Some novels are full of puns, quips, humorous asides, made-up words, generally weird language, etc. All of that can be overdone, but it can also be fun. And those books can have serious moments, too.

One novel with a wordplay bonanza is Ali Smith’s There But For The, which I read last week. It’s a quirky book that opens with a dinner guest locking himself in a room for what will be weeks and weeks — angering the homeowner who hosted the meal — before the novel spins into depicting various people who knew the interloper. The turns of phrase come fast and furious, but there are also poignant sections — most notably one focusing on a very sick women in her 80s. Not sure I can strongly recommend the novel — it was a trial to read at times — but the author certainly deserves props for originality.

From Garrison Keillor’s “The Writers’ Almanac”:

Today is the birthday of the poet and novelist Sandra Cisneros (books by this author), born in Chicago (1954) and best known for the highly acclaimed coming-of-age novel The House on Mango Street (1984). Although the book was largely ignored when it was first published, its popularity grew, and soon Cisneros became the first Mexican-American woman to sign a contract with a big American publishing house. The House on Mango Street has since been translated into a dozen languages and has become required reading for middle schools and high schools throughout the United States.

Cisneros was the third child — and the only girl — in a family of seven children, and she spent most of her childhood rootless, moving back and forth between Chicago and Mexico City. Because her father felt that daughters were meant for husbands and not necessarily careers, she was free to…

The accountability hawks have decided that NAEP testing must be canceled this spring because of the pandemic, but the burdensome, useless, meaningless annual testing of every single student from grades 3-8 should not be disrupted. Betsy DeVos proposed canceling NAEP, and the director of the National Center for Education Statistics complied. There will be no NAEP 2021.

This is backwards.

If we want to understand the impact of the coronavirus on American students, NAEP testing should go forward. NAEP—the National Assessment of Educational Progress—has been administered to scientific samples of American students since the late 1960s. Since 1992, it has provided state-by-state comparisons. It disaggregates scores by race, gender, income, English language status, disability status, and other criteria. It measures achievement gaps among whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Asians. It supplies the same valuable information for a score of urban district that volunteer to be tested. No stakes are attached to…

Our blog poet frequently favors with rhyme:

Privatize the planet

Privatize the planet
Plunder it for gain
Light the fire and fan it
Mine the golden vein

Privatize the water
Sell it to the poor
Privatize your daughter
Sell her as a whore

Privatize the wildlife
Charge a viewing fee
Like a Wall Street low life
That is what you’ll be

I promised myself I would not post anything about Orange 45 unless absolutely necessary. Then I read this. Dave Pell asks a crucial question:

While Trump appointees are doing their best to impose their policies before January 20, a federal judge in California told Betsy DeVos in no equivocal terms by a federal judge that she cannot divert CARES money to private schools. The nation’s nearly 100,000 public schools received $13.2 billion in CARES funding, which they were required to share with charter schools and to private schools with low-income students. However, charter schools, religious schools, and private schools also qualified for billions more from the CARES Payroll Protection Program, which excluded public schools. DeVos initially tried to wedge private schools into the public schools’ $13.2 billion fund, even if the private schools had no low-income students. But three federal judges rejected her efforts. Now she is permanently enjoined.

LANSING, Mich — A judge has formally closed the case on U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ efforts to rewrite a section of the Coronavirus Aid…

John Merrow looks at the deeply partisan divide in our country and thinks about ways that we can communicate with each other.

Three Big Questions:  1) How many of the nearly 73 million Americans who voted for President Donald J. Trump can be persuaded to support President Joe Biden? 2) How can we connect with them?  3) Can we fix our schools so they don’t keep turning out angry and disaffected graduates who eagerly support demagogues?

I suspect that the racists, the white nationalists, the misogynists, and other close-minded bigots who voted for Trump aren’t persuadable, nor are greedy, selfish voters who care only about their finances. 

But, as I see it, that leaves many millions of Trump voters who might be open to change. Let’s not scorn or mock them but rather try to understand their position.

To change the minds of adults who voted for Trump, we…

Thomas Ultican took a close look at spending on education technology in North Carolina and was shocked by what he learned.

He begins:

A North Carolina cabal of school superintendents, politicians, consultants and technology companies has gone wild over the past seven years. In Chapel Hill, Education Elements obtained an illegitimate $767,000 contract. Chapel Hill-Carborro City Hills Schools (CHCCS) Assistant Superintendent of Business and Finance, Jennifer Bennett, supposedly ignored school board policy and agreed to the contract in secret. It seems that when the state and local schools are spending on education technology, policies and law are being ignored.

After the Education Elements negotiations, Bennett sent a message to their Managing Partner, Jason Bedford, saying, “Need to get you guys to modify the [contract] if you can since if we include the whole potential payment value, then we have to take this to the Board since over our $90K threshold ….” This…

Consider the following scenarios that were recently printed in our local newspaper related to the spread of COVID-19:

1. Going to work when sick.
2. Not wearing face masks or not wearing them correctly.
3. Traveling to COVID-19 hot spots and bringing back the virus.
4. Sending children to school sick.
5. Attending large holiday parties where unmasked people engage in close contact activities like dancing, singing, and sharing food.
6. Gathering for in-person birthday parties with guests from other households.
7. Attending large prayer group sessions without following social distancing and masking guidelines.
8. Visiting grocery stores or other areas without practicing social distancing and wearing masks.
9. Joining poker games where people sit too close to each other.
10. Huddling too close together at bars to watch football games.

THINK PEOPLE!
These are clear examples of how this virus continues to spread.