Wanna-Be

Did you ever get into your blog dashboard (if you are primitive like me) and get distracted from the task of writing something only to read someone else's blog leading only to further distraction and in the end a helpless feeling of inferiority that makes you seriously consider never writing anything again?

I feel like that all the time.

But press on I will.  Just like Andy Schleck who must have known that he couldn't quite beat Alberto pistol-grip Contador in the time trial today but absolutely destroyed himself trying.  Just like Floyd Landis who decided after years and years of lying and covering up what actually happened that he would just come out and tell all of it.  ALL of it basically making sure that he will never be on a cycling team or have a friend in the pro-cycling world ever again.  But apparently it does make him feel better, which is a good thing in my book.

I watched a movie yesterday and today that was quite intellectual, a big surprise actually from what I thought it was going to be about.  If you know some of my movie preferences, you might be able to easily guess which one this was, but how about a modern movie with pretty big stars in it basically examining the idea of using scripture as either a weapon or a panacea.  It had some fun twists to it as well, one that I didn't see coming that was really fabulous.  Although I do have to wonder if that particular version of that particular book wouldn't have been significantly larger than the one in the movie...

Two last semi-random notes...

1.  One of Liz's co-workers asked me yesterday if I agreed with Jonathan Kozol.  Then he asked what I thought about affirmative action programs in public universities.  Pretty interesting stuff.  I kept thinking back to what Joel Salatin brought up, the idea that by making civil rights and other things laws you may have actually hindered their progress.  I'd never considered that as an option before, but it does make for a more interesting debate, that's for sure.

2.  The folks at the Sudbury Valley School argue that children will learn to read on their own when the time is right.  They point out the fact that they've never taught a child to read since their opening in 1967 and everyone who has attended the school has learned to read.  They also claim an incredibly low (almost zero) incidence of reading disorders, their theory being that most of them are caused when adults tell a child that they are behind and then forcing them to learn to read before they are ready.  I tend to buy into this theory but I have so little practical experience in any part of that process that it is a somewhat tenuous position for me.

Really, this is a school?  I think I'd take that one over the 100+ million dollar building we are moving into in a month or so.  Then again, we have a pool...

I don't remember learning to read.  I haven't had a child learn to read and so far our three year old mutt hasn't picked it up.  I haven't taught children to read.  I haven't even really been around a child learning to read for any significant part of the process.  But it sure seems right.  I wonder what the reading specialists at school would say about it.  Maybe someday I will ask them.