Just strike??

The Chicago Teacher's Union authorized a strike. They have been striking for at least 2 days. Who knows how long this could go on? I support the rights of union workers and others to strike when things aren't right. I support certain tenets of the strike but don't support it 100%. The fact of the matter is the city of Chicago has been downsizing teachers and closing schools for sometime now. If the policy was based solely on "student performance" it wouldn't be that bad. Some of the dismissals are political in nature and to save the city money. Let me be clear though. The status quo is not an option. As of 2010 the high school graduation rate in the city is at 55.8%!! How has this been allowed? I'm not blaming the teachers;parents, and the school system share the blame as well. I assign a large portion of the blame to the system. The Board of Education system. Were I a parent of High School age children there is only about 30% of schools within the city I would be comfortable sending my child to. So all of the CPS students excluding charter school students haven't been in school for 2 days. Schools in Chicago started after Labor Day. About 144 of the schools in the city have been open since the strike basically as a limited baby-sitting service. There are teachers protesting across the city as they should. However, I see problems arising in the downtown area. Students that would normally be in school could be out terrorizing the city. http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2012/08/02/media-covers-up-violence-of-flash-mobs/ I believe a vast amount of CPS students are honest, non-thieving students. I guess the more important issue is what the kids aren't learning. Teachers should be held accountable but there are other ways to measure student performance besides standardized test scores. I think some of the requests are laughable though. I can understand a raise if you're working more hours.. Understand though the city of Chicago, the County of Cook and the State of Illinois have some of the highest taxes in the country. State and city governments here have been terribly mismanaged. It isn't just for a teacher to be fired just because they can. It also isn't right to pay all the teachers the same amount and not take into account skill and success. All of the teachers aren't successful in instructing. Great teachers should be incentived and rewarded. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204226204576601232986845102.html

What I like/ look for in a women

There is no perfect woman. A woman won't complete me. These are just random qualities, attributes characteristics, talents in no particular order. Humor Fashion Sense Ability to cook/ bake It'd be awesome if she could play an instrument Faith in Christ Attractiveness won't specify what I mean about attractiveness but I look for different things in different women. I just want someone I can talk to. Someone that isn't contentious.

Random bites

You know when we have a friend and a tv show we like to say that person reminds us of the character more than the actual actor or person even if they seem more like the person or actor portraying the character. TV shows are kind of like friends. They're not all meant to last a while but sometimes we want them to carry on forever when it isn't really meant to be that way. People change and tv shows get spin-offs. You sometimes become closer friends with your friend's friends. Just look at Frasier then look at him on Cheers. It doesn't always get better sometimes you have the Cleveland Show but Family Guy the original is better.

Changes

I feel like the last few posts although they come less and less haven't had a cohesive theme for either of my blogs. That's my life and thoughts and life doesn't always fit into our puzzles or coffee pots. I'm back in Waco and besides the claims of things feeling different and odd are the cycles and changes that I've noticed. Before I had them I didn't understand why folks had multiple pairs of Sperry Top Siders. They get sticky and yucky for lack of a better term. I'm sure you can get them cleaned but I'm sure most people don't. I've found people that I know at Baylor and it's great. It's kind of like meeting them all over again. This is the summer. Some folks have graduated or gone home and there is this cycle of people that are in town leaving town coming back to town Graduated and will come back as an outsider looking in. Didn't mean to present this as prose. Presently is what I'm posing is changes. "Change isn't good or bad, it just is" They say the un-examined life is not worth living. I'm examining it. People think about their friends moving on and changing places in life. You don't think about changes you make in the context of others a lot. "We all in the same picture but all got different poses" And another thing.. All you people I went to High School with and some of you went to college with.. The babies and marriage thing is making me feel old or young. Like because you're married it seems like you're older more mature than me even though we're the same age. Somewhere cares about this stuff right? These just aren't musings in my head that go out in cyberspace that strangers and associates will pore over is it? Think I should own some kind of literary magazine website when people just rapt about what's own their mind. Kind of like the Huffington Post or thought catalog. http://bible.cc/philippians/3-13.htm

"If you were here"

It's only after you here a song repeatedly sometimes that you explore what you think the song means and who the song is for. I was listening to the Thompson Twin's hit "If you were here" earlier. I don't know how many times I've listened to it but at the time I was in my living room alone and thinking who do I want to be here in this room at this very moment. My mind cycled through a bunch of folks, Jesus, (although he wasn't the first thought), past crushes, previous roommates, close friends, lady friends. I finally settled on 2 people. Not at the same time. Both juxtaposition-ally if one couldn't be there the other the could.

The first was a close friend of mine from Minnesota she was from a small-ish town 1 hour away from the cities. She is vivacious and bright and always made me feel good. Which is weird because the 1st couple of times I saw her she looked odd. I'm not saying she was ugly she just looked differently. he hair was unusual shades and she wasn't really popular. There is just something about her though.

The other person is a bit more mysterious. I've seen her face many times.. I think we might have danced at a party when I was a Sophomore at Baylor. I've definitely seen her around the library, at Scruffs, study session at St. James. I asked her name and she told me but I can't remember it for the life of me.

Back to the song though.. I'm not a big 80s music fan but I was reading a book about John Hughes a few months ago. He was an enigmatic inspirational film maker that lived in the suburbs of Chicago. He understood teenagers and life. Anyway Susannah Gorah wrote a book about him and his films "You Couldn't Ignore me if you tried". Great book as well. They did a whole chapter on the music on a lot of those movies.

These ladies don't really have anything in common. They both represent different parts of my life. One the past and the other the future. One hails from Houston I think or some city in Texas the other from some smaller town in Minnesota. Maybe they represent how I've grown. These are real people by the way.

Letter to the President

As many of you are aware the "Kony 2012" campaign has gone viral. While these efforts are noble and eager many of these attempts may do more harm than good. The following letter is what I relayed to the White House not long ago.


First off President Obama I’d like to commend your administration on taking a step towards fighting the LRA and attempting to discover Joseph Kony. As I am sure you aware there is a large movement known as Invisible Children which seeks to spread awareness about needs in Uganda is receiving lots of media attention for the “Stop Kony” campaign or “Kony 2012”.
These members have pressured your administration and members of Congress to find Kony and bring him to justice. I don’t dispute that this is a necessary need to stop a tyrant who is bringing war and destruction to a region I do dispute several of the “facts” invisible children uses in its movies and production.
1. According to Visible Children, an anti Invisible Children blog, the company spent only 33 percent of its $8 million-plus in spending on "direct services." Some critics also point to Charity Navigator, which grades the transparency and financial earnings of charities, and Invisible Children's 2-star rating when it comes to "accountability and "transparency" (out of four).
2. And The Guardian reports that Invisible Children supports the Ugandan Army. That isn't good, because they also do plenty of bad things (arrests, torture, killings, etc.), says an expert at Human Rights Watch Africa.
3. Invisible Children also been accused of tampering with the stats they reported, inflating them. Foreign Affairs called it, "manipulated facts for strategic purposes."
To call [Kony2012's] campaign a misrepresentation is an understatement. While it draws attention to the fact that Kony, indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court in 2005, is still on the loose, it’s portrayal of his alleged crimes in Northern Uganda are from a bygone era. At the height of the war between especially 1999 and 2004, large hordes of children took refuge on the streets of Gulu town to escape the horrors of abduction and brutal conscription to the ranks of the LRA. Today most of these children are semi-adults. Many are still on the streets unemployed. Gulu has the highest numbers of child prostitutes in Uganda. It also has one of the highest rates of HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis.
This isn’t the beginning of problems seeing how there is corruption in Uganda’s government.
I don’t suggest that this administration “sits on it’s hands” and does nothing either while the people suffer. We must back successful methods for stopping autocratic warlords. I suggest working in conjunction with the African Union, United Nations and the International Criminal Court.
Thank You for your time.

MGA

Why Kanye inspires me?

Part of the problem with facebook is the status update. I still like faceboook but it's only conducive to a certain depth of knowledge.

With Befe's bites. I hope to delve deeper in to my thoughts, beliefs, views. There were probably be issues of faith, politics, music, television, film, art, culture whatever I might be thinking about at the time.

Kanye West inspires me really.

He has a middle class upbringing and never had to hustle. When I say hustle I mean he never had to sell drugs, worry about killing someone or the quote on quote regular problems of rappers. That doesn't mean that he didn't have challenges.

I like to dance in addition to just listening to music. Kanye makes music people can dance to as well as music that has a message. Let's start off at the College Dropout. This album focuses on family, faith, education, and materialism.

I'm a Christian and besides "Jesus Walks" there are other high points to this album. In the track "All Falls Down" I see the perception of success being critiqued. "We'll buy a lot of clothes but we don't really need em things we buy to cover up whats inside"
"Then I spent 400 bucks on this
Just to be like nigga you ain't up on this!"

There are lot of other great examples from this one track but I'ma let that simmer right quick.

Many people do things without questioning there own motivations. I know I do a lot. We should question and challenge why we do the things the we do.

Independent from his music he's also the sartorial style icon. http://www.esquire.com/blogs/mens-fashion/kanye-west-fashion-2010

Back to the music. Some people familiar with his producing know that before he became an artist he used to produce for acts such as Jay-Z, Alcia Keys, Jermaine Dupri others. He had to challenge the views of people that he worked for hard to be taken as a serious artist.

After the College Dropout instead of just relying on soul samples he used Jon Brion the film score guy to add variety in his musical repertoire. There were intricate orchestral pieces overlaid with Ye rapping and rhyming. His musical proclivities continued to evolve with Graduation featuring samples from the great Steely Dan and Elton John. 808s took this evolution even farther with West singing. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy had elements found on all 4 of his initial albums. My pastor once said that "Rivers flow, Reservoirs hold water. Reservoirs just hold water and don't spread it, but with rivers there is a change and movement" In life we should be rivers flowing, changing not reservoirs staying the same.

Kanye isn't afraid of controversy either. I don't have to tell you about the George Bush doesn't like black people. Not to mention him interrupting Taylor Swift at the MTV awards.

I don't agree with Ye here of course. I think W. having 2 African-American secretaries of state would show he's probably not racist. There's other stuff he's done too. Like speak on the soft bigotry of low expectations and not being guilty of it.