An E&P Halloween

Hark, children: ‘Tis All Hallows’ Eve, and madness lurks in every corner of the Happy Kitten Cottage yard. A crazed killer is on the loose.

Where shall the killer strike?



No! Not Lewis!

Alas, the knife's edge is not for everyone's favorite fierce tiger kitty.



[gasp!] Not Kigi, the resident Rasta Cat!

Nay, Kigi too has been spared. Indeed, he shall listen to Bob Marley for another day.



Poor cross-eyed Elvis sees two killers—he looks them somewhat straight in the eye(s), without fear! Oh, ignorance is indeed bliss, in the gaping maw of Death!

Nay, children: the killer searches not for feline blood.

‘Tis much, much worse than that.



Oh, dear.

'Twas as we feared all along: a sacrifice befitting Halloween Night.



Run, Myrtle! RUN FOR YOUR LIFE!!!!!!!

Has our brave, sweet, sassy Rhode Island Red girl been turned to dumplings?



Oh, my...



AAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!






HAPPY HALLOWEEN, EVERYONE!!!

Why grammar drills still don't improve writing

NCTE: Isolated Grammar Drills Do Not Produce Good Writers

Remember how much you hated doing those sentence-diagramming exercises in junior high school? The NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English) isn't crazy about them, either. My favorite quotes from the article:

"Decades of research have shown that isolated grammar drills do little to improve student writing and are a poor use of instructional time. ...In classrooms where much of the time is spent on grammar exercises, student writing suffers.

Students need to be able to compose complex, varied sentences, and they need to be able to proofread their writing for mistakes that might distract their audiences or distort their intended meaning. Skilled teachers of writing know how to teach grammar to their students as they write, when they have a particular need to know the information."

I could not have said it better myself.

A few years ago, when I was tending bar in Atlanta, I got a late-night phone call from a friend. Her 13-year-old daughter was falling dangerously behind in language arts class. "Please, please tell me you can help her," Harley* pleaded. "The state graduation test is coming up, but she's gone from loving this class to hating it. I can't even get her to crack a book, and the test is in six weeks. If she fails the test, she stays behind in 8th grade." So I agreed to help the girl.

I arrived at Harley's house to find a sullen (but otherwise very bright) teenager who had given up on language arts, and on school in general. I tried a gentle approach. "What's giving you trouble?" I asked her.

She thrust a two-inch-thick ring binder at me. "I have to know all this for the graduation test."

Inside the binder was the stuff my worst nightmares are made of: sentence diagramming and grammar terminology; exercises such as "Diagram this sentence correctly" and "Is the gerund used correctly?" ran for 250 pages. I blinked and tried to rid my brain of the English 3608 - Advanced Linguistics flashbacks.

"Your teacher wants you to learn this? Is all of this going to be on the test?" I asked.

"Yeah," she said, with the prerequisite Teenage Eye Roll.

We worked for two hours on grammar basics and made up flash cards for the grammar terms. I also helped her figure out how to avoid the major sentence errors such as run-ons and comma splices. At the end of our time, though, I still couldn't understand how all the regurgitation of definition, all the diagramming, was going to help this bunch of junior-high students write better. Would these 8th graders remember how to diagram a sentence, or what the present perfect tense is, in 25 years? Probably not. How was this sort of material supposed to prove that these kids got a good 8th-grade education?

I told Harley's daughter, "Since you grew up speaking English, you already have in your head most of the 'proper' rules for speaking and writing. It's a matter of remembering which rules to use when. You're not going to write the same way in an assignment for English class as you would when you're writing a note to your friend." Then we worked on deciphering what those 'proper' rules were. She got 95% of them correct on her first try.

It seemed to help a little. But I still couldn't shake the sinking feeling that this girl, and many of her classmates, would not be passing a test filled with b.s. such as this. Someone at the highest levels of our state educational system had failed to exorcise his/her Ghost of English Classes Past—the one who clinks the chains and moans, “Grammar! Grammar, my child! If they can define ‘participle,’ then they can write!”

Summer of Tomato Glory: Update #4, plus a cat or two

All these green tomatoes I picked yesterday evening because the weather forecast called for freezing weather. Relish and fried green tomatoes, here I come!



But the plants still don't look any worse for wear--perhaps a little under-watered. The Weather Channel report is that 32 degrees was our low last night. Hmph.



The blossoms are still intact, too; no frost-induced shriveling to report. Maybe I planted these in a more sheltered location than I previously thought.



In other news, snooziness abounds here in Small Town. Clark's feeling it.



So is Little Guy.



The little portable radiator is everyone's favorite.

It's Tuesday, and I have no original post ideas.

So I stole these from SpookyRach.

1. List two things that are true of you that are not stereotypically true of members of some group that you belong to (college professors).

• I looooove makeup and lingerie.
• I own a handgun.

2. List two unusual talents that you have.

• I am blessed with unusual physical flexibility.
• I have a near-photographic memory for numbers.

3. List two unusual weaknesses that you have.

• Good-looking older men.
• Cats.

4. List two unusual things that you aspire to do.

• Record a country/bluegrass album
• Learn the art of tile masonry & have a second career creating counters, backsplashes, and tabletops

5. List two words that you use more than most people do.

• plagiarism
• revision

6. List two foods that you dislike and most other people like.

• lobster
• hot wings

7. List two strange habits that you have.
Are you sure you want to know about these?

• My nose must be booger-free at all times. I surreptitiously check my boogage in the ladies' room mirror dozens of times a day.
• While driving down the road, I often stop to move dead animals, especially cats and dogs, and I say a little prayer for each one.

Monday randomness, combined with Summer of Tomato Glory #3: Nearing the End

The world's smallest green tomato, from my 'Rutgers' plants in the backyard. Too cute to fry!



And here are some funky, cracked, smooshed salad tomatoes from my mom's garden. She sent them home with me to give to Myrtle Mae. Mom had quarts of these this summer and hasn't been able to pick them fast enough to keep up with how quickly they ripen.



Lewis tries to horn in on Myrtle's mini-'maters. (Oooh, alliteration!)



After a peck between kitty ears, Myrtle once again has the tiny tomatoes to herself.



"I meant to do that. Clark dared me."



Mr. Greenjeans and I are almost done painting my bathroom. Purple!

The randomness is astounding, isn't it? Tomatoes, chickens, cats, a bathroom--can't get much more random than that! (Although I'm sure I can top this post.)

Lately, I've been too exhausted and burned out from classes to post much of anything education-related, or about any of my schools. So that's why you haven't been seeing much from me. My two Georgia Regents' Exam remedial classes will be over this week, thanks be to God, so that means I can leave D2U at 6:00pm instead of 7:30pm. Tuesdays and Thursdays are killer. I'm still leaving SBCC at the end of the semester. My Tiny Tech supervisor, Crazy Betty*, is still crazy, but seems to have forgotten that I pissed her off so royally last quarter. So until I hear otherwise or feel a thunderclap about my ears, I guess I'm safe there. Just doing my job and keeping my head down.

This morning's low was supposedly 33 degrees, but I doubt that. Here in Small Town, it might have gotten down to 40, and I know this because my tomato plants don't seem to be any worse for wear. However, tonight's low will most definitely be at or below freezing for the first time this season, and I'll be picking the remainder of the green beauties to turn into fried green tomatoes, which everyone says I must fry in bacon grease, and of which I happen to have none at the moment. There's also FarmGirl Susan's Green Tomato Relish, which I simply must try to get made this week. One person can fry just so many green tomatoes, you know.

Weekend cuteness

Myrtle Mae enjoys a leftover biscuit.



Little Guy (aka Davy) enjoys the front-loading washer.

Your bumper needs one, too

And you can get yours here. It's only $2.

Random Tuesday thoughts

Since I can't seem to put together a coherent, one-topic post today, I'm taking my cue from SpookyRach and Mrs. Kennedy.

• Rainy days are nice.
• There should be a machine that really sucks the goo out of clogged pores.
• How does she stand having her drawers all bunched up in her crack like that?
• Helloooooo? It's called reading.
• Cornbread.

Three of my allotted 15 minutes of fame

Things here at E&P keep getting stranger all the time. I've been contacted by a reporter for a major (mainstream) news organization for a feature that will air November 3. We had an off-the-record chat this morning, and I hope I directed the person toward more information that will help the story. I'll let you know more details closer to the air date; I don't want to blow the reporter's cover or feature.

Sexual healing, you idiots!

MSNBC.com: Marching band punished for sexual hazing

Maybe they got the halftime song list wrong. "And...and...one time, at band camp..."

Doing my duty as a Georgia graduate

Boo-Boo is a great truck, dents and all. She's in pretty good shape for being 16 years old and having 133,000 miles on her odometer.

But my sister sold her to me with one glaring problem:



What's a Georgia Bulldog to do?

I didn't have much time or patience, so spending half an hour kneeling behind the truck with a hair dryer, a razor blade, and a bottle of Goo-Gone wasn't an option.

But...hey, wait a minute...



Electrical tape? Check.



Scissors? Check.



Much better.

D2U stalker update #2: Closure?

Lulu*, D2U's Best Receptionist of All Time, has taken a job far, far away from D2U City. This makes all of us very sad, as she's fantastic at what she does, but being stalked by Jacques* made life hell for her. The new place where she'll be going, Prestigious Private College, is a full day's drive away from here, and is paying her a lot more money than D2U is. Thankfully, she hasn't heard from Jacques lately, and she's hoping to keep it that way. (No word yet on whether he's really in Denmark.) This will be a quick move for her, and she's taking care not to leave any traces of where she's gone (other than e-mails to let close friends and family know her new address and phone number).

While I'm happy for Lulu's big pay raise at her new job, I'm very sad to see her go. Had it not been for that bastard Jacques, she might be staying around these parts a little longer. We will all miss her. There's a good-bye lunch for her this afternoon at a local restaurant, and I'll be there between classes.

This could go on MyCatHatesYou.com!

Melody hates you for keeping her in this cage while you drive all around west Georgia.

The highlight of the weekend was Mr. Greenjeans' adopting Melody, a four-year-old calico cat who was abandoned near my mom's house about a year ago. (She looks absolutely dejected, but she was actually purring when I took this photo.) Mel had obviously belonged to someone ebfore, as she was declawed, spayed, and very people-friendly. The only problem was that she hated other cats...and Mom already had ten kitties. So Mom sheltered Melody until she could find someone to adopt her, and Mr. GJ happened to want just one friendly critter to keep him company (other than yours truly, heh-heh).

There won't be much posting going on this week. Fall Break begins Wednesday, and I'm going to be as far away from schoolwork and computers as possible. I'm getting caught up on paperwork and grading between now and Wednesday afternoon, and after that it's R&R until next Monday.

Okay, I might post if I buy more chickens. Or if anything else hilarious or noteworthy happens.

"Why isn't there a Check Driver light on the dashboard?"

Several E&P readers have e-mailed to ask about last week's vehicle fiasco. Thanks for your concern and well wishes.

Recap: last Thursday, Boo-Boo the Wonder Truck broke down on the way home. She was pouring thick smoke out of her exhaust pipe, and I was so afraid that I'd blown a head gasket before even having had the truck six months. Mr. Greenjeans was kind enough to come over to D2U and bring me home. He promised to have Bill, his mechanic, come look at Boo-Boo on Friday afternoon, while I was still in the First-Year Comp seminar.

So Friday evening arrived, and I bounded downstairs out of the D2U Conference Center to find Mr. Greenjeans awaiting me in the parking lot. I thought it an ominous sign that he hadn't called my cell phone all Friday afternoon.

"So," he said as I settled into the passenger seat, "do you want the good news first, or the bad news first?"

"Ugh. Gimme the bad news first," I groaned.

"There is no fuckin' bad news!" he cackled.

Bill had pulled out Boo-Boo's dipstick to see just how much oil was in there, and he exclaimed to Mr. GJ, "Damn, this thing's drowning!"

The little service station where I filled up has a notoriously cheap owner. He will let his employees turn on the outdoor lights only when it's too dark to see outside. In the twilight beside the gas pump, I had refilled Boo-Boo's oil without being able to see whether the oil level was back to normal. I put in as much as I could, just to be on the safe side. Better to be over-full than under-full!

"No wonder the damn thing was smoking," Bill told Mr. GJ. "Oil was getting into the PCV valve, and that's why it smoked like it'd blown a head gasket." They were both laughing uproariously by now, and Bill told Mr. GJ to drive Boo-Boo over to his shop. He drained out three-and-a-half quarts of brand-new Havoline 10W-30.

I don't think I'll ever live this one down. But I'm delighted to still have a truck that runs so well. Even if she is still smoking a little now and then.

Dang it!

My new blogging amour, AudioBlogger, will be discontinuing its service as of November 1, 2006. Aaaaack! Just when I'd found a way to put insane kitty growls and worried chicken clucks on E&P!

Happily, though, the good people at AudioBlogger and Odeo have suggested a replacement:

Gabcast News #22 - Welcome to former Audioblogger Users!!

Maybe teaching public high school isn't so bad in Wisconsin...

MSNBC.com: Wisconsin lawmaker wants teachers to carry guns

I'm not sure this would be a good idea for people like me. "Johnny, I told you to be quiet!" [POP!!!!]

Responding to Joel's comment on an earlier post: as to secondary-school teaching, public high school is all that's available around here. The local private schools are a joke. (They're a separate post, though.) So the part-time professor life is about it for me.

Four years ago, I completed all the necessary steps toward becoming a high-school English teacher. I took the PPST and Praxis exams and scored very high on all of them; with my M.A. and several years of college teaching experience, I met Georgia's requirements for a provisional (temporary, one-year) teaching certificate. After all, TeachGeorgia.org was listing no fewer than 20 school districts across the state in need of "highly qualified" teachers for English/language arts. I applied for positions from Albany (southwest Georgia) to Gainesville (northeast Georgia). The ads all seemed to say the same thing: "Teacher retiring, need instructor in place by July. Urgent need for English teachers, grades 9-12!"

I couldn't even get an interview. I was lucky to get a two-minute phone conversation. WTF?

A friend who retired from the Board of Education here in Small Town summed it up. "You have a Master's, and that starts you out at $40,000 a year in smaller systems," she told me. "You'd be starting at $60,000 in Atlanta. Most school systems are looking to get out cheap--they want someone who's fresh out of college, who doesn't know what she or he is doing, and whom they won't have to pay more than $27,000 a year. These newbies burn out and stay only a few years and then move on, but that doesn't matter. Most Boards of Education are so short-sighted that they can only see the dollar signs."

So much for those Highly Qualified Teachers, hmm?

Oh, well. I would say it's the school systems' loss...but the students are the ones who lose out in the end.

Georgia Regents' Exam blooper #46

I'm grading practice essays from my Regents' Writing Test classes, and I just came across this gem:

This practice dates back to the Civil War error.

Error, indeed.

Classrooms from the future, paychecks from the past

This article in the Baltimore Sun comes to me by way of NCTE's Inbox e-newsletter. More and more college professors are offering their lectures as podcasts. Sounds great! Of course, it doesn't take the place of actually being there to hear the lecture and ask questions as they pop into one's head, but it's a good idea. It's something I'd like to know how to implement for my online classes. What a convenient way to have lectures online for students I'll most likely never meet in person!

Yeah, it's probably a pain in the butt to record one's lectures and put them into iPod-able formats. And for what I get paid to conduct online classes, I'm not sure it's worth it.

My Small 'Bama Community College paycheck arrived in the mail Monday. I'm only teaching one class for them this semester (the online Comp. I) , so I expected my paycheck to be pretty slim, especially with my "single, no exemptions" tax withholding status.

When I saw the amount, though...I was nearly speechless. I am expected to be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week via e-mail and phone for my SBCC online students, for $218 a month. The 30 hours I spend maintaining the class this month (not counting all the phone calls I answer, nor the e-mails I return) will earn me $7.26 per hour. My students who work at Wal-Mart make slightly more than that. And none of us get any benefits.

So I e-mailed the department head and asked him to please find someone else for Spring. His reply:

Thank you for your e-mail, Kitty. Would you be interested in an on-campus class for spring?

The answer to that would be, "Ummm...thanks, but no thanks." Which I told him nicely in my reply.

I am truly almost free of SBCC. It's scary not knowing where that (whopping) extra $218/month will be coming from, but I can tighten my belt and manage until I get a better teaching gig.

This way to food & shelter

Last night, I walked out onto the back patio to feed the outdoor cats, who were already meowing and milling around, and put up Myrtle Mae, who was already perched on the patio rail and clucking quietly. I put my fine feathered girl in her house, sprinkled kitty food into the various old bowls on the patio, and went back indoors.

Half an hour later, I was walking back out the door to get something out of the car...when I thought I saw something small and furry zip! off the patio into the flower bed.

It was a dirty, bedraggled, skinny, frightened orange-and white kitten, about two months old. He was so hungry and eating so fast that he probably had to burp to remember what he'd eaten.

He won't let me get near him, yet he'll let me look at him and talk to him through the screen door. The bigger outdoor cats mostly leave him alone; Lewis has growled a few times like a bad-ass, but I think she knows he's not a threat.

So I can't catch a possum in the humane trap...but maybe a kitten?

One more reason why we should kill our televisions

Watching TV on school night bad for grades: Study also finds kids who view adult programs do worse in class

All together, now: "Duh!"

The monster that is Caffeine

Mr. Greenjeans and I have an ongoing disagreement about all things Caffeine. (Hell, why not capitalize it? It's that important.) Luckily, we haven't had many other disagreements, but this is one on which neither of us wants to budge.

Every morning, I have either two cups of reduced-Caffeine coffee or a large Diet Coke. If I don't get my daily dose by 10am, I have a pounding headache that lasts most of the rest of the day. (Drinks for the rest of the day are water and water only to help avoid bladder and kidney problems.) I've tried to give up Caffeine completely; it hasn't worked. Cutting back has been successful, but I've experienced enough withdrawal headaches to know that quitting completely is neither easy nor pleasant. So I go ahead and drink my two cups in the morning, knowing that while it's not necessarily good for me, it's probably safer than, say, bungee-jumping. Or smoking cigarettes. Or freebasing cocaine. Or walking naked across the main floor of the Republican National Convention.

Mr. Greenjeans, on the other hand, is old-fashioned when it comes to the notion of quitting a bad habit. He maintains that Caffeine addiction is psychological rather than physiological. I've tried to disabuse him of this idea, but to no avail. "It's all in your head," he tells me. "If you decide you want to quit drinking coffee, there's no reason why you can't."

"Let's get one thing straight," I reply. "I have tried giving up Caffeine. Sure, I could do it gradually, but I would still have headaches. I know this from experience. And I can't afford to have a skull-splitting headache when I teach as many classes as I do. Besides, scientists documented years ago that Caffeine causes a physical need. It's a drug in the truest sense of the word."

As I do every time this conversation comes up, I remind Mr. GJ of the time he switched my morning coffee with decaf. (Decaf is all he has at his house, and he rarely makes coffee, anyhow; a couple times a year, he'll make after-dinner decaf for guests.) I awoke long after he had gone to work, and switched on the coffeepot that he had set up the night before. I drank my two cups and headed to work. Halfway through my first morning class, my head began to hurt. Why's my head hurting? I wondered. I got plenty of sleep last night...I drank some coffee...hmmmm. Only later that afternoon did I find out that my regular brew had been switched. It was not a Taster's Choice Moment for Mr. Greenjeans.

We still go back and forth with our Caffeine disagreement. How about you, faithful E&P readers? Many of you are either professors, public-school teachers, or people working long hours in offices or shops. Many of you probably are current or former coffee/cola drinkers. What's your experience with the monster Caffeine?

October 1 = payday. Payday = more chickens!

Now that the first of the month is finally here, I've got some cash and can actually start calling around about more chickens. This week's Farmers & Consumers Bulletin is full of interesting chicken breeds. A fellow in Cedartown has both these Golden Comets...


...as well as Barred Plymouth Rocks, such as this one. (Golden Comet photo by Gary Lawrence; this photo by Virginia Martin, both via FeatherSite.)

Virginia Martin's story about how the above hen, BitchHiker, got her name is available right here. Just goes to show us that chickens have just as much personality (if not more--but don't tell the cats I said that) as any other animal.


(Photo courtesy of Andy Vardy Via FeatherSite.

A farmer in Northeast Georgia, about three hours from here, has these beautiful Golden-Laced Wyandottes for sale. The feathers look red, but they're called "Golden." It would be a day-long trip, but I think it'd be worth it to have one of these beauties pecking around in the yard.


Photo by Rose M. Isgrigg via FeatherSite.

I had hoped to find someone in the state who raises Columbian Barred Rock chickens, such as the one above, but I haven't had any luck so far. This beauty is like ones I used to see when I was little, along with Rhode Island Reds, Leghorns (both black and white), and Dominique bantams.

The farmer selling the "chickens with fluffy, feathery pants" (Mille Fleurs) was actually selling only roosters--he's keeping all his hens. So no fluffy-booted, origami-feathered chickens for right now.

Still in the running as top new-chicken names are Lucille and Ernestine. I need one more old-fashioned name. Any more suggestions?

Mr. Greenjeans and I are also going with CrankyProf's suggestion for decorating the hen house door: KFC's Colonel Sanders inside the red circle & bar, with NO COLONELS ALLOWED beneath. It's brilliant, Cranky, and it truly does work on so, so many levels.