Baltimore Diary

Here's to Absent Friends

2008-10-12T01:23:20-04:00

Hammer: Why, it's the most exclusive residential district in Florida. Nobody lives there.

—The Cocoanuts (1929)

-------------------------------

Settle in, and I'll tell you a story.

It's a story of a young woman who grew up on Long Island. After she graduated from high school, she moved to Baltimore to study at the College of Notre Dame of Maryland and got her degree in Education. From there she got a job with the Baltimore City Public Schools, teaching Social Studies at Francis Scott Key Elementary/Middle School in Locust Point. She was in her early 20s at the time.

This was in 1968, and the Vietnam War was entering a phase of being not especially popular with the American public. Young men were doing their best to avoid being drafted, and one of the tactics they used was to flunk out constantly, so they'd be retained and have to repeat grades. Back then, a student could repeat almost infinitely, and while the draft board could recruit from high schoolers who were old enough to go to war, they couldn't recruit from middle school. So she found herself a 22 year-old woman, teaching Social Studies to 19 year-olds who were hiding from the draft. She and another teacher, who was also just starting out, vowed to at least get these boys graduated from middle school, and they succeeded. It wasn't so that they could be drafted, and it probably wasn't so they could move on and perhaps get diplomas. It was mostly so they wouldn't have middle school students who were old enough to be flirting with them. After a few years of this, she became the Guidance Counselor at the school, a position she retained until she retired this past spring.

Just in case you didn't get that, let me clarify: she worked at Francis Scott Key Elementary/Middle School for forty years. She stayed there even when the school didn't: in the mid-1980s the school was torn down and rebuilt; the school and the parking lot essentially switched places.

Until just a couple of years ago, Locust Point was a rather insular neighborhood. With only one road in or out of the area (Fort Avenue), the only time non-residents passed through was to visit Fort McHenry. Housing was ridiculously cheap (I know of several rowhomes that went in the mid-$40K range in 2001), and everybody knew everybody else, partly because they'd all grown up together. They were probably living in the house that their parents--or even their grandparents--owned. Everybody was practically related to everybody else. And, as the Guidance Counselor, every student in that school passed through her office at one time or another. Consequently she was the information repository; she knew who was related to whom, which kid matched up with which parent (broken homes being no less common in LP than in any other place), and basically every kid's bloodline going back at least as far as their grandparents.

When I first moved to Baltimore from New York, I was trying to rebuild following a life that could charitably be called "shattered." She was one of my first friends in town. We had many lunches together and I have no doubt that, even though she rarely worked directly with me, the insights she was able to provide me regarding the students definitely gave me a better handle on how they operated, and the relationships they had with their peers and their families. This, in turn, allowed me to do a much better job than another person new to a school might be. There was emotional and occasionally financial support, and while you always felt that you'd been singled out for this sort of treatment, I often heard from others who also felt the same way.

Everyone in the neighborhood knows her, although nobody ever seemed to expect to see her outside the school. There were a few occasions where we'd be at Hull Street Blues, or J. R.'s Bar & Grill, or the now-departed Back Finz, and the locals would be surprised to see her, not to mention a little embarrassed to be seen by her in a local bar. It didn't matter that she was there having a drink, too.

Back in June, the school threw a retirement party for her. Naturally, it was held in Locust Point, in the Marine Corps League Hall directly across the street from the school. It was attended by co-workers, by friends and by former students. There was the usual food and cake, and then there was a presentation of awards, certificates and congratulatory letters from all over the state: the City Council, the Mayor, the Governor, several Senators. Then people were invited to get up to speak. The verbal testimonies took over an hour, and nobody's attention wavered. People told stories that were funny, or sad, or inspirational, or some combination of all of the above.

Some months earlier she'd planned to retire to Florida with her husband. She began to research houses on the Internet, and because she knew my mother, she looked in that immediate area. She'd find a place with potential and dispatch my mother to check it out. Mom was naturally a little nervous about telling someone to move into a place they hadn't seen, but the fact was that she was trusted to make the decision and that was that. It was her car that I took to Florida back in August, since neither she nor her husband could drive the entire way solo and they needed someone else to bring the second car down. While I was down there, my brother and I moved some furniture into the house as well.

Because of some bureaucratic snafus involving reimbursement of unused benefit days, she didn't get to leave the Baltimore area until very recently. She left on a Monday and arrived in Florida on Thursday. Their furniture got there on Friday, and the beds that they'd ordered locally came the following Tuesday. The post-Baltimore life is starting to settle in, although she still fields phone calls on a near-daily basis from people at Francis Scott Key looking for information or help.

Forty years! I don't think I want to do something I LIKE for that much time. Pam, I raise a glass to your long career, and wish you a very restful time in the Sunshine State. I'll see you during the Holiday break.

Sale of the 21st Century

2008-10-07T20:54:50-04:00

Jim Rockford: This is Jim Rockford. At the tone leave your name and message, I'll get back to you.
[Beep]
Computer Recording: Hi There! If you're interested in selling your product by a computerized telephone sale, stay on the line and one of our representatives will speak to you.

—The Rockford Files, "Forced Retirement" (12/9/77)

---------------------------------------------

This afternoon I got a telemarketing phone call from the good folks at HSBC, where I have a credit-card account. The perky young voice on the other end identified herself as Tina or whatever and asked how I'm doing today.

"Um...OK?" I responded, wondering what was up.

There was a little bit of a pause, and then she said, "So you're hanging in there, too?" She laughed briefly. Then she told me that the call might be recorded for quality purposes, and asked me to confirm what the computer had in its database as my name. For a second, it switched over and a recorded male voice spat out my name. It sounded just a little bit more natural than that voice emulation gizmo that Stephen Hawking uses to communicate, but it was correct, so I said "Yes." Tina asked me again, "Is that your name?" and I repeated yes. I figured she hadn't come back quickly enough to hear me the first time around, so I didn't think anything of it.

From this point, she launched into a pitch for one of those credit insurance programs that offers forgiveness on your credit card debt if you have a family emergency or whatever, and how the program costs only pennies on the dollar, and how if you have no balance then you pay absolutely nothing, so if it's all right with me then we can get me signed up in just a couple of minutes. I'm sure you've heard about it a million times before. However...

The thing that was weird about this particular pitch, however, was the background noise. Sometimes you talk to people in call centers and you hear murmuring of people in nearby cubicles. In this particular case, the background was white noise. But it wasn't just white noise. It was white noise that audibly changed in quality every few seconds, and between her sentences. Something wasn't quite right, here, but I couldn't put my finger on what it was. So when Tina got to the end of the paragraph, I used my usual polite lie to brush her off: "No thanks, I already have an insurance policy that covers this." This isn't precisely true; I don't have a credit insurance policy but I do have life insurance and it's much more than enough to cover my debts.

As if she didn't hear me (and she didn't), Tina moved into the next paragraph in the script, the one that the flow chart tells you to use when they say "no". At this point I was actively listening to the background rather than the pitch, so I couldn't tell you what she said, but I did note that the white noise would change in pitch and loudness between each of her sentences. It was pretty clear at this point that I was in a conversation with a recording. At the end of this paragraph I said "no" again and The Amazing Tina 3000 Unit now provided me with an 800 number if I should desire more information, then thanked me for my time and disconnected.

This is a bit of technology that you could have seen coming; after all, when you call Verizon it asks for your number and can interpret your voice; when it asks you to make a choice and you respond, it will reply after a pause, "Okay," and move into the next section. But it was always clear that you were talking to what was essentially a voicemail system. And if it could help you, then great and if it couldn't, there's usually a means to get to a human being. I'm not so sure that I'm comfortable with an automated system giving me the sales pitch for a product, especially one in which I wasn't especially interested in the first place. And I certainly don't need that system trying to be casual and chatty with me as a means of trying to fake me into thinking that it's not an automaton. This may be an audio version of the Uncanny Valley theory, but I'm not sure.

Have you ever dealt with something like this? How did you react?

Snatching Defeat From the Jaws of Victory

2008-10-06T00:04:46-04:00

Martin Crane: You know, when I first met your mother she was so upbeat and bouncy I used to fantasize about her wearing a skimpy little cheerleader's outfit, shaking her pom-poms...
Frasier & Niles Crane: Dad!
Martin Crane: Grow up, you two! I'm just saying it's perfectly natural. I can't tell you the number of times I was on a stake-out in the cold, picturing your mother in front of a warm fire wearing nothing but a...
Frasier & Niles Crane: DAD!
Martin Crane: Oh, I'm sorry. One day your mother and I went on a church picnic and the two of you came floating down the river in little wicker baskets!

—Frasier, "It's Hard to Say Goodbye If You Won't Leave" (1/9/93)

---------------------------------------------

This morning we went to the first of three cheerleading competitions that Wee One is participating in, through the Harford/Baltimore County Cheerleading League.

The cheer teams ordinarily practice during the week, then they cheer at the games played by the Harford and Baltimore County Youth Football games on Saturdays. And, they do these competitions which are a big deal.

If you've been around here for more than a year, then you might remember that I wrote about the third event last year. And if you don't remember, at least you have a handy link, now.

This first competition, like the one that will come next week, took place at Baltimore County Community College's Dundalk campus. Although the gates open at 9:00, we had to get there around 8:00 to check the girls in and secure a place in the line to get in. As you can see by the photo at left, we wound up pretty close to the front of the line. When we first got there, it was very overcast and foggy. In fact, the bright spot in the photo between the tree and the fence isn't the sun burning through; it's the lights shining on the field. That path leads to a steep hill that, fortunately, has steps cut into it. Those lights are atop poles that are at least 40 to 50 feet tall.

The girls go through a separate entrance and at 9:00, we're allowed in. Each team has its own area roped off on the field, arranged in rows that flank a big mat. At right you can see the Parkville girls' area. The rope in the foreground is the one that the parents need to stay behind; we all brought portable chairs and stuff to keep ourselves comfortable. The white canopy is where the judges sit. When I took this picture I was standing in the Bel Air parents' section, which had nobody in it because there weren't any squads competing in the morning session. Each group of cheerleaders got a short period to run through their routines one more time, more or less out of sight of the parents and judges, then they had to return to the rope corral.

The cheer squads appear grouped by age and skill level. So first they do age 3-5, which is exhibition-only, then the 5-7s, and so forth. There's also sometimes overlap with the groups, despite a one-year cushion built into each group. Thus, the 5-7 group could have students aged 4-8 in it. This is why Wee One, who is nine, is in the 6-8 group. But the overlaps also mean that a squad may not have any direct competition. So if, say, the team from Fallston has a 7-9 group and Parkville has 6-8 and 9-11, they won't compete against one another. Thus, it's possible that a team could be the only one in their class and automatically take first place. (This did happen a couple of times today.)

This picture is Wee One's squad shortly before they were asked to line up to perform. None of the girls in this shot have their own hair on the back; they're all wearing weaves.

The teams are announced as being "on the mat", "on deck" (next) or "in the hole", which is the group that follows whoever's "on deck". The schedule is usually a little better organized than it was today; a few teams were a little surprised to learn that they were in the hole, when they were still in the corral area, so they had to hustle over to the far end of the field to get into place.

There's a special place for parents to view and photograph their kids during the routines, and while I'm taller than most moms, I had the double disadvantage of A) having people in front of me by the time I got there, and B) having the sun shining directly into my face, so I couldn't see my camera's screen clearly at all. As a result a lot of the pictures I took during the routine were of the "point and pray" variety. I got some nice shots of the back of someone's head, though:

The girls taking the mat.

Doing their thing.

This is the start of a pyramid that didn't quite work out because the groups were so far apart. I'm told that they don't lose a lot of points on it if the girls do everything else that they're supposed to do, e.g. put up their hands as if they're still joined.

Doing their last build.

After all of the groups had presented, including two adult groups and a teenaged group from the Special Olympics, there was a break before announcing the awards.

Now, what happens when they do this part is that they typically announce the last place first, and work their way up to the winners. Thus, the girls learn early on that if they don't hear their names by the time Second Place is announced, then they've won. And we don't have programs or presentation lists, so we're pretty much depending on the standings to tell us how many teams are competing.

The announcer called out the 6-8 Third Place winner, then a Second Place winner. Parkville wasn't either of those, so naturally pandemonium broke out in our section, followed by confusion when a First Place winner was announced that also wasn't Parkville. Finally we learned that we'd placed fourth in a field of four, but they hadn't called fourth place before the others. Poor planning, poor presentation and these girls basically got their hopes dashed as a result.

We're still not sure what caused this squad to place so poorly; with any luck the coaches will get to see the judges' score sheets so they have some idea of what to work on, other than the pyramid. I guess it's possible that the scores were quite close and the pyramid was just enough to send us to the bottom, but I really don't know. What I do know is that, if history is an accurate guide, the girls are going to see some a very different style coming from their coaches. And, if the coaches are smart, the parents will see a different attitude coming from the coaches as well. 'Nuff said.

I Want This T-Shirt

2008-10-02T00:10:00-04:00

Bonus points if you can identify the source material.

Friday Night Lights

2008-10-02T00:05:00-04:00

[Team motto]

Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can't Lose.

--Friday Night Lights (2006-present)

--------------------------------------

Hurray! Friday Night Lights is back! But only if you have DirecTV. All the rest of you will have to wait another few months.

No spoilers here, even though the show has aired for the sattelite folks. The timeline has jumped forward several months. Tami has a new job and some tough choices to make. Coach Taylor is trying to get his team's act back together after last season and the graduation of a few key players, such as Smash Williams. Funny Landry is back, Tyra is kicking ass again, Julie is still a snot, Grace is still weird-looking. Buddy is up to his usual antics, as is the rest of the town, which includes a new character, the rich booster father of a freshman player.

The DirecTV shows are clocking in at about 52-53 minutes so far, so presumably something's going to have to get cut when they air on NBC early next year. So if you're a fan, perhaps now is the time to get the DirecTV if you haven't already. You don't want to miss any of this show.

When Doing My Job Makes My Job Easier

2008-10-01T23:58:00-04:00

Leo McGarry: This guy's walking down a street when he falls in a hole. The walls are so steep, he can't get out. A doctor passes by, and the guy shouts up, "Hey you, can you help me out?" The doctor writes a prescription, throws it down in the hole and moves on. Then a priest comes along, and the guy shouts up "Father, I'm down in this hole, can you help me out?" The priest writes out a prayer, throws it down in the hole and moves on. Then a friend walks by. "Hey Joe, it's me, can you help me out?" And the friend jumps in the hole. Our guy says, "Are you stupid? Now we're both down here." The friend says, "Yeah, but I've been down here before, and I know the way out."

—The West Wing, "Noël" (12/20/00)

--------------------------------------------

So yesterday, I had planned to do an educational assessment, but it got pulled out from under me because I didn't make a phone call early enough in the day on Monday. This wasn't a total disaster for me, since I had an overdue project (or two...or three, now that I think about it) to finish, so I sent an email to my boss saying that I was taking the time to finish the projects now that the ed assessment was cancelled. I got back an email saying simply "OK".

And so to work. I didn't necessarily need to be in a school building to do all this, and working at home can get a little distracting, so I opted for the Public Library. Oops, not open till 10:00. But, no worries. I hit Valentino's restaurant nearby, got a cup of tea and started typing. Later on, I did hit the Library and got almost everything done. I'd have finished except that 1) I had a doctor appointment in the afternoon, and 2) I was fielding phone calls from other people who needed help.

Let me tell you, the folks who called me yesterday had some WEIRD problems. I don't think I spent less than fifteen minutes on the phone with any one of them.

Anyway. VERY productive day overall and I never set a toe inside a school building.

This morning was also shaping up to be a relatively light day. I had to meet with a couple of teachers to talk about this week's Progress Reports, get a few documents cleaned up, prepare for next week's meetings, no big deals. Shortly after leaving the house, I got a call from the school's psychologist. She, like so many service providers in Baltimore City, is assigned to more than one school. She's calling from the other school, which is not far from my home.

She said that my boss thought I'd be able to help, and then launches into a whole thing. The school has no IEP Team Associate, and things are all discombobulated, and they have these meetings today and they're pretty lost and my boss' counterpart was there yesterday and started stuff but they're not sure where to pick up, and--

OK, OK, I've heard enough. I told them I could come and help out, but I couldn't stay through the entire day. So I turned the car around and headed to this other school.

Now, since the conversation started with "[your boss] thought you might be able to help", I'm thinking that this is a sanctioned action. The principal at my school might not be so thrilled with this, but I'll get that settled later. This is a team that's in dire need of help, and as it turns out I'm able to help them. No-brainer.

The problem was, I apparently misunderstood the psychologist, and so my boss didn't really expect me to go to the school and help out. But in the long run, I expected some support in this. What I didn't expect is this "nobody knew where you were yesterday, [except for the email I'd sent], nobody knew where you were this morning, you need to tell me when you change your schedule, nobody knows where you're supposed to be" routine that I got from my boss.

I've said it a million times; I work for the students and their parents. The people in the IEP Teams, they're my coworkers. And it's my job to support them. I'm not going to get hung up on "this is my territory, this is your territory" crap. We're all Baltimore City Schools. And this particular school, as I learned on my visit, is desperately disorganized and probably incurring multiple violations of the Consent Decree on a daily basis. All of the service providers are overscheduled and so none of them can do the entire job of a missing IEP Team Associate. So they're patching together whatever they can but the bottom line is, no matter how good they all are (and they are; I've worked with all of them at one time or another in other schools), they can't do their job and all this, too.

And this is more or less what I told my boss when he finally got through to me around 12:30. I also told him that my conscience was clear in this one. That's when he wished me a good day and hung up. Then I got a terse call shortly thereafter, telling me that my presence at a meeting next week was unnecessary. Oh, and the assessment I didn't get to do yesterday had been reassigned. I'm comfortable with all of this as well, since I have other stuff that can easily take the place of these two.

People need help, I go and help them. That's part of my job. And my school didn't suffer for it, since I stayed there from noon until 5:30 today. I got everything done that I'd planned to, and I managed to field the phone calls and the emails from the people looking for assistance. I don't care that I'm not specifically assigned to the school; I don't care that it's "not in my area". These are my coworkers; these are my kids. And sometimes I'm with students and/or parents and that means that I'm not going to answer my phone.

You know what? This city has a lot of real battles to fight. I've about had it with the cosmetic ones.

Just to be Faire About It

2008-09-30T20:40:19-04:00

Josh Lyman: You're quite a nerd, Mr. President.
President Josiah Bartlet: Really?
Josh Lyman: Yes, sir.
President Josiah Bartlet: I assume that was said with all due respect?
Josh Lyman: [a beat] Yes, sir.

—The West Wing, "Enemies" (11/17/99)

------------------------------------

I am pretty much of a self-proclaimed nerd. I aspire to be a geek, but I don't really have the time to put into it.

My problem is that I don't necessarily fit the nerd mold, either. I dig Star Trek (and I've been DVRing the Original Series episodes they run late at night on the weekends so I can see and appreciate the remastering), but I didn't think much of Lord of the Rings. I was an early adopter of Monty Python but never warmed to comics the way others seemed to. You get the idea.

But for whatever reason, I never warmed up to the idea of the Renaissance Festival. Even when I was younger and had opportunity to go to the ones in upstate New York, they just didn't hold a lot of appeal for me. And as I got older, it just seemed a little weirder.

It's not the costumes, and it's not the people walking around saying really old stuff like "Ye" or "verily" (and usually wrong). I've been to Williamsburg, VA and Plymouth, MA, and interacted with the docents there, all of whom behaved in character. I even get annoyed when someone comes along and tries to force them to behave in a modern manner, as though it were a contest of some kind. But when it comes to the RennFest...I don't know. And I can't see how people can get so jacked up about it.

Maybe it's the idea that these people don't do this sort of thing for the rest of the year, the way they do in the historical villages. Maybe it's that they seem to take it almost TOO seriously. But even when they don't, it strikes me as a little odd.

One night, when I lived in Northern New Jersey, I was in my usual bar and they had trouble locating the disc I'd chosen. So I stood there with the mike in my hand and decided to make use of it (as a former broadcasting major this wasn't exactly foreign territory for me). I saw a group of people I didn't recognize. I figured that they were there for a party of some kind so I asked them what was up. It turned out that they were all employees of Medieval Times (in nearby Lyndhurst, NJ), and they'd just gotten off work.

"Medieval Times? That's the place where they give you the paper crowns and you have to eat with your hands, isn't it?" They all signaled their assent. "Cool. You know, I can do all that for a lot less money at the Burger King, right?"

So it turns out, you don't want to piss off a bunch of drunks who handle lances for a living. But I did live to tell the tale, so.

So I've known, and been friends, with otherwise ordinary people who will buy very expensive props and authentically-constructed costumes which also cost a boatload of money, for the privilege of being tourists at an event, as though the outfits and the props give them extra license refer to women as "wenches", to the point where you get upbraided if you don't. And I'm reminded of this.

You May Think It's Funny But It Snot

2008-09-26T08:38:31-04:00

Det. James 'Jimmy' McNulty: This kid, whose mama went to the trouble to christen him Omar Isaiah Betts... You know, he forgets his jacket, his nose starts running and some asshole, instead of giving him a Kleenex, he calls him "Snot". So he's Snot forever. Doesn't seem fair.
Kid: Life just be that way, I guess.

—The Wire, "The Target" (6/2/02)

----------------------------------------

I've always had trouble with my sinuses, my whole life. Sinuses, and later on, allergies. When I was just out of college I went to an allergist. The first thing he did was a blood draw to do a test called an "IGE". Now, as it was explained to me, when they do this test, a value of 80-100 indicates that you're probably allergic to something, but that's all it says. A value over 100 indicates a stronger probability.

My value was in the three thousand range. The doctor was quick to point out that this doesn't indicate HOW allergic I am to whatever, but that there's clearly a lot going on here. So, we did the scratch tests, which all came up negative. Then he did something called "intradermals", in which they take allergenic substances (such as pollen) and inject it into a point just under the skin. You know how they do the TB test and make a little bubble? Like that. Those all came up positive. Then they gave me a huge dose of Benadryl ('cause I was practically dying by then) and we started on allergy shots for a year.

Flash-forward to 2008. It's been my worst year EVER for allergies, and on top of that I've had numerous upper respiratory infections, and GF says that she's heard me appear to stop breathing at night.

What! I don't need a doctor to tell me that not breathing is bad. Everyone I've seen somebody not breathing, they slap a lid over them and stick their ass in the ground. So this week I went to see an Ear, Nose and Throat guy recommended by a co-worker, who recommended him on the basis of his being quite the hottie.

I'll confess at this point that I'm totally blind to that sort of thing when it comes to men. Why women are attracted to us at all, that's a complete mystery. Never mind what makes a particular guy "hot". I mean, I can look at someone and say "Yeah, he's a good-looking guy," but I couldn't define what makes one man attractive to women and another guy not.

Anyway. So Doctor Hot (? Whatever.) interviewed me, got a history, looked in my ears and nose and throat (hence the diploma). He noted that I do, indeed, have the deviated septum, but he doesn't like to operate unless he thinks it's going to actually do me some good. So he'd like to have a few tests done, all on one day.

So, one day next month, I'm going to get a CT scan of my sinuses, to find out what's in there that's sinus and what's in there that isn't. From there I have to take the film to an allergist. I'm supposed to be there for two hours, so presumably I'm going to be tested all over again. And then it's back to Doctor Hot, where we decide what's going to happen next.

And, since I'll have a lot of wait time between appointments, if GBMC has wireless then I guess I'll be practically live-blogging the experience.

I Don't Get This

2008-09-24T23:10:02-04:00

Mitch Brenner: I guess we read the same gossip columns.
Melanie Daniels: Oh, that. Rome.
Mitch Brenner: Yeah, I really like to swim, I think we might get along very well.
Melanie Daniels: In case you're interested, I was pushed into that fountain.
Mitch Brenner: Without any clothes on?
Melanie Daniels: With all my clothes on. The newspaper that ran that story happens to be a rival of my father's paper.
Mitch Brenner: You're just a poor, innocent victim of circumstances, huh?
Melanie Daniels:Well I'm neither poor nor innocent, but the truth of that particular...

—The Birds (1963)

-----------------------------

(Picture swiped from the City Paper.)

Yesterday afternoon, shortly after I got home, GF asked me if I'd heard the latest news about the late Ken Harris. I had, but I wanted to see where she was going with it, so I said no.

"It turns out that there was somebody in the car with him," she said, with just a hint of conspiracy in her voice.

"So?"

"It was a woman."

Now I knew where she was going, so I replied again, "So?"

"She wasn't his wife."

"...and?"

"Well, it's pretty obvious that he was up to something."

This is where the conversation pretty much broke down. Her point, which I've heard other people spout, is that if he hadn't been out with this woman then he wouldn't have been killed. And the way that I've heard it phrased, is that because he may have been doing something that ain't quite right (and as I write this, I don't think it's clear what relationship he has with this person), that he somehow had it coming.

That's absurd. ABSURD! What's the matter with this city, anyway?

Look, this is not a case where a guy is on a street corner and tries to buy some heroin, and the deal goes bad and the guns go off and that's that. Nor is this a situation where someone is, himself, out committing a crime and winds up in a firefight because his intended victim turns out to be heavily armed.

This is a man who is doing something that anybody might be doing. It was late at night and he was (presumably) looking to open a bottle of wine. A light goes off in his head: "Hey, I have a friend at the bar nearby; I'm sure he can help." So off he heads.

And he winds up getting killed for it.

It doesn't matter whom he was with. Nor does it matter why he was with her, unless this was some weird situation where she set him up to be there for assassination, which doesn't sound so likely to me. The fact is, Ken Harris could have been any guy in any parking lot who was doing something that wasn't illegal and, in so doing, became our city's Murder Victim #160 for the year. It just so happened that he was locally famous.

The message that the "Divine Justice" crowd is handing out is that we shouldn't go out. If we stay home, nothing bad can happen to us. Does anybody see anything wrong with this head-in-the-sand mentality? Are we so inured to the violence in this city that we simply find some reason in our heads to justify why we weren't the victim this time? "Hey, he shouldn't have been there at that hour. He was doing wrong and got what was coming to him." It doesn't matter! The man didn't deserve to die just for being where he was!

I, for one, can't remain cloistered in my house just because something could happen to me. Many of the schools I work with (or in, for that matter) are in less-than-excellent neighborhoods. If I'm out doing my job and I take a bullet, is the refrain going to be that I shouldn't have been in that neighborhood? That I shouldn't have been doing my job? That I shouldn't have been working to make the lives of children in our city a little better, and that I shouldn't have done my job without regard for race or economic ranking?

I truly don't understand the mind-set involved, here.

Multitasking!

2008-09-21T13:40:52-04:00

Demetri Martin: Employee of the month is a good example of how somebody can be both a winner and a loser at the same time.

—Comedy Central Presents: Demitri Martin (3/19/04)

-------------------------------

I pulled this out of my garden this morning:

Yes indeed, kids. This is the SECOND time this season that I've picked a batch of tomatoes like this. The first batch already went into about three gallons of pasta sauce. This will yield a similar amount.

I'll probably get another harvest like this in another week or two. Then I'll be set for the entire winter with the sauce, even if I share with B & S. And I think they're kind of counting on my sharing, since S did take the time to hit my garden with the Miracle-Gro. Once.

So I have three projects going on today. Making a huge pot of sauce is the first one. The second involves helping my boss with a work-related project. It's a little tedious (and by "a little," I mean "soul-crushingly"), and involves some computer-based research, at which I'm probably a little faster than he is, so I was glad to assist. I just hope he wasn't counting on me giving this my FULL attention, because...

Hey, it's Sunday. Are you ready for some football? Today's game looks, on paper, to be a pretty tight matchup with a slight edge to the Browns, but Joe Flacco has been a pleasant surprise for the Ravens and we also have that unexpected sort-of bye week (which could hurt things down the line; we'll have to see). So I'm thinking that this will be a pretty good game, regardless of the outcome. Of course, I've been wrong about that sort of thing before.