Nazis" will fizzle and even backfire. After all, the Internet is intricate and interwoven into almost every aspect of modern life, even in Russia. There are very smart people who are devising clever ways to get around almost any attempts to block contacts and sharing of information.

This is one of those good news/bad news situations, perhaps, with the same truths about the difficulty of blocking information on the web applying to both truth and lies. They all get through and no one seems to have found a way to sort everything out. And regular folks have almost no hope of living in a society -- no matter where in the world -- where everyone is working from one set of accepted facts.

I have read a number of posts by pundits suggesting that we not punish Russian citizens as a whole for the actions of Putin's regime, and I can see their reasoning. Most people are quite busy just making enough money to keep things going and most people are just trying to get through the day before dropping off to sleep, exhausted. 

You really can't blame the vast majority of Russians for accepting whatever the available media tells them. Options are hard to find and most carry some risk of punishment. They don't even have the relative luxury of being able to choose between a radical network like FOX News and a mainstream platform like CBS. For Russians, it's all propaganda, all the time.

It occurs to me that many Americans find themselves in a similar situation to their Russian counterparts. There is certainly more choice of media in the U.S., but our tribalism has sent much of the country into opposed and entrenched channels and platforms. At the heart of American dysfunction is the fact that our media (and our personal choices) don't seem to inhabit the same reality as one another.

I can't imagine the courage of the young woman who interrupted the most-watched news show in Russia yesterday by holding up a poster calling for the end of the war behind the news reader. She knew she would be hauled away and possibly "disappeared," yet she felt compelling to share the truth. Her actions are unlikely to become common since the authorities can't afford to yield, but millions of viewers must have at least wondered what was going on.

Here's the thing about creating an alternate universe, like the one most FOX News pundits have developed. When reality intrudes, people still try to find ways around facts, still strive to find some sly angle to defend themselves and rationalize their actions and beliefs.

Putin is just a more dangerous version of Trump, an unrestrained egoist unable to conceive of defeat and or even making a mistake. Trump never deviates from his whining about the 2020 election and Putin won't be changing his tune about some fantasy Nazi government plotting to send trained birds loaded with biological weapons into the motherland.

To back down or, worse, to admit wrong, is the end for politicians who maintain power only through manipulation.

But most FOX News viewers are quite satisfied with what they see every evening from the network blowhards. I wonder if most Russians would bother to turn to some rough equivalent of MSNBC if such a network would magically appear on their TVs and phones.

One thing must be true for Russians, at least, and that is that they cannot simply be blind to the sudden disappearance of nearly every Western business, from McDonalds to Levi-Straus, and the blocking of social media platforms that they are just as addicted to as the rest of the world.

But many Americans continue to believe that vaccines will harm them and that no pandemic really happened.

As Buffalo Springfield once sang, "There's something happening here. What it is ain't exactly clear."

Some things never change.

Some people have it; most people don't

"Follow the money" is my go-to strategy for figuring out why people, companies, governments, and entire nations behave the way they do.

Sometimes this can be a good thing, BTW. For instance, I have been on several nonprofit boards of directors and you can't go wrong if you try to match an organization's budget document with its goals and vision. When we find out that a charity, for instance, is spending a significant portion of its income on administrative costs, we suspect that things could be better.

For profit-making businesses, following the money usually reveals that a very few people/investors are making a lot of money, while the vast majority of people (customers, the general public) get taken.

That is a major truth about gas prices, for instance. Prices skyrocket at the pump when there are even faint hints at something bad in the world. And when the rumors turn out to be untrue or the crisis eases, prices do not immediately revert to where they were. It's not that prices can never come down, but it usually takes a recession or depression to significantly move prices.

Gas prices shot up last week mostly due to worries about Russia and less oil on the market, but a lot of the angst over oil has mellowed out and the raw costs of barrels of oil has dropped nearly 25 percent from its high, at least temporarily.

We should anticipate gasoline prices falling about 25 percent soon, right? Ha! Ha! Not a chance.

Those who own the products and the production facilities will rake in as much profit as they can, as long as they can. It's the essence of capitalism, after all.

Our local school board majority got slapped down a bit by a judge who essentially "gave them a talking to" and simply said that our four radicals who broke the state open meeting laws should stop breaking the law. No real sanctions. No fines. No reversed decisions.

When those four radicals were told that district insurance will not cover their legal fees if they would choose to appeal the ruling, they (of course) said the district should pay those fees out of money designed to support student learning. Others on the board urged the four to not appeal, reasoning that the judge simply told the majority to follow state law. That does not seem that onerous but you can bet this debate will drag on for some time.

Politicians from both major parties often receive donations from people who don't live anywhere near them -- certainly not in their legislative districts or even the state -- based on extreme statements and showboating. In Colorado, we have Boebert, who as far I can tell from a bit of online research, has introduced zero bills that are focused on her congressional district in Colorado. All the bills she co-sponsors (she sponsors very few herself) are on national issues, like border security, impeachment of the president and vice president, and declaring Antifa a terrorist group. 

And every time she hollers inanely during the State of the Union or spews lies and insults at Republican fundraisers she garners more dollars in donations. 

The governor of Colorado is a Democrat, mostly, who is a multi-millionaire and who has funded his own campaigns by himself, without donations... because he can. I assume many people respect that and maybe even voted for him because he is so independent and so, well, American.

In 2021, statistics showed that 51 percent of U.S. representatives and senators were millionaires, while only 4 percent of Americans overall are millionaires. I'm not sure exactly how those calculations are made, since owning a decent home in many areas means you have nearly a million in equity, which doesn't seem all that much these days, but the overall effect is clear. Rich people run America.

When we find ourselves asking why things seem so divided and why so many Americans are struggling to pay for basic necessities -- including gas, which is a much higher percentage of total expenses for the poor as for the rich -- we know the answer, don't we?

Follow the money.

Some things never seem to change

Today's news coverage, beyond Ukraine, features a wide range of stories about racism and white defensiveness. The world may be changing geopolitically, but isn't it nice to know that some issues never really change?

One national story shows that Blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans were undercounted in the 2020 Census by percentages ranging from 2-5 percent, while whites were overcounted by that percentage. In some ways this is not really news, since the Census Bureau reports similar inaccuracies for several past census counts.

The coverage points out that the overall Census count is quite accurate -- 331.5 million people -- so the only way to interpret the inaccuracies is to point out that the "pie" is cut into unequal pieces. Shockingly (ha!) the discrepancies favor whites, with lots of economic and government assistance and even redistricting affected.

In today's Washington Post I find a story about how Black and Latino students in Iowa have felt under attack by Republican legislation that bans state agencies and schools from teaching “divisive concepts” at mandatory training sessions, including the idea that the United States or the state of Iowa is systemically racist or sexist. As a former Iowan who used to be proud of his state, I have to wonder about what those white R. legislators are worried about. Iowa is a lot things, but racially diverse is not one of them.

Also in today's Post is an article on the Florida legislature passing a bill that prohibits trainings that cause someone to feel guilty or ashamed about the past collective actions of their race or sex. It will be signed by the governor, according to reports, since he initially encouraged the measure.

Lots of statistical analyses have shown that Blacks and Latinos died from Covid in much higher percentages than whites, and the overall death rates, disregarding the pandemic, have been much higher in every age group for people of color than for whites for many years.

Not to get too far into the weeds here, but another story notes the connection between past racist "redlining" practices in many cities, where minority residents were pushed into particular neighborhoods and cut off from other parts of cities by highway construction, and air pollution. It is a short leap to connect more pollution with more health problems and earlier deaths. 

Somehow, our political parties have basically separated into one group that at least claims to be supportive of multiculturalism and equity, and another group that claims that racism and its effects may be real, but that they should not trouble people.

For many white Republicans, it appears that the bottom line is that we declare racism over, just like the pandemic. Time to move on.

Sexism? Old news. We're fine.

Empire building? Back in vogue.

And so we slouch along as a nation and as a world.

The normality of atrocities in Ukraine is unsettling

You may have seen the horrific photograph of a mother and two children killed by mortar fire. The image was taken seconds after the explosion by a New York Times photographer who happened to be nearby. The Times printed it on the front page a couple days ago and the image has gone viral. Today's Times includes a story on the image and the people involved, beginning with this:

KYIV, Ukraine — They met in high school but became a couple years later, after meeting again on a dance floor at a Ukrainian nightclub. Married in 2001, they lived in a bedroom community outside Kyiv, in an apartment with their two children and their dogs, Benz and Cake. She was an accountant and he was a computer programmer.

Serhiy and Tetiana Perebyinis owned a Chevrolet minivan. They shared a country home with friends, and Ms. Perebyinis was a dedicated gardener and an avid skier. She had just returned from a ski trip to Georgia.

And then, late last month, Russia invaded Ukraine, and the fighting quickly moved toward Kyiv. It wasn’t long before artillery shells were crashing into their neighborhood. One night, a shell hit their building, prompting Ms. Perebyinis and the children to move to the basement. Finally, with her husband away in eastern Ukraine tending to his ailing mother, Ms. Perebyinis decided it was time to take her children and run.

They didn’t make it. Ms. Perebyinis, 43, and her two children, Mykyta, 18, and Alisa, 9, along with a church volunteer who was helping them, Anatoly Berezhnyi, 26, were killed on Sunday as they dashed across the concrete remnants of a damaged bridge in their town of Irpin, trying to evacuate to Kyiv.

Their luggage — a blue roller suitcase, a gray suitcase and some backpacks — was scattered near their bodies, along with a green carrying case for a small dog that was barking.

Let's do some "x-ray reading of this news story, which goes on much longer. The writer chose to NOT begin with the Ukrainian couple's names but opted for "they," which injects a bit of mystery but also some universality. Their relationship is captured in just three sentences and their story seems familiar and unremarkable.

The second graf continues adding some personal details, all of which help the reader get to know the main characters -- the Perebvinis. 

The third graf provides the quick timeline on the family's choices and actions of the past few weeks.

And the fourth graf contains the "nut" of the story, building on the abrupt "They didn't make it." The most profound statements are often best found in short, punchy sentences. "I love you." "Jesus wept." "Forget it." That very short first sentence stops the reader short, and allows for a breath to take readers through the compound, complex sentence that follows.

Less skilled writers might have begun the story with the lengthy second sentence of the fourth graf. After all, it answers the 5 Ws and H and makes clear why readers should be reading this news report right now. But pathos is added with those first three grafs that set the scene, almost lulling us with the normality of their lives.

And then comes the kicker, for me at least, of that fifth graf, featuring the luggage details and the assorted colors -- blue, gray, and green -- and the final detail of the small barking dog that survived the shelling, ast least for a time. 

No one WANTS to see this sort of photo. Few WANT to even read about this senseless slaughter.

But the public sometimes NEEDS to be grabbed by the collar, so to speak, and forced to see events in their raw form. 

I can't imagine how reporters in Ukraine are dealing with the combination of huge events and personal danger. I can't imagine the agony of a man losing his wife and two daughters in an instant.

But this sort of reporting and writing can help see events more clearly,.

Tolerating a certain amount of death and suffering is America's choice

While we are worried about WWIII, currently most visible in the Ukrainian invasion but occurring in the gray world of online conflict and crypto fiddling, it's important to note that the Covid pandemic is now a full two years of age.

We are now at over 6 million deaths due to the virus worldwide, with the United States nearing 1 million. 

That is an astounding number, revealing something disturbing about America's health system, general level of health, and political dysfunction. The overall wealth of a nation clearly has little to do with limiting unnecessary death and disease. The U.S. is a big place with a long tradition of valuing freedom, even the freedom to engage in risky behaviors. As a society, we have made the collective decision that a certain number of traffic deaths drug deaths and gun deaths are regrettable but acceptable. 

Part of that decision has to be our willingness to sacrifice citizens who are not as productive as the nation's ethos demands. If you are poor, not white, or elderly (or some combination), your death does not rise to the level of concern needed for changes to be made. 

Yes, masking and social distancing are pretty much over, certainly here in Colorado. Yes, it is difficult to measure just how much masking, etc., helped reduce deaths or hospitalizations. There will be ongoing arguments, certainly.

Much clearer is that vaccines are the only reliable way to attack the pandemic. That we still have about 27 percent of Americans who have not yet received at least one vaccination dose, despite the easy availability, clear statistics, and incentives to feel safer in crowded areas.

Not surprisingly, most of this unvaccinated minority are younger (hey, I'm healthy and strong), less educated (only 19 percent of those with a college degree, for instance, are unvaccinated), and Republican (about 60 percent are declared Rs). Blame will be cast for many years to come, but it's hard not to point fingers at partisan media, social media, and politicians looking for angles.

In the end, however, vaccinations happen one-at-a-time and some of the holdouts may prefer to wait, even after a full year of free vaccines and piles of data confirming the effectiveness of the vaccines in keeping people alive. So I don't give up hope that the numbers will improve over the next year or so.

But masks were "recommended" rather than "required" at St. Luke's UMC just last week. Most people ignored the recommendation last Sunday, including the entire choir. Two years and vaccinations and sheer exhaustion made this inevitable, I suppose.

Last night Kathleen and I went to Prost, a newish beer garden offering pub food offerings here in Highlands Ranch. No masks, of course, but also nothing even approaching social distancing. Lots of noise. Lots of customers. Lots of fun (and the food and beer were tasty). Kathleen recommends the Reuben.

Highlands Ranch does not feature many poor people and I'm guessing most of the residents are vaccinated, with overall high levels of education. More money equals more health, and that's an American choice that is clear.

There are estimates that up to 75 percent of American deaths were preventable with a more efficient health system and less political divisiveness about vaccines.

It is not possible to nail this down, but why would I disagree with this estimate?

America is a nation that tolerates a lot of death, at least as long as "people like us" aren't dying in large numbers.

Prost!

Americans are on the economic front lines of the war

I have heard my own high school students argue for many years that the only way to significantly shift America's attitudes about gasoline and mileage efficiency is to raise taxes significantly to create enough motivation for people to invest in better fuel efficiency.

They were and are idealistic and possess a keen sense of justice and a deep concern for how they will be affected by a changing climate. 

The Russian invasion and the skyrocketing price of gas may be creating a "live" experiment on whether their proposed gas price strategy will work.

Each American uses about 560 gallons of gasoline per year, based on average driving habits. That would mean that an average driver will end up spending about $560 additional each year for every ONE dollar increase in the price at the pump.

It looks like we are nearing a TWO dollar increase quite soon over prices from a year ago, so $1,120 additional seems likely. The average American would pay a total of $2,240 annually for gasoline if gas prices were $4/gallon. They look like they could go higher, at least for some time, so this is a significant increase, particularly for drivers in lower income brackets.

I am among those likely driving far less than average miles per year (hooray for retirement and working from home!), but no one looks forward to triple digit gas costs each time we fill up.

With today's announcement banning the import of Russian oil, we need to prep for this new reality, and I assume this is not the only increase in price we are looking at.

STILL, I am in favor of banning the oil and becoming more self-sufficient regarding energy. Sometimes nations need an extra push to make changes that most people would see as positive over the long term. Those short term bills are important, but when we are seeing images of dead Ukrainian children indiscriminately targeted by Russian troops... do we really have much choice here?

As Yogi Berra said, "The future ain't what it used to be," and the last couple weeks have proven that the world can shift quite quickly, for better or worse.

Rooting from afar

Yesterday I experienced the thrill of watching the Iowa women's basketball team win the Big Ten Tournament, followed a couple hours later with experiencing the agony of watching the Iowa men's basketball team miss 12 free throws in a two-point loss.

Both games were on TV, and both involved lots of ups and downs, thrills and spills, and much shouting at the screen. I watched from my downstairs, at least 1,000 miles from the action in either game. 

I moved from Iowa City over 20 years ago and don't go back all that often. Yet Iowa basketball and football games are events I rarely miss, even scheduling around contests when necessary. All games are recorded automatically, just in case.

I know. It's weird. 

I grew up an Iowa fan but don't give money to the program these days and haven't attended an in-person game in over a decade. 

Yet the Iowa women's championship felt a bit like it was MY championship, which makes no logical sense but which makes total sense emotionally to, say, a Cubs fan who waited over 80 years for a World Series title or to a Rockies fan who has never experienced a world title.

I am an Iowa fan by choice, I guess, but also by familiarity. Fan is a short form of "fanatic," which sounds much more sinister than its cute, cuddly cousin. I'm also a fan of good writing, of the new Jack Reacher series on Prime (mostly envying our hero's combination of muscle and brains), and of obscure songs from the band 10CC. 

None of these other than the writing has anything to do with my "real" life, yet I would be poorer in metaphysical ways without these enthusiasms. Being a fan of a sports team is a raw example of pathos: there is no logic involved but that emotional appeal is overwhelming.

I have more recently become a fan of Ukraine and its brave (and not-so-brave but struggling) citizens. It helps that they are relatively blameless in terms of the war and that Russia is so clearly blasting through all sorts of civilized expectations and "rules." It also helps that there is a David and Goliath narrative here, with a smaller nation with a smaller and less prepared military resisting a giant bully of a country and its war machine.

I would love to see a reenactment of the Bible story, perhaps with Putin as the nine-foot-tall Goliath (heavy Photoshop use will be needed there) going up against that Ukrainian grandmother who confronted a Russian soldier, demanding he place sunflower seeds in his pockets so he could contribute something worthwhile to Ukraine when he died and decomposed on Ukrainian soil. That woman certainly qualifies as a David character.

I have tried to NOT be a fan of war, though I find histories of past wars and battles fascinating, and who doesn't like a good WWII movie? I WANT to be a peacenik, but it's not happening. I don't want to see the war spread and don't want to see Russia humiliated to the point where nuclear war becomes an option (since all else is lost). 

But I want Ukraine to get as many missiles and bullets and guns and equipment to kill and main as many Russian soldiers as is possible.

I once played a little basketball and football in high school, so I have a faint idea of what athletes might be doing or thinking, though I was never going to be elite. I once was in the military and learned a little about the chain of command and about the importance of loyalty to your fellow soldiers, but never came under fire.

If I am honest, I guess I am still a fan of war, so long as the war is "just." I am still rooting for David, whether he plays for the Hawks or stands up to tanks. 

I want to be a fan of peace, but peace doesn't make for good TV.

Iowa's Caitlin Clark, on the other hand? She is always good TV.

And that Ukrainian grandmother is a star.

Some days feature memorable and unexpected rhetoric

From a rhetorical point of view, war often produces a lot of ad hominem attacks on people or even entire countries. From our far-off vantage point, as Ukrainians are slaughtered, such personal attacks may be all we have.

But sometimes mocking physical characteristics can carry more metaphorical weight.

In The Washington Post, Sally Jenkins endorsed a particular punishment of the Russian president, writing that there’s “nothing trivial about wiping Vladimir Putin’s musky perspirations from the international sports stage.” She continued: “His brand of shirtless belligerent patriotism — his macho nationalism — has been a long con, and it’s no small thing to knock him off medal podiums and expose the lifts in his shoes, or to rip off his judo belt and show the softening of his belly.”

Jenkins builds on the "man's man" physical mythology that Putin has boasted and built upon for decades. He's not a big guy and he used to be quite fit. Now he is 69 and no man can resist the gravity of aging. That maybe excuses the allusions Jenkins makes to his short stature and his likely "looser" body.

On the other hand, we might argue that it's fair game to attack in any way a leader who has ordered innocents' deaths and the invasion of a peaceful and closely connected neighbor. Judicious rhetoric is always a casualty of war.

As a change of pace, I appreciate writers whose main objective is to entertain, and a nice example showed up this week that made me smile.

On his website, Garrison Keillor reflected on fine music and his anticipation of an imminent breakfast, noting that “this bagel is turning into the high point of my day, the bagel of all bagels, the bagel Hegel would’ve finagled with Puccini’s cream cheese and scallions that win medallions from Italians.”

Keillor is not sharing "straight news," of course, but this sort of "fun with language" is a nice break for many readers who are inundated with the serious, the tragic, the challenging, and the dismaying that makes up much of the news.

In this example, we find a mix of poetry with the prose, including internal rhymes ("bagel Hegel would've finagled...") as well as a recognition of how something quite small in the world's eyes can bring joy. Finding the universal and wise within something seemingly mundane is the essence of poetry.

Hyperbole is at work here, as well, which is a tried and true tactic for humorists. Take an everyday event or situation and allow it to spin out to natural (or unnatural) conclusions. 

Is this sort of writing "showing off"? Duh. It is not recommended for most professional writing, mostly because we can never be certain who is reading our professional memos and emails and reports. 

As a writing instructor, however, I have to admit that when a student produces a clever phrase or metaphor or twist on a cliché, I couldn't be happier. 

There is a limit to how much dry, technically correct writing I can handle.

Now I must return to grading the ultimate in "dry and technical" -- an assignment to create a new resume and cover letter for a fictional job opening.

Forgive me if my attention wanders and the subject of bagels comes up.

Most tricks only work once

The Western world has changed over the past week, and just when it was starting to seem like history was stuck in a churning period of hatred and bickering and one-upmanship leading... nowhere.

Russian's invasion of Ukraine has now reached the point where even the most abject about face by Russian troops will not change things much, and perhaps for years to come. One of the paradoxes of life is that once power is used, it loses its mystique. Potential power is threatening and exaggerated. Power exerted usually involves realizations about the limits of power.

The Russian military turns out to have some of the same problems that all large organizations possess and has been shown to not be an irresistible force -- though it is certainly a large, dangerous blunt instrument. That blunt instrument can destroy and kill and maim, but it's tough to see how this invasion wins over the hearts of Ukrainians. 

The paradox of power being used often leading to power diminished shows up constantly in our lives and teachers certainly need to be aware of this truth. 

When I was in "teacher school" -- getting certified to teach at the University of Iowa -- instructors occasionally felt compelled to teach prospective educators some "tricks" to maintain classroom management and not allow distractions to, well, distract. 

I remember one such trick vividly. The fictional situation we were discussing was that of the typical unruly kid who won't shut up, and how to deal with that. Even in the mid-1970s, simply yelling at little Billy or Susie was frowned upon. But a professor offered the "get in their personal bubble" tactic as one to employ.

Let's say the class was discussing some insights into some poem by John Donne and Billy starts yacking to his neighbor. The tactic was to nonchalantly amble toward Billy until the teacher was standing right next to Billy's desk. No reason to address him or even look at him. The theory was that Billy would be intimidated by the physical presence of the teacher and would stop talking.

I was thinking that Mr. Biden might have considered some similar strategy following outbursts by some wacko Republican representatives (including the "pride" of western Colorado, Lauren Boebert). He might have continued speaking but strolled out into the chamber and stood quite close to the hecklers. No confrontation needed. 

You are likely thinking that would not work, and you are probably right, at least over any longer period of time. What I found on some occasions when I tried to employ this management trick was that it worked very quickly, but then created its own tensions, and mostly for me. So, Billy has stopped yakking with Fred for a bit, but now I am stuck standing there.

Here's what likely went through Billy's mind: Oh, oh. I'm in trouble. He's coming my way, and, on no, he's standing right here. And then he continues talking, and he's not yelling at me. I wonder how long he can keep this up... and I've got all day. Ah, now he is moving away toward Susie's side of the room. Nothing horrible really happened, so I will continue talking to Fred.

I mention this "teacher trick" to make this point: I learned very quickly that once I USED a trick, I lost that trick. Once students saw the tactic in action, they realized it was just that: a tactic. Some students might have an interest in just how many such tricks I had in my arsenal, and might enjoy provoking some more dramatic ones. 

But I really did not have a large inventory of tricks. Mr. Biden does not either. Even Putin appears to have only a limited number of tricks to call upon.

Better to be genuine and to truly engage students, audiences, and civic populations.  

The diction of war is even more important in a Tik-Tok world

It's interesting to see how politicians find ways to manipulate language and hope to manipulate voters. "Pro Life" has become the accepted term for one side of the abortion debate, for instance, but the term often seems twisted when real events are considered. Whose life? How long should we be "pro"? What does "pro" even mean here?

In many ways, "anti-abortion" is much more accurate in describing what one side of the issue desires, but that "anti" doesn't appeal to most people. Some people are "anti-vax" but tend to identify as "vaccine skeptics," which seems far more reasonable.

In Colorado, some radical Republican legislators have offered a bill that teies to appeal to the general desire of people for more "transparency." But how much "transparency" is enough, and how many voters really want to see every detail of the "sausage being made," so to speak?

Where do such bills comes from? Certainly not from Rep. Tim Reitner, carrying water for anti-public education and thoroughly anti-Democrat forces. The bill he introduced (which gets a committee hearing this week) is identical to bills in other states... all written by the same man.

Christopher Rufo, an activist who engineered the conservative backlash to critical race theory, drafted model legislation on curriculum transparency last year and set a goal of seeing at least 10 states adopt it. “The strategy here is to use a non-threatening, liberal value — ‘transparency’ — to force ideological actors to undergo public scrutiny,” Rufo tweeted in January. “It’s a rhetorically-advantageous position and, when enacted, will give parents a powerful check on bureaucratic power.”

There is a lot to unpack in Rufo's quote (which basically spills the beans on the bill's intent, upon further reflection). First, it's a rhetorical choice to find the most reasonable word for an action, and assumes most listeners/voters won't spend much time considering the rhetoric.

"Ideological actors" are, based on the bill's details, teachers. Of course! There are just so many educators willing to be underpaid and over-pressured and consistently reviled (unless they are Suzie's teacher, duh!) just to undermine the American Way. For the most demented radicals, teachers are sleeper agents who are warping our values for years.

"Bureaucratic power" is lacking in any sort of transparency, which is is both frustrating and effective. No one likes those damn bureaucrats. Everyone loves those sweet elementary teachers. Attacking Suzie's fifth grade teacher turns off voters. Attacking some faceless entity which is never identified can succeed.

Much like chicken shit George Brachler (who I have mentioned in early posts), who eventually fessed up to filing the request to publish the names of every Douglas County teacher who called out sick a few weeks ago in protest (and then withdrew the request), Rufo also hides behind "transparency" and avoids the nasty implications of making it easier for nut cases to attack (sometimes physically) teachers.

Make no mistake: Radical legislation to force schools and teachers to publish all curriculum, all book lists, all professional development, etc., is not designed to highlight education's successes and encourage the public to feel good about the education their children are receiving.

It's not a question of being proud of what we do as teachers. And it's certainly not to deny that many days teacher efforts do not work out as intended. School is a messy place, physically and psychically.

The question is whether people trust that teachers are professionals and are providing the basic skills and background needed for future American voters.

Putin calls the invasion of Ukraine a "special military operation," and Russian censors have demanded that their own media NOT use terms like "attack, invasion, or war." 

The citizens huddling in bombed out ruins in Ukraine know the truth.

We all do.

Perhaps we can all agree on this particular "cancellation"

I'm not certain how "cancel" become the go-to term every time someone objects to a position or action or quote or poor choice (or just ANOTHER choice), but it seems like a good concept to apply to Russia right now.

The "free world" is steadily canceling Russia in response to its invasion of a peaceful neighboring democracy. Freezing or seizing assets held in foreign banks is a good start and that instantly caused at least temporary problems for Russians in terms of interest rates, inflation, and the value of the ruble. But cultural cancellations may have more effect on everyday Russian citizens.

No World Cup playoffs. No hosting big international contests. No buying Russian vodka. No releasing Disney movies (at least for a while). No overlooking Putin supporters in the arts.

I am a fan of some sort of direct response to bullies, including punching them in the nose, due to the satisfying feeling of vengeance achieved. I suppose that is why I root for the bad guys to not only die (say, in the recent "Reacher" series on Amazon Prime) but to die in some gruesome way. But just because that physical response satisfies my reptilian brain is no reason to ignore more "civilized" instincts.

The isolating of a bully nation like Russia -- even though I am aware that most ordinary Russians have nothing to do with the invasion and may not support anything about it -- is more effective than any punches will ever be. 

It is human nature to want to connect with others, and have the freedom to explore the world, and to participate in all that modern technology and economies can provide. 

Take away those connections and you present people with a raw fact: much of the world disapproves of Russia, and Putin represents the country. In some part of my logical brain, I would agree that I would not like ordinary Russians to suffer. But in my emotional brain, I know that leaders will not make changes without a push from some large number of the citizens they purport to lead.

Just as, in some ways, I have to "own" the fact that my own country could elect a ludicrous salesman as its leader just five years ago -- despite my own opposition -- so ordinary Russians have to "own" their cold-eyed bully who is leading them to... who knows?

Russian society, Russian athletics, Russian art, Russian goods... they must be excluded from the free world for some time to come. 

I feel the same about Trump and his minions, but that is for another day.

Exclusion is the only logical response to a country bullying neighbors, and it's nice to see much of the world embrace enforcing this isolation.