I’ve noticed a slew of advertisements recently, both on-line and on late night television (and herein lies a clue, future detectives, to my sleeping habits) for various training opportunities in law enforcement, national security, and various jobs for dealing with criminals and incarceration. Here is an email I just received a few moments ago:

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I recently sat in on a meeting of a group of pre-K through second grade teachers planning their school's Halloween celebration.They were charged with coming up with Halloween games for the event. One of the teachers provided the succint suggestion: " Take a traditional game, like bowling or bean bag toss, and put a ghost on it." This seemed to me to be a wise, efficient, and sufficiently scary recommendation for a holiday that calls for just the right balance between terror and delight.

More and more, we are hearing calls for a more creative workforce activated by, as the business writer Daniel H. Pink calls it, "a whole new mind". The idea seems to be that in an information economy, developing creative and critical thinking skills is becoming increasingly necessary for our citizenry in order to effectively adapt to an ever-changing workplace and a radically fluctuating economy. If this is indeed true (and I believe that it is), our education systems must actively support learners in becoming increasing flexible, collaborative, and innovative.

A classic grade school science (or is it art?) activity calls for charcoal briquettes, ammonia, salt, water, food coloring, and bluing. What is bluing? Bluing is a dye used to treat clothing that has yellowed with age and use. Here is copy from the website for Mrs. Stewart’s Bluing:

One of the ways to understand the once and future role of the arts in school improvement is to poke around in the iconography of schools themselves. What is the history and meaning of bell schedules, of the intercom, of desks in rows, of asphalt playgrounds, of chain-link fences, of pencils, of erasers, of cursive writing, of blackboards, of whiteboards, of calculators, of computers, of notebook paper? Investigating the images and artifacts of public education maps the subjective terrain that arts education advocates work within.

Bela Legosi’s Count Dracula, perhaps the most famous creature of the night, was filmed entirely during the daytime. The same movie set for the daytime Dracula was inhabited at night by an entirely different cast and crew to shoot the Spanish language version of Bram Stoker’s classic tale.

Is there any lead in lead pencils? Not a bit of it. So why are they called “lead pencils”? Wikipedia reveals all:

Who knows what long term subtle brain damage is caused by falling asleep in the glow of the cathode tube rays of cable television? I do it often enough to eventually find out. I usually make it through half of the “Daily Show” on Comedy Central, and then wake up in the middle of the night to unfunny paid advertisements for various questionable products.

As part of my work in arts education, I spend a lot of time traveling to conferences and meetings in other cities, which means I spend a lot of time in airports. I love flying, but like an albatross, I’m fine up in the air, but all too often have an awkward experience on the ground. My departure gate is frequently moved at the last minute to the far other end of the airport. If I have a layover, I end up waiting for the shuttle bus to my connecting flight (boarding in a few minutes - the last flight of the evening), wondering whether it is going to show up at all, let alone on time.