"Take a Chill Pill"

"You were really strict."

That's what the counselor told me. That was the reason why I did not get the job.

At the time, I was so jittery, just looking for any line of approval that I could find. So distraught and at a loss for the truth, I was willing to take anyone else's point of view.

What I did not realize then, which I have since learned, is that to be stablished is the way to bknow righht from wrong in this life. I have ot be OK with myself from the word "Go", and everything else will flow from there.

Still, I let the counselor tell it to me "straight". Why was I talking to her? I wanted a letter of recommendation, and I believed that she would be agood source, someone who could make a good impression on a future hire.

For nearly two months, though, she had stalled on writing the letter. I did not need to be so naive about the whole thing. I had done a terrible job at the last high school. I did not get the job, and I for one am glad. Indeed, all things did work for good in my life, just at the time I was not willing to see it, for believing is seeing, all the way.

She was not the most above-board of professionals about the whole thing, though. She could have mustered the integrity to tell me plainly that she did not want ot write the letter of recommendation.

"Arthur, I need to talk to you," she started out.

"Why do you think that you did not get the job?"

I told her that I was not coordinated with my lessons, that the principal had told me that I expected the students to excel from 0 to 50 in an accelerated manner.

"Well, let me tell you what the students told me." Then she related a consistent narrative which I had heard all of my teaching career: "They said that you were really strict -- stringent, even."

"Stringent" -- that was a unique word. I had believed the whole time the exact oppposite:

"I thought that I was a doormat," I blithely admitted to her. "I thought that I let the kids get away with everything."

"Oh no, that's not at all what they said. If you had been a pushover, the students would have told me."

Then she tried to cooax me a ltitle bit.

"I know it's really hard, Arthur, but you have to find a way to be firm but flexible. Even I struggle with this at times."

"I wish that you had told me this sooner. Why didn't you?"

Then she candidately admitted -- "I have a difficult time asserting myself with colleagues."

What an extreme. I was really tough, and she was too nice. Yet here she was finally telling it like it is, or at least so I thought.

"Arthur, I feel that I owe it to you, that I have to be ethical about writing you this letter, because I am concerned that you will have a hard time getting a job in the future. You see, Arthur, the kids have to like you, at least the kids in this district have to life you."

At first, I thought that was a sensible statement. Since then, I have repudiated such nonsense. The cult of accomodation and equalit which is taking over our schools and putting teachers at the mercy of parents and students starts with this insidious exhoration: "The kids have to like you."

No, No, No, -- a thousand times NO! Respect is the word, and the teacher does not have to earn it -- and neither do the students. This nonsense of earning respect is causing more problems than ever.

At the time, I had so little going for me, I was just willing to take whatever was coming my way, any advice. She then added:

"Arthur, this is what you need to do: "Take a chill pill!"

"Take a chill pill" -- I thought that was reasonable enough, at the time. Looking back on the whole mess, that was thew last thing that any teacher really could do. Respect is the number one commodity for a teacher, something that he should not have to earn just to get through the day. For the six weeks that I was teaching at Hawthorne, the role had reversed, to detrimental effect. I was forced into the possition og trying to gain the respec tof students who never really would. The fact that I was a substitute made all the difference, for the worse.

No teacher can "take a chill pill" when he is pressed from all sides, with empty curriculum schedules which push students through two or three chapters a week, when in many cases students cannot read at the grade level. Then the culture of sloth and disrespect takes over, in which case the teachers is on the defensive time and again, dealing with students who in greater number have no desire to do any work, since they can slide into the half-day program at the continuation school.

This insanity would put out even the best of teachers. I often believe that even Jaime Escalante would fail to "Stand and Deliver" in such an environment.

"Take a chill pill" -- the stressful environment breaking out in our public schools has done nothing to advance the quality of education that our youth, or our teachers, deserve. The demands are only growing, since the school year is getting cut shorter and shorter as the budgets from the state and the school districts fail to provide even the most meager of provisions for our students.

I would take a "chill pill" in a less stressful environment, certainly. Schools are no longer such a place. They provide nothing but challenges and turmoil, especiall for guest teachers or first-year faculty who have no protection from fearful administrators and terrifying parents and students who honor no one, not even themselves.

The counselor engaged in the same folly which afflicts many people who have survived long enough in the system to refuse to do anything but just keep getting by -- they blamed the victim, which in my case was myself, the bewildered teacher.

Time and truth have worked their magic since then, and I can rest in the knowledge that I was out of my element from the moment that I stepped onto that campus nearly two years ago. I can now chill, but without the pills, because I am no longer at the mercy of complicated, dysfunctional system which in greater trend has nothing to do with educating and more with placating those in power, those who receive a pension, and those who have no other purpose but to collect something from the state.

"Sailing to Byzantium" by W. B. Yeats

THAT is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
- Those dying generations - at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.


An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

Yeats has written about "The Second Coming" which fallen, secularized man is still unprepared for, so foolish and slow of heart as to disdain both tradition and truth for the trappings of life's daily tragedies.

He has written of the infinite, intimate, and minute thrill of an Irish airman who will meet his fate above the clouds. Yeats taps into the Romantic impulse of a man who is drifting through the vestiges of a weakened world wondering and wandering for something meaningful, yet abandoning the very  premise of meaning, and thus finding not promise or solace of peace in the morass of moral myopia.

A world that has no respect for the past, which insists on recreating the future based on the empty and transient knowledge of sense will find no win or desire in the old men who remember what is was all like, and wish for it what can never return to be resurrected. So, in this poem, the poet longs for a land that will remember him, that will honor who he was, who is, and will make sure that others will remember, too.

THAT is no country for old men. The young
In one another's arms, birds in the trees
- Those dying generations - at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

The pleasures of the moment, to the more respectable, "sins for a season."

"Old" is cast as "lifeless" or engaged, cast out or cast away from the easy, useless fun of the younger generation, so caught up in themselves, who have no interest in the "unageing intellect", monuments of no importance to the boy and girl enraptured in their momentary bliss. "Birds in the trees" is a trite phrase, yet in the genius of Yeats' preliminary cynical observation, this phrase is an indictment against "the young" not the "old men".

Yet for all their young, they are "dying generation", one which marginalizes the same teeming life of crowded seas, the alliteration of "salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas" giving off the sound of fishes flopping against each other, slapping the water and pushing the limits of nature.

"Fish, flesh, fowl" -- heated, bated alliteration, "sensual music", signalling the heavy fall of life waiting to exhale, and like the same breath of two entwined lovers, does not last long.

An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress,
Nor is there singing school but studying
Monuments of its own magnificence;
And therefore I have sailed the seas and come
To the holy city of Byzantium.

In direct contrast to the "unageing intellect", there is the "aged man" who is "paltry", nothing noble like the monuments everlasting which capture the respect of younger generations. To the masses caught up in the show of things, the old man is a "tattered coat", a reminder of a once-wonderful piece of cloth, now all worn out and never to be worn again, bereft of shape or power, merely standing on a stick. The rips on a coat mean nothing unless someone praises the old man for what he has endured, such that he ended up all ripped up. Just as a historian only can begin to respect the sacrifice which veteran has made on behalf of his country, or only a widow can reminisce with grandeur the sacrifices of a now-deceased spouse, so a "soul" a  man endowed with memory and a measured respect, can "clap its hands and sing, and louder sing".

Kierkegaard in his work "Fear and Trembling" describes the hero and the poet, that the feats of a hero die without the song and praise of the poet. Here, in a sense, the poet descants on the sorrow that accompanies the old man who has done so much, yet only the soul, the deeper part of a person, can appreciate all that he has done. Since the younger generations care only for the imposing "monuments", the big things that can be seen and inspire in their physical capacities, the old man commands no respect.

To the poet, there is no more singing, no "singing school" where the next generation will not just learn by love the efforts of the older men. Instead of poets who will sing the praises to commemorate the former exploits of fallen men, there is "studying" of those monuments, which enrapture the viewer because of "its own magnificence". Such is the tragedy in trying to remember something or someone great, that the act, or the creation, that seeks to commemorate takes on a greater design than the action or the actor intended for celebration.

For this sheer and insulting confusion, the poet, identified as a slighted old man, has sailed "to the holy city of Byzantium."

O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

"Sages" has the traveling, sailing old man found here in Byzantium, a city, a memory, a great world which once was, whose monuments remain. Perhaps he has found the "soul clap" that he was looking for. The sages stand, not sit, in "God's holy fire", suggesting that they are ready to receive and to achieve for their aged visitor. He asks them to be his "singing-masters" -- masters of song and to give a masterful song, one in which the old man is the subject, not merely an object of curiosity.

"God's holy fire" -- here, the poet alludes to the divine aura, the lingering sentiment of sanctity which has never left this land. They stand in the fire like gold in a mosaic, standing out as well as remaining in the beauty, also an allusion to the mosaics which glittered throughout the city on the straits of Bosporus. Instead of a "gyre" that widens without holding, here the "gyre" spins forth a fire to gather together a value and a victory for a man still searching for respect.

"Consume my heart away" -- he wants to be rid of himself, even as he seeks to find some solace to celebrate him. The heart is not happy, having found no hearth in his former homeland to honor him. He is distinct from the rest of his organism, "a dying animal" which has lost contact with himself. The imagery suggests a slowing dying away, a desperation that may never find rest "Consume' "sick with desire' "dying animal" and ''gather" indicate a culmination leading to the cessation of life. In asking to enter "the artifice of eternity", a faint cynicism manages to poke through, as if the sailor who has arrived at Byzantine shores still believes that he will not find what he is looking for. Eternity as "artifice" may suggest, instead, the inevitable glory that will consume him, just like his heart.

Once out of nature I shall never take
My bodily form from any natural thing,
But such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make
Of hammered gold and gold enamelling
To keep a drowsy Emperor awake;
Or set upon a golden bough to sing
To lords and ladies of Byzantium
Of what is past, or passing, or to come.

No longer flesh and blood, he has become a part of the gilded enamel of old mosaics. "Out of nature" speaks of his death, his departure from the world of sense into the realm of artifice. Now he joins the gold mosaics of old, and has become the pastime of kinds, "to keep a drows Emperor awake." Or instead of a picture on a wall, he is a song, "set upon a golden bough" to entertain royal persons, in constrast to the flush and lusty youths infered in the first stanza of this poem. No longer a "tattered coat on a stick", he is a gleaming, golden artwork, a song of measure and majesty.

Another Failure from Obama's "DREAM Act" Lite

Obama's deferred action, or non-enforcement, will only benefit those illegal immigrants who are in school or who have a high school diploma or a GED.

That will do nothing for those migrant workers who put on more ten or more hours a day on our nation's farms. These youth cannot opt into this deferral.

When will the voters in this country recognize once and for all that President Obama promulgated this reprieve chiefly for political gain? He and his executive staff did not reflect on the unintended consequence of this half-formed amnesty, which has created strain on federal processing agencies while depleting an already under-funded, depleted bureaucracy.

A growing number of illegal immigrants will take advantage of the growing disingenuous relaxing of this nation's immigration laws, bringing in their wake more youth, who will labor in menial jobs for the greater part of every day throughout their young lives, who will not enroll in school, who will have few skills and fewer options for improving their status in this country.

Policy moves based on the feeling of the moment, based on compassion instead of a conservative legacy will ever more harm the very people who claim to benefit from these executive orders.

Teachers Refuse -- Divided Loyalties

Unions are not worthy of the teachers whom they claim to represent.

I anticipate that a number of teachers will disregard the politicized suggestions of the Manhattan Beach Teachers Union Leadership.

Students should not suffer because the district leadership refuses to honor the great work that our local teachers do. What has created this bitter acrimony among teachers and district leadership?

The union power-struggle with school boards bares much of the blame. The political tensions have instituted conflict into the school setting, where cooperation and community belong.

Teachers must march up the salary scales of block, stock salary schedules, which do not recognize the intense, and extraordinary which are teachers give to their students.

Manhattan Beach Unified School District is as likely a place as any for the needed transitions from the traditional and failing union-school board model to charter-community-choice model which we need to see more of in our public schools.

Short "USA Today" Take on the RNC

The Republican National Convention is a sea-change in National Politics. The tide is turning against Big Government. For the first time ever, national political figures were not afraid to talk about entitlement reform for our entitlements, to talk about taking on public sector unions, to talk about cutting debts, deficits, and government dysfunction.

Love and respect are two complimentary and contrasting values in the public forum. Machiavelli told his princely charges that they should seek to be loved and feared, or respected. Yet if they could not be loved, then at least they should be feared. How interesting that Governor Christie's Sicilian mother, of Italian stock, would tell her son the same thing, and Christie put her advice before his party and the nation. In order to solve this nation’s problems, politicians will have to dispense with being loved, and command respect from voters and the opposition. Governor Chris Christie was correct when he drew this distinct in his Keynote Speech. His reasoning is the future of the Republican Party.

Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan has led a small delegation to take on the profligate spending eating away at our present and destroying our nation's future. GOP Vice Presidential candidate Paul Ryan has advanced a comprehensive reform of Medicare. Not touching benefits for current seniors, Ryan wants to offer a voucher which will permit future recipients to choose their own plan. This commands respect, even if the Democrats want to demagogue this responsible alternative by refusing to solve the problem and let the entitlement program go insolvent. Ryan commands a compelling grasp of fiscal and budgetary issues, and he has provided the most information condemning ObamaCare.

If necessary, Congressman Ryan would be more than ready to be president. He is a leader not afraid to tell people the truth about our country's broken and bankrupting fiscal policies. He knows how to make the case for comprehensive reform, even if by long-term estimates the reforms are timid.

Former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney is not a celebrity, not a star, not someone whom many expected to win the nomination. Even on the floor of the convention, Ron Paul supporters threatened a massive disruption on behalf of their "super-star" candidate. No matter how unappealing he may be, Romney is just what this country needs: a responsible politician with private sector and executive experience, who has taken failed enterprises into economic recovery.

Romney’s resume is loved by supporters and respected by critics. Romney is more than ready to be president. He already has what it takes to be a leader. Let's elect him and make him president.

Artur Davis at the RNC

Former Alabama Congressman Artur Davis admitted that he was in the wrong place last year. He was an Obama supporter.

"Thank you for welcoming me where I belong", Davis told the crowd. The crowd roared with approval.

Artur Davis represents the diversity of opinion, and the multiplicity of background, which is taking place in the Republican Party. Even the Mainstream Media insists on remaining color blind to the multi-ethnic representation stepping up to lead the Republican party in this new century.

National Conservative Pat Buchanan has predicted that Republican Party will not survive as the white vote diminishes across the country. That fear was resoundingly refuted over and over at the 2012 RNC Convention in Tampa Bay, Florida. From Indian-American Nikki Haley to Cuban Marco Rubio, the Republican Party has established a growing legacy of leaders who will put to death the race-baiting of the Democratic Party, which for too long has screamed itself into the advocacy of minorities.

What a great story for the GOP. A black man as a standard bearer for the party. I refuse the negative ads which suggest that the GOP is just "The White Man's Party."

For over fifty years, from the end of Reconstruction to the New Deal, the Democratic Party advertised itself as "The White Man's Party." Even President Obama was more concerned with the white vote than with the Black Vote, a bloc which the Democratic party has taken for granted for decades. Double the unemployment for blacks compared to whites and Hispanics would suggest that the Democratic Party does not have the best interests of African-Americans at heart.

Why did Obama swing into office. "We led with our hearts -- no candidate had ever spoken so beautifully." Artur Davis admits that he drank the Obama Kool-aid, and now he's throwing it all away.

"Obama has wrecked the recovery for three years and counting." Obama has been the gift for the GOP that keeps on giving. Time Magazine and Newsweek, the second a failing commodity in the rapidly innovating media market, both predicted the decline and demise of the Republican Party. Obama's left-wing policies have made this center-right country sick to our stomachs.

"Middle America is hurting." Putting aside class warfare, David addressed "Middle America" -- the lost middle ground in our politics.

ObamaCare became the final legacy of "Yes, We Can!" No the country is crying -- "No, You Don't!"

"Do these Democrats speak for you?" Artur Davis proposed to the Democrats and Independents who voted for Obama in 2008. The "Hope and Change" rhetoric has given way to the "Nope and Blame" reality of politics as usual.

Artur Davis, thank you for your charged and commanding words!

Clint Eastwood at the RNC

The Good Not Afraid to Make the Bad Look Ugly

Clint Eastwood declared for the camera the latent truth:

There are many conservatives in Hollywood, but they don't blast. They are conservative in every way.

Clint would ask the following questions. He was talking about the election in 2008. The discussion was about Hope and Change.

Everybody was crying, even Oprah. He had not cried that hard

23 million unemployed are in this country. He started to cry for that -- that is disgraceful, and he is right. Obama has not done enough to deal with his problem.

It's time for someone else to come and solve the problem -- he did not give the warmest endorsement for Mitt when he said that.

How do you handle promises that you made during your election? This is a great question, and Clint Eastwood

He did not close Gitmo, as he promised that he would -- wow, Clint is really "with it" -- even I had forgotten that. He also brought up the failed attempt to bring the Khalid trial to New York City.

Obama was against the war in Iraq, but he favored the war in Afghanistan. How shameful that the professor in the Oval Office did not check in with the Russians, who failed miserably

Romney -- why are you giving the date out for withdrawal? Bring them home NOW! Yes, bring home our troops, bring them home!

More promises, not kept, thank you Clint, for keeping the President on his toes. Romney

Joe Biden -- the intellect of the Democratic Body -- what a witty, worthy chop! A smile with a body behind it.

I never thought it was a good idea for attorneys to be President - the Civil lawyer lobby has too much power in Washington. The dialectic of devil's advocate takes too much time away from making the necessary decisions.,

It is time for a businessman, Clint. Yes, and Romney is a stellar businessman. I wish that Clint had hammered home the stiff opposition that Mitt gave to the overwhelmingly Democratic statehouse in Massachusetts.

We own this country -- we the People own this country, not the President, not Washington, not the Congress. Politicians are our employees. Yes, I could not agree more.

Obama has not done his job. He needs to be let go.

Clint Eastwood seemed a little out of it, yet he commanded a roaring response from the RNC crowd.

"Go ahead! Make my day!"

Clint made the four days, that's for sure.

Easy Reader News: Waxman in Hermosa Beach

Hermosa Beach resident Julian Deveroux commented that Hermosa Beach is turning into “Little Santa Monica” because of the progressive bans on smoking and plastic bags. She neglected to mention Santa Monica-based Congressman Henry Waxman, who is infiltrating the Beach Cities.

Now running in the newly-carved 33rd Congressional District, which spans half of his former district and includes the Beach Cities, the unsightly oversight chairman paid an undisclosed visit to Councilmember Michael Keegan’s Hermosa Beach home August 29.

I cannot think of a more unqualified candidate to represent the Beach Cities, including my home in West Torrance.  Waxman bullied baseball players in 2009, yet had no standing knowledge of the standard steroid laws in this country when questioned by a constituent. He went after Tobacco executives in 1994, yet he did nothing during the Congressional Post Office scandal or the “Congressional check-kiting scandal” which brought down the House Democratic majority.

In open committee, he admitted that he did not know what was in his own Cap and Trade legislation. He  also  brazenly assumed that “We’re not broke”, even though  this nation is facing a $16 trillion national debt.

Hermosa Beach Democratic Club President Diane Wallace claimed: “One of the things (Waxman) reflected on is how he has been so successful in Congress because he has a good working relationship with Republicans.” Waxman threatened to  throw one Republican out of committee because the chairman refused to pursue regular order. He shoved his Cap and Trade, including a last-minute three hundred page amendment, without input from Republicans. ObamaCare received no insight from Republicans. Both bills passed with opposition from Democrats as well as Republicans on the slimmest of majorities.

Bill Bloomfield has the real record of bipartisanship, working with Democrats to advance education and electoral reform.  Bloomfield has run his own businesses. Bloomfield has also worked with underprivileged youth. He opposes the partisanship which has forged nothing but gridlock and wasteful spending in Washington.

Waxman commented: “If there’s ever a chance that anybody’s going to try to close that air force base [in El Segundo], they’re going to have to do it over my dead body.”

After picking his district and voters for over thirty years, Waxman so readily assumes that he’s going to swing into another term in office.

Over my dead body!

About "Prop 32 as Conservative Attack on Unions"

In the LA Times, I have not read so soundless and unsound a hit piece as "Proposition 32: A fraud to end all frauds":

http://articles.latimes.com/2012/aug/19/business/la-fi-hiltzik-20120819

The legal fraud of public sector unions forcing their employees to contribute against their will to funds, which the union leadership then spend on causes and candidates which the individual employee does not support -- that is the greater travesty.

Public sector wrangling is tying up this state. Pensions and benefits are easting away at an already eaten out state budget. The latest reforms, just released two days ago, do very little to curb the public sector unions' appetite for taxpayer dollars.

Let's not forget the shameful abstentions from prominent Assembly Democrats, who did nothing to pass a bill which would expedite the dismissal of teachers guilty of moral turpitude in the classroom.

I support Prop 32 -- I want to end the throttle on the state, the schools, and the taxpayers!

On the Manhattan Beach District/Union Impasse

For the Manhattan Beach teacher/union impasse, the following proposals will spread the responsibility and enhance respect for all parties:

Retract all pay increases for every administrator in the district office.  How hard can it be to serve as a superintendent in a district with one high school, one middle school, and six elementary schools?  In every contract for district staff, the salary increases must be specifically enumerated and itemized.  No more perks or payouts.

Fire every consultant who has been hired on to “help” the district officials to do the jobs which they were paid to do in their own capacities. The bloated expansion of district “leadership” is wasting away the money that belongs to the classrooms and in the service of the students and the teachers who are educating them.

Do away with district funding for technology innovations. Let the parent foundations or a local business donate money to fund these resources.

Give the teachers their ten percent increase. They deserve it.

Limit the collective bargain rights of the union. This politicking had its place years ago, when teachers had no protections whatsoever. Current Civil rights laws protect teachers better. Today, union representation is conflicted and unnecessary.

End tenure for life, and replace it with a contract system with merit pay, which will reward teachers for going the extra distance for their students. End the sclerotic salary schedules which do not recognize excellence but manage mediocrity or inculcate incompetence.

These compromises would enforce reform and accent accountability for all.