Intermission

If you may have noticed, I haven’t been writing as much lately.  I’ve been on an intermission of sorts.  Life stuff.  And fun stuff (for me at least).  I’ve been catching up on some reading and listening to a lot of music.  Things I used to do a lot before I started blogging.  I just need to wind down at times.  I’ve pretty much been on the go for over two years with education and I really don’t want to burn out.  So I’m taking some time off.  I’ll still try to get some stuff up everyday, but nothing to in-depth.  Unless something big comes my way.  Then I will get that up fast!

My wife and I cleaned out our garage today.  My car was filled with stuff we donated to Good Will.  I had to clean out my gutters when I saw weeds growing out of them in a couple of areas.  While I was doing that, a wicked wind blew green leaves all over the place.  I thought I might lose some trees on the edge of our property, but walnuts are very sturdy.

TV winds down for me in the summer.  Only a few shows I’m watching now: Game of Thrones, Preacher and Outcast.  The season finale of The Americans is on tonight.  I will definitely be watching that!  Like those who watch it, I think it is one of the best shows on TV now.  Having lived through the 1980s it is very spot-on with the rendition of the early part of that decade.  They even had a bunch of characters watching “The Day After” in one episode this season.  Kids today don’t live with nuclear threats like I did when I was a kid/teenager.  That movie scared the crap out of millions of Americans.  It came out in 1983 on a Sunday night.  I’ve watched it a few times since.

I was listening to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons earlier today.  The Summer trio are my favorite.  Highs and lows, with a crashing crescendo at the end!  Then I vegged out to some Imagine Dragons and later a band you’ve most likely forgotten about or never heard of called Gene Loves Jezebel.

I’m just blabbing here, about nothing specific.  My son has been watching Arrow and telling me all about it.  I’m a huge Flash fan, but I’ve been stuck on the first season of Arrow for a couple of years.  If you haven’t guessed, I’m a huge comic book fan.  In terms of shows and movies, Marvel gets the movies right and DC does really well with the tv shows.  I still haven’t seen Captain America: Civil War yet.  It is on my soon-to-do list.  Along with a million other things.

I’m kind of at a transition point.  My son is exactly where he needs to be with education.  His battles are a thing of the past for the most part so much my anger is fading.  That doesn’t mean I don’t care about education overall, I just don’t have that immediate connection to it I used to have.  I’ll still do the research and the digging and the listening.  But I am really trying to leave emotion out of it.  If anything, I’ve gotten more sarcastic with my writing.  I’ve been involved with this mess in Delaware so long and so intensely, nothing really shocks me much anymore.  But we are entering unchartered territory with Jack leaving next year and the upcoming elections.  At the time of this writing, Hillary is the Democrat nominee and Donald is the Republican.  I really can’t stand them both.  I was really rooting for Bernie, but his age concerned me a lot.  I don’t like the fact that both the frontrunners are two people who I’ve heard about for over twenty years and neither of them ever impressed me.  It’s kind of depressing actually.  I will fully admit it is very hard for me to not want to blast certain people involved in education.  I see them doing some of the same things over and over.  But it’s the everyday people I’m sometimes hard on, and I’m starting to feel bad about that.  My intention isn’t to hurt anyone.  I’ve always figured if you are going to attend meetings about education you are most likely a public person.  Even if they are “secret” or non-public meetings.  I know I upset a couple of people two weeks ago and I feel bad about that.  I’m going to try to be nicer to people on here.   I know, I’ve said that before and then two weeks later I was cussing out some folks.  When I have posts like that, I’m not going to publish them right away.  Sometimes the best thing to do is sleep on it and not go by the moment.

Alright, enough out of me.  For those reading this, I’m sure this was not the kind of post you wanted to read.  Everyone always loves the scoop (or the supposed scoop).  But even bloggers need a time out once in a while!

Did John King Leave Delaware Yesterday? Were He And Jack Planning Common Core 2.0 Instead Of A Level 2 State Of Emergency?

Acting US Secretary of Education John King visited Delaware yesterday.  Governor Jack Markell called a State of Emergency at 5pm yesterday.  My question: Did King leave Delaware?  Is he hanging out with Jack planning the next wave or corporate education reform?  Common Core 2.0?

Meanwhile, employees all over the state are screaming cause Markell didn’t even issue a Level 2 for the Blizzard of 2016 until just now.  In Sussex County, fears of flooding when the high tide came in at 7am this morning caused a lot of anxiety.  Freezing rain has turned the roadways into a slushy mess down there.  Central Kent County, where I live, got pounded last night.  The snow is like a thick paste here.  Police are checking drivers for work IDs up in New Castle County.  And Jack?  Where is Jack?  He said there would be an update in an hour over on his Facebook page and that just now came in, after several people already attempted to go to work but couldn’t get out of their driveways or developments and came back home if they didn’t get stuck.

This is yet another example of Governor Markell looking out for business interests over the concerns of the everyday citizens in the state he governs.  These are the types of storms where everyone else is staying “STAY OFF THE ROADS”.  People die in storms like this.  Does anyone really think they are going to get a haircut today?  Or go grocery shopping?  There’s probably nothing left on the shelves!  Meanwhile, all the surrounding states called their states of emergency before the storm actually hit.  Why does it take people blasting him all over the place before he actually does something?  During a hurricane some years back, he pulled the same thing.

I think Jack is looking at this wrong.  If kids are home, with their parents who shouldn’t be working today, that’s more time to work on closing those gaps.  Parents can help their kids to become college and career ready all weekend long!  With the right amount of rigor and grit, we will get those kids acing the best test Delaware ever made in no time!

*The above picture is not from Delaware…gotcha!