The Two Economies & Why Can't They Vote to Just Get Along?

Dear Colleagues,

2 Economies:
Sacred & Secular;
Profound & Profane

Colin Powell joins Obama & McCain
both in declaring EDUCATION a primary
agenda for the next administration, he didn't
elaborate but the usual talk is familiar and
reassuring: spending more money all around,
higher pay for better teaching, supporting high
quality schools and closing low performing
charter schools, addressing the drop out crisis
and the perennial make-math- &-science-a-
national-priority and stuff like that.

Sustaining the sustainable sustainably.

Einstein declared something like the mind
that makes the problem might be the mind
that sustains the problem but can’t be the
the mind that solves it— round and round
the cobbler's bench the monkey chases the
weasel: the monkey thinks it's all in fun till:
Pop! goes the weasel: variant on Jack
in-&-out-of-the-box thinking.

Education Improvement is the agenda,
not Educational Reform There’s a
difference.that makes a difference.

Me: old guy nostalgic for the 70’s & all its talk
of radical educational reform, stuck in that
decade & feel like primordial Bill Ayers in his
pre- Educational Professor Weatherman Youth—
doing despicable acts under the beef of a
different drummer.

I just now punched all A’s into my Grade Input
for Mid-Term Assessment. & confess a thrill up
my leg & cold shiver down my back as if casting a
vote to refuse funding for the armor & arming of all
youth in a rock and a hard pace. Something
fundamental & unquestioned: violated.

I know better.

Distribution of Wealth don’t motivate
any body. A terrorist act is all.
Monkey wrenching.

Like Hermes stealing Apollo’s cows.:

Later he took the fat and all the
flesh and stored them in that ample
barn, setting them high up as a token
of his youthful theft… but the god
didn’t get by the goddess, his mother:

“Hello there you double sneak!”
she said to him. “Where exactly
have you been at this hour, you
who wrap yourself in shamelessness?

I believe I’d rather see Apollo carry
you out of here, bound hand and foot
in unbreakable ropes, then have you
grow up to pester the woods with your
sneaking thievery. But go ahead.
Who am I? Your father meant you to
be a great bother, both to the gods,
who do not die, and to human beings,
who do” (The Homeric Hymn to Hermes)


Sacred Cow.

Something too highly regarded
to be open to criticism or curtailment.

The figurative use of the term 'sacred
cow', to refer to a project or process that
is immune from tampering, is American
in origin and also dates from the late 19th
century.

In September 1909 The Galveston Daily News
...referred to a project that was a 'sacred cow',
rather than merely being like one:

"They understand Mr. Bryan's position to be
one of antagonism to the contention that
raw material is a 'sacred cow,' immune
from tariff reform, ever to be upon the
dutiable list and in consequence
enjoying the blessings of
incidental protection.”

Copyright © Gary Martin, 1996 – 2008
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