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By Janet Evans
Thursday, Mar 13 2008, 08:05 PM
"It's kind of sick, yah?"
That's what Professor Wolfgang Mieder, of the University of Vermont, had to say about his over 10,000 publications regarding proverbs.
Proverbs....
"What, exactly, is a proverb? "A concise statement of an apparent truth, which has had, has, or will have currency," he says, adding that it's generally 10 words or less. "You need ready-made formulaic expressions that you can pull out of your drawer, so to speak."
"Proverbs are not universal truths. Indeed, they often contradict each another: Absence may make the heart grow fonder, but out of sight, out of mind. "
Mieder has had this "job" of reasearching and writing about proverbs for 30 years, along with teaching German and Russian. He even gives presentations about his work to places like elementary schools and Rotary Clubs from over 10,000 slides he has made.
"But Mieder is a decisive man. " 'Different strokes for different folks' is my favorite proverb," he says. He traces it back to 1950s African-American culture, noting that a song by Sly & the Family Stone popularized the phrase in the 1960s."
"I would argue it had to grow on American ground, because it doesn't tell you what to do. It says, 'Accept the differences in people,' " Mieder says. "I think it's a truly liberating proverb."
Read about this interesting man and his love for proverbs at CSMonitor.com
Meet the "Proverbial" Scholar à here
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By Janet Evans
Tuesday, Jan 8 2008, 06:20 AM
Alright, the Pink Floyd song Another Brick in the Wall doesn't have anything to do with this story.
But a lot of parents are feeling they don't want their kids going to school here....
"Moments after dozens of World War II-era bombs were blown up Saturday
on the Odyssey Middle School campus, school leaders and politicians reassured
parents that it's safe to send their children back to classes."
Read the story from the Orlando Sentinel
Officials say bombs at Odyssey Middle School no threat to kids ◄ here
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By Janet Evans
Thursday, Nov 29 2007, 01:30 PM
Growing up, I had always had an interest in running, and in Phy. Ed. classes I was pretty fast, beating all the girls, and sometimes even one or two of the guys when I was really young.
In the early 70’s I went to high school in southern Florida. At that time, almost all Varsity sports where boys sports. Any girl’s sports were those such as Cheerleading, Field Hockey, and I don’t know, maybe dodge ball . . . There were no girl’s competitive track and field sports.
When I was in 10th grade I approached the Varsity Cross Country Coach and said I wanted to be on the team, even if it meant just to practice with them. I received a flat “No.” So, I lost interest in running. The following year, I approached him again. He seemed more interested, but again, “No.”
Finally, when I was a Senior, Title IX was passed. It was the first time I had actually realized I had been discriminated against for being a female. I know I had been angry that I couldn’t do a simple thing - I just wanted to run in a sport. It wasn’t a contact sport. Finally we could have a Girls Cross Country and Track Team! The coach approached me! Sure two years of doing nothing but riding a bike about five miles a day, and tanning on the beach while I could have been in great shape by now. But I said yes.
There were few Girls Cross Country teams formed in southern Florida that first year. My team consisted of me, a 17 year old, and one other girl, a freshman, who was a great runner and would have been bumped up to Varsity even if she hadn’t been. You couldn’t have only one girl on a team!
My school wasn’t happy about Title IX, and did not push for any new girls sports. We trained with the boys after school and on weekends (we couldn't keep up at first and we were a distraction running in our bikini tops - hey, it was hot). Our school was so not accepting of a girls program that it wouldn’t give us official uniforms and we sat outside the locker room, angry, while the boys had team meetings inside. We ran against teams of 8-12 girls, usually all African American teams. And we beat them. In the following years, our team gained girls, and real uniforms.
At meets, it was HOT. We didn’t carry around water bottles back then. Never heard of them. Most of the home teams would make giant “vats” of Gatorade. Most of them looked like pig feeding troths, filled with lime green liquid. It was just gross. I’m glad the girls usually ran first, because by the time the guys got to the vat, usually they were scooping that Gatorade into their mouths with their sweat-dripping hands! YUK.
Why am I telling you my back-story? This past week the creator of Gatorade passed away, and that picture of those green vats popped right into my head.
Dr. Robert Cade, who invented the sports drink Gatorade and launched a multibillion-dollar industry that the beverage continues to dominate, died Tuesday of kidney failure. He was 80. He created Gatorade in 1965, at the University of Florida, along with other researchers. He had been trying to find something to help the schools football players replace the carbohydrates and electrolytes they lost through sweat while playing in the swamp-like heat in Florida...
The research on Gatorade all started because the former Gators Coach, Dwayne Douglas, asked the doctor why the players weren’t peeing after the games. And this changed everything.
“Using their research and about $43 in supplies, they concocted a brew for players to drink while playing football. The first batch was not exactly a hit."
"It sort of tasted like toilet bowl cleaner," said Dana Shires, one of the researchers. "I guzzled it and I vomited," Cade said. "
"The researchers added some sugar and some lemon juice to improve the taste. It was first tested on freshmen because Coach Ray Graves didn't want to hurt the varsity team. "
"Eventually, however, the use of the sports beverage spread to the Gators, who enjoyed a winning record and were known as a "second-half team" by outlasting opponents. "
"After the Gators beat Georgia Tech 27-12 in the Orange Bowl in 1967, Tech coach Bobby Dodd told reporters his team lost because, "We didn't have Gatorade ... that made the difference."
Read the story of Gatorade and the University of Florida's football team
Gatorade, the Idea that Launched an Industry
Instead of the original four flavors, Gatorade now comes in over 30, and is sold in 80 countries.
Born James Robert Cade in San Antonio on Sept. 26, 1927, Cade, a Navy veteran, graduated from the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School in Dallas. Cade was appointed an assistant professor in internal medicine at UF in 1961. He worked until he was 76, retiring in November 2004 from the university, where he taught medicine, saw patients and conducted research.
James Cade 1927-2007
I know it bothered me back in the 70's that I was not allowed to participate on a simple running sports team.
I'm more upset about it today than I was back then. It felt more like a “bump” then.
You see, when you are being discriminated against, you tend to accept what is going on as everyday life; you don’t like it, and you keep trying to change it, but until someone gets in your face and says to you "YOU ARE BEING DISCRIMINATED AGAINST," you don't tend to REALIZE IT.
What happened in sports back then in the 60s, and early 70s was WRONG.
Now we have girls who, the past few years, want to wrestle in a contact sport with boys because there are no girl’s teams. The boys do not go along with this. I am on the side of the boys in this one.
I don’t believe Title IX was meant to pit boys and girls together in a contact sport such as wrestling. I know a girl is allowed, and should be able to make a football, baseball, soccer, or whatever team if she is as good as or better than her fellow teammates of boys. But if I were a boy in high school, I too would not want to be wrestling a female in a competition. I guess, if I were the boy, I would take her out, but most of the girls are in different weight classes, too . . . Instead, the boys are forfeiting their matches. It's a pity.
Read an article from the New York Times on this topic:
More Girls Take Part in High School Wrestling
What do you think about the invention of Gatorade?
Did you realize there was discrimination against women
in sports in the 60’s and 70’s?
What about Title IX now?
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By Janet Evans
Thursday, Nov 15 2007, 06:35 AM
This is a postscript to my previous blog entry regarding advanced video technology surveillance, linked directly to police departments, installed in schools in New Jersey.
I would like to focus this entry on something no parent ever wants to face. That would be the thought of terrorism entering our own schools, right here in Franklin, Wisconsin.
Eric Shoemaker, a retired law enforcement administrator wrote a paper titled:
Terrorism in American Schools: The First of ALL Fears
Eric is a retired Public Safety Administrator with over 23 years of service on college and university campuses. He is an author of over two dozen publications on law enforcement and public safety topics. He is also a retired active and reserve U.S. Army officer.
His paper details school terrorism attacks on the following schools, and their motivations:
The Bath, Michigan Consolidated School Case 1927
The Columbine, Colorado High School Case 1999
The Belsan North Ossetia, Russian School Number One Case 2004
The West Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania (Amish) School Case 2006
Shoemaker also discusses the Islamist Jihad and their view on women and children as being collateral damage in jihad and his thoughts on the LIKELY terrorist threat to U.S schools.
He states, "On an emotional level, no matter how unlikely, and perhaps because al Quaida or Belsan-type attack on an American school or schools is so unthinkable, it becomes the first of all fears. But, just because something is unthinkable, does not mean it is likely."
"When looking at examples of school massacres in the United States, there is greater likelihood that the threat comes from a pair like Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris who had a series of problems, plus firearms. Other likelihood rests with lone disturbed individuals such as Andrew Kehoe or Charles Carl Roberts IV."
"Mitigating the risk of terrorist targeting of American schools is an exercise of dispassionately determining the greatest threat and then devising strategies to mitigate and manage that threat; be it individuals armed with firearms, explosives, or toxins that can be introduced to the victims through water, air or food. The Columbine Review Commission report to Colorado Governor Bill Owens is a detailed account of the events and lessons learned. It contains valuable insight that by extension can provide a framework for action to combat violence of the type that, to many, is the first of all fears."
PLEASE take the time to read Eric Shoemaker's entire paper, Terrorism in American Schools: The First of All Fears. It's only six, short pages.
Then, PLEASE take the time to leave your thoughts ...
Also, go back to my last post and think about it again. Is high-tech video surveillance something we might want to consider in Franklin Public Schools?
What do you think about the possibility of an Islamist Jihad attack here, on U.S. soil, in our own schools?
If you would like to contact Eric Shoemaker, his email is jjackoe@comcast.net
Thanks for reading this article.
Terrorism in American Schools: The First of All Fears also formatted in TEXT here ß
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