homoLudens

Technical difficulties overcome. Registration is open for both the pre-gathering Manila Intermediate and Frontier Server trainings. [edBloggerSF2003 News]
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Two news stories, proving that the predicted and expected rarely arrive: the Catholic Vatican II’s surprising political legacy and ROC Taiwan’s gay pride parade.
Which juxtapostion, on this second day of a fifty-third year, Northern
California autumn-winter rain in the air, from the secure perspective
of a left coast redoubt, brings odd comfort and remembrance of 
this neglected MacNeice jewel:

Snow

The room was suddenly rich and the
great bay-window was
Spawning snow and pink roses against it
Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:
World is suddener than we fancy it.

World is crazier and more of it
than we think,
Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion
A tangerine and spit the pips and feel
The drunkenness of things being various.

And the fire flames with a bubbling
sound for world
Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes–
On the tongue on the eyes on the ears on the palms of one’s hands–
There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.

The Associated Press 10/26/2003, 3:22 p.m. ET LANSING, Mich. (AP) ó
“Six companies responsible for teaching 17,000 Michigan’s charter
school students fail to produce test scores that match even low-scoring
traditional public schools, records show???.” [via the useful (though
without RSS feed and permalinks) Media
Transparency ]
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