SALMAGUNDI FOR A SNOWY DAY

This is the type of a day when  the desire to slip and slide, to spin  and bounce and test the hardest of the walkway or street is best left to the less brittle or more foolish. It also is the perfect time to write a typical column of disjointed but brief thoughts that others might expand into worthwhile commentaries.

One of the blogs that is a daily required read is  Maria's. Maria  is a relative newcomer to our city who  has become one of our most effective crusaders for the improvement of the quality of life in Plainfield. For the past two years she has been so focused  to have become our most valuable advocate for educational superiority for all.. . Each one of  her blogs reflect more time spent in research for facts than most of us will do in a year. If the Plainfield BOE had  9 Marias as its membership the system would once more be the model for the State that it was 30 years ago.

Her recent blog critical of the notice for the  public meeting on the second reconfiguration of the Maxson Middle School  in the past few years mandated by its failure to pass points out and serious lack of communication skills by administration  to the public. One would think that a system with a large number  of Hispanic students would have an administrative organization that is fluent in the language.
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Even I who can't read Spanish is able to understand that the notice calls for rebuilding (reconstructing)the community.Either a grandiose idea whose time has come, or a Freudian slip with the hope of reality.

This is Black History month.. I came across a blog written by Merideth Woo, Dean of the College  of Arts and Sciences of the University of Virginia that you will find most interesting about some of the desegregation process in the South:)( http://artsandsciences.virginia.edu/meredithwoo/blog/at-tackle-chester-pierce ) while you are on that link also hit the link in the blog to (The Desegregated Heart). These are two essays that you will enjoy.

Tuesday's Courier was full of Plainfield goodies. Two men shot; Dr. Gallon gets off with a tap on the knuckles. I don't believe "pre-trial intervention" is a recordable action. And of course on the editorial page is Assemblyman Green's philippic. Time for that in the immediate future.

Now that a Court in Florida has found cause to declare the entire Health Reform Act unconstitutional based on the requirement for mandatory purchase of insurance what can be salvaged will have to be determined. The next step will be the Court of Appeals and then  the Supreme Court. It will probably reach there  in 2012. The offending clause was to become law in 2014.In the meantime the 26 States that  are the plaintiff in the suit will ignore all its provisions.I have ventilated on health care in the past and will revisit with my "Fox"  oriented opinion asap.

We all can use inconsequential knowledge. Sometimes it becomes valuable. How many  have read 'Lolita"? How many knew that the  author,Vladimir Nabokov, was a self taught lepidopterists and was curator at Harvard University's Museum of Comparative Zoology. He died  in 1977.

In 1945 in came up with the hypothesis that in studying blue butterflies that the had emigrated to the western world from Asia via Siberia and the Bering Straits he identified different species  of "Blues" by their genitalia and suggestive successive migration waves. His theory was not accepted by the professionals of that day. In 1990 the then curator at Harvard was preparing a  1000th birthday memorial about the good doctor and decided to test his disputed theory by using a new tool, DNA. To all's surprise she found a common genetic relation ship to ancient Asian butterflies,not the link to hose of  the Amazon or Central America.

You should be happy you read today's blog and have acquired this pearl of knowledge. And if you are one of today's It illiterates the phrase "garbage in, garbage out" refers to computer use. If useless data is entered into the computer the resulting data retrieved will be worthless. It has nothing to do with PMUA trash. If the individual was using the phrase to describe the selection of a candidate, I would hope there would be some justification of  that insult.