Baltimore Diary

Get Used to Disappointment, Kid

Mutt Williams: You know, for an old man you ain't bad in a fight. What are you, like 80?

—Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)

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

Wee One was invited to a birthday party this weekend. It was a big deal kind of event, where there were plans to go to some place in Pennsylvania and spend the night, and there would be swimming and all kinds of revelry for eight-year-olds. Not the kind of party I'd throw for kids, but it sounded like fun.

The bad news was, it was scheduled for this weekend, which is her weekend to be with The Sperm Donor her father. He wasn't going to waste any time going to Pennsylvania (he would have been welcome to come along), and that was the end of that. To make up for it, he got them a pair of tickets to the Orioles game scheduled for today. So they'd do whatever they were going to do Saturday night, spend Sunday at the ballpark and have a reasonably pleasant weekend, even if the party wasn't part of it.

He called on Saturday afternoon around noon to say that he was about to leave. We needed to go visit with GF's grandmother (who recently transferred to a nursing home from the congregate housing she was in previously), so we arranged to meet him there. Since his mother lives in the same complex, and it cuts his travel time by about a half hour, it's good all around. Wee One packed a set of clothes for the game, her Nintendo DS (naturally), and a couple of other doodads that almost-nine-year-olds can't live without.

In the nursing home, GF's phone rang and I answered it. It was SD her father. He was having car trouble. More accurately, he thought he might be having car trouble and decided it wasn't worth the risk. I made some commisserating noises and suggested that he talk to Wee One. I handed over the phone and of course there's all kinds of tears mixed with the almost-not-quite-kinda-sorta-maybe-meaning-it "That's OK"s and such. By now, GF's returned from wherever she'd been, so now we get to pick up the pieces. And how do we do this, you ask? By taking Wee One along on our date night.

Now, we'd pondered going to the May Birthday thing to celebrate with the local blogiverse, even though I'd be a Designated Driver (today's my last day on the Weapons-Grade Antibiotics), but I do have to draw a line with taking a kid into a situation where there's a bunch of grownups drinking, even if it's technically legal for that child to be there. (Pig Roast notwithstanding, ahem.) Plus, she's in third grade, when they start indoctrinating the kids into all that "Drinking is bad, mmmkay?" routine, so now we have a pint-size Carrie Nation on our hands. I hope all you guys had fun, anyway.

Instead, we decided we'd do one of those things I swear not to do: we went to the movies on a Saturday night. Not only did we go to the movies, we went to White Marsh. To see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. That's right. We went to that hellhole (as all movie theaters are on Saturday nights) to see one of the top films in the nation.

Without getting too spoilery, I'll say this: The movie clocks in at about two hours and five minutes, and the first hour and forty minutes are pretty good, It's about what you'd expect from the Indiana Jones franchise, even almost twenty years later, and despite Shia LeBeouf's performance. It's that last 20 minutes or so that gives you a little bit of "...the hell?" It was almost prophetic on my part to buy Reese's Pieces at the snack bar earlier in the evening.

We saw the 8:00 show and by the time we got home, everyone was pretty much ready for bed. And sometimes, that's how Date Night goes.

Telling Tales

Brian: [mistaking a police scanner for a normal radio, during a crime report] Is it just me, or is rap music getting lazier?

—Family Guy, "A Hero Sits Next Door" (5/2/99)

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

There have been a bunch of changes up and down the radio dial lately, and I'm not sure I get all of them.

The thing about Mark Steiner everyone knows about already. A bunch of listeners are upset, WYPR has managed to entrench themselves on this issue, so Steiner has moved up the dial to 88.9 FM. Last I heard he doesn't have a regular gig yet but they're working on that. Dan Rodericks, in the meantime, is terrible. Soooo, I'm sitting on my membership money. I'd be curious to see if anyone else did as well; at least enough to make a dent in the station's income.

What really confuses me is the changes made over at Live 105 FM. They've actually made matters worse for themselves, as far as I can tell.

It doesn't seem to me that anyone currently in Baltimore radio has heard of the idea of counter-programming. All this means is that, when someone else with a similar format is in a stop set (commercial block), you do your best to ensure that you're not. So many times a station I'm listening to goes to commercials, so I scan through my presets, only to discover that they're ALL in stop sets. The only station that managed to avoid this trap was Live 105. Now, they've become remarkably predictable in that they've got a network news break at the top of the hour, then a local news break, then they have the traffic with its attendant stop set every 15 minutes. So if a station I'm listening to goes to a commerical, I actually know whether or not to bother listening to them as I zip through presets, because nine times out of ten I'll know whether they'll be in a break or a stop set.

Plus, as it happens, I got to listen to a LOT more Ed Norris when he was on middays. However, now that it's Troy Johnson or Brian Wilson, I don't hear nearly as much of that station as I used to. Of course, this is all snippets heard when traveling from one school to another, but still.

The other thing that got to me this week was learning that Bob Waugh on WRNR isn't necessarily in the studio when he's on-air. His show appears to be voicetracked. "Voicetracking" is when a DJ pre-records all the intros and outros to the songs he's playing, and then someone else in the studio plays the DJ's chatter and the attendant records. A couple of days ago, WRNR was playing a song, then Waugh said a few words, then they went to a stop set. During the stop set, we suddenly heard Waugh doing the exact same outro for the song he'd just played. Therefore, Waugh's voice was recorded and his show is likely to be voicetracked. I've liked Bob Waugh since I was younger, listening to him on WBAB on Long Island, so this was a bit of a disappointment.

I've also heard that the Smooth Jazz station at 104.3 is now gone, with a format change to a kind of Adult Alternative. Since their definition of "Jazz" was kind of loose, this isn't a huge loss. But cities should have jazz stations, and not just the Andy Bienstock option.  

This post was kind of a ramble, so feel free to add your own thoughts.

Metapost: Defending Your Life

Quint: He's either very smart or very dumb.

—Jaws (1975)

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

[Epiph basically beat me to this post earlier today, but mine is wordier. Plus, I'd already started this one  when I saw his. Thus, when you print our respective posts out, mine is a little more useful in the bathroom, if you know what I mean.]

The downside to having a blog that's read by people you know is that they want you to make them famous, without necessarily making them famous.

Since I tend to write about some aspects of my life obliquely, I get a lot of "that wasn't about me, was it? Was that about me? It was, wasn't it." There's a perverse brand of pride involved in someone identifying themselves as the idiot who did that stupid thing the other day. Especially since the answer is usually "No."

The other thing that happens is that people take my comments in the exact opposite spirit in which they were offered, Jokes are taken seriously, and of course the serious stuff gets a hearty laugh. "That was pretty funny, that thing about how dead babies are sad! Haw haw haw!"

Stuff like that is when I'm actually glad I don't get more comments.

Every now and again I toy with the idea of not writing about the stuff I do. As it is, I do a lot of self-censoring:

• I could write about the IEP Teams which came thisclose to getting sued if not for my intervention, who then complained that I was mean to them, but that could violate confidentiality unless I change a LOT of facts.
• I could write about any number of teams whose approach to a student has been essentially "We've tried nothing and it hasn't worked!" and who then complain because my recommendations weren't what they were looking for, but I really don't enjoy having to go on the defensive with the decisions I make. Plus, sometimes it's just my job to be an extra set of eyes and perhaps notice the obvious stuff that they might overlook. Is that insulting? Too bad.
• I could write about GF watching me carry toilet paper to the downstairs bathroom and then asking me, "What are you going to do with that?" (because there are so many options?), but we've gotta maintain the peace around here, yes? Ah, hell.
• I could write something darkly comic about how there's still a lot of lead in Baltimore's water, which adds up to job security for special educators in this town, but I already did that one.
• I could write about the stupid things I've done with contact lenses, but I covered a lot of that ground already, too.
• I could write about the fatuousness of the phrase "It is what it is", which has only grown in its ubiquity in this town, but still boils down to "I choose not to think too deeply about this topic, nor to discuss it with you." I'm not sure what good that would do, though.

I don't write as a means of venting, or therapy, or practicing for the next Great American Novel. I certainly don't do it to demonstrate that I'm the smartest kid in the room and here's why I'm right and they're wrong. I do it because I enjoy it. I like expressing myself; I like turning a phrase around a little bit; I like finding the quotations at the top of the posts (and you may not believe this, but Cheese was the one who inspired me to do that). I've gone over three years and well over 500 posts, and I've seen the quality of my writing grow. Some of the stuff from 'way back when is cringe-worthy, but I don't want to go all George Lucas on them. lest I be accused of revisionist history.

So at this point I have to regret nothing I've written, and nothing I haven't. It is what it is.

Heh.

Sometimes It Is About the Barbecue

Homer: Look kids! I just got my party invitiations back from the printers.
Lisa: [reading the invitation] "Come to Homer's BBBQ. The extra B is for BYOBB."
Bart: What's that extra B for?
Homer: It's a typo.

—The Simpsons, "Lisa the Vegetarian" (10/15/95)

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

A couple of nights ago, we were trying to figure out what, if anything, we were going to do for dinner tonight. Now, several weeks ago the neighbors brought home a half a cow they'd purchased from a farm somewhere north of here, possibly in Delaware. In among all that half-cow was a nice-sized brisket. We'd all been pretty hot to put that brisket on the smoker, so we decided that today would be an ideal day. The three of us, plus the four of them (the baby doesn't count when you're calculating supper), means that everyone would be pretty well-fed on this thing.

Well. Somewhere between Friday and today, the event started to balloon into something else again. This, by the way, is through no fault of our own. S & B invited a bunch of friends and family along. I didn't mind it as such, but it was kind of funny to see plans for seven adults turn into 20 in the space of about 36 hours.

I put together a dry rub (my brother's recipe; I fully admit it) and started the brisket on the smoker shortly after noon (counting on a 4:00ish serving time). Around 2:00 I put some pork ribs in the oven. At 3:15 I put some Italian sausage on my Binford 16000 grill, and about four pounds of peppers & onions, along with some olive oil, in a wok on the grill's side burner.

Is there a better smell in the world than peppers and onions just starting to cook? Probably, but not when you're in the moment.

3:30: Ribs come out of the oven. By 3:45 they're on the grill and drenched lovingly basted with barbecue sauce. The sausages are tossed into the wok. The brisket comes out of the smoker and is sliced up. It's amazing. By 4:00 everything on my side of the fence is done. Just for kicks I've also skewered some shrimp I found in the freezer and stuck that on the grill with a little BBQ sauce as well. I didn't really like the way the shrimp came out but everyone liked it, so what do I know.

S, on the other side, put corn on the cob on her grill, along with the requisite burgers & dogs, and a last-minute addition of kielbasa. She also made cole slaw, potato salad and a bowtie pasta/shrimp salad. And baked beans.

This all feels like a warmup for my annual pig roast, does it not?

It's Not Just About the Barbecue Thing

Sam Weinberg: Why do you like them so much?
Jo Galloway: Because they stand on a wall. And they say, "Nothing's gonna hurt you tonight. Not on my watch."

—A Few Good Men (1992)

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

A sonnet that Garrison Keillor wrote in 2004 and read during the show on Friday:

We're here to honor those who went to war
Who did not wish to die, but did die, grievously,
In eighteen sixty-one and in two-thousand four
Though they were peaceable as you or me.
Young and innocent, they knew nothing of horror---
Singers and athletes, and all in all well-bred.
Their sergeants, mercifully, made them into warriors,
And at the end, they were moving straight ahead.
As we look at these headstones, row on row on row,
Let us see them as they were, laughing and joking,
On that bright irreverent morning long ago.
And once more, let our hearts be broken.
God have mercy on them for their heroic gift.
May we live the good lives they would have lived.

Just a simple "Thanks" to those who have stood, and who continue to stand on that wall.

Ooh-ooh-ooh-wee, Bad Jokes For Me

Guy Noir: She had a Mount Rushmore t-shirt on, and those guys never looked so good. Especially Jefferson and Lincoln. Kind of bloated but happy.

—A Prairie Home Companion (2006)

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

The worst thing about this past Friday night is that I was taking the Weapons-Grade Antibiotics and therefore drinking alcohol was not advisable.

The best part is that it was a gorgeous night to be on the lawn at Wolf Trap.

GF and I went down there with S&B, our next-door neighbors, to see the Friday performance of "A Prairie Home Companion." The Saturday show, which is the one that gets broadcast, was sold out, but we saw that there was a Friday show and got tickets for that instead.

I had a feeling that we might get some interesting stuff, since it stood to reason that the Friday show might be used as a kind of dress/tech rehearsal where they work some of the kinks out and maybe decide what bits to leave in and what to take out for the broadcast. It turns out that I was partially right and partially wrong. For instance, the show was MUCH longer than the two hours it runs on-air; it started promptly at 8:00, there was an intermission at 9:15 and I think we left around 10:30. The guests were all the same, but the broadcast version had an episode of "Lives of the Cowboys" that we didn't get. And so on.

But it didn't take away from the fact that we were there, and we did have fun. Garrison Keillor opened the show alone on the stage and had everyone sing all of "America the Beautiful". Betcha didn't know there was more than one verse, did you? As he led the audience, he began to walk off the stage and up the side aisle. When he reached the end of the seats, he began to cross over and walk up the center aisle, among the lawn seats. So for a little while at least, the people in the $48 seats were in the "crappy seats" section. As Keillor started all this, GF was in the rest room. She heard him singing and rushed back to where we were. Consequently she nearly collided with him in the aisle, because she didn't realize where he was as he sang. If you were there, too? Yes, she was the one who almost ran him down, then stopped short and did the "pitty pat" applause when I pointed him out to her.

From "America the Beautiful" we went to "The Star-Spangled Banner" and he worked his way back down to the stage. At that point the show proper began and he launched into the show's usual theme song.

I won't go into a full rundown of the show, because that isn't a lot of fun. But I will make mention of the guests. Rhonda Vincent and The Rage is a bluegrass group that's been at the forefront of that style of music for a few years. I know that people who know me think that I don't like country music very much, but the truth is that I don't like modern country very much. The old-school stuff, and the rootsy stuff, I rather enjoy. And bluegrass would be in that category. That doesn't mean that you should run out and buy me a Rhonda Vincent CD or anything. But I'd listen to that before, say, Trace Adkins (although Trace is on my "doesn't suck" list).

The other guest is one of the newest up-and-coming tenors, a fellow named Raul Melo. He's got a fine sense of humor (as evidenced by his performance in the Rhubarb ad and perhaps his costume in the first half of the show), and a great voice (as evidenced by bazillions of opera fans). Again, opera is something that I definitely enjoy. DEFINITELY don't buy me an opera CD though, since I get nothing from that. I enjoy the whole experience. So buy me tickets to a show instead. Italian preferred.

I've done the radio thing, back when I was in college, so it wasn't too weird to me to see Fred Newman doing the various sound effects and all. I didn't realize that he did more voices on the show than I thought he did. And it's fun to watch Tim Russell switch from one voice to another as rapidly as he does. Sue Scott is the type of radio actor who drops all her script pages to the floor as she finishes reading them, but then she scoops them all up again at the end of each bit.

The only real disappointment to the evening was that the stuff in the souvenir stand was actually more expensive in there than it was if I'd purchased it online (shipping notwithstanding). And--AND! No Powdermilk Biscuits, nor rhubarb pie at the concession stand.

Ecch Marks the Spot

[about the United States' hypochondria]
George Carlin: It's ridiculous and it goes to ridiculous lengths! In prisons, before they give you a lethal injection, they swab your arm with alcohol! It's true! It's true. It's true! Well, they don't want you to get an infection! And you can see their point: wouldn't want some guy to go to Hell and be sick! It would take a lot of the sportsmanship out of the whole execution.

—George Carlin: You Are All Diseased (1999)

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

Last week I went to the doctor for my annual checkup, which happens about every 24-30 months. Shut up.

Naturally, there were a few things the doctor wasn't happy with. My weight is up (duh) and despite my good blood pressure, my total cholesterol number can only be expressed using exponents. I had a few issues of my own, however.

I mentioned recently here that my allergies are the worst that they have ever been in my entire adult life, and I shared this with her. That's right: I have a female doctor. My prostate exams aren't so much gay as they are a little kinky. Anyway, she gave me some nasal spray to use, and a drug called Xyzal, which is almost exactly the same thing as Zyrtec.

What's the difference? I'm glad you asked. Very little, it turns out. But the Zyrtec has reached the end of its exclusivity period, which means that you can buy it in the generic over the counter. So they move a molecule from the left side of the compound to the right side, call it a new drug and get another patent. This is an exaggeration, but not by much.

The Zyrtec, however, didn't have the side effect that the Xyzal did, which was to make me dizzy. I know that allergy medications may make you drowsy, but I've never been so whacked out that I was afraid to drive. So I stopped taking the Xyzal and kept using the nasal spray.

Too late, as it turns out. My allergies have developed into a pretty respectable upper respiratory infection, which means that I'm waking up in the morning and coughing up in brilliant shades of green; a green that isn't ordinarily seen in nature except maybe on the planet Fnark during Solar Flare Season.

So I've tried calling the doctor, who appears to have taken a long weekend, and had just about resigned myself to dealing with this until next Tuesday, when lo and behold, Wee One steps on a piece of glass.

GF broke a jar or something in the basement a few months ago, and despite her sweeping and vacuuming, Wee One managed to find a new shard. Worse, we couldn't get it out of her foot. It was almost 9:30 and we figured we were headed for the Emergency Room, when GF remembered a Patient First office nearby and tried to call. Woo Hoo! They're open till 10! Into the car we go to get this glass out of her foot.

On the way, it FINALLY occurs to me that I can get my URI treated while we're there. So while GF is trying to keep Wee One from screaming too loudly at the prospect of maybe having to get a shot for this before they extract the glass, I'm in the next room picking up antibiotics and a cough medicine that I could probably sell to junkies for $10 a hit. Once I'm done I head back into her room and I have to help hold her still while the doctor gives her a Lidocaine shot and uses some cool Doctor-Grade Tweezers to yoink out this piece of glass, which is shaped like a thorn and nearly a half-inch long.

The best part was watching Wee One try to walk out with a numb foot. And since I took the cough syrup shortly before I started typing this, it's definitely off to bed for me.

World Wide Cobweb

Nikolai 'Kolya' Rodchenko: I see. You and your wife, you work in the theater. And you live here...in Siberia.
Raymond Greenwood: It's just temporary.
Rodchenko: [dryly] Of course. Nobody is here permanently.

—White Nights (1985)

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

I mentioned awhile back that the Morrell Park Community Association had decided that they didn't want me to do their newsletter anymore. I wasn't getting any feedback with relation to their website, so I put up a "Goodbye" page letting people know that the site was going to go dark sometime shortly after Christmas.

Well, that's when heads started to explode. The phone calls and emails started, people asking me what was going on, please don't do this, and so on and so forth. The VP of the Association came up with the hosting fee and the renewal and told me that they wanted the website to go on. So I put up a new home page with a new design, and solicited updated information. And I waited for the information.

And waited.

And waited.

And waited. I got information from one person and I put that up, but otherwise nothing came to me.

And the stuff that was on the homepage started to age out, so I took it down, piece by piece. At this point, all that's left is the meeting dates, some recycling information and some contact information for the Association. I'm not going to make stuff up for them, right?

A few weeks ago (April 7) an email came to me from the Association's VP. It read, in part:

Good things are happening back here in Morrell Park.  Next Pancake Breakfast, 8th year for Mayors Clean Up, Big CERT expansion Meeting, Next GED Sessions both day and evening , Little League 28th Parade, updates/plans on MP New Rec Center, Dunkin Donut expansion, and new homes being built to name a few. Also, many Business and Builders want to advertise and our web site update is desperately needed. Good people have offered to help make this happen 
XX and XY son B offered to place MP updates on the web. <snipped> [B] would like to become more involved offering his experience with computers to update MPCA web site.  However, he needs www.morrellpark.net user ID and password.    Could you please forward that information forward so this process and progress can begin ?

I guess that's their way of saying they don't want me to do this anymore either. So I sent a reply telling them it wasn't quite as simple as handing over an ID and a password, and I'd get in touch with B directly.

A few days later, on the following Sunday, I sent B a detailed email telling him how to FTP information to the website: where the hosting is located, etc. He didn't reply, nor has the website been updated since then.

So let me be the first to congratulate the officers of the Morrell Park Community Association on their fine selection of a new webmaster. You've done a fantastic job, so far. And the best part is that I'll be billing the MPCA for hosting a webpage that hasn't been updated in a couple of months.

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

Confidential to SH: I admit it in this space; you were right. 'nuff said.

Gone With The Schwinn

C.J. Cregg: Is there anything I can say other than the President rode his bicycle into a tree?
Leo McGarry: He hopes never to do it again.
C.J. Cregg: Seriously, they're laughing pretty hard.
Leo McGarry: He rode his bicycle into a tree, C.J., what do you want me—"The President, while riding his bicycle on his vacation in Jackson Hole, came to a sudden arboreal stop."—What do you want from me?

—The West Wing, "Pilot" (9/22/99)

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

So a few weeks ago I sought out some advice from friends, neighbors and This Guy, and began the shopping process for a bicycle. I looked at a few websites, I stopped in at a few stores, I taked to a couple of salespeople, and about a week or so ago I decided on the bike I wanted:

Unfortunately, this one wasn't available. Plus, the last one sold for something like $17,000 on eBay, so it was a wee bit out of my range.

I went back to the shops and, specifically, stopped into a place called Performance Bike, on East Joppa Road. I chit-chatted with a sales person, found a bike to my liking that also happened to be on sale, and left, letting him know that I'd be back when my Economic Stimulus arrived from the good folks at the IRS.

As it happened, the day I returned (about a week ago) I went through much the same sort of thing I tend to experience at Petco. However, the place was very busy that day so they get a bye from me on that one. I went back today and it was a good news/bad news kind of thing. The bad news was that the bike I'd wanted was no longer on sale. The good news was that there was a sale on last year's model. The even better news was that after a test ride, I actually liked the older model better. So say hello to my new bicycle: the 2007 model Schwinn Voyageur.

The last bike I had was a ten-speed, with side-pull caliper brakes, a couple of levers on the center post and the kind of handlebars that curved down and then back. I put in thousands of miles on that thing, and even survived a head-on collision with a car while riding it (and this was back when NOBODY wore helmets).

For such a simple machine, the bicycle has gone through a few changes. My new bike has disc brakes, twenty-four gears and a relatively straight handlebar. Disc brakes! I have to admit I like them better, but I'm a little worried about maintaining them. I wasn't even that great at adjusting the side-pull calipers (I tended to screw them up and I'd get one brake shoe dragging a lot). But the typical brakes are so much harsher than the discs. With the usual brakes, there's always this fear that you'll be moving very fast with, and then all of a sudden without, your bike. The twenty-four gears feels to me a little more like "Feature Creep".

My worry at this point is that somehow I'm going to get it into my head that I'm half as old as I am, and try to take the bicycle to get somewhere impossibly far away before I'm in good enough shape to do that. As it is right now, right after I answer the phone I have to stop and catch my breath. Small steps, small steps.

Although, I think my boss would agree that I get plenty of exercise just by pushing my luck, running down the folks at North Avenue and flying off the handle.

Unfortunate Events

Sideshow Bob: [Bob is calling into a radio show] I am presently incarcerated, imprisoned for a crime I did not even commit. "Attempted murder," now honestly, did they ever give anyone a Nobel prize for "attempted chemistry?"

—The Simpsons, "Sideshow Bob Roberts" (10/9/94)

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

By now almost everyone's heard about the latest in a series of stories involving violence in Baltimore City schools. This past Sunday, a pair of 13-year-old boys broke into Calverton Elementary/Middle School, ransacked several rooms and tried to sexually assault one of the assistant principals.

There's not a lot to say about this, really. The public response from the school, Central Office, the Union and the Mayor's Office has run anywhere between tepid and the usual hand-wringing, but in the end I doubt that much is going to happen.

Union President Marietta English has advised teachers not to put themselves in a position to leave the building after dark. Nice advice, Mari. Did you see the part of the story where this took place at 3:30 PM?

Mayor Dixon's representative was quoted in the Sun as saying that there are limitations to what the city can do: "We can't say, 'Here's the new policy.' We can't say, 'Here is the new deployment policy for police in the schools.' ... What we can do is work with the school system and offer any assistance that they are asking for." I hope that's not the same sort of assistance you're giving the Arabbers, and way to screw THEM over, by the way, Ms. Mayor.

The thing that disturbs me is that the teachers knew there was a break-in—and really, how could they not, given the state of the rooms and offices that were affected?—but until Tuesday afternoon, nobody among school staff knew that a staff member had been assaulted. Until it broke on the news, practically no parents were aware that anything had happened.

For the most part, Calverton Elementary/Middle School has been the "innocent bystander" in this neighborhood. It basically marks the line between the Bloods and the Crips, and consequently is the heart of a turf war. When the lockdowns took place there a few weeks ago, it was because of activity OUTSIDE the school that didn't necessarily involve students. Now the violence is starting to move inside.

The school called a staff meeting at the end of the day today, and people were advised to keep the rumors to a minimum. Marjorie Miles, the principal, advised people to leave the school in groups. I guess if you're in the middle of a group, you're only one of several potential targets. I'm not sure what the logic entails there. But the fact is that nobody in the building feels safe anymore, and they don't feel as though anyone really wants to help. You can still see broken glass on the floor inside the office where the students broke in, and there's still fingerprint dust all over the room, because the custodians haven't bothered to clean any of it up. This despite several requests by the person who occupies the office.

Something I don't get is the rather poor response on the part of the parents. Why aren't more of them angry? Why aren't more of them banging on the doors at North Avenue, demanding answers or, at the very least, transfers? Their children's lives are in danger! Here's a quick idea: why not get the preschool programs and the elementary-level kids OFF THE FIRST FLOOR OF THE BUILDING?

And why aren't more teachers furious about the situation they've been thrust into? Their lives are hanging in the balance! Why are they taking it like sheep?

There was a time, in the days of the Roman Empire, when a citizen could walk throughout the known world without fear of being accosted simply because they carried the designation: Civis Romanus; "I am a Roman Citizen". It was universally understood that retribution would be swift and certain. Why haven't the police moved into this neighborhood like the Wrath of God Himself and rendered it untenable for these gangs? Doesn't discouraging this sort of activity do anything toward making the neighborhood a better place?

I honest to god don't get it anymore.