Quote of the Week

"One cool judgment is worth a thousand hasty councils."
- Woodrow Wilson



Sunday, November 30, 2014

A Mouthful of Turkey Can Keep the Peace

As in many houses across the country, a good portion of my extended family gathered for a Thanksgiving dinner. This is one of my favorite events of the year. Relatives of all ages gather at my parent's house, my great grand parent's on my Dad's side homestead.

We all gather for the traditional turkey dinner with all the fixings, sides and two choices of homemade pie. We eat, drink, play with the kids,watch football and talk. Just like in many houses across the country.

While at the table, the topic of conversion was how college was going for one of my cousins. She was telling a story about one of the older teachers and how she like his matter of fact, tell it like it his attitude. She smiled as she told us this teacher considers her generation as the dumbest one he's seen come through his classroom.

My cousin is going to a private Catholic college on a hockey scholarship. While not Catholic herself, either the school takes anyone, or at least good hockey players. Being a private school, the teachers (at least the one she talked about) are not as PC as found in the public side.

This was shown right away when one of my Uncles, as retired English Teacher who spent his whole career teaching in Madison, exclaimed "oh my word! What a horrible thing to say. I never would have said anything negative like that in front of a class or to any of my students."

I the chimed in saying, how I kind of agree with my cousin's teacher. We as a whole are way too reliant on technology for one thing. I pointed out how most kids who work par time can't make change without the cash register telling them exactly what to do. Another relative added how most people today can't function without a calculator or spell-check in their daily lives.

Then my uncle sighed and said "ah spell-check. What a Godsend that was! It would drive me batty trying to even read papers turned in before spell-check came along. Each year their grammar and spelling got worse and worse. It took me forever to grade papers before it."

Mmmm..... a  Public School English Teacher praising what a Godsend spell-check is. It was a good thing I had a mouthful of turkey to bite down on at the time; would have severed the tip of my tongue off otherwise.

Thursday, November 27, 2014

I am thankful

I am thankful. I am thankful for many, many things. A short list of some of the things I am thankful for are

  • my parents who raised me (and still influence me) with values
  • some teachers, coaches, bosses and other who mentored me and given me a chance to improve myself
  • some teachers, coaches, bosses and other who didn't give me a chance and allowed me not to waste my time with them and to pursue influence from better people
  • my lack of patience for the negative things and people that keeps me from wasting my time with them
  • my ability to see potential in what is sometimes disguised as negative 
  • my wiliness to continually learn
  • family
  • friends
  • freedom
  • knowing that I can achieve what many others find not achievable, simply by trying and working hard with a plan
  • being able to learn from those who don't see things the way I do, by both keeping an open mind and also by seeing their failures
  • my faith in a higher power that has had a direct or indirect influence on all I listed above   

Thursday, November 13, 2014

Observation on Winter Commuting and Social Media

 
Surprisingly, luck is on my side as it is not my week to drive when the first snowfall of the season hit us this Monday morning. As I enjoyed the rode from the passenger side, I made an observation based on my Facebook fed. You can tell a lot about a persons work ethic by what they post about their commute.
 
One of my over the top liberal school teacher friends was posting on Facebook something about enjoying a "snow day" and planning on doing nothing but relaxing in her pajamas, drink coffee and watch TV today. She did this a fair amount last winter, then complained in the late spring about something called "make up" days that she was forced unfairly do. Poor thing.
 
On the far other end of the spectrum a friend posted triumphantly that he was able to drive to work, even though the commute was slow going and took an extra 20 minutes. But he was still as proud as if he climb the K2 solo. I guess we all take pride in something, some take pride in every, single, thing.
 
Fortunately there are still a large percentage of people who simply get up, brush the snow off their vehicle, and just go to work. Snow happens in the winter around here, act like you've seen it before and carry on.