T. Rex discusses how tattoos are made of awesome: [link]

That one is awesome! The last panel especially cracked me up....

I need to find a way to support programs like this because for so many kids like her and her peers here in city schools, college is so much not even an option they don't even dream about it. And she's one of the lucky ones because she's got a dad who is determined she'll go to college because he didn't.

That just about killed me when I taught high school in the East Village (Ukranian and Polish immigrants, or kids of) and they had no idea that college was even a possibility. I was so happy when I ran into one of them working years later in one of the research rooms at the NYPL.

T. Rex discusses how tattoos are made of awesome: [link]

That one is awesome! The last panel especially cracked me up....

Sir! I promise nothing!

Is that Tivo deal for current subscribers?

it's all the stuff that middle-class college educated parents would do as a matter of course, but these kids don't have those parents, so they need these programs.

And even for the parents who do have that dream, but no experience and few means or connections, it is daunting. I mean, they borrow gas money from me sometimes between paychecks. Without those programs, it would seem even more elusive.

It amazes me the expectations I took for granted, and I grew up in a pretty limited place in some respects. And the experiences. But the whole east coast public education and opportunities status was a big shocker to me. Naive of me, sure. But I got lucky in the sense that as poor as my community was, we had fucking awesome public ed.

And even for the parents who do have that dream, but no experience and few means or connections, it is daunting.

Yeah, absolutely. It's a matter of, here's when you need to sign up for the SATs and here's how you need to prepare to take them, and did you know about all of these different kinds of colleges, and let's go visit them, and do you need someone to review your application essays, and -- I mean, the stuff my parents did just as a matter of course goes on and on. Because they knew the system!

Actually, I was thinking about some of this recently, listening to some really impressive high school kids -- I hope someone is telling them to apply to expensive private schools, because they would get a lot of financial aid, but they might only be looking at the price tag and writing them off.

Schechting an animal is complicated. It's got to be done with a very sharp knife, and just one cut at the neck. And it has to be done with the knife held in such a way that the animal can't see it coming. And a whole bunch of other rules that I don't really know since I never really studied that side of the kosher meat process much. (Given a properly-killed and cleaned chicken, though, I do know how to do the salting and stuff to make it kosher. But that's much simpler. And it's a largely impractical skill nowadays, since, aside from the whole being-vegetarian thing, most kosher butchers will do that for you. You only needed to do it yourself back in the days when you were buying a chicken with feathers still on it.)

I just have to post these awesome lyrics by The Handsome Family for the song "So Long." The music is country and slow:

So long to my dog Stickers who ate Christmas tinsel
So long to Mr Whiskers who jumped out of a window
And to the family of gerbils who chewed out of their cage
And the little brown rabbit I ran over by mistake

So long, so long, I'll see you on the other side

So long to the goldfish who ate each others' tails
So long to the chipmunk trapped under the stairs
So long to the rosebush I never watered
And to whatever was inside that hole that I bricked over

So long, so long, I'll see you on the other side

So long to the seagull I hit with a rock
So long to the squirrel I accidentally shot
And to everything I burned with a magnifying lens
That long lonely summer when I was only ten

So long, so long, I'll see you on the other side

Funny and sad can go well together....

I know my mention of taking the PSATS (I don't know if they still have those, for all I can remember, I took the regular SATs as a sophomore) prompted T to sign up for whatever version exists now. But even so, she's got teachers who are pushing her into that sort of thing anyway. Thank goodness.

Again, she's a lucky kid, with an involved dad and she got into a magnet school where they push this stuff.

But ALL schools should push this stuff. I look at my next door neighbor's great-grandchild, who graduated last year and is 18. She's working, hoping she can save for community college, and to hear her talk, she doesn't think it realistic. She never was pushed, rarely had confidence instilled in her. Schools sure didn't. The thing is, she's working as an admin in the hospital system here. It'll give her so many opportunities if she knows to take them.

we just got an email from Kerri Strug, and my minion is freaking out. It literally didn't occur to me that this email from the Department of Justice about some budget mods was actually from the Olympic gymnast, but sure enough, it is. Apparently.

Jesse, Kerri Strug's brother Kevin was a cheerleader at the same time I was at my university. I'm not surprised that she's DoJ; if I recall his family was pretty political active.

Jilli, thanks! I was going to blog the pic so you might see it more easily.