Left class tonight excited for a new term and more analysis and discussion on media literacy.  Naturally, switched the TV on as I collapsed after the day.  CNN featured a 2 hour (turned into 4 hours) coverage of the Michael Jackson Funeral.  70 days after MJ died, he is finally, at least for the day, laid to rest in a memorial park.  For 4 hours (I actually worked during that time), I didn't hear how the fires in LA were, the two hurricanes bearing down on the Americas...where are they?  did anyone die in Iraq?  Afghanistan?

Ribbons at the bottom declared that Dame Elizabeth Taylor was there, Jackson's mother was visibly upset, and that ex-wife Lisa Marie Presley appeared emotional.

i was invited to speak this past Thursday eve and Friday to the parents (Th) and faculty (Fr) of a high school in the midlands of SC. . .they asked me to talk about the "boys crisis," literacy, and poverty. . .they heard me say we should be skeptical of anything labeled "crisis". . .they heard me talk about the insidious intent hidden in SAT data (poverty and gender and corporate deception). . .they heard me ask them all to reconsider why we view children (not just boys) as empty glasses needing us to fill them (with the middle-class assumptions we never question). . .they heard me argue with two or three teachers who openly disagreed with me (almost all English teachers. . .). . .and they heard me call for no one ever again to use the distorted programs of Ruby Payne addressing poverty in deficit ways. . .over and over faculty came up to me afterward and said quietly, "you are a brave man". .