I think it's very interesting to note that while the school board is about to enter into contract negotiations with the teachers, they say they have a $1.2 million dollar surplus built into the fiscal 2003 school budget. The surplus is unofficially earmarked for teachers' raises once the district and the Springfield Education Association reach an agreement. That quote from the State Journal Register will disappear after this Tuesday, because, well, because it's the State Journal Register and they only keep articles on line for a week.

Anyway, this is the first I've heard of a surplus. School funding and teachers' contracts are apparently very complicated.

This article from the Washington Post, entitled Success for Some, makes me think that if a school system finds something that works, keep doing it and don't back down.

Within a couple months of my oldest daughter starting first grade, her teacher determined that my daughter had a reading problem. What this stemmed from, we never knew.

We moved to Springfield, Illinois, from Muskegon, Michigan, in April of her kindergarten year. In Muskegon she was in the Norton Shores School District. Norton Shores was touted as one of the best, if not the best, public school district in Muskegon County. Some people told me the Norton Shores high school was reputed to be a University of Michigan prep school. If this was actually true, I never saw any evidence of it.

Kindergarten at Norton Shores was half-day. But it wasn't really a full half day. Class started at 9:00 a.m. and ended at 11:30 a.m. Full-day kindergarten was not an option. The school day, for lack of a better word, was divided up into various activities. A main daily activity, such as music, arts and crafts, and physical education, was rotated throughout the week. I didn't realize it until we moved to Springfield, but teaching the children how to read was not on the kindergarten curriculum in Norton Shores at that time.

When we got to Springfield, kindergarten was a completely different experience. The most notable difference was that it was full-day kindergarten. And, the kids in her class were already reading.

To teach reading to the kindergartners, they used a thing called "sight words." As best as I can understand it, sight words entailed the child seeing a word on paper and visualizing what the word represents. For instance, seeing the word "dog," the child would visualize what a dog looks like.

On the last day of kindergarten my daughter brought home her report card. Inside was a note from the teacher and a list of 30 sight words. The note said that if I didn't teach my daughter these sight words over the summer, that she would be behind the other children when she got to first grade.

Immediately, I hightailed it over to the drug store and bought a pack index cards. On one side of each index card I printed one sight word. On the other side, I pasted a picture which I cut out from magazines. My daughter and I spent every day that summer studying her sight words. It didn't work.

By the time first grade started, I learned the school district had dropped the sight word form of teaching reading. They were now on to a thing called phonics.

Come parent/teacher conference time, her teacher made mention that my daughter was behind the class in reading. But, she indicated she was hopeful she could catch her up to the rest in short order. Silently, I hoped that with hard work and a positive attitude, my daughter would become a good reader. That's the attitude I tried to convey to my daughter.

Then one day in the middle of October, just before report cards were to come out, the teacher called me at work. She said my daughter was so distraught over her inability to read, that when daily reading time came around, my daughter would just sit at her desk and softly cry. My heart sunk as I pictured my precious little girl.

The teacher told me there might be a solution. She wanted to put my daughter in a special program called Reading First. She explained tht the program included daily one-on-one sessions between the student and a reading teacher. That sounded great to me, and I immediately agreed. She said it was a new program to the school district. She was concerned about my daughter's feelings for being singled out since she would have to leave the regular class for an hour a day. I told the teacher not to worry, that I would discuss it with my daughter so that she understood what was going on.

And so it happened. My daughter learned how to read. She loved her reading teacher. And she loved to read. By the end of the first week she was reading little stories to me and my other daughter at bedtime. By Christmas break, she was reading at a fourth grade level. In January, the reading teacher called me and said she wanted to take my daughter to the University of Illinois at Urbana for a meeting and demonstration. She said there were going to be some very important people there to evaluate the effectiveness of the Reading First program. She said my daughter was an outstanding example of how well the program worked. I agreed to the trip.

In March the reading teacher called me and said she thought my daughter was ready to graduate from the Reading First program. She said, originally my daughter was slated to remain in the class until the end of the school year, but since my daughter was now reading at a sixth grade level, she wanted to use the time for another child who needed special reading attention. I agreed.

When my daughter entered the second grade, the school district had expanded the Reading First program, and she was picked to be a student tutor in the reading program.

Not only did that remarkable program help my daughter to read, but it gave her a tremendous love for reading. To this day, she loves to read.

1. How long have you had a weblog?
I had a journal on Diaryland within a few weeks after he first opened the web site for business. I think that was early 1999. It only lasted until October of 1999 when I started devoting most of my free online time to CNN. When CNN closed its community in January of 2002, I went back to Diaryland, but found I had forgotten my log-in name and password. So, I started this. However, the February through May 2002 entries are not online.

2. What was your first post about?
Him.

3. How many changes (name, location, etc.) of your weblog have there been, if more than one?
Including Diaryland, this is the third.

4. What CMS (content management system) do you use? Do you like it or do you want to try something else?
Blogger for now. I'd love to try Movable Type, but unfortunately, my web host doesn't support the necessary technology.

On a totally unrelated note, I'm not usually one to ogle men on the Internet, but Professor Lemley is very much worthy of ogling.

1. Do you remember your first encounter with computers? Tell me about that.
Oh yes. The year was 1969. My then brother-in-law's mainframe was in a building behind the Chicago Tribune along the Chicago River. Well, it wasn't actually his mainframe. He rented computer time there. I recall that it was in a large room. Most everything in the room was stark white, except for some IBM blue and some black here and there. And it was cold in there. Sometimes he would have me checking for errors in lines of code in Cobol. I was 13.

2. How late can you stay up and still be functional the next day? Do you do that very often?
2:00 a.m. Just about every night. I love to stay up late. But, I make up for it by see number 4. I think it comes from some kind of rebellion from having to go bed at an early hour as a child.

3. When was the last really good hug you got from another adult? Who was it and what was the situation?
My oldest daughter and I hug a lot for no apparent reason. It's very comforting. Other than that, the last time was August 26, 2000, and if I had known it was going to be the last time....

4. One thing about children is that they all like to draw. We all shared the same ability and skill level at one time. Do you still like to draw? (Not do you think you draw well, or do others, but do you like to?) If not, how come? Did you get discouraged at some point?
Yes, I still like to draw. It's very relaxing. Not surprisingly, I still draw like I did in the third grade.

5. I way overslept today. I had to head to work with no shower (don't get too close), and I am not in the best of moods. Have you ever overslept on a day you had something important going on? What's the story there?
Oh yeah! Chronically tardy is my middle name. A couple years ago my boss gave me an electric alarm clock. Like that'll do any good.

6. Ever go shopping for something you know you can't afford? You look at it and even think about how it will look when you get it home, somehow you justify the cost and believe it can happen? And just before you get to the counter come to your senses? What was the last thing you almost bought, but thought better of it? And why the heck do we do that to ourselves?
I don't do this.

7. (It begins again...) It's all such a blur now. I'd asked you to help me wake up but the alarm didn't go off. It was 10 till and just I knew I'd be late. Somehow you got me here on time. How did you do that? Door to door service? By remaining calm.

This goes way beyond big brother just watching what you're doing. This reeks of turning the MPAA and the RIAA into police, judge and jury.

One question that comes to mind right off the bat is, how are these organizations going to determine whether or not you paid to use the materials? There are legitimate ways to obtain copyright material for use on your computer, right?

Another question, how are these organizations going to get past firewalls?

And then there's the beautiful Ridgely Building. The Ridgely Building is a 12 story office building. It was originally the Ridgely Farmer's State Bank Building. Prior to the Depression, it was a five story building. The bank survived the Depression, prospered, and rebuilt at the same location. Unfortunately, shortly after that the bank folded. As I recall (not that I was actually there), at some point it was taken over by a land trust in Chicago and continued to operate as an office building.

From the time I was about ten, to when I turned 18, my dentist was in that building.

In 1974, at the age of 17, I went to work in the Ridgely Building. It had two passenger cars, both operated by little old ladies. One of the ladies was out sick quite often, which left the other lady to carry all the passengers. Her name was Pauline. Pauline and I did not hit it off too well in the beginning of our acquaintance together. Something about her scared me. Okay, she had an unsightly growth on her nose, and at the age of 17, I was very shallow. However, after a short while, I got to know her as a person and I found her to be very likeable. Sometimes she would make me little gifts like potholders. I worked in that building for four years. When I told her I was leaving, she told me, that in that case, she would retire. And she did.

The building manager, a farmer by trade, had two sons, both of whom worked in the building in various capacities. And, both of whom, impacted my life. But those are stories for another day.

Where am I going with all this. Oh, yeah...

Sunday's Chicago Tribune has an article entitled, Help line spawns new breed of elevator operators. It's about the people at Otis who take calls when something goes wrong with one of their elevators somewhere.

From 1981 to 1984, I worked on the 72nd floor of the Standard Oil Building, now known as the Aon Center. The SOB, as I call it, is a fascinating building with a fascinating, if short, history. When I went to work in the building, I quickly learned that the building facade consisted of white marble which was taken from the same quarry Michael Angelo used for his sculpture of David, and that the pylons are as deep into the Earth as the Empire State Building is tall. I don't know if either of those "facts" are true or not. Apparently, the first "fact" doesn't matter any more, since, according to skyscrapers.com:

From 1990 to 1992 the building's 43,000 marble cladding panels were replaced by two-inch-thick Mt. Airy granite panels at a cost of about $80 million.

The 50 or 60 secretaries at my firm each had a typewriter on their desk. The word processing department consisted of a Wang with ten terminals scattered around the office. The general procedure, if you wanted something done on word processing, was for the secretary to type the first draft of her document on pink paper. From there the document went to word processing where it was scanned. The document was then printed on dot matrix sort of printer. Actually, I don't know what type of printer it was because I had never seen anything like before or since. It operated on a sheet feeder and each page was printed with a single bang in about a second. Quite impressive. From there the document went back to the secretary for minor editing, then back to word processing for corrections and reprinting, then back to the secretary who gave it to the lawyer for major or minor editing as the case may be. Repeat until the document was finalized and ready to be printed on one of the daisy wheel printers. It was a long process. Word processing was strictly for lengthy documents and briefs. Since I developed a good relationship with the girls in word processing, they trusted me to operate the Wang system on my own without them being there. One of my bosses had a big appellate practice and I found I could get a lot more done if I did the word processing myself outside of the regular course of business.

It was a quiet Saturday sometime in about 1982, the exact date of which I can't recall. I had gone into the office to grab some computer time and some overtime pay. About 1:30 in the afternoon, I left the office and boarded the elevator to the main level. I watched the floor numbers descend past 68 and, in what was probably one or two seconds, the car stopped. I pushed some buttons, but nothing happened. Calmly I opened the little box below the control panel and there in all it's saving glory, was a brown telephone. I picked up the receiver and was immediately connected to the guard desk at the after hours entrance to the building. I told the guard who I was and what had happened. While the guard kept me on the line, he called Otis from another phone. After about ten minutes, someone from Otis showed up, the car lurched upward, and the doors opened on the 68th floor. After the Otis guy made sure I was okay, he disabled the car I was in, and we rode down to the first floor together. Yeah, the experience was a little rush.