So I find out that Augusta County is planning on killing an elementary school…
3 minute read
January 1, 2009, 4:28 PM
While my father and I were out today, he told me that he had heard that Augusta County might be closing Ladd Elementary, which is in Waynesboro.
First of all, before I even researched it, I said it was probably a good idea to abandon the site. First of all, the facility is indeed an Augusta County school, but it’s located within the independent city of Waynesboro. That happened because the area that the school is in was annexed by the city of Waynesboro in the 1980s or so. So it’s an anomaly for being a county school that’s no longer in the county. But it’s also now in the middle of a large shopping district, with Wal-Mart directly across the street, and Home Depot, Martin’s, Target, Kohl’s, Lowe’s, and a plethora of other smaller retailers within a short distance from the school. Traffic is hideous outside the school, with signs for tractor-trailers telling them that the school is not a turn-around. Plus I’m sure some other retailer would snap up the school site in a heartbeat to peddle more crap to people.
Then I found an article in The News Virginian about the plan. How interesting. They want to close and sell the Ladd location in Waynesboro, close Beverley Manor Elementary School near Staunton, and expand Wilson, Cassell, and Riverheads elementary schools to accommodate more students. They say no teachers will lose their jobs, since it’s more of a consolidation than a closing. And the idea of moving the Shenandoah Valley Governor’s School into the old Beverley Manor building was tossed around as well. Currently, that facility shares a building with Valley Vocational Technical Center.
Continue reading…Categories: School, State and local politics, Virginia local news
School days and the oddball things that teachers would mandate for their classes…
4 minute read
September 3, 2008, 7:43 PM
I was talking to a friend of mine over IM who’s presently a senior in high school, and he’s told me about the joys of what teachers mandate for their classes. According to my friend, one of his teachers mandated use of the Cornell note-taking system for taking class notes. The Cornell note-taking system seems to be good enough, but seems right offhand to be a bit more of a use of paper than I would like. Use half the page for non-note activity? You’re looking at someone who, in college, as a cost-saving measure, would find the narrowest-ruled paper possible in order to squeeze a few more lines onto a page and therefore save a few sheets of paper. I’m sure that over an entire college career, I probably saved maybe two sheets total (and even that’s probably a bit optimistic), but at least I felt thrifty.
But that’s really not the point of this entry. It just reminds me of the wacko things that teachers used to mandate when I was in school. I remember that so many teachers thought that they knew best, and thus used that rationale to force various methods of organization on their students. Now my method of organization was always chronological. Everything was in the order that it was done, in a big binder, usually 1½” wide. Then as now, I’m big on dates and time order, since I am really good with knowing that A came before B, which came after C, and that A, B, and C were on or around such and such a date. Thus if I’m looking for something, I would go back to that point in time. Pow. All by date, and I could find my way around. And everything went in that notebook. Yes, I was one of those people who owned a small notebook-size three-hole punch to tote around. And yes, I also had a big three-hole punch at home. In fact, I still have that big hole punch.
So that’s why it frustrated me then and amuses me now when teachers would mandate to students how they were to arrange their notebooks. After all, by high school, one would hope that one has a system that works. I know I did. These kinds of things always frustrated me. I remember some teachers would require notebooks that were so anal-retentive in their organization, requiring separate labeled sections for notes, classwork, homework, quizzes, tests, vocabulary, etc. etc. etc. And half of those sections never got used, and were a waste of space.
Categories: School
JMU class reunions in September 2008: Cancelled due to lack of interest.
3 minute read
August 6, 2008, 8:00 AM
JMU does so many things that make me laugh, and not in the hee-hee-that’s-funny kind of way, either. Unfortunately, it’s usually in a far more mean-spirited kind of way, as I laugh at some of the DUMB things that they do. I still remember back in 2003 when JMU announced that they were fighting spam, while at the same time constantly spamming the student body after they set a far-too-flexible process for campus organizations to promote their junk.
Of course, once you graduate JMU, you lose the abovementioned spam, and start hearing from the alumni people. JMU recently sent me mail about the reunions for the classes of 2008, 2003 (me), 1998, 1993, and 1988. That’s five graduating classes right there. I know – I’m exhausted just reading all those different years. And JMU had a whole slate of events for people to do, and an overblown fee for the package (read: “Good lord, that’s expensive!”). My exact reaction was, oh, hell no, as I’ve been through the procedure with JMU’s cheesy event scheduling before, and it’s not that much different than going to Sea World, going from one show to the next to the next all day.
So I was quite amused to get this in my Email yesterday:
Categories: JMU
What a fun weekend!
5 minute read
November 25, 2007, 8:38 AM
All in all, I had a fun Thanksgiving weekend in Stuarts Draft, but I’m still very glad to be home again.
Thanksgiving itself involved the usual – turkey, and all the various fixings to go with it, and then falling asleep afterwards.
Then I spent Friday with Katie. We had a blast, as we did anything but shop. We went on the Blue Ridge Parkway for a while, then rode back around to Charlottesville, where we went to the Mellow Mushroom, where we had a vegetarian pizza with a pesto base. Twas awesome.
However, before Katie and I started out, we got a movie of Katie’s cat Peabo chasing a laser pointer around…
Categories: Charlottesville, Driving, Food and drink, High school, Katie, Target, Thanksgiving, Walmart, Waynesboro Outlet Village
Once a slimeball, always a slimeball, I suppose…
2 minute read
November 8, 2007, 7:38 PM
Some people never change, I suppose. When I was in seventh grade, my homeroom teacher and I did NOT get along. He was a bit of a jerk back then, and told little seventh graders to work interpersonal problems out themselves and not even so much as assist in the process. I am convinced that he did that because it was easier to let these little children who don’t know any better come to blows, because then, by letting an issue boil over rather than actually having to deal with the issue at hand, he could just pull both students apart and send them to the office, and not have to so much as get his hands dirty. And that would be that.
Now fast forward to 2007. As you know, my mother now teaches in the middle school that I once attended. My former seventh grade homeroom teacher is now an assistant principal at another middle school in the same county. And Mom was at that particular middle school for something, and ran into him. He mentioned to Mom that he’d seen me recently. Mom gave him this puzzled look, and asked where he’d seen me. He said, “Wal-Mart.” Busted. Mom enlightened him, as it’s now been seven months since I left Wal-Mart. She said, “Ben works in Washington now.”
Categories: Middle school, Some people
Sable is packed to the gills…
2 minute read
May 11, 2007, 9:53 PM
I don’t think I’ve filled a car so full since I left Potomac Hall at JMU for the last time back in 2003. Back then, I had the Previa stuffed to the gills with my junk from the dorm. Now, I have the Sable filled to the brim with my stuff, headed for Silver Spring. That car is literally packed full. The back seats are folded down, and I’ve put stuff in every possible spot. There’s even stuff sitting in the passenger seat. I just hope the car doesn’t think it’s a passenger and sound the seat belt alarm when I get going. That would look odd to have the seat belt buckled over there, to keep the alarm quiet.
It reminds me of a rhyme by Muffy from Today’s Special:
There was an old woman who lived in a hat,
With fourteen kids and one smelly cat.
The hat was bulging, filled right to the brim,
And inside, things were looking mighty grim.
And then when the woman came back with one more kid,
The hat shouted, “Fifteen!” and blew its lid!
That was then followed by the top flying off a nearby top hat. But yeah, I think if I put anything else in there, the car will shout, “Fifteen!” and blow its lid, too.
One thing that I will really appreciate with this run for stuff is the lamps. Those four torchiere lamps that I have are coming, and will be placed in strategic locations in the apartment. It’s helpful because there are few light fixtures in the apartment, and lots of switches attached to electrical outlets. Thus since I brought no lamps on the first run, I had to kind of find my way around in the dark upon leaving the apartment, feeling for walls and furniture, to avoid running into them, and the subsequent cursing. And I don’t particularly like to swear, though I’ve been known to let them fly fairly easily.
Speaking of swearing, I remember something I did for a professor at JMU that both the professor and I found amusing. He said that we could write whatever on the tests themselves, “Just don’t write any swear words.” So I decided to be a bit of a wiseguy. I wrote “SWEAR WORDS” in all caps near the top of the test paper. Not actual dirty words – literally the phrase “swear words”.
All in all, I’m excited about living in the DC area…
Categories: JMU, Language, Mercury Sable, Move to DC area, Silver Spring, Today's Special
Look what I found!
< 1 minute read
May 7, 2007, 12:06 PM
I’m going through and cleaning stuff out in preparation for the big move to DC, and I found this:
Categories: Childhood, Elementary school, Move to DC area
“Peace”
< 1 minute read
November 25, 2006, 9:39 PM
Paz, paix, peace, an, siochain, friede, shalom, salaam,amani, santeepop, heiwa, hoa bihn
That’s “peace” in twelve different languages: Spanish, French, English, Korean, Gaelic, German, Hebrew, Arabic, Swahili, Thai, Japanese, and Vietnamese. In this time in our history, with a war going on in Iraq, I’m reminded of the song whose lyrics are reproduced above in all those different languages.
I first learned the song in 1991, when I sang a duet with Laine Virtue in the fourth grade for the school chorus. Back then, there was another war going on in Iraq: Operation Desert Storm. Laine and I sang that song, whose only words were the various translations of “peace” as quoted above. Then the next fall, the whole chorus sang a song, “Let Peace Begin With Me”, which was a really neat song (and I can’t find the lyrics for it online).
And with Christmas exactly one month away, I’m holding out hope that we can come up with a peaceful end to the current conflict, and bring our troops home alive very soon. I think this photo says it all…
Categories: Anti-war, Elementary school
“Remember this?”
< 1 minute read
October 18, 2006, 4:47 PM
Dad went to a meeting at my old high school today, and caught a photo with his cell phone of a piece of artwork that had my name attached to it. What the meeting was about, I have no idea. But this is what he got, seen here in the art room of Stuarts Draft High School:
Dad texted the photo and the message to me this morning, with the message “remember this?” with it. When it first buzzed in, I looked at it, and I was like, nooooooo… since I wasn’t even quite sure what I was looking at. I honestly don’t remember making that. It must not have left that big of an impression on me. We can assume that this was a group project, considering that my name appears on top, and Samantha Hensley’s name appears at the bottom. I’d say it was probably done about mid-semester in the spring of 1998, during the acrylic paint unit.
So, yeah. I’m sure Dad was quite proud, though, to see my name on the wall from some eight years ago.
Categories: High school
The time I got backhanded…
< 1 minute read
September 18, 2006, 11:11 PM
I still remember the time I got backhanded in high school, and I was thinking about that recently. It was in Mrs. Dixon’s English class way back in 1998, and I got decked by a girl, whom we’ll call “Wilma Eyeball” (this person gave herself this nickname in sixth grade back in 1992, so they know who they are), who sat in the seat in front of me. I had presumably managed to tick off this particular girl, and while I was discussing something with another classmate, she just up and backhanded me. She just swung her arm back and kapow. I was kind of stunned. I got decked by Wilma Eyeball. I must have really gotten on her nerves. And it marked the only time I ever got decked in school. And thankfully, no injuries came about – not even a bruise.
After I got decked, Mrs. Dixon took us both out in the hall to discuss this between the two of us. This ultimately led to a seating change, where Wilma Eyeball was moved to a seat across the room. It ended up working out for the better.
Meanwhile, now I find out that Wilma Eyeball lives near Los Angeles and seems to be having a great time…
Categories: High school
College shirt weekend at work led to an amusing photo in the end…
2 minute read
July 23, 2006, 1:47 AM
Yes, it was college shirt weekend at our store this weekend, and so I made sure to represent JMU.
But what’s funny is the shirt that I chose. I went hunting through my closet to find a JMU shirt. I was really looking for a “JMU Alumni” shirt that Mom got me, since that’s what I really wanted to wear. I ended up not finding that, and the only thing I found that was suitable for late July ended up being my old Office of Residence Life “purple shirt”. That would be this shirt, seen here back in the day. So I wore that under my vest. And purple and maroon certainly do look good together. Judge for yourself:
How does one fail the DMV vision test?
< 1 minute read
May 11, 2006, 2:49 PM
How does one fail the DMV vision test? I’d like to know. I went to DMV today to renew my license, and subsequently failed the vision test. Weird. And it wasn’t that things were fuzzy. Things did look sharp, but they all looked like 8s. I don’t know exactly how to explain it, because I can see. Quite well, as long as I’m wearing my glasses. I wonder if it’s the machine, because I didn’t think to ask to use a different machine. Either way, though, I have to go see Dr. Patel at AMC again to get an eye exam. But DMV said that once I get the eye exam and Dr. Patel fills out their form, that will bypass DMV’s vision test. All in all, weird.
Otherwise, though, I went up to Harrisonburg today. I actually am writing this from JMU, and I got an interesting photo of myself with my cell phone that will probably end up being May’s photo on the front of the site. Still, things have changed at JMU. Taylor Down Under has been rearranged, with a new TDU stage, and some other stuff has been shuffled around. I also visited Harrison Hall, which was just starting renovations when I graduated. Now, it’s done, and it’s interesting. It’s certainly not the rathole that I remember from my college days anymore.
I also stopped at Steve and Barry’s to see if I could get more tie-dye shirts. In a word: No. They clearanced them all out, and so there are none left to wear. A shame.
So all and all, it’s been an interesting day. I still have more stuff to take care of in Harrisonburg, so I’m not done yet…
Gave my scooter to Goodwill, and it’s kind of heartening to know that the system does still work.
2 minute read
March 27, 2006, 5:25 PM
First of all, remember this?
That’s my “Just Go” scooter, which is basically a knock-off of the Razor scooter. It is actually better described as my former scooter, as I donated it to Goodwill last Thursday. I figured, since I’d not ridden it in nearly five years (seriously!), I might as well get rid of it, so someone else can get some good use out of it. Thus I gave it to Goodwill.
Categories: JMU
I read an article that troubled me…
6 minute read
November 6, 2005, 10:31 PM
I was reading this past Saturday’s News Virginian, and an article on the front page of the paper troubled me. The article was called “Dilemma of threats on Internet”. Here’s a link to the article.
The basic premise of the article was about students’ reactions in their own online journals to an incident at Riverheads High School in Augusta County, where a 15-year-old student was given an “indefinite suspension” by school officials for an October 1 entry in his online journal hosted by xanga.com where he contemplated “a massive systematical killing of people at rhs for the soul purpose of saying that i can”.
First of all, I will be the first to say that posting such things in a public space (which the Internet basically is) was not the best thing to do. But, to avoid dwelling on should-have-dones in that situation, let’s assume that what’s done is done. It’s posted, and that’s all there is to it.
In addition, I do not take issue with the principal’s encountering the material in question in the first place. These online journals are accessible to the general public without a password, and thus I consider the principal to be well within his rights to look at these online journals. When someone posts to an online journal that is publicly accessible, including this one, that means that anyone can look at it, and I do mean anyone. To make my point, I had no trouble finding AnothrDmBlnd’s Xanga site, whose November 2 entry was the source of one of the comments mentioned in the article.
Categories: School, Security, Virginia local news
Upgrading the fire alarm system at my old middle school brings back a lot of memories…
5 minute read
September 10, 2005, 9:02 PM
I found out on Friday that Stuarts Draft Middle School is getting a new fire alarm system, to replace the charming vintage-but-terribly-obsolete Edwards system installed when the building was constructed. As I’ve not been over there lately, I can’t tell you whether the update is in the process of completion or if it’s done, though my guess is that it’s done. I also don’t know who makes the new system or what model, nor do I know what kind of horns and pull-stations were used.
I found out when Mom brought a Food Lion bag home from school containing, to my surprise, two Edwards 270-SPO pull-stations (“Local Alarm”), two Cerberus Pyrotronics MS-151 pull-stations (from the 1993 addition), and an Edwards Edwards 881D horn. I believe that one of the Edwards pulls came from the gym next to the boys’ locker room, as it has a sticker with a zig-zag line under the “E” logo that I recalled on that spot. I don’t know where in the school the horn came from, or where the other pulls came from.
Altogether, before this alarm update, SDMS had 24 horns, of which 20 were the Edwards 881D (all were originally the Edwards 881D). Two horns were replaced before I started there with large square horns – one in the cafeteria and one outside Room 38 (a stone’s throw away from the other replaced horn). I won’t swear to it, but I think those horns said “Pyrotronics” on them in small white letters. Then two horns were replaced in 1993 with Wheelock 34T horns. One was outside Room 12, and the other was outside Room 22. I remember seeing workers replacing the horn outside Room 12 from a distance, and noticed the Wheelock 34T outside Room 22, which was near the sixth-grade lockers (which were later relocated), as being new when it was replaced during third or fourth period.
Categories: Fire alarms, Fire drills, Middle school