One of the comments that Laura heard a lot was that volunteers could take her job.

Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaaaaaaaa.

---

This time it was national health care and how we shouldn't trust the government to do anything efficiently.

I think the problem with health care is there is a desire for it work both as a free market system and a government service. Everybody should be able to get it, but the government shouldn't be involved.

It's sort of like going to the road store to buy the street your house is on and going to the road repair place to get it serviced. I'm sure there are people who think that's great, but I imagine most people don't want roads to work that way.

The current system isn't even a good free market system. The insurance model for something everybody will need is kinda weird. You have employers having to deal with health care which is a big headache especially for small businesses. You're screwed if you're not able to get in a large pool. To me it feels like a bunch of band-aids.

---

To me it feels like a bunch of band-aids.

Yeah. Plus with socialized medial insurance you'd have one big bureaucracy. With the current system you've got thousands of smaller bureaucracies, duplicating effort and what-not (which is, oddly enough, far less efficient than one big bureaucracy would be). A major reason for all the increases in insurance premiums in the last few decades has been the sharp increase in paperwork and associated bureaucracy. The % of people's health care $ that goes to bureaucracy/paperwork is far higher than it used to be.

---

Senior year in high school, we bought books for history class so that we could write in them. (There were some loaners in case people couldn't afford them.)

Come to think of it, we did it in English Lit, too.

People gobsmack me with the stupid. Everyone wants something for nothing (by which I mean, roads and services, but none of those nasty taxes!), and no one seems to get the concept of for the public good.

---

Deeply bizarre Friday Afternoon video [okay for work]: [link]

---

I love annotating text and think it's a good skill to be taught to students, especially with readers who struggle because it makes explicit what is often a hidden process -- that of making meaning of a text. And I will often, with short pieces, have kids get credit for annotating (or group annotating) because they are practicing it and need motivation to do so since it isn't easy.

...

And there are lots of ways to annotate and teach annotating. For many of the teachers I work with, it's now WHAT or HOW something is annotated, but it is the fact that annotation happens that is important.

Yep to both of these, especially the practicing part. And no, it wasn't taught in most schools until very recently; like Susan said, most of us got to college and realized we actually could write in books and started to...because it was really helpful in paying attention to the text and remembering it. Its usefulness has a lot to do with learning styles, especially for kinesthetic/visual learners. The act of marking the text helps lock it into your brain.

I give my kids a bunch of different appoaches like marking the actual text, using post-its (color-coded are especially effective), or creating notes systems so that they can deal with any kind of text they face. If it's their own book and not one they want to keep pristine, mark that sucker up! If they don't want to write in the book or if it's not their own book (I can't believe anyone would write a library book. Seriously, people! Manners!), then post-its or a note system work well. Like Kat said, it's not really the "what" or "how" of the annotation as much as it is understanding the process and developing a system that works for you.

In my opinion, teaching active reading skills like this alongside writing process skills are the major pedogogical leaps that English teaching has made in the past 20 years.

I love love LOVE the library. So very much. I am always horrified when I hear stories like your friend's, Allyson. My ex-MIL was a librarian assistant in a small town in upstate NY, and they were constantly fighting to keep their library funded and open. I just don't understand how people could think that the internet replaces the need for libraries. Yes, research is easier, but unless you have access to some of the better academic databases (ProQuest, Galegroup, JStor, etc.) , you aren't getting the quality of research that is available at local libraries through their computers. And in terms of pleasure reading...FREE BOOKS, people! How can they not get that?!?

Um. I may be ranting. I'm going to blame my student advisory group, who brought in Oreos and milk this morning. I may be a bit sugar-buzzed.

---

The house we're buying has a very high level of radon. Anyone here ever dealt with radon mitigation? How much does it cost to fix? Will it give us cancer?

---

Extreme pumpkins

Giant squid pumpkin

---

But I think libraries, especially branch libraries, are a waste of space as they exist now. They duplicate effort with school libraries and rec centers.

I work at a Twig ( too small to be a branch)-the people that come in Need us. and our number of users has grown amazingly over the last couple of months. and, BTW, I working CA - let me tell you about how bad the public school libraries are.

and yesterday had to be one of the best days ever. I started a kids book club - yesterday was the first meeting. 3 kids - all 4th graders - but it was Great. We read The witches by Roald Dahl . First - I didn't even have to ask questions to et them to start talking - they just started up. They were all voracious readers. my two favorite comments

- You know I sometimes think books are better than tv.

and then we were talking about being turned into a mouse. They decided that the worse part about being a mouse is that it would be hard to read a book - and they were wondering how long it would take to turn a page if they were a mouse.

Seriously, what else could I ask for?

Happy Birthday Burrell

---

Oh, beth, what great kids!

I don't know if I was clear in my amazement before - I think it's wonderful that annotation is being taught. Looking back, it probably would have helped me immensely. It's astounding that there could be such a change in what still feels like a short period of time since I was in school.

---