Isaac Laquedem

G.B.S. tells the Oregon legislature not to complain about nepotism

Now that Kelly Wirth has rescinded the hefty salary increase that she gave her legislative assistant (who was also her mother) and resigned from the legislature, maybe the furor over legislative nepotism will die down.

And maybe before it dies down, an investigative reporter will find out and print how many of Oregon's legislators put a relative on their legislative office payroll for the 2005 session.  Oregon's legislators have put relatives on their office payrolls for years, and we should recall that Ms. Wirth was called out on the practice, not for having her mother on the payroll, but for being unreasonably greedy about it and quadrupling her mother's salary even as Ms. Wirth prepared to resign her seat.

It calls to mind the story about George Bernard Shaw, the society lady, and the indecent proposition: the other legislators are objecting not to the principle but to the price.

Vicki Phillips II and the college preparatory curriculum

As I reread yesterday's post, I recalled the Alma Mater's description of what courses high school students who wanted to go there should take.  One sentence jumped to mind:  "Four years of English, with constant practice in reading and writing."  Other colleges had similar requirements.  (I hope they still do.)

Do all students in Portland Public Schools' high schools who want to go to college get four years of English, with constant practice in reading and writing?  And if not, what will the district and its teachers do to see that the students get this level of education?  I'd like to think that the students get this level of instruction already, but after reading the negative reactions of the teachers' union to the Superintendent's plan to require three papers a year from each student, I'm not sure I want to know the answer.

Vicki Phillips assigns homework to her students, but it's the teachers who are complaining

Vicki Phillips, superintendent of Portland Public Schools, is asking (actually, telling) teachers in middle and high schools to give a common set of writing assignments in English, social studies, and science.  (The Oregonian reports the story here.)  District officials say that the assignments would be a "temperature gauge" to see whether students at all schools are getting (in the Oregonian's words, not the officials' words) "the same level of rigorous instruction."  She calls this the "anchor assignment" concept.

Ann Nice, president of the Portland Public Schools' teachers' union, says that the teachers' opposition to the anchor assignments is "pretty deep and pretty widespread," partly because teachers perceive the Superintendent's decision as a top-down approach to instruction, which they had hoped would change under Superintendent Phillips' administration.  One reason many teachers don't like the anchor assignments is (they say) that the district already gives standard tests, including the state-mandated writing tests in 8th and 10th grades, and can use these to compare schools.  That's fine, as far as it goes.

But buried within the article lurks what I think is the real reason that Superintendent Phillips is giving the teachers this assignment: she wants the students to work harder and learn more.  The PPS administration believes that some teachers aren't giving students assignments that are hard enough to challenge them.  Middle and high school students in the Portland system don't do as well as the elementary students on the state's standard tests, and the Superintendent evidently wants to change that unhappy fact.  Bob Lawrence, a PPS spokesman, says that Ms. Phillips "has been very clear about making sure our students have a rigorous core curriculum that prepares them for life after high school, and that means strengthening what we do." 

Something's missing from the response of the teachers' union and of the teacher quoted in the article.  I read their objections to be mainly that the district already has ways to test students for achievement.  And it does.  But (if my theory is correct) that's not really why Ms. Phillips is introducing the anchor assignments.  She's doing it because she wants her students to learn more, and a response from the teachers of "they're learning well enough" (or as too many of the students might say, "we're learning good enough") won't earning a passing grade from the boss.  And rightly so, I say.  It's refreshing to have a schools superintendent who thinks that her graduating seniors should be able to write.

The monorail offers a lesson to designers of tramways

On Saturday the Laquedemitasse and I rode Seattle's monorail.  The Laquedemitasse loves trains of all sorts, and he examined the monorail with great interest.

The monorail has two tracks, each one a solid concrete rail several feet across with wires and electrical service mounted on the side.  The rails are roughly parallel to each other and are about a mile long.  The monorail has no equivalent of a railway switch; each train (there are only two) runs on its own rail, shuttling back and forth between the two stations, and the trains can't be switched or shunted from one rail to the other.  The rails don't intersect or merge anywhere.  Because the tracks don't merge or cross, you can see that it's impossible for the two trains to collide with each other.

Saturday evening, shortly after we left the monorail, the trains collided. 

Unlike the crashes of our model trains at home, this time the Laquedemitasse was not the cause.  Rather, one curve on the track, near the downtown station, is too tight for the two trains to pass each other.  The operators know that the southbound train imust stop and wait for the northbound train to go through the curve before entering the curve itself, to avoid exactly this sort of accident.  Saturday the operator of the southbound train didn't stop and wait.

The engineers who are designing the OHSU tram (or "Ftpht" as I'm occasionally calling it) might keep the monorail story in mind when they're laying out the path of the cables.  I think I'll watch from the ground for a while before taking a ride.

You'd think that 18 months of living with felons would have cured him of wanting into a club that admits them

Andrew Wiederhorn intends to sue the Multnomah Athletic Club, reports the Oregonian today.  His reason?  After Mr. Wiederhorn was convicted of a federal felony (two, actually), the MAC expelled him and prohibited him from darkening its doors, dining halls, and driveways.  The club rules state that the club may expel members who are convicted of major crimes  Mr. Wiederhorn says that the MAC didn't expel other members who had picked up federal convictions (including one of his business partners), and therefore the MAC acted unfairly when it expelled him.  Those felons (says Mr. Wiederhorn) are still members; why not him also?  (Mrs. Wiederhorn and their children are still members; Mr. Wiederhorn's the only one of his family who's been banned from the premises.)

I have to admit that I'd like to see Mr. Wiederhorn sue to force the MAC to readmit him, but not because I think he should be readmitted.  It's because I can imagine unions across America, particularly those whose pension funds lent money to Mr. Wiederhorn's company, chipping in to help pay the MAC's legal fees to defend the case.  Come to think of it, I'd be willing to send them some money also, if the MAC promised not to settle before trial.

A tanning salon for you and your saw?

Some unusual business combinations make sense, such as a business called "Suds 'n' Duds," composed of a laundry and a tavern.  Customers can load their laundry into the washing machine, insert the quarters, start the machine, and then pass the next half-hour having a beer or two.  I haven't been able to make sense of one I saw this week on Highway 30, a few miles east of Rainier.  The sign read, "Tanning and Toning -- Saw Sharpening."  Do grizzled loggers come in with their crosscut saws and then soak up some UV rays while the technician works on their saws?  Or do women who go to tanning salons also own dull saws?  I've thought of no persuasive theory, and I'm tempted to bring a saw there the next time I pass through Rainier, just to have an excuse to look inside.

Autumn leaves and clogged sewers

As I read this morning's story about the state government fining the City of Portland for allowing sewage overflows into streams, and about the federal government considering fining the City for the same thing, I recalled that some drains are plugged by autumn leaves.

Later this morning I passed by a church on SW 18th Avenue, where a man was using a leafblower to clean the lawn and sidewalk by blowing the autumn leaves (and there were a lot of them) over the curb and into Salmon Street, near a drain that I believe empties into historic (and underground) Tanner Creek.  He likely didn't know that he was, in part, front-page news today.

Being modest about one's education

This week at the board meeting of a local non-profit, one of the members entered wearing a t-shirt that said "YALE" in big bold letters.  Someone asked the member, "Oh, Yale -- is that where you went to school?"  The person wearing the t-shirt replied, "No, it's a microbrew."

Beavers are prouder than Ducks

In the run-up to the Civil War game (Oregon Ducks v. Oregon State Beavers), I've noticed that Duck fans put stickers on the rears of their cars.  Beaver fans fly pennants on the front of their cars, or mounted above the front-seat windows.  Beaver fans don't seem to use stickers, and Duck fans don't seem to fly pennants.

I am a nonpartisan who didn't attend either school, but I've thought about telling my brother-in-law, a Duck, that OSU alumni must be prouder than UO alumni, because the OSU graduates will advertise their alma mater with flags so that you can see them coming, but the U of O graduates abashedly put their allegiance where you can see it only when they're going.

The stolen second-hand stuff is our fault

The Oregonian's series on second-hand shops is making it clear that in the Oregonian's view, the Portland Police Bureau doesn't care much about stolen property.

It occurred to me that one reason the Police Bureau doesn't care is that the citizens and Multnomah County have -- not knowingly -- told the Police Bureau that they don't care about stolen property.  It's hard to miss that message from the county building a jail to hold petty criminals, without providing the money to operate it. 

The county commission might say that it's carrying out the will of the taxpayers, who don't (as a group) want to pay for more county services.  Jails are easy things to cut from a budget: victims of small-time crime don't fight much for the jail budget, and the jail's would-be users don't complain, either.