Bringing Shame on Telluride

Holes found in Wolfowitz's style

World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz may be dedicated to freeing the world from poverty - but he seems unable to afford a new pair of socks.

Mr Wolfowitz's sartorial deficiencies were revealed when he took his shoes off while visiting a mosque in Edirne, western Turkey.

Both of the grey socks sported holes with his big toes peeking through.

The last World Bank annual report, for 2006, puts the president's salary as of 1 July, 2005, at $391,440 (£200,279).

Mr Wolfowitz was in Turkey on a two-day visit that included a meeting with Prime Minister Reycep Tayyip Erdogan.

Mr Wolfowitz strongly backs Turkey's bid to join the European Union.

On his trip he also met homeless men at a shelter in Istanbul who are being helped by a World Bank-financed scheme.

In an earlier sartorial foray in the media, in the Michael Moore film Fahrenheit 9/11, Mr Wolfowitz was seen to spit on his comb before running it through his hair ahead of a television appearance.
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I really want to look his name up in the telluride directory and ACTUALLY SEND HIM SOCKS. oh, the connections TASP has given me.

Justice served

So, my senior year has been a veritable comedy of errors, an orgy of death and destruction, etc. I'll elaborate more later, but I thought this piece of information would be particularly picante to TASPy ears:

Yours truly has been voted...by his peers...most likely to fall asleep in class. I swear, if this is wrong, I dont want to feel right. More stories later, kiddies.

PS. I finally(!) get Alison's Hyp. Lecture name.

Burnt by the Sun 2

Oh yes - not only have I emerged from Ludditey obscurity without warning, but [see title]. No conceivable event could be stranger. Check it out at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0403645.

Invitation au concert...

Whereas the Jubilee Singers once went to South Africa, now South African choirs are touring the U. S. (Insert Vinsonian commentary about changing black views in the post-colonial world.) Indeed, the Soweto Gospel Choir (http://www.sowetogospelchoir.com/) is coming to Penn State's Eisenhower Auditorium on February 22nd. So, who wants to come with me? (Alison merrily ignores the fact that this silly continent is far too big for its own good.)

Hark! Social Commentary!

Hello you beautiful people.

As some of you know, I'm doing an internship right now with an obituary writer at the Denver Post for my creative writing class. Weird, right? It's actually pretty interesting, from a writing perspective. She always tells me, I don't know how I could ever write fiction. The people and situations I find in the world are stranger and more interesting than any I could invent myself. In some ways, that's true for me too (though I do write fiction sometimes). For instance, the other day I was waiting in the line at the post office and listening to an old woman complain to her daughter that she can't find anywhere to buy sympathy cards in bulk. "So many people I know are dying these days, and I don't want pay $1.99 a pop plus postage." Or what about the fact that I go to a doctor named Sorena Kierkegaard? (what's even weirder about that is that soren kierkegaard's middle name was Aabye. Soren a Kierkegaard. WACK)

Anyway, those stories were entirely irrelevant to where I'm going with this post. Point is, I'm doing this internship. And I just started working on editorial writing. The first editorial I wrote, though it was summarily rejected by the woman i'm interning with (not so much rejected as she told me I need to rewrite it better and on a different but related subject if i want even a chance to get it published), is quite TASPy. Plus, since it isn't going to published, if I don't post it here it'll languish forever in the corner of my desktop, sad and alone.

That said, I now present my (kind of bad and kind of melodramatic but also on a subject of great personal interest to me and i think of general interest to the peoples of our TASP) editorial about race and education in here in my lovely city. Call it my MLK day reflection.

Cool? Cool.


This Monday, more than 1200 Denverites gathered in City Park, undeterred by the sub-freezing temperatures, for the city’s 22nd annual Martin Luther King marade (march and parade). Many present were children, eager to share in the experience on their day off from school. They toted signs and waved to passerby, bouncing down Colfax to avoid the cold. Ardently and repeatedly, they spoke of King’s work for peace, equality, and justice.

However, to me the most impacting comment was one that touched on something closer to home. Said six year-old Matthew Pente proudly of King, “He made it so that black kids and white kids could be together.” I cannot help but be struck by Matthew’s simple statement, not because he is growing up in a generation of realized civil rights, but precisely because, forty years after King’s death, what he said is no more than a fantasy for most of Denver’s children.

Today, the vast majority of kids growing up in the metro area attend schools where theirs is the predominant race. In fact, 50% of blacks and close to three quarters of Latinos enroll in schools that are less than 10% white, and their white peers, the few (less than 7%) who choose to remain in the Denver Public Schools that is, cluster in a small number of affluent schools and well-funded magnet programs. More than half a century after Brown v. Board of Education proclaimed that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal,” public education in the city of Denver continues to exist in two separate and distinctly unequal realms.

Rarely do we allow ourselves to talk about public education in such overtly racial language. But to do so is necessary if we are to understand why segregation and inequality in Denver schools has persisted as it has, and how eventually this system will fail our students, all of them. Half will drop out before they graduate. Many more will lack the basic skills to continue their education. But most of all, these children will grow up in the polar antithesis of King’s dream, a system of racial and socioeconomic isolation so reinforced it will seem to them vastly permanent.

I know it does not have to be this way because I know it didn’t used to be. In 1973, Denver was actually the first major metropolitan area outside of the south to desegregate by order of the Supreme Court. Until the mid-80s, it enjoyed a remarkable level of integration. However, by the time I was born, in 1989, the “flight” of wealthy, white students to suburban and private schools, accompanied by an influx of Hispanic migrants, had torn gaping holes in funding, opportunity, and that old promise of integration. By the time the court’s ruling was lifted in 1995, four out of every five DPS students were minorities, and of the few remaining white students, nearly one fourth- myself included- attended schools that were at least 60% white. Separation had surfaced once again.

And with it came the twin demon of low expectations. All but three DPS high schools are now labeled as “low” achievers by the state. Most boast overcrowding, underfunding, and constant turnover of teachers and administrators. Education writer Jonathan Kozol calls this rampant breakdown of urban schools the “savage” inequality of American education. I like his term, because it exposes the disparity in our public schools in a way that is necessarily vicious. No, he says, this kind of isolation and poverty is not just unfair or even prejudiced. It is something much more. It is brutish, destructive, backward.

It is Philips Elementary in northeast Denver, an overwhelmingly black school with only one part time art teacher. And it is Richel Middle School, 92% Hispanic, which sends more than 100 students per year to city court for school infractions. It is North High School, where less than 40% of the entering freshman class this year will graduate. It is all these schools and so many more. It is the history of every child our education system has ever failed.

It is time we demand accountability for this inequity, not only from the city and school district, but from ourselves as well. Because it is us, the parents, the taxpayers, and most of all the students like me, who will bear the responsibility for seeing this through. And it is us most of all who deserve to watch it realized- clean, safe schools with high standards and humane discipline policies. All of these things are vastly important, of course. However, none of us, no Denver students, benefit from the continuing misconception that the only policy changes that matter are the ones that boost our CSAP scores, not when we know there is more. We know that we- black, Hispanic, Asian, white- do not benefit from learning in isolation from one another. We know too that we deserve better, that we should be the benefactors of that great dream King spoke about so many years ago. “Education is fundamental to all that we do,” our new governor told the state legislature yesterday. We know this, and we hope Mr. Ritter will not let it become just another campaign promise. Our future depends on it.


That's my story. Make of it what you will :-)

speaking of MLK

This was my prompt and essay for the SAT. I pride myself on my ability to relate a wide variety of prompts to our TASP seminar topic.

Prompt: Think carefully about the issue presented in the following excerpt and the assignment below:

"It is wrong to think of ourselves as indispensable. We would love to think that our contributions are essential, but we are mistaken if we think that any one person has made the world what it is today. The contributions of individual people are seldom as important or as necessary as we think they are."

Do we put too much value on the ideas or actions of individual people? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.


Essay:
When studying history, we tend to look at the leaders of important movements--the individuals who have made a difference in our world. Such a narrow focus, however, undermines the contributions of people working together. Far more important is the effect of various groups or cooperative units uniting to achieve a common goal.

The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960's offers an excellent example of this point. Classrooms tend to emphasize the leaders of this movement--most notably, Dr. Martin Luther King (MLK), Jr. In my high school history class, I would say an average of about half of the time studying the Civil Rights Movement was devoted to MLK and his revolutionary ideas of nonviolent protest. The curious thing is that these ideas were not so revolutionary for the time period, and that focusing on MLK draws attention away from the groups that really created change in the 1960's and the decades before then. Groups like the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People played a far larger role in causing change in the Jim Crow South. These groups organized sit-ints, united African Americans around the country, and were able to put the Civil Rights Movement into legislative action. King's 'March on Washington' speech was not the expression of a single voice against institutionalized racism; it was the expression of the thousands of voices behind the movement. King was, like so many other movement leaders throughout history, far more of a figurehead than an essential individual. The movement could have lived without King.

It could not have lived, however, without the individuals supporting the various groups formed to address racism. These individuals, the ones whose names the world may never know or care to discover, were integral to creating social change in the name of justice. There was not a single person that was absolutely necessary for the success of the Civil Rights Movement, but the collective unity of such individuals was absolutely necessary. Recognizing this leads one to discover a fundamental truth regarding an individual's place in society. One person working alone can accomplish little or nothing in this world; each person is dispensable. However, individuals choosing to work together can make a difference. Thus, the fear that one's place in the world is unimportant and unable to produce change is fundamentally misplaced. Each of us has the power to contribute to our world, to change it and alter it, to motivate others to do the same, but we cannot do it alone. We must unite for a common cause, and work with each other to produce change.

and so I eloquently label this post: a list of stuff

1. My choir beat the vocal crap out of the other choirs in one of the annual concert choir competitions on Friday. We're the only choir that has won the competition...ever, in the six years that it's been going. As in, wow I love choir.

2. I applied to Java Detour and got / already had an interview. I think they're going to hire me. What this entails: free coffee, working in a relatively small space with evening and early weekend hours (about 5am on Saturdays), free coffee, getting paid, free coffee. PS--I quit my other job in like November. Coffee is so much cooler.

3. NHS is crazy. We had the longest meeting ever last week. Things we're doing within the next month: a run/walk, t-shirts, a blood drive, a Valentine's dance fundraiser, the list goes on and on. For the record, my t-shirt is going to say 'prez,' mainly because it's semi-gangsta, is less in-your-face than spelling out 'president,' and also erases the possibility of strangers looking at my last name and thinking...what the hell.

Tomorrow is MLK day--represent. I think I'll wear my TASP shirt.

From the RyanBlog Archives

January 23, 2006

I have now devoted what can only be termed a pitiful number of hours to writing crappy essays for a summer program I'll never get into anyway. I truly wish this summer program wasn't so cool, because then I really wouldn't care. But the idea of spending six weeks in St. Louis studying the civil rights movement (for free, may I add) is just about the coolest thing since Al Gore invented the internet.

Damn straight.

(P.S. Said crappy essays are now circulating like crazy among the BabyTASPers (at least 35 of them). This is what one post to the effect of "i can let you read my essays" on college confidential gets you. Biggest Mistake Ever.)

Happy 79th, Mr. Mondale

I hope your day wasn't filled with the crushing weight of being the most failed presidential candidate of all time.

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In other pertinent news, a couple small updates from my life:

1. Last night I went to the Colorado Yale Association Holiday EXTRAVAGANZA. Except, they just called it a "holiday party." Boring. In any event, it was populated by a mix of old men in bowties and ridiculously attractive current students. Plus, all five of the early admits showed up, so I got to meet them. We're an interesting bunch, I think. There's the 6 foot 9 (!!!!) basketball recruit from Colorado Springs, the black, gay boy who goes to military school in Texas (uhh), the rich prep school girl, the absurdly intelligent hipster with a thing for biophysics, and me. Some covertly rude remarks were made by various parties about my school, which I guess is okay because I'm basically the queen of disparaging comments about my school, but it still felt kind of strange. Strange was the operative word of the night, actually. But I'm glad I went because, as it turns out, Yale is pretty cool.

2. One of my documentaries (not the bad one you all have seen, a slightly less bad one) was accepted to a film festival in Durango. I'm excited. Why, you ask? Well, Durango, in addition to being at the ass end of nowhere in southwestern Colorado, is quite close to Telluride. So i'm sensing a field trip to the land of Nunn. There will be photographs, I promise.

3. Word on the street is it's 60 degrees in NYC. There have been two blizzards here in the past two weeks. Damnit, Jordan. I'll trade you.

That's about it from here. I've been pretty much trapped in my house for the majority of break (see update #3), so there's not a lot to report. However, it has given me an inordinate time to reminisce about the past year. It goes without saying I think, but I still can't believe how lucky I am to have gone to TASP and met all of you (warning: corniness ahead). The summer itself was the single best experience I've ever had, but it's more than that. I had a pretty tough junior year, and was generally coming off of three years of feeling pretty undervalued at school. For nineteen strangers to make me feel not only remarkably comfortable, but accepted and valued, it blew me away. I don't want us to lose touch because all of you are remarkable, and I need to see what amazing things you do with your lives. So keep my curiousity in check and drop me an email every now and then. That would be grand :-)

On that note, I bid you farewell. I hope you're all celebrating the end of college apps (or close to the end, if you have any due on the 15th). Now comes the waiting. Ole!

OVER AND OUT.