Category: In the News

education news round-up

News to share:

Reminders:

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memorial

Sylvan Rodriguez, Houston broadcast journalist and founding member of a professional organization I belong to and am on the board of, died Friday. We all knew it was going to happen. People don’t recover from colon cancer, not the kind he had and not from the degree of illness he suffered. We all knew it was coming, but I guess none of us were really prepared for it.

I’m dreading this…I have to go to a funeral and am trying to find ways out of it. I suppose that one of the main reasons I don’t want to go is that I really didn’t know him very well. He was an acquaintance. Someone I met several times in a group setting.

It feels wrong somehow to go to his funeral, as if I’m pushing into a private moment or something. Which I’m not, since this is one of two public services being held for him. And I have met his wife and children on several occasions. Still, it feels wrong.

{Sigh}

Still, I did wear black. I did tell my organization’s president that I would go. I have been preparing myself to do this all day long………..

I suppose I should be an adult, ir y darles mi pésame. That’s what I’ll do.

FRIVOLOUS THINGS: Have any of you bought anything off uBid? I’m thinking about bidding on something and need to know what others think about the place first. Please please please let me know.

being political…

…is something I learned from my father. He was always ill at ease with his daughters, of which he had three and I was the oldest, and personal conversations were rare. The one thing he learned eventually, though, was that he could preach politics to me all day and I would sit there with a fascinated look on my face. Politics, I found, were a lot like soap operas. And being political, I learned, was just another way of expressing your opinion. It’s too bad that politics are such a taboo subject, something that is usually avoided as a topic of conversation. Teachers, community leaders and even families avoid the subject in an effort to not offend each other by having different opinions. Heaven forbid that differences should exist. And we all know that nobody is educated, tolerant or civil enough to respect the facts that other people may disagree with his/her views.

Sorry, folks. I’m just rambling on because I’m tired of the oh-so-polite atmosphere that I’ve been caught up in recently. People don’t say what they mean or think, and that doesn’t give other people a chance to expose them to new ideas. And that means that they will never change their ideals. And that’s scary and frustrating and all those other things that infuriate me. So I have this incredible urge to grab every person I see and demand to know that they think and would they please stop being so closed-mouthed about it? I know I’m not making a lot of sense, but anger does that to me. Talk to all of you soon.

Emmy Awards

Congratulations to the winners of last night’s Emmy Awards. As an avid television watcher I knew who was nominated for the categories and had an opinion on almost every award.

Of special mention is Hector Elizondo, who won Best Supporting Actor in a Drama (the only Hispanic to win an award and one of two to be nominated — the other was Jimmy Smits). Gillian Anderson, who plays one of my favorite characters, Dana Scully, in The X-Files, won Best Actress in a Drama. She won an Emmy last year in the same category. I thought it was a great touch that Helen Mirren, of the Prime Suspect movie series, presented the award. One actress who plays a tough-as-nails police chief in England, and doing it well, presenting to another actress who plays a no-nonsense forensic pathologist with the FBI. Not a bad pairing. Too bad they represented a minority — actresses playing strong female roles.

death of a princess

The Death of Princess Diana shocked the entire world last weekend. While many will argue that Diana only accomplished living her privileged life as badly as possibly, others will argue that she used her notoriety to make an impact. Whatever your opinion of Di may have bern, one thing is for certain: the world is mourning the loss of its fairy-tale princess.

I remember my mother waking me up at 5 am to watch the royal wedding. It was something out of storybooks, something that wasn’t supposed to happen in real life. But there she was, a 19-year-old becoming a princess. Though through her life we learned that fairy tales cannot come true. We learned that if your prince comes for you, you had better look at him closely. We learned that “happily ever after” doesn’t exist. And we learned that fame and fortune do not bring peace and harmony. Good-bye Diana.