#the middle class rich kid school chronicles

[melonymint753]

funnily, I had a high school classmate in the girls' golfing team* and she was really athletic. Like "can easily run with the track team" level. I asked her where she got exercise from, and turns out uhhhhh *looks above* those cars and servants? They're really expensive, so when training she has to carry all her clubs and walk from one hole to another.

so really it's a strange blend of jock and fem that tends towards the latter the more money you have. I really typed this all to say that the most jock-like golfer I know is a woman.

*yes my school has a golfing team that won't even let anyone without experience join, so the team has four people out of a school population of ~1600. The fact that there are still Four people does show how much of a middle class rich kid school it was

Golf is an extremely effeminate game. Its a non-contact low-exertion activity played on a perfectly manicured little picnic lawn and between individual actions you sit in a dainty car and get driven to the next spot so you arent blemished by the act of walking under the sun. If elderly men ever realized this it would be cataclysmic

[satellitetvcompany-blog]

The Ultimate Guide to Tween TV Shows: Entertainment for Growing Kids

As children grow older, their taste in television evolves. They move from simple animated series to more complex narratives that cater to their burgeoning interests and understanding of the world. Tween TV shows, designed for kids aged 9 to 12, offer a perfect blend of entertainment, education, and relatable content that resonates with this unique age group. This guide will explore some of the best tween TV shows, highlighting their themes, characters, and the values they promote.

Why Tween TV Shows Matter

Tween years is a critical developmental period. Kids are beginning to form their identities, seek independence, and develop more sophisticated cognitive and social skills. TV shows for tweens not only provide entertainment but also serve as a mirror to their lives, reflecting their struggles, joys, and the complex world around them. These shows often address themes such as friendship, family, school life, and personal growth, helping tweens navigate this transitional phase with relatable characters and storylines.

Classic Tween TV Shows

Lizzie McGuire

Overview: This iconic show follows Lizzie McGuire, a typical middle school student, as she navigates the challenges of growing up.

Themes: Friendship, self-acceptance, and the trials of adolescence.

Why It's Great: Lizzie's inner thoughts, often portrayed through an animated alter-ego, offer a humorous and insightful look into the mind of a tween.

Even Stevens

Overview: The series centers on the Stevens family, particularly the sibling rivalry between Louis, the mischievous younger brother, and Ren, the overachieving older sister.

Themes: Family dynamics, individuality, and humor.

Why It's Great: Its blend of slapstick comedy and heartfelt moments makes it a timeless favorite.

Modern Hits for Tweens

Andi Mack

Overview: Andi Mack's life takes a turn when she discovers a family secret that changes her perception of her identity.

Themes: Family secrets, friendship, and self-discovery.

Why It's Great: The show addresses real-life issues with sensitivity and provides a diverse representation of characters.

The Thunder Mans

Overview: The Thunder Mans are a family of superheroes trying to live a normal life in the suburbs.

Themes: Balancing ordinary life with extraordinary powers, sibling rivalry, and responsibility.

Why It's Great: It combines the excitement of superhero elements with the relatable dynamics of family life.

Educational and Inspirational Shows

The Magic School Bus Rides Again

Overview: A reboot of the classic series, following Ms. Frizzle’s sister, Fiona, as she takes her class on magical educational adventures.

Themes: Science, exploration, and curiosity.

Why It's Great: It makes learning fun and encourages kids to explore the world around them.

Project Mc²

Overview: This series follows a group of girls who use their STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) skills to solve problems.

Themes: Empowerment, intelligence, and teamwork.

Why It's Great: It promotes STEM education and shows that being smart is cool, especially for girls.

Fantasy and Adventure

Gravity Falls

Overview: Twins Dipper and Mabel spend the summer with their great-uncle in a mysterious town filled with supernatural occurrences.

Themes: Mystery, adventure, and family.

Why It's Great: Its complex, serialized storytelling and witty humor appeal to both kids and adults.

Avatar: The Last Airbender

Overview: In a world where people can manipulate the elements, young Aang must fulfill his destiny as the Avatar to bring peace to the world.

Themes: Destiny, friendship, and balance.

Why It's Great: It's praised for its deep storytelling, rich world-building, and character development.

Comedies That Deliver Life Lessons

Diary of a Future President

Overview: This show chronicles the middle school life of Elena, a Cuban American girl who dreams of becoming the President of the United States.

Themes: Ambition, cultural identity, and perseverance.

Why It's Great: It offers a positive role model and emphasizes the importance of dreams and hard work.

Alexa & Katie

Overview: Best friends Alexa and Katie face the highs and lows of high school while Alexa battles cancer.

Themes: Friendship, resilience, and support.

Why It's Great: It tackles serious issues with humor and heart, showcasing the strength of true friendship.

Inclusivity and Diversity

Degrassi: Next Class

Overview: The latest iteration of the long running Degrassi series, focusing on the lives of students at Degrassi Community School.

Themes: Teen issues, diversity, and acceptance.

Why It's Great: It doesn't shy away from tough topics and provides a platform for diverse voices and experiences.

The Loud House

Overview: Follows Lincoln Loud, the only boy in a family of eleven children, as he navigates the chaos of a large household.

Themes: Family, diversity, and problem-solving.

Why It's Great: It features a diverse cast and represents various family dynamics and backgrounds.

Conclusion

Tween TV shows play a crucial role in the entertainment and development of kids in this age group. They provide not only a source of enjoyment but also important lessons and reflections on real-life experiences. Whether through comedy, drama, fantasy, or adventure, these shows help tweens understand the world and their place in it. With the variety of high-quality programming available today, there's no shortage of excellent content to keep tweens engaged, informed, and entertained.

[these-are-the-first-steps]

Anne Rice has passed away today.

For anyone who has ever enjoyed a speck of my writing, please understand that this woman had a significant and profound influence on my writing style and how I parse the flow of story– amongst so much else.

From the moment my high school friend (coincidentally, also named 'Annie') slapped "The Vampire Lestat" down in front of me at the lunch room table after I'd been complaining about how I couldn't find anything good to read anymore, I....well, all the puzzle pieces of Writing that had been floating around in my skull since late elementary school suddenly snapped into place. Seeing and experiencing her example, as I then began to avidly follow the entire series and then some, suddenly ordered the clusterfuck of my mine.

The intricacy of her story setups (in her first nine books at least), borderline obsessed me in college. So much so that in the middle of a triptych re-read (her books tend to function in groups of three), I was so overcome with Opinions and Emotions About Said Opinions that I straight up skipped class, went to the computer lab, and typed up a huge email to Anne herself despite her website saying, in bright big bold red letters at the time, that she absolutely would NOT answer any emails/letters about the Vampire Chronicles anymore. Well, I wrote her anyway. And within the next day or two, nearly fell over, hands shaking, as I saw, sitting in my inbox, a reply.

She had written me back, and not just written me back, but a page and a half or so of answers, gentle chiding (I deserved it), and praise- she appreciated my letter so much she invited me to continue my investigation into the story, my philosophizing, my analysis, in a book of my own if I wanted- her blessing granted. I was floored. I was just a (very very) poor college student. I could never spare the time or precious energy for that. But I always carried the idea with me. Like a rain check. An IOU. Because Anne Rice had said I, me, silly dirt poor thing too in love with the story and characters, could do something like that with her encouragement. That to this day I still keep it all in my back pocket with the caveat "One day..." as I go on to write my own silly stories and stretch my literary muscles in this or that way.

Today, Anne has died. I am filled with unspeakable sadness. But this sadness is markedly, I think, different. It's a sadness over seeing that bright spot in the sky slowly dim out as you always knew it would, but while also knowing that it was never unfulfilled. Anne accomplished so much, and through so much pain and suffering that, while making her quite a bit grumpy from time to time (as extraneously irritating things would make any of us in times of distress), resulted in a life so rich, interesting, and perhaps even complete that while her physical presence may now be gone, her spirit surely isn't- that doesn't feel changed in the slightest. Sometimes great artists leave this world and you can feel the void left behind....I don't feel that this time with Anne. It's as if she didn't leave per se, but just transmuted into something a little different. But she's still there– there's no doubting that.

December 12th, 2021. 12-12-21. It's a nicely rounded out date. It looks nice written down on paper. I hope she also approves of it. I figure she's got so much to do now- finally seeing her little daughter, the inspiration for Claudia, again, and also her husband. So much to do! So many questions to finally have answered!! Literally, in heaven. What a shift! What a finish to such a life! Thank you for being here, Anne, and for taking the time out for me, and for all of us. Anne's son Christopher wrote today in his message conveying the news that as Anne's younger sister made her goodbyes, she told her, "What a ride you took us on, kid." Absolutely– exactly, that.

[chroniclesofalonewolf]

BLOND AMBITION (Just Another Appreciation Post)

SAYAKA SAEKI (Bloom Into You)

Her Deal: Touko Nanami's bestfriend/classmate/rival of some sorts. She's been in love with Touko upon entering Tohmi Higashi High School. With the aftermath of the events of the Student Council Play that showed a drastic change in Touko, Sayaka took the next step, confessing her love during their school field trip (Episode 37 of the manga). And, yes, she's the hottest lesbian in the planet. Fight me.

Regarding Saeki Sayaka: Underneath Sayaka's calm and poised exterior is a young woman struggling with her sexuality and her relationships. It is chronicled in the Bloom Into You spinoff light novels ".... Regarding Saeki Sayaka". Book 1 focused on her chance meeting with a kid in her swimming class and her first relationship with a senpai in middle school. Book 2 centered around Touko (her narrative is almost in conjunction with the events in the manga) and what she actually feels about sometime rival - now friend - Yuu Koito. Will Sayaka ever find her happy ending? Her story will conclude on Book 3, where Haru (mentioned in passing in the final chapter of the manga and also appeared at the tailend of Book 2) will be formally introduced.

TAIGA AISAKA (Toradora!)

Her Deal: The female lead and Ryuuji Takasu's partner-in-crime.

The Palm-Top Tiger: Taiga earned her (in) famous moniker "The Palm-Top Tiger" in Ohashi High School due to her small stature and her fits of temper. But underneath her rough exterior is a kind and supportive friend (evident with her interactions with Ryuuji, Minori, and Yusaku - even Ami) that sets aside her own happiness for others.

TUESDAY SIMMONS (Carole and Tuesday)

Her Deal: Singer-songwriter, one-half of Carole and Tuesday. Plays guitar.

Parent/s Just Don't Understand: Tuesday comes from a rich family in Hershell City, Mars. She wanted to pursue a career in music, but her politician mother opposed to the idea. This lead to Tuesday running away from home, then headed to Alba City where she met her musical partner Carole Stanley. Their mother-daughter conflict is one of the story arcs in the series.

WINRY ROCKBELL (Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood)

Her Deal: Childhood friend of the Elric Brothers. Brilliant automail mechanic.

Equivalent Exchange: Winry has a deeper connection with Alphonse and Edward Elric, but as the story progressed, she gradually developed romantic feelings with the latter. In the concluding episode of FMAB, Ed finally proposes to Winry through the whole "Equivalent Exchange" idea, where Winry replied, "... why should I give only half if I could give my whole life to yours?" (or something like that... 😅).

YUUKO YOSHIKAWA (Sound! Euphonium)

Her Deal: Trumpeter in the Kitauji High School Concert Band. Haruka Ogasawara's successor as President of the band.

Dynamite: Yuuko is another one of the interesting characters in the franchise. She can be cheerful and friendly at one point, but have fits of rage when provoked. She's also a Minami Middle School band alumna, alongside Nozomi Kasaki, Mizore Yoroizuka, and Natsuki Nakagawa (though the latter only joined the band when they went to Kitauji). A faithful admirer and supporter to fellow trumpeter and senpai Kaori Nakaseko, and once antagonist to Reina Kousaka during the trumpet solo mess (they eventually made amends in Season 2). But her dynamic with bandmate/frenemy Natsuki has been one of the highlights in her time in the series.

SHION KARANOMORI (Psycho-Pass)

Her Deal: Goddess of Information Analysis. MWPSB Division 1's Eyes and Ears.

Love is Love: Shion is bisexual. She often flirts with Nobuchika Ginoza and Shinya Kogami at times, but Shion is actually in an intimate relationship with enforcer Yayoi Kunizuka.

YUI YAMADA (Kase-san and Morning Glories)

Her Deal: The hardworking member (then later on, president) of their high school's greenery committee. She eventually took up an agriculture course in college.

It's Not Easy Being Green: Her job in the greenery committee include planting, watering, weeding, arranging, etc. Her dedication to her work caught the attention of eventual love interest - now girlfriend - school jock Tomoka Kase.

MARY SAOTOME (Kakegurui)

Her Deal: Skillful gambler in her own right. Had a one hell of a ride in the series from falling to become a house pet then climbing back to prominence once more. Became Yumeko Jabami's ally in the process.

Face-to-face with the Devil: Mary seemed to be brutal, cocky and overconfident when she was first introduced in Kakegurui (because she always wins in her matches - one instance her beating Ryota Suzui in a game hence becoming Mary's house pet). But things went straight to hell when she faced the then newly-transferred Yumeko in a game of rock-paper-scissors. The latter exposed Mary's cheating ways that lead to her eventual downfall.

RIZA HAWKEYE (Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood)

Her Deal: Ranked as lieutenant and ace markswoman in the Amestris State Military. Well-acquainted with guns. Significant member of Colonel Roy Mustang's Unit. Just don't mess with her.

The Colonel's "Queen": Lt. Hawkeye is a close confidant to the Flame Alchemist himself, Col. Mustang. Her loyalty and dedication to him is chronicled throughout the manga/anime series to a point that she's willing to die protecting him. On a personal level, there are some subtle hints that the two can be romantically linked (Mustang do care about Riza, too) but military duties just gets in the way, esp. in Riza's part. But I still ship them though!

[nitrateglow]

Time for me to complain about THE IMMORTAL COUNT

You know a biography is bad when it says more about its author than it does its chosen subject. 

Arthur Lenning lets you know he is a cradle Lugosi fan, even having met the man several times as a youngster in the 1940s. sometimes, fannish enthusiasm can enrich a critical study or biography. Other times, it comes off not unlike a Jack Chick tract: obnoxious, ugly, and unable to tolerate any view that so much as nudges its accepted ideology. Unfortunately, Lenning’s book is very much the latter.

Some positives first: the first chapters are very good, going into Lugosi’s childhood, his time on the Hungarian stage, his sad first marriage, his political entanglements, and his struggles to make it in Hollywood, where American xenophobia prevented him from being seen as anything but a heavy. These chapters are rich with biographical information, tend to be more objective, and gave me insight into Lugosi’s views on acting as a profession. In essence, it was actually a biography for the first hundred pages of this five hundred page book.

The moment Lugosi becomes a horror icon with the Dracula play, the book transforms from a biography to a fanboyish catechism. I understand the book’s full title is The Immortal Count: The Films and Life of Bela Lugosi, so I did anticipate some film analysis, likely observing what made Lugosi’s style unique and which films made the biggest impression on the popular culture. I did not expect 50% of the book to be plot summaries combined with the kind of fanboy commentary you can find on IMDB’s user reviews pages. Sometimes, Lenning is insightful, such as when he discusses the fairy tale motifs of White Zombie or explains how a movie is made “cinematic” through editing rather than camera movement when discussing the oft-praised Spanish Dracula. Other times, he indulges in trying to “improve” movies he doesn’t like, either by coming up with fix-it fanfiction rewrites of cheap 1940s filler features that make Lugosi more prominent or informing us that Lugosi should have played this or that role that Boris Karloff or Lon Chaney Jr. made famous because Lugosi is God and should not have been denied anything!

The hatred Lenning appears to bear Boris Karloff floored me because it seemed more based in jealousy for Lugosi’s sake than anything else. Karloff made more money than Lugosi, was more supported by the studio, and had a better career on the whole (even though he too ended up in some dire crap towards the end, but this does not suit Lenning’s narrative, so he never observes that). Any positive anecdote about Karloff is dismissed because Lugosi once referred to Karloff as “a cold fish” and who’s going to distrust Lugosi (even though Lenning himself admits Lugosi was envious of Karloff and often made things up about his own background make himself seem more interesting)?

Every story or remark that painted Karloff as an aloof snob is taken at face value. Lenning even claims Karloff’s politeness was a façade for a prima donna nature, hiding an arrogant man who reveled in being more successful than Lugosi. It’s absolutely childish how he chooses to make Karloff a cartoon villain in this, even mocking Karloff’s looks in comparison to Lugosi’s “attractiveness” and “sexual appeal.”

Now, I don’t believe Karloff was a saint whatsoever, and I’m sure he and Lugosi had an awkward working relationship at best, but the many interviews and anecdotes I have perused about Karloff over the years do not match up with how Lenning paints him here.

(Needless to say, when Lenning praises Karloff’s performance in The Body Snatcher, I was actually floored—was this the same author or had someone else typed that??)

However, I was most annoyed with his treatment of Lillian Lugosi by the end. For much of the book, he seems sympathetic to her: Lugosi was extremely controlling in their relationship, forbidding her from wearing make-up or curling her hair, buying all her clothes, growing easily jealous anytime she so much as went shopping on a whim for fear she was really seeing another man. Lenning, the veritable pope of the One True Church of Lugosi, even claims Lugosi seemed to have more regard for his dogs than he did his wife! Yet at the end of the book, when he cites her calling her second husband the love of her life, he snidely remarks that the guy was a drunk and really no better than Lugosi—because how dare she prefer anyone to Lugosi even after twenty years of putting up with his crap!

It’s hard for me to share Lenning’s disdain for Lugosi Jr either. Lenning paints him as a cold son and money-grubber only interested in Lugosi’s image for lucrative purposes, though to be honest, I rarely blamed Jr. for not being so close to his father. Lugosi was constantly traveling to do stage work, the two of them did not share common interests (more than likely due to Lugosi being such an older father), and Jr. was bullied at school for having Dracula as his dad, making their bond all the more awkward. I’m not saying he was totally in the right and as far as I know he could be some Snidely Whiplash money-grubber, but considering how biased Lenning shows himself to be when dealing with everyone else in this book, I have a hard time trusting anything he says about anybody. Either you’re a true believer or you’re a “cold fish,” I guess.

The most cringeworthy thing about this book is that Lenning makes himself a character in Lugosi’s life drama. He chronicles in detail the times he met the actor at performances of Dracula in the 1940s. This would normally be charming. Lenning instead casts himself as a holy figure, a sign to the saddened Lugosi that there is at least one “Lugosi-ite” out there adoring his films! He almost seems to suggest he is the son Lugosi should have had, unlike the unappreciative Jr. Why, Jr. didn’t even read the first edition of Lenning’s Lugosi biography! How awful!

(No, I’m not even kidding. He does complain about this! After claiming that Jr. attempted to control a conversation Lenning had with Lillian Lugosi, poor, poor Lenning says, “Once again he said that he had not read my book! (Perhaps he will spare himself from reading this update as well.)” I don’t know about Jr., but I wish I had spared myself the effort!)

This self-pitying, dare I say self-righteous, attitude permeates the book, making it unbearable and exhausting to read. Lenning makes snide remarks about those who don’t like Lugosi’s style or who dare to interpret events and anecdotes in ways that make Lugosi seem like the bad guy. He even calls some of his detractors “smart-ass critics.” I get being frustrated when critics are being smart-asses about things you like—I really do. I still haven’t fully forgiven Roger Ebert for his review of John Carpenter’s The Thing*… but when you’re writing a biography, is it really the time to settle personal vendettas? Is it really time to call people names like you’re still in middle school? Why not be the bigger person and show some class instead of making smart-ass comments yourself?

Ugh, Lugosi really needs a new biography. He deserves better than this fanboyish diarrhea. It’s sad, because it’s well-researched… but the author taints every event with his own rose-tinted view of Lugosi and his sheer disdain for everyone else save for fellow zealots.

Anyway, I’m done. Holy crap…

* This is a joke. Kind of.

[quarantineroulette]

Meet Me in the Bathroom and where things went wrong in NYC

“I remember seeing these kids that were 15 years old...They were saying, ‘This is the first time I’m seeing the Strokes. I listened to them all through elementary school and middle school.’ It was so cool to see them there so excited. I don’t know, maybe somewhere, somehow, years from now Vampire Weekend will do some kind of reunion show, but I can’t imagine young kids being there saying, ‘I love Vampire Weekend so much...I’ve been listening to them since elementary school.’ And if they are, they should be punched in the face.”   - Laura Young, blogger

While reading Lizzy Goodman’s Meet Me in the Bathroom: Rebirth and Rock and Roll in New York City 2001 - 2011 I found myself in a state that was equal parts amusement and depression. I moved to New York in 2006, after the initial New York Rock Renaissance had settled a bit. I came to New York because of a few of those Renaissance bands - specifically Interpol - but one year later the lackluster (to me at the time) Our Love to Admire was released and it just got worse from there. A few good bands and lots of bad ones came and went, New York became increasingly harder to succeed in if you were without a trust fund, and much of Brooklyn rapidly morphed into a suffocating Disneyland for yipsters. 

Goodman’s book evokes both the excitement that drove people like me to New York and the despair at what it inevitably became after a certain point in time. But it’s also much more than that: an account of the in-between era, when the Internet grew from being a gathering place for harmless to deviant weirdos to a music-sharing network to be reckoned with; an oral history on a few of the last rock bands who made it through before the door closed perhaps definitively; a very gossipy petri dish; a less cool younger sibling to Please Kill Me.   

My main takeaway from Meet Me..., however, is that it encapsulates a turning point for artists in NY, where wealth and marketing skills trumped having any real talent. It started out innocently enough - the book mentions that The Strokes, Interpol, and Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the big three it focuses on, all came from varying degrees of affluence. The sheer power of Karen O left Yeah Yeah Yeahs fairly safe from claims of derivation or stagnation that were sometimes directed at The Strokes or Interpol, and early on I even found myself thinking, “did I ever really need to read this much hyperbole on The Strokes?” Then I remembered that something like “12:51″ is basically a perfect song - that instantly irresistible riff, instrumental chorus, the handclaps, dumb lyrics - and I let it slide. 

 As NY slowly evolved into the kiddie’s big city play set it is today, money gradually overtook talent and so we had things like the Misshapes, whose ethos was that anybody can DJ, just show up and plug in your iPod, no further skills necessary. Because these Jersey kids had the marketing wherewithal, in crowd connections, & an entrepreneurial approach to early social media, Misshapes became a huge nightlife phenomena, overshadowing Tiswas, a less successful, more authentic club night in a similar vein, where being a DJ was (rightly) considered a learned skill. 

Then came the rich kid music nerds like Vampire Weekend, who blended styles that never really needed to be blended just because they downloaded a bunch of music from the Internet and it seemed like a novel idea. Because of privilege, these boat-shoed Columbia students could say they made music as a “hobby” not as a “profession” and got a lot farther than The Strokes in the process. The Strokes, suffering from “leader of the pack” syndrome, took a creative tumble as squarer bands fielded calls from Geoff Travis and debuted in the Billboard Top 20. 

Despite these depressing findings, I found a lot to enjoy in Meet Me..., especially the chapters on Yeah Yeah Yeahs - whose history I honestly wasn’t that knowledgable of - and of course the passages on Interpol. The commentary from Paul Banks was especially hilarious, and I could’ve easily just read a book of him and Matt Berninger from The National going back and forth on things (I’m aware this probably makes me sound like a sad white dude and I accept it). I also appreciated its focus on the rise of blog culture, and how this medium gave more of a voice to female music writers and fans. Those women, as well as the late, great Marc Spitz, were the critical voices whom I most appreciated, although it was nice when Rob Sheffield shared his PG Conor Oberst / Nick Zinner slash fantasy. 

My main criticism of the book is its omission of some of the less successful bands of the era - such as Calla, stellastarr*, !!!, The Double and others. A few are given a sentence or two, but a whole chapter would have been preferred over chronicling The Vines, The Killers, and other outlying bands who were included to show the scope of The Strokes’ influence. In this way I found the book a bit too macro, and would have preferred if it focused on a slightly shorter period of time. This could have created some loose ends, but some of the more interesting bands covered - Liars, TV on the Radio, The National - peter out inconclusively, although TV on the Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe gets a pretty brilliant final say in a chapter entitled “We Warmed it Up for you Fuckers.” 

All in all, Meet Me in the Bathroom made me even less happy about being a New Yorker in 2019, but it also gave me a decade’s worth of early 2000s music trivia to pull out whenever my friends and I tire of complaining about how lame New York has become.  

[thevividgreenmoss]

But here’s the depressing truth: this exposé will only make things worse. Any attempt to shed light on the absurdity and excess of the admissions scramble only breeds more scramble, as one admissions consultant, an advisor to clients including middle-eastern royalty and scions of name-brand multinational conglomerates, said. “Articles like this are part of the white noise vortex,” she told me at the outset of our interview. “They are consumed by these communities focused on this.”

In elite admissions, sunshine is more of a fertilizer than a disinfectant. In the early 2000s, then-Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Golden broke a string of stories chronicling corruption in admissions, from politicians pulling strings to billionaires like Charles Kushner bribing their kids through the storied gates of the Ivy League. Then he started getting calls. “Some of the Journal’s wealthier subscribers regarded my series not as investigative journalism but as a how-to guide,” Golden wrote in his 2006 book The Price of Admission (a point he returned to on Tuesday for ProPublica). One “high-tech tycoon” asked Golden for help getting his academically undistinguished daughter into an Ivy. Others offered him large sums to serve as an advisor.

If elite education is mostly about status consciousness, galling tales of profligacy in college admissions will have the unintended effect of producing more of the same. Imagine the plight of a multimillionaire parent looking to land their kid in a top college. Whatever the motivation might be—class preservation, earnest belief in the power of education, shallow hunger for prestige—they know there’s a thousand other parents just like them angling for some kind of advantage that goes beyond the obvious educational expenditures, the tutors and prep schools and mission trips to Guatemala.

The first option is to hire someone to help their kid stand out among the rest. Thankfully, a burgeoning cottage industry of admissions consultants stands ready to shepherd well-heeled Ivy aspirants through the application gauntlet. At the baseline, their job is to aid in college selection, ease anxiety, strategize around course selection, and help revise essays. At the higher end of the market, there are consultants charging over $1,000 an hour to help kids set up resume-enhancing charity projects; others blatantly offer to punch up essays and leave no trace in the process. In any other context, we would call it PR.

But this is all just a way of getting in the front gates. Another suite of strategies exists to help usher privileged teens in through the back door of elite educational institutions. The most obvious is legacy preference, which colleges defend on the logic that it helps bring in donations. It also doesn’t hurt to play some country club sport like tennis or water polo (see, for instance, the well-meaning charities that teach low-income, inner-city kids squash to help their future educational prospects). Legal bribery in the form of donations provides a last-ditch option for the obscenely rich, though I was told that an opening bid of $10 million is required to even be taken seriously among the Ivies.

But at this point the front gates are already crowded with perfectly credentialed, consultant-polished applicants, while the back door is straining under the pressure of legacy cases and trustees’ nephews and plutocratic donors. What other option is there? Enter the side door. Here is William Singer, the mastermind behind the Edge College & Career Network, aka the Key, who was charged Tuesday for racketeering, money laundering, conspiracy to defraud the United States, and obstruction of justice:

If I can make the comparison, there is a front door of getting in where a student just does it on their own, and then there’s a back door where people go to institutional advancement and make large donations, but they’re not guaranteed in . . . And then I created a side door that guaranteed families to get in. So that was what made it very attractive to so many families, is I created a guarantee.

It would be nice to believe that the recent bust would close forever the side door that Singer pried open for the criminal conspirators he called clients. But more realistically, status-conscious one-percenters reading the recent coverage aren’t going to be struck with a sudden bout of conscience. Instead, they’ll be googling “side door ivy league consultant” and looking for someone they can pay who isn’t staring at ten to twenty in federal prison.

This isn’t to say brazen schemes like Singer’s are all that common (though really, who knows). What matters more is the fine-tuned system of perfectly legal advantage-gaming that surrounds higher-end admissions. The latter will exist as long as the economic and social rewards to Ivy degrees tower so vertiginously above those of less elite competitors. All that is needed for the system of legal bribery to persist are three interrelated factors: social and financial networks that help usher alumni into the one percent; the dependence of elite colleges on private donations and alumni support; and admissions offices that are not perfectly insulated from the prerogatives of development offices and trustees, among other interested parties. So long as these realities remain, the rich will continue to exploit the elite education system by whatever (totally legal) means are available. Only the truly gauche will sink so low as bribe an SAT proctor.

For all the bile and spleen surrounding the admissions scandal, it’s hard to imagine any systematic overhaul coming anytime soon. Some of the embarrassed universities might tighten up their admissions practices, particularly the easily exploited athletic preference angle. But none of them are going to, say, ditch legacy admissions or lock trustees out of the decision process. And among ultra-wealthy parents, the current news cycle will only intensify the admissions anxiety (read: class anxiety). As the aforementioned high-end admissions consultant told me, “You and your gory stories keep me employed, but frankly I would rather have people be less stressed.”

[chiseler]

William Attaway’s Hobo Novel

“Day O! Day O! Daylight come and me wanna go home.” Most Americans would immediately recognize Harry Belafonte’s “Banana Boat Song,” with its rhyming, rhythmic language and the irresistible calypso beat. “Come Mr. Tally man tally me banana…” Yet the creative genius behind the popular Jamaican singer is little known beyond a small academic circle. A close friend of Belafonte, African American writer William Attaway wrote the lyrics to this classic and others, compiled in his Calypso Song Book of 1957. “Day O is based on the traditional work songs of the gangs who load the banana boats in the harbor at Trinidad,” Attaway explains in the liner notes of Belafonte’s 1956 album Calypso. “The men come to work with the evening star and continue through the night. They long for daybreak when they will be able to return to their homes. All their wishful thinking is expressed in the lead singer’s plaintive cry: ‘Day O, Day O…. The lonely men and the cry in the night spill overtones of symbolism which are universal.” Attaway spent a long and varied career giving voice, in a range of literary and popular genres, to “the lonely men” whose labor puts food on our tables and keeps our industries running. He is best known for his 1941 novel Blood on the Forge, which chronicles the African American Great Migration and labor strife in the Pennsylvania steel mills. But perhaps Attaway’s most powerful expression of the loneliness of the agricultural worker is his first novella—out of print and neglected by scholars—a hobo narrative called Let Me Breathe Thunder.

Attaway’s interest in the poor and outcast began not with his own experience of poverty, but with his youthful rejection of bourgeois values that prompted him to follow an unconventional path. Attaway was born in Greenville, Mississippi in 1911, and migrated as a child to Chicago. His father, a physician, and his mother, a teacher, desired better opportunities for their children outside of the Jim Crow South, and encouraged their son to pursue a career in medicine. While his older sister, Ruth, met their parents’ expectations by studying hard and becoming a successful Broadway actress, William bristled under the constraints of his middle-class upbringing. He frequently skipped classes during high school, and fared little better at the University of Illinois—except for his course in creative writing.

The genesis of Attaway’s hobo novella lies in his adventures on the road and rails during the Great Depression. After two years of college, Attaway dropped out and hopped a freight headed west with forty dollars in his pocket. This was the early 1930s, when desperate men, women, and children swelled the ranks of the itinerant labor force. Once he reached San Francisco, he realized he was too broke to follow his dream of traveling to the Far East, so he got a job as a stevedore. Lured once again by the romance of the road, he followed the crops up through the western states, stopping for a few months at a farm in Kansas and again with a Japanese family back in San Francisco. “I had a hard job making it,” Attaway reminisced to the Daily Worker in June 1939, “Going over the mountains in an empty [refrigerator car] I lost all sensation in my fingers for almost two years.” Riding the rails as an itinerant laborer radicalized Attaway, and he worked as a union organizer upon joining his sister Ruth in Harlem in 1933. After struggling to find a job in the depth of the Depression, Attaway hit the road again, this time as an actor in Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman’s play “You Can’t Take It With You.”

These experiences—as hobo, activist, and actor—provided rich material for Attaway’s literary imagination. He wrote Let Me Breathe Thunder while on tour with the play, and its theatrical qualities reflect the context of its creation. The story draws from Attaway’s hobo experience, yet its main characters, Step and Ed, are white. These hard-boiled hoboes ride the rails in search of a good time and an occasional job. On a lark, they take a runaway Mexican child named Hi Boy under their wings. While Attaway flirts with the devil-may-care freedom of the hobo life, he makes it clear that the road is not a fit environment for a child, and he exposes Step and Ed’s desperate loneliness beneath their raucous revelry. The threesome settles into a more domestic routine when they stop to work for a few months at an apple farm in Washington’s Yakima Valley, owned by a kindly, father figure named Sampson. When they tire of this wholesome, familial environment, Step and Ed visit a nearby roadhouse owned by the most fascinating characters in the novella, a black female entrepreneur, Mag, and her partner, Cooper. Ultimately, the womanizing, hedonist Step loses his chance at redemption when he brings Sampson’s teen-aged daughter to the roadhouse and seduces her, and they flee to the rails once more.

Published in 1939, Let Me Breathe Thunder received positive reviews in both the mainstream and radical press. As Milton Meltzer proclaimed in the Daily Worker: “When William Attaway’s first novel landed on the desks of the critics the other day they got excited. From left to right the reviews are alive with paragraphs punched out enthusiastically.” Attaway’s novel may have appealed to critics in and out of the literary Left because it embedded radical themes—anti-Capitalism, anti-lynching, and even interracial sex—within the framework of a more conventional masculine road narrative. As Stanley Young of the New York Times put it: “His tough and tender story of two young box-car wanderers and their love for a little Mexican waif who rides the reefers with them has some of the emotional quality and force of the familiar relationship of George and Lennie in ‘Of Mice and Men.’  We see two rootless men faced by hard reality yet still susceptible to dreams and affection.” Despite these favorable reviews, the novella did not sell well, and it has received little attention from scholars. This critical neglect is perhaps due to the nature of present-day critical categories, which implicitly define African American literature as literature by and about black people. What does one do with a book written by a black writer with white protagonists? A book that resembles Of Mice and Men more so than Native Son?

Stanley Young wasn’t the only critic to mention the resemblance between Attaway’s debut novella and Steinbeck’s best-seller. Other critics at the time noticed the parallel, as have a handful of scholars who make passing reference to Attaway’s first book in their surveys of African American literature. Yet no one has compared the two in depth, which is crucial to understanding Attaway’s take on the intersections of race and class, and his effort to bridge radical anti-racism and American populism. Attaway self-consciously revises Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men to complicate the image of the populist collective—in this case the hobo community—that was so appealing in the 1930s. Attaway suggests the radically egalitarian potential of the hobo subculture, yet also exposes its racist shadow side.

In both novellas, the outsider status of the white characters allows them to cross racial boundaries. In Of Mice and Men, Lennie and George expand their vision of the “dream farm” to include Candy, the aging and crippled “swamper,” and Crooks, the “Negro stable buck” with a disfigured back. Yet Crooks does not enter into the community as an equal, but rather offers to “work for nothing—just [my] keep.” Moreover, Steinbeck avoids the thorny issue of miscegenation by limiting his interracial community to men. When Curley’s wife enters the scene, she silences the newfound friends by threatening to accuse Crooks of rape. Her threat of lynching disempowers and marginalizes the interracial collective.

Attaway offers a more radical interracial vision by directly confronting the hot-button issue of miscegenation. Like Steinbeck, he depicts the hobo subculture as radically egalitarian due to the outsider status of poor, rootless whites. According to the black hobo that appears briefly in Attaway’s story, “Guys on the road ain’t got prejudice like other folks.” Yet this hobo is a far cry from the physically weak, guarded Crooks. Rather, he asserts his racial equality in sexual terms, bragging about his sexual encounter with a white woman: “‘there was a yeller-haired girl in the empty with a bunch of us. Some of them gave her money. She let me love her up all the way in to Chi for a piece of cake. […] Black or white, it’s all the same on the road.’” In the boxcar, the black hobo can break America’s most powerful racial taboo, its number one justification for lynching.

While this boxcar moment offers a vision of racial equality among the down-and-out, a subsequent lynching scene suggests that the egalitarian hobo collective is as transient as its members. While Step is unfazed by the anonymous black hobo’s story of his sexual encounter with a white prostitute, he reacts violently to the notion of Cooper, the black owner of the roadhouse, having sex with Sampson’s white daughter, and joins a lynch mob in pursuit of his old friend. What explains Step’s contradictory behavior? First, class status and sexuality mediate each woman’s claim to whiteness: perhaps the miscegenation taboo applies to the farmer’s daughter and not to the prostitute. More importantly, Attaway warns that without political consciousness, it is impossible for someone like Step to differentiate between radical and reactionary collectivism.  

While Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men enjoys enduring popularity as novel, play, and film, Attaway’s novella has slipped into obscurity. It was reprinted several more times—in London in 1940; in Copenhagen (in Danish) in 1943; under the title Tough Kid in 1952 and ‘55, and a final version under the original title in 1969. In 1960, the New York Times reported that Herbert Kline was working on a film adaptation of Let Me Breathe Thunder in Mexico, but the film was never made. Recovering Attaway’s hobo narrative restores the radical edge to a popular Depression-era icon. His story draws parallels between the experiences of white hoboes and racial minorities, yet ultimately warns readers of the powerful allure of the Jim Crow lynch myth, its geographical reach, and its fundamental hypocrisy.

by Erin Royston Battat

[knowing-truth4031-blog]

Santa Claus (Opinion)

Since Christmas is right around the corner I figured this particular opinion post would focus on the holly jolly man in the red suite...Santa Claus.

So who is this Santa Claus. In our culture here in the United States of America, Santa Claus is a man who lives at the North Pole. He has a workshop where the toys are made for all of the good children of the world. How are the toys made? Well, a bunch of little creatures called elves work all year (with no pay) to make these toys in time for them to be delivered by Christmas morning. 

How does Santa deliver these toys? Why, in a magical sled pulled along by eight (nine if you count the red nosed one) reindeer who can...fly. On the night of Christmas Eve, Santa flies around the entire world, breaks in to every house and leaves toys for the good kids.  

If you haven't figured it out from my maybe obvious sarcasm, I am not a fan of Santa Claus. In fact, I find him to be very harmful and not just from a Christian perspective. We will touch on the Christian perspective of course, because this blog is taken from such perspective, but I will also throw in why even those who stay far away from the church should also caution themselves when it comes to ol’ St. Nick.

Reason #1: Santa Is A Lie

If you are reading this and you still believe in Santa...well, spoiler alert, he’s not real. This shouldn’t be a controversial idea. Santa Claus is not real. He doesn’t live in the North Pole, he does not have a magic sled (because that’s not real either). He does not have several flying reindeer (because those don’t exist either...reindeer do, just not the flying kind). There is no toy factory at the North Pole where a bunch of little enslaved creatures work day after day all year to make toys for no pay. It’s all fantasy. 

Is there anything wrong with fantasy? No. God gave us an imagination. Fantasy has been used by many people to promote the gospel. A good example is the famous and wonderful Chronicles of Narnia saga by C. S. Lewis. When you have an active imagination, you can use that for the glory of God! So now why is Santa different? When you read stories to your children such as Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings you make it clear (or at least you should) that what is going on is not real. Hogwarts does not exist. Middle Earth is not a real place. You read these stories because they are entertaining and there are wonderful lessons that can be learned from them. The whole Santa Claus narrative is most commonly told to children as real and true. 

How many of you grew up believing in Santa Claus? I’m sure many of you did! I did. The Bible says this...

- So stop telling lies. Let us tell our neighbors , for we are all part of the same body. (Ephesians 4:25)

I know what some of you are thinking...this is a little intense. That’s the point. I think many of us as Christians see that there are two levels of lying. The lying that is really bad and the lying that is not that bad because it’s not hurting anything. Right? Wrong. All lying is wrong. All lying is sin. The Bible is very clear on this. We as Christians are supposed to be witnesses to truth! That’s all truth. 

We tell our kids they shouldn’t lie to us. We tell our kids that lying is a sin. Then we need to be an example of this and not lie to them! No matter how big or small we think the lie may be, it is still a lie. And in case you’re wondering, I believe this applies to all fictional things such as the Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, Great Pumpkin, Bigfoot and that creepy baby angel Cupid.

Reason #2: Santa Teaches a Gospel of Works

If we want to raise our kids in a Christ centered home with a Bible based way of seeing things then we need to apply it to our whole lives and not pick and choose. The Bible teaches that it is by grace through faith alone that we are saved and not by works so that no one can boast (Ephesians 2:8-9). So if this is the case, then why do we tach that Santa will only reward you if you are good?

He knows if you’ve been bad or good so be good for goodness sake. I think most know this song. And I think we can all agree that being kind to others and acting with other people’s best interest instead of our own. That’s sacrificial. But it does not count towards our salvation. At all. Our works are as filthy rags to God. If we try to earn or even contribute to our salvation through good works then we are fighting a losing fight. God loved us so he made a way for us to have access to him through the death of Christ. This is a gift freely given to us. We did not earn it. It’s not based on if we’ve been bad or good.

Parents will use this idea of Santa to get their kids to behave. I remember my mom or dad would say things like, “You better be good because Santa is watching!” And this would sometimes cause me to get my act together because I wanted to make sure I got that one special gift for Christmas. I am not faulting my parents. Like most parents, I do not believe there is any intent to lead their children astray. They see it as a fun little way of getting in the Christmas spirit. My parents were very good about making sure me and my brother knew that Jesus was the reason for the season. However, there were times when it crossed over in to “do this or Santa will know and you won’t get anything for Christmas!” 

To repeat. God gives us the free gift of salvation for all who repent and turn from sin and surrender to Christ. It has nothing to with us. What we do. It has everything to do with what Jesus has done. 

Reason #3: Santa Discriminates

What do I mean by this? This is probably the simplest point I can make. When we do the Santa thing with our kids we are not taking other people in to consideration. Let me paint a picture for you...

Family A is an upper-middle class family. They have a  lovely young son who really wants an Xbox for Christmas. He has not been very good all year but he is sure Santa is going to bring one for him.

Family B is a lower income family with an equally lovely young son who also really wants and Xbox for Christmas. He has been good all year. Respects his parents, gets good grades, says please and thank you. Great kid.

Well, Christmas comes and Family A has put a brand new Xbox under the tree for their child while Family B does not because they can’ afford one. They give their son what they can. Both kids happen to go to the same school and are in the same class. Kid from Family A is talking about his new Xbox that Santa gave him and kid from Family B overhears him.

Why didn’t Santa bring him one if he brought the kid from Family A one? Did he do something wrong? Was he not good enough? Or does Santa not like lower class people?

You see the issue here? 

We put so much value on our possessions. And we like people to know what we have. We like people to see the car we drive or the clothes we wear or we want them to know that we have the latest and greatest gadget. I have an iPhone, and I think the most common question I get asked is, “what iPhone do you have.” When I answer they usually respond with, “Oh, I have the newest one. It’s great.” Why do I care? Why should I care?

You shouldn’t care. Because the worth of someone is not found in what someone has. It is found in their character. I am reminded of a story from the Bible where Jesus and his disciples are at the temple. Jesus points out the rich people like to make a show of their giving. They do it for the attention and not because they want to be generous but because they have the extra money and what they’re giving isn’t a sacrifice to them. And then comes this woman who puts in two little coins. Jesus points her out and says that she gave more because she gave everything shad had. Her heart was in the right place. 

The idea of Santa falls in this category of the rich. We give these gifts because we want to be recognized. Be good and get gifts and tell everyone that Santa brought it to you. Santa is all for show and it’s all about me. If we teach our kids to give instead of receive, to abandon this idea of a Santa who discriminates against the less fortunate then we are able to teach them about a God who gave everything to us. To make a sacrifice on our behalf, not because we’ve been good or bad but because he loves us. It doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor, doesn’t matter what part of the world you’re from. Jesus extends this invitation to all who repent and turn to him. This is something Santa cannot offer.

I am not saying receiving gifts is bad. I’m not saying to have a desire for something is bad. What is bad is when we tell our children that there is this man who seems to know everything (sees us when we’re sleeping. Knows when we’re awake. Knows if we’ve been bad or good) and yet seems to forget about or doesn’t care about the kids in the families who can’t afford the luxuries other people can.

Reason #4: Santa Takes the Place of Jesus

I do think we need to be cautious though. There are much bigger issues in the Bible that need to be addressed when it comes to what we teach our children, but, the Bible does paint a pretty harsh picture of what should happen to someone who leads children away from Jesus (Matthew 18:6). Again, do I think that if you are a parent who does the Santa thing is guilty of this? Not necessarily, but could that be the case? Yes. When the child chooses Santa over Jesus. When Jesus is put aside and Santa takes that spot, then I believe you are walking on dangerous ground. 

Jesus needs to be the focus and the center of our entire lives. Everything we do should be Jesus centered. The moment something takes the place of Jesus in our lives we have crossed over in to sin. Don’t get me wrong, we all do this from time to time. We are human beings. We are not perfect. Yes we will stumble, but we repent. However, when we knowingly and willingly put Santa in our children’ t head as this all knowing judge of good and bad, we cross a line. We lie to them. We push Jesus to the side. And that is not good. Not good at all.

Bonus Reason: Santa Is Just Kind Of Creepy

Let’s just take a moment and remember a quote from a lovely little fellow named Olaf; “Breaking and entering: Okay on Christmas.” And I might add that it’s okay as long as it’s someone who is bringing you a gift that you really, really, really, really wanted. Can I just remind everyone that this person called Santa apparently breaks in to your house by means of chimney. And according to a semi-entertaining movie from years back, if you don’t have a fireplace one would just appear. I like how they fill that plot hole but not the one about kids in 3rd world countries. The point I’m making is Santa is just plain creepy.

Conclusion: I know many of you who read this probably think I am being way too picky about this and that it’s not as big of a deal as I am making it out to be. And that’s okay. That’s why this is marked as an opinion blog. Unlike most of my other blogs, this is all based on my own opinion of what I see in scripture. If you do the Santa thing with your kids, I do not see you as a bad person nor would I avoid you if I saw you in a Walmart picking out one of those giant inflatable yard Santas. I love you and you have your own convictions. I just argue that maybe some re-evaluation takes place with the whole Santa Claus thing.

God bless.

-Ty

[spiritualdirections]

Professional women today are as unhappy as their suburban housewife grandmothers. This wasn’t supposed to happen.

“The Ambition Collision,” by Lisa Miller is one of the more read articles on the New York Magazine website. It compares the malaise that professional women feel today with the malaise of the suburban housewife Betty Freidan characterizes in The Feminine Mystique.

What is this midlife crisis among the 30-year-olds I know?  Millennial women — at least those who reside in professional bubbles — seem to have it all. They are better educated, more prosperous, less encumbered by cultural expectations than any previous generation of women. They delay marriage (if they marry at all) and children (if they choose to conceive). They can own or rent. They can save or spend. These women have been on familiar terms with their ambitions all their lives — raised by careful parents to aim high (millennial women are likelier than their male peers to have professional jobs, to be managers, and to work in finance), and tutored by their cultural icons to perform their empowerment, and never submit. You know, “Bow down, bitches,” as they say.

So why are the well-employed, ambitious 30-year-olds of my acquaintance feeling so adrift, as discontented as the balding midlife sad sacks whose cliché dissatisfactions made Updike rich? The women complain of the enervating psychic effects of the professional treadmill as white-collar piecework and describe their dread as they contemplate bleak futures — decade after decade, they imagine, unfulfilled. After a lifetime of saying ‘yes’ to their professional hunger — these are the opportunity-seizers, the list-makers, the ascendant females, weaned on Lean In — they’ve lost it, like a child losing grasp of a helium balloon. Grief-stricken, they are baffled too, for they have always been propelled by their drive. They were the ones who were supposed to run stuff — who as girls imagined themselves leaving the airport in stylish trench coats, hailing a taxi with one hand while holding their cell in the other.

Who ever said that work should be the be-all?

Now, “there’s no vision,” one woman said to me. “Nothing solid,” said another. Limp, desperate, they fantasize about quitting their good jobs and moving home to Michigan. They murmur about purpose, about the concrete satisfactions of baking a loaf of bread or watching a garden grow. One young woman I know dreams about leaving her consulting job, which takes her to Dubai and Prague, to move back home and raise a bunch of kids. Another, an accountant with corner-office aspirations, has decided to “phone it in” for a few years while she figures out what she wants to do. Mostly, though, these women don’t bail out. They are too responsible, and too devoted to their wavering dreams. They stay put, diligently working, ordering Seamless and waiting for something — anything — to reignite them, to convince them that their wanting hasn’t abandoned them for good. Any goal would do, one woman told me: a child, a dog — “even a refrigerator.” People have been motivated by less.

Get a grip, I want to tell them, for I am old enough to be, if not their mother then their world-weary aunt. Who ever said that work should be the be-all? You work for money. The money you earn pays the rent. You are the very, very lucky few, in possession of the jobs and apartments that every tier-one college student wants. But the more I listen, the more I think I hear in these young women’s voices the echo of something familiar — the complaints of a long-ago generation but in reverse. The female dissatisfaction chronicled by Betty Friedan in The Feminine Mystique was prompted by a widespread awakening to the bullshit promises of domestic happiness, manufactured by culture to make female containment look good. Now another bullshit promise has taken its place, and another generation is waking up.

Here’s some thoughtful commentary from an MIT student:

Last night, I was reading some articles from “The Cut”, a section of New York Magazine. I came across this one, titled “The Ambition Collision” by Lisa Miller. It's one of The Cut's most read articles, and describes how a generation of professional millennial women face a strange, unexplainable burnout. They seem to lose their motivation and desire after a few years in the workforce, or at once on entering it. ...What intrigued me about the article is what the author said after describing this problem, which is that, while those external struggles exist, there’s still a deeply personal perspective problem that everyone has. I’ll let the article explain itself here:

“The lesson of The Feminine Mystique was not that every woman should quit the ‘burbs and go to work, but that no woman should be expected to find all her happiness in one place — in kitchen appliances, for example. And the lesson for my discontented friends is not that they should ditch their professional responsibilities but that they should stop looking to work, as their mothers looked to husbands, as the answer to the big questions they have about their lives. “I think possibly work has replaced ‘and they got married and lived happily ever after,’ and that is a false promise,” says Ellen Galinsky, co-founder of the Families and Work Institute. “Everyone needs to have more than one thing in their life. We find people who are dual-centric to be most satisfied. If people put an equivalent stress on their life outside of their job they get further ahead and are more satisfied at their job.””

Though this insight was shared through the lens of writing about women’s issues, I think it’s a useful thing to think about for everyone. After graduating high school and moving into college, I graduated in a lot of other ways too. Some were expected--I reached new levels of independence and capability. Some were unexpected, like new reaching new levels of confidence, or weird, like a new level of defining myself and understanding the depth of my identity. And somehow, I seemed to reach a new level of sadness or discomfort too. Adult feelings somehow are more complicated than kid feelings, and I still haven’t figured out why. It’s not that I feel more or less happy than when I was child (although probably it’s a little bit less, lol) but it’s that, as a child you at least always know why you’re unhappy--denial of ice cream, the onset of sleepiness, a little brother that destroys your things. Unhappiness is for the most part temporary and usually defined by a single moment.

Adult unhappiness has seemed to involve many more themes, where the same feelings always worm their way into whatever sadness I’m feeling that day, even if they have nothing to do with why I’m sad in that moment. It feels a little more chronic. Maybe it’s because of passage of time, and accumulating many more things to be unhappy about over the years. Sometimes sadness is unexplainable, like those women in The Cut article, just a strange listlessness that I can never articulate very well.

Sometimes coming to MIT feels a little bit like hitting a ceiling too. At least in my case, MIT was a goal I worked on for a full 7 years (I first started reading the blogs in middle school, lol). A sentence from this article stands out to me: “It’s as if the women have cleared spaces in their lives for meteoric careers, and then those careers have been less gratifying, or harder won, or more shrunken than they’d imagined.”

MIT was certainly hard won. And I had known, at least superficially, that what I was doing was kind of insane--I worked really hard to get into a place where I would have to work even harder. I think what I hadn’t prepared for was just how dissatisfying it can be to have hard work feel fully wasted. Freshmen year there was a lot of studying for days to barely pass, rather than studying for days to at least get a decent grade. But now that’s mostly over--my classes are in the field I most enjoy, they’re interesting, and though they’ve certainly required hard work, my academic life is a little more balanced. So why does that feeling of burnout, dissatisfaction, listlessness still hit? (it’s always in November or February....)

Maybe it's because as a student, life is still pretty centered around work. But things outside of work aren't always great either...

As Pascal said, all people complain, even those at the top of society. The world is fallen, and so it doesn’t live up to our desires that it not be fallen. And nothing in the world can make that fallenness go away. We’ll eventually all feel this if we are sensitive and thoughtful and realistic, if we don’t just distract ourselves from it. Not even a great university or great career or great apartment can make us deeply happy.

[gokuchulainn]

because apparently i'm not allowed to ask all about morgen i guess you have to do 1-10 rose, 11-20 ayo, 21-30 your seafolk girl i can't remember how to spell her name, 31-40 morgen. i expect you to write a book

WHOOPS I’M GONNA WRITE A NOVEL

ROSARY

Does your character have siblings or family members in their age group? Which one are they closest with? Rosary is the lone teenager! Both of her cousins are under the age of 12 and her mom and aunt are early 40′s and late 30′s respectively! She doesn’t know her dad’s family well and isn’t really familiar with whether or not she even HAS cousins her age on that side. 

What is/was your character’s relationship with their mother like? She loves her mom so much. She respects the shit out of her mom’s work ethic and will do whatever she can to support her mother in her endeavors. However, she misses her mom because their schedules don’t overlap much, since her mom works a lot and Rose is either in school or off solving mysteries or some shit. Her mom is very supportive but generally isn’t in the loop about her daughter, which drives a wedge between them.

What is/was your character’s relationship with their father like? Rose’s dad is dead but he was very supportive and involved with his daughter. He was very open about his culture and encouraged artistic endeavors from her. However, she was 9 or 10 when he passed and Rose feels a temporal distance from his love and support now.

Has your character ever witnessed something that fundamentally changed them? If so, does anyone else know? Oh boy. Having her abilities sealed off, seeing her mother break down after learning her father didn’t make it after the accident that killed him, reading the final missing page of Sharon’s diary (the one chronicling the leadup to her untimely death). The only people who are aware of ALL of these things are Ayo and Morgen. 

On an average day, what can be found in your character’s pockets? She has a lot of twine in her pockets because she works as a florist. She usually also has receipts from the coffee she purchases before school, and the change from that. She also usually has eyedrops in her pocket because she cannot stand if she gets dry eyes while wearing her contacts. 

Does your character have recurring themes in their dreams? Rose doesn’t remember most of her dreams, but if she does, it’s usually super bizarre shit.

Does your character have recurring themes in their nightmares? See above. Rosary isn’t really a dreamer. She doesn’t have enough information to draw from to draw off patterns.

Has your character ever fired a gun? If so, what was their first target? Rose’s weapon of choice isn’t really a gun, so N/A.

Is your character’s current socioeconomic status different than it was when they were growing up? Rosary has always grow up pretty smack-dab in the center of middle class, but money was very tight after her dad passed. When her aunt moved in with her kids, they were able to return to the smack dab of middle class sort of position. (Also they live out west so that cost of living tho).

Does your character feel more comfortable with more clothing, or with less clothing? Rosary likes to show more skin, but she’s also a 17 year old with tattoos, which is considered pretty illegal or is at least frowned upon by others. Also her mom has no idea that she has them, so she’s very careful about how much skin and what skin she shows, which feels stifling for her.

Ayo

In what situation was your character the most afraid they’ve ever been? Her first time out with Rosary investigating her friend’s murder kind of tosses her unceremoniously into the underworld of demons and spirits and stuff and she definitely doesn’t sleep for a few nights after that. In what situation was your character the most calm they’ve ever been? She’s really chill when she’s spending time with her boyfriend, Al. He keeps her grounded.Is your character bothered by the sight of blood? If so, in what way? This is an interesting question. Ayo is pretty rough-and-tumble and plays catcher for her softball team, so she’s used to getting roughed up and bloody from time to time. However, she really HATES seeing other people’s blood. For example, Rosary uses blood magic, and Ayo has to look away whenever Rose cuts herself to use it.Does your character remember names or faces easier? Ayo has a great memory for both! It’s one of her predominant character traits. She can hear a full name once and remember it always. When she met her boyfriend in freshman year of high school, he introduced himself by his full name, and she was able to greet him by it when she met him again for the second time months later. Also, her facial memory is kind of nuts.

Is your character preoccupied with money or material possession? Why or why not? Ayo kind of grew up in a pretty wealthy household, so she has that rich kid “doesn’t really understand the value of money” thing. She kind of just assumes she’ll be successful in life. In short, she doesn’t really have a preoccupation with it: it barely crosses her radar. 

Which does your character idealize most: happiness or success? Before Sharon’s passing, Ayo was never truly unhappy in a broad sense. Her dreams are usually about the sort of job she’ll have and the sort of house she’ll live in, so I suppose success is what she idealizes. 

What was your character’s favorite toy as a child? Ayo’s favorite toy was her older sisters lol. She liked to bother them and get them to play make believe with her rather than play with dolls or action figures or other toys. She has a stuffed dog from when she was a child named Dottie that you would have to pry from her cold, dead hands.

Is your character more likely to admire wisdom, or ambition in others? Ayo’s parents are both from cultures where elders and their advice are heavily respected, and this has passed on to Ayo. She views heavy ambition as a way for people to undo themselves. Ayo generally doesn’t value this quality as much.

What is your character’s biggest relationship flaw? Has this flaw destroyed relationships for them before? Ayo tends to overinvest in relationships at the beginning of them, which usually drives people away or makes them take advantage of her. She had a number of short-lived, unhappy relationships before she met Al because of this, but he was patient with her as they began to date. (note that they were friends for two years before they began to date). 

In what ways does your character compare themselves to others? Do they do this for the sake of self-validation, or self-criticism? Ayo tends to compare on a level of “what is x person doing that I’m not?” She’s fairly confident in her body image and appearance, not caring if she has slobbish days. However, if she feels that a friend is doing more than her, she may begin to internalize that she’s somehow lesser for not being as involved or as busy. (A large flaw of hers is equating busy with productive or fruitful). It’s more self-critical than anything.

Caarda

If something tragic or negative happens to your character, do they believe they may have caused or deserved it, or are they quick to blame others? Caarda is a young teenager by her species’ standards. She tends to blame others before looking at herself, although the tragic events that happen to her in her story are generally just terrible luck rather than anything she can actively control.

What does your character like in other people? Caarda enjoys altruism (she hates sensing ulterior motives) and confidence. She likes people who hum or sing to themselves, too, especially if they think no one else is watching. Also, those who actively swear without a filter.

What does your character dislike in other people? Caarda doesn’t like people who are closed-off or hard to read. Her biggest pet peeve is also when people touch without asking, and will actively do her best to avoid these sorts of people if she can.

How quick is your character to trust someone else? Though flighty, Caarda tends to trust people pretty quickly if they speak nicely enough and smile genuinely. 

How quick is your character to suspect someone else? Does this change if they are close with that person? Caarda’s trust is quick to die if someone does something that speaks against her morals. For example, if someone were to actively lie in front of her (with her knowing the truth of the situation), then Caarda would begin to distrust that person. It doesn’t change if she’s close to someone, but it can cause her more angst/grief if she’s familiar with them.

How does your character behave around children? Caarda is a child lol. But with younger children she’s the “fun older kid” who teaches them shitty behaviors and fun games. 

How does your character normally deal with confrontation? Caarda is very avoidant with confrontation. She’d rather someone else deal with it while she hides away. Again, she’s pretty flighty, but that’s sort of to be expected from a young kid.

How quick or slow is your character to resort to physical violence in a confrontation? Caarda is very slow to resorting to physical violence. While she may horse around with friends or play-fight, she doesn’t want to actually fight and gets scared the minute things come to more than shoving and splashing. If necessary, she will do incapacitating blows and swim away as fast as possible. 

What did your character dream of being or doing as a child? Did that dream come true? Caarda wants to visit every major ocean and sea on the planet and meet all other seafolk (current stand-in name for her species). I’m hoping she gets to!

What does your character find repulsive or disgusting? After being taken aboard a research vessel, Caarda finds needles and human men repulsive. She doesn’t mind women, like Ayelet or Lillian (two other female characters in this story), but MAN OH MAN. If a human man ever touches her again she may resort to violence.

Morgen

Describe a scenario in which your character feels most comfortable. Morgen is most comfortable when doing something he’s good at, especially if he looks good doing the thing he’s good at. For example, if Morgen got to play a really wicked violin/fiddle solo in a well-lit, gorgeous building, he’d feel really comfortable and happy to the point of being showoffish. He’s kind of a vain little creature.

Describe a scenario in which your character feels most uncomfortable. Morgen would be extremely uncomfortable in a situation in which he has no prior knowledge of what to do but is expected to perform/do a task perfectly. If someone gave him a task with no direction and not enough time to do it, he’d be uncomfortable to the point of excessive defensiveness or even tears.

In the face of criticism, is your character defensive, self-deprecating, or willing to improve? Morgen and criticism don’t mix well. He tends to get a bit defensive or deflects, asking if the critic could “do it better” or something like that. He can also get darkly self-deprecating, mockingly saying things like “Yeah I know, I fucking suck” etc etc. He’s pretty caustic when it comes to that, and he often has to be reminded that he doesn’t have to be perfect and criticism is okay.

Is your character more likely to keep trying a solution/method that didn’t work the first time, or immediately move on to a different solution/method? Morgen will strive toward perfection and the best-fit solution, so he will get really pissed off that it didn’t work but then invest quickly into finding a new solution or method to solving a problem. He’s the sort of person who would write like 80 drafts of something trying to find the “perfect” one.

How does your character behave around people they like? Oh god, this boy is so sappy and sweet, almost to the point of being overbearing. He likes to be physically affectionate and hug people or touch them, which can make some people uncomfortable.  He’s also very chatty, because he likes to share what he’s thinking and feeling.

How does your character behave around people they dislike? Quiet. Cold. Distant. He will not look them in the eye, might use words they don’t understand (whether it’s a language or knowledge barrier), and will do anything to keep them from continuing to talk to him. He’s kind of childish in that regard.

Is your character more concerned with defending their honor, or protecting their status? Why not all of the above? Boy’s super worried about he’s perceived both physically, mentally, and any other form. He’s worried about looking good in all facets.

Is your character more likely to remove a problem/threat, or remove themselves from a problem/threat? Morgen will eliminate a threat as efficiently as possible. He doesn’t scare easily in the face of danger and would rather make the threat pay for being a threat than anything else. This sometimes can lead to what might effectively be an execution.

Has your character ever been bitten by an animal? How were they affected (or unaffected)? Dude gets bitten by cats constantly. He loves them but they do not love him back. It depresses him because HE WANTS THE CATS TO LOVE HIM OH MY GODDDDDD. 

How does your character treat people in service jobs? A waiter could spill coffee on Morgen and he would apologize for sitting where the coffee fell instead of demanding an apology. 

[hopeatermain]

Assassin’s creed modern au headcanons part 3

So, my first two post about how Assassin’s Creed would be if they lived in a little weirdly liberal town are my most liked posts. I am happy. So, I decided to do a THIRD PART (I was planning to do at least five parts anyway, so...). This one lists off the DLC’s characters, the Chronicles crew and Arno’s teammates.

Adewalé

In their young years, he and Edward were partners in crime. He is now like him: retired.

Unlike Edward, the 82 years old man has a thing called common sense when it comes to his dressing style. Meaning he dresses in clothes appropriate for his age. He also prefers warm colors.

He used to do parkour in his young age, but is now too old for that. He kept his blue fancy but practical coat, however.

He used to be Edward second-in-command before becoming the captain of his own ship. The last mission he had with Edward was the one involving the human-selling ring.

He had a brief escapade with Bastienne Josèphe and a son with her, Babatunde, but that’s about it.

He’s literally the only one seeing how much of a nerd Edward is with the son of the last one, Haytham. He’s also the one holding Edward on a leash (I think)

Jack

An orphan who admires Jacob (he’s a child in this)

Most of the time, he wears an over-sized button-up shirt with shorts and shoes.

Since he tries to emulate Jacob, he wears a black jacket when he’s  trying to do “Parkour” (really climbing everything in his line of sight)

He’s a child. He just goes to school right now.

No, he doesn’t have a girlfriend. He’s really shy.

He shows signs of being a sociopath, but it’s a little early to tell...

Lydia (DIDN’T EXPECT HER, HUH? HUH?!)

She’s Jacob and Evie little sister.

She tries to emulate both of them, but she just wears t-shirts with prints on them and jackets tied around her waist right now.

When Jacob takes her out to learn Parkour, she puts her favorite green jacket with a huge hood on.

She’s a child and going to school. Like a child.

Sam Crowder, a kid in her class, has a little crush on her.

She’s already showing up signs of being a strong, if little, lady who can do her things alone!

Shao

She moved from China to be able to pursue her studies without the pressure of getting an husband.

She likes dark clothing. She’s not a goth. She just really likes black.

She puts on a black hoodie with red, Chinese pattern when doing parkour.

She’s a student right now, and plans on going into the secret services latter.

She does not desire to be in a relationship. Keep it away from her, please.

She’s literally the only girl besides his mother and sister that Ezio never tried to flirt with. Actually, he acts like an overprotective brother toward her. She doesn’t complain since he also give her a quiet place to study in his house, but it’s a little gratting...

Arbaaz

The chill father from India with a child and a wife.

He wears light colored clothes with a red scarf heavily inspired by his home.

He wears more... flashy clothes when doing parkour...

...or acrobatics, since his job is the one of a circus performer.

It’s okay, his wife, Pyara Kaur, used to be a princess anyway. They’re rich!

He used to be a thief in his young age and stole a diamond, the Koh-I-Noor, from a bunch of rich British men who were passing through. He afterwards sold it to shady men in hoods. It’s only upon meeting Pyara that he stopped stealing. D’awww...

Nikolai

The russian veteran from war who lost everything to the Cold War

He’s always in impossibly warm clothing with outlines of fur. Always. It’s to the point Altair calls his clothes “tacky”. Friendly reminder that Altair wears five layers.

He used to do Parkour, has far-fetched has it sounds. Yes, he wore a warm coat, why?

He’s a retired soldier, more precisely a sniper, who suffered a lot from the Cold war. His wife died during the middle of the conflict when he tried to quit the army to take care of his childrens, and they died at the end, leaving him with his grandson, Daniel Cross.

He used to have a wife.

The thing that was the Cold War made him despise Russia, and he moved to the USA once he could with Daniel, who was a baby at the time. He’s now a grumpy, 70 years old man and you better not touch his fucking lawn. It’s not so much as he hates young people these days, but he isolates himself and does not want to talk to anyone unless necessary.

Edgard

The angry German man who becomes even angrier if you mention Nazi Germany to him outside of history classes.

He dresses has a goddamn lumberjack. Mainly flannels. And gloves.

He does parkour, yes. He usually wears a brown leather jacket over his flannels when doing it.

He’s an odd job man. If you need something, he’ll do it. Your cat is stuck in a tree? Sure, he’ll get it down for you, kid. Your fireplace is clogged? He’ll find out what’s wrong with it and fix it, don’t worry. Your probable boyfriend is having a nervous breakdown and needs aspirin but you can’t leave him? He’ll get the aspirin for you. All he asks is a little money in exchange. In depends on how difficult the job was.

He’s not interested in romance. At all.

The fact that he is angry at literally everything doesn’t stop him from being a good person. The proof? When his good friend Arno had an extremely bad day and didn’t got out of bed the next morning, he rushed there to see if he was okay. Upon seeing he was not okay, he literally spent the next six hours baking baguettes while chatting with him, asking him things to make sure he would be okay.

Agape

The half-romanian, half-french slight pyromaniac hypersexual homosexual. I swear this makes more sense in context. And that he’s a nice person.

He’s a modern gypsy. He generally puts on a cream-colored shirt (long sleeved or short sleeved, depends on the temperature) ripped jeans and decorates the all with colorful trinkets.

He takes the trinkets off when doing parkour. He also puts on a beige long coat if the temperature is chilly

He’s a street performer. He does dances on the street for money and is fairly successful. He also use his gypsy heritage to act as a fortune teller from time to time. At worst, he’ll mooch off Arno and Edgard.

He’s about has successful in bed as Ezio; bedded a third of the homosexual men in his town. It pisses people off just as much. The only difference is that he’s now in a committed relationship with Thomas and is faithful.

No seriously, he’s a nice person, if a little disconnected from reality. When he sees that someone is sad, he’ll stop doing everything just to give them a shoulder to cry on. He knows what it’s like to be sad and alone, and doesn’t want that for anyone.

Thomas

The lazy french genius who is childhood friend with Arno and Élise’s personal butler.

He wears his work uniform on a daily basis.

He has a green coat that makes him look awesome and that he absolutely adores. He wears it when doing parkour.

He’s a student trying to get his master in pharmacy to become a pharmacist. To pay for his studies, he works as a servant in the De La Serre household, which also provides him with a roof.

He’s demisexual and in a relationship with Agape. It’s really sweet.

He’s just so lazy. And in his quest to be lazy, he ends up doing things that just complicate his life even if these things are successful. Example: he was once asked to do the dishes. He tried to fake his death. He succeeded. He woke up during his own funerals and freaked out everyone. He is no longer asked to do the dishes.

[zipgrowth]

When Education CEOs and Bigwig Financiers Go ‘Back to School’

Students and teachers were not the only ones to return to class this week.

Nearly a thousand of the education industry’s C-level executives, private equity fund managers and investors gathered at BMO Capital’s “Back to School” conference in New York City. On their syllabus: networking and identifying the latest market trends in the education industry that can drive a company’s growth—and, of course, financial returns.

If ASU+GSV Summit is the edtech industry’s playground for dealmaking, this is the VIP club for its financiers. Few, if any educators were present (ironic, given the back-to-school theme). Instead, bankers and financial analysts showed up in full force. Early-stage education entrepreneurs were also in short supply; word in the halls was that private companies were expected to be making $15 million-plus in revenue to get a formal invite.

The Big Picture

The conversations and company showcases all seemed to revolve around the market opportunity in the education industry, and geared towards convincing financiers to dip their hands into the pot. In its latest market report, BMO estimates that $1.52 trillion will be spent on U.S. educational services in 2018 across childcare, K-12, postsecondary and corporate training sectors.

Source: BMO Capital Markets

Now in its 18th year, the conference’s program reflects a shift in public markets, says its organizers. At the turn of this century, most publicly-traded companies attending the event were operators of for-profit colleges and universities. But scrutiny and revelations of predatory malpractice involving misleading students have “left public investors with a sour taste about that sector,” says Jeff Silber, managing director and senior research analyst at BMO and an author of the report.

These days, the public companies in attendance tend to be education technology providers, says Silber. He expects more to come. “We’re going to see more IPO,” he adds. “My guess is if we’re here 3 or 4 years from now, some of the companies that I’ve been talking to will be public companies. I think investors’ appetite for a publicly held education company, specifically in the technology space, is present.”

The report also notes a steady climb in the number of mergers and acquisitions across the education industry.

Source: BMO Capital Markets

Private equity-backed rollups of education technology companies have become recurring headlines. That’s not a new phenomenon; in earlier decades many private-equity firms also invested in for-profit college businesses. Today, most have switched their focus instead on on education technology products. “There are tons of companies that are small-scale, but you’re getting enough of them that are getting large enough and combining with others that private equity firms are investing in.”

Often, private equity firms say they want to build a “platform” of complementary tools that make it easier for customers to access and deploy multiple services at once. But the question remains whether these assets are integrated at the product and technical level—or whether these firms are simply buying a collection of brands that then get re-packaged and sold to the next buyer.

Should these companies aim to list on the public markets, “public investors are going to be looking for outcomes-based metrics, because today you have to prove that you’re improving outcomes,” says Silver. “If you simply just package a company, that’s more like financial engineering, and it’s going to be tough to sell.”

‘Crazy’ Rich Asians?

Whether it’s through investments (like a $500 million fundraise for VIPKID) or acquisitions (like NetDragon’s acquisition of Edmodo), the Chinese appetite for education technology assets has not gone unnoticed—especially by investment bankers.

Susan Wolford, head of technology and services business at BMO quips: “On the sell side, we now anticipate in every transaction [the question]: ‘How about those crazy Chinese buyers?”

Many Chinese education companies that go public choose to list on the Hong Kong stock exchange, as it creates a smoother path to transactions, say the investors on her panel. Expect most of that capital to be invested outside of China. (EdSurge has chronicled how Asian dollars fuel U.S. edtech investments.)

American companies have tried going abroad to Asia before, sometimes as partners with on a joint venture. But they’ve enjoyed limited success. “U.S. companies are under-executing” on the opportunity, claims John Rogers, education sector lead at The Rise Fund.

Still, the opportunity is not stopping companies like Imagine Learning and Mathnasium, which have launched operations in Vietnam.

“The single largest megatrend is the rise of the Asian middle class,” claims Kosmo Kalliarekos, managing director of Baring Private Equity Asia. “The massive expansion of hundreds of millions of private payers, not the government, is changing the landscape of education.” Estimates from philanthropist Michael Milken suggest that Asian households spend upwards of 15 percent of their income on supplemental education services (versus 2 percent for U.S. families.)

Is It Core? Is It Supplemental? (Does This Matter?)

Source: BMO Capital Markets

To sell into schools, curriculum developers focus on going after one of two pots of district funds: core materials (like textbooks) and supplementary tools (like educational games). Much of their sales strategy revolves around a district’s budget for these materials. In years past, digital providers have pursued funds in the supplemental category, as their tools were considered “point solutions” that focus on addressing a few needs.

There is some flexibility in states like Florida and Texas, says Sari Factor, CEO of Edgenuity, where there is “flex” funding that allows buyers to spend some money earmarked for core materials (like textbooks) on supplemental tools.

But over in the classroom, the lines in how teachers actually use core and supplemental materials have become blurred. “In the classroom, teachers are asking, ‘What is it going to take to deliver to students what they each need?’” says DreamBox CEO Jessie Woolley-Wilson. “What’s happening in the classroom is pragmatic and practical.”

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s Chief Learning Officer, Rose Else-Mitchell, acknowledged that “in the past, core companies like us are slow to innovate.” Bethlam Forsa, president of Pearson, added: “In the past, the main publishers used to have a pretty good-sized supplemental division...But we abandoned them. And it opened up white space for a lot of players to come in.”

Publishers aren’t sitting idly, though. Else-Mitchell and Forsa both say their companies are adding assessments and analytics into their digital offerings. They say that data from students using the tools can help drive continuous refinements to their products.

On a different panel, Accelerate Learning CEO Vernon Johnson offered this observation: “More and more teachers are DIY-ing it. When they close the doors, they’re building a collection of the things they like and work for their kids.” He later added: “Atomization and modularization...that’s important to the marketplace because that’s where it’s going.”

Yet too many tools also pose a challenge. “You’re going to walk into a classroom, and a teacher is going to be using a bunch of products, with 50 or 100 logins,” says Jamie Candee, CEO of Edmentum. “If you’re a provider, you have to understand everything else [teachers] are using in the classroom, and how your program is going to intersect.”

When Education CEOs and Bigwig Financiers Go ‘Back to School’ published first on https://medium.com/@GetNewDLBusiness

[flickdirect]

Why is it movies about heists always make it seem so easy as if anyone could rob a bank or armored car? It promotes a false sense of hope as well thought out plans seem to go off without a hitch (well not always but you know what I mean). It's not surprising then that four College kids decided, planned and executed a heist to steal valuable artifacts from the special collections library at Transylvania University in Kentucky. Unfortunately, unlike the movies, theirs was an imperfect plan that landed them in jail for the next seven years and had them labeled as convicted felons for the rest of their lives. Their story is chronicled in the new drama American Animals.

Spencer Reinhard (Barry Keoghan; Dunkirk) grew up in a nice neighborhood in Kentucky and went to college as expected. Along the way, he became friends with Warren Lipka (Evan Peters; American Horror Story) who was a bit more of a troublemaker. When Spencer told Warren about the rare books housed in his school's library the two wondered what it would take to steal and sell them. They thought about how rich they would be and what they could do with all that money…and then they started to plan.

Realizing they needed additional help they enlisted Eric Borsuk (Jared Abrahamson; Travelers) and Chas Allen (Blake Jenner; Glee) and the foursome plotted every detail of their heist. Of course, there were complications. Their plan to subdue the lone librarian, Betty Jean "BJ' Gooch (Ann Dowd; The Handmaid's Tale), with a taser didn't work and the books were heavier than they anticipated. Their escape was hindered when the outside door in the basement of the building was nowhere to be found and their idea to take the books to New York to get authenticated for sale was thwarted when the appraiser wasn't there when they arrived. Everything fell apart and they were eventually arrested. A fantastical story for sure, except that it is true!

The actors do a terrific job portraying the middle-class college students who steal the books but the treats of this film are the moments in between the acting. Writer/Director Bart Layton (The Imposter) smartly infuses the film with interviews with the real-life perpetrators who tell their story from their perspectives. The movie in this regard comes off as a television show where the parties involved tell the stories and actors dramatize the events – only must better done in this case. While Peters, Keoghan, Abrahamson and Jenner are enjoyable to watch, listening to Reinhard, LIpka, Borsuk, and Allen is fascinating.

The film moves at a good pace and the interchange between the dramatization and the real-life interviews flows well. Neither jolts the audience out of the film which is good because it could it have come off disjointed but doesn't. Of course, the subject matter is somewhat disheartening and infuriating but watching as a witness to see how their minds work is interesting and entertaining. Of course, the real BJ Gooch says it best when she describes them as selfish though they don't come across as spoiled as they could have and that is in part due to Layton's writing.

These handsome, intelligent men evoke a level of sympathy as they tell their story while still enraging the audience to think they had the audacity to try and pull off a crime at all. The film is entertaining while answering the question most people have thought about at one time or another in their lives…If I tried to commit a crime, could I get away with it? In this case the answer is no and these men paid for it in more ways than just seven years of their freedom. Makes you think…doesn't it?

Grade: B+

About Allison Hazlett-Rose Allison Hazlett-Rose has always had a passion for the arts and uses her organization skills to help keep FlickDirect prosperous. Mrs. Hazlett-Rose oversees and supervises the correspondents and critics that are part of the FlickDirect team. Mrs. Hazlett-Rose attended Hofstra University where she earned her bachelors degree in communications and is a member of the Florida Film Critics Circle.

Read more reviews and content by Allison Hazlett-Rose.

via FlickDirect Entertainment News, Exlclusive Interviews, and Film Reviews

[riverdamien]

Dysphoria

Dysphoria

Luke 11:15-26

There was article in the Chronicle in which a person described San Francisco as becoming a dysphoria, a place where there is a great division between rich and poor and no middle class, and where people do not care for each other--they simply take care of themselves and their tribes. It is a deadly, boring, soul killing environment.

Last night a friend texted asking if it was appropriate for him to call me; when I was in the hospital a year ago, a clergy person texted me saying that was the way he was doing visitation to "save money and time." I told my friend to call me any time, day or night, and my clergy friend is no longer a friend. When we lose personal touch, when we are afraid to open ourselves to others, when we are too damn busy to talk to someone or to see them--than we are failing to bring the Kingdom of God into reality.

The Kingdom of God is now. The cross is both perpendicular and diagonal. Unless we care for each other, take care of each, other our relationship with God simply is dead. The reign of God is now--not in some distant future nor after death, it is now!

I was in Santa Rosa two days ago being present to people in a shelter, it was sobering, it was painful; I came home to two tents in front of my door. And it is sobering and painful--we all hurt, we all suffer, in one form or another. We suffer less, and we help others suffer less when we reach out and touch the lives of others.

Frankly there are days when I wonder why keep on living, why go on. I have thought of ways to end my life. There are days I think "Why keep on going?" It is painful, to see so much pain, to be so disconnected, and see that people do not give a damn. I sometimes simply take it one minute at at time. We have become so disconnected, we text, we email, but we never talk; we say the most horrible things on Facebook to each other, spreading gossip and rumors, and tearing down people for what they believe. Each day I wonder when someone is going to spread something about me. There are no boundaries. So why live in such a world, why live where you never feel safe, never feel connected? I hear that day in and day out from kids on the street, from homeless adults, from people who have money, and I feel the same way.

I have a friend who is a Senior in high school, and he invites me out to his house. We sit in his room, and watch T.V., and talk. Some times I say very little, and he wonders if I am having fun, and the truth is I feel so connected, like I belong, like I do not have to give anything. It is my most enjoyable time of the week. I was out at his house last night, I was quiet, my day in Santa Rosa frankly was painful, and draining, and he asked me if I was having fun. Matthew has no idea how much those three hours meant to me, the greatest gift any one can give is themselves. Matt is willing to put up with me, as we all should be willing to be put with another.

That is friendship, that is what we are called to be with each other.

Henri Nouwen struggled all of his life, with deep depression and feeling alone, and he summarizes what is needed in our time:

"Compassion means to become

close to the one who suffers. But we can come close to another person

only when we are willing to become vulnerable ourselves.

A compassionate person says:

"I am your brother; I am your sister;

I am human, fragile, and mortal, just like you.

I am not scandalized by our tears,

nor afraid of your pain.

I too have wept, I too have felt pain."

We can be with the other

only when the other ceases to be "other" and becomes like us."

Fr. River Damien Sims, sfw, D.Min., D.S.T.

P.O. Box 642656

San Francisco, CA 94164

www.temenos.org

415-305-2124

punkpriest1@gmail.com

[fic-dreamin]

A great read for Halloween time. I loved this book! The characters and story were well developed. I especially liked how Ray Bradbury took us through time in order to experience how Halloween came about, although some parts were a reach. The story is very creative, the drawings (at least in the book I ordered) were very well done, and provided assistance to my imagination as to the costumes and locations the boys traveled. The book can be a little "scary" in places, so you may want to read it yourself before sharing it with young children. You be the judge. Nevertheless, I would recommend this book. Go to Amazon

A Great Tale by Bradbury This is a story I read many years ago; however, the book was lost and when I attempted to repurchase, was out of print. I was very happy to have the chance to own this fantastic story again. It is a good read for tweens and teens as well as adults. If you are a Bradbury fan, there is no way you can go wrong purchasing this tale. Go to Amazon

Great family/Dad book to read to kids around Halloween - for ages 8-12 Great book, especially around Halloween Go to Amazon

One of my favorites An adventure on Halloween Night to save the life of a friend. Ray Bradbury at his finest, twisting words and combining them. Leading the reader further into the story. A great book to have added to my collection. Go to Amazon

Halloween Classic by my favorite author I thought I'd finish out the first month of my nine weeks of horror-and-Halloween reviews with a book by my favorite author, the late Ray Bradbury. The Halloween tree is a classic, appropriate for children but deep enough for adults as well and a perfect way to lead us into October. In typical Ray Bradbury fashion, the author uses elements of speculative fiction to shed light on the human condition. Go to Amazon

One of my favorite books as a kid One of my favorite books as a kid. Teaching acceptance and examination of other cultures while telling an engaging story. Go to Amazon

Another of Bradbury's Fine Recipes for October (or year round!) I first encountered Ray Bradbury by reading The Marrtian Chronicles for a middle school English class long ago in the last millenium. Since then I have read a half dozen or so of his books and ordered this book on a whim. I find myself regulary enchanted by his use of words and vivid imagination. The Halloween Tree is best aimed at younger readers, yet its beautifu,l descriptive passages and themes of loyalty mixed with Halloween's history is a treat or readers of all ages. This edition is certainly well presented for younger readers, with nice illustrations and large print. While a slim volume in appearance, it is rich with language and ideas. Go to Amazon

Five Stars Bradbury's writing is beautiful - this book gives me such intense childhood/"good old days" American fall nostalgia. Go to Amazon

Fantastic I read this to my nephew's and niece's great book I am excited to have purchased this Novels of poetic beauty. A wonderfully spooky Dickensian Hallow's Eve Five Stars Five Stars The Halloween Tree is a seasonal prose adventure poem wrapped ... Thank you