Identity Theft Revisited

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Remember last summer when I mentioned I had been the victim of identity theft?

Well, I got a letter in the mail today from the U.S. Justice Department. They actually caught the persons involved. I am fairly surprised. I don’t hold out much hope that they’ll go to jail, but maybe they’ll have at least learned that they can’t get away with that sort of thing. Actually, one of them might do jail time, because it looked like he was involved in some pretty hairy schemes.

I am not sure what all I can say about it. I haven’t been put under a gag order or told not to reveal who it was, but considering they haven’t been arraigned yet, it feels wrong. Maybe once they’re convicted.

It feels really good to know that I wasn’t forgotten or ignored and that they found the guys. It is a horrible feeling to know someone is out there trying to get credit in your name, using your Social Security Number, and emptying your bank account. Not that they managed to do much harm to me financially — my bank was really good about it.

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Pressure to Change Grades

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Not that I have to deal with this in my current teaching position, but yes, I too have been pressured to change grades (bypass registration with BugMeNot). While I’m not proud of it, I have done it. Sometimes, I wasn’t given a choice. I’m not sure I would have lowered a student’s grade as a discipline issue, but when I taught at a rough school with no parental or administrative support, grades were the only (rather small amount) leverage I had, and I admit I used them. I called them participation grades. Perhaps that sort of thing is more acceptable than taking a grade a student earned and lowering it, but I still think the firing of the teacher was too extreme. This is a move that will impact Neace’s career. He may find it difficult to procure future employment. Please understand, I am not saying I think Neace made a good decision in lowering the grade, but he shouldn’t have been fired for it. I wonder what the system’s policy is on participation grading? I ought to know, as I worked there. Maybe that’s all I need to say…

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The Bible, Not Bible-Thumping

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It should come as no surprise to anyone who teaches literature that a good background in the Bible is really helpful for students. So much of Western literature derives influence from the Bible, whether through symbolism or allusion. As a teacher in the South, I never worried about bringing up the Bible in class when an author clearly referred to it. I have been known to find the reference and read that, too. I think that’s just good teaching. It is nice to work at a school where students are taught Tanakh (the Torah plus other books that make up the Christian Old Testament) and also Rabbinic literature. They know much more than any other students I’ve taught, and they pick up Biblical references. Therefore, “Call me Ishmael” means something to them, and I don’t have to spend a lot of time explaining it. I agree that studying the Bible as the most influential source for so much Western canon is a good idea, but I understand why it makes people nervous. There is a fine line to be walked. Oddly enough, my students are fairly well-versed in New Testament, having studied it in middle school, and I rarely have to describe references to the New Testament in great detail.

I think what people fear about the Bible is directly related to idiots like Republican Alabama State Representative Gerald Allen, who tried to push through a bill to ban books written by homosexuals or that have homosexual characters from public schools.

What that meant was no Tennessee Williams — The Glass Menagerie is a staple of American literature curricula across the country. It meant no Truman Capote. By extension, does that mean he might have banned To Kill a Mockingbird, as Dill was based on Harper Lee’s childhood friend Truman Capote? The Color Purple would have been gone. He even went after some of Shakespeare before backing down and allowing “classics” to be exempt, although the article’s author maintains Allen couldn’t define what a classic was.

Librarian Donna Schremser sums it up perfectly: “[T]he idea that we would have a pristine collection that represents one political view, one religious view, that’s not a library.”

Thank God for absenteeism:

When the time for the vote in the legislature came there were not enough state legislators present for the vote, so the measure died automatically.

Let’s hope it stays dead, for the good of Alabama’s schoolchildren.

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Blog Stuff

Posted on by Dana
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Are you a blogger, or do you want to be? Today’s del.icio.us links are for those of you interested in blogging.

Movable Type and WordPress are publishing platforms that will allow you to manage the content of a blog on your own website. There are lots of places to go to get your own website. I use MaxiPoint because they are cheap. In the past, I’ve had complaints about their customer service, and I still maintain you probably want to know your way around building a web page if you use them, but they have been better about that sort of thing — quicker response to help tickets, more knowledgeable about different aspects of building a web site. I think they may also have fixed their CSS problem, because I don’t remember having to make any alterations to the template for our genealogy blog.

Obviously, I know my way around Movable Type better, since I use it, but I’ve heard good things about WordPress. If you do use Movable Type, there are a few good sites you need to know about:

  • Learning Movable Type is much more helpful than the support forum at MT’s own web site (which lately, for me, has been a “don’t even bother” proposition — unless you have questions about installation, no one will help you)
  • Movable Style helps you move beyond the default style templates.
  • Movable Type Plugins can help you enhance your experience with MT.
  • SpamLookup is the 800-pound gorilla of spam filtering and blocking. I wish I’d thought of that metaphor, but it was previously used by Diarist.net to describe DiaryLand. I love SpamLookup.
  • MT-Blacklist works very well for comment spam, but I still had problems with trackback spam.

If you want some fun stuff for your blog, you can create a radio blog, but you should make sure you have plenty of space on your server — those tunes take up some space, and a 20 MB server isn’t going to work for a radio blog. You can also make buttons with Kalsey’s Button-Maker or simply steal the creations of others at Taylor McKnight’s site.

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Jennifer Wilbanks

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Jennifer Wilbanks has some ‘splaining to do. I find it utterly reprehensible that she led police on a wild goose chase, worried her fiancé and family like that, and initially blamed her abduction on a fictional Hispanic couple. Because, you know, making it seem like it was a “dangerous minority” makes it believable. Shades of Susan Smith’s mysterious black man, anyone? I understand cold feet. I know people would have been upset if she called off the wedding, but for crying out loud, how much more upset must they be that she is capable of such heartless deceit? I never could put my finger on it, but I thought there was something odd about this from the start. Everyone was starting to think her poor fiancé had done something — all this business about the lie-detector test — and it turns out she just ran away.

Weddings do tend to take on a life of their own, don’t they? But there was, I think, a much better solution. I don’t know that any criminal charges that might be filed could possibly make her feel worse, assuming she is capable of feeling remorse, but I think they should be filed nonetheless. They won’t be. Those good old boy cops in Gwinnett County might love doling out tickets to harried moms of three trying to get to work on time and going a bit too fast on Ronald Reagan Parkway, but they won’t make poor little Jennifer pay for the hours they spent looking for her. I have a feeling she’ll pay in some way.

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Celtic Music

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Do you like Celtic music? You might want to check out one of my favorite links: Ceolas Celtic Music Archive. You can learn more about your favorite artists and instruments and learn a little about Celtic dance. A caution, however: the site does not appear to have been updated with information in some sections (such as tours) in several years. That’s the del.icio.us link for today.

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Celtic Art and Cultures

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The link for today is Celtic Art and Cultures, a web site constructed for students of UNC’s Art 111 course; thankfully, they share it with the world. You can view images of Celtic art on everything from jewelry to food utensils. There is also a collection of maps and timelines, a thorough guide to Celtic design motifs, and even a vocabulary section complete with quizzes.

That said, I’m going out of town for a couple of days. I plan to visit my in-laws at the beach. See you on Sunday.

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Tik Day

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Today was the last day of school before our spring break, timed to coincide with Passover. Part of the mission of our school is to instill civic responsibility in our students. One of the ways we do this is organized Tik Days. Tikkun olam is translated as “repairing the world.” On Tik Days, students and teachers engage in various volunteer activities. I decided to go to PAWS Atlanta, an animal shelter. I cleaned, lined, and filled litter boxes, played with kitties, and shoveled mulch into a wheelbarrow so the other volunteers could put it on the dog walk. I was so tired! I had to take a nap when I got home. It was fun, and I decided if there is some way to organize it, then all schools should require community service for their students. It was really great working alongside my students. They worked so hard, and they were so enthusiastic. They did whatever was asked of them, and I know the PAWS staff was really impressed with them.

Our other students divided themselves between cleaning up at local cemetery, volunteering at a food bank, and a gardening project (I cannot, I’m sorry to say, remember the particulars on that last). I’m really impressed with how much our students do for their community. It really makes me proud — as proud as if I were their own parents, I think.

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