Some days, my brain is way too much like a gerbil. That is, completely unable to hold onto a single thought for any useful length of time. So, for today, all you’re going to get is a series of quick hit observations that snuck past my distractedness over the last few weeks.
I notice that the Gunther Toody’s in Arvada has closed; at the same time, two new stores have opened in the area: an ARC collection site, and a Goodwill store over in West Woods. I’m not exactly sure what that says about the state of the economy, but it doesn’t exactly scream “recovery” to me.
I’ve been a fairly outspoken critic of the public schools’ testing regime over the last couple years, for a myriad of reasons. So it’s only fair that I point out when they get it right: the new regime, the CMAS, is all computerized, which means it will be more useful to guide instruction and it occupies a much smaller space in the learning day. Bravo!
My daughter, the 12 year old, had another hamster die on her last week. We discovered him, hiding in his cage and in distress, and we tried to nurse him back to health, but to no avail. Of course, there were tears and trauma. But, by the next morning, she was back to her normal self again. That is one of the unheralded benefits of pets: they teach children about death. No, it’s not anything like losing someone close to you, but it does teach children, from an early age, that death is merely another journey, one which we all must take. And, by the way, no more hamsters in our house, let me tell you!
One of the really interesting things we do in the schools these days is “conflict management.” This is when we train students to act as mediators between other students who are having a disagreement. The conflict mediators are trained by school personnel. In an unrelated/completely related news, the teachers’ union declared an impasse and walked away from contract negotiations with Jeffco schools last week. No, no point ...
Apparently, over the course of the next year and a half, there are going to be four lunar eclipses. It’s very odd for them to be bunched up like that, and it is thought to be a portent of big events. All we need now is a comet, a black cat, and a ghost, and we’ll have something Shakespearian. Like, maybe, somebody who can write taking over Hollywood.
The publication date of this edition of this paper is April 17. On this day in history, the Allies conducted their final bombing of Dresden in 1945. In several separate “carpet-bombing” raids, the Allies reduced huge parts of the city to rubble, including a fire that burned over 1,600 acres of the central city, and resulted in somewhere in the vicinity of 2,500 German deaths, mostly civilian. Less than two weeks later, Hitler committed suicide and the war in Europe was over; less than four months later, we would drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and war would be completely over shortly thereafter. Now, I am in no way endorsing or condoning that sort of wanton destruction — in fact, I rather deplore it. I am merely bringing it up to point out that America did, once upon a time, really fight wars to win.
Also on this day in history, the first professional baseball game was played in Cincinnati. I continue to be optimistic that, one day, we’ll have professional baseball again in Denver.
That’s all I got. Happy Easter, everyone!
