A lot profs here tend to give annotated bibliographies as a research assignment just to get students comfortable with and practice in searching for scholarly information from a variety of sources. It's not a bad idea since most of them have never used anything but Google or other general search engine, where finding scholarly info takes a little more skill then just plugging in a few key words.
One such assignment asks them to create a bibliography of sources about a religious figure the instructor assigns. They need something like 5 books and 10 journal articles. For about two weeks now I've been working repeatedly with a student who was assigned Hillel, an early Talmudic scholar. Well, as it happens we have no books on Hillel. That's not such a big deal, though, since the students only need to cite the books, not necessarily read them and we can find books at other libraries without much difficulty. Journal articles, on the other hand, has been a real challenge. We don't have tons of database subscriptions the way research libraries have, so it was very challenging to find stuff. Of course, we also looked in Google Scholar and other free web specialty databases and search engines, but all of us were surprised to discover how little we could find. Now, of course, I do have access to SJSU's library databases, which includes JSTOR, and there I was able to find articles. But, I'm not actually allowed to share that info with the student since she can't find that using resources available to her.
The few articles we were able to find also did not lead to many other articles since they are mostly relying on primary source interpretations. But, one article we tracked down from JSTOR that was indexed by GScholar, had a citation that simply said: "R E J, XXIV, 68-81". So, first task was to find out, what is REJ. I searched around and discovered it is a French journal on Judaism. The student asked the instructor if she could use it in her bib. He said, OK, but then she wasn't sure how to cite it, since we didn't have the article in hand. So, this morning I searched for the article itself, and lo and behold, I find it in Google Books by way of the Internet Archive. Turns out it's from 1892 and the bound volumes of the the journal must have been scanned by Google. For the curious, here it is. Neither I nor the student can actually read the article since it's in French, but, hey, she's got her additional citation and I learned something new about GBooks (I didn't realize they scanned bound journal volumes).
Had a rare opportunity to meet new folks on Tuesday evening that was really enjoyable. It was a get together of parents of students at the school organized by the Eagle Rock Elementary Foundation at a wine bar on Colorado. No babysitter, so I went solo. Met a number of interesting folks, including a documentary film maker who also teaches in Community Studies at UCSC (and I thought my commute was bad!), a communications prof at USC and several others. I guess what stood out for me was the contrast with our experience at Crestwood, where I never really got the sense that we would ever get to know any of the other parents in a meaningful way. Here I am hopeful that it is different. I suspect some of that has to do with the fact that the ER parents we've met so far have by and large been professionals, whereas at Crestwood it seemed there was more of a blue collar crowd of dock workers and the like. Don't know if that makes me classist, but it was just clearly easier to strike up and sustain a conversation with the ER parents.
One of the guys I talked to for quite a while told me there's also a fathers group that gets together every once in awhile. He's gonna email me to let me know about their next outing. Seriously, I would like nothing better than to start building some friendships with people who live nearby.
Less hopeful about developments on the political front. It's hard to know what to make of the so-called health care reform winding its way through Congress. Obviously, increasing the number of insured is a good thing, but I heard a pretty harsh critique of the plan(s) on Democracy Now yesterday from a Harvard medical professor who is also the director of Physicians for a National Health Program. Her argument in a nutshell is that while the plans will increase the rolls of the insured, they do so only by increasing power of the private insurance lobby who get the lion's share of newly insured at premiums that are still uncontrolled. Combine this with subsidizing premiums, whether through direct taxes or shifting of spending, and you get another version of corporate welfare. To the argument that something is better than nothing and that this is just the first step towards a more sane policy, she responds that change in the future will actually be more difficulty because the private health insurance lobby will be strengthened. Still, while I would also say a single-payer system is the way to go, we know that for a variety of reasons that won't get passed under current circumstances, so it's really hard to know what to support.
Got in another ride this past Sunday. Better Half and Little One and I first stopped off at a tire store in Gdale to get BH's flat tire repaired and from there I started my ride. I headed toward the LA river bike path that runs parallel to I-5 and Griffith Park. Can't say there was much to it in terms of scenery. The LA river is pretty dismal and riding alongside the 5 with its constant hum of traffic is not exactly peaceful. That said, I did see some rather interesting birds in the river bed. Might have been some sort of Heron. At the end of the path, I circled back around through the edge of Griffith Park on Riverside/Crystal Springs and then wound my way through Atwater Village, Glassell Park and finally back through Eagle Rock. I definitely want to explore Griffith Park more, both by bike and on foot. All told, the ride was just shy of 16 miles on the Brommie. Doable, but as I've noted before, the Brommie is not really ideal for longer rides. So, yes, I'm starting to think I'd like to get a third bike, one specifically for recreational rides. My other two bikes are more utilitarian.
In other news, there's another cold front in relations with BH. Lots of bickering going on and then one evening about a week ago, she just completely lost it on me in front of Little One. LO got very scared, in fact. These outbursts are intense, but invariably we perceive them much differently. To me, they are signs of existential crises. To her, they seem to be no big deal. This difference in perception makes resolution difficult.
Saturday we hosted a Halloween Party for LO and her friends. Sent an evite to all the kids in her class and also invited a friend from after school program as well as some neighboring kids. Predictably, most of the parents did not even bother to respond to the evite. But, two kids from her class came along with the kid from after school program and the two boys across the street.
I had wanted to provide the kids some structure for the party rather than have them all run around wildly. To that end, I had prepared some arts and crafts projects and a couple of ideas for games. Unfortunately, in the end, chaos reigned. I got no support from BH on providing structure; instead she got to socialize with the adult guests while I tried to deal with kids and pick up the pizza (next time I'm definitely doing delivery, even though it was darn good pie). LO had multiple meltdowns when things weren't going as she had hoped, one little boy fell down the stairs (luckily no harm done), and another kid broke a glass pane in our coffee table (again, we were just lucky she didn't get hurt). On top of it all, the Schmaz shows up in a French Maid costume, and despite my expressed request to NOT lift up her skirt to show her panties when the guests were there (our neighbors across the street are fairly religious, and I was concerned that they might be offended, not to mention the inappropriateness of such behavior at a kids party), she did. So, all in all, I pretty much hated the party. Next party opportunity, I'm not lifting a finger.
There was some redemption in having one of the kids stay for trick or treating and then spending the night. She's a third grader and goes to the same after school program. Her parents are very cool and it is nice to see LO bond quickly with another kid. They had fun trick or treating and the following day. Hopefully, we'll be doing more with them in the future.
