I am, sorry, but I am, in a fucking foul mood at the moment. I need not to be, as it is H’s birthday on Monday, and his parents are coming to stay for a couple of days, and I took time off work to (don’t tell H) (H, don’t read this bit) go shopping for him, which was niiiiiiice, and I’ve been to a couple of quite seriously good concerts and a dinner out, in the company of lovely people, and you’d've thought I’d be quite chirpy now.

I even got a really good mark for my Creative Writing assignment, which startled me (I thought it was pants), and which made H point and laugh, because, really, he always cheerleads me on, telling me I’m marvellous, and I always spend the entire essay/dissertation/story/poem/shopping list vapouring about my extreme rubbishness, and tah-dah! It was fine (again) and I was being silly (again) and H gets to point and laugh and so he should. Not that it’s a habit I can shake (You do know, don’t you, that you’re not really enjoying my blog at all, and it bores and irritates you in equal measure? That you’re not laughing at any of the jokes, in fact, you hadn’t realised there were jokes, and any minute now the clouds of delusion will lift and you will all realise this and briskly delete me from your feeds, turning to each other in embarrassment and saying you can’t believe I conned you all into sticking around for so long. Right? Anyone?).

Back on Planet Bitter McTwisted, Infertility Edition, I was jolted into rather an overshare at work on Thursday. Up until that point, all my colleagues were being rather sweet and discreet about my massive three-week absence. Probably gossiping like meerkats in my absence, but still, splendid lack of awkwardness. Until Thursday. Tech Guy (who is a sweetheart, really) came wandering in, and did the whole ‘hey, May, lovely to have you back! How are you! Better? Excellent!’ thing, which was gratefully received. Alas, on receiving this unwitting encouragement, he launched into a really quite intense ‘So! What happened to you then? We were all quite worried! Three weeks is a long time off sick, you know,’ (yes, I do know, thank you). ‘Was it swine flu? No? Normal flu? Not flu at all? It sounds serious! Tell me about it!’ (I wish I was shitting you, but I’m not) ‘Ohh, an accident, you say? What sort of accident? Did you have to go to hospital? Oh, you did? Why? Blood loss? You lost a lot of blood, you say? Ohh, dear. How did you…’ And at this point, thank arsing fuck, someone else popped their head round the door and said something had gone horribly wrong with the printer, and Tech Guy assured me he’d catch up with me later before sprinting off (shit).

My colleague S, who sits at the next desk, had been getting an unavoidable earful of this, and could see that I was flustered. She asked if I was OK. I nodded. She (quietly, not at the top of her healthy young lungs, colleagues take note), then told me she hadn’t asked me many questions because she didn’t think it was really her business, but she did want me to know that she did care and had been worried too. Never be kind to a flustered person. I sort of blurt-whispered ‘It’s just that, you know, I had a miscarriage, and it’s not that I mind people knowing, but I find it really hard to talk about it, especially in front of the whole office.’ And S said instantly that she was so, so sorry. And, did I have to go to hospital like I said. I said yes, that bit was perfectly true, as was the blood loss bit, and she looked quite miserable for me. And she asked how H was doing, which in my book earns her a Small Gold Star Certificate for Having Empathy And Intelligence.

Anyway. After a few minutes, people started coming back into the office, so we both coughed and stared casually out of the window or back at our computer screens and probably looked exactly like teenagers caught passing notes in assembly.

It’s true, though. I don’t mind people knowing one little bit. I just don’t want to be the one doing the telling. I most certainly don’t want to be the one answering questions or explaining next steps or trying to enlighten the unenlightened as to karyotyping or factor V Leiden, and also why, under the circumstances, it’s quite important that I absolutely don’t relax and go on vayyyycayyyyytion. Relaxing and vacationing might just work (hey, they sort of did in Switzerland, as I conceived about a week after we got back) and that’d be a great blog fodder anecdote. Hello! I nearly bled to death in a bus station in the Algarve! Also, I don’t speak Spanish!

My, I’m all unicorn ballet and rainbows today.

Anyway, part of the glumness is because on Sunday H and his dad are going out to do Manly Father-Son Bonding and I will be doing Girly Night In with my MiL. Now, she tried quite desperately to talk to me ‘about it all’ when I lost Pikaia, and I equally as desperately DID NOT WANT and became very good at changing the subject and/or if necessary volunteering to do the washing up. It was easy, because the rest of the family were milling about on most visits and MiL was clearly not prepared to broach things in front of *gasp* men. Not even my FiL or my husband. (I, personally, find protecting the Squeamish Sex from the realities of the massive and sometimes horrible sacrifices women make to keep the human race going, offensive both to their intelligence and our experience, but still…). A whole evening in, just the two of us, and a fresh new disaster to discuss? Oy vey.

I absolutely know in my heart her motives are the best and most pure. She is sad and sorry and wants to sympathise. She had a miscarriage herself, between H and his brother. It’s not like she’s going to say or think anything too clueless and irritate me that way. And this is her family, continuance of. And she has wanted to be a grandmother since H and I moved in together last century, and she has had the decency to more or less shut up about it. On points, she wins a total victory over my own female relations, who never shut up about anything at all ever.

But. But but but. You knew there was at least one but, didn’t you? The but is, as I said, that I just do not want to talk about it with people who need things explaining to them. And the other but is, MiL is a sort of emotional sponge. We all know people like this, don’t we? Unlike emotional vampires, who suck you dry, or emotional shit-stirrers, who like creating high drama for their own warped amusement, emotional sponges can’t hear a tale of woe without it becoming their tale of woe. They feel everything so intensely, they can’t separate out their own distress from the distress of the person concerned. MiL is prone to anxiety and sadness anyway, and is always taking the weight of the world on her shoulders, even about situations which she can’t possibly have any real responsibility for or interest in. My case is definitely meaningful for her and close to her heart. I feel awful because I know she already feels awful. I feel awful because she gets upset about the very idea of hospital visits and tests (I can’t cope with that. As far as I’m concerned, the up-coming visits and tests and hopefully answers are the only thing keeping me from booking a hysterectomy). I feel awful because it awakes bad memories for her. I feel awful because I’m part of a series of shitty things that have happened to H’s side of the family these past few years, and I feel I am adding to her burdens (regardless of whether it’s sensible of her to take on these emotional burdens or not, she does, and I’m hardly going to be able to magically change that for her with three well-chosen pieces of assvice).

And I feel awful because she has tried to say ‘I know how you feel’. And I can’t really sit there and say: ‘no, you don’t. You had a kid. You had one miscarriage. You had another kid. As for the grandkids thing, H has a brother, I’m not your only freakin’ chance. What you felt/ feel is in no way ‘less’ or ‘better’ than how I feel, but it is different. Because you never, not for a minute in your entire life, had to sit and face the possibility of never becoming a mother. And I have been doing that for the past four years. You probably had a far more realistic view of parenthood and what, exactly, you had lost when you miscarried H’s little sibling. You knew that loss, that grief, in a way I never could. I wouldn’t dream of telling a woman who had living children but lost the next pregnancy that I knew how she felt. I don’t. My beautifully idealised picture of my children is just that, an idealised picture. The weight that reality, practical understanding, can give to grief, I don’t feel. But similarly, a woman with at least one living child before her first loss cannot feel the bitter hopelessness of nothing but losses. She may understand, or empathise, but she cannot feel it.’

But I can’t say that. It’s not kind. And my MiL deserves kindness as much as I do.

Here’s to courage, and a stiff upper lip, and to iron bands around the heart. One day I’ll be able to take them off and go into hysterics. But, please, not this weekend.

Please excuse me, my beloved regular Gentle Readers. I must just get a few things off my not-inconsiderable chest. You may prefer to avoid this post and return next time, as I can assure you I am not talking to any of you.

Item – If a blogger wants people to comment on her/his blog, it’s a good (logical?) idea to make sure they can. To take, ooh, a completely random example, if a blogger has a blogspot account, they might want to make sure they haven’t left the settings so only people with blogspot or google accounts can comment. As lovely as a given blog-post is, I am so not going to set up yet another account, on top of my wordpress ones, my hotmail one, my university one, my work one, my favourite forum one, my favourite forum off-shoot one, and my fertility charting one, just so I can say something on a new-to-me blog, on what might be a one-off mission. It’d be infinitely more courteous of the blogger to quickly-quickly-takes-three-minutes change his/her settings to accept openID or similar. No, I don’t mind doing word verification. Yes, I can perfectly see why a person wouldn’t want any old anonymous wing-nut barging about in the comments. Still. OpenID. Is way to go.

Item – Please don’t email me privately just to tell me how your four miscarriages and two failed IVFs trump my two (three?) miscarriages and six Clomid cycles. Of course they do. I never said they didn’t. I am well aware there are bloggers/blog-readers out there whose stories make mine look like a brisk skip through the autumn leaves in my favourite park. But, you see, my blog is about (go figure!) me. It would be very odd if it were about you, don’t you think? You’re perfectly entitled to set up your own blog and ask for your well-deserved cookies and cuddles on that. Meanwhile, as I skipped through said park, I trod on a rake. I may not have fallen in a bear-trap as you did, but my nose is bleeding right now and a hanky would be more… befitting?… than a lecture on the bigness and sharpness of the stakes you fell on. (For the record, I am writing this here instead of replying to you privately because my hand went into a sort of spasm as I read your email, and I hit ‘delete’ and then I hit ‘delete irretrievably forever’. And then I ran away and made a cup of tea and spilt said tea over carpet. When I had finished mopping and hyperventilating, I realised I couldn’t retrieve the email. This is probably for the best). (Also for the record, this email was (apparently) not from a blogger or a regular reader/lurker).

Item – To the person who, anonymously, left a ‘how exciting! Congratulations!’ comment on the post with the positive pregnancy test this morning: That photo was taken more than two weeks ago. There have been, what, ten? posts since that one. While I appreciate the sentiment, it is a good idea in general to check the most recent post on a blog if you’re late to the party. Especially on an IF blog. We are the club of Shit Happens. I’m afraid I have deleted the comment. I’m in a button-stabbing sort of mood. I do appreciate the sentiment, I swear. It’s just the timing of it that… is not quite… you know. (Incidentally, this happened last time too. *sigh*).

To those of you who read all this anyway, despite the fact it didn’t apply to you, sorry about that. I must now go and knit something at a ferociously tight tension and knock another cup of tea over.

I’ve even left the house a few times.

I know, big hairy deal.

Except, actually, it is a bit of a big deal. The one thing I can’t shake is this endless sense of exhaustion. I stopped spotting altogether a week ago, so it’s not continuous bleeding. I finished the whole course of antibiotics on Thursday, so my bowel function (sorry, but antibiotics play hob with said function) is returning to normal, and I am eating sensible healthy meals and taking my vitamins and iron supplements. I’m even sleeping quite well. What more can I do? I have been signed off work until next week, so this is in no way a vital or pressing question. I am just. So. Fucking. Tired. So I am very proud that I went out, walked about, and came back. Especially so as I got to meet Womb for Improvement for hot chocolate (squeeeeeee!)

Last time I miscarried, I was very emotional. Devastated. Heart-broken. Raging and inconsolable. This time I feel, chiefly, tired and bitter. So far at any rate. We shall see what spectacular outbreaks I come up with as time goes by. Because, oh, yes, H and I got into a deeply, deeply pointless fight last night, based on the sort of infinitesimal misunderstanding we’d normally clear up in seventeen placid seconds. It then occurred to me that we went through this sort of stupid blow-up and resultant disproportionate fury from last time. It’s like misery-induced paranoia, as if there was no possible way anything could be meant in all innocence. The universe is, after all, a heap of shite, right?

I personally attribute the lack of immediate devastation to:

• a) Denial. It’ll smack me upside the head at some point. Heigh ho.
• b) I’ve already lost my miscarriage virginity. The first time, I knew intellectually that shit happens, but, in my innocence, thought getting pregnant was the hard part, and that I had, therefore, paid my ‘hard part’ dues. This time? Feh. I am comfortably tucked into the box marked ’shit happens’.
• c) By the time I knew I was pregnant, I had already been cramping and spotting. I knew it was doomed. I had no chance whatsoever of getting attached, or invested, or whatever. Actually, I suspect that this will be the part of this loss that will come back to haunt me most. Me, watching the second pink line coming up on the pee-stick, and thinking not: ‘hurrah, I’m pregnant!’ but ‘oh God. This isn’t a wonky period. This is a miscarriage. Oh, please, no. Not again.’

H also seems more resigned. He is also more communicative (yay for counselling!), and we both seem to find the fact that we’re being taken very seriously and sent off to specialists reassuring. Last time, we were adrift on a vast ocean of confusion and loss, and nobody in the least bit interested in hauling us in to shore. Contrary to popular (medical) belief, there is nothing in the least bit reassuring or comforting about the diagnosis ‘It’s just bad luck, it almost certainly won’t happen again.’ Statistics may say this is so. We, the couple sitting before you, are not statistics. Statistically, any given couple should get happily, innocently pregnant in one year of banging away. We have already flicked the V at statistics. We can’t possibly feel that statistics apply to us any more. The unreasoning, meaningless diagnosis ‘bad luck’ is also the unreasoning, meaningless diagnosis ‘there’s fuck all we can/will do for you. Now bugger off.’

*Momentary pause while I feel some sympathy for doctors saddled with having to give the diagnosis ‘bad luck’, and the powerlessness they get to ‘enjoy’ too.*

And now all is onwards and upwards. Take more blood. Do more tests. Test both of us. Find a cause. Treat it. We may turn out to be in a shitty-bad place, but at least we won’t be lost in the dark anymore.

At least, I hope so.

Item – Since the momentous day I decided not to renew my Pill prescription, four years ago now (four! Four years! For fuck’s sake!), and start a determined assault on Castle Baby, I have had twelve ovulatory cycles. Twelve in four years. Pfft. However, of those twelve cycles, two (with an option on possibly three) ended in pregnancy – I use the word ended with all possible irony. Even I have to admit two (three) out of twelve is really not bad. It’s ’statistically normal’, or possibly even slightly better than ’statistically normal’. I win.

Item – I was so worried about the state of the One And Only Fallopian Tube. I have had two HSGs, and both times the radiologist mentioned it looked, well, borked, and both times Miss Consultant thought it looked OK, and I would wind myself into a frenzy about it. I think, now, with two intrauterine pregnancies (or, fuck-ups, as I prefer to call them when I’m in this mood), we can be sure the damn thing is not blocked. It may be leaking unspeakable fluids of toxic death into my uterus from the possible mild hydrosalpinx the radiologist kept seeing, but it’s not blocked or so damaged it stops eggs wafting along it in a timely fashion. So, I win.

Item – My mother came over for dinner last night. It was good. She seems to get it now. She did bring up the whole ’so excited you can get pregnant!’ thing, but she followed it up by saying ‘because, after last time, I was so worried you wouldn’t be able to again.’ And looked sad. And my heart melted. I won that one, in the end, but sheesh, be careful what you wish for, you might just get it. (And apparantly, when Mum told Diva about the miscarriage, Diva cried. Oh God).

Item – I thought of another possible diagnosis that would explain both the miscarriages and the fact I bleed like stink during periods and bled so very, very ludicrously much for a less-than-five-weeks-gone loss. Von Willebrand’s disease, or a similar clotting factor deficiency. About one in a hundred women have it. It is hereditable, from one or both parents, and the mild version is sometimes not even noticed at all in men (though my Dad has a tendency to turn a small kitchen accident into a flailing blood-spraying-up-the-walls melodrama. Maybe he’s not actually being melodramatic? For once?). In women, it causes really, really heavy periods and pain on ovulation (from internal bleeding). And possibly an increased risk of early miscarriage. Of course, the GP ordered the blood tests for a clotting disorder, not a bleeding one. I was thinking about this, nodding along with the GP’s thinking, and I announced firmly to H that it’s not like I bruise easily or get nosebleeds much, and he looked at me as if I had suddenly declared I was a turquoise stoat and pointed out I do bruise easily and I get a damn nose-bleed every time I get a damn cold (only, they tend to come on at night and end up in my throat rather than down my face. Umm. That was disgusting, wasn’t it?). So I thought, indeed, why a clotting disorder? I am positively lavish with my blood. I catch a hang-nail and it bleeds for fifteen fucking minutes. Should we perhaps be looking in the opposite direction? What do you people think? Is this a win for self-diagnosis and Dr Google, or a fail for vapouring?

Item – At this very moment I am only being tested for the clotting disorders mentioned before. I’ve had my thyroid tested (twice) in the past, and both times it came back normal. My mother, however, who does have real official thyroid problems, got a little hacked off about this and pointed out there were several different things that needed to be tested to determine thyroid function, and they only found her issue by testing all of them, as the standard test comes back normal for her and frankly, her thyroid is visible across the sodding room. So I think I need a proper thyroid screen, clotting tests, bleeding tests, karyotyping for the both of us, FSH and LH tests, testosterone and SHBG tests, progesterone, estrogen, anything I’ve missed out? I shall have to print out a list and take it with me to the clinic. And this is a win, you know, because thanks to the wonders of blogging, I have internet friends who can tell me I need these tests. I have advocates.

Item – I’ve lost a few more pounds this week. I am thinner than I was when we married. I am thinner than I have been for seven or eight years. I am within a few pounds of BMI 29, and the green light to go ahead with IVF (this being a whole ‘nother post, you understand). It’s a fucker of a way to lose weight, though. Bit of a pyrrhic victory.

Item – I am watching movies and eating chocolate in my pyjamas, on a Thursday afternoon. This is totally a win.

President Obama gave a speech at Wright Middle School in Madison today (text here) outlining his education reform initiative for the nation’s schools, called “Race to the Top,” sometimes referred to by some of his critics as the “Race off the Cliff.”

As Thomas Mertz has pointed out earlier, the amount of funds being discussed here for Wisconsin are relatively meager.

Make no mistake that this is cake, a treat, not life-sustaining bread.  The amount being discussed for Wisconsin is $80 million and this relative pittance would all be targeted for specific programs and when the $80 million is gone, Wisconsin would be stuck with more things that we can no longer afford.

So what type of reform would we be getting in this initiative, along with the modest dollars to come our way, and what would we be giving up in return? That was the crux of a letter sent yesterday by State Senator Mark Miller, chair of the Joint Committee on Finance, to Secretary Arne Duncan. He is worried like others in similar policy positions, that with all the current economic challenges out there blowing huge holes in states’ budgets across the country, that:

We do not have the fiscal resilience to sustain another long-term financial commitment based on the mere possibility that we may be awarded one-time federal dollars in the future. Once these proposed educational policy and fiscal changes are enacted into law, Wisconsin legislators and taxpayers will be responsible for the accompanying financial commitment regardless of the outcome of Wisconsin’s Race to the Top application. This promise to fund new requirements without the promise of federal dollars puts at risk other social safety net programs that rely on adequate state funding to operate.

He cited the example of costs associated with the implementation of a “Children’s Zone” in Wisconsin based upon a model developed for Harlem that could ultimately have ongoing costs to Wisconsin of more than $400 million. If you make such financial and policy commitments you must be able to have some good assurances that you can continue to pay for them. He likens the exercise in not knowing how the grant dollars will be allocated and for how long, to a gambler “trying to draw to an inside straight.”

The National Academy of Sciences recently issued a report offering recommendations on how to revise the funding guidelines and regulations of Obama/Duncan’s $4.35 billion “Race to the Top” grant program, and is well worth a read. Interestingly, the report all but neglects to mention charter schools, which are a major component of RTtT. You can read something I wrote on that subject the other day, here.

In a press release for the Academy’s study, they applauded the step of encouraging states to create systems of linking data on student achievement to teachers, since, as they noted, it is essential to conducting research about the best ways of evaluating teachers.

One way of evaluating teachers, currently the subject of intense interest and research, are value-added approaches, which typically compare a student’s scores going into a grade with his or her scores coming out of it, in order to assess how much “value” a year with a particular teacher added to the student’s educational experience.  The report expresses concern that the department’s proposed regulations place excessive emphasis on value-added approaches.  Too little research has been done on these methods’ validity to base high-stakes decisions about teachers on them.  A student’s scores may be affected by many factors other than a teacher — his or her motivation, for example, or the amount of parental support — and value-added techniques have not yet found a good way to account for these other elements.

The report also cautioned against the use of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), a federal assessment instrument. While effective at monitoring broad trends, it will not be able to detect the type of specific effects of the targeted interventions that the RTtT hopes to fund. This infatuation with data can lead reformers, philanthropists (case in point, Bill Gates’ team up with RTtT-type initiatives) and bureaucrats to become unquestioning supporters of using test scores as indicators of real learning and teaching. As the study pointed out:

The choice of appropriate assessments for use in instructional improvement systems is critical. Because of the extensive focus on large-scale, high-stakes, summative tests, policy makers and educators sometimes mistakenly believe that such tests are appropriate to use to provide rapid feedback to guide instruction. This is not the case.

The report also urged caution when trying to apply such a blunt instrument towards making international comparisons.

We note that the difficulties that arise in comparing test results from different states apply even more strongly for comparing test results from different countries.

They conclude the report with a reiterated point, “careful evaluation of this spending should not be seen as optional; it is likely to be the only way that this substantial investment in educational innovation can have a lasting impact on the U.S. education system.”

And in another side note related to federal education financing, the Obama administration’s latest and most detailed information yet on the jobs created by the stimulus, noted that of the 640,239 jobs recipients claimed to have created or saved so far, more than half — 325,000 — were in education. Most were teachers’ jobs that states said were saved when stimulus money averted a need for layoffs.

Robert Godfrey

First, a quick State-of-May report:

• Uterus – has shut up. Is merely spotting. This is good.
• Bladder – has also shut up, most of the time, but still thinks making me need to pee every seventeen minutes is funny.
• Stomach – being walloped by the antibiotics (the antibiotics are for the UTI). Seriously, I get to feel sick for an hour or so every morning. Yes. I miscarried last week and I get to feel sick every morning this week. Because, you know, the universe has a very strange sense of humour.
• Pallor – much improved, thank you. I just look tired and sulky now.
• Emotional state – numb. Or furious. Mostly numb. Realised last night that we actually got pregnant all by ourselves, and all my fears and vapourings about never getting pregnant again after Pikaia were completely unfounded, and laughed the sort of laugh that is shortly followed by a thunderstorm, mysterious groans and lurchings about in the cellar, and fifty-odd villagers with pitch-forks turning up at the front door.

And now for the State-of-Play report:

H and I went to the GP yesterday, to get the referral to the Recurrent Miscarriage clinic, and to get a sick note, so I can stay at home and sulk for a bit. I took H along in case I got flustered and incoherent. We saw Doc Tashless, because I asked to, because it’s boring explaining all the past history over and over again and he has seen me often enough to have a vague grip on it all. Upshot:

• When I mentioned perhaps taking the rest of the week off work, he promptly signed me off for two weeks. H mentioned that last time round I’d probably gone back to work a little too soon, and Doc Tashless promptly decided I’d need to see him again on the last day of my sick leave so he could be sure I didn’t need even more time off. Oy vey, but that’s being taken seriously.
• I asked him to be perfectly open and put ‘miscarriage’ on the sick leave form. You see, sick leave taken for reasons of pregnancy or maternity cannot be added to your sick-leave total and used against you in disciplinary procedures, and I am off sick every sodding month as it is, so I thought, and H thought, my ass, covered, please. Not that I think anyone at work will make a fuss, but HR has an automatic sick-leave tracking system and gets your line manager to have words with you if you take more than a certain amount of time off in a year, and my line manager has already had to do this once. She was lovely about it, but nerves? Racked.
• We discussed the recurrent nature of the situation, and I (hesitantly, feeling like a dork) mentioned the possible chemical in July, and he took that seriously too, which made me feel flustered and like a dork because, you know, no proof beyond a ‘funny feeling’ (incidentally, a funny feeling I had this time round, and Pikaia time round, eeeeeeek eeeek eeeeek eeeek, but I digress). I hunted down their website this morning and found out that the RM clinic takes referrals from couples who’ve had only two consecutive miscarriages, so I could’ve left the possible chemical buried in decent obscurity and not endorkified myself.
• Doc Tashless decided we may as well get the ball rolling, as the referral could take a couple of months, and sent me directly to the phlebotomy nurse to collect what little remains of my blood for examination of my Antiphospholipid Antibodies, Cardiolipin Antibodies, and I think the paperwork said something about Lupus as well. In the event the needle-jockey only took one vial, so either they don’t need much for each test or they’re all the same test or the needle-jockey can’t read Doc Tashless’s handwriting.
• It made me quite sad and cross that I recognise the above terms, and have heard of Hughes syndrome, without Doc Tashless having to explain a word of it. But, hey, if that is it, it is treatable.
• I’m always impressed when someone, anyone, remembers to ask how H is doing as well. Because, yes, I may be the one leaking tears and snot into this wad of blue paper ripped hurridly off the roll normally used for protecting the examination couch, but H also lost a baby. And had to deal with a sobbing, vomiting, haemorrhaging emergency wife. Which was no picnic. I’d've hated it and freaked the fuck out when it was all over, had the roles been reversed.

Conclusion – I now am, and for some time shall be, sitting about at home, ‘resting’, and being kindly distracted by friendly visits, emails, and phone-calls. H went back to work this morning, so hopefully was keeping busy there. We are waiting for a date from the RM clinic. We are waiting for the results of Doc Tashless’s blood tests.

I still feel mostly numb.

Item – HFF sent me these:

The bouquet was too big to put in any of our vases, so I made H divide and conquer it, and now the flat looks like a stage-star’s dressing-room, with flowers all over the place. Can you see the white roses? I love roses. And lisianthus. *pleased sigh* (God knows what the florist thought on being asked to write ‘Love, the Hairy Farmer Family’ on the little card. I had a mental image of him/her desperately maintaining a very professional poker-face. For some reason it made me giggle for hours).

Item – I have had so many kind, supportive text-messages, from HFF (hi, HFF!), and from my friends Ben (hi Ben!), who comments here, and her lovely husband, who doesn’t, but does read (hah! Hi to you too!). There are people out there who really really care about me. Nice, funny, sweet, intelligent people. I can’t tell you how much it helps to feel people (especially people I know and am fond of) care. I also have a friend who doesn’t know about this blog, but who I had to strand on his own on a theatre door-step with no bed for the night because I was, uh, miscarrying again (he was around the first time I miscarried too, and I messed up his plans that time as well). He has been emailing me an endearing mix of kind, caring emails and some excellent gallows-humour. I am so proud of my friends.

Item – The comments! Dear God, the wonderful, wonderful comments, from my usual Bloggy pals, and from new people wandering over from LFCA (I got three mentions in a row!), and from long-time lurkers decloaking in my time of need. I am so touched. You have made me feel so cared for. OK, now I need a tissue.

Item – My Friend Who Knows Who She Is came round with a bucket of ice-cream and a precious packet of real Russian cocoa from her super-special stash. And we had one of those pleasant, slightly twisted conversations which meandered through miscarriage and various other medical mishaps and ended up cheerfully general, and we ate the icecream and then we had tea and tea-cake. I felt quite jolly after that. It takes a magic sort of person to make a woman in my state feel jolly. I am impressed. And grateful.

Item – Codeine. Codeine is good. Only, it makes me burble like a loon and walk into furniture. Hot damn, but I feel so much better today. It can’t all be the codeine, can it? Look, if I sound stoned, it’s because I am. I’ll probably read this tomorrow and see all the typos and infelicities of orthography and cry.

Item – My tutor has, cheerfully and for the mere asking (though I did mention ‘hospital’ and ‘emergency’), given me extra time to finish my first assignment for the creative writing course. Bless her. I was beginning to feel a little melodramatic about that. Because, seriously, every SINGLE time I have been studying in my ENTIRE LIFE, some huge and ridiculous drama has blown up in my face. And now, again? I was only doing the creative writing for fun, FFS.

Item – H. H is the best part of my life so far.

Mike Rose at Truthdig has noted that following the extensive and unprecedented federal reach of No Child Left Behind, the Obama administration is attempting to extend this iniative further by putting some some serious money behind a number of education initiatives that invite states and districts to compete for federal dollars. In the K-12 education world, they want, in part, to stimulate better state standards and tests, including the better measurement of teacher effectiveness, while turning around failing schools. One way they want to accomplish this is through an increase in the number of charter schools. At the same time, a third initiative wants to spark innovation and scale up the best of local academic programs.

As Mr. Rose acknowledges, this is a moment of real promise for American education, from kindergarten through college. But he also sounds a note of caution.

Reform is in the air. But within many of these reforms are the seeds of their undoing.

He pointed out that the Education Department has put a lot of stock in charter schools as “engines of innovation,” while noting, importantly, that DOE will not consider a state’s funding proposal if that state has a cap on charters.

Yet a number of research studies — the most recent from Stanford — demonstrate that charter schools, on average, are no better or worse than the regular public schools around them. To be sure, some charters are sites of fresh ideas and robust education, but so are magnet schools, and, lest we forget, so are our regular public schools, ones with strong leadership and a critical mass of good teachers. For the “reformers’” however, charter schools are the recipients of the highest accolades, the rest – not so much.

The Stanford University study shattered the myth of charter school superiority. According to Stanford’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes, students at only 17 percent of charter schools do better on math and reading tests than their demographic peers in regular public schools. Thirty-seven percent do worse, while 46 percent of charter school kids, almost half, perform at approximately the same level as their traditional public school counterparts.

The author of the report concludes:

This study shows that we’ve got a 2-to-1 margin of bad charters to good charters.

The results are especially significant, given that charter schools have built-in advantages – starting with parents that are engaged enough in their children’s education to put them there, in the first place. Yet the actual outcomes, in most cases, fail to live up to the hype.

President Obama and his administration are committed to charter schools. In no small part this policy is driven by Education Secretary Arne Duncan, who was a cheerleader for charters when he ran the Chicago school system, and has threatened to withhold federal education money from the 10 states that don’t yet have charter schools and the 26 other states that put limits on enrollment in charters. Such raw coercion, especially given the results of the Stanford study, seems strongly misguided. This comes in spite of the acknowledgement of the Stanford study on the part of Sec. Duncan, which, he suggests, merely points to the need for greater vigilance. “Charter authorizers need to do a better job of holding schools accountable.”

This administration has said that charter schools are key to educational “reform,” and provide “competition” for traditional schools. But that’s utter nonsense if the educational outcomes are no better, and in many cases worse, than in the regular public schools.

Speaking of “holding [charter] schools accountable,” one would of thought that that was a central argument for the need for charter schools in the first place, an institution free of those ill-principled and wretched teacher unions. Unionized teachers are blamed for much of the ills of education; it’s not a reasoned argument, but a matter of faith – and political prejudice. Charter schools are not private (at least not entirely, if you consider they are chartered by the state), but they are the privatizers’ foot in the door, a wedge issue to demonize unions. And that third leg of the reform movement, so to speak, measurement of teacher effectiveness, is also front and center (see the latest continued plea from the Wisconsin State Journal).

One approach being piloted in a number of education systems around the country is by the non-profit Hope Street Group, and developed by a team of teachers across the U.S., who have proposed recommendations for a smarter evaluation system, imploying more ‘objective’ measures of student achievement, ones that aim to attract and retain teachers, and put America’s schools back on top internationally.

“Policy 2.0: Using Open Innovation to Reform Teacher Evaluation Systems” suggests that in K-12 education, any teacher evaluation system should have the input of teachers and administrators and not solely come from researchers and policymakers. Their specific recommendations include the suggestion that evaluation systems should be frequently revised, that teaching advocates need to be involved in this process, and that any in-class observations for assessment must be done by teachers with sufficient experience.

Lets hope the coming “seeds of change” are not broadcasted, with great hope, onto marginal soil. There is too much at stake for education in this new century.

Robert Godfrey

From the Wisconsin Alliance for Excellent Schools. Table of contents below, with related material on AMPS linked to some items.  Click here for the full update.

WAES, others groups criticize Governor’s “funding plan”

Electors saying no to levy hikes resulting from state budget (and here and here and here)

Public, media understand the source of school funding problems


State of Washington wants pennies for its kids, too

Business leaders back expansion of early childhood education

WAES needs renewals, new members to continue work

Other states get it … what’s wrong with Wisconsin?

Colorado Supreme Court will hear adequacy challenge

WAES members take case on funding reform to the public

It’s time for America to pay attention to its schools again

Help WAES correct e-mail update glitch

School-funding reform calendar

The Wisconsin Alliance for Excellent Schools (WAES) is a statewide, independent, membership-based organization of educators, school board members, students, parents, community leaders, researchers, citizens, and community activists whose lone goal is the comprehensive reform of Wisconsin’s school-funding system. If you would like more information about the organization — or on becoming part of WAES — contact Tom Beebe at 920-650-0525 or tbeebe@excellentschools.org.

Thomas J. Mertz

I never got to play with my new expensive pee-sticks. I started spotting and cramping instead.

Thank you all for your kind words and support. I feel deeply peeved that we couldn’t finish the weekend off with a celebratory can-can and fire-work display. That would have been much more fun, yes? Yes, well. I know. Disappointment, after all that build-up. It’s a giant, hairy, pimply arse, isn’t it?

As for you, Cute Ute, you disgrace to the name of internal organ, you’ve spent two and a half days playing a giant game of Chicken with your poor benighted hostess, you’ve raised everybody’s hopes, you’ve been, in short, showing off in the worst possible way. You’ve let me down. You’ve let H down. You’ve let the entire bloody internet down. But worst of all, you’ve let yourself down. And now you shall have to put up with the consequences. Yes, and they’re not very nice consequences either, are they? You should’ve thought of that before embarking on your lively career as Drama Queen and Hysteric*. Now, stop snivelling, be brave, and take your pain-killers.

(Positive Thinking Fairy wishes to note, at this point, that a 14 day luteal phase is not to be sneezed at, and I should be pleased my body seems to be more healthy and regular. Shall I hold her down while you lot kick her, or do you want to hold while I kick?)

*Ooh, go me with the bilingual punning across the centuries. I’m so funny I just slay myself.

from here.

In my writing I got so interested in fakes that I finally came up with the concept of fake fakes. For example, in Disneyland there are fake birds worked by electric motors which emit caws and shrieks as you pass by them. Suppose some night all of us sneaked into the park with real birds and substituted them for the artificial ones. Imagine the horror the Disneyland officials would feel when they discovered the cruel hoax. Real birds! And perhaps someday even real hippos and lions. Consternation. The park being cunningly transmuted from the unreal to the real, by sinister forces. For instance, suppose the Matterhorn turned into a genuine snow-covered mountain? What if the entire place, by a miracle of God’s power and wisdom, was changed, in a moment, in the blink of an eye, into something incorruptible? They would have to close down.

In Plato’s Timaeus, God does not create the universe, as does the Christian God; He simply finds it one day. It is in a state of total chaos. God sets to work to transform the chaos into order. That idea appeals to me, and I have adapted it to fit my own intellectual needs: What if our universe started out as not quite real, a sort of illusion, as the Hindu religion teaches, and God, out of love and kindness for us, is slowly transmuting it, slowly and secretly, into something real?

We would not be aware of this transformation, since we were not aware that our world was an illusion in the first place. This technically is a Gnostic idea. Gnosticism is a religion which embraced Jews, Christians, and pagans for several centuries. I have been accused of holding Gnostic ideas. I guess I do. At one time I would have been burned. But some of their ideas intrigue me. One time, when I was researching Gnosticism in the Britannica, I came across mention of a Gnostic codex called The Unreal God and the Aspects of His Nonexistent Universe, an idea which reduced me to helpless laughter. What kind of person would write about something that he knows doesn’t exist, and how can something that doesn’t exist have aspects? But then I realized that I’d been writing about these matters for over twenty-five years. I guess there is a lot of latitude in what you can say when writing about a topic that does not exist. A friend of mine once published a book called Snakes of Hawaii. A number of libraries wrote him ordering copies. Well, there are no snakes in Hawaii. All the pages of his book were blank.

Of course, in science fiction no pretense is made that the worlds described are real. This is why we call it fiction. The reader is warned in advance not to believe what he is about to read. Equally true, the visitors to Disneyland understand that Mr. Toad does not really exist and that the pirates are animated by motors and servo-assist mechanisms, relays and electronic circuits. So no deception is taking place.

And yet the strange thing is, in some way, some real way, much of what appears under the title “science fiction” is true. It may not be literally true, I suppose. We have not really been invaded by creatures from another star system, as depicted in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The producers of that film never intended for us to believe it. Or did they?

And, more important, if they did intend to state this, is it actually true? That is the issue: not, Does the author or producer believe it, but—Is it true? Because, quite by accident, in the pursuit of a good yarn, a science fiction author or producer or scriptwriter might stumble onto the truth… and only later on realize it.

The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words. George Orwell made this clear in his novel 1984. But another way to control the minds of people is to control their perceptions. If you can get them to see the world as you do, they will think as you do. Comprehension follows perception. How do you get them to see the reality you see? After all, it is only one reality out of many. Images are a basic constituent: pictures. This is why the power of TV to influence young minds is so staggeringly vast. Words and pictures are synchronized. The possibility of total control of the viewer exists, especially the young viewer. TV viewing is a kind of sleep-learning. An EEG of a person watching TV shows that after about half an hour the brain decides that nothing is happening, and it goes into a hypnoidal twilight state, emitting alpha waves. This is because there is such little eye motion. In addition, much of the information is graphic and therefore passes into the right hemisphere of the brain, rather than being processed by the left, where the conscious personality is located. Recent experiments indicate that much of what we see on the TV screen is received on a subliminal basis. We only imagine that we consciously see what is there. The bulk of the messages elude our attention; literally, after a few hours of TV watching, we do not know what we have seen. Our memories are spurious, like our memories of dreams; the blank are filled in retrospectively. And falsified. We have participated unknowingly in the creation of a spurious reality, and then we have obligingly fed it to ourselves. We have colluded in our own doom.

from here.

And—and I say this as a professional fiction writer—the producers, scriptwriters, and directors who create these video/audio worlds do not know how much of their content is true. In other words, they are victims of their own product, along with us. Speaking for myself, I do not know how much of my writing is true, or which parts (if any) are true. This is a potentially lethal situation. We have fiction mimicking truth, and truth mimicking fiction. We have a dangerous overlap, a dangerous blur. And in all probability it is not deliberate. In fact, that is part of the problem. You cannot legislate an author into correctly labeling his product, like a can of pudding whose ingredients are listed on the label… you cannot compel him to declare what part is true and what isn’t if he himself does not know.

We want to thank Philip K. Dick, author of The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch and The Man In The High Castle amongst many other novels, for sticking it to reality and taking time out of his busy afterlife to share with us another excerpt from his 1978 speech “How To Build A Reality That Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later.” It also appears as the introduction to his 1985 short story collection, I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon. The first excerpt he shared with us is here, and…

…you have to love that PKD fans are called dickheads.

For the sake of truth, we can tell you that Mr. Dick will probably return with another excerpt for us in the next few days. But until then…

Adam Gopnik on PKD.

Stanislaw Lem on PKD.

Jonathan Lethem on PKD.

Jonathan Lethem being interviewed about PKD.

PKD on Kurt Vonnegut.

Photograph by David Wahl

The National Access Network has highlighted the U.S. Department of Educations (USDOE) Office of the Inspector General’s report that has raised concerns over states’ use of stimulus funds.

The American Renewal and Recovery Act (ARRA) statute requires states to provide several assurances, including commitments to fund K-12 and higher education at least at FY 2006 levels and to promote reform in four areas, in order to receive these monies. The report noted however, that several states have capitalized on the flexibility of the funding requirements, to use stimulus funds to supplant rather than supplement education budgets. On AMPS we have highlighted this same issue for Wisconsin on a number of occasions, see here and here.

The department’s report contended that it has made an effort to close some funding loopholes by including funding maintenance as a consideration for awarding the so-called “Race to the Top” funds.

Equity advocates, however, have argued that this provision does not do enough, as the guidelines focus on proportional levels of funding rather than absolute figures. That is, the regulations leave the door open for states to cut the total budget from year-to-year and remain competitive applicants.

As the Access Network has noted:

The information the states have submitted raises serious questions about whether the stated purposes of the Act – stabilizing education funding, facilitating the continuation of equity and adequacy formula adjustments and promoting education reforms to boost student achievement – are being met. The goal of boosting student achievement is to be promoted through commitments from each state to promote four essential areas of reform: 1) improving teacher effectiveness; 2) making progress toward college and career-ready standards and rigorous assessments; 3) enhancing data systems to track educational practice; and 4) improving achievement in low-performing schools.

Only the first of these three goals appears to have been achieved. Virtually all of the states have stabilized their funding levels for FY 2010 at the previous years level, with the application of the federal stimulus funds. (In many instances, however, this flat funding will nevertheless result in substantial cuts in educational services since mandatory cost increases will not be covered.)

In the vastly underfunded state education systems throughout the country, stabilizing funding levels may have been

unduly emphasized at the expense of the equity and reform goals of the ARRA, as some states apparently increased their anticipated education deficits upon learning that substantial federal funding for education was in the offing, in order to limit planned cuts in other areas of the budget. Although some officials might argue that such maneuvers represented prudent budget planning, from the perspective the intent of the ARRA and the constitutional pre-eminence given to education in most state constitutions, such maneuvers clearly raise serious legal issues.

A number of advocates for educational equity have called on the DOE to require states to fund low performing schools at adequate levels. The way the current regulations are drafted, only one provision has a focus on this kind of funding. The Campaign for Educational Equity for example, has proposed a requirement that states need to provide data that shows to what extent the proportion of each state’s budget devoted to education for FY 2009 either increased, decreased or remained the same compared to FY 2008. The assumption is that those states who have maintained or increased educational funding during the last fiscal year would receive some favorable consideration in the review process for doing so. But additionally, the campaign has argued that any reform conditions that seek to assist struggling schools should include specifically the various resources identified through adequacy case law that are deemed necessary comprehensive services for students from poverty backgrounds. Further, they’ve advocated for the DOE to require states to increase their total and per pupil state and local revenues that meet the average levels of all states, or if the state is more affluent, then maintain their current funding levels. That requirement would also include states having to allocate higher levels of funding to school districts with higher levels of poverty. The DOE is meant to issue final guidelines quite shortly and grant applications will then be due and phase 1 monies will be distrubuted in early 2010.

Exactly where Wisconsin is on the supplanting vs. supplementing continuum remains to be seen. A report card from this July of each state can be found here. We’ll keep you posted.

Robert Godfrey

It’s Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day again. When I got home (late, irritable, desiring strongly to flick rubber-bands at my persnicketty boss) H had already lit our candle and placed it by the living-room window, so I could see it from the cold dark yard outside. I stood and watched it for a moment, and felt guilty, because my first thought was not one of mourning, or remembrance, or solidarity, or even wistfulness about nine-month-olds covered in mashed carrot. It was anger. I was bloody angry that it was now, what, 17? 18? months since the miscarriage, and I still wasn’t pregnant again, and this was all taking too fucking long. I am such a class act.

And then I took a deep breath and went inside. And found poor H having a thoughtful moment in contemplation of the candle-flame. Thank crikey for deep breaths. I don’t think a raging harpy would have been ideal company for him at that moment. So we held hands for a while.

Muse – Come On

Tribute to Jordan Maxwell

David Icke – We Are Not Alone

Gareth Icke – Feels Like A Race

Blakk & Sherrie Lea – Song For WE ARE CHANGE

AND FOR NOSTALGIC REASONS

Ron Paul New Years March 2007/2008

There is much appropriate attention on how Wisconsin school districts are dealing with the decreases in state aid and well below cost-to-continue revenue limit increases in their 2009-10 budgets.    More attention needs to be given to 2010-11.

The state budget came too late for many districts to make extensive cuts in programs and services (although Oshkosh closed two schools and districts around the state have scaled back), instead districts are spending down fund balances, refinancing to shift the costs to the future and raising property taxes to get through the year.

They are also planning for cuts in 2010-11.  Here is a sample of what school district officials from around the state have been saying recently about their budgets in the future.

Next year could be even worse for property taxpayers. The district projects a jump of $192.50 in taxes on a $250,000 home.

“These (numbers) are ugly,” said Kass. “What I try to do is always show what I believe to be the worst-case scenario. We have 12 months to figure out what areas of flexibility we have. We’ve done a lot of stuff this year. The problem is, when you come up with ways to address those concerns, they’re not there every single year. Areas like decreasing our debt service, which we’re able to do through some refinancing – that’s not going to be there in the future.”

Madison Asst. Superintendent Erik Kass, quoted in the Wisconsin State Journal.

Even with the 8% increase, it is anticipated that deep budget cuts of over $1 million will be necessary for the 2010-11 school year.

River Falls Superintendent, Tom Westerhaus.

While the district finalizes the 2009-10 budget, officials are already preparing for foreseen difficulties in the 2010-11 budget, for which stimulus money would not likely be available and which may further be hampered by changes in state law.

HalesCornersNow on the Whitnall School District.

School Board member Dave Szychlinski said it was a tough budget to prepare in light of the recession, especially given many residents’ own financial battles.

“We know that people are struggling, many people in our community have lost their jobs, and yet we have an obligation to prepare our young people for their futures,” he said.

The district was forced to make some tough decisions because of losses in state aid, and officials made about $833,500 in cuts, he said.

Next year will likely bring more cuts, Szychlinski added (emphasis added).

Franklin Board of Education Member Dave Szychlinski quoted in FranklinNow.

Despite last year’s surplus, [Reedsburg School District Business Manager Pat] Ruddy anticipates major deficits in the future if enrollment holds steady — as much as $1.2 million in 2010-11.

Reedsburg School District Business Manager Pat Ruddy quoted in the Reedsburg Times Press.

With the recent repeal of the state’s qualified economic law aimed at limiting teacher salaries and a shortfall in state aid, the district’s budget woes promise to only get worse, [Greenfield Superintendent Conrad] Farner said (emphasis added). School officials say the 15.1 percent drop in state aid was the main reason for the tax levy increase.

Farner and other school officials urged the public to contact their state representatives to voice concern over school funding mechanisms.

Greenfield School District Superintendent Conrad Farner in GreenfieldNow.

The projection for the 2010-2011 school year includes further reductions of teaching and support positions as the district continues to meet the challenges caused by declining resident enrollment.

MequonNow on the Mequon-Thiensville School District.

[Menomonee Falls School District Director of Business Service Jeffrey] Gross is projecting a $1.6 million deficit in the 2010-11 school and a $2 million deficit the year after that.

Menomonee Falls School District Director of Business Service Jeffrey Gross in MenomoneeFallsNow.

Neenah faces a $2.8 million budget deficit in 2010-11 after its $6 million in referendum money runs out. The shortfall represents about 3 percent of the proposed 2009-10 budget of $84.1 million.

The Northwestern on the Neenah School District.

He [Randy Fredrikson, district administrator for Two Rivers Public Schools] said the district will face similar financial circumstances next year.

“It’s not a one-year ‘we’ll get through’ (situation),” he said. “This is going to be the way it is in school budgets for a while.”

Randy Fredrikson, District Administrator for Two Rivers Public Schools in the Northwestern.

School boards across Wisconsin are developing their budgets for the 2010-11 school year, and the early calculations aren’t looking good for property taxpayers.

Appleton Post Crescent editorial “Blame school tax hikes on state budget.”

Something needs to be done for both the long and short term.  The long term answer is comprehensive school funding reform along the lines proposed by the Wisconsin Alliance for Excellent Schools (WAES), the School Finance Network and others.

The short term must come first and the answer is the Pennies for Kids dedicated sales tax for education proposal WAES is working on.

The prognostications quoted above are only about the 2010-11 budget; looking  beyond next year, the future of our state and our children are at risk if action is not taken to head off these scenarios.

Thomas J. Mertz

It’s me! I’m back! I’m alive and everything! In fact, I got back on Wednesday night, and have very rudely ignored the internet altogether while I dealt with the Great! Big! Annoying! issues that were waiting on the door-step for us. Here, for example, we have a letter telling us our water was being cut off, because we are, apparantly, to my astonishment, moving house. Cue me falling to my knees and wailing ‘but we only went to Switzerland for a week!’ while H does all the sensible things like calling the water company and repeating to them over and over and over, ‘no, there’s been a mistake. We are not moving. We are staying here,’ until some tired call-centre jockey in New Delhi confesses that an utter numb-nut had entered the wrong address on the internet database. And here we have a letter from my creative writing course people, asking me to enroll and pay my fees, you know, the fees I paid over a week ago already, also, I am totally enrolled, and I have a tutor and everything, I have emails from said tutor, and a work-book, and lectures on CD, so, seriously, WTF? And we had tickets for two concerts on Thursday. Oh, and laundry. We’d been hiking for five or six hours a day, for a week. Hoooo, boy, there is laundry.

Anyway. To Switzerland!

Holiday High Points:

• Let us begin with the Red Menace, as I could concentrate on very little else for the first two days of the trip. The tranexamic acid worked. I bled a decorous medium-heavy amount, and brought most of my sanitary supplies untouched back to Blighty. And I did not faint or vomit at any point at all. I was feeling pretty fine by Friday morning. But see also low points.
• Swiss public lavatories. They are so clean. They smell nice. They have toilet-roll and soap and hand-towels and air-freshener. Even on top of a freaking mountain. Even in a freaking train (though the sight of the sleepers rushing away at the bottom of the toilet-bowl is… disconcerting. As is the breeze when you sit down).
• The old centre of Zurich is very, very, very pretty. Very. And clean. We saw one (1) sweetie wrapper lying in the street. We actually stopped and stared at it. And the swans on the lake are as white as driven snow, unlike London swans, who are usually on the Tallulah Bankhead end of the driven frozen water products spectrum. We then looked into the lake, and realised we could see the bottom. Ah. Well then. Blimey, this place is clean.
• The view from the balcony of the Chalet of Terror. Oh. My. God. Every single time I walked past the window and caught sight of it, I’d stand transfixed. The chalet is built on the knees of a mountain, looking straight down an alpine valley dotted with little steep-roofed barns and geranium-lined farm-houses, and dinky nearly vertical patches of meadow in between the cliffs and pine-forests. At the end of the valley, a snow-white medieval church with a spire stands tiny and perfect against the blue-green slopes of the distant alps.
• The Chalet of Terror itself. It is very nice and very swanky, and my step-Dad has thoughtfully filled it to the brim with books.
• Hiking down the mountain for a couple of hours, to a village of enchanting prettiness, collapsing in the garden of a beautiful old hotel, begging for cake, and being bought a slab of plum tart the size of a roofing-tile, smothered in a mini-alp of collapsing whipped cream.
• Swiss cakes generally.
• Despite which, I lost three pounds.
• My Mum and I got on very well indeed, and apart from a brief tantrum because I needed the loo and she needed to look at boots in shop-windows, we were thoroughly pleased with each other.
• Being woken every morning at dawn by cow-bells as the herds go out to pasture.

Holiday Low Points:

• My period. Though I bled much much less, the cramps were still pretty much in Torment of the Damned league. The mefenamic acid did, I admit, take the edge off, so I could walk upright and talk, but failed to restore my sense of humour, or sense of proportion, or fresh rosy complexion (I looked like curdled milk for three days. So adorable). Every time I made the mistake of thinking the mefenamic acid was a total con and a barrel of shite, it’d wear off, sometimes hours before I could take the next dose, and I’d slowly curl up like a dying leaf and stop talking altogether.
• H and I had a Discussion, alas at about 1 am, when we were both too tired to make any sense at all. But this one probably needs a whole post of its own. (We’ve kissed and made up, don’t panic).
• The morning I woke up after a three-and-a-half hour descent from the top of the peak opposite, all down a 4:1 grit track of extreme skiddiness, and realised I couldn’t straighten my sodding legs as my calves had seized up completely.
• There were moments when I am not sure what prevented me from running round the living room shouting ‘will you all just go away and stop talking to me!’ These tended to occur mostly when I was trying to read a book and my In-Laws treated this as an invitation to tell me all about how they haven’t had a cold for two years thanks to the power of, possibly, smugness (I can’t be sure. It may have been healthy living and Chinese herbs. I was trying very hard not to listen).
• Also, that little tantrum I had when on a day-trip to the nearest big town, because Mum and H were cheerfully ignoring my increasingly desperate pleas for a) a pee and b) lunch and carrying on photographing random street-corners and cooing over shoes. I am a little ashamed of just how tantrumy and adolescent said tantrum was. Nobody over the age of 21 should be allowed to say ‘no one ever listens to me!’ in public, especially not in that tone of voice.
• Being woken every morning at dawn by cow-bells as the herds go out to pasture.

Holiday WTF Moments:

• Swiss teenagers all carry guitars. And when school is over, they sit about in the square or on the train and play guitar at each other. However, nearly peed self laughing at sight of three youngsters playing ‘Knocking on Heaven’s Door’ quite loudly but singing the words in teeny tiny little shy embarrassed voices. They were almost inaudible and they even had a mike. Ohhhh, bless.
• Waking up at 3 am every single night, in a muck sweat, despite lovely fresh air wafting in from the window and absolutely everyone’s reassurance that the heating really didn’t come on in the middle of the night. My Mum has the exact same thing, but, people, she’s menopausal.
• Seeing Boris Becker sitting at the next table when we stopped for tea in Zurich. Really! He was even limping (BB has recently had a hip operation). We acted all classy and smooth and pretended we hadn’t a clue who he was. Except for all the excited whispering and long thoughtful stares.
• In German, I can say the following: ‘Bitte, Danke, Toiletten, Kaffee, Scheiße.’ As you can imagine, I was a conversational rock-star in Switzerland.
• Being woken every morning at dawn by cow-bells as the herds go out to pasture.

So, I think, Red Menace 1, Chalet of Terror 0.

The darkness feels stifling, consuming the light of my eyes
Choking the frail hope i retain that you will be my deliverance
I am in the midst of great darkness, and no lights present themselves to guide me
I am lost beneath a great cloud of fog, and my direction is uncertain

They said you would be my light, They said that if I had enough faith you would always make everything work.  They said i could trust in you to make me normal. They spoke of your great glory, but it was only to serve the ends they thought appropriate. They told me not to be sad, to overcome by pretending to be happy. They told me to tell others I was blessed and not cursed, above only and not beneath, more than a conqueror. They told me to conquer and make violence against the devil and his forces, they told me to be a one man army, to have the faith of a prophet.

I was led into the place where my hands were stained with blood, I tried to fix myself
I was led to the place where malice was my accomplice and a altar was placed before me
I was led upon the dais to behold the altar, and I burned incense to myself.
I was led to the place where my discomfort was my enemy, and i had to atone for myself.
I was led into darkness.

I was told that what matters is me, that who I am, and MY story are way God is going to use me. And now I am in deep darkness. I was told to seek after the things of the world, just to do it in a way that appeased the mandates of cultural humility.

The darkness swallows everything. There is not one thing that escapes decay, not one thing that escapes corruption, and we are all fallen. I am in darkness, and I am unhappy. I am in pain, and I am discontent. I sometimes wish I was not acquainted with You, and Your gospel. I sometimes wish I was different, another. I sometimes desire to be forsaken but you will not leave me. You have called me to the cross, and it pains me, you have called me to death and it is not easy.

You have called me to a holy dread, and it will not give me the desires of my wicked heart. You have spoken to me by speaking to the world, and we tremble at the sign the cross is our mt. zion, and we have all seen the glory of the lord and been called to respond.

You have started a world in which there is no more pain, and that world is already-not yet
where there is joy, you are there, where there is suffering, you are there, where your church suffers, you suffer with us, where your church is crucified, you are too, where your people are beaten and scourged, this is already our glory, where your people are weeping and famished, you are starving among the weakest

You are the human, you are the objective humanity, you are the one who knows what it means to live before the Father as a man teach me my beloved and cross shattered Lord, what it means to suffer unto the shedding of blood
and reassure me that these sufferings are well to experience. The suffering of the world is not foreign to you, you are the suffering one, you are the ever suffering one, we remember the testament of your great sorrow, and we enjoin our suffering to yours. You are dead, but not atheistically, we do not proclaim your death because you have ceased to be
but we proclaim your death, because we know that without it, there could be no life, we proclaim your death because we know we have been found wanting, we proclaim your death because it shows us we are accepted, we are loveless sinners, beloved children

Death is our enemy, and we reject her power, we reject her sting, yet the suffering is our life, and our sweet promise, the darkness we pass through is for the sake of light, the darkness we endure is exhaustible, and we bear the fury of the world with courage, not because we are inexhaustible, but because you are, and as we bear the suffering of the whole world enjoined in you, we shall find that your inexhaustible love is what guides us through the night and gives us assurance in the midst of despair

it is not that we are happy, but that we have courage to endure our fears, it is not that we have power, but that you make possible a community which does not need it, it is not that we have blessings according to the world, but that we have one bread, and one cup which is the sweetest blessing of all it is not that we are the most miraculous, but that you yourself have given us the greatest miracle of all. It is not that we have the greater works which we we seek, there is truly no greater love, no greater act than to suffer and lay down one’s life. Teach me to suffer by the way of your son, that my life brings to you principalities and powers subjected and laid at your feet Holy King of Israel

From the depths we cry to you oh Lord, your unhappy, and suffering children
From the depths we cry to You, your beloved children

Spirit be my guide in darkness, that where I am in the midst of sheol you are there
Spirit be my purger, and let my purgatory be in this life
Jesus be my teacher, that i may follow even unto death
Father, be that which you are, self-emptying love

Bring that vengeance which we seek, peace that destroys the powers of war. bring the vengeance which makes peace out of chaos, which brings order out of nothing. bring the vengeance and the wrath which dissolves alienation and marginalization. bring the justice which overcomes corruption, and the various injustices of the world, bring about that which you promised, the reconciliation of all things and most of all, give us the patience to wait, with love and trust that you will not fail us.

Xbox (hi, Xbox!) posted this back at the end of July. In particular he says, of the child he and his wife are at last expecting :

We’ll know it as the kid that has kept us going for two years….

So no, I’m not nervous, I’m excited at the thought of finally getting to meet in the flesh, someone who has already done so much for us. Someone we’re already familiar with after years of ups and downs.

Someone we’ve already known for a long, long time.

A brand new old friend.

I think I cried when I first read it (sorry, Xbox!). Mostly because it’s exactly true. I was teetering on the verge of writing about it too. And then a couple of weeks later Mel of Stirrup Queens posted some thoughts along the same lines, and I got a little overwrought in my whole-hearted, nay, whole-bodied agreement and shelved the whole subject until it felt safe. Because, for me, it’s not a beautiful, heart-filling, piercingly sweet thought any more.

When I lost Pikaia (and I always think of her as female, even though we never knew if she was), I didn’t just lose a few weeks-worth of pointless pregnancy. I didn’t lose a mere blob of genetic material, a non-person. I lost that child who had already been in my heart for the whole two-and-a-half years we’d been trying. We’d been trying for her, after all. Through the polyps and anovulation and bleeding and surgery and drugs, the hope of her, the reality of her, was the one Pole-Star that kept us going. It was for her we did it. It was for her we clung on.

When I lost Pikaia, it was all that that died.

It took a year, at least a year, for me to get to a place where my heart wasn’t crying to have her back again. Oh, yes, I wanted to get pregnant again, of course I did. But in the night, when I wept, I wept oh come back to me, come back to me.

Finally, my heart managed to bury her.

Today I am able to hope and wish for a baby without instantly being hijacked by yearning for her.

Some people talk an awful lot of bumfluff about the influence psychology has on physiology. I have been told that, for example, painful periods are a result of my disappointment at not being pregnant (what, when I was fourteen?). That you must ‘make room in your heart’ for a pregnancy. That you have to be ready. And that, dear friends, is exactly why I have not talked about this before. Certainly not while I was still yearning for my first pregnancy to somehow miraculously come back. Some platitudinous twerp, I felt sure, would bounce out of the woodwork and tell me to free my soul or what-have-you, and I’d have to go round to their house and spit in their eye, which comes expensive if they live across the oceans. Every blog, message board, personal account I ever read or heard confirmed that getting pregnant again is a great healer and helps a person move on. I have yet to hear that wallowing in grief is a natural sterilizer. God, and if it were, all war-torn countries would have a birth-rate of precisely fuck-all (and they notoriously don’t). (And it kinda rankles that we had to get over Pikaia’s loss all by ourselves).

But still, it’s a, well, not a relief at all, really, but it’s something to be able to long for a baby, and not that baby anymore.

Not that either of us can forget her. H (to my (possibly unworthy) surprise) began to talk about Pikaia last night, and then he lit her candle for a while, and we spent the rest of the evening in its glow. See?

And so we go on, knowing only that it will go on for ever, and, perversely, the only life Pikaia has is in our desire, as she was made of our longing before she existed, and is made of our longing now she has ceased to exist.

With most Wisconsin school districts contemplating or committed to sizable local property tax increases for 2009-10 and looking at continued service and program cuts combined with more property tax increases in 2010-11, this is not the best time to be asking the voters to approve a referendum.  Personal budgets are tight, the economy is uncertain and there is a delicate balance between program and service cuts as demonstrations of fiscal responsibility and program and service cuts undermining quality to the extent that it is difficult to garner further support (the “starve the beast” idea).

Yet because the problems caused by the latest state budget were piled on top of 16 years of struggles due to the broken state school finance system, some districts feel they have no choice.  These include ones seeking building projects, ones who feel they cannot endure any more cuts and continue to provide the quality of education they are committed to, and ones that are anticipating the expiration of a non-recurring referendum and the budget gap this will produce.

Although there has been little or no official acknowledgment or discussion, the Madison Metropolitan School District is in this last category.  At the end of the 2009-10 fiscal year, Madison will lose about $5.5 million in revenue authority for ‘maintenance and technology.”   The probable cuts for 2010-11 are bad; without this money they will be more horrific than anything we have experienced lately.  If the district wants to extend this authority, the time to start making their pitch is now.   I hope they do and I hope they get started.

Madison has not begun discussions, but others have.  There are five referenda on the ballot at special elections in October and November 2009 and more being contemplated.

Two of the ones that are set are for building projects.  These are being fast tracked in order to try for the 0% interest ARRA srtimulus bonds.

On November 3, voters in Pewaukee will vote on $24.95 million in debt authorization for classroom construction and other renovations, including a swimming pool (more from the district here and from a pro-referendum community group here).  That same day the Trevor-Wilmont voters will  decide on an $11 million plan to build an addition and renovate (more from the district here).

Pewaukee is also asking for $400,000 in annual recurring authority for general operating purposes for the new facilities.

Wheatland will go back to the voters on October 27, asking for four years of nonrecurring authority in the amount of $300,000 per year.  Nonrecurring authority in this amount expired at the end of the 1008-9 year, so this is in a sense a renewal.

A similar referendum failed last April (here and here).  The language is a great example in truth in marketing:

BE IT RESOLVED by the School Board of the Joint School District Number 1, Towns of Wheatland, Brighton, Randall and Salem, Kenosha County, Wisconsin, that the revenues included in the School District budget for the 2009-2010 school year and for three school years thereafter, to and including the 2012-2013 school year be authorized to exceed the revenue limit specified in Section 121.91, Wisconsin Statutes, by $300,000 a year, for non-recurring purposes in order to maintain the current educational level of the District and cover shortfalls due to decreased funding.” (italics and bold added).

Sad but true, the shortfalls are bigger than ever and referenda continue to be the only way to fully fund education.

On October 6, 2009 the Whitehall district has a three year non recurring maintenance, technology and infrastructure referendum on the ballot. The amounts are $200,000 for 2009-10, $150,00 for 2010-11 and $100,000 for 2011-12.  Superintendent Mike Beighley explained the thinking behind the referendum:

“When we look at the ability to improve our district with the limited increase in taxes, I think we have an obligation at least to present that to the public as an option,” said Beighley.

All across the state other districts see similar opportunities to “improve,” yet know that refrerenda are difficult and the odds of passage are less than 50%, so they don’t even ask.

Two districts struggling to finalize referenda plans are Wisconsin Dells and Rhinelander.

In the Dells, the possibility of the ARRA 0% bonding makes building an addition for 4 year-old kindergarten an attractive option. The district is holding a community meeting on September 9 and may go for the November 3 date.  They are also considering an operating referendum to make up for part of  the state budget created mess:

[District Administrator Chuck] Whitsell also said the district is facing an $800,000 budget deficit next school year, and because of no raise in the per pupil taxing authority it has been given from the state, the district might ask taxpayers to increase the revenue limits in another referendum question.

I hope they do ask for the operating money and get it.

In Rhinelander the need is clear, but the path to meeting the need has been continually blocked.  It is one of those districts that has been caught in almost all the faults of the current school funding system.  The district is geographically large, but the economies of scale are small or negative.  Enrollment has declined and incomes are not great, but property values remain relatively high.  Referenda have repeatedly failed.  There have been cuts for 16 years, 150 positions have been lost in the last seven years and more are on the table.

Here in Madison we think we have experienced the failures of the school funding system (and we have to a great extent), but I talk to my friends in Rhinelander and can only shake my head and think how lucky we are to have avoided the full weight of these failures.

Dating back to 2004, 10 operating referenda have been voted down in Rhinelander.  Yet it looks like they will try again.  I am filled with admiration for their perseverance and commitment.

The date hasn’t been set, but the word is  Rhinelander voters will get two questions this time.  One will ask for three years of $1,5 million revenue authority for operations and the other is for $13.7 million in construction bonding to maintain and remodel facilities.

Superintendent Roger Erdahl summed up the situation succinctly:

“It would stop closing buildings, it would stop laying off staff, which are the techniques we currently use to balance our budget.”

Here is what will happen if there is no successful referendum (from NewsoftheNorth.Net):

The following actions would be taken in the year 2010-11, in order of priority:

• Close and sell South Parking building, requiring a mandatory grade re-configuration, for a savings of $117,000.
• Close and sell Cassian-Woodboro building, with an accompanying grade re-configuration, for a savings of $120,000.
• Reduce extra-curricular activities for a savings of $27,800.
• Reduce custodial staff, for a savings of $472,000.
• Reduce regular education paraprofessional staff, for a savings of $200,000.
• Reduce full-time teaching staff by 12.5 by raising class sizes from the current low 20s to low to mid-30s in grades 4-12; or by reducing electives at the middle and high schools; or by doing a combination of larger class sizes and the reduction of electives, for a savings of $1 million.

In the year 2011-12, the following drawdown actions would be taken:

• Reduce full-time staff, raise class sizes and reduce electives to achieve a savings of $296,000.
• Decertify the elementary and secondary charter school and absorb these students into the other district school buildings for a savings of $240,000.
• Reduce high school graduation requirements and move to a six-period day; reduce staff at the middle school and eliminate all professional travel and staff development, for a savings of $160,000.
• Eliminate all Fund 10 staff development and travel and impose a moratorium on the acquisition of textbooks and instructional materials; eliminate middle school activities and travel; reduce administration staff, for a savings of $320,000.
• Move 7th and 8th grade to the high school building; with grades 3 – 6 moving to the middle school building to reduce full-time staff, for a savings of $240,000.
• Close and sell Crescent school building for a savings of $125,000.
• Moratorium on all maintenance upkeep and repair of buildings, except for emergencies, for a savings of $500,000.

This is the destruction of public education.  This is the inevitable result of what Ruth Page Jones has called the “Going out of Business Plan” that is Wisconsin’s system for investing in education and the future.

Next time the Governor or a Legislator starts gabbing about how “education is a priority we protected in the state budget,” drop them a line and ask about Rhinelander.  Ask them if education has been “strengthened” as their political mouthpiece claims. Ask them what they are going to do to fix the mess they have made and inherited.

And be proactive.  The best way to help the children of Rhinelander and Wisconsin is to work for change via the Wisconsin Alliance for Excellent Schools (WAES).  Our state needs to look  for ways to fully fund the education of every child in every district, we need to consider a “Cents for Schools” dedicated sales tax, we need to make sure that the money is going where it is needed most, we need to do better.  WAES is the loudest and clearest voice saying these things.  Lend your voice and make the call for reform even louder.

Thomas J. Mertz

Well. It’s that phase of trying to conceive, isn’t it? The seriously boring phase. The part when you actually get the time and energy to realise you’re 34 already – how the buggery fuck did that happen? – and Dream Job is beginning to get a little *ahem* unchallenging, which gives you time to notice that your boss is just a teeny weeny bit of a control freak and some of your colleagues are unreasonably stupid and all of them are just bloody there all day, seriously interfering with a girl’s ability to get a vast mug of coffee, put her feet on her desk, and fish out her knitting (funnily enough (no, not really) this urge is always at its most almighty when Alpha Boss has one of her periodic ‘and everybody must be extremely punctual or Alpha Boss will pitch a fit’ moments). And you think, shit, my entire life is turning beige.

See, as far as I have been able to make out from my extensive but haphazard skimming of the infertility blogs of the world, TTC does sometimes fall into a tedious, oh, look, there’s the rest of my life and it is also tedious phase. The basic story arc goes something like this:

1. First inkling that getting pregnant is hard, Barbie. Much fretting about what the matter is, and if medical attention should be sought, and what, exactly, one is prepared to do or not do in order to procreate (this last hilarious in retrospect. Hil. Ar. Ious. Such innocence). Others in the same position start popping up to hold hands. Veterans pop up to stroke hair.
2. First doctor’s appointment made. Massively exciting and distressing rollercoaster now embarked on. Infertile blogger usually screaming to get off somewhere between first transvaginal ultrasound and the hysterosalpingogram. Tests, whether infuriatingly inconclusive or hideously conclusive, all depressing. Sex life wobbles precariously on brink of toilet. But lo! a hopeful light at yonder window breaks! Devoted readers start to hang out on the blog, cheerleading and/or kibitzing.
3. First rounds of treatment, whether Clomid or a spot of surgical interference to tidy up whatever inner mess is the issue, or straight into Big Guns Land with IVF. Sex resumes urgency if not always passion and tenderness. That Bitch Hope starts sniffing around the ankles. Things are very exciting and dramatic and, frankly, make great reading.
4. A few people are allowed out of the fun fair at this point, as said treatments worked and thank God, they have a child at last. The rest are getting a bit sick of it all. The fireworks and champagne are interspersed with wailing and gnashing of teeth
5. Treatments fail. Treatments work, heartbreakingly, for a few weeks, and then fail. Bodies become resistant to drugs. Bodies overreact ridiculously to drugs. There are more tests, more surgeries, more valiant attempts, on and on, with nerves slowly winched out on the rack to well past the point of permanent damage. Another handful of people nevertheless hit the jack-pot and are allowed to leave. The regular readers are all chewing their nails off by now.
6. And then, nothing. Nada. Zip. One has temporarily run out of options, or funding, or strength, or all of the above. Some more people run away from or are chased out of the fair, this time with no prizes. The rest mill about for a while, until they get the wherewithall to clamber back on the rides. Weeks, months, drift past. The regular readers hang on grimly, bless them; the occasional soap-opera fans dissolve back into the ether, to hunt for something just a tad more fascinating than watching someone lose weight at snails-pace or save money at glacial rates. One in a hundred has a miracle. Everyone else instantly hates their own sodding unmiraculous bastard innards just that little bit more.
7. Repeat 5 and 6 ad nauseam.

I am afraid that chez May we are currently stuck in phase 6. And I agree, my God it is dull. I had no idea infertility could be so bloody boring. Did you know? I mean, before you got to phase six? Me, I’m now very glad my acupuncturist wants to impale me with burning needles, because otherwise I’d have to impale myself just to give you-all something to read.

No, Satsuma still hasn’t come out of her room. How did you guess?

School districts and school finance reform advocates were sandbagged by Governor Jim Doyle and the Democratic controlled Legislature.  For years they had said “if you put us in control, fixing school finance will be a priority.’  We helped put them in control, districts built preliminary budgets based on the assumption that even if they wouldn’t enact a fix right away, they also wouldn’t make things worse.

But that is exactly what they did, make things worse.

They did this in many ways.  They cut the money targeted to the neediest students and districts via categorical aid.  They cut the amount of total revenue available to districts to well below “cost to continue.”  They upped the property tax credits, money that never goes near a classroom, and called it more money for education. They saddled school boards and districts with the unwelcome dual tasks of finding new savings and raising property taxes (for more on how this is playing out in Madison, see here and here).  Sandbagged.

Now — as districts are finalizing their budgets,  setting their tax levies and raising property taxes — the teabagger anti-tax crowd is coming out.  So far the only report I’ve seen is from Washburn, but more may well be on the way.

The Ashland Daily Press reports that   80-90 people showed up at the district budget listening session, many came to protest.  On August 18th, the Board of Education had passed a preliminary budget with what is being called a 24% tax increase in the local property tax contribution (I did the math and the mil rate will go up about 15%, not small, but not 24% either).  Like in Madison, there is a combination of a recent referendum, high property values, and most of all, the miserable state budget.  At the time the budget was passed District Superintendent Sue Masterson laid out the choices:

“We are not happy about it, but there is nothing we can do about it.”

… Masterson said cutting back to what would essentially leave “reading, writing and arithmetic” would be damaging to the community. She said that as part of the referendum process, many cuts had already been made and that the district had made as many cuts as they could without cutting the quality of instruction. She said that further cuts could result in dramatically larger class sizes and might require building changes that the district couldn’t afford in any event.

“The only way you cut now is putting 40 kids in a classroom, eliminating programs, which will result in an exodus of new families and existing families from local schools,” she said. “Consumer science programs, music programs, tech ed programs — when you start cutting those kinds of things… well, today’s public education families expect a rounded education,” Masterson said.

This hasn’t changed, but now the voices from the community are louder and more strident.  The Daily Press described the message from the September 1, 2009 listening session (let me note that MMSD has scheduled no listening sessions on their budget revisions):

One message came across loud and clear: The amount of the increase is unacceptable — and they expect the school board to go back to the budget and rework it so the increase is much closer to the 9 percent increase approved last November in a referendum allowing the district to exceed revenue caps. The tough economy makes a big tax increase especially difficult, many said.

…”The bottom line is we need to cut, and we need to keep Washburn houses filled with families.”

As is usual with these things, they were less forthcoming when asked for suggestions about what to cut and how to save:

Many at the meeting were unhappy they were being asked for suggestions for cuts when they didn’t have a line-item budget to look at for ideas, and others said the reason they hire an administrator and elect a school board is to make intelligent fiscal decisions on behalf of their constituents. Still, some suggestions were made.

Those included delaying improvements to the bleachers, cutting the food service program, and cutting administration costs by sharing an administrator with other school districts.

It is likely that there are some savings to be had, but after 16 years of struggling with annual cuts due to revenues that have been inadequate by design, the potential savings are minimal.

I have some sympathy with the people who are unhappy with the tax increase.  They are correct that too much of the investment in education is coming from property taxes.

I also have much admiration for the Board and administrators who are defending education as a valuable investment and have not yet given in to the anti-tax sentiment (contrast with Madison, where sometimes it is hard to tell the difference between the district and the anti-taxers).

The ones I have no use for are the those who say –as one attendee did — they are  “sick of hearing the excuse ‘the state did this to us.’”

This is both wrong — the state did do this to them — and counter productive, because  it cuts off productive protest directed at the state officials who actually have the power to make things better and electoral action directed to replace the ones who sandbagged us.  Getting mad at district officials over this makes no sense.

We’ve heard this sort of thing in Madison before (one sitting Board member still mouths these ridiculous ideas on occasion), but mostly the message that school funding is a state responsibility in need of a state solution has been heard.  This needs to happen all around the state.  Join the Wisconsin Alliance for Excellent Schools to help make that happen.

Thomas J. Mertz

Well, no. But probably not alien spacecraft caught in passing either. What’s likely being imaged in these NASA photos are probably human-generated debris orbiting from previous space missions, but they certainly look otherworldly, don’t they? NASA has removed these pictures from its site.

How come?

Click image for Google Books page.

The Clash, “Know Your Rights” (click to listen or download)

Tom Robinson Band, “Better Decide Which Side You’re On” (click to listen or download)

A little side trip from the usual.

This evening I was at my local gas station.  I’ve had some interactions with the guy behind the counter before.  He’s probably in his late 20s, a white guy into “Positive Hip Hop” (we’ve talked about that before).  He wears some bling, has what looks like a prison tear tattoo by his eye, I think he said takes some classes at MATC.  I’m always glad to see him.

Tonight I walked in and saw — off to the side, behind the counter –  Naomi Wolf’s Give Me Liberty: A Handbook for American Revolutionaries.

I said, ” Your reading Noami Wolf?” and smiled.

He responded “I got Howard Zinn in the car,” smiling also.

We talked a bit about Zinn and the People’s History (purchase from Rainbow Bookstore Cooperative).  I told him I taught history.

You’d be amazed at how many peple bring up Zinn when I tell them I am a historian.  I can do the “critical reading” thing with Zinn and find things that should be better, but he has done so much good for so many people’s understanding and in turn most of those people have become better citizens because of what they learned.  Zinn is good, the People’s History is good.

This would be a better country if more people had Howard Zinn in the car.

We talked some more;  he told me about reading the Constitution with his 11 year old daughter who wants to be  a Constitutional lawyer.  He told me that the price he extracted from his daughter for recreational computer access this Summer was a five page paper on the Federal Reserve.

We talked more about the Constitution.  As I was walking out, I quoted “Know your rights.”

He answered “They are under attack.”

With the door closing I said “Always” and he flashed me a hand sign and a smile.

These days it is easy to get discouraged about politics, activism, education and so much else.  It happens to me all the time.  I wasn’t discouraged on my way home and haven’t been since.

I’m energized.  I know that my friend at the gas station is going to keep doing what he is doing and the world is a better place for it.  I’m energized to make sure that people like him and me have opportunities to come together to work for that better future.  Mostly I’m energized to keep trying make public education live up to all of its promises, for his daughter, my sons and all the rest.

Thomas J. Mertz