Do Not Seek the Treasure

In my new apartment, we have floor vents to distribute our central heat and air. The kind I remember seeing in churches or schools as a kid. They look like this:

Full of curiosity and an urge to explore, I pulled one open the other day, just to see what I could find. I imagined finding gold doubloons, an old tin with childhood treasures of the previous owner, a passage to Narnia, or even the One Ring, slipped from Smeagol's finger. I found only disappointment.

And a lot of trash:

I excavated as much of the trash as I could from the five floor vents we have. I filled a box lid with secrets long hidden and clandestine tools from past civilizations.

Here's a list of things I found:

• a feather
• pens and pencils
• a Magic: The Gathering card
• cards from a children's board game
• pieces from the game Battleship
• rusty nails and screws
• foil from a Yoplait yogurt tub
• Legos
• beads
• a pencil sharpener
• toothpicks
• a Thomas the Tank Engine ruler
• US currency
• dirt
• weather stripping
• and Goldfish crackers (the cheese flavor much diminished by storage in an AC vent)

Here's the money shot:

Arboretum Up and Spit Em Out

Another Quoi
While doing research on the Round Barns, I spent some time studying the general lay of the land on Google Maps. A hasty click-and-drag took me farther east of the Round Barns than I intended to go, and I saw something bizarre, irregularities in the map that couldn't be explained away by country clubs, subdivisions, or campus buildings.

See what I mean:

After a bit of Googling, I realized I had stumbled into the Arboretum, consisting of the Japan House (with the serpentine pond to the south), the Hartley Gardens (which look like a helicopter landing pad on the map), and the Idea Garden. A week or so later, I drove over to the Arboretum, quite unprepared for what I found.

Like most of the CU, the Arboretum functions as a "living laboratory" for the University, allowing academic botanists and master gardeners from the community to experiment with and study plant life.

Two Ridiculous Things:

1. This whole place is completely free of charge. You just park and wander around as long as you want.
2. It's huge. My pictures don't convey how much space this area covers.

I'm not the most adept at taking stunning pictures, and these were all taken late in the day, but this place is mind-blowing. Caveat Lector: This is mostly a picture post with not a lot of commentary. I kept the pictures small for space, but you can always click on them to blow them up.

Welcome Garden
After you park, but before you can enter the Hartley Gardens, you pass through a small Welcome Garden. All the plants in this garden and the Hartley are species that are grown in the US. Not all are native, but they've all become common.

All throughout they have some touches that made me feel at home: plants from Texas. Here they had some Papyrus (Cyperus papyrus):

Ornamental Peppers (Capsicum annuum):

And the best Texas flower OF ALL TIME, Lantana (Lantana camara):

They've planted a line of trees to shield the Hartley Gardens from the rest of the world:

Hartley Gardens
From there, you enter the Hartley Gardens, 3 acres of annual and perennial American Plants. These shots, hopefully, show you the size and diversity of the gardens:

In the far background of this next picture, you can see the President's House, home of the UofI President. Built in the Georgian Revival style in 1931 (the middle of the Great Depression), it cost $225 thousand. That's $3.5 million in Today Dollars. President at the time, Harry Woodburn Chase (if that's not a rich guy's name, I don't know what is) moved into the house and it has served as home to the university president and his family up to current president, Robert A. Easter. Imagine having the Arboretum in your backyard.

So, here's the crazy part. They laid these beds out by species, with separate rows for each cultivar. Walking through the Hartley Gardens feels like walking through a flower encyclopedia.

This bed has something like 15 different types of Impatiens (Impatiens walleriana). Just count the little gray signs.

In another spot, they planted 20 different types of Marigolds (Tagetes sp.).

Idea Garden
Across a wide field of grass, the compact little Idea Garden sits alone. The Idea Garden features borders, ornamentals, and vegetables.

They had some Back Home plants here as well. Succulents:

Aloe vera:

And Horse Tail (Equisetum sp.):

The Idea Garden had a lot of very surprising little nooks and crannies.

This garden is part of a community outreach program, so they have a spot just for kids.

They also have the Patriot Garden, planted with red, white, and blue species.

Grass Track
Winding through the entire Arboretum area, a grass track, lined only with spray paint like they use on football fields, stretches a mile or more for those who want to run, jog, or walk on grass. Notice the tiny person in the distant mid-ground of the second picture.

Japan House
Post Coming Soon.

You Will Not Go to Heaven

Champaign in Song
When Bob Dylan (that's right, I went there) was recording his 1969 album Nashville Skyline, Carl Perkins (you know him as the guy who wrote Blue Suede Shoes for Elvis and sometimes played with Johnny Cash, no relation to Luther Perkins, though) stopped by the studio and they wrote this song together:

This video uses photographs from both Champaign and Urbana. You'll notice some of the landmarks from previous posts. Jarling's Custard is right down the street from our apartment. And the Blind Pig is the bar we frequent in downtown Champaign.

Later, the Old 97s, a band from Dallas, Texas that likes to play in Austin, asked Bob Dylan (I did it again) if they could use the melody from his song Desolation Row with some new lyrics they had written.

Here they are playing that song at Waterloo Records in Austin (we bought stuff for our groomsmen and bridesmaids here):

Interesting story. I got really excited when I heard this Old 97s song. I jumped up and down a little bit, then raced down the hallway to tackle Aine out of her study chair. I said, you have to listen to this song. She shrugged. Oh, yeah, she said. I have that CD. I've had it for almost a year. 

So, unlike my wife, I have chosen to SHARE this music with others.

Minestra Maritata

It's Cold!
We dropped to the 30s last night. Again. I'm not entirely sure I approve of sub-70 temperature before December. I think we're on the downhill slide to winter, up here on the steppes. The leaves are just starting to turn.

Cold weather, however, affords us an excuse to make more soup. I love making soup.

Standing over a huge dutch oven, stirring a bubbling liquid mass of random ingredients, makes me feel like a wizard or something. It has this Norse Mead Hall sort of aesthetic. Soups feel ancient and exotic, these gurgling, steaming artifacts from our most distant past.

Archeaologists have found evidence of soup-making dating to 8 thousand years ago. Around that time, the Egyptians figured out agriculture, the Chinese started eating rice, some Persians invented wine, and the people of Catal Huyuk, the oldest known city, started baking the first bricks.

That's Old!
Some soup experts think soup started sometime after advances in pottery allowed for boiling without breaking. Others point to evidence of animal hides and hot rocks used for pre-pottery stewing. People originally used boiling water to soften beans and grains and roots. Soup just naturally developed from there. Many ancient cultures subsisted entirely on soup. The sophisticated Spartans (who invented a government of checks and balances divided among various branches like you see in our Constitution) ate this black gruel that few from outside of the Peloponnese could smell without retching. The people of interior Turkey, which was sort of like the Arkansas of the ancient world, lived on goat and grain stews. These people, you know them as the Galatians, left thousands of years of soup cooking artifacts for archaeologists to find.

But no spoons. While soup eating appears more or less consistently across history, spoon usage is spotty. Most people used bread. In fact, the origin of the English word soup comes from the French soupe, meaning "broth", which comes from the Latin suppa, meaning "bread soaked in broth". Suppa also gives us the word sop, which preserves the original meaning a bit more accurately.

Grilled meats and starch dishes don't feel fundamentally different from culture to culture. Soups, though, convey as much information about a culture or region as literature. It tells you about the people, the land, the climate. Soups are the most distinctive regional dish. Think of the difference between Texas Chili, New England Clam Chowder, and Cajun Gumbo. Think of the difference between Chinese Wonton Soup, Spanish Gazpacho, and Middle Eastern Lentil Soup (Esau sold his birthright for a bowl of lentil soup).

So, what regional soppable did I brew last night? Italian Wedding Soup. The Spanish brought with them an early form of this when they conquered Italy in the 1500s. The Italians thought the meat and greens went together so well, they called it minestra maritata, literally "married soup". They intended this as a nod to the compatability of the ingredients, not as a proposed dish for nuptial feasts. The translation into English got confused and then stuck. On the southwestern coast of Italy, this remains a sort of Christmas season dish.

Apologia!
I first came into contact with the Italian Wedding Soup Phenomenon during my food service days. I've thought of it often, but didn't decide to try my hand at it until recently. I found a  recipe in the recipe drawer that came from Cooks.com and it was more or less shenanigans, as are many online recipes (as were other versions of this soup I found online). So I took the backbone of it, threw in some stuff I remembered from the old days, and sort of created my own monster.

Meatballs!
I took the recipe for the meatballs exactly from the cooks.com recipe:

1/2 lb ground beef
2 tsp dried parsley
1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
1/4 tsp salt
1/8 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp chopped garlic
1/4 tsp dried oregano
1/4 tsp basil
1/4 cup milk

Ok, I actually multiplied all of those by 3 when I made it and mixed them all together in a bowl, like meatloaf. Then I rolled it into ping pong sized balls. I brought a pot of salted water to a boil, dropped in the meatballs, and let them boil for 10 minutes.

C'est Soupe!
Then I threw the meatballs in a pot with this stuff:

1.5 cups uncooked orzo
1 onion quartered
2 tsp chopped garlic
2 bay leaves
2 chopped carrots
2 chopped celery stalks
1 tsp oregano
pepper/salt/chili powder to taste
8 cups chicken broth
1 head escarole (you can substitute cabbage or spinach)

Ok, so the reprobates at Cooks.com thought it a good idea to introduce new ingredients mid-instruction-paragraph instead of listing them all at the top, so I missed the escarole when writing up a grocery list. Since you have to have greens, meatballs, and chicken broth as the three tripod legs of a legitimate Italian Wedding Soup, maybe mine was a lie. I'll add the escarole next time I make it.

I brought that delectable mosaic to a boil, cut the heat, and simmered it for 10 minutes. Then we ate it with bread like the Galatians would have done.

Here's what it looked like:

Pretty tasty. Aine and I give it four thumbs up.

Hessel Park Tree Review (Part 2)

To Set the Record Straight.
The books and websites about Illinois trees very nearly give me an ulcer. In their academic zeal to create a comprehensive encyclopedia of local trees, they don't give you an accurate sense of Tree Demographics. I find they tend to include every tree that has ever grown in any part of Illinois in any number. Here's the truth: about 80% of the tree population in this town consists of Maples, Oaks, Norway Spruces, Blue Spruces, and Eastern White Pines. Everything else I post can be squeezed into the other 20%.

More of the Same
Since we left off with Oaks, last time, I'll add one more the to list. The Pin Oak (Quercus palustris) has simple pinnate leaves with pointed lobes, like our Red Oak, but deeper cuts between the lobes. These leaves look a little wilted, but they give you the idea.

The Native Americans made a drink from the bark of the Pin Oak that they used to alleviate intestinal pain. Today, we use wood from the Pin Oak for railroad ties and firewood.

But where did we get the name, Pin Oak? In many wooden constructions, builders preferred wooden pins, called treenails or trunnels, especially in cases where a nail can rust and accelerate the decay of the wood around it. Boats and bridges. Vikings fastened the planks of their ships with trunnels. When the pin gets wet, it expands and forms a tighter bond. In America, houses built before the 1840s often utilized square trunnels, malleted into circular slots. That's where we get the phrase, square peg in a round hole. Many covered bridges in the US used trunnels as late as the First World War, some still in use. Since the Pin Oak has such hard, compact wood, builders often used it as a source of trunnels, or wooden pins, and came to call it the Pin Oak. Now you know the Paul Harvey part of the story.

I originally snapped a photo of this next tree just because it looked so weird. I thought, what kind of pine tree grows like that? Well, the Scots Pine (Pinus sylvestris) does, I learned.

The Scots Pine (or Scotch Pine) comes in two varieties, the Northern European, which grows straight and tall, and the Southern European, which grows in all sorts of absurd shapes. When the British wanted to start planting these in the New World, they accidentally brought the wrong seeds. This Southern European Scots Pine grows straight and conical as a young tree, but then sort of wanders through the air as it ages. It's one of the most numerous cultivated pines in the US, making up 30% of the Christmas trees sold every year. The sap is also used to make the rosin for violin bows. In the good ole days, folks used Scots Pine sap to make Pine Tar. When you read about mobs Tar and Feathering unpopular individuals and riding them out on a rail, they used Pine Tar, rather than the Petroleum Tar we use today. Pine Tar liquifies at room temperature, so often it just made victims really sticky. A particularly vindictive mob would heat the tar, scalding and blistering the victim, though this was probably the exception rather than the rule.

Also, it's the national tree of Scotland. My wife is half Scottish. She doesn't get as excited about this tree as I do, though.

You can tell the difference between the Scots Pine and the Eastern White Pine in three ways:

• The unusual shape.
• Flat needles that grow in pairs (EWPs have round needles that grow in bunches of 3 to 5).
• Darker foliage with a coarser look from a distance (EWPs just look softer; you want to give them a hug).

The other popular Christmas tree species, the Douglas Fir, (Pseudotsuga menziesii) has given botanists fits for centuries. It looks like a spruce (Picea). It has flat needles like a fir (Abies). Botanists decided it sort of reminded them of a hemlock (Tsuga), but not quite. So they gave the Douglas its own genus, Pseudotsuga, which means Fake Hemlock.

The species name (menziesii) comes from the Scottish physician who discovered this tree, Archibald Menzies. Sadly, and this happens often in science and in history, the common name of this tree comes from his archenemy and rival botanist, David Douglas.

The Hawaiians built canoes from Douglas Fir trunks that floated over from California. Apparently, this occurred frequently. A movement in the NorthWest called the Cascadia Independence Movement uses the Douglas Fir on their flag, which they call the Doug Flag. Cascadians think that Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia should break away from the US and Canada and form a separate nation. The nation would be about the size of Mongolia with a larger economy than Egypt or Colombia. Its similar to the Chicano movement to create the Aztlan Republic from most of the Southwestern states.

Now Something Completely Different
My favorite tree right now is probably the Sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua). It has simple palmate leaves with five pointed lobes. They look sort of like Tree Stars from Land Before Time. Fossils of this tree date back to 20 million years ago, the Miocene era. Not old enough for Littlefoot, but still pretty old.

Native Americans and early settlers would chew on the sweet sap. That's why it's called a Sweetgum. Medicinally, it has been used to cure Diarrhea, Gonorrhea, and Ringworm. The Pullman company (based in Chicago and responsible for Labor Day) used Sweetgum wood for the interior finish of Pullman cars.

I'd also like to point out the genus: Liquidambar. It looks just like the words liquid amber. The sap has sort of an amber hue and it's liquid. The scientists got lazy on this one. The species name, styraciflua, comes from the sap as well. The sap contains a chemical used in the early production of polystyrene and Styrofoam.

The Parting Shot
Chew on this. The spiky fruit of the Sweetgum tree is called a Gumball.

And the Winner Is...

Depends on Who You Ask
After two hours of clandestine deliberations Tuesday, the teachers' reps for the CTU voted to end the strike with a 98% majority. Just in time, too. A judge scheduled the hearing for the injunction suit filed by Rahm Emanuel for early Wednesday morning. Karen Lewis says the injunction suit had no influence over the union rep decision. Over the next two weeks, the reps will review and decide on whether to approve the tentative agreement struck between Lewis and Vitale last Friday.

People have differing opinions over who won the strike and many have written blog posts and editorials explaining why. Proponents of the strike claim that valor and courage in the face of tyranny explains the outcome. The scrawny kid stood up to the town bully and got to keep his lunch money. Opponents of the strike point to the incremental gains in reform, complying with state law and national policy.

Let's Make a Deal
Here's a break down of who got what out of this messy ordeal:

Teachers

• Struck down the merit pay system. The district proposed higher pay for teachers whose students perform better academically. CTU said no.
• Any teachers laid off by a school closing will get preferential bids on new positions.

The District

• Got a longer school day and a longer school year. Rahm Emanuel says that a student starting kindergarten after the new contract commences will spend the equivalent of 2.5 more years in the classroom.

Compromise

• The teachers will receive the 3-2-2% raise bump that I explained in an earlier post. The district calculates that, including seniority raises and education raises (more money if you have a Master's) already in place, the average teacher will get a real raise of over 17% in the next four years. This will push the average salary very near the $90 thousand mark. Originally, the teachers demanded a 30% raise over the same period. This would have pushed the average salary well over $100 thousand a year.
• Evaluations based on student performance remain, you know, since they are mandated by state law. However, the district has agreed to make student performance a lower percentage of the total evaluation and teachers who get bad evaluations have access to an appeals process.

So, after seven days, the strike has ended. Good thing, too. The 1987 strike over pay and length of the school day lasted a month.

Lake Forest
The Lake Forest strike ended yesterday as well. Wearing ties and sitting in camping chairs, the Lake Forest teachers protested for two or three days for raises and better benefits. 80% of the teachers in this district make $100 thousand a year or more. To be fair, though, 99% of them have Master's degrees and they produce some of the most successful students in the state. Depending on who is looking at these numbers, different people see different things. Some see a correlation between teacher pay and student performance. Some see a correlation between parent income and student performance. Some see a correlation between professional excellence and employee salary. I'm not good with all this Sociology stuff, so you decide.

Walmarch
Also ended. It was a march against Walmart. You see what they did there. Employees of a distribution company contracted by Walmart walked off the job last Wednesday. These warehouse workers, complaining about unsafe conditions, began a 50 mile/6 day hike across the state of California. Some farmworkers joined them. Warehouse workers in Illinois (here's where we tie it in) heard about the strike and joined it by walking off the job. Spokesman for Warehouse Workers United said, well, no, they don't technically work for Walmart, but Walmart dictates the standards of operations for its contractors, so there. And also Walmart sucks. End quote. The strike ended when Walmart said, sure, we'll look into all these allegations.

A Little Closer to Home
The union representing graduate student teaching assistants is threatening a strike over contract details. I'm new to the unionized part of the world. In Texas, unions are regarded much like third world air pollution: something far away that doesn't affect us. As such, I haven't paid attention to union activity. I don't know if this period between the blistering summer heat and the lethal winter winds, being conducive to standing outside with signs, is just Strike Season. Sort of like Hurricane Season on the Gulf Coast. Or if this goes on all year, like humidity in Houston.

Viking Schools
I read a blog about Finnish education. Finland has the best education system in the world (measured by student performance), followed closely by those syrup-guzzling socialists in Canada. Students don't start school until age 7, spend less time in the classroom than American students, and don't have to take a rigorous standardized test until grade 12. And they are outperforming us. The key is the teachers. It's not enough that they have a pulse and have just been doing it for a long time. All teachers in Finland have a Master's degree and only the top students can hope to compete for a teaching position. The profession is competitive and rigorous and is more revered than medicine or law in the US. All teachers are trained as researchers. This means, rather than adopting a teaching strategy akin to a frontal assault at Gallipoli, they actively evaluate themselves and their methods and find creative solutions for presenting curriculum. Also, they don't allow politics to influence education decisions made by administrators. They sort of treat education and politics like two different spheres. I know, it sounds crazy.

Ain't No Party Like a CTU Party

Cuz a CTU Party Don't Stop
Chicago teachers are still marching for Truth, Justice, and the American Way. CPS and the CTU came to a tentative agreement on Friday before going to happy hour. The final product, a three year contract, guarantees a yearly raise, a hiring pool that opens half of its positions to laid-off teachers, and a system for appealing poor evaluations.

The yearly raise scheme looks like this: teachers will receive a 3% raise the first year and 2% the next two years. I'll save you the math. This pushes the average pay of a Chicago teacher to over $80 thousand dollars a year. Chicago teachers currently make almost twice what Austin teachers make. Surely, this results from high cost of living in Cook County, one might surmise. I looked it up. According to Sperling's Best Places, the two cities have roughly the same cost of living index. Housing costs slightly more in Austin; groceries cost slightly more in Chicago. Salary.com and CNNMoney tell a slightly different story. They say the cost of living in Chicago is 25% more than in Austin and Chicago employers pay 12% more than Austin employers. This makes sense, but it doesn't account for Chicago teachers making double the salary of Austin teachers.

Nope!
So everyone's happy with the new contracts, right? Wrong. The CTU House of Delegates met on Friday to approve the agreement. They said it looked cool to them, but it would be inherently undemocratic to approve it without the consent of each individual teacher, many of whom are still dissatisfied with the terms. So the decision to unstrike will have to wait for the Union Representatives to meet and vote. Unfortunately, they can't squeeze a meeting into their schedule until Tuesday, so the teachers won't teach until Wednesday at the earliest. Karen Lewis says even Wednesday may be optimistic.

Rahm Emanuel responded by filing a request that the State Court file an injunction to force teachers back into their classrooms. A state law prohibits strikes on non-economic issues, including evaluations, layoffs, recall rights, length of the school day, and length of the school year. Pretty much all the reasons the CTU decided to strike. Also, Emanuel claims the strike endangers the health and safety of the children. For many of them, free school breakfast and lunch are they only meals they get on an average day. Since the strike affects mostly urban schools in poverty stricken neighborhoods, many of the kids who would be in schools are at home alone or on the streets in places where crime and violence are rampant. These aren't your suburban kids who spend the day playing X-box and eating Pizza Rolls.

It Gets Kooky
This strike coincides with the monthly Labor Department survey of employment. The Labor Department polls 141 thousand employers, including the Chicago Public School system. CPS runs a biweekly pay schedule, this one from September 9 through September 22. If the teachers don't return to the classroom by the end of the week, the Labor Department survey could show a decrease of 30 thousand jobs for this month. The same thing happened before, during the Verizon employee strike in 2011, the report showed a 50 thousand job loss.

The Labor Department goes back later, after no one's paying attention any more, and adjusts the numbers. But these raw numbers, the inaccurate numbers that don't matter, affect things like the stock market and elections and become the source of yet another unintelligible rant by Limbaugh the Hut.

Also, it doesn't have an effect on unemployment numbers. That's a different survey altogether.

The Parting Shot
My favorite part of this whole situation has been the giant inflatable rat I keep seeing in news images. The rat image gets used often in strikes to demonize employers who use non-union labor. Inflatable rats have become a frequent addition to major strikes and protests as a sort of rallying point. Most are named Scabby the Rat in reference to Scabs, folks who cross picket lines. This one in Chicago is a loaner from the Teamsters to the CTU just for this strike.

Picture from Reuters

You Pronounce Schlafly Like Laughly

Not like Mayfly
I learned this the hard way. While ordering it at a bar.

The Saint Louis Brewery (from the Missouri city of the same name) brews Schlafly. Dan Kopman and Tom Schlafly started brewing in 1989 and distribute to much of the Midwest and Northeast. I've noticed with many of these Midwestern brewers, that they expand east across the fruited plain to Appalachia with more ease than they expand south. I think the Ozarks and the Arbuckles form some sort of impenetrable barrier that makes beer shipment impossible.

Or it could be that special brand of Texas nationalism that scorns any beer not home brewed. In Texas you have three echelons of beer. You have the cold urine style which includes Lonestar and Corona (Mexican beers count as local beers in Texas since we used to be all the same place). You have the slightly better than cold urine beers: Shiner (from Shiner) and Ziegenbock (from Houston). Finally, for those with more refined pallates, you can always buy Texas craft beer from Saint Arnold's brewery (also from Houston).

I've always been a fan of Saint Arnold's, if nothing else for the packaging. Every bottle shows old St. Arnold, the patron saint of brewers, holding a beer and hailing a star in the sky. If you look closely, you'll see the star is shaped like the state of Texas. Brilliant.

Texans also drink Miller and Budweiser, but only in the vicinity of trailer parks and towns like Pasadena.

Back to Schlafly. The other night we picked the Schlafly Oktoberfest, spelled with a K so it looks more German. You can probably tell from the color, we're dealing with another Amber Ale. Like all Amber Ales, it tasted crisp, caramelly, and delicious.

Do what you want, but my suggestion: Give it a try.

Why do you drink so many Amber Ales, one might ask. Well, because that's pretty much the only beer Aine wants to drink. So Amber Ale it is. To be fair, she also like Brown Ales. But IPAs are right out.

Of course, for a well round dinner, we also needed, you know, food. And since we haven't mastered our fear enough start exploring the phenomenon known as Illinois Mexican Food, we just make our own.

Chicken quesadillas with black beans and corn. With the obligatory homemade salsa slathered over the top.

Pumpkin Beer
I need to talk to you about something serious. I don't know if this is a regional thing or the latest trend gripping the beer world. I don't remember seeing these last year in Austin, but this year, we've seen this explosion of pumpkin beers.

It's getting out of hand.

Wanting to keep ahead of any beer fad before it goes flat, we sampled some of the pumpkin beers available here.

First we tried Smuttynose, a brewery out of New Hampshire. Not exactly local, but this has been the best of the pumpkin beers we've tried. The pumpkin flavor was mellow, with nutmeg and cinnamon and all the usual spices. Also, for a mascot, they use the most adorable little seal. Give it a try.

The brewers named their beer after Smuttynose Island, the third largest in a group of islands off the coast of Maine and New Hampshire. The islands, collectively called Isles of Shoals, received their names from John Smith, hairy Englishman of Pocahontas fame, in 1614. Several years later, when the Puritans established the Massachusetts Bay Colony, they incorporated the islands into their claim. So much for the Algonquians that fished there. Aside from a legend about Blackbeard having his honeymoon on this island, most people who have heard of it, know it for the savage murders that occurred in the 1870s. German fisherman Louis Wagner killed two Norwegian sisters, Karen and Anethe Christensen, one by strangling, the other by hatchet. A third woman, Maren Hontvet escaped and testified against him. He escaped from the island, though, and fled to Boston. The authorities hunted him down, hauled him back, and sentenced him to death. Then he broke out of jail and escaped again. They found him in New Hampshire this time and promptly hung him to prevent any further shenanigans.

But that's not even remotely local or Midwestern, so forget I said anything about Smuttynose Island.

Next we tried the New Belgian pumpkin beer. New Belgian brews their beer in Colorado and when it comes to pumpkin beer, I think they should keep it there. This just tasted like mediocre beer with a gourdy aftertaste. Do not buy.

Then, for a poker night, we bought some of the Schlafly (pronounced like laughly, not like mayfly) Pumpkin Ale. This tasted like pumpkin pie in a bottle, which seemed a little alarming at first. However, we grew accostomed to the overpowering flavor very quickly, probably because it had an 8% alcohol content. Needless to say, I did not do well in poker that night.

Give it a try, if you have nothing to lose.

Maybe Today Is the Day

Jabbo Special Edition:
Teacher Strike Day Four

It's still going, this teacher strike. Both sides left the bargaining table at midnight last night, confident that today, all their hopes and dreams would come true. Although, even if they shake hands on a deal today, Karen Lewis says teachers won't return to their classrooms until Monday at the earliest. Any deal they make at the bargaining table must be approved by the CTU House of Delegates and they won't be able to meet until sometime tomorrow.

I read that while the district has provided the union with a four inch binder of proposals, the union only came back with a single handwritten page (on notebook paper). You can read the scribble here:
http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/428771/reported-union-proposal.pdf

Democrats across the country have watched this strike with concern, since it seems to evidence a growing rift in the Democratic Party, much like the contention between Tea Party and Establishment Republicans. Organized Labor (specifically, teacher unions) no longer sees eye to eye with wealthy Liberals (the ones who contribute the most money to campaigns, but also send their children to charter schools and private schools). The Obama administration is still careful not to take sides in this issue.

Obama, I read, has had an uneasy relationship with teacher unions. On one hand, he defends collective bargaining and promises government moulah to districts in financial straits. On the other, he champions opening charter schools and closing underperforming schools.

Here's where it gets wicked. Performance based evalutations, the central issue of this strike, form a cornerstone of Race to the Top, Obama's policy introduced to reform Bush's No Child Left Behind.

In 2010, Democratic Governor of Illinois, signed into law PERA (Performance Evaluation Reform Act) to comply with Race to the Top (also to get the promised moulah). The addition of performance based evaluations to the Chicago school district policy was in compliance with the state law. Part of the Chicago plan stipulated that the new evaluations (only 40% based on student performance) would not be counted for the first year, to work out any bugs in the system and to allow teachers a period of acclimation to the new evaluation system.

The CTU, though, argues that the standardized tests do not take into account povery, claiming that students from lower income neighborhoods do poorly on such tests and it's not the teacher's fault. They want to strike down evaluations based on student performance and secure a promise that any teacher laid off as a result of a school closing will get a preferential bid for new positions.

A humble rebuttle to that theory has been proffered by a joint study from Harvard and Columbia. This study asserts that poverty has less an impact on student performance than teacher quality. A poor performing teacher has the same impact on a child as missing 40% of the school year. A child with a top performing teacher gets the equivalent of two extra months of education. Then there's all this mumbo jumbo about even one year with a good teacher lowers the chances of teen pregnancy and raises the chances of higher salaries as an adult. Read it for yourself if you have plenty of coffee:
http://obs.rc.fas.harvard.edu/chetty/value_added.pdf

Hey Hey Ho Ho Inflatable Rats Have Got To Go

Jabbo Special Edition:
Teacher's Strike Day 3

Yesterday, School Board President David Vitale promised to reach an agreement with the CTU. Union President Karen Lewis came out of the meeting accusing Vitale of feckless brigandry (my words, not hers, she went to Chicago public schools). The Union and the School Board meet again today. The Board will present a "comprehensive proposal" (AP words, not mine) to which the the Union will return a written response. Or some shenanigans like that. The strike continues.

Dramatis Personae
Because I like to know what the people look like. Imagine these guys sitting across a table from one another, screaming.

CTU President Karen Lewis

School Board President David Vitale

Mayor Rahm Emanuel

The Strike Spreads!
The school custodian union (I don't know the official name) has promised to strike in support of the CTU and several suburban school districts in the Chicago area are facing strikes as well.

In the Lake Forest school district, where teachers average $106 thousand a year, teachers are striking because they want more pay, better benefits, and because union leaders and school board members can't agree on which dates to meet. Lake Forest pictured below: notice the difference in landscape and attire.

Teachers in North Shore are striking because they have been working without contracts since the beginning of the school year.

Prairie Grove teachers planned a walk out on Friday, but have agreed to stay in their classrooms until negotiations have progressed.

Teachers at Argo High School in Summit are threatening to go on strike by the end of the month. Here's the situation. Currently, teachers on the verge of retirement get a 6% raise each year to boost their retirement income. The district wants to stop that practice. The union there accuses the district of trying to roll back previous gains made by collective bargaining. Also, they're upset about health insurance.

Also on the verge of a strike, teachers in Evergreen Park are upset about the $16 million reserve fund the district has amassed. The district wants to use the money for renovations to schools, technology improvements in the classroom, and unforeseen emergencies. The teachers want to use the money for raises.

Back in Chicago, union members are trying to gain more parent support by advertising the large class sizes and poor air conditioning of many schools. The teachers, they say, are striking to create better learning environments for their children. I'm not politically or mechanically savvy, so I'm not sure how performance based evaluations affect room temperature, but maybe if they use the evaluations in the winter, they can cut down on heating costs. Just a thought.

A significant difference exists between strikes in the urban district and strikes in the suburban districts. Urban districts have seen a steady decrease in enrollment, due to charter schools, drop outs, and moves. This decrease has led to a decrease in funding (schools get paid per kid per day) and to more classroom space than children to fill it and, therefore, to more school closings. The key issue in the urban district is job security. In the suburbs, school officials get to spoon the sweet cream from teacher milk pail. They get the best teachers and more applications than they have open positions. Weeding out weak performers by performance evaluation doesn't frighten anyone. In the suburbs, the teachers want more money.

The Parting Shot
Why are we striking, June? Where are my pills?

(These are all AP pictures from news sites.)