The Salt-Box

People who follow me on Twitter know that this week has been contractor week at chez Salt-Box, with the focus of most efforts being the upstairs bathroom.  (You can see evidence on Flickr: “Things That Are Busted in Our Bathroom“; “Day 2: Return of the Contractor“; and “Day 3: Still Contractin‘.”)

The bathtub’s not cast-iron or porcelain or anything . . . it’s a composite material called “Vikrell,” which is why we could afford it.  I have no idea if this is a good decision, or not–frankly, it’s the best we could do now–but the name is unfortunate.  All I can think of is this episode from Friends, when Ross invents a former boyfriend for Phoebe, named Vikram.

. . . to her:

Promoted and tenured a year early . . . not too shabby for [redacted].

Yesterday we went to the Bronx Zoo for the first time.  A good time was had by all–as you can see here, we got a pretty up-close visit from a polar bear, plus close encounters with red pandas, baboons, giraffes, and a sea lion.  A few observations:

1. While it’s great that the Eco Restroom near the Bronx River parking lot uses so much less water, the fact that you can smell the restroom throughout the lot probably isn’t a very good advertisment for green building practices.  No one wants to live that way.

2. The Zoo is also particularly heavy-handed in its environmentalist moralizing.  Here’s a small example. I’m sympathetic to the message, but geez!

3. The 6-yr-old’s day was absolutely made by the presenter on the Wild Asia Monorail, a college-age woman who saw his Hulk t-shirt and reported, not only was The Hulk her favorite superhero, but she even named her cat “Banner.”

4.  If you can’t wait until September for the new Mac OS upgrade, you can see all the snow leopards you want at the zoo.  You can even buy a plush one in the gift shop.

Last week, the 6-yr-old’s school–the Holmes School for Science & Technology–had its first science fair. (I know, right?  What were they waiting for?)  Anyway, the boy was *super* excited about it, as you can see in this photoset on Flickr,  and he did a project on whether a solution of sugar, epsom salts, or alum will grow the best crystals as they evaporate at room temperature.  (Alum!)

We were a bit surprised at the fair to discover that the judges were evaluating grades K-3 together, using a rubric that included such items as a “lab report” and “three documented sources.”  Now, we both know enough about the scientific method to know that good experiments take into account existing knowledge, but . . . documented sources?  For kindergarteners?   That sounds age-appropriate.

Instead of doing that, we opted for a project that the boy could do, and for a poster that he could design and make himself.  He likes his participant ribbon just fine, and he and the *one* other kindergartener who participated both felt super-proud of themselves, as well they should have.   (They also worked each other into a panic early on, because the instructions had said that judges would interview you about your poster before making a decision.  That didn’t happen, but it took them a couple of minutes to catch on.  The adults you see him talking to in the photoset are my dept. chair, whose younger daughter attends the same school, and the principal.)

He’s already announced that next year he wants to do a project on Darwin.

This weekend at GeekDad I have a “10 things parents should know” post up about Land of the Lost, which was almost no fun at all.  That said, there’s always a silver lining:

10.  Well, is there at least a GeekDad-friendly catchphrase?

Yes!  “Matt Lauer can suck it!” “Science shows no mercy.  And neither do I.”

This is the year-in-review playlist for the boy, who turned 6 this week.  (See this post at GeekDad for background.)

1. “Constructive Summer,” The Hold Steady
2. “3 Dimes Down,” Drive-By Truckers
3. “Livin’ in the Future,” Bruce Springsteen
4. “The Spike,” Junkman’s Choir
5. “Meet Me By the River’s Edge,” The Gaslight Anthem
6. “Radio Nowhere,” Bruce Springsteen
7. “A Well-Respected Man,” The Kinks
8. “Wide Blue Yonder,” Junkman’s Choir
9. “Ask Her for Some Adderall,” The Hold Steady
10. “Thank You Mario But Our Princess Is in Another Castle,” The Mountain Goats w/ Kaki King
11. “Tire Swing,” Kimya Dawson
12. “Two Daughters and a Beautiful Wife,” Drive-By Truckers
13. “Back to School Again,” Ken Sheldon
14. “All I Want Is You,” Barry Louis Polisar
15. “7 8 9,” Barenaked Ladies
16. “Happy Home (Keep On Writing),” Kimya Dawson
17. “Pop Fly,” Justin Roberts
18. “Outfit,” Drive-By Truckers
19. “Sleigh Ride,” R2-D2 & C-3PO

Like THS say, “the sing-a-long songs’ll be our scriptures.”

I was gobsmacked on Friday when something happened for the first time in 10+ years of teaching: A student produced a reasonable definition of the word canonical.  It was a first-year student, in a composition class.

And how did the young scholar know this term?  Through the concept of canon in the Star Wars universe.

All of a sudden the 5-yr-old’s action figures, DVR-ed Clone Wars episodes, and novelizations were redeemed–a little–in A’s eyes.

Today I found out that my parents check up on A’s and my teaching by reading RateMyProfessors.com regularly.

Awesome.

Urmee Khan has a terminally silly post this morning at the Guardian’s Comment Is Free site, arguing that only middle-aged white guys like HBO’s brilliant show, The Wire.  Her chief objection to the show is its treatment of women:

It is misogynistic. All the main characters are men, apart from one woman. It is a world of men, in which many of the women are portrayed as subservient, lap-dancing gangsters’ molls.

This isn’t really true (there are several women who’d count as main characters) as a description of facts on the ground, and it’s just insipid as cultural commentary, inasmuch as it confuses a representation of misogyny with its endorsement.  The show signals pretty clearly indicts even its most sympathetic characters for their attitudes toward women.

She’s not much better on race:

The white characters in The Wire inhabit - usually - a sort of post-race world, where friendships and enmities with black men are denuded of racial tension. There are questions about how realistic this is, but for the purposes of the show, race in The Wire is a background hum rather than a dominating theme. When, in season three, a white detective kills a black colleague, under the mistaken belief he’s a criminal, the “racial element” (as it’s referred to) of the resulting controversy is shown as something unreasonable.

This isn’t an especially reasonable reading of season 3, which includes in it a ludicrous white cop who insists on singling out black cops as character witnesses for the shooter.  It also glosses over racial tensions depicted in the first two seasons.

But my main reason for writing this post is just anecdotal: As far as I can tell, women love The Wire.  That’s how it came into our home, through word-of-mouth from West Hartford moms.  (Think Little Children, and you’re not far off.)  I’d heard of the show for a couple of years, but never queued it on Netflix because I figured A. wouldn’t be interested.  But then Every Single WH Mom she hangs out with started watching it obsessively, plowing through those first 3 seasons on DVD over and over again, and talking about it nonstop at playdates.  So, we started watching, and got hooked.

Frankly, the first scene of the first episode caught us: It’s the greatest opener to any television show.  “This is America–everybody gets to play.”

I know typo-blogging is a bit unfair, but this one’s pretty funny.  From today’s New Britain Herald:

The story, of course, is deeply unfunny.  While I’m prepared in theory to agree that throwing money at problems isn’t always a good solution, it does strike me as unreasonable to take a state “Educational Cost Sharing” grant and apply it to . . . tax relief, at a time when the city’s high school risks losing accreditation.

The thing that nearly prevented us from moving to New Britain wasn’t the tax burden, though I recognize it’s relatively high; rather, it was the reputation of the schools, particularly the high school.