(( Murphy )) . Holding you in the light and praying for light to return to your life. re lack of transparency around training of armed security officers in school Does your state have freedom of information act-type legislation in place for public entities? Mine does (as do many other states); and if your state has an equivalent framework there is a process by which constituents can formally request such information and the school is **required** to provide it. And if not, it is definitely an appropriate issue to ask the school board to intervene to provide transparency to parents and other constituents. (It's a townwide liability issue as well as a parent issue.)

If the person on the other side happens to have an iPhone you can Facetime on audio-only. Give it a try, there won't be a fee if it doesn't work. If that fails I'd load up $10 on skype credits and call audio-only that way. We used to do that all the time back in the day when our my brother/ eldest / BIL and his whole family lived overseas. You need the same country & city (click the drop-down menu within that site for a particular country, and scroll down a bit, to get cities within that country) codes you do for old-fashioned landline or full-charge cellphone calls, but it's VOIP so it's only pennies per call.

It's been extremely *pretty* here and has been coming down off and on for going on 24 hours now, but the ground was very warm and it hasn't added up to more than 2 inches. My next door neighbor **built a ramp** over the 2-steps up to their front door and their 5 year old was sledding it shrieking over and over and over all afternoon until the sun set (( puffy heart )). It's supposed to all melt tomorrow, le sigh.

1970s, mother was a high school teacher who had to be *at her desk* by 7:15 am. My grandfather, who lived with us, shepherded me and my brother (whose schools started later) through the morning and out to the bus stop. Breakfast: we always HAD eggs / milk / OJ / basic fruit etc in the fridge, and by 11 I *could* have made a hot breakfast if I'd wanted to, but even then I wasn't a morning person and it was all I could do to choke down a bowl of cereal. On weekends my dad always made eggs or waffles or pancakes. Lunch: during school, some rubber chicken / salisbury "steak" / pot roast sort of thing, with some kind of potato / rice sort of side, with a canned fruit cup. On weekends / summer, proper sandwiches on reasonably good bread with good cold cuts, lettuce, mayo, cheese. Snack: after school my grandfather would make a pot of tea, which he drank in a glass, and we'd play cards for at least an hour before starting homework. I don't specifically remember snack, but I really liked toast with cinnamon sugar in those days and would not be surprised if I had that just about every day too. Dinner: after retiring my mom became a much better cook, but in those days she was pretty busy and got home pretty late, and there was a lot of Hamburger Helper, frozen or canned veggies, and (god forgive us all) instant potatoes / minute rice and etc.

re role of arguing on the internet / making facebook posts 100%. There is **a** function that arguing on the internet / making FB post fills. For many people, it's an important part of processing; and that processing is necessary. And for some, it provides some early pointers to organizations in the space / info about policy that has been effected elsewhere / how to contact legislators etc. Kvetching on the internet CAN BE a gateway for subsequent more-on-point action, in the same way that exhilarating marches/protests CAN BE a gateway to subsequent more-on-point action. But neither is where and how actual change occurs. ( Obvi , and yet also, worth saying... ) re role of criminal and civil liability lawsuits Yeah. It took 12 years and some creative legal thinking, but the Sandy Hook lawsuits finally HAVE liquidated Alex Jones' (may his name be erased from memory) evil snake oil machine, monetizing the lives of kindergartners to enrich himself. And perhaps even more importantly, Remington didn't quite accept the idea of liability but nonetheless settled at $73 million, which OTOH they can certainly afford but OTO is sufficient that the cost of insuring against similar liability in the future is suddenly a new cost of doing business. CT and other states are looking long and hard at policies that extend liability to gun owners (with kids in the house, of unsecured weapons, of unreported stolen weapons, etc) and at requiring weapons to be insured, similar to cars. We have a 2nd Amendment. That really IS a dimension in which we ARE exceptional, compared to our peer nations. Our way to a saner society IS going to look different than nations that don't have such a provision. But that does not mean there are no roads toward the "well-regulated" side of the 2A's language.

re feeling overwhelmed / helpless => giving up on possibility of change (( I know. )) And, I know you know that **grieving / venting / debating better policy on WTM** and **kvetching on Facebook** is not the mechanism through which laws are made. There really ARE powerful forces allied against better policies that other nations (even those with bears and coyotes preying on farms, even those with recreational hunters, even those with demographically diverse populations, even those whose populations are sufficiently spread out that LE takes a long time to arrive, WE ARE NOT AS EXCEPTIONAL AS WE BELIEVE) have enacted, that we have been unable to get to. The disproportionate impact of those interests are better described as a small number of collective entities that "have a distinct financial interest in fanning the flames / motivating the othering and fear / that fuels more gun sales" than as "voters." Which is where the crack is, there's a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in. I am not suggesting it's ever going to be an easy lift. But for those of us who care about dead schoolchildren / women / judges / unnamed unnoted POC, we have to recognize that outrage isn't what effects change either. Plodding organization, consisted concerted pressure on legislators who always have a finger up to feel the prevailing wind, following the money that is actively seeking to make and keep us outraged and/or hopeless, and the occasional well-targeted lawsuits are what has effected all the major policy and societal changes of the last 70 years. Effecting change is a MARATHON, and there's not much validation in much of the work. Well, that's how it is. Ruth Messinger comes back repeatedly to the idea that we cannot retreat to the luxury of feeling overwhelmed. I am not optimistic by disposition -- anyone who knows me IRL will attest to this -- and, also, moments of overwhelmed-ness and the real need to retreat and regroup and refuel really is a real thing. But I also have lived long enough to understand that "I'm too overwhelmed; therefore I'm out" is, indeed, a luxury.

NPR and Iowa public radio were covering it late yesterday afternoon. While I do agree that Some Lives Matter more than others, and there are patterns to the mattering... I don't think the break is whether school shootings are literally "covered." Mass shootings inside school buildings and targeted shootings of judges are covered in real time; they're still deemed newsworthy by responsible press outlets (DV shootings and driveby shootings maybe notsomuch, unless it's Jon Benet or Tupac). I think the issue is more, we the public don't know what to DO with such news. It's right there, on NPR / NYT / WaPo / Fox / CNN / BBC / regional public radio / etc. But it doesn't get a zillion carryovers into the social media infrastructure that most people now get their first (often only) referral to most news. It doesn't fuel the adrenaline cycle.

Concur with pp who concur with your instinct to talk to him about "it." If he's not an introspective, verbalize-the-feelz kind of guy (my own husband, bless his heart, is decidedly NOT that guy), he may not have a particularly great grasp on what "it" is. So you might need a couple (short, iterative, nicely spaced) rounds rather than a Big Comprehensive Work Out The Solution kind of conference. And IME dealing with what I sometimes-affectionately, sometimes-not call "married to the Western Wall" * , it helps to frame the early rounds as musing, almost casual, questions for curious exploration, rather than with any kind of expectation of actual answers in the moment. * why yes, it IS exasperating at times, thank you for asking

Effectively, that's what happens if you have the free version -- if you make 1-2 error per exercise session within the level on the sequence, you have to go back and replenish your stars (=5 practice sessions) twice before proceeding to the next level. I take 4-6 minutes per sequence clump, and 2-3 minutes for the heart-regenerating review clumps (so ~10 minutes to replenish my hearts; they give a bonus heart fairly regularly). I practice 30-40 minutes each day, at beginning and end of the day, which I think must be on the high end of the total-minutes-per-day (or I wouldn't end up as "top 1% of learners," whatever that means, at the end of the year). But at least 10-15 minutes of that is forced practice to regenerate the hearts I need to keep playing. I rarely get through 2 full lessons a day -- I mean, I could if I spent 2+ hours, but within the time I'm putting in it's pretty hard. Every so often they give me 3-5 days free trial of the paid version, and I do like the "targeted practice" of the specific errors very much -- just what my sieve brain needs. I wish I had access to that. I can also see how the oral pronunciation practice would be quite helpful to some learners, but in my own case my pronunciation is comparatively ok (I lived in Puerto Rico as a kid, and I work with Spanish-speaking students, so my ear is fairly trained). But in my case I just use the extra practice in the paid version to run up points quickly, which is sort of pointless; and I've also noticed that NOT having the constraints that the hearts impose (which impose a penalty on errors during the main sequence), I'm a lot less careful in the main sequence and I therefore make more errors. So for me, the **constraints** that the free version imposes on me actually help me slow down, check my work, be more careful, and force me to review, all of which I need. (I am truly not "good" at languages. One of my kids is, and a number of my English students are, and I can definitely see the difference. I need a LOT more repetition than "good" language learners need, which for decades discouraged me and then one day it was like a lightbulb went off which just sort of reset things. (The game-ification really helps too. I was thinking over on the resolutions thread about goals whose implementation is "self-reinforcing" because some activities have a positive reinforcement loop, like meeting a friend to walk with, while others are more of a chore. DL is the first time my effort to learn a language had that inherent self-reinforcement loop.)

Ah, TY. Spanish has 7 "levels" but they seem to be unevenly distributed in terms of the number of lessons. Sections 1 and 2, and Sections 3 and 4 are categorized as A1 and A2 level respectively (which I think I read elsewhere corresponds to collegiate level semester course content); and they each have 20-30 "units" within the levels; then Sections 5-6 are categorized as B1, but Section 5 (which I'm near the end of) has 29 "units" but Section 6 has 69 (!) "units"; and Section 7 is categorized as "review", with 41 units. So after going pretty steady for nearly two years (daily or twice daily, Diamond for over a year, "top 1% of learners" at end year whatever that means) I'm nowhere near the end of the sequence. As noted upthread I think I move through the sequence slower than a lot of people because I do a lot more review practice than some because my brain is a SIEVE for grammar; but the sequence has still taken me further along in grammar constructs than I've had any other way (at the moment I'm learning subjunctive applications in two-clause sentences where there is more than one subject, ie "I hope my son buys his plane ticket soon") and it's sticking better than it ever has before (part of which is doubtless the truly-daily practice as much as the pedagogy; I haven't ever been so CONSISTENT over such a sustained period... for me, DL makes that consistency easy through the game-ification)

I decided this time last year that in all other years I'd set out too-many, too-high-level goals. Last year I set just two, and then in addition to general statements of intent I also picked out concrete measurable weekly or monthly sub-goals for those two areas. I feel good about laying down sufficiently sturdy habits in those two areas that I'm likely to carry on with them. So henceforth, just two. This year, to the larger aspirations of health/movement and also of making new / more / more politically diverse social connections, I'm going to take up pickleball for the year: in January sign up for a beginner class; in May join the town club which then has round robins once a week. I'll evaluate IN DECEMBER whether I like it enough to continue, but I'm committing to giving it a go for the year. On poetry, the daily writing/editing/deep reading of which I only added to my life last year, I'm committing to two submissions a month and a five-day workshop with a mentor whose work I deeply admire in October.

How many does Spanish have? I'm on Unit 20/29 of Section 5, and I can see Section 6 is right there to keep going on, but I can't see if there's a Section 7 or 8 or etc. How can you tell?

I teach ESL, and spent a LOT of time ~10+ years ago getting up to speed on $$$$ Rosetta Stone, since the libraries around here make RS available free to patrons and I was referring students to use it as another means of self-practice with English. There are limitations to any mode of instruction, even including a live teacher working 1-1 or in small groups. Access, cost, ease of use all matter as much as pedagogy. The "best" program is the one you can actually afford / access / use. Net, I think Duolingo is better pedagogy than Rosetta Stone, which was at the time considered best in computer=based. And, also better than Rosetta Stone, it makes practicing a language easy-peasy, on your phone, while you're waiting for a kid or a bus or a prescription to be filled. And, it *game-ifies* practice so it ends up, for lots of people, feeling more like Candy Crush or Angry Bird or Tetris or whatever, than Rosetta Stone. And, it's free or $5/month. I do free because the way the free version functions (you have to keep going back into old lessons to practice to generate the "hearts" that enable you to keep playing... and my memory is so bad I really NEED to keep going back to practice old lessons. So for me the constraint of forced practice, and also that the more mistakes I make on the main lesson sequence the more often I'm forced to go back and earn the hearts, is very good discipline, and I'm retaining more than I ever have with prior efforts at other programs. If my memory were better I'd step up to the $5/month paid version; it's certainly worth it.

re the podcasts / practicing oral language Yeah I sooooo miss the podcasts from the phone app -- I do nearly all my DL time before getting out of bed / just before sleeping, and I long ago made a rule not to have my laptop in my bedroom. And I rarely go looking for them now. I also wish there was an audio-only version of the stoopid stories, with oral questions about what's going on equivalent to the written ones. My oral receptive is OK -- I've gotten to the point in the regular lessons where some of the single-sentence unscramble exercises are oral only, and I can generally get them without replaying or using la Tortuga button -- but I would really benefit from paragraph-length oral "passages" with oral comprehension Qs immediately following. I haven't tried a full length Spanish audiobook because I'm afraid I would just tune out after a bit. It's a lot easier to follow a movie, even without subtitles (my daughter taught me to put the subtitles on SPANISH, so the language is still coming in but there's a second means of "catching" it) because of all the visual prompts and facial/ body language supports the words.

@Amira I'm halfway through Juneteenth and really liking it. I just recommended it to my eldest and her husband who as it happens are in the midst of a 2 week roadtrip across Texas; they're adding it to the audiobook stack behind No Country for Old Men. TY!

re maximizing XP points on Duolingo -- buenos dias alma gemela! so, I was yesterday years old when I worked out a game-changing XP-exploding hack -that while you're racing to max out on your 15 minutes of double XP you can go waaaaaay back to easy-peasy lessons in prior levels (I'm almost done with level 5, and can go back all the way to level 1) and read the stoopid stories. You can wrack up (40x2=80) points in like 45 seconds this way. If you already knew this, nm but I FEEL A NEED TO SHARE.... lol

I'm pretty devoted to Spanish Duolingo -- 15 minutes pretty much every morning and another before bed, so as to maximize the XP Bonus algorithm, lol. I also **try** to watch two movies in Spanish every month on Kanopy (oh my goodness Kanopy is SO GREAT for Spanish films). Once in a while I go to a Spanish film+discussion program series at a neighboring library but the schedule doesn't work well for me. @Junie I really like the idea of attending religious services in Spanish - TY for that. I'm trying to get to Merida MX for a couple weeks of homestay & immersion but haven't been able to work out when. Anyone done it there?

This thread has turned in a way that makes me SO SAD. My little population, somewhat geographically sprawling town has two public playgrounds as well as four more associated with the lower and upper elementary schools and the Y, none of them fenced, all of them heavily utilized dawn to dusk; the library has a teen center for grades 6+ that is open for homework/ chess club/ rocketry club/ just drop in (with buses running to it from the schools) and is adjacent to a makers space (which the kids need to be trained in before using without a supervising adult, but once they've gone through the training they can use the equipment on their own); there is also an actual teen center in a different section of town, also with school bus service, with pool/ fusball/ pingpong tables, a community garden, etc. And there's nothing to stop kids from utilizing the bike paths and trails that criss-cross the town, which connect directly to all the school campuses and to the Y. All of the municipal activities are free for the kids (the makers space charges modest materials fees). The geography of our town (narrow winding hilly roads, no sidewalks) discourages bikeriding as a mode of transportation (which was how I got everywhere myself from grades 6-11), but the school buses run to all the major municipal spaces in town, so parents only have to organize one pickup anywhere from 5-closing time. We don't have a skateboard park (the town immediately to our north does, and the kids who use it, use it a LOT) but there are efforts underway to establish one. (We're in a high-tax town within a high-tax, high-COLA state, which surely accounts for some of the difference. But it's very, very sad to me to hear how little other areas invest in kids. Stuff like bike paths and a teen room in the library don't cost much.)

Nope. And my two youngers and the two kids next door designated a patch between the houses as "mudville." They kept a bunch of Tonka trucks out there all summer, built roads between cairns they declared to be "apartment buildings." If it didn't rain one of them would drag a hose from one of the houses to **make** the mud. I mean, it only lasts through age 7 or so. But pretty hilarious while it lasts.

Oh my gosh, what a ghastly shock. I am so sorry.

I liked Stone Blind (Medusa) best; but I liked Thousand Ships a lot (more than WoT, which I also enjoyed) and Pandora's Jar (which is not fiction, more an extended riff of her hot takes on a number of the stories starting with Pandora -- more longer-form and a little bit more serious (but still VERY funny) than her stand up comedy (!!!!) show for BBC, Stand Up for the Classics. Where does one begin with Victoria Goddard?

Like @Lady Florida. I have also kept meaning to pop into these threads but just haven't gotten my act together. I'm not on Goodreads and my, erm, "system" amounts to jotting down just-completed books on the back page of whatever journal volume I'm scribbling in, so I'm not very coherent at any point of time until I do an end-of-year accounting! But I puffy-heart love seeing what other readers are enjoying.

I'm also older, before cable or computers or electronic games or etc, and mostly grew up pretty rural. My mother was always one of those "loud? restless? driving me crazy with the bouncing ball? THERE'S THE DOOR, you might consider a hat" kind of parent. We rarely voiced "bored" as she most definitely did not consider our boredom to be her problem. (Or suffocating heat -- we lived in Puerto Rico for a few years in there -- or bitter cold either -- upstate NY for another few; and had she known about air quality I rather doubt she'd have much cared about that either). My own kids obviously had access to more electronic things and eventually screens, but I think I probably carried on with my mother's basic mindset -- your boredom is not my problem. What are YOU going to do with the time before you? (Both my household growing up, and that of my kids growing up, had loads and loads of books and games and art supplies and balls and frisbees and etc. But no parent making bright suggestions.)

Agreeing that a) it's hard to define a bright line; some folks' motors really do run much higher energy; and b) playing team sports and doing other physical activities with other people is, for many, as much a "social" experience as "exercise." That said, is is also true that it CAN become obsessive / unhealthy, and (we've struggled with eating disorders in our family, and FWIW obsessive exercise IS categorized by ED therapists as a form of "purging" in certain circumstances) If his motor has always run high, and he's always enjoyed doing sports / other physical activities with friends, and he's recently joined a more-intensive-level team with more practice hours / he's jostling for playing time / he's made friends he enjoys spending time with... the absolute number of ~20 ish hours isn't out of norms. If OTOH he's markedly changed in other realms -- schoolwork, attention, behavior; or if as pp noted is exercising secretively; or if he's verbalizing dissatisfaction his body, or if a great deal of the exercise is solo... I'd be vigilant. (In the US at least, attention issues are way under-identified in females; and eating issues are way under-identified in males, I've learned later than I'd wished.)

I'm currently finishing up #45, Isabel Allende's The Wind Knows My Name. Allende is uneven IMO, in the same way and with the same veering-off-the-storytelling-and-packing-in-the-prosletyzing problem as plagues Barbara Kingsolver (whose doorstop Demon Copperhead I read earlier this year); and sadly this is not her best work. Combination of very current non-fiction, a lot of Greek myth feminist midrash, regular fiction, and a lot of poetry this year. My most exciting discoveries of the year were Natalie Haynes (the best of the Greek myth feminist midrashists, and she's also a comedian!!) and Ocean Vuong, oh.my. Awards for non-fiction award to Tyranny of the Minority; and for poetry analysis to Padraig O'Tuama's In the Shelter.