So we are drinking heavily, eating greasy pizza and we start asking each other crazy questions. He asked me if he could piss on my face and slap the shit outta me. I asked him if I could tie him to the ceiling fan and shoot him with a paintball gun. Ummmm no and no. He asked me if he could handcuff me and tie me down. I said no and that he would probably throw away the key and leave me there a la SAW. I asked if I could handcuff him and he raises his left hand and we both laugh.

I could see a future for us (sometimes) complete with mortgage, crying infants and credit card debt. But why am I calling him Future X Husband? Do I love him? Do I care about him? Am I being faithful to him? No, I think and hell no. Maybe it's the anxiety I am feeling to be the person I never wanted to be: boring. I already told him that I need fireworks and vodka on a daily basis. I am talking drunk nights, swinger clubs, walks on South Beach and a few orgies. We already discussed my frivolous ways with the boys. Hence, the swingers club.

One thing I can say from all of this, it is crazy how honest we are with each other. We've been knowing each other for a few months (I know, crazy) and I am not afraid to be myself. Which includes cursing him out, being my ADD self, rambling on about nothing. He takes pictures of me on the toilet and calls me midget. I am 5'2. He's 6'3. He is my big, black warrior I always dreamed of. Tall, dark, handsome with incredibly white teeth. So what is it that I am afraid of?

He is already locking himself to me. Am I ready to lock myself with him?

Rules:
1.Wait to be tagged by a youtuber=D
2.Choose 10 of your fave t- shirts to express yourself
3.Make a video response
4.Tag 10 other people
5.Post your video!
6.Let me know when you uploaded your video already so I can list your channel in the description box

Here are the 10 people I tagged:

directorei
regisor94
annspade
melodyelize
retardedmango
blasianFMA
pinayrules
johneepixels7
juliusmariano
gentosmentos

For completeness and because it was a fun adventure I thought I'd give a brief outline here. 

The setting was Matsue College of Technology, and our 4 characters were:

• kenichi, a Ninja, an 18 year old boy, member of the Kendo club
• midori, an 18 year old girl who is a witch, member of the shooting club
• shouhei, an 18 year old boy who is a type of high-school Shugenja, a member of the baseball club 
• yuki, an 18 year old girl, who is a thief, and a member of the Kenpo club

All four characters were also members of the magic club, whose senior member is an 18 year old girl called Sayako (pictured at the top of this post). 

(By way of background: I had 8 students in this class, all 16 years old; they played 2 to a character so as to avoid embarrassment when they couldn't think what to do, or got confused about the English; club life is a very important part of Japanese school life; the drinking age in Japan is 20 years old; Matsue is one of only a small number of Japanese towns to have its original castle still intact, and also has a very fine old section of town, and a lake. Also, to ensure no confusion about the task and the goals, all background material was handed out in Japanese as well as English).

So, the adventure began at Matsue College of Technology, after Midori and Sayako had an argument about black magic. Midori gathered her companions and they burst into the magic club rooms, which were empty, but contained these two notes:

Fellow members!

This is the moment we have waited a year for! Tonight we will go to Matsue Castle and summon a Demon on the top floor! Once we have summoned the Demon, we can take control of Matsue, and people will give us everything we want! 

To summon the Demon we need to collect some things: 

•       The bones of a Samurai child
•       10 people to feed to the Demon
•       A lot of sake 

If we go now, we can have everything ready before midnight. It is best to summon the Demon at midnight on Halloween! Meet me at Matsue Castle when you have collected these things! We have planned for this for a whole year, so please do it correctly!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 Your evil master

 Sayako

The second note they found gave more detail about what had to be done:

Samurai House

Naked Space bar

Bar EAD

 

was all it said.

So the characters rushed off to rescue Matsue from the Demon-summoning boss of their school magic club. Amusingly, there  was some debate about the best way to get into town (the College is a way out of town) and eventually they settled on... the bus!

Unfortunately, as they were running down the hallways towards the main gate, they heard a gunshot behind them. Turning around, they saw the head of the English Department, Professor Takahashi, shambling towards them, clearly enchanted, waving a gun. (At this point my students worked out how to say "A spell has been cast on him" in English, clearly an essential part of their education!)

Because Takahashi Sensei is very popular at Matsue College of Technology, they did not want to hurt him. So Midori cast a sleep spell on him and stole his gun, and they ran off to the bus.

The bus goes directly past the Samurai house, so they hopped off at the bus stop and wandered over to the house. Yuki crept in ahead, and found an undead Samurai warrior in the courtyard. They attacked this warrior and, after some difficulty, managed to defeat him. Scouting some more around the courtyard, they found to their horror that the Samurai had been buried in the garden with his child many centuries ago, and now his child's body had been disinterred and stolen! (I didn't bother teaching my students "disinterred"). So, they realised, they had missed the first stage of Sayako's plan and must rush to Naked Space!

Fortunately, Naked Space and Bar EAD are only a short distance from the Samurai House, and all Japanese school students can run a marathon, so off they jogged. They reached Naked Space quickly, but were disappointed to discover, when they walked up the stairs and through the little foyer into the nightclub proper, that the club was empty. Shohei heard the sound of sobbing and, wandering through to the bathroom, found Sayako's boyfriend (who owns naked space) sobbing in the toilet. There was some initial confusion in which Shohei tried to kill him, but then everyone calmed down and learnt that Sayako and her acolytes had burst into the Naked Space bar, and abducted all 10 of its customers (Naked Space is very small), who were guests at a halloween party. So, the characters had failed again!

Despairing of their speed (perhaps a cab would have been a good idea), the characters dashed around the corner to Bar EAD and charged up to the third floor, to find it in a state of disarray. The door had been smashed in, chairs torn apart, all of the pretty ornaments scattered around the room, and the collage of French movie posters torn and wrecked. Behind the rubbish-scattered counter, the waitress sat hunched over, trying to hide. Upon interrogation, she revealed that Sayako had charged into the bar, trashed it with her magical powers, and then run away with all the sake, liquour bottles and wine to be found in the building.

So, again the characters were late! (Perhaps they shouldn't have jogged). There was only one place left to go - Matsue Castle! Off they went, back the way they had come from the bars by the lake and over to the car park at the front of the castle. However, as they approached the Castle they were attacked by a group of Kappa, of whom they made fantastically short (and gruesome) work. From there it was in through the broad swathe of gardens inside the main gate, and up into the inner citadel. The castle was strangely empty and a strange, evil light was glowing above its keep as thick stormclouds gathered.

Once inside the Keep, the characters found themselves facing a strange sight.  A couple of goblins, a witch, a Harry Potter, a Football player, a Hobbit, a soldier, an Oni, Yuki Onna, and 2 maids, all stood in a circle on the ground floor. After a moment's confusion they realised these were the halloween party guests from Naked Space, still in their costumes, and held in stasis within columns of light stretching up to the ceiling of the room. As Midori considered how to break this magic, Sayako's acolytes attacked them, and the characters had to do battle again, this time against wizards.

They survived this battle too, but not quickly enough to prevent the entrapped halloween guests from dying. "Oh well", said Kenichi, and I taught them the phrase "If you want to make an omelette..." They ran up the stairs to attack Sayako, but found a demon between them and her. Battle was joined, but they realised that Sayako had to concentrate hard to control the demon - she had conjured more than she could control! Yuki ambushed Sayako, breaking her concentration, and the demon ate her whole. Then it thanked them all for aiding it, and disappeared with a loud bang.

I ran this game in a kind of simplified AD&D 3.5, with very few skills, a few simple attack and magic rules, and limited magic items - these guys were playing this out of their own language, so bewildering character sheets and extensive language for rules were definitely out. It worked though, and I recommend it as a fun way to pass two lessons. I'm not so sure that it actually helped anyone learn any English. But then, none of my other classes did either...

If you can keep your ADD at bay long enough to watch this documentary, you will know exactly why everything going on today, from the $700 billion financial bailout to the Terrorist farse to the stock market crash and ultimate destruction of our country as we know it is nothing but a GAME.

And we are the losers.... the slaves.... the failed breeders.

[googlevideo=http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7065205277695921912]

Why do teachers become frustrated and unenlightened about their jobs only after a few years? Most teachers are frustrated because they are given multiple roles that sometimes overshadow the role of just educating children. Because of the high rate of behavioral problems, teachers spend most of their time discipling children and then filling out the paperwork for office referrals. Once the office referral process is exhausted, they then have to attend meetings and go through a behavioral intervention program that is extensive in both time and paperwork.

If the child with the behavioral problems is a special education student, there are more processes in which the teacher must involve themselves with. If a student does something extreme, the teacher must attend a manifestation determination meeting to confirm that the behavior was not related to or influenced by their disability. A student with a disability can assault a teacher one day and be back in that same teacher's room the very next day.

There are programs that have been and are currently being put in place to deal with and educate these extreme behaviors and acting out children. The programs are designed according to the ability or the lack of a disability like emotionality. In Sheridan, Wyoming the A.C.E. program was created as an in-school suspension in which a student has to earn there way out to go back to school. For students with disabilities such as emotional or behavioral, there is the R4 program. This program teaches students how to act properly in the classroom and deal with their emotional and behavioral issues.

10 days to a Better You.

Why cleanse? 

• Cleansing makes people feel better and look younger.
• Because of the chemicals found in food, air, water & environment, glandular systems are crippled, causing depression, obesity, fatigue, & frequently illness.
• No other animal could survive if they ate the chemicals humans eat. 
• Even humans that come from indigenous parts of the world become deathly ill when they adopt the "Western" diet. 
• Our bodies are sick & polluted, & just like neglected machines, they suffer when not running at peak efficiency.  
• Our Master Cleanse can help change that.  It's not magic; it flushes out the waste that's putting a huge burden on every organ in your body.
• Dr Bernard Jensen explains how internal waste poisons the entire body:

"The heavy mucus coating in the colon thickens and becomes a host of putrefaction. The blood capillaries to the colon begin to pick up the toxins, poisons and noxious debris as it seeps through the bowel wall. All tissues and organs of the body are now taking on toxic substances. Here is the beginning of true autointoxication on a physiological level."

~ Dr Bernard Jensen, DC, ND, Ph.D.

Thankfully Our Master Cleanse can eliminate waste and reverse lots of damage.

Tried & failed?

Tried the original Lemonade Master Cleanse (1950s) and failed?  Why?

• hunger
• fatigue
• cravings
• blood sugar imbalance
• lack of protein
• too many toxins to eliminate
• detox effect

Solution?

Science has solved these problems by adding specific products & foods. 

• To maintain freshness, prepare only enough for 1 day. (6-12 servings each day).
• Keep refrigerated.
• Don't like spicy drinks?  Put cayenne pepper in small capsules (from health stores) & take 1 with each glass of lemonade.

BENEFITS others have noticed:

• addictions decrease (sugar, preservatives, tobacco, etc)
• appetite & metabolism
• blood cleanse
• colon cleanse
• energy levels soar
• fat stores decrease
• "feel good" hormones restored
• food allergies identified
• glandular system cleansed / restored
• hair - stronger, stop split ends
• healthy habits created
• heavy metals / toxins removed from intestinal lining
• immunity
• inflammation, (eased aching joints)
• kidney cleanse
• mental acuity
• metabolism
• mood
• muscle building
• protein - decreased animal protein intake (difficult to digest & can lead to kidney stones / disease)
• sex drive
• skin complexion brightened
• skin elasticity restored
• sleep better
• weight loss, (some people lose as much as 1-2 # per day)

Pounds Of Putrid Waste Eliminated

It's common to pass

• pounds of built up, foul smelling, black waste.
• hardened phlegm & mucus resembling long strands of rubber.
• waste which holds the shape of the inside of your intestine because it's been inside you for years.
• marble sized gallstones which are green & yellow balls of hardened cholesterol that can block the bile ducts from the liver to the small intestine (can be fatal if you don't eliminate them).

Expect Results 

• As soon as you start Our Master Cleanse your body will quickly begin detoxing & rejuvenating.
• The changes happen fast--many get the WOW! response from the people they know. 
• If you want to loose lots of weight, it's extremely important to follow the directions.  Many have lost up to 40 lbs.
• I know it's gross, but as people expel this waste, they feel amazing.  The body hums with lightness and renewed energy.  

Want to begin? - Get your supplies here. 

• Consult with Deb.
• Determine your Health Quotient.
• Is Candida Overgrowth messing with your weight? 
• more on detox

Fuck me.

And you haven't even seen the post I started to write before this.

I'd better bloody well log off now.

And yes...I've taken my meds. *rolls eyes*

Now I just have to sit around and wait for something to fucking happen.

Hopefully soon because I can't stand feeling like...whatever.

We're all mental, we all get it or we don't or we do or we each have our own.

Laters.

In the past running in the halls, passing notes, and chewing gum were the main offences in the public school system. Since the 1980s the offenses have become more serious. Assaults, rapes, robberies, and violence are listed as the top offenses and the percentage of junior high students and high school students participating in these crimes has increased in the last thirty years. Children under 18 are assaulting teachers and their peers.

If a child commits so many offenses that are not criminal and are deemed to be emotionally disabled, most public schools systems have self-contained programs where the child is taught proper school behavior and how to socially interact in school with peers in teachers. The programs are usually staffed by trained professionals that deal with the emotionally disabled, but many are emergency hires that do not have the experience or the training to deal with these troubled youths.

There is very little information out there that teaches the teacher how to deal with the emotionally disabled and most wing it and their room becomes containment areas to get the child through. If you are a parent of a child that has been placed in a behavior program you need to know the qualifications of the teacher. A special education degree is sometimes not enough. Ask what experience they have and what techniques and methods they plan to use. The more you know about the teacher that is assigned to teach your child, the more you will understand the way those methods will affect your child when they are at home. If you are a parent of an emotionally disabled child, the success of that child is pertinent to you asking questions and becoming actively involved in their education and success.

Want more productivity?  

• We have 2 starter cleanses. 
• Cleanse at least one month. 
• Many continue to cleanse daily forever.

Choose #1 or #2. 

_____________________________________________________

#1 - Take with your meal.

• Herb Lax —– (instructions)
• Energizing Soy Protein - 2 x day, 1 @ breakfast, 1 @ 3pm
• Fiber Plan Daily Mix or Tabs - 1-3 x day with meals

#2 - Take to replace a meal.

• Herb Lax —– (instructions) 
• Cinch - 1-2 x day as meal

___________________________________________________________

Benefits:

• blood sugar stabilization
• chemicals removed from blood
• cholesterol (decrease LDL & triglycerides)
• cognitive improvement
• craving reduction
• energy (What would you do with a few extra hours?)
• excretory & liver
• hair strengthening / thickness
• hormones (both genders & all ages)
• intestine help (constipation / diarrhea / mal-absorption)
• intestine - impacted fecal matter removed
• immunity
• muscle recovery / repair
• nutrient absorption improvement
• sex drive improvement
• skin (smooth / clear)
• weight loss
• more

_________________________________________

Get your supplies here.

________________________________________________________________

• Quickly assess your Health Quotient.
• Other cleanses:  Our Master Cleanse

It actually explains a lot !

Another thing I've been considering is some form of light med's anyways, I remeber when I was on zyban, and I felt a little more normal.  So its something I've been considering.

A couple of nights ago, I was fairly bored, while reading a Karl May book, (At work we've been working on coverting some of his books to audiobooks/ebooks).  Anyhow, it actually kind made me feel like writing.  I guess I was thinking, Fuck i can do better than this !

So wandered up stairs , fired up the computer, I remeber having written some stories in the past, so I read thru them.  Some of which were really good starts, and I actually felt, they were interesting, one of which , I had to convince myself that I ACTUALLY WROTE IT ! LOL.

I spent sometime working on a few,  but my ambition went out the window :p I'm probally going to post them on here, anyhow, just in case anybody has some feedback !

One thought went thru my mind, that it would be interesting to setup an ebook site, with SCI-FI  Authors, I dunno.

I have the infrastructure here to do something like that.  But I know I wouldn't write anything worth while.

It was just a pondering really.  But setting up something to publish indie authors would be cool !

I've really felt lately that I would like to something incredibly huge and spectacular , I just have no idea, what that might be.

Von der Anfahrt kann ich euch leider nicht all zu viel berichten. Eigenartigerweise habe ich den Großteil der von 18:30 Uhr bis 22:15 andauernder Fahrt geschlafen. ;) Dennoch habe ich mir in der relativ kurzen Wach-Phase ein gutes Bild des neuen Albums von Peter Fox machen. Ich kann es nur weiterhin empfehlen, nur mal so am Rande! 

Als wir in Darmstadt ankamen, hat natürlich erstmal unsere Navi-Uschi schlapp gemacht. Die kannte sich leider plötzlich nicht mehr aus. Aber man muss ja auch nicht alles wissen! Dennoch wäre es schön gewesen, WENN sie ein bisschen was über das nächtlich-düster-anmutende Darmstadt gewusst hätte. Instinktiv sind wir erstmal in die genau entgegengesetzte Richtung gefahren, wurden dann jedoch noch nach kurzer Zeit telefonisch in die richtige Richtung gelenkt. Daher hat es nicht allzu lange gedauert, bis wir auch endlich was zu essen bekamen! ;)

Der zweite Tag begann erst recht spät. Den haben meine Großcousine und ich genutzt, um mir Darmstadt ein bisschen näher zu bringen. Eigentlich ging es aber nicht um die Stadt sondern eventuell ein bisschen mehr ums Eisessen! ;) Nichtsdestotrotz ist Darmstadt eine schöne Stadt mit der ein oder anderen schönen Sehenswürdigkeit. Leider war es nur arschkalt (aber es hat nicht geregnet, ha!) und daher habe ich ständig versucht irgendwie meine Hände in den Tasch zu wärmen – mit mittelmäßigem Erfolg! :( Das Eis war trotz der niedrigen Temperaturen doch sehr lecker. Später gab es zu Hause noch eine „Scrabble“ und „Derverrückte Pharao“-Session. Letzteres habe ich seit gefühlten fünf Jahren nicht mehr gespielt. Ich glaube, die fünf Jahre entsprechen sogar in etwa der Wahrheit. Leider habe ich beide Spiele auch verloren…

Am letzten Tag in Darmstadt, war der Samstag, waren wir inner Innenstadt zum shoppen. Die Innenstadt ist verdammt interessant und bietet eigentlich alles, was ich so zum Leben brauche. Einen lokalen L+T-Verschnitt, sowas wie Titus, ein Runnerspoint und ein H&M. Daher ist sie eigentlich recht interessant, ich habe allerdings nichts supertolles gesehen. Ich bin ja immer noch auf der Suche nach bestimmten Schuhe, die ich bis jetzt aber leider noch nirgends gefunden habe. Ich habe mir nur einen Pullover gekauft. Natürlich in zeitgemäßem meliert-grau. 

Samstagabend sich wir auch schon wieder gefahren. Was jedoch noch erwähnenswert ist, ist ein Restaurant, das wir in Darmstadt noch besucht haben. Das Restaurant ist nicht allzu weit von der Innenstadt entfernt und nennt sich 3klang. Das Restaurant ist relativ gut besucht, fällt auch eigentlich eher unter Szenenklatsche. Jedoch ist es berechtigt, denn das Essen ist verdammt gut! 

Das war Darmstadt. Achso, um mal auf den Titel zu sprechen zu kommen: Auf dem Weg nach Darmstadt sind uns mehrere seltsame Namen auf den Straßenschildern aufgefallen. Dazu gehörten zum Beispiel Linsengericht und Mensengesäß. Dank dieser netten Gemeinden hatten wir 'ne Menge Spaß. Vorausgesetzt natürlich, ich war zu dem Zeitpunkt wach! :D

Bliss = Kitarō, Padilla

I have, à propos of nothing, found two new musical passions — both suitable accompaniments to meditation in entirely different ways:

Juan Gutiérrez de Padilla (c. 1590 - 1664) was a composer of New Spain (a viceroyalty of Spain that included modern-day Mexico, the Philippines, Guatemala, and other parts of Central America and the Caribbean). He was born in Málaga, Spain, but moved to Puebla, Mexico, in 1620 to compose music in the new world. —Wikipedia 

If you enjoy Renaissance and Baroque choral music, you'll love Padilla. His Missa Ego Flos Campi, which you can hear in toto (not the dog, silly) HERE, is a sublime segue from the older almost chantlike style of, say, Thomas Tallis, to the later, fuller, more structured choral sounds of Bach and Handel.

Kitarō (born Masanori Takahashi) is a Grammy-award-winning Japanese musician, composer, and multi-instrumentalist.... Inspired by the R&B music of Otis Redding, Kitaro taught himself how to play guitar. "I never had education in music, I just learned to trust my ears and my feelings." He gives credit for his creations to a power beyond himself. "This music is not from my mind," he said. "It is from heaven, going through my body and out my fingers through composing. Sometimes I wonder. I never practice. I don't read or write music, but my fingers move. I wonder, 'Who's song is this?' I write my songs, but they are not my songs." —Wikipedia

Listen to Kitaro HERE. Listen to Kitaro while you're doing the laundry or balancing your checkbook. Because I am an attention-deficit-disordered individual, music generally either distracts or annoys me when I am doing mental work. Kitaro's music is energizing. Though I usually run like the wind from New Age music, Kitaro's compositions are more like lush movie-sound-track music. (He won a Grammy for the sound track for the Oliver Stone film Heaven & Earth, starring Tommy Lee Jones, Haing S. Ngor, Joan Chen and Hiep Thi Le. It is the third film in Stone's Vietnam War trilogy, which also included Platoon [1986] and Born on the Fourth of July [1989]. Heaven & Earth is a grim flick — difficult to watch but exquisite to listen to.)

Due to enchantment with Padilla and Kitaro, and necessity of shipping three (3!) eBay parcels, purchased on my eBay store, immédiatement, today's topic — why to sell books on eBay, and how to list them using Auctiva — has been postponed.

May you and yours experience enchantment today and every day.... —Mary

"People can't multitask very well, and when people say they can, they're deluding themselves," said neuroscientist Earl Miller. And, he said, "The brain is very good at deluding itself."

Miller, a Picower professor of neuroscience at MIT, says that for the most part, we simply can't focus on more than one thing at a time.

What we can do, he said, is shift our focus from one thing to the next with astonishing speed.

Don't you think that this is just common sense?

"Switching from task to task, you think you're actually paying attention to everything around you at the same time. But you're actually not," Miller said.

"You're not paying attention to one or two things simultaneously, but switching between them very rapidly."

I have always thought that I was mildly retarded for not being able to multitask, but in all actuality, it was the ego of others making them out to be "better" (despite mistakes while "multitasking") that make others with a swift ability to concentrate, less worthy.

People with sharp attention spans are not regarded in society.

"Think about writing an e-mail and talking on the phone at the same time. Those things are nearly impossible to do at the same time," he said.

Actually, people DO do this. But... when they are "talking" to you on the phone, they aren't listening to YOU. ;-) That email they are writing may be loaded with errors as well.

I know somebody who constantly blames not being able to multitask on their age. But this person blames everything on their age. It's not an "age" thing.

Dominant — and, perhaps, too confident in our own skill. Studies show that we frequently overestimate our ability to handle multiple tasks.

For early humans, that sort of miscalculation could have meant becoming a tiger's lunch. These days, the consequences are more likely to be stress, a blunder — or maybe a car crash.

Sadly, over-confident humans holding on to their egos for their lives are the majority. The ones who can admit to only being able to focus on one thing at a time, are in the minority. And with that said, it is why there are so many problems in the world.

Feel free to read more on this topic here.

At first I chalked this up to the usual "when-I-was-a-kid" kind of growsing you can hear all the time, but then, as the phrase "things are different. . . ." kept popping up,  I started to listen. Finally I started asking, deliberately, repeatedly, "What is different? Tell me what you notice that is different."

I heard certain things over and over again, and it began to sound not like growsing at all, but like puzzlement at a new state of things.

What's different? Here are some of the comments I've heard.

• More kids are coming to school with serious family problems. In the past, we've always helped kids who come from families with addiction, crime, and violence, but now there seem to be far more of them. Certainly there are many more kids from divorced families. Some years there are far more kids in single-parent families than in two-parent families.
• More kids are coming to school with neurobehavioral difficulties such as ADD, ADHD, and so on.
• More kids, more often, seem "off-the-wall" than before. My music teacher friend who just retired, a master teacher, mentioned that she had more kids who couldn't respond to her "magic," all those endearing techniques that good teachers use. She had to separate these kids from her classes till they reined themselves in.
• Many more kids seem to have focus problems. Although these are not students diagnosed with neurobehavioral difficulties, many of them seem to have problems maintaining focus.
• Many more kids than usual seem to lack the basic repertoire of accepted mores and behaviors. The good old established values of "typical" American families are gone. Kids seem to be imbibing their values from the media.
• Kids are far more responsive to media than they are to print. In fact, sometimes kids don't even seem to know how to interact with books--much less, how to love them.

What are these teachers doing about these changes, however they are manifesting in their classes? They're doing what good teachers always do: love kids, try to understand, work with them, and the material, and the new emphasis on more and more testing, as best they can, with their best hearts.

Most teachers say that they're just more tired now. My friend Joan, a longtime tutor in juvenile corrections, says that her longtime elementary teacher husband is having a hard time of it, even though he is one of the splendid elementary teachers of this world. Her son and her daughter, now in their first year of teaching, usually come home exhausted as well.

We could never undo the changes in our society, but we need to observe these changes, understand them, and adapt ourselves--and someday, hopefully, our educational systems--to accomodate them.