Category Archives: General

A place, in the mind, kinda like “miscellaneous,” but not.

‘Nother Bike Wreck?

Three close calls.  That’s the limit, the way I’ve heard it.  These are the kinds of things that “come in threes,” right?  Of course they do.

bike wreckExcept not.  Assumptions like that can lead to eventful days–like yesterday.  Being a warm October day, I thought I’d bike into Durham on the American Tobacco Trail and try out the early voting opportunities there.  A mile from home, I hit something in the leaf litter that threw me onto my front tire.  I was balanced there, like one of those stunt motorcyclists.  I held it together on one wheel for a second and righted myself.  On I went.

Crossing a normally peaceful side street, I was confronted by a hurtling, two-ton vehicle bearing down on me.  Brake hard; take evasive action.  Check.

Later, taking off from a stop at a light, going straight, a driver beside me decided to make a right regardless of my existence in the space toward which he headed his car.  The booming bass and rattling widows gave me an aural picture of what I had to miss.  Sporting of him.  Not even that close.

And we’re riding!  We’re riding! Continue reading

Sarah H. Foxwell, Age 11, Murdered

This was a Christmas headline nobody wanted to read.  The news story unfolded all too predictably, but despite that predictability–maybe because of it–the story caused a strong reaction in anyone who read it.

Except me.  I was characteristically unmoved, able to maintain my objectivity and intellectual distance; that is, until the news story revealed a single salient detail.  The girl’s toothbrush was found in the suspect’s car.

Of course, this fact probably was included as damning circumstantial evidence against the accused, but for me, this mundane detail somehow broke through my customary emotional distance.  It brought me into that house on that night.  It increased the immediacy of the victimization involved in the crime, the level of violence of the young girl’s abduction and murder.

If she had simply been overpowered and dragged from her bedroom, as I initially had believed, it would have been bad enough.  The detail of the toothbrush, however, leads to a different vision of the crime.  Rather than an act of savage, unreasoning violence, the kidnapping obviously unfolded at leisure, with ample forethought and scheming.  As part of this pattern, the perpetrator created the illusion of concern for the girl’s welfare.  He allowed her to retrieve her toothbrush. Continue reading

You say it’s your birthday…

Happy Birthday TO ya!Well, it’s my birthday, too, yeah.

Yep, if I haven’t made it to this august and sublime threshold yet, I am now well and truly, “old enough to know better.”  My Mom started telling me that when I was still pretty young.  I didn’t believe her then, and I’m not altogether inclined to believe this particular sentiment even now.

Anyway, here are the usual URLs I consult at such times:

NYTimes – On this Day
http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/20090326.html

BBC – On this Day
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/march/26/

Wikipedia – March 26
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_26

Jury Duty? Almost!

On Oct. 14, 2008, the Word of the Day from the Oxford English Dictionary was jury.  The OED is a little more thorough than many dictionaries in that their lexicographers not only define words, but also chart the use of those  words over time, providing copious verbatim quotations to that effect.  In this case, the story of the word jury begins in 1187 with a reference in Latin.  One might have thought the word would be somewhat older, but we apparently did not derive the entirety of our civic system from the ancients.

The OED defines the word thus:

A company of persons (orig. men) sworn to render a verdict or true answer upon some question or questions officially submitted to them; in modern times, in a court of justice, usually upon evidence delivered to them touching the issue; but in the earliest times usually upon facts or matters within their own knowledge, for which reason they were summoned from the neighborhood to which the question submitted to them related….

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You Can Have All of Mine, Really

My newly revised faceOK, so I “came off my bike” this afternoon.

Yeah, you can believe me on this: This is not something you want. You can die from this. Even if you just get your bell rung, you still don’t want it.

So, how did this happen, you’re asking. Well, very, very quickly, in fact.  “It all happened so fast!” Heard that one before?  Here it is again, for your delectation. Take it for what you will.  But as to the facts at hand, I was returning from a routine bike ride, one I take every day or so, and as I have done countless times before, I turned into my peaceful little cul-de-sac. Apropos to the topic, the entrance to my street has been furnished with an unnecessary extra divot–somebody’s idea of a way to channel storm runoff alongside a piece of road that already sports a generous existing grade. This makes such a feature altogether superfluous (and in my case, at least a little dangerous). Anyway, when I hit this divot, carrying, perhaps, a bit of exuberant, excess speed, the rubber grip on the right handlebar slipped off, leaving me somewhat in the lurch.

Regardless, the aforementioned combination of mechanical and engineering failures put me in rather immediate contact with the unforgiving asphalt. I’d estimate that less than a second elapsed between hitting the bump and hitting the pavement. That’s not a lot of time to do any planning or prognostication, oh my bruvvers. That’s not even enough time to take a deep breath and get ready for all that you are about to suffer. It’s basically just a blur through which one traverses and tries to do the best one can under the somewhat impromptu circumstances.

A brief, subsequent, anatomical inventory provided a retrospective account of the events that transpired with, shall we say, a smattering of indeliberate haste. Said inventory was informative, however, providing insights into what may have transpired in that split instant, such as the following:

  • I had hit the pavement (did I mention it was unforgiving?) with the knuckles, and palms, of both hands, therefore leading me to assume that I must have bounced at least once.
  • I also, apparently, made contact with the big toe of my left foot. Good thing I was wearing sensible shoes. Good safety tip, that.
  • As to the evidence of contact on my right shoulder, there was a rather prominent tear in my T-shirt, and a corresponding raspberry spread gooily on said shoulder’s apex.
  • I won’t go into detail as to the state of the various knees and elbows; they have seen this territory before and were well prepared to revisit it. Let’s just say, however, that they had to cowboy up considerably to make the grade in this instance, forebearance-wise.


* Having been a victim of a little of the old ultraviolence, I am channeling Alex, from A Clockwork Orange.
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Thank You, Ibiblio!

This is just a quick post thanking the folks at Ibiblio.org for the great service they have done for me and many others by allowing us to host our various resources here. If you check out Ibiblio’s main page, you will see that the resources span quite a gamut. They call themselves “The Public’s Library,” and it is indeed true.

I first became aware of Ibiblio back when it was called Sunsite. It was a big download repository for Linux and other software back then (and it still is). It became Metalab for a few years, and then, with an expanded mission and vision, it became Ibiblio.

This organization has remained true to some outstanding, egalitarian principles over the years. While most of America seems devoted to enriching itself or to consumption of resources of one kind or another, Ibiblio has busied itself providing resources for free. By hosting sites such as Creative Commons, they have contributed to the expansion of the vision of sharing and given it an organizing principle.

Paul Jones has been at the helm for much of this time and doubtless deserves credit for maintaining the purity of Ibiblio’s vision. Kudos on a great organization! We all appreciate it a lot!

Greetings, etc.

This is the first post on this blog. As such I suppose I should lay out my purpose in initiating this project in the first place. As much as anything, it is an experiment, a proof-of concept sort of thing. I am enrolled in a class on 21st Century technologies, and our professor has encouraged the class to see what new technologies await us out there. What better way to “kick the tires on the 21st Century” than to start a blog of my own?

Now, many blogs have a central purpose, a raison d’etre, as it were. This one is way more random than that. The only organizing principle at work here is that it’s all spilling out of my mind. Well, whose mind is this, anyway? Not to identify myself too completely (and take the risk of identity theft), I’ll just frame myself as a world-weary boomer, an educator, and a person with lots of hobbies.

There. I think I’m safe from that identity theft bugaboo now. I mean, who wants to be that guy?

But my life as a public high school teacher has offered me the opportunity to observe quite a bit of what we’ll cal “human behavior,” for lack of a better word. A public high school is one of the best places there is for observing our culture, popular and otherwise, and how it affects us whether we like to admit it or not. Experience in that environment put one in touch with how we Americans raise our children and how we put value on the various aspects of our lives, and that is a big part of who we are.

Beyond cultural commentary, as an educator, I might have something to say about education from time to time. I have a two-year-old child, so I might talk about him a little. (I’ll try not to go on and on about him, though; I know how tedious that can be.) I spend a good bit of time outside, too–fishing, gardening, running, that sort of thing–so topics like that might find their way into the mix.

As I have said, though, I also spend time observing my fellow man (and woman). I find myself constantly amazed at what we are capable of, both the bad and the good, but mostly the odd and incomprehensible. When I can’t figure out why folks do the wacky stuff they do, I might just ask for input from the the world of blog readers. They seem to be a pretty literate bunch; they might offer some worthwhile insights for us to consider.

Oh, yeah. The name of the blog. With a name like mine, you’d think I would have gotten a lot of teasing growing up. Not so much, really, even when I found myself on the same soccer team as a guy named Sellers. Hey, that team won two high school state championships. Maybe that had a way of deflecting criticism, I don’t know. Anyway, when I Googled the phrase, nothing came up except misspellings of the more familiar term. It’s fair game! I nailed it down first!

Hey, big deal. Get over yourself.