Putting the Daily Back into The Grind

Now that the 2008-09 school year is officially in the books, both literally and figuratively as my grades are complete, I am on semi-summer vacation and ready to write. When I first started this blog a couple years ago, the intent was to use it as a daily exercise, they way you go to the gym or hiking trails every day to keep your body fit. I have developed over the last five years an excellent exercise regimen; I do various forms of workouts six days a week, saving one day as a rest day, which is both good for the soul and what a 38 year-old body with 58 year-old knees cries out for. I have also developed over the last year or so a very enjoyable reading regimen, after finally weaning myself off of the newspapers, I have rekindled my love of books and now read at least one book a week, often two depending on the form and length of the tome. So now it is time to, after multiple attempts, develop a writing regimen that will keep me active and productive. One part of that is what I do here, and so for those handful of my loyal and faithful readers, I humbly offer you my opinions, observations, and analysis on life, politics, sports, and whatever else seeps into my mind and finds a release in digital form.

Starting with life, I just finished up my first year at my new school, Arizona School for the Arts, and while I plan to dedicate an entire column to this subject, I’ll say briefly that it was quite an experience. Leaving a comfortable if ultimately unfulfilling teaching gig where I had all the benefits of seniority and autonomy to take on a new challenge, for less money no less, was a decision that I often questioned during the course of the year. But it is one that now in reflection I look on as one of the better decisions I’ve made in my professional life, arguably the best since the decision I made a decade ago to return to the profession that I love and am best suited for. Having just finished grading over a hundred final exam essays, I can breathe a sigh of relief, and am thoroughly impressed with how much my students retained and absorbed in a single year, their intellect and level of understanding is most impressive, and I can honestly say that I enjoy going to work every day, which I realize is a gift not to be taken for granted, especially in today’s economic climate.

Of course, the only thing better than enjoying going to work every day is enjoying not having to go to work every day, which is what teachers look forward to and what probably more than anything keeps us coming back for more. While I am teaching summer school in June, the hours are pretty hard to beat, a couple hours in the morning which is fine as I’m an early riser anyways and keeps plenty of time for the regimens and routines that I enjoy both before and after the abbreviated work day. Then come July and August, I’ve got six weeks of full vacation, which could only be better if it came during December and January when the weather in the desert is a touch cooler, but I suppose we can’t have it all.

Ok, now that anyone reading this at work is wishing they could smack me around a little, it’s time to go into politics. For starters, I have to admit that while I still keep tabs on the issues du jour by listening to NPR on my daily commute, by reading The Economist on a weekly basis, and by watching some PBS now and again, I am not a news junkie like I once was. I find that following every single issue on a 24/7 cable news cycle becomes maddeningly mundane and inane based on the coverage offered by the mainstream media. Perhaps it’s not entirely their fault, filling all that time I suppose requires a certain level of covering issues that don’t matter and are generally uninteresting, but that’s not to let the 4th estate off the hook entirely. They are supposed to be the gatekeepers of relevant information, and I just don’t see how the Octomom being replaced by Susan Boyle being succeeded by some couple I never heard of with 8 kids and an infidelity problem is worth a fraction of the time that the cable news channels devote to it.

The papers aren’t much better, and for all the handwringing about the demise of the newspaper industry, I don’t hear too much commentary on how irrelevant their product has become. Increasingly there is more fluff and fewer relevancies, even among the venerable New York Times and Washington Post. Even the op-ed columns that I still enjoy perusing occasionally have become nearly as predictable as the litany of Crossfire type shows on cable. Let’s see, Paul Krugman sounds the alarm about the need for more government spending, George Will hates government and has recurring fantasies about taking Sam Donaldson out behind the woodshed one of these Sunday mornings after the cameras stop rolling, and Tom Friedman flies off to some exotic locale in a big old jet airplane so he can preach to us about how we need to be saving the environment. Forgive me if I’ve gotten a bit jaded with it all.

It looks like I didn’t leave enough time or space for my favorite subject, the wide world of sports. I’m trying to hold my daily columns to around 1000 words, as there is other writing I want to get accomplished this summer, and besides, my small cadre of readers needs to get back to work and stop blowing your productivity on my ramblings, so my take on the NBA Finals, which begin tomorrow, will have to wait, as disappointing as I know that will be to my two biggest fans, my wife and mom. Until then, this is your faithful correspondent signing off, over, and out.