Archive for August, 2009

I never did quite "get" Poldark.

Back in the old days, when I was a teenager, my parents would watch Masterpiece Theater and I just knew there was something strange going on. My teenaged mind wanted to know, who cared about history, American, English or Continental, enough to watch movies about it after school was out? And what was so interesting about this Poldark guy who had so many dramatic problems which he brought upon himself anyway?

The characters in my parents’ movies wore period costumes and talked in a strange accent. There was no soundtrack of exciting background music and the sets were all in England, either grey healther covered moors or grey castles, which looked depressing.

And now, years later, here are Dean and I sitting around watching historical movies while the kids ask us why we are doing this. Do I feel nervous seeing what’s going on? Yes.

This movie was every bit as romantic and exotic as the poster suggested.

I would like to say in my defense that the current crop of historical movies have 1) unbelievable sets b) high production values, c) exciting sound tracks, d) stirring battle scenes and e) attractive actors and actresses. In these regards, they totally eclipse Masterpiece Theater.

So, yes, we watch historical dramas, long ones, just like my parents.  Our taste runs to the HBO Rome Series, Showtime’s The Tudors, or the movie we finished last night, Jodhaa Akbar, which was perhaps my favorite, which was made in India.

Why is it my favorite? Well for one thing check out the hero, Hrithik Roshan, the handsomest guy I’ve seen in a movie since … a long time ago. Perhaps its the pale eyes that got me. The leading lady, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, is stunning as well. Apparently, Hollywood has no monopoly on incredibly beautiful people.

A historical romance/adventure story set in 16th century India, the predictable part of the movie concerns that young emperor’s efforts at consolidation of his empire and the constant problem of seditions friends, relatives, and advisors. The romantic part is far more unusual; although Jodhaa and Jalai are married (arranged without her consent) she won’t let him anywhere near her. She has her standards, both religious and personal, and she expects her husband to win her heart personally, not through arrangement with her father. If Jalai is ever to have an heir he will have to succeed in capturing her heart.

I’m sure romance novelists have come up with this plot hundreds of times, in books I would not have read, but here, in this movie, it worked for me. And Dean watched it too, giving the conquest/violence/sedition part of the movie credit for the “best fight scene he’d come across in years.”

Masterpiece theater it is not. But if you like romance, adventure, palace intrigue, and incredible sets this might be a good choice. What’s more, the  movie is current available on Netflix “watch it tonight” online streaming.  I highly recommend it, and may be watching it (again) tonight myself.

I posted recently about “media with great replay value.” Today, I’ll share the movies that I watch – repeatedly. For years. This is a sampling.

Topping the list for movies is the ultimate in “comfort media” Notting Hill. It makes me happy inside, from the beginning, when Hugh Grant as scruffy bookshop owner tries to woo Julia Roberts – the world famous Anna Scott – with the contents of his paltry bachelor fridge:

all the way to the end, when, rejected by the still-scruffy Thacker’s worry of a broken-again heart, Anna softly says:

Don’t you just melt? He did – about an half hour later, just in time to race to his friend’s car and catch her before she left the country for good.

Next, Amelie, which appeals to feeling of being different. I can quote it in English and French. This is the only movie that I actually refrain from watching too much, because I love it so much I want to save it.

Eat Drink Man Woman, a movie filmed in Taiwan about the travails of family – especially siblings. I like to listen to the Chinese, and drool over the food – the movie begins with a ten minute segment of Old Chu, the chef and father of the family, preparing a sumptuous feast.

Of course, the original three Star Wars movies – which I religiously watch every time I am sick.The ones produced later have little for me – though when I was younger I loved the second, as it had the budding (and insipid, to my later self) relationship of Anakin and Padme.

Little Women is the tearjerker of the bunch. Involving both Christian Bale as a young cutie pie and Susan Sarandon as wisdom incarnate, it’s like rolling up in a big quilt next to a softly crackling northeastern fireplace. And yes, every time Beth gets sick and has that scene with Jo, I sob like a small child. I am of the opinion this is actually rather healthy – cleansing, sortof.

Studio Ghibli will forever have a special place in my heart. Spirited Away and My Neighbor Totoro got me through some tough times – and every time I watch Howl’s Moving Castle, I believe in magic again (and finding a man whose voice is as sexy as Howl’s). In Howl, a young girl is cursed into old age by a jealous witch, and finds herself as the cleaning lady of an enigmatic wizard with multiple personalities. A fire with an attitude adds spark. Kiki’s Delivery Service, also a Ghibli, fits in with the rest as a beautiful work of art.

Movies aren’t just about plot, about excitement, for me — they’re about feelings. One has to believe that one is not the only one who’s ever felt the way one does — and that is something my favorite movies list brings to me again and again.  No, I am not alone. Feeling various ways is normal. I’m not the first and not the last to feel the way I do, and I’m not the first or last to keep watching the same movies over and over again incessantly. There must be someone else out there who does this!

—–N–ss

Thursday night in class, we watched a video about teaching kids with learning disabilities, what school can seem like to a learning disabled (LD) child, and how parents and teachers often react to them. As the litany of the responses, such as disbelief, anger, rejection, etc. that adults may express towards such children, I just sadly nodded my head. Yes, I knew all these things were true.

When Vince, now 15, was born, he had respiratory distress syndrome, and had to be placed in the Newborn Intensive Care Unit. He got out in ten days and seemed to develop normally on most fronts, but he didn’t learn to speak very quickly. I remember when he was 18 months old, he learned that we called the commuter train from which we picked up his father after work the “GO” (so named because it was run by the Government of Ontario; we were in Tornoto) and he showed great happiness when he could shout “Go!” as the train came up.

He made all his development benchmarks as a preschooler, though he was quite hard to discipline. Tantrums! That doesn’t seem like a strong enough word. We got through it somehow, and into kindergarten. I was teaching him myself, and having taught his older sisters successfully I wasn’t too worried. I had been told not to expect him to learn to read as quickly as his sisters, since they were girls, more verbal and developing such skills more quickly, so I wasn’t really worried when he had to repeat kindergarten. Lots of boys repeat kindergarden.

He went to conventional school in first grade and we came up against a curriculum specialist — after a few months the school was pretty sure there was something about Vince that was impairing his ability to learn to read. I wasn’t ready to here it, though, and I wouldn’t let him be tested. Meanwhile, thanks to being a discipline problem, Vince spent a lot of time in the office, he later told me. I don’t remember hearing about it from the teacher, though perhaps I just wasn’t paying enough attention.

In second grade, I brought him back to home schooling, and began to work harder on getting him to learn to read. He made some slow progress, more, I think, than he had at regular school. He could read now, but not well. He never picked up a bookfor fun like his sisters and later his brother would do.

Vince does not like to read, I thought to myself. He is not a good reader, he will probably never quite get it. He may have dyslexia or some related problem.

It was at the end of third grade that I gave Vince and his younger brother a standardized test and  he was far below average in reading. I had known it, of course, but the documentation put the whole situation into a different light. We took him for diagnostic testing to the Learning Center of North Texas. For about $750 they did a a battery of tests. The two things I remember are that he was dyslexic, and he was reading at 1.7 grade level.

I could not have a below-par student in my home school, but I wasn’t ready to give up yet. I spent the summer with The Read Aloud Handbook and the Writing Road to Reading. I created a curriculum that included listening to novels read aloud. We did the Spaulding method phonics program. Fortunately his younger brother, whom I was also teaching, was now at Vince’s same reading level  so I could teach them from the same lesson plan.  We started out in September, nervously, to see where it would lead.

I had been told at the Learning Center of North Texas that for kids like Vince, phonics training had to be repeated about ten times more than for a child without dyslexia. I worked with them every morning, iwth phonic flashcards, phonics dictation, handwriting (in the Spaulding method, the way the children form the letters is said to impact their mental processing of the information). And, slowly, it began to work. Vince’s scores in phonics, spelling and reading comprehension were going up. He was reading on grade level at last.

But then the discipline problems became overwhelming. He didn’t want to go to public school, though I told him if he couldn’t follow instructions, he would go, because I did have a limit and the tantrums were almost beyond that limit. He didn’t believe me, or perhaps he didn’t care, but one afternoon, after a particularly vociferous argument, about what I don’t remember but usually it was about something mundane — I told him he was going to school. Regular school.  I’d had it.

Perhaps I had tried to hard, worked myself to exhaustion in my efforts to remediate the dyslexia. Whatever the reason, it was April and I went down to the local school to enroll him. The principle told me I could wait until September if I wanted to but I did not want to. A few days later his younger brother joined him and we became, and have been ever since, a family with children in the FWISD.

And how did he do, you wonder? Well, apparently a few days after school began, he decided he was going to refuse to follow instructions, the way he had at home. He told this to the teacher in such a way that she called the vice principal. He told the vice principal some things too. The office called me and I had to come and get him for the day.

Don’t do that again, I suggested. They may send you to reform school. Neither of us knew if that was true, or if there really was a reform school, but the suggestion was enough.  He never tried blatant defiance on a school employee again, as far as I know.  In the fall, he returned to school for fifth grade, and the kids said, “hey, there’s that guy that said all that unbelievable stuff to the AP.”  He was most disappointed that they remembered.

“Will they ever forget?” he asked me.

“They’ll either forget or grow up and go away,” I replied.

I’m glad to say that my efforts to work with Vince in his reading seem to have been effective. He passed the TAKS the next year, the first year he officially took it. Further, he decided to be a good student and by applying himself, he was able to keep up and eventually was able to reach the top tier of classes in junior high school, be in the TAKS commended group, and, riding on his sister’s coattails, gain admission to a local private school with significant admission standards.

When I brought him in to start at private school, I told a couple of people he was not a natural reader and might have trouble in some areas, but they were distracted and wanted to see for themselves. The public school had never identified him as an LD student, so maybe the were looking for more documentation or experience with him. When, in December, the guidance counsellor called me. I was worried. What could he have done this time? He hadn’t rebelled against anyone or shown them his temper, I hoped. And then she asked me,

Did I think my son might have a learning disability?

Yes, I told her, I think he does. But he, and we, can work with it, I promise.

Restaurant and Food News and Reviews

Francis goes after the steakhouse concept in a post on the arrival in Fort Worth of Dallas-based Bailey’s Prime … Coffee Talkee wants to tell you some tips for buying an expresso machine …

Arts and Letters

The Japanese Garden and the porch of the Amon Carter museum are listed as two of the Most Inspiring Places to Stand in Fort Worth by a Star-Telegram survey … from Frugal in Fort Worth, tonight will be the first Friday on the Green two-band concert in Fort Worth South,  at 7 p.m. in Magnolia Green Park at Magnolia and Rosedale…. Kevin at Fortworthology has details on the bands … Dallas Arboretum is offering $1 admission …  Roy Rivera took some pictures of our recent rainy days … Trevor photographed and wrote a short piece about Tarrant County Courthouse … Eva-Marie has a link to the Texas Education Agency’s rating for your child’s Tarrant County public school …

Shopping

Lauren W. Smith at Blue Eye, Brown Eye loves shoes …. also, Stacy gives us an Ebay Ugly Sweater Contest …

Social Media and Networking

Richie Escovedo has taken up the PR perspective on the story a jobless NYC grad who’s suing her college’s placement office for incompetence … Scott at the Balcom Ad Agency is concerned that social media is making us into grammatical slobs, and he’s got the tag cloud to prove it.

Local News

Austin notes a recent story from Fort Worth Magazine that lists how much people make, and he claims he makes way more than that… what’s more, that’s not counting his blogging income … Fort Worth Can Do has their 4^th anniversary and posts on the State of the natural gas drilling in Tarrant county … and finally, Ancavge writes on a Fort Worth firm testing Swine Flu on volunteers.

This is the next installment in the “Media with Replay Value” lineup.

There is a bit of music I listen to ad infinitum. Ranking songs by play count on my iPod is a favorite habit of mine – and often a rather sobering one too. Here is a small sampling of that which never gets old for me. Links are to YouTube videos with the songs.

The Lake House Soundtrack tops the charts far and away. Rachel Portman’s instrumentals and a handful of musing soft songs forms the perfect background for my daydreams of eligible bachelors, as I pace the room.I probably average listening to it about four times a week. The main theme is here on facebook.

Also, Let it Be - my favorite Beatles album. The Beatles have always have a steady place in our household, and I grew up listening to them. The eponymous Let it Be and Across the Universe probably rank in the top three best of theirs in my opinion. I have fond memories of my stepfather playing the latter on his guitar late in the evening when I was in grammar school. Also, the Long and Winding Road speaks to me in some way (still looking for who’s at the end of it, though.)

ABBA: Gold -made a certain drive to Amarillo tolerable a few years ago. Among others, Dancing Queen seems to have allure for girls age 7 to 70 – it just makes you happy.

Finally,Shania Twain will also have a place, as the first CD I ever owned, bought for me by my mother in Toronto back in the late 90′s, was The Woman in Me, and I still listen to it  and her other albums to this day. My favorite on The Woman in Me was Whose Bed Have Your Boots Been Under. Her later albums contain many memories – like the time when driving through the Mojave on a two lane highway my stepmother passed a cement truck going 100, while listening to Man! I Feel Like a Woman. From This Moment On reigns as my favorite song to embarass myself with, through the woeful means of Karaoke. I once “sang” it in front of a large audience, after which my mother made me swear never to sing in public again. Finally, Nah! got me through more than one breakup.

So what’s your poison?

Okay, I know I shouldn’t write about Twitter two days out of three. But this really concerned me, which just goes to show how off-balance my priorities really are. Recently, @AnnWylie wrote a short piece in her PR/Writing newsletter titled “How to Make Your Tweets More Useful.” And it included (along with the very interesting information that the biggest day for tweeting is Tueday) an explanation of @AngelaMaier‘s 70-20-10 rule, which recommends that:

70 percent of your tweets share resources — blog postings, articles, opinions and tools
20 percent of your tweets engage in conversations and connections
10 percent of your tweets “chirp,” or chat about yourself, your life and your thoughts.

Well, no wonder I am not the ultimate twitter goddess that I thought I could be, because this is not what I’ve been doing. My scores, which I just got by counting my last 20 posts on Tweetdeck, are more like:

1) 15% share resources
2) 60% engage in conversation
3) 25% updates on what I am doing.

When I see articles like this one, I always think “so this is why my “All Friends” column on Tweetdeck is just one long rippling thread of hyperlinks and @tags. There’s precious little real message left in our SMS-based system. And even though my browser is pretty quick (since I bought the used iMac from @PeteWann) I don’t have time to click all those links. I don’t even have time to process what they’re about.

I don’t go to twitter looking for articles, I go looking for people, for personality. Also, I’m looking for freedom and the surprising. Maybe it’s just me, but when I hear “Twitter rules” I reach for my gun.

I’m not alone in this. Back in January @ChrisBrogan wrote the post “You’re doing it all wrong?” where he does a complete send-up of the idea that twitter can even have “rules.” I mean, yes, you can make a list of ideas on how to tweeet and call them “rules.” But really they’re only suggestions, guidelines. One of the big things about Twitter, I believe, is that there are no rules.

There are a lot of different types on twitter (I wrote this blog post pointing out a short list of some of the major ones) and each has their own formula of tweet balance. There are some tweeps who are more than anything else like a morning DJ, blasting out news and notes from the scandalous to the profane. Others go on all day chatting with friends. Some really do give updates on what they are doing. Is this okay? With me, it’s okay. I feel you have to work out your twitter identity with fear and trembling.

As for me, I might not be doing twitter right, because after a year I don’t have tens of thousands of followers. But I have enjoyed it a great deal and met some pretty neat folks. That’s good enough for me, for now.

Are you wondering what’s going on after the Heritage Park Workshop back in April? I was, and my curiosity finally drove me to call up the City’s PR contact for the project, Veronica Villegas. She reported that the City was planning a press release as soon as they had firm plans to report, at least in terms of doing a feasibility study on the project that the workshops showed the people want.

Here’s the thing: the workshop turned up a strong desire to see an upgrade and repair on the entire Heritage Park site, all 112 acres, not just the Heritage Plaza, the part designed by Lawrence Halperin. Even doing a study on how to accomplish the updating will cost millions.

Villegas explained that the entire Heritage Park site extends from the Main Street bridge down to where the new TCC Downtown campus has been built, encompassing the bluff where the original Fort Worth settlement (a fort, of course) stood as well as the site of the meeting between the West and Clear forks of the Trinity River. Naturally, a park this large cannot be developed on a shoestring.

The City, then, is working on a plan to restore the plaza and transform the park into an important Fort Worth destination. The problem that may prevent this, not surprisingly, is money. However, currently a number of partner agencies have been working to move the project forward. These include the Amon Carter foundation, Downtown Fort Worth Initiative, Historic Fort Worth, Fort Worth Public Art, Streams and Valleys, Tarrant Regional Water District, Tarrant County College and even Tarrant County itself.

Olin Studios, who conducted the workshop, has provided the City with a proposal. The city has not yet signed off on the project, however, as they need some idea of how to pay for it.

“It will be years” before the project can be completed, Villegas said. The project may be phased, with the most critical elements coming first. One would think this would mean Heritage Plaza, but there are no safe assumptions in city government or municipal planning.

In conclusion, Villegas said, “The project will need a lot of community support and very likely some private funding.” Will the plans the citizens asked for at the workshop come to fruition? It’s impossible to tell, but if you care about this project, you might agitate through your City Council member.

For the Uninitiated: Twitter is a social media application where you can post mini-updates and view the updates of others. People who have been doing it a while sometimes have thousands of followers. Many who wish to have a large following have in the past followed everyone who follows them, sometimes automatically. It’s a friendly thing to do, and you don’t have to read everyone’s updates. In fact, after you start following more than 50 or so people, there’s basically no way you can.  At that point you either take pot luck or go on TweetDeck, an application for the Twitter application, and construct a list of the people you’re really, really following — your “inner circle” as @DaivRawks would call it, or your “crew” as @BillCammack would say. Meanwhile, if anyone from the greater group wants you, they can either @message you — send you a public “hey remember me?” call — or they can send you a direct message (DM), which is private.

And Now the Main Story:

The problem is with the DM’s. Increasingly, Twitter is becoming attractive to people who are trying to sell stuff. And increasingly, these types add you, you innocently and as a friendly gesture add back, and they send you a DM promoting their services. This is particularly a problem for users who access Twitter via cell phone SMS, because the commercial DM’s are blowing out their inboxes. For the rest of us, they’re just a garden variety iritation, which becomes worse and worse the more of the things you get.

Anyway, last week social media guru and prince @ChrisBrogan, who is followed by something like a 100,000 people, threw down the gauntlet. No more auto-following. The DM’s were just too out of control.

It was interesting to me when I read it, because quietly and undramatically and not followed by nearly six figures of people (last Twitter count was 1450 or so followers, many of whom I suspect are no longer reading my updates and which inevitably contains some MLM people and the like) I had come to the same conclusion. Thankfully, now twitter gives you a mini-profile on everyone who appears on your followers list. Instead of auto-following people, I go down the line, check out their location, their avatar, their bio and their latest tweet, and I can usually tell if they’re a spammer or not.

For a lower-volume user like me, it works. @ChrisBrogan, on the other hand, has had to resort to requesting that those who are legit @message him if they want him to follow back. But mine is a human system, so it’s not failproof. Imaging my irritation when someone I had hand-followed shot back an instant DM last week:

“Check us out at blahblahblah.com  for stunning marketing solutions … we can and do help people just like you … “

Oops. Looks like I’ve had a Personally-Administered Twitter Adding System error. Only remedy? Hand-Unfollow. Okay. All better now. See the rest of you soon.

At teacher training class this morning, everyone was talking about their progress in getting classrooms set up. They seemed all to have gone shopping, and bought posters, and were creating laminated charts, and buying stickers and colored borders, and just generally showing that they have it together when it comes to knowing how to set up a classroom.

I, on the other hand, have not been thinking about this, having turned my mind to other, seemingly more urgent matters. But now, with the day of reporting to my room imminent, I have to admit the truth: I don’t have any great ideas for posters, charts, or other displays. The only things I’ve come up with are:

1) I have a set of rules I made last week, laminated by CopyMax.

2) I plan to buy some plants to put in the windows.

3) I am hoping to get permission to have a class pet.

4) I will bring a broom and dustpan, I suppose, and sweep behind the furniture, which I somehow believe will be necessary, perhaps only because it would be necessarily if you tried to open an unused room at my home after months.

So on Monday I am supposed to go out and get my class ready. I am hoping that inspiration will strike when I see the room again. The last time I saw it was the day I was hired, and all I remember was a row of lockers in the back, a generally dark overall character, two teacher desks, one metal and one wood, and a blank discipline referral sitting on the table at the front, which I considered, at the time, not the best foreboding signal.

I have lots of great ideas for lesson plans, but I can’t think of anything to put up on the walls. What will I start with? The writing process. I will make a poster of the 5 steps. Then, something about the water cycle. I’ve always liked the water cycle. And maybe a couple of pictures of my heroes. Who are my heroes? I can think of a few. It’s a start. I’ll go Monday to see the room again, and draw a diagram, and go from there.