F ³: Free Form Folderol

Seen on Columbia Reddit…

Any belote players in the area who'd like to meet up and play?

Naturally I assumed that a belote was a musical instrument. It’s not. So then I figured it must be a sport. Nope.

This struck me as a good example that life is full of reminders that I don’t know everything and that these just might be opportunities to learn something new.

*****

As a teacher of young children I’ve rarely thrown anything more risky than a bean bag, but this thread on Bluesky made me smile.

Doug Mack: randomly decided to look at the history of people throwing sandwiches and...

Cleveland Press, 1957

“With mustard!”

Mack also writes what he calls an “Agreeably nerdy food history newsletter: snackstack.net” so I suppose that airborne edibles are in his wheelhouse.

*****

I’ve spent the summer falling asleep to the polite, unassuming tones of this fellow on YouTube.

“Hello. Thanks for stopping by.”

Robslondon

An exploration of everything to do with London; from the city's history and transport, to tales of true crime and more…... and every now and then I'll be exploring other parts of the UK too!

No, I don’t listen to the creepy ones before bed. And I can’t explain why I find it so restful. But the two-part series on London’s Quirkiest Railways is oddly comforting. Someone I know has long listened to episodes of The West Wing to get to sleep, so I suspect I’m not the only one to to find that counting sheep takes other forms.

Do I hate the adverts? Yes. Will I pay to get rid of them? Nah. If I had that kind of extra money I’d donate it to Columbia Community Care.

*****

Yesterday I responded to an NPR story on Facebook and someone immediately lit into me. After my initial discomfort I realized they had misunderstood me. I did my best to rearticulate my point more clearly. You’ll never guess what happened next.

About an hour or so later that person acknowledged they had misunderstood, apologized, and took down their post.

This is such a rare occurrence I thought I’d memorialize it here. Who knows when it will happen again?

*****

It’s Friday. Do you have any interesting weekend plans? I have not had a single snowball this summer and I’m hoping to rectify that.

Village Green/Town² Comments

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Teacher Gifts

Today is the last day of school before the Winter Break. It’s a good time to remember the far-reaching nature of our public school system. You may not have children. You may have sent your children to independent schools. It matters not. You will be impacted one way or another. Yesterday I read a long thread on Facebook about several waves of illness in the schools right now. There’s influenza A and norovirus, I believe. And of course there’s COVID. Apparently in some individual schools the rate of illness is high enough for school admin to notify parents. When I was little the acceptable holiday gift for a teacher was one of those lovely floral handkerchief squares. (I don’t know what it was for male teachers. They were rare in my elementary years.) These days the range of teacher gifts is wider and I have fond memories of Target gift cards which I have written about before. I think it’s safe to say that giving one’s teacher Influenza, norovirus, or COVID is not the ideal holiday...

F ³: We Are Not Entitled

A college student went missing. His family and friends were distraught. The community was encouraged to be on the lookout and spread the word. Days passed. They must have been agonizing days for those who cared about the missing student. Thoughts that foul play had been involved cannot have been far from their thoughts. Then, at last, the student was found. Alive. The news was shared with the public. So. Much. Relief. A family had been reunited with their child. Even though we know that life is complicated, I think it is okay to accept this as a happy ending and leave it at that. But the world of social media says no. For every expression of joy at the news came questions and even judgement. It became clear to me that some folks felt entitled to an explanation. They wanted the backstory. It’s as though they felt that, by enlisting the help of the public on social media, the authorities now owed them all the details. Television dramas often weave curr...

Separate and Unequal

Remember “Separate but equal”? Remember how that really meant that Black schools languished in broken-down buildings without adequate heat or toilet facilities, with cast-off, ragged learning materials, underfunded and largely ignored? The Supreme Court struck that down in 1954. The evidence was clear that separate was not equal. Plessy v Ferguson had led to - - no, endorsed - - deeply unequal schooling and opportunities. We tend to think of Brown v Board as being purely about racial integration. It was not. It was about the logical consequences of segregation. And they were not, not, not equal. The ruling in 1954 didn’t transform public education for non-whites into a land of milk and honey by any means. But it articulated some essential truths in a way that made including everyone a legal precedent which could be relied upon and built upon. It was better than what came before it but it rested upon unsteady ground. It did not necessarily change the hearts or minds ...

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