Spring

It was Spring, and the brook was filled to the brim with its water. And the water moved in a hurry, as all things move in a hurry when it is Spring.

-- Gertrude Crampton, Scuffy the Tugboat and His Adventures Down the River (1946)

Education: Change We Need

Ugh. We're currently in contract negotiations at work. For obvious reasons, that's all I'm going to say. Instead, I offer the following:

Education is the silver bullet. Education is everything. We don't need little changes. We need gigantic, monumental changes. Schools should be palaces. The competition for the best teachers should be fierce. They should be making six figure salaries. Schools should be incredibly expensive for government and absolutely free of charge to its citizens, just like national defense. That's my position. I just haven't figured out how to do it yet.

-- Sam Seaborn, The West Wing, "Six Meetings Before Breakfast," Season 1, Episode 18 (2000)

Regarding Coffee

“It picks you up. It calms you down. It's the lifeblood that drives the dreams of champions.”

~ Mike Ditka, Kicking & Screaming, 2005.

Quote of the Month

This one's for Valerie, who recently had a run-in with someone who seems to have Rip Van Winkle'd their way through the Civil Rights Movement. (Favorite line: "WTF is it 1960 and someone forgot to tell me?")

"Racism isn't born, folks, it's taught. I have a two-year-old son. You know what he hates? Naps! End of list."

-- Denis Leary

Seems particularly fitting after this week's Democratic National Convention, too, doesn't it? Maybe we're finally learning (or unlearning, depending on how you look at it).

Sexual Politics

Thoughts of the coming election, mingled with those of parenthood, keep bringing to mind Anne Lamott's memoir of her son's first year and this quote from it:

Then I called a woman who went out with him a few years ago and discovered the two most damaging things I can know about a man: one, he voted for both Bush and Reagan, and two, he was very reluctant to give head. Now maybe on a really bad night I would let one of these things go by, but I tell you, if his head wouldn't go south of my waist and he was up there talking with passion about the thousand points of light, I'd crack. It would be like "Hey, thanks for stopping by, pal, but the thousand points of light are in my pussy." I don't want to negotiate the SALT talks just to get a little oral sex. The right guy will love nothing more.

-- Anne Lamott, Operating Instructions

What she said

"She says the sex is dynamite... One of the three legs that hold up Love's stool: sex, liking his brain, then kind of accepting who he is 'cause you're never going to change him anyway."
-- Shelly Tambo, Northern Exposure, "My Mother, My Sister"

Quote of the Month

From the book Matilda Bone, which I'm reading with my World Cultures class:

"Spring was but a promise, but a promise was better than winter."

Yeah. That.