Hi all! I promised a return and then didn’t deliver. Where am I? Out of the blue, I got assigned a great research topic, with a speedy turnaround and a nice paycheck. My in-laws are arriving here at noon on Thursday. Will I finish my work, clean the house, and prep meals in the next 24 hours? Oh, the drama. While I don’t have time to write something long and coherent, I do have time to post some links:
My spec ed kid spent all last year in a literal basement. (How can they do that?) But the spec ed kids in Minneapolis are being shunted to a virtual basement. (Evil!) MPS says they don’t have enough staff.
We’re talking about this New Yorker article on Serena Williams. She’s truly an amazing person. This article reminded to check out the King Richard and her Vogue essay. I love this paragraph about how her dad recognized the importance of the serve and how he trained the girls.
What makes her toss so effective is its precision and its consistency; what makes its precision and consistency possible is her ease. There is tension in the moment—some of her best serving happens under duress—but none in her left hand. She cradles the ball delicately. Her toss does not drift under pressure, nor drop when she’s tight. It takes a lot of training to achieve that kind of consistency, no matter the situation, no matter the choice of serve. It involves a mastery that is not only mechanical but psychological. There are stories about Venus and Serena as children throwing footballs to develop the motion and rotational power of their shoulders. Richard Williams understood how fundamental the serve was, and how his daughters could gain a competitive advantage by mastering it perfectly and early.
Sometimes I wonder if we should have trained our kids with the same dedication as Richard Williams. Ah well. They’re fine.
I continue to be fascinated about the collision between celebrity and philanthropy worlds that is Meghan and Harry. They are trying so super hard to make philanthropy into a global, profitable brand, and it’s just not working. They just announced that they are going to visit their favorite charities in the UK (while dragging along Netflix cameras), but without visiting his brother, who will be a 10 minute walk from their UK house. You gotta read the hate comments that some poor organization is getting, because they agree to host the pair. He has a memoir coming out at the end of the year, which will could allege that the British government had something to do with Diana’s death and had nothing to do with the fact that the driver was drunk.
Watching: Reservation Dogs, What We Do In the Shadows. Next up: The Boys
Reading: How The Other Half Learns – a profile of the Success Academy charter school and its founder, Eva Moskowitz.
Picture: Carbs and Caffeine in Quebec City.
Apt. 11d 
“Out of the blue, I got assigned a great research topic, with a speedy turnaround and a nice paycheck.”
Yay!!
I read the article about virtual instruction in Minnesota. Dreadful. I suspect they can’t hire the staff they need (and yes, dysfunction might have meant others poached, and that they are a less desirable district to work for).
It does seem to me that the students have the right to the services under the law, but, as noted in the article, the enforcement is technical, and individual, and might require refusing the services or paying for them outside the system i hopes of reimbursement (Carter cases) in order to execute the right. I do hope there are some pro bono attorneys who will be willing to take some of those cases (they can get reimbursed, if they win — attorneys fees were one of the line items in the NJ budget you shared on Twittter). But, that does require taking the risk.
Or maybe DOE or another organization will take on the case.
But, in the meantime, indeed dreadful. The district is playing some kind of chicken, potentially some form of financial chicken (for example, if the state funds outside services directly — in WA state, private placements are funded outside the districts budget by the state, for example). But, if parents have to file grievances and sue to get the services, they will be unequally delivered and be time-consuming.
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Oh, and if you haven’t stumbled on it, you might enjoy the bit of reading fluff that is the “The Windsor Knot”, a detective story in which a death occurs in Windsor castle and QE2 investigates with the help of her staff. The Queen is an excellent and admirable character in the book.
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1. Jersey boys stay in place: https://twitter.com/rpuentes/status/1559337578540695552
2. The Sussexes. Well, it was Archimedes who said “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.” Meghan had a real failure of apprehension when she thought she had a fulcrum.. The notion that there is a LOT of money to skim off the table when charity is happening seems pretty daft to me, too. All in all, train wreck.
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dave s wrote, “Meghan had a real failure of apprehension when she thought she had a fulcrum.. The notion that there is a LOT of money to skim off the table when charity is happening seems pretty daft to me, too.”
Yeah.
The crazy thing is that what she/they wanted to create is basically the British royal family…live very comfortably while engaging in various very ceremonial functions and highly scripted do-gooding.
But that was too much work and too constricting, so they threw it away.
I think this is also a lesson in the difference between the lifestyle of the rich (Harry and Meghan) and very, very rich (which is what they aspire to). The difference seems to be one or two zeroes (low 8 digit wealth versus 9 or 10). Part of the problem with the H & M project is that they seem like they are trying to live parasitically on their wealthier friends…and that’s not a good look.
With regard to living off charity foundations, obviously there is a model for this (see various Kennedy or other kids who are heirs to large fortunes), but ideally you need to start with a vast fortune and create a foundation and make-work jobs for your less satisfactory offspring, as opposed to whatever it is that H & M are doing.
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” (see various Kennedy or other kids who are heirs to large fortunes), but ideally you need to start with a vast fortune and create a foundation and make-work jobs for your less satisfactory offspring” Chelsea Clinton is the example who springs to mind for me, as well as the Trumplings.
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ds wrote, “Chelsea Clinton is the example who springs to mind for me, as well as the Trumplings.”
Yeah, there is a model for this, but H & M are doing it wrong.
I don’t know the details, but there’s a thing that the very rich do where they say, I’m giving away all my money and leaving almost nothing to my kids…and then they give their kids fat jobs in their foundations.
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On Harry
“allege that the British government had something to do with Diana’s death and had nothing to do with the fact that the driver was drunk. ”
Or the fact that she didn’t bother to wear a seatbelt (in a car speeding deliberately dangerously to try to evade the paparazzi). If she had, she would almost certainly have survived.
Really, she made one bad decision after another that evening; and, finally, one of them killed her.
It’s a tragedy – but no more or less so than any other family bereaved by a car crash. And you don’t see them wailing in the papers 20 years later.
Time for H to grow up, get his therapy, and move on with his life – rather than the endless rehashes of ‘how badly he was damaged’
Both of my parents came from solo-parent families (where one parent died while the kids were still young) – neither of them let it ruin their adult lives.
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