Blogs

On the last day of school, my daughter’s grade one teacher invited parents to attend a class awards ceremony. Each of the twenty-one children in her class was presented with a unique award. Although my attention was at first fully focused on my daughter (a writing award!), I was especially happy for a boy who received recognition for his ability to identify more bugs, birds, and reptiles than the teacher. It made my heart soar that she’d singled out the importance of the boy’s identification skills, especially in a world where people increasingly place little value on knowing what lives around them.

Back in the day, music was expensive and books were cheap. A cassette (ahem) ran almost $15 and then a CD was at least $20. My books were (usually) paperbacks for less than $10. The library was also well-stocked with books that I wanted, while the music selection was less impressive. So my music collection largely consisted of mixed tapes I recorded off the radio and copies of the tapes of my friends. If there was a particularly expensive hardcover book I wanted, I would either get it from the library and buy it later in paperback or ask for it as a gift. We owned a lot of books in my house growing up (a lot of vinyl records, too), so it’s of little surprise that you would find me at swim meets plugged into my walkman, reading.

Subscribers to the Green Schools Listserv recently got invited to participate in a sustainability survey. And while the opportunity to fill out yet another fool survey is not generally attractive, this one was from a grad student at Erasmus U in Rotterdam. I have a soft spot for Rotterday (Frau R says I have a lot of soft spots, mostly north of my neck), so I decided to give it a go. I'm glad I did.

F. Scott Fitzgerald famously stated that "The rich are different from you and me." Given the demographics of wealth distribution in this country, it is not a wonder that Tavis Smiley and Cornel West have teamed up to create a manifesto based on that statement. But since this is a blog about law, policy and technology, I offer a variation on that theme. The moguls are different from you and me. And keep eyes and ears peeled: they are getting together to talk money today in Sun Valley, Idaho.

Are you in New Orleans this week for the big Blackboard conference (or BbWorld as the company brands the conference)? What are your big goals for the conference? What do you hope to learn from Blackboard?

I think I had an idea for a blog post in mind this morning — I was going to write about my daughter’s upcoming travels, the semester-plus that she’s spent with us, and the bittersweet sense I have of sending her off (yet again!) into the world not fully prepared, but nonetheless ready. But right around noon I learned of a sudden death — the mother of someone Nick has been in school with since kindergarten — and whatever idea I might have had was immediately gone. While this mother and I didn’t know each other well, we’d been in each other’s houses, years ago, when the kids were small and still had play dates and birthday parties. We’d seen each other at PTA events over the years. It was that kind of relationship.

So this summer, try to take some time off. Give yourself a few breaks away from schoolwork, away from your smart phone, and focus on leisure and focus on recharging. GradHacker is going to be taking a break for the rest of July to recharge, so shouldn't you?

Recently, I was talking to a friend of the family. A middle-aged woman with a PhD, she's fluent in three languages and has spent a reasonable portion of her life in Europe. One question that came up was why, in certain countries, people might be disallowed from spending their own money to buy health care that the relevant national health care system might deem to be unnecessary or of low priority.