Cancer/shmancer (part deux).  I woke up this morning to find an e-mail from one of my oldest and best friends "complaining" that while I had mentioned other friends in the blog, she had yet to make an appearance.  (Here you go, CALM.)  One question she asked was whether in the daily routine some things had become less important; "stupid politics" was one of her examples.  But for me, at least, the answer is no.  This isn't an original thought, but I don't think a cancer diagnosis changed me; it simply made me more like what I already was.  Politics does seem vastly more stupid this year than most, but I can't stop myself from watching the infuriating debates, discussions, and analyses by politicans and pundits.  (No more so than I can stop my rising blood pressure when I hear "pundants" or designers talking about their "ascetic" or the constant use of "very unique.") 

I was awake for about 15 minutes this morning before I had a blood pressure surge.  The two-hour topic today on "Morning Joe" was education, and the first two interviewees were Michelle Rhee (not a fan here) and Gov. Chris Christie (ditto).  There was nothing surprising in their talking points: unions are bad, charter schools are good, and we need more evaluation of schools and teachers.  Wrong, questionable, and wrong.  If there were two words over the last decade that almost make me glad I'm not still teaching, they'd be assessment and rubric.  No matter what idea came up in discussions of, say, revamping the general education program, someone was bound to say, "But how can we assess that?"  And if the assessment wasn't "objective" and couldn't be tied to a rubric, the idea would die.  Perhaps that's why the various committees on general education are now in their sixth year.

Luckily, "Morning Joe" later had some really solid guests and a smart discussion.  One of the most valuable voices on education is Diane Ravitch, whose two-part series in the last two issues of the New York Review of Books gives just a brief suggestion of her take on what works and what doesn't in American education.  The last issue also contains a beautiful reminiscence by the widow of the historian Tony Judt, who died in 2010 of ALS.  During the seven weeks I was in the abduction brace, when it cut into my skin, when I couldn't take it off so that Mohamed had to wipe me down every day, when one of the happiest moments of the day was just before sleep when Mohamed would loosen it just enough so that I could breathe comfortably, and when I sometimes thought that I really couldn't do it any longer, I'd remember Judt, writing (dictating, really) his last thoughtful essays on memory as he wasted away.  And thinking of him and his courage, I'd have tell myself that there were a lot worse situations than an awkward brace.

This isn't at all what I planned to write about when I started the post.  Nor did I expect to look up and see snow falling for only the second time this winter.  The first snow of the year always, but especially this year, makes me think of Frost's poem "The Onset."  The speaker says, "I almost stumble looking up and round, / As one who overtaken by the end / Gives up his errand, and lets death descend / Upon him where he is, with nothing done / To evil, no important triumph won, / More than if life had never been begun."  The second (and last) stanza seems to console us, since "winter death has never tried / The earth but it has failed," yet the consolation evaporates more quickly than the snow as what's left behind by the disappearing snow (compared to a snake) is nothing white (here, as so often in Frost, a sign of death) except a birch (the natural world), a clump of houses (the social world), and a church (the spiritual world).  There's nothing to be frightened of.

Next time I'll stay more focused.