Blue moon blues

This is not science, no matter what NASA says.

This is about folks who miss regularly spectacular events such as the ever-changing moon phases getting excited because a "full moon" happens twice within an artificial division of time. Turns out we create even bigger, vaguer excitement if that month happens to mark the culturally designated new year.

The word "month" comes from menses, an old word from an older language. "Menses"comes from the same old word. Whether menstrual cycles were tied to the moon before artificial light changed our culture is not clear, though women may be more likely to ovulate during the full moon.

Many critters remain romantically tied to the moon: grunions, newts, and coral have kept their ancient pact with natural cycles.




Thomas Edison allowed us sever our ties to the moon; that we continue to do so is our choice.

Ultimately, what you do with the choices you have today, what you do with this moment, defines who you are. We have years, decades, centuries as constructs in our heads, but we can only act in the moment. This one.

It's all we ever had, despite our tongues that confuse what we create ("blue moons" and calendars) with what exists in the natural world, a huge chunk of matter revolving around the Earth, affecting our tides, and perhaps our bodies.

***

If you believe tonight's blue moon is news, you need to get reacquainted with our gravitational neighbor. You can pretend to do this by looking at the Farmer's Almanac, or go high tech and download a moon phase widget.

Or you can step outside and look up. Tomorrow night, do the same. A week from now, look up again. Two weeks from now, you'll need to look during the day if you hope to see the moon.

Do this for a month, for a year, for a lifetime, and you will learn, as Robert Frost knew, that time is "neither wrong nor right" for those of us "acquainted with the night."

Forget Happy New Year! Time is in our heads, and you only get a few dozen New Years in your adult life.

Start celebrating Happy New Moment!, an infinite string of "nows" celebrated by everything in the natural world.

The photo is by Tom King, taken October 2003 and lifted from the NASA website.
The Robert Frost lines were taken from his "Acquainted with the Night," New Hampshire, 1923.

Moving on up!

We start evolution soon.

I've already had enlightening literature left on my desk:

If you reject Jesus, your Creator, that will be your worst mistake ever! You'll be in the lake of fire with billions of others who believe we evolved from monkeys.

Moving On Up! (Chick Publications)

I never tell anyone we evolved from monkeys, because it's simply not true. Half of teaching descent with modification is unteaching the nonsense people already believe. I'm not talking about religion; I'm talking about bad science.

***

Again, I will start with a seemingly simple question: which is more evolved, a sophomore high school student or an earthworm?

It's a trick question--humans and worms have been descending from a common ancestor for a long time now, but neither holds an advantage in time.

I suppose the correct answer would be that neither is more evolved than the other. Since earthworms have had more generations to evolve, though, I'll give the edge to them this year.

That will go over well at dinner--"Mom, Dr. D says earthworms are more evolved than you are."

***

Our universes collided yesterday, human and earthworm. I was doing a human thing, diverting water using my brains, my fingers, and my credit card. The earthworm was doing its thing, munching through soil, warmed by the composting earth I just dug up to bury a discharge pipe.

Which of us is better adapted for its environment? Which of us will successfully reproduce ten thousand more generations?

***

The mysterious appearance of Moving On Up, as creepy as it is, does have a bright side--at least a few of my students will be unusually attentive, looking for chinks in my armor.

Hey, they're only 15 years old--there's hope.

I fear more for my students who believe in evolution, and try to rise to my defense when the monkey muckers start tossing pamphlets at me. Their smug acceptance of a theory they do not yet grasp is ultimately more dangerous.

The heart of Darwin's work, the dark and terrible beauty that makes On the Origin of Species such a powerful work, is the overwhelming evidence that natural selection is sufficient to explain speciation from common ancestors.

Chance variations in heritable characteristics separated me from the earthorm, both of us from a common ancestor, both of us now reasonably suited for our respective habitats.

When you grasp this, your universe shifts.

Best I can hope for now is to expose my kids to the evidence, and at least keep monkeys out of the equation.

I don't need believers. I need skeptics.

Maybe I'll even shift a universe or two.

"Are you a martyr? A Modest Checklist"

I found this indirectly via Tom Hoffman's In My Head sidebar. (I check his site SVC Tuttle daily for his posts, and hourly for his finds--it's like using Digg without the nonsense.)

Go read Dina's blog, then get back to me.

***

I am punch drunk at the moment--I spent half the night combating the relentless rising water table that threatens to wash us away into the bay. The other half? Writing a grant proposal for a set of netbooks for my classroom.

If the proposal succeeds, I will have a lovely set of netbooks, wireless access to the internet, and hours of unanticipated headaches.

Should I succeed, my students will be better equipped to be effective citizens when they leave our hallowed halls.

I am not a martyr, but I do bust my ass way above and beyond what the contract requires, as do most teachers around me. (A few manage to squeeze their teaching lives within the contractual hours--you know who you are....)

***

You want to be a professional? Do what you need to do to do what's best for the kids. Here's my modest checklist for accomplishing just that:

*Know what you're trying to teach, figure out how best to teach it, then address the reasons why a good chunk of your class still does not grasp your objectives.

*Devise a personal development plan geared to your first priority above. If you have other priorities ("become an administrator, rule the world") fine--just do not count those hours against the time you spend on the first priority.

*Know your limits--a tired teacher is often less effective than a rested one.

*Remember why you're here. It's OK to imagine you are wearing a cape--it's what professionals do.

*Professionals have a duty to their clients students above and beyond their contractual duties to the board of education, beyond their mandates from their superintendent. Indeed, they have a duty to openly challenge any directives that counter their primary duties to their students.

Are we true professionals? I am not sure that's possible so long as we work to dual purposes.

I am a bona fide dues paying member of the Bloomfield Education Association, the local union. I get what unions have done for us. I get that there may be times I need union representation. I understand the need to present a united front.

But I also get why many members of my department snuck back into the building a few years ago when a job action "required" teachers to leave on the dot of 2:45 PM.


"Profession" is a slippery word. A key point, I think, is autonomy within the guidelines proscribed by the guild, or "professional association." We have the NEA and the AFT, both useful groups that work to promote our profession, ostensibly to serve teachers, children, and (at least for the NEA) administrators. When push comes to shove, what order does the union serve its clients?

We are not required to meet the standards of any national, independent body for certifying professional standards--we leave this up to the states. (The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards may become a big player in this soon.) We are paid by our towns, our states, and (in some cases) the Federal government.

I love teaching, and I feel a duty to work hard to provide what my kids need. What I need to get better at is resisting the efforts of others to impose huge chinks of time on things they do not need.

It's what professionals do. We get paid reasonably well to do what we love--can't beat that.

And here's a dirty little secret--just about everybody works hard, not just teachers. If you break it down into hourly wages, factoring in benefits, I make about the same now as I did when I was a pediatrician working ungodly hours. I was happy then, I am happy now. If my happiness disturbs you, so be it--I'm not here for you.

I'm here for the larval humans that will succeed my place on the planet.

The NEA logo is owned by the National Education Association; the Superman logo is owned by DC Comics.

Transpiration

The good news is that given the flow of water into the basement, we're not likely to float away.

The bad news is that my mighty maple tree next to the house is sleeping. It's still a good 5 months away from opening its May leaves, transpiring hundreds of gallons of water a day into the air.

Meanwhile, we'll keep pumping.....

Home Depot physics

Granted, it's a parochial problem, but a real one--our water table has risen as high as it's been in a few decades.

Week after week we get rain; week after week we get nor'easters. Bay water gets pushed up, rain water flows down, and now we have more water than we know what to do with.

I happen to love water, beyond its obvious life-giving qualities. I love to play in puddles. I love how it sticks to things. I love that it's (mostly) transparent. I love the way it gives, but barely, when you run your fingers through it. I hope it is kind when I drown in it. It is, indeed, life.

Still, a rising water table can be a problem, especially if you're foolish enough to have a basement just a foot or two above the usual water table.

***

I used to be a stevedore, a very brief period in my life, made briefer by my bride, who convinced me not to sign a two year contract as a foreman for M.J. Rudolph way back in the 70's. I loved working on the waterfront, and I was vain enough to appreciate my growing pecs even more than the substantial money shoveling iron earned you back then.

I learned how to fix things. I learned that school smart ain't worth shit when a crane boom goes down. I learned that if a man threatens you with a shovel, and you have one in your hand, responding in kind may ease the threat. I learned that being learned is not nearly the same thing as being smart, and neither of has much to do with being wise.

They (we) know stuff you do not. Stuff that matters. How to fix things. How to build things. How to kill things.

Two of the brightest men I know never went to college, and one never made it out of high school. Both are happy, both are productive.

***

My basement has a small sump pump basin, about 10" in diameter. The basement has been dry since we owned the home, and the sump pump basin had been hidden by a metal cover painted to match the color of the basement floor. There was no pump in the basin.

A couple of weeks ago, the sump pump basin, normally dry all the way down, was half full of water. Uh-oh.

More rain, then snow, more rain again. Today the water rose a half inch above the basin's edge. Water seeped from crack in the basement floor. More uh-oh.

Water seeks its own level. Water is as destructive as fire, just more patient. We have a problem.

I wandered over to Home Depot--I needed a sump pump that could squeeze into a 10" diameter, and the internet site assured me that Home Depot carries it--and it does. But I was about 32 customers behind.

Yep, we got the peak of a 30 year cycle--one guy just came in for his 4th pump today--the first three are just keeping even.

Fair enough--I need a narrow pump.

Last one went a few hours ago. But we got a pedestal pump. Might try that.

I took it.

We finagled over what kind of joints to get--the associate (correctly) pointed out that a few 45 degree joints will get you the same place as a few 90 degree elbows, at less work for the pump.

Less bend, the less force needed. Keep the pipe at 1 1/2 inches--any less will eventually kill the pump.

Conversation drifted over to water--if you grasp water, you grasp Newtonian physics.

Another associate ambled by--men love to talk about water, and problems we cannot solve.

Man came by and reported his neighbor's house just got lifted up--it's all about displacement--you displace enough water, you get enough lift to raise a house. It's the same reason steel ships float.

And I didn't doubt him, because he was right. In my head I tried to calculate the basement square footage, and the buoyancy force created if the water table rose a half foot higher than the floor.

We have a lot of smart young people who can solve quadratic equations but cannot change a tire. We have a lot of smart young people that can ace the SAT's but cannot grow a head of cabbage.

Acing the SAT's is a useful skill--it will get you money, and power, and maybe even better sex. But you will still depend on the someone who can figure out the head pressure for the sump pump you need when things are less than perfect.

***

I spent a night in Brooklyn keeping a barge afloat.

Barges have two skins--the outside, and the inside. There is enough space in between for a man to crawl through, squeezing between cross struts and through hatches.

My orders were simple--do not let the barge sink. Refuel the pumps. Clean their filters. Just keep the damn thing afloat until the commercial divers could fix the hole punched through the side by an errant crane.

What did I learn?

I could work for 36 hours straight.
I could fix just about anything that could go wrong with a simple 2 stroke engine.
That dawn in Brooklyn can be lovely, even over the din of 2 stroke pumps.

Tonight I am manning one pump, an electric 1/3 horsepower machine, with a roof over my head instead of stars. I am drinking decent ale instead of spiked coffee from John the Pollack's thermos.

I am almost three times as old now as I was then. I have two wonderful kids. I have lost half my immediate family over the last dozen years or so.

And yet Orion rises overhead, and yet the tide falls below, and yet solstice returns as it has, as it will, no matter what I pretend to know.

And should my home rise like Noah's Ark upon the rising tide, no degrees will stop the flood, no certifications will part the sea.

And after 40 days of rain, the practical knowledge of how to run and maintain a simple 2 stroke pump will trump anything Ludwig Wittgenstein has written.

Ordering seeds

The week between solstice and the New Year, I stare at seed catalogs, gardeners' pornography.

The sun set a tad later yesterday than it did the day before--while this has been going on for a couple of weeks now, last evening was the first time I felt it in my bones. Time to order seeds.

(Yes, I know I can gather my own seeds, and I do--I have thousands of seeds scattered all over tarnation tucked in baggies, many with indecipherable code. Stamp collectors buy stamps they'll never lick, anglers buy lures they never cast, I save seeds I'll never plant.)

A seed is about promise, a tiny being put together by another, not without cost. Each seed has some stored energy, a few sleepy enzymes ready to be activated, and a tiny embryo.

Within this tiny, living plant rests strings of nucleic acids, with instructions for how to create living mass from air, from water. Mostly from thin air.

There is wilderness in a seed--reminders of the edge of life that we depend on yet cannot control.

Monsanto is the world's largest seed seller. Monsanto can (and does) manipulate the world's food supply. Monsanto is a publicly owned American company. As such, its primary duty is to maximize profit. If you want to read hard-core plant pornography, go visit Monsanto.

In the meantime, I'll continue to use Pinetree Garden Seeds for my seeds, one of many small privately owned companies that exist to sell seeds. I'm sure they make money, too, but I'm also sure that they won't sue me if I save some seeds next year.

Plants will be making seeds long after Monsanto crumbles. On a late December day, when the world outside waits patiently for life-giving sunlight to return, it's good to remember what matters, and dream of Carouby de Maussane pea flowers dancing in an early June breeze.

Guilty as charged

How many times have I used this as an excuse?

We have to cover the material rapidly--
we have a state test in May.

So what do I do? I fly through material. I shorten labs. I guide students through discussions with a machete, slicing down errant thoughts for the sake of time.

Yes, I know kids are the masters of the sidestep, and can take a tangent from Kansas to Oz, but a good teacher can usually tell the difference between a stall move and a thoughtful (but flawed) discussion point.

The result? My version of the Race to the Top guarantees that my lambs will know less of a whole lot more.

***

Our latest superintendent left a couple of months ago to go back home after cutting his teeth here. I don't get too involved with the machinations of administration--no sense vibrating over things I cannot control--but he said something at the beginning of the year that disturbed me, and still does.

He essentially announced that no matter what we think, no matter what our opinion of the state testing, no matter how illogical it is to expect 100% compliance with NCLB by 2014, we must do the things we must do to increase our scores because that's what the government mandates.

I am sure others have heard similar speeches in their districts.

That bothers me. A lot.

If we truly believe we are doing our kids a disservice by teaching to a test that I doubt most U.S. Senators could pass (or even, alas, a few teachers), why are we complicit?

Here in New Jersey, teachers do not work for the state, nor do we work for the Feds--we work for our local Boards of Education, and we're paid by the folks who live in the town where we teach.

If I am not doing what is in the best interests of the children of the citizens of Bloomfield, I had better have a good reason.

We can fairly argue, Mr. Superintendent, whether striving towards meeting NCLB is in our children's best interests. We can debate whether losing a small percentage of our funding will cripple our school system any more than the mindless pursuit of a mythical measurable standard.

What we should not tolerate, however, is blind acceptance of a flawed law using logic that smacks of Befehl ist Befehl.

Farmer wielding a machete photo from the National Archives.