Ya think??

“We tend to believe Zhang’s death was caused primarily by unknown health problems. But there’s still a possibility that the freezing contributed to his death.“

Wow. To call this sentence an understatement would be doing a disservice to all the mere understatements people have uttered throughout recorded history. I mean, it doesn’t even assume as much responsibility as that classic, passive-voiced cop-out, “Mistakes were made.”

Also, happy Monday!

Doing it for the children

I find it highly cathartic to write an angry letter every now and then. This is one I emailed to the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, which is trying to prevent the Georgia O’Keeffe Elementary School from going by the initials GOK, which might diminish or tarnish the artist’s legacy…somehow. Anyway, I like this letter so much that I’m going to print it out, put it in an envelope, sacrifice one of my pretty pretty Jackie Robinson stamps, and allow a mail carrier to deliver it.

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To those who make the decisions [I considered, and decided against, Dear Wankers]:

I just read this article about your museum, and to tell you the truth, it made me a little sick. You’re a well-respected art museum that apparently has all the grace and compassion of a school-yard bully. It has been said that there’s no such thing as bad press, but I’m pretty sure you know that this is simply not true. We live in the age of the Internet now, and I am always begrudgingly impressed when highly visible entities like the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum display such an appalling lack of awareness of how quickly information spreads via this medium.

I read just a few minutes ago on Metafilter (consistently listed as one of Time Magazine’s Top 25 and PC Magazine’s Top 100 Classic web sites) that your museum is trying to get the Georgia O’Keeffe Elementary School of Albuquerque, NM not to go by its initials, as if having people pronounce “gawk” for GOK would somehow diminish this amazing artist’s legacy. There’s quite a lively discussion going on over at Metafilter about the way that your museum is doing a fine job on its own of tarnishing the legacy of Georgia O’Keeffe. There’s a lot of sympathy in that thread, but none of it lies with you. And I don’t think that Metafilter is somehow unique in its interpretation of this situation. I sincerely doubt that anybody is going to say, “Well, I used to respect Georgia O’Keeffe, but ever since that one elementary school in Santa Fe started going by GOK, I realized how vastly overrated she was as an artist and have since allowed my membership to the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum to lapse.”

More than anything, I wonder what you could be thinking by even allowing your ridiculousness to continue through several rounds of emails, letters, and now the serious threat of legal action. I’m curious to know whether you are somehow unfamiliar with the plight of public schools in this nation in general, and Albuquerque in particular. It’s not as though schools are raking in the dough hand over fist, so why would you think it prudent to threaten the school over its use of Ms. O’Keeffe’s initials? You do realize that she was a former schoolteacher, right? I can’t imagine, if she were still living, that her sympathies would lie with you, either. And let’s not forget the very real fact that the school had this name before your museum even owned the rights to Ms. O’Keeffe’s trademark.

In the olden days (say, the late 1980s), awareness of this story might not have reached very far. Locals might have tsked, and if it was a particularly slow news day, you might have made it onto one of the nightly news programs. Dan Rather would have used some indecipherable phrase to illustrate how dastardly he found your behavior (because “like stealing candy from a baby”) would have been to easy, and Peter Jennings would have said something amazingly erudite that would have made you look like graceless money-grubbers.

But now we’ve got blogs, 24-hour news cycles (it’s always a slow news day somewhere), incessant social networking, and online communities with near-global reach. And just like I’m posting this on my web site, Facebook page, and twitter feed, somebody I know is going to see this and pass it along, too. I’ve got friends all over the world, and being that I am a librarian, several of them work in museums, archives, and libraries. We’re used to feeling like the good guys, and this will be passed along just as a sheer oddity. I mean, shouldn’t an entity dedicated to the preservation of an artist’s works, spirit, and legacy be on the side of education? Who are you saving this legacy for, if not the people who will grow up in a world where knowledge of Georgia O’Keeffe recedes further and further into the past? And what about the students affected by your misguided attempt to prevent the disrespect of Ms. O’Keeffe’s legacy? Let me tell you: you’re doing a heckuva job at disrespecting your raison d’etre all by yourselves. At this point, all that the kids at that school are going to remember is that they were named after a woman whose memory was left in the hands of seriously misguided, greedy people.

I am utterly disgusted by your behavior.

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So there.

Please stop laughing

Sadly enough, this article is real, and not something thought up by the good folks over at The Onion. That’s right, folks: more Liberty University/evolution class silliness, this time brought to you by the Washington Post. Because it wasn’t embarrassing enough when the local Lynchburg paper was doing the reporting. Professor DeWitt, from the earlier article, takes his Advanced Creation Studies class to the Smithsonian, and complains how only one side is presented. Please explain to me how advanced any theory can be that essentially boils down to “A wizard did it.” If I went to Liberty, though, I would definitely take that series of classes. Sounds like an easy A for sure, as long as the words creator, infinite wisdowm, and divine plan figure prominently in all responses to essay questions. The Washington Post article’s subtitle makes me so sad: Creationist Students Take Field Trip to Hotbed of Evolution: The Smithsonian. When your real life would make a suitably humorous Onion headline, it might be time to reevaluate the road that led you to that point.

Read all instructions before writing anything

Did you ever take that test in school, where the teacher told you to read every instruction before writing anything? My eighth grade social studies teacher gave that one to us, and I was reading the whole thing and getting nervous, because while I was fretting about coming back to the seemingly-difficult math question at the top, I noticed that people in the class were already writing. And then, when I got to the end of the 20 questions, I read: “Write only your name at the top of the paper. Do not answer any other question.” I felt much better, and was silently laughing all all the yahoos who’d started to answer the hard questions above without ever reading that they need only write their name to complete the test.

Well, today I’m that yahoo. I received an email from a coworker. I usually ignore everything that she sends me, because they’re usually about jobs, and I already have one (I get creeped out by somebody I work with constantly trying to push me to get another job, although she seems to think I’m really smart and swears that she just thinks I could do better), but this one I actually read. It was about the Corporate Fellowship at Wake Forest U’s Babcock School, in which minority students can receive an MBA free (plus expenses are paid). It sounded good, so I read the brochure attached in the email, thought it still seemed pretty sweet, and then started my application.

I rounded up my GRE scores (kept in the same box as a bunch of casserole recipes and a Great Adventure ticket good for the entire 2007 season), spent most of today sprucing up my resume, and then prepared to write the essays required. I didn’t get to them yet, but went back to the Babcock School web site to get inspiration. I decided to read more about the Fellowship, and that’s when I read that it is open only to those who have graduated from college within the last 12 months. I finished undergrad in 2003, and finished my master’s in 2006, so I definitely don’t qualify in that respect.

I emailed one of the program directors to see if the lack of applicants would allow them to overlook my extreme oldness, and consider my application anyway, since I meet every other qualification. I am still waiting to hear back from her, but I’m not hopeful. If I’d only thought to read that page before I started my application, I never would have gone further, and wouldn’t have cared. Well, at least my resume looks pretty great now.

Things that do not surprise me

I haven’t lived in Lynchburg, VA for six years (man, the years have flown by!), but I haven’t forgotten what it was like to live there, either. Every now and then I catch up with what’s going on there by visiting the web site of the News and Advance, the local newspaper. I was saddened, but in no way surprised to see this article about Liberty University’s position on evolution (hint: not favorable towards). I know a lot of people who I respect and think the world of who do not believe in evolution either (we agree to disagree), but I think that a whole institute of learning should probably know better than to endorse an untestable, untried, unprovable theory based on the an account written when people still believed that offering sacrifices of animals, vegetables, and PEOPLE could appease the gods.
My kind of alma mater, Randolph College, comes out looking infinitely more reasonable here.

Was that wrong? Should I not have done that?

Remember Stephen Lewis, the Murfreesboro Free Press columnist who thought it would be hilarious to rewrite the theme song to The Jeffersons with the Obamas in mind? Well, as the person who commented on my post mentioned, in addition to reworking songs and ridiculing the accents of naturalized Americans in his free time, Mr. Lewis spends his days as a principal of an elementary school. Oh goody, because he is exactly who I want overseeing the next generation! (Overseeing! See what I did there?)

It seems that, in addition to the apology published by the editor of the Free Press, Mr. Lewis emailed his own tepid apology to the parents of those children who attend his school.

Although my hobby as a columnist is not connected directly to my position as principal I should have known better than to attempt to find humor in a subject so sensitive to so many. With all of that being said, I truly apologize to those of you who were offended by my comments.

What an apology, huh? I’m guessing that the school board or whoever actually hired him told him to write that. It certainly doesn’t sound heartfelt. To me, it sounds a lot like, “I’m sorry you overly sensitive whiners can’t take a joke.” I still really cannot believe that anybody would be dumb enough to write that column, but especially somebody who works with diverse populations every day and knows about the standards to which educators are held. How could this have seemed like a good idea? It would have been a terrible thing just to forward to a few friends, so how much more boneheaded was it to submit it for publication in a newspaper? You have to wonder about some people.

For those people who were directed to this post because of its title, George said that in an episode of Seinfeld, a show I generally don’t care about at all, but which I find selectively quotable.