Deja (D'Asia) vu

Most Korean places include all of these little dishes with your meal, placed in the middle of the table for sharing, and this place kept them coming. They were all delicious, and almost all impressively spicy. Good thing I built up a tolerance in Thailand!

So after making Shama's acquaintance at McSorley's, as well as her friend Seint, also in the clinical psych. program, I received an invitation to their joint birthday party (they were actually born on the same day) which took place on Wednesday. There's a street in downtown NYC known as Korea Town, or K-Town for those in the know. After a tasty dinner of Korean BBQ (with a specially ordered tofu bowl for the party pooper vegetarians in the house), we headed off to karaoke.

Seint and me, digesting.

I've done karaoke once before in the city, and it's fantastic because it reminds me so much of Japan. I'm sure there are traditional, American-style karaoke bars around the city, but in K-Town you can find the kind of karaoke they have in Japan: rooms of varying size that you rent for your group of friends only. The people at the front desk give you a few microphones, sometimes a tambourine or two, and let you have at it. It typically costs around $8 per person, per hour. In Japan, both of these things (Korean BBQ and karaoke) were some of my favorite things to do, and we had an absolutely fantastic time. Each person gets to sing much more often with this kind of set up, and it's not nearly as scary to sing in front of friends. It helps that most karaoke bars serve up liquid courage as well, to sort of loosen things up. I had an absolutely wonderful time.

The next morning, I got a text message from my friend Eddie, whom you may remember from my Halloween blog, inviting me to do karaoke with some of his friends on Friday for his birthday. Eddie was born and raised in Manhattan, and I met him in Japan where he was also a teacher. He was a musical theater major at Ithaca. Before that, he went to a high school with a focus on performing arts. His sister had a role in "Spring Awakening," a hugely popular musical on Broadway, for about a year before she headed off to college. His dad won a Tony. So his social group consists almost entirely of obscenely talented people, and I can't even begin to describe how impressive a scene I found myself in the middle of last night. One girl I met is an opera singer, and she performed an operatic version of "Like a Virgin" that would have left Madonna pretty impressed. Another guy toured for four years with "Cats" and "Oklahoma!" I'm not sure about the bios of any of the other attendees, but it was clear that they were all professionals. Another girl I met had directed some production that Eddie had been in recently. She's a dancer, not a singer, and she and I talked about how we felt like we should have bought tickets for the night. It was one hell of a show. At Shama and Seint's birthday party, I did a lot of singing. There were only about ten of us, as opposed to the 30 at Eddie's, and I was better than the majority of them. At Eddie's party, however, I was not about to grab the mic in front of that crowd. I was more than content to just watch the show, however.

"We were here before you were born."

This is the slogan at McSorley's, and no matter who you are, if you're walking through the door, it's true. McSorley's Old Ale House is an Irish bar in downtown New York that has the distinct honor of being the oldest bar in the city (that is, the one that's been operating uninterrupted for the longest stretch). It first opened its doors in 1854, and I have to imagine it didn't look all that different then. Women weren't allowed to drink there until the 1970's, but Irish bartenders, straight from the emerald shores of Erin by the sounds of their accents, still sling mugs of home-brewed beer at patrons who rub shoulders over sawdust-strewn floors. I didn't have to wrangle with the decision-making process when ordering here; there are only two choices, light beer or dark beer, or one of each if you like. The mugs aren't very big, so to make up for it they come two at a time and cost $4.50 for both. Quite a deal. Visitors to the bar can put it away pretty handily, and so the bartenders and waitstaff have massive forearms from hoisting so many glasses at once - the glasses have handles, and our bartender told us he can lift approximately ten with each hand. Yowzah. If you feel like you want something a bit more solid, there are sandwiches, fries and that sort of thing available, although my friend Shama and I spent about 20 minutes scrutinizing the area behind the bar trying to determine just where these dishes would come from. We didn't figure it out. I never saw anyone order anything other than a sort of combination platter consisting of huge chunks of cheddar cheese, crackers, slabs of raw onion, and pots of mustard. Tasty.

The most interesting feature hung above the bar, luckily not the part where my group stood. A light fixture was adorned with shapeless fuzzy gray forms. Someone commented on the perilous state of the mugs resting on the bar below this fixture, and a member of our group explained that he'd been to McSorley's before, and that the gray forms were actually wishbones. It seems that when the United States first began to send troops to fight in World War I, local boys preparing to be shipped off would meet in McSorley's for a few final mugs of beer. They hung wishbones on the fixture, vowing to remove them once they returned from the war. As the dust-covered remaining wishbones attest, not all of them managed to keep this promise.

We arrived around 10 P.M. and the place was packed. In fact, we had to wait in line outside for about ten minutes. Once inside, we had to stand for the first hour or so until some of our more resourceful group members managed to snag some seats at a long table in the crowded back room. The waiter made sure that each person had at least two glasses, which were in the process of being emptied, in front of him/her at all times to ensure that we weren't taking up valuable real estate without shelling out money for it. People at other tables kept popping up and challenging anyone who'd accept their offer to chugging contests. It was unfathomably loud and festive. Perhaps it was the beer, but I felt a strange sense of camaraderie with the other drinkers squeezed into the bar on all sides of me.

My group had assembled in honor of my friend Jeff's birthday. While in line, I made friends with a girl named Shama, who is in the clinical psychology program with Jeff. We hit it off, and I ended up at her birthday party not too long after, which will be the topic of my next post.

Cheers!

Undressed

After lunch with Frank, a friend of ours from Japan, and his girlfriend, Dave and I went to the Bodies exhibit near the South Street Seaport. The area reminds me of Cannery Row - clean, touristy, kitschy.

For those of you who have been living under a rock for the last few years, Bodies is an exhibit in which real cadavers have been dissected, preserved, and positioned to show different structures and systems. Pamala, Frank's girlfriend, told us that the bodies were all from China, which explained why they seemed so small.

My student ID card got me a $10 discount on the price of admission, which I was crowing about until Dave made a sarcastic comment that my thousands of dollars of tuition were really starting to pay off. Hmph. It wasn't terribly crowded, and the people that shared the exhibition with us were hushed as they walked around, looking at the figures from all angles and reading the placards. Different rooms were devoted to different systems: skeletal, muscular, nervous, reproductive, etc. I'd seen this sort of thing before on a much smaller scale when I was a faculty advisor one summer for the National Youth Leadership Forum on Medicine, but I was responsible for a group of kids then, and this time I could give my full attention to the specimens. After the initial ew-that's-actually-a-real-person weirdness (faces still have eyelashes and eyebrows, and most of the complete bodies weren't behind glass so you could get quite close), it was really interesting. Dave made a few comments comparing different parts on display to various meat dishes, and I was glad to be a vegetarian. Each room had at least one complete body, stripped down to different degrees to show bones, cartilage, muscles, organs, or whatever. Aside from that, there were lots of display cases with isolated parts like a kidney or a pelvis or a brain. Often, there would be two of something with different parts removed, like a shoulder joint with tendons and one without so that you could get a clear look at the bones underneath.

Most impressive, I thought were the displays showing the circulatory system (see the circulatory system in a pair of lungs above). Apparently the cadavers used were injected with a polymer, and once it had hardened inside the veins and arteries, the tissue was removed (otherwise it would be too delicate and complex to remove and display). The first time I looked at a map of the Tokyo rail transit system it reminded me of a diagram of the human circulatory system, and I was reminded of that experience today. The complexity (of both) is really amazing.

Dave, a smoker, said that the slices of brains of stroke victims made him want to quit more than the blackened lungs did - and since the cadavers were all from China, most of them had blackened lungs. There were also kidneys with stones in them, tumors, and various body parts with cancers. A liver with cirrhosis. Polyps along the inside of an intestinal wall. Pretty gross. From an educational standpoint, I'd have loved to see more on obesity; there was one plump-ish cadaver, and I didn't feel that they explained the risks of being overweight very thoroughly. That would shock people into thinking twice before supersizing at the drive-thru (although I guess scare tactics weren't the principle purpose here). I would have been interested to see other ailments too, more common ones, like arthritic knuckles perhaps. And there was no space devoted to the eye, although if they wanted to use only real bodies and no larger models, I guess that would be sort of tough to do.

All in all, a very interesting exhibit, that I'd highly recommend.

Snow in Central Park

February might actually be the cruelest month. After a relatively warm start, we had a snowy cold snap and now it's beautiful and warmer (highs in the mid-40s!!!) with more snow/rain predicted for Monday. Yuck. I went running on Friday with only a tank top and jacket on top - no long-sleeved shirt layer in the middle - and was actually too hot.

Now that I can take pictures and listen to podcasts with one handy device, I pause during my runs occasionally (hey, sometimes a girl needs a breather, right?) to snap a few pictures in the park. I apologize for the not-so-great quality. My BlackBerry's camera has about half the megapixels as my digital camera does. C'est la vie, it's better than nothing.

Appropriately enough, I took this picture right outside the Metropolitan Musuem of Art.

This is a waterfall (well, more like a trickle) in warmer weather.

So Happy Together: My CrackBerry and me

After nearly three years of faithful service, my trusty Verizon flip phone bit the dust. I opened it one day and the plastic around the hinge cracked. Courtney, who used to have the same phone, assured me that I couldn't just live with it because the plastic would continue to crack until the metal joint the connected the top part with the bottom part fell out. Oh dear.

I'd never felt the need for a fancy phone; as long as it made calls it was fine with me. But recently, I've become completely dependent on an application on my computer called iCal. It's a great tool for managing one's schedule - I can assign different colors to different events, import information from Facebook, make notes, attach websites, and basically indulge my borderline OCD to my heart's content. The problem was that, unless I had my laptop with me, I couldn't add anything to my calendar or even check it. So I decided that I needed a phone that I could connect to my computer and thus load my calendar onto it. This decision narrowed the pool of possibilities considerably. Macintoshes are notoriously finicky about with whom they will associate, and of all of the phones available through Verizon, only the BlackBerry would provide what I needed. So be it. I ended up with the BlackBerry Tour.

After a brief getting-to-know you period, during which I flipped through an instruction manual the size of a novel and watched a DVD about my new phone, I feel like I have a pretty good handle on how to use at least the most important features on this thing. It's much bigger than my other phone, but aside from that I really can't think of any other cons. Obviously, first and foremost, I can load my calendar onto it, adjust my calendar, then transfer the changes back to my computer. Ditto for my address book. Another thing I particularly like is that I can load music onto it. Now I don't have to carry both an iPod and a phone when I go out, and when you're walking around a city all day, every ounce counts. An added bonus: When I go running with my BlackBerry, I have not only music but a camera with me at all times, which was not the case with my iPod. The pictures I take are not of outstanding quality, but they're more than sufficient. I can also access the Internet directly from my phone, and my email account is synced so that I get email messages in both places. (This is actually a blessing and a curse.) If I want to write an email message or a text message, I have a full keyboard to use instead of only the nine number keys, making typing a great deal easier and faster. They keys, however, are pretty tiny and take some getting used to. And ridiculous as this is, I'm endlessly tickled by the fact that I can set any song I want to be a ring tone instead of having to choose from the inevitably annoying, overly electronic-sounding options available on the phone. (Currently it's "Boy with a Coin" by Iron & Wine, a song I like so much that I sort of don't want to answer it when it rings so that I can keep listening.) I'll admit readily that it's not nearly as cool as the iPhone, but I'm sufficiently impressed by what it can do.

Am I addicted yet? Don't think so. But I may be on my way.

It keeps America together!

Q: Why is duct tape like the Force?

A: It has a dark side and a light side, and it holds the universe together.

Use #7,924 for duct tape: preventing blisters from forming or from getting worse. Dad and I learned this handy trick in the wilderness medicine course we took last summer. Go figure that my shoes never gave me a problem until the day I decided to run the half marathon.

Wile E.?

It's wild out there: article

Snow day!

It started snowing at about 1:00 in the morning on Tuesday and didn't stop for 24 hours. All schools, including Columbia were closed for the day. Go figure that I have no class on Wednesday anyway.

Morningside Park. The steps were very pretty that night, and very icy the next day. Hooray for salt!

In the background is the old library building on Columbia's main campus.

This guy said he'd been working for 4 hours and expected to be out there for 5 more before he finished his igloo. He'd pack a five-sided rectangular box with snow, saw the top off, and place the brick.

No overnight bicycle parking, by order of the snow gods.

Butler Library on Columbia's main campus.

A lot of students, undergrads mostly, I think, were out building snowmen, having snowball fights, and sledding down whatever slopes they could find.

Stimulating Equity? Part II

Yesterday was the final day of the symposium. (I didn´t write up a summary last night because it had been decided already that today would be a snow day and I went out to celebrate that fact. Pictures of a snowy Columbia campus coming soon!) The keynote speaker, who works in DC, was unable to get out of the city because of the weather down there, and the techies were having some trouble getting the video feed set up for her, so we began with what was supposed to be the second session. I really liked the concept; there were three professors of history who talked about educational policy throughout US history, with an emphasis on the last 50 or so years. It was pretty interesting. Their most salient points (in my professional opinion): Whereas, in one speaker's opinon, the focus of educational reform under G. W. Bush was graduation from high school, the focus of the Obama campaign is the transition from high school to college/career; a hallmark of educational reform is that it tends to overestimate the impact it will have while underestimating the difficulty of implementation (d'oh!); the media, however, doesn´t often compare the specific goals of a reform with the specific outcome to prevent people from becoming cynical - rather they just sort of deplore the general inadequacy of the education system; specific curricula/commercial programs to assist with math, literacy, etc. aren't clear-cut successes or failures because they work well in some environments and not in others. After their spiel, there was an opportunity for questions. One guy, probably the oldest in the room, let loose a 5-minute tirade before asking his question. Initially, I was interested in what he was saying, but I lost interest after the first few minutes. He said that the incentive of money (or the threat of not receiving money) from the federal government was sometimes the only thing that would persuade states to reform their educational systems. As proof of this theory, he brought up the subject of desegregation. After the Brown case, many districts in the South refused to start busing until the federal government threatened to withhold funding, which, in his opinion, was the only reason they ended up making the change. Interesting point.

Our keynote speaker, Russlyn Ali, was finally able to connect with us via Skype. She's the assistant secretary in the Office of Civil Rights and has quite a laundry list of credentials even though she looks only about 30. She was a very inspirational speaker, and when she talked about fighting for disadvantaged children and inadequate schools, she looked like she was on the verge of tears. She talked about the importance of accurate data collection so that negative trends can be identified and remedied, and about the importance of using stimulus funds to creat long-term changes rather than plugging budget holes. I liked a lot of what she had to say, and I really liked the fact that she had teaching experience. (Her post doesn't directly affect educational policy, but I always like elected officials who have any influence in education at all with experience in classrooms; many of them, including our SECRETARY OF EDUCATION have never taught before.) However, she was clearly a politician, and that became clear during the question-and-answer session that followed her speech, during which she expressed deep concern for the issues raised by the questioners and then failed to provide a single solid answer to any of them. Her mantra: "stay tuned, we're working on it."

The next session focused on law, and featured the heads of two watchdog committees centered on education and a lawyer-turned-professor whose specialty at Columbia Law School is educational law. This was my favorite session of the day. I learned something I think few people know: Financial hardship is not considered a legal excuse for states to provide substandard education. By law, if a state is in dire straits and a governor has to make budget cuts, he cannot cut money from education if it means that children will receive services that are not considered adequate. The shrewd thinker will quickly see the problem here, though: It's pretty hard to nail down just what factors must be present in a school if it is to provide the kind of education that is guaranteed by law. Still, it would be a great excuse for an education-minded governor faced with a tight budget to make cuts in other areas rather than slashing education funds. On the topic of cutting costs, one of the speakers talked about a lot of areas that are pretty inefficient financially. He said that there is generally a lot of waste in transportation, and lots of heads in the audience bobbed in agreement. (For an interesting transportation-themed anecdote, scroll down*.) He said also that multi-year budgeting was generally much more streamlined than year-by-year budgets and that small school districts could save huge amounts of money by consolidating into larger districts; he admitted, during questioning, that this isn't always an appropriate course of action, however. His final proposal was that teacher pensions need to be drastically cut, in New York at least. Naturally, I bristled at this, but after he'd explained himself I found myself agreeing with what he had to say. He talked about teachers who retire when they're 55. Life expectancies being what they are, that leaves the district with around 25 years to keep making payments to the "retiree," who, odds are, will pick up another job to fill all of that free time and end up with two incomes (this does happen, apparently; he wasn't just being snarky). In addition, until the retiree turns 65, the school district is responsible for 100% of his/her medical bills before MedicAid takes over. Ouch. That's a lot of money. The speaker, who was no spring chicken himself, said that society in general provides a lot of resources for older people when it should be focusing on the younger generations. Although I've left the younger-generation category, I guess I agree...

I attended a discussion over lunch during which two women, one from Italy and one from the Netherlands, talked about educational funding in their respective countries. It was fascinating to compare their systems with ours, and it got me interested in other funding systems in foreign school systems. Luckily, I have enough friends abroad that I can look into this further. I've sent out some emails and will most likely write an entry later detailing what I learn.

The final session of the day was a little slow. It was called "State and Federal Perspectives." I took few notes and left before it was over; it just didn't seem cohesive. The only point that really hit home for me was when one of the speakers, talking about standards and testing, pointed out that it didn't seem fair that kids be expected to achieve the same amount if they don't have the same amount.

I'll finish with a few questions raised by the symposium that have left me thinking. I don't suppose there are really answers, but I'll pose them here, and if you have a solution, pass it on!

-According to the Constitution, what exactly are students guaranteed to receive in public schools? Services? A certain outcome? An opportunity?

-What are the mandatory criteria of a basic, appropriate education? What can be cut? What absolutely has to stay?

-To what extent is consolidation (of standards, curriculum, school governance, etc.) a good thing? Does it lead to school/district/state empowerment, or impotence?

-Related: What role, if any, should the federal government have in public education?

*Transportation anecdote: Courtney and I were talking recently about an interesting policy in New York public schools. Students, regardless of where they live, are allowed to apply to any junior high school/high school in the city. Ultimately, it is the school's decision to admit individual students, but the theory is that families have a shot at avoiding schools with bad reputations. This is supposed to create competition among the school so that they'll try to be better to attract more students, because schools with lower enrollments get less funding. One of Courtney's co-workers in Boston used to teach in New York and she told us about how smart the kids are in this city (although I don't think their teachers taught them about this particular trick): If a child is admitted to a school that's a certain distance away from his/her home, the district issues a monthly subway pass so the kid can get to school each day. Monthly passes allow for unlimited use for a 30-day period and cost somewhere around $60. (They may be cheaper for children; I haven't looked into it.) These bright youngsters would hang out with their passes in busy stations like Grand Central and Times Square and offer to swipe people through the turnstiles for $1. The kid would pocket the money, the traveler would save $1.25 off the price of a ticket, and the city would lose the $2.25 it should have collected. I don't think this is exactly what the speaker meant when he talked about inefficient transportation budgets, but it would probably qualify.

Stimulating Equity? Part I

During her welcome speech to the newest crop of Teachers College students back in August, Susan Fuhrman, president of TC gave the usual speech about the importance of trying to balance all of our responsibilities during our time as graduate students. She recommended that we view this as a time of luxury, unrealistic as that would sound to us as the demands of our classes began to pile up. She was referring, she explained, to intellectual luxury. As students, we would have the freedom and relative flexibility to learn all sorts of things by attending lectures, listening to visiting experts, and taking classes out of our fields. While, alas, my schedule of classes in the reading specialist program doesn't leave a lot of opportunity to deviate from the prescribed course load (although I did get to take some interesting electives, like neuro and linguistics), I have loved going to see as many speakers and panels as I can fit between my classes, practicum, and fellowship obligations. I continue to be surprised by how few of my fellow students I see at these events. Most of them are free, and while some have been a little disappointing, I always come away with something new to think about.

Today is the first day of a two-day symposium hosted by TC called "Stimulating Equity? The Impact of the Federal Stimulus Act on Educational Opportunity." This is an annual event, but the focus is different each year. The cost to me as a TC student: $10. (It's something like $65 for outsiders.) When you figure in two free breakfasts and lunches and a complimentary pen, it pretty much pays for itself. I was concerned that I'd have trouble staying awake - there are about six hours of speakers lined up for each day, and I had trouble falling asleep last night. But it wasn't a problem. I'm learning a lot about educational policy, economics, and politics, and I'm taking pages of notes. (Not everyone was so riveted. One former presenter slept through the afternoon session, and another woman stayed attentive while knitting furiously.) I was the only student from my program there. In fact, I recognized only one other student in attendance, although I'm guessing that about 15% of the audience was TC students I'd never seen before.

The first speaker of note this morning was Ed Rendell, governor of Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, he is due to present the annual state budget tomorrow and so wasn't able to come in person; we had to watch him on a screen via live video feed. I'd never heard of him, but I'm a huge fan now. He's known as "the education governor" and education is his top budget priority. However (and this is big) he doesn't advocate just throwing money at education; as he said, he issues no blank checks. He increases funding in very specific areas - like early childhood education, after-school tutoring, the implementation of small learning communities, technology in classrooms, and more Advanced Placement courses in high schools - and revisits them continuously for results. (Pennsylvania is the largest single purchaser of laptops in the US apparently. Every high school student and teacher gets one.) He said that we have a responsibility to educate children well because it's both morally right and economically sound, a nice two-pronged argument aimed at both bleeding hearts and stony realists. Unfortunately, he won't be serving another term, but I'm willing to bet that now that he has nothing to lose he's going to implement some pretty bold legislature aimed at education on his way out.

For the second portion, we heard five speakers who presented three research papers between them. The aim of all three papers was essentially to determine what had happened to the federal stimulus money and whether states were implementing it well (with a focus on equity, if only for the purpose of this symposium). Gotta love higher education: the first guy said it was going to all the right places, the second team said it hadn't gone to the right place in any one of the states they investigated, and the third team said that while it appeared to go to all the right places it actually hadn't. And they were all technically right, because they looked at the question from different angles using different research methods. The first guy, although he works for an independent research company and has no incentive to skew his results, relied on surveys distributed to states for his data. Although the states' anonymity was assured, I still find that practice a little fishy. So I'm more inclined to agree with the other two papers that were presented. One point I found interesting: In general, the number of dollars invested in education is up. However, the increase in spending doesn't match the inflation rates, nor the growth in population, meaning that although the governments (state and federal) are spending more in total, the number of dollars spent per pupil is down, and of course that's the number that really matters. Those scheisty politicians.

After a (free!) lunch, we met up for what were supposed to be the final two sessions. The first one featured a panel comprised of an official from the department that makes the annual statewide educational budget in Georgia (with a fantastic southern accent); a superintendent from a school district in South Dakota whose at-risk students have made tremendous gains in the last seven-or-so years under his watch (with a less fantastic midwestern accent); and a woman from New Jersey who's high up in legislation for students with disabilities (with no accent at all, to my disappointment). All three were pretty impressive, but the superintendent was incredible. I never could have imagined that someone would make me want to move to South Dakota, but I wanted to work for him after hearing what he had to say, even if it meant living in, well, South Dakota. His district was eligible for a huge sum of money from the federal government because he has so many children who live in poverty, and he posed the question: How can I use short-term funding (i.e. the stimulus bill) to instigate long-term effects? He went right to he research - real research, not commercial programs that claim to be research-based - and signed a 5-year contract with Achieve 3000, a literacy program, so that the district will have it after the stimulus money is no longer available. He also invested in technology in classrooms and the results are incredible. I could go on about this guy, but I suppose I shouldn't. The last panel of the day focused on the stimulus in the state of New York. It wasn't very cohesive, and I had class coming up, so I ducked out a little early.

I could also go on about the symposium, but I won't. As I wrote before, I took pages of notes. It has really left me with a lot to think about, and although I'm pretty mentally fried from 6 hours of speakers followed by 4 hours of class, I'm really glad I decided to do this. I'm looking forward to tomorrow.

For more information (as if you ever want to read anything about this again) The New York Times ran this article about the symposium and the issues it covers. Also, here is the website where you can download the studies and other information presented.

More tomorrow.

Who dat?

This picture looks greenish because the lighting was greenish. Mardi Gras decorations are usually purple, green, and gold. I'm not sure if the bar let the hosts pick the color of the light, but it went nicely with the streamers and beads that were everywhere.

I've never been much of a football fan, but when my diehard Saints fan friend Michael, a New Orleans transplant, invited me to a Superbowl party some of his friends were throwing at a bar in midtown, I couldn't resist. If nothing else, I knew I'd enjoy watching Michael watching the game. Luckily for everyone there, the Saints won, and Michael and Co. were just as animated as expected. As a bonus, the place was decked on with Mardi Gras themed decor, and drinks included not just beer but hurricanes (no mint juleps unfortunately).

My third slice of king cake, which tastes a lot like a cinnamon roll

To prevent people from getting too boozy, there were huge platters of homemade jumbalayah and several king cakes Michael's dad had shipped from The Big Easy. Sadly, the small plastic baby that is usually hidden in a king cake for some lucky person to find was packaged separately; something about them not doing it the traditional way if the cakes are shipped out of the city.

Rockin' kicks

I woke up to clear, sunny skies this morning. Most of the snow that fell the night before last - not that it was much - has melted. This means that on his walk this morning, Ozzie probably will not need his red shoes (actually balloons, available at pet stores according to his owner) to keep his feet dry. Yesterday, however, they were necessary apparently; everybody knows that dogs aren't built to withstand the harsh conditions of nature. Wait a minute...

Parking in New York

Luckily, this is something I don't have to deal with. I was downtown today, a little below midtown where space isn't quite as tight, and peeked into a garage to check rates - around $40 for a 24-hour period, or $18 an hour. Might as well stay all day at that rate... Here is an alternative to the garage option, though, presenting a pretty good option when horizontal space is limited, as it is in Manhattan:

The business motto? "Unparalleled parking." I have to admit, it's actually pretty clever.

Book talk

One of my favorite things about TC is going to the free lectures of all kinds that are advertised all over campus. Recently, I attended a book talk by the editors of a new book about comparative education. (Critical Approaches to International Education, ed. Frances Vavrus and Lesley Barlett.) I'm always interested in the educational systems in place in the different countries I visit but have never studied it formally. Rest assured, however, that if there is a topic someone thinks they can get a grant to study, they'll study it, and comparative education is no exception. This book contained studies of educational systems in the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and the Americas.

I was a little annoyed that more time wasn't spent on the actual studies themselves. The editors of the book went on and on about horizontal and vertical comparisons and what was legitimate to compare and what wasn't. I wanted to hear the specifics about the issues they covered. This is the problem with modern scholarship in my opinion: too much emphasis on process. I know that you have to pay attention to method if your results are going to be considered legitimate, but still… This is why I have no interest in research.)

There were a few points made which I found interesting, however. One of the editors cited an anthropologist who wrote about "friction." She said that a wheel that spins in the air doesn't go anywhere and one stick on its own doesn't create heat and light, whereas a wheel on the ground can travel and two sticks can make fire. In the same way, social friction can be very productive, even if it's not always initially pleasant, because friction can really reveal people's values and bring out the best (or worst) in a culture. Cool concept. I was also introduced to the term "edutainment," (which, interestingly, my word processing program has recognized and is not underlining in red. Perhaps it's not as new a term as I thought) in the context of a magazine in Tanzania meant to educate teenagers about AIDS prevention.

While the talk wasn't quite what I'd expected, one thing that was kind of cool about it was seeing many of the participants interact with the two editors. About half the people in the room, it seemed, had been involved in the research that went into the book, and because they're all into international education, they'd been traveling all over the place and hadn't been together for at least a year. It was almost warm and fuzzy, which aren't words I thought I'd ever use to describe the interactions between a team of academic researchers. Somehow I can't picture molecular biologists or civil engineers behaving this way.