Tag: Lydia

The Lydster: Feeling the Bern

I swear I saw Joe Bruno.

Trumpcar2On Monday, April 11, not one but THREE Presidential candidates were going to be in the Capital District of New York State: John Kasich (R), Bernie Sanders (D), and Donald Drumpf (R). A day or two before, The Daughter started wheedling me – why didn’t she bug her mother? – to see one of them, the one alphabetically last.

I said no. I said no because I was afraid she might get hurt. She said that no one was going to hurt a little girl, but I noted that she is taller than most adult women. She should watch him on television. (I was also afraid I might get hurt, but I didn’t bring that up.)

Her counter-proposal was to see Bernie Sanders. I noted that he too would be on TV, and he was speaking during the school day.

“But it would be educational!”

She wanted ME to contact her teacher to ask if she could go, but I said she could go if SHE asked her teacher and she said yes; she can be shy in these matters.

Monday morning, I had to get a blood test, which I ended up going to TWICE because I forgot my insurance card the first time. I kept checking my email to see if her teacher contacted me. The Wife came home early – she had an eye test in the early afternoon – and she checked HER email, where she received a positive response from the teacher to MY inquiry.

By this time, it was already noon. The Washington Armory opened at 11 a.m., and the rally was at 2 p.m. I got the Daughter out of school. The Wife dropped us a block from the Armory, because I figure the traffic at Washington and Lark would be crazy, and so it was.

We went to the end of the line, which was down Washington Avenue, across Dove Street, up Elk Street to behind the armory; had we realized, we would have gone the shorter route.

I engaged a young man, 33, behind us in conversation. We decided that this was very educational for the Daughter, because it addressed sociology (the nature of the crowd), history, political science, meteorology (it was very windy, raining briefly; his girlfriend was freezing), and undoubtedly other disciplines.

A green car drove by a couple times, with Drumpf USA, etc. painted in splotchy white, as though he’d used a huge bottle of Wite-Out. It had two huge American flags.
Bernie.APL
Even as the Armory was in sight, I knew the capacity of the Washington Armory was 3000 for basketball games, maybe 1000 more for something like this, and that we probably wouldn’t get in. This turned out to be the case.

Still, we stuck around. I ran into my friends Dan and Lynne. I bought The Daughter a Feel the Bern T-shirt and a couple buttons.

She started taking notes, as we listened to the activities inside via a couple speakers that kept cutting out. The audio in front stopped playing music, and we heard, “I’m sorry the venue wasn’t big enough.”

BERNIE CAME OUT!

He gave a seven-minute speech on his main topics: end fracking, Medicare for all, free college, climate change is real. “We can’t spend trillions in Iraq while we leave our cities at home.” Some families are spending 50-60% on housing each month. There’s too much police violence. We need a $15 per hour minimum wage.

He noted that movements develop from the bottom up: trade unions, civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights.

After that, we caught a bus and went home, and watched the last 50 minutes of the speech on TV. We also saw Kasich speak in Troy.

The Wife took us out to dinner; it was quite good. In another room, I swear I saw Joe Bruno, the former state Senate Majority Leader, surrounded by a dozen others.

The Daughter was trying to rush The Wife home, because she (and I) wanted to watch The Donald. He didn’t say anything in that way he generally does: read some reviews. All in all, an excellent day.

The next day, The Daughter confessed that she didn’t REALLY wanted to see Donald, she wanted to see Bernie, but used the DJT request as an opening salvo in what she REALLY wanted. Well played, Daughter, but I would have said yes to Bernie, eventually, even without the chicanery.

Photo credits: car (c) 2016 Kate Intelisano. Bernie (c) Daniel Van Riper

The Lydster, Part 144: An Even Dozen

She’s now #1 in New York State in First in Math

Lydia.kente.
Earlier this month, the Daughter appeared in the church musical, for the third year in a row. This year’s effort was called SPEAK LOUD, SPEAK PROUD, and had readings written by the performers, as well as dancing, and singing, and rapping. My daughter wrote something about me, which was only slightly mortifying because it was true.

She continues to excel in school, particularly in math. She may be a tad obsessed with First in Math. She’s now #1 in New York State with over 20,000 points, in the Top 20 for her grade nationally, and trying to make the Top 100 nationally. More importantly to her, she’s helping to close the gap between her school and the #1 school in the district.

She enjoys reading but is less than enthralled about writing about the readings. The class requirements DO seem to have a bit of mechanical feel to it, with X number of paragraphs, all starting with certain words such as First or Then or Next or Finally, and X paragraphs, each with Y sentences.

To my surprise, she’s given up the clarinet. I thought she was doing well, and that she both enjoyed it, especially playing with her mother, and that she was pretty good at it. The Wife wants to sell the Daughter’s instrument, but I’m opposed; I think she might come back to it.

She had to deal with a bullying incident in school, which has been resolved. The principal to him noted that his remarks were not only hurtful to others but, taken the wrong way, dangerous to himself. It was difficult for her to report him, as it seemed to draw attention to herself, and perhaps even harder to hear his apology.

Her room is…not as tidy as it might be, even by my fairly lax standards.

There’s undoubtedly more to say, but I’ll just note that I love the girl.

The Lydster, Part 143: playing with Fire

My loving child regularly mocks me.

Amazon fireALL of her friends had some sort of electronic device, and she did not, so someone (Santa? The Wife, and I? I forget) gave The Daughter an Amazon Fire for Christmas. It was one of the best presents I ever got.

For one thing, it ended the fussing over The Wife’s work iPad. It was entrusted to the adult, of course, but the child knew far better how to actually USE the thing. I was of no help in this arena either.

The Daughter getting her own device means The Wife doesn’t complain that her device is not charged, or not in her school bag in the morning as she heads off to work. Not hearing this repeated disagreement is GREAT, for ME, and for them as well.

Another thing: it made MY Amazon Fire, purchased some months ago, actually usable. For some reason, I had to change the password in our home WiFi last summer, and the Time Warner Cable guy said, “You’d better write it down because it’s unretrievable.” Well, I DID lose it, in fairly short order. I had my device but couldn’t use it at home.

Since The Daughter wanted to use her new machine at home, I called TWC anyway – something I wouldn’t have bothered to do for myself – and, lo and behold, was able to reset the password to something this Census geek can actually remember.

Oh, yeah. The Wife has a habit of putting all the plugs for all the devices in a drawer, but somehow, my Fire charger went MIA. Now, I can use The Daughter’s charger; yeah, I could have bought a new one, but I did not. My loving child regularly mocks me when she realizes things she can do after two days that I never figured out in four months.

The Lydster, Part 142: First in Math

FIM512icon_singledigitsAt Thanksgiving, when we were at my in-laws, the Daughter became obsessed with being on the computer. But it wasn’t to be playing with the latest mind-numbing video trash. It was to play First in Math.

The variety of games include Measurement World, where one picks out the comparable length or weight in either metric, US customary, or mixed; Know and Show word problems; and Skill Sets. The latter uses the 24® Game, which, briefly, is getting four numbers and using the math functions, trying to get to 24.

For instance, if the numbers were 5, 6, 7, and 8, you could do: 5+7=12, 8-6=2, 12X2=24. But the actual timed play gets increasingly difficult, as the numbers include negative integers, fractions, and decimals. It gets even trickier when one has two sets of numbers, one number is unknown in each set and needs to be solved using the same missing variable.

FIM was designed to “Harness the power of digital gaming to build math skills.” Schools all over the country participated, but, as of the end of December, there wasn’t a New York State school in the top 100 of the country, less a matter of skill than a function of different emphasis.

Within the school district, the Daughter’s class was the last in her school, and her school among the last in the city to join First in Math, beginning in mid-October. At the end of the third week in November, she had about 4500 points, but by the time the turkey had digested in our stomachs, she’d reached 7500 points. And in mid-December, she obtained the coveted 10,000 points and got to first place in the city, overtaking some child two grades behind her at a different school.

Her class went from barely in the Top 50 in the state to the mid-teens. In the city, they are a solid #2, though it would be difficult – “Don’t say impossible!”, she implores – to catch them. A lot of that, though by no means, all of that rise came from her efforts.

I’d like to say that I have no idea where she gets this competitive streak. I’d like to say that, but it would be wrong.

The Lydster, Part 141: the Presbyterian

The stated clerk of the Presbyterian Church USA explained the denomination to the Donald.

Presbyterian_Church_(U.S.A.)Both the Wife and I grew up in the Methodist tradition. We didn’t become Presbyterians until the 21st century. Theologically, there’s not that much of a difference between the two Christian denominations, IMO, but some of the rituals are a bit different.

The Daughter has grown up in the Presbyterian church, so it’s more difficult for her when we go to other houses of worship, such as my parents-in-law’s Methodist service. For my spouse and myself, it doesn’t much matter, when we recite the Lord’s Prayer, if we say “sins” or “debts” (our usual form) or “trespasses” (the Methodist form). I WILL admit that growing up, all that sibilant “trespasses… trespass against us” ironically sounded a bit serpentine.

When Donald Trump was campaigning, he made some comments about Ben Carson’s Seventh Day Adventist faith. Then he noted, “I’m Presbyterian. Boy, that’s down the middle of the road, folks, in all fairness.” The Daughter saw this on TV and grimaced. “He can’t be a Presbyterian, can he?” (The stated clerk of the Presbyterian Church USA explained the denomination to the Donald.)

I wish The Daughter was more familiar with the late Fred Rogers, who was a counterculture Christian icon, not just a wholesome American TV star. Here’s a lovely story about the ordained Presbyterian minister.

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