A Toast.

To new and renewed love,
to finding out what is really precious and letting go of things that are trivial and have no ultimate value,
to a greater understanding of one another and the realization that we are all in this thing called life together,
to wisdom, courage, and conviction for the world's leaders which will lead the world closer to peace,
to a hunger for Truth and a passion for compassion...

to old friends, heroes, and lifetimes!

Happy 2007!!!
dt

5 Things.

Interesting tag from the Ponderer. Here are five things that you may not know about me just from this blog.

1) Sometime during the 2007 campaign I will eclipse the mid century mark in rockin' out with the 6 headed monster. I started listening to Widespread Panic my junior year in high school and fell in love with the lyrics of "Ain't Life Grand." My first show was in Charlotte in 1999 back when the boys played the Center City Fest at night. It was a very purple show. Since then I've been to NC, SC, VA, TN, AL, and CO... and maybe beyond. Panic never plays the same show... in fact they rarely play the same songs within a 4 night run. Mikey Houser died in 2002, but the band has settled in with Jimmy Herring and are ready to rock Philips Arena tonight as a matter of fact.

2) I was a few months away from being a SPE--in fact, I was the pledge class president. They called me Dan at DC and it never really was my thang. I spent way too much time at UNCW, UNC, and NCSU instead of the vaunted halls of academe at the presitigious institution. I learned a lot about who I was and wasn't during those years of haze. I still have a soft spot for the Cats, but I'll take the Dawgs any day.

3) My son Samuel Adams--"you named your son after a beer?"--Thomas was born 6 weeks early. We were on our annual end of the year golfing extravaganza in MB. I had just finished a great round defeating my partner handily when my wife called with concern. We started at Grand Strand Hospital and ended up a few hours later in Florence. He was a tiny 4 lbs 2ozs when we finally brought him home. Thankfully he had and has had no health issues. We are hoping our next little one Sydney Grace will be content for the entire 40 weeks.

4) The best 3 weeks of my life would have to be when Sarah and I drove across the country. We went up through the Badlands, Mt. Rushmore, Little Bighorn, Yellowstone, Grand Tetons, Glacier--with the Northern Lights accompanying--over and down the Washington, Oregon, and California coasts until we finally reached the Grand Canyon. I think my quote by that point was "how long are we supposed to stand here and look at it?" I'm hoping the underground comes through and teachers are paid much higher salaries, so I can visit the great west more often.

5) Nothing beats Saturday nights in the Fall/Winter by the fire at Shields' house. Sipping on the smooth Canadian Blend and discussing sports, education, politics, Masonic conspiracies, women, children, and on and on and on.... Sarah says she could pen the script for each time we get together because the same old topics always arise--the same 10-15 year running jokes. "Old Friends, Heroes and Lifetimes, don't let a single memory ever fade away."

Cheers to 2007 folks!
peace
dt

The Other Guy's Response (to the previous post)

**Sorry for the layout--BLogger is whoopin me**

Where to start.  Well, I guess I’ll start with what is going on.
(Name deleted) has
decided to start a bi-partisan caucus together that will inform
Members of Congress about terrorism.  There seems to be a basic
lack of education regarding Islam, terrorists, etc. in Congress-
and without it we cannot effectively engage the enemy.  So last
week I sat through meetings with over 20 terrorism experts
(face to face I’ll discuss more) and what was

going on around the world and what they thought we should
help other members

understand.

What I took from the experts (which all had diff. opinions)
and pieced

together what I believe to be- Iraq was the best move we could
have

made. We need a strategic base to send black ops out into
the region.  The

troop force argument is worthless as you look at the big
picture.  While we

sit here and argue troop levels the Iranians are sending
in tons of dollars

to gain political leverage while we send in tons of dollars
to build

infrastructure- which gains us nothing.  Adding more
troops isn’t going

to help or hurt because that’s not the issue.  The
insurgency is going to

keep coming because they want us to stay there longer
so they can get more

political leverage there with the people.  Iran wants
us there because they

aren’t really ready for a war yet.  Turkey wants us
there so they don’t

have to save the Kurds, and Saudi’s want us there so
they don’t have to

start a war with Iran over Sunni’s getting killed.
So the troop argument comes

from the western mindset, while the middle eastern
mindset could care less

about America or its troop levels.  They are set on
killing the other Muslims

so they have dominance and can set up the next part
of the caliphate. The

US is just a fly on their back that must be put up
with until the other ripe

fields are taken over (Somalia, Chechnya, etc.)  I
blame the

administration for allowing this troop level debate to
even go on because they won’t

level with the people that the argument isn’t important
compared to what we

should do in Northern Pakistan, etc.  But yea- we
should get someone who makes

us sacrifice, we should also be teaching anti-terrorism
in schools like we

did with communism.  But something has happened in
America- its like they

don’t believe reality if it challenges their thinking
or happy zone.  There

is some crazy stuff going on over there- and here too-
that have little to

nothing to do with us, yet we think they are fighting

us.  They have not even yet begun to even look at us.  
Right now we are a breeding ground

for money- and will stay that way until they have
taken more steps to build

their Islamic empire.  And they see this is a 100
years war where we

cannot even stomach a 4 year war where deaths are
not that extreme compared to

the other wars we have been in.

We are in trouble because we don’t think like our
enemy’s.  Our news

Feeds us the wrong information.  Our leaders cannot
provide the proper

Oversight to help the intel community do its work.
And our education system is

producing people who are not citizens- they are
individuals (and I’m

putting it nicely).  There is still hope, but it
is fading fast.

Hannibal ad portas!

Conversation: On War

The article that ignited this exchange is here. The conversation follows first me, then the other guy...

yeah ol pat buchanan makes a lot of sense to me these
days.  I like Newt too. 

Not sure about the troop surge idea.  It would seem
the only reason to do that would be if we were gonna
surge 50 or 60 thousand for several months--and it
seems that in order to do that we would need to
institute a military draft.  The National Guard was
not built for the types of deployments they've
received over the years.  I guess the Rumsfeldian view
of smaller and faster has proven to be disastrous--at
least in the short term. 

That being said, I'm not sure what the best option is.
I saw a headline on Drudge that we were thinking
about building up in the Persian Gulf as a warning to
Iran.... probably just speculation.

I think we need a leader who will call for real
sacrifice.  Let's move forward with real alternative
engery plans--within the next decade kinda stuff.
Remove our dependence completely from the Muslims and
then withdraw.  Then if they remain belligerent we
will have the political will to truly wage war. 

I still believe that going in was the thing to do, but
it has been horribly mismanaged.  I'm afraid it may
end up being the "worst strategic mistake in the
history of the United States."  The only thing that
comes to my mind that rivals is the decision to give
Stalin all he wanted at Yalta and not dealing with the
Soviet threat early on.... 

Anyway, just some ramblings from a measly high school
civics teacher.  

Les Miserables

"Will you give all you can give so that our banner may advance? Some will fall and some will live will you stand up and take a chance?"

dt

Fusion.

So, about a week ago an editorial came out in the paper attacking our head football coach. The story ended up being about the fictitious author and the lapse in judgment by the editor, but the piece itself was pretty scathing--typical athletics over academics type accusations.

A week or so before that our school held a "black female forum" in which community and school members addressed issues with that particular demographic. A subsequent email was sent out to the staff explaining the forum from our newly hired African American AP. In that email she called for teachers to spend time one on one with these black females because it is a "cultural fact that minorities respond better to one on one" attention rather than being called out in front of a group.

Well, I take issue with that contention, because I don't think it is a "cultural fact" at all, I think it is a human fact. Any student--any person--would respond better to one on one correction rather than its alternative. But, that's not really an argument that I can take on or win--interesting free speech/lack thereof implications perhaps--but perhaps it's not worth it anyway...

There is a cultural divide. And I wonder what role I--or we--play in perpetuating that gap. After all, athletics do play a huge role in the realities of black students. We have a system in place that encourages and rewards migration from school to school in order to play on a winning team. Winning team = exposure = next level perhaps. But at what price?

Don't misunderstand. I love competition and athletics. I believe in sport. Strongly. But as the marketing behemoth that sports has become I'm not sure the price is worth it.

Am I totally off base? The argument generally is that these kids, if it weren't for football etc, would not be where they are. They learn life skills and such on the field. And they are sure to learn more there than in the classroom. That's the standard explanation. But I'm not so sure I'm buying that anymore.

The reality is that the lure of athletic success is a mirage for 99.9% of people--I mean as a career. Academic preparedness is what is crucial, right?

I suppose I'll leave my thoughts here for now...
dt

Y2K6

shew. just went dang near a week without my pc. while installing a new multi function printer/copier/scanner/toaster/etc it turns out i had a corrupted file. thanks windows. and for good measure my long injured graphics card finally blew up. so 5 days and $89 big ones later i have my pc back and have just successfully installed my new hardware. not to mention i was able to scan myspace again--filters at school have kept me separated. i'm an addict, that's the first step right?

what's more is that i'm coming out of my months long blogging slump. i've had many ideas in my head over the past few days--and wouldn't you know only a pen and paper to write them down with and that's for the birds. so i'm glad to be back in the 21st century and look forward to fleshing out some of the thoughts that are banging around in my noggin.

peace
dt