Thank you to all who serve or have served in the nation’s armed forces.
Thank you to all who have given their lives in that service.
I don’t have much else to say today, but readers may find the site for Arlington National Ceremony worth a look, especially the Ceremonies and Historical Information links.
I decided to take a crack at making homemade chocolate syrup last night, and printed out Alton Brown’s Cocoa Syrup recipe from the Food Network site. I really should have gone to the Alton Brown fan page to check out the episode transcript just to see what details I missed, because when the printed recipe says to only reduce the syrup “until slightly thickened,” they sure as heck mean the slightly. I underestimated exactly how much the sauce would thicken as it cooled, and wound up with something almost like chocolate tar. I reheated the syrup and mixed in some more water, and the end result is still awfully tasty stuff, but I have a hunch the second go-round will be even better. Still, I guess screwing up the recipe the first time is half the fun of cooking. OK, maybe a quarter of the fun. Do I hear an eighth?
The Boston Red Sox are 11.5 games ahead of the New York Yankees in the American League East, and I must confess this makes me quite happy. (Although it could be a setup for a major gut-punch collapse, in which case, won’t that be a story and a half.) Part of me feels bad when I celebrate the Yankees losing. I went to college in the Bronx just as the Yankees were getting this current dynasty together, and there was a lot of happiness on campus when they won the World Series in 1996. Plus I have family members who are huge Yankee fans. So why the antipathy?
I gotta say it probably comes down to George Steinbrenner. Back in 2001, the Yankees were in Game 7 of the World Series with a lead in the ninth inning, but the Arizona Diamondbacks came back to win the game. Afterward, Steinbrenner said something to the effect that this was an unacceptable failure and he would make sure it didn’t happen again, and over the next few years the Yankees went from being in the group of league-leading payrolls to way ahead of everyone else. There’s something about that sense of entitlement that bothers me, the idea that if you do not reach the absolute pinnacle you are a failure because by rights you should be at that pinnacle. There must be some midpoint between accepting mediocrity and being hypercompetitive, but Steinbrenner hasn’t found it. So while I know it is horribly unfair to the many Yankees fans and personnel who realize that hey, some of those other teams are pretty good too, I enjoy it when George has to watch another team celebrate.
Besides, I’m a Phillies fan. It’s not like I’ve had a whole lot to celebrate for the last 13 seasons.
So today is the 30th anniversary of Star Wars, also known as the day George Lucas attached a vacuum to my wallet. My major commemoration of the anniversary has been to dive into the excellent new Making of Star Wars hardcover, which I’ll be reviewing in a few weeks over at theLogBook. I enjoy the book (and Ken Burns’s great documentary Empire of Dreams) for showing me more of how the movie was made – my interest in how-the-heck-did-they-do-that probably stems back to the Star Wars movies. But I also appreciate the occasional glimpse of a world where lightsabers and Wookiees were not ubiquitous pop culture references, but ideas that existed in the head of one stubborn director. I can’t remember a period when I didn’t know about Star Wars – I was one-and-a-half when the movie came out, three or four when I started playing with the toys, and six by the time I finally got to see the thing. So unlike Earl, I don’t necessarily remember how my life changed because of Star Wars – it’s just been a constant source of entertainment, inspiration, and occasional exasperation.
As for the title of this post – like a lot of people, I figured that the big Star Wars Celebration in California would be a source of big news about the future of the franchise. Some newspapers and fansites had even gotten worked up about the idea that new movies might be in the works, although Lucasfilm reps have said no. Still, plenty of time left in the weekend, so who knows what might be coming down the pike.
I went to an open house at the neighborhood public school today – Alex will start kindergarten this fall, so we registered her there. I got to look at the kindergarten classrooms, and the kids there seemed enthusiastic. Lots of projects and signs were hung around the room, and while it wasn’t the brightest of environments – the kindergarten classrooms are in the basement – it seemed like a place where kids were learning. I was a little late to the opening discussion, so I stayed later to talk to the principal, who asked me if Alex would be continuing at the school after kindergarten. A large number of kids in the area apparently go to the public school for K and then switch to parochial schools for first grade and up. (The Archdiocese of Philadelphia runs a huge network of schools – there are two parish grade schools within a ten minute walk of my house and a third about 20-25 minutes away.) I said that while Alex won’t go to the parochial schools, I don’t know whether she’d stay at the public school. The principal offered to show me a first grade classroom, and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised. I have heard so many horror stories about the public schools from my classmates at Temple, and I had my own memories of grade school in the front of my mind. But in this classroom, there were no rows of desks with kids expected to sit in them all day. It looked a lot like the kindergarten classrooms, and I mean that as a compliment. Round tables for students to sit and work in small groups, a large floor space for kids to gather together with the teacher, colorful student projects all around – it looked like the students were getting the attention they needed and participating in their learning process. It was a considerable relief, to tell you the truth. The principal seemed pretty proud of the work they were doing given the resources they have, and I can’t really blame her. Now if we could only figure out how to replicate that success.
There’s a lot of anger in antiwar circles about the supplemental spending bill that came out of the House-Senate conference committee, which appears to strip all timelines and mandated consequences from the bill. It’s being portrayed as a blank check for the president’s war policy
The major thing I’ve been grappling with in this discussion is that it seems like even many of the anti-war voices in Congress seem opposed to any action that would cut off funds. Whether that’s because of political fears, reliving Vietnam, beliefs about the separation of powers, or something else entirely, I’m not completely sure. But it seems pretty real and not something that’s going away any time soon. And given that fact, it seems like President Bush knows that he doesn’t have to compromise – even if by not compromising he’s doing himself and his party political harm. That seems like something that’s so hard for anyone else in Washington to comprehend that they really can’t come up with a strategy for it. I suppose it’s why I never really expected anything different to come from all of this – but I still wouldn’t mind if people proved me wrong.
After years of discussing it, today I filled in two areas in front the house with small white stones – snowchips, as the rock store called them. Rather than make roughly three hundred extra trips to Lowe’s, we ordered the rocks from a wholesaler. Thus it came to be that at around 3 in the afternoon, I heard a truck pulling into the driveway. By the time I got outside, the truck was spilling a ton of small rocks onto the pavement – a ton apparently being the smallest unit that this wholesaler sells. I suppose fractional tons would require it being called a halfsaler. But I digress. I then spent the next few hours shoveling these rocks into their designated positions so that the driveway would be usable again.
Don’t get me wrong, I like my rocks. But this is one of those things you have to remember when someone gives you the “buy-a-home-don’t-waste-your-money-renting” spiel. Were I renting a place, I doubt I would have said to myself, “There’s a hundred bucks burning a hole in my pocket. Let me purchase many, many small rocks so that I can spend hours shoveling them around.” So I think that should be in the spiel.
I’m not exactly sure what this says about Internet discourse, reading comprehension, pervasive marketing, and overall cynicism. But this story and discussion thread over at Newsarama is well worth reading. Apparently the Franklin Mint – the folks who’ve brought us so many pewter chess sets over the years, one piece every other month – is taking a bunch of quarters and “enhancing” them with images of the Silver Surfer from the upcoming Fantastic 4 movie. People who find these quarters can then enter a contest or something. As you can probably tell from reading the story, the initial details were sketchy and had to be updated later. But it did not take long for folks to start complaining about the government participating in a movie promotion. Now, I can’t quite blame anyone for getting the Franklin Mint and the U.S. Mint confused – but doesn’t it say something that people would have such an easy time believing it?
About a week ago I discovered a long-running webcomic called Real Life, a loosely autobiographical comic done in Illustrator by Greg Dean. The comics and some of the situations are based on Greg’s life, his friends, and his various hobbies. Others are clearly science fiction scenarios played for humor, such as dimension hopping, time travel, and evil geniuses taking over the world. There’s also a healthy amount of metafictional fourth-wall-breaking interactions with The Cartoonist. All in all, it’s quite entertaining. Reading the entire seven-plus years in the archives, I was most struck by Greg’s evolution from a 20-year-old with a serious ramen noodle habit to a culinary school graduate. How’s that for unplanned foreshadowing?
So we went out to dinner tonight because I had a hankering for tacos, and in the restaurant there was a guy making balloon animals for tips. You can guess what the chances of us leaving the restaurant without a balloon for Alex was. So the guy comes over, sees my Fordham cap, and asks me where Fordham is and what I studied. When I mentioned philosophy, he said that he was studying philosophy out in Pittsburgh, and when I said I had a grad degree, he said he was interested in that as well – and then he asked me if I had published anything. I haven’t, in part because I’ve focused on the education/teaching stuff and in part because there’s a voice in the back of my head saying that my philosophical writing voice just isn’t quite right. My papers never really bowled anyone over during my grad work, and I just couldn’t seem to make it click.
When I got home and checked my e-mail, there was a message from a political science professor whose seminar I took last spring. He was sending me a Word file with comments on my term paper, and as I went through there were a number of little style goofs or bad antecedents or what have you. But at the end there was a comment that the paper was unusually well-written or words to that effect. And this was not the first time a poli sci professor had praised my writing.
All of this has me wondering if I didn’t pick the wrong discipline – that my brain somehow works more smoothly in a political theory direction than a straight-theoretical line. Or it could just be down to individual professors’ preferences. Something to think about as I move forward, anyway.