Tag: community

ToTD: Fran Lebowitz

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2008-07-17

4:31 pm

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Thought of the Day

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Take away a man’s actu­al sense of manhood–which is con­ven­tion­al­ly based on the abil­i­ty to work, to earn mon­ey, to be self-suf­fi­cient, to pro­vide for children–and you’ve got to give them some­thing else. And they did.

This hideous reli­gion that’s all over the country–these huge church-malls–that’s what sub­sti­tutes for these lost towns. But that’s not a town. That’s a cult. A town is diverse, in a real way, not in this fake way we have now. A com­mu­ni­ty is a butch­er and a doc­tor, a min­is­ter, a town trou­ble­mak­er. A ‘com­mu­ni­ty’ is not a bunch of peo­ple unit­ed by some griev­ance. That’s just self-righteousness–incredibly dan­ger­ous and anti­de­mo­c­ra­t­ic. Peo­ple have become so rigid; their opin­ions seem to them like them­selves. When that hap­pens (and it has hap­pened) peo­ple can’t change their minds. If you are iden­ti­fied by your opinions–if that is the very basis of yourself–how can you change your mind?

Fran Lebowitz, Rumi­na­tor Mag­a­zine inter­view with Susan­nah McNeely (August/September 2005)

The Myth About Homework

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2006-09-13

4:28 pm

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Community, General

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As the days go by, Katie’s time gets more and more pre­cious. I’m not the only one who is miss­ing lazy days of cud­dling up to do our lessons togeth­er at our own pace, doing as much as is need­ed and no more, then going on to Girl Scouts or dance or friends.

Every night, every week­end is full of more and more home­work. Some of it is very obvi­ous­ly work for the sake of assign­ing home­work. She has four class­es, and only two of the teach­ers assign home­work. I can’t begin to imag­ine when she’d sleep if she were tak­ing four “seri­ous” cours­es, but we’ll know next semes­ter, when she adds a third one.

So this arti­cle real­ly hit home. It’s some­thing we railed about when Sam’s chil­dren lived with us, and now it’s an issue for our fam­i­ly again.

Think hours of slog­ging are help­ing your child make the grade? Think again

Too much home­work brings dimin­ish­ing returns. Coop­er’s analy­sis of dozens of stud­ies found that kids who do some home­work in mid­dle and high school score some­what bet­ter on stan­dard­ized tests, but doing more than 60 to 90 min. a night in mid­dle school and more than 2 hr. in high school is asso­ci­at­ed with, gulp, low­er scores.

I sup­pose it’s time to start cam­paign­ing, which means first get­ting involved in oth­er ways. You can’t walk in with a com­plaint and expect to be heard very well if you haven’t already estab­lished your­self as a pos­i­tive asset.

SBQ: Stitching habits?

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2006-07-12

7:05 pm

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Blogging, Needlework, SBQ

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This week’s Stitch­ing Blog­gers Ques­tion is:

Since you start­ed blog­ging, have you noticed any dif­fer­ence in your stitch­ing habits? Tell us about them.
Blog­ging has­n’t real­ly changed my stitch­ing habits, but I haven’t got­ten to know a great many oth­er stitch­ing blog­gers — yet 🙂

When that hap­pens, though, I expect that it may have the same effect that sub­scrib­ing to rec.crafts.textiles.needlework did back in 1995. I dis­cov­ered Q‑Snaps and Ott Lites and new tech­niques and fibers and fab­rics! And there were design­ers who actu­al­ly par­tic­i­pat­ed in the news­group!

I’d been stitch­ing for over a decade then, but r.c.t.n. sparked a peri­od of growth and renew­al that has con­tin­ued to this day. I’m excit­ed about the new inspi­ra­tion I’m sure I’ll find from read­ing the blogs of oth­er stitch­ers!