The days are long and the years are short

Chess, the Cold War musical. We saw it with starstraf and sweetie. It was in Arlington, so we had to go to Virginia. We actually approached from Rock Creek Parkway and Potomac Park, so we went under the patio of the Kennedy Center.

All the signature songs went off well. My favorite is Anthem. starstraf 's sweetie likes "Nobody on Nobody's Side" best. The ensemble dancers were a bit cheesy, which grew on us over the course of the play.

We took Emily to the zoo. It was pretty cold, but we had some fun. We said goodbye to Tai Shan, the baby (who's more of a teenager) panda who will be traveling to China to see if he can meet a nice girl panda. We met up with a family that we had met once before at the zoo. I know the mom from the Internets.

I made a soup of orange vegetables. It's pretty good in a creamy soup way.

We told Emily about 9/11 today in terms of major events of the decade. It may take her a while to ask her questions about the event. We compared it to Mr. 'Splody Pants, just that they involved airplanes and bracketed the 'Naughties in terms of time. We've mentioned the war in Afghanistan a few times. She may have made more sense of it this time, since we put 9/11 as the cause of it and since the father of the family has been in Afghanistan. She may also remember that the father of her school friend has also been in Afghanistan.

Anyway, we're trying to give her the view of history without depressing her or frightening her. She is pretty sensitive to these things. She often has questions about things like that.

When starstraf and I went to the museum yesterday, there was a field trip there.

I noticed first that there were no boys in the class.

Then I noticed that they spoke Spanish. The teacher could translate from English. Most of the girls could also speak and read English, but if it got confusing, they went to Spanish.

Then I noticed that they were spending a long time discussing vaccinations.

Then I noticed that they were talking about what vaccines children need. Young children. And about vaccines required to enroll children in school.

Then I looked at some of the girls' midsections. Some of them definitely *could* be pregnant.

Then I heard the museum tour director ask the girls if their children were born yet. Actually the way she asked it, was are they on the inside or the outside?

So, the conclusion to draw is that the field trip was from the school for pregnant girls. Right?

PS. I am giving myself major points for understanding most of the translations.

I'm a Democrat.

Emily, mrmoosie and I went to a march  an event in support of the public option for health insurance reform. We were late, the bulk of the people were later. Eventually, the group paraded around the fountain. The group had had a sponsor for parading on the Mall, but at some point (maybe when it was clear that there would not be many people) the sponsor pulled out. It is probably just as well, the group would have been dwarfed by the size of the Mall. mrmoosie is trying to convince himself that there were 300-400 people there. I'm thinking 200. We "thronged" with them for several revolutions of the fountain. Emily was given a preprinted sign ("Standing together for Health Insurance Reform" on the front and "Thank You" on the back). We worked up a bit of a sweat (good for our personal health) and got a bit of a sunburn (bad for our personal health). Eventually, a PA system was brought out and people told their own health care horror stories.

The same group is going to try something bigger in October.

Beyond the goal of teaching the curriculum. Is there a set of actions that we want all children to have experienced? Are there values that we want to share?

Another blog was talking about overnight field trips (8th grade). Those are boondoggles from one point of view (particularly here). We have all the resources to provide everything locally with no need for an overnight trip.

On the other hand, an overnight trip provides a world of experiences that are unique to the experience of having an overnight trip with your classmates.

My neighbor just alerted me to the risk of copperheads in our neighborhood. With the heavy rains, and our nearby river, they are getting flooded out of their 'dens' and are trying to get to a smaller stream. This is also the time when baby copperheads are born (late summer, early fall).

But all I want to do is get on the computer.

Although our local newspaper is making a case for Maryland catching up to CA and MA in biotech, it's not quite correct. It's leaving out NJ/PA/DE, which is a good-sized cluster--just not in a single state for classification purposes. MD is commonly considered to rank 4th, and a fairly distant 4th.

Sigh.

There was a train crash on the Red Line at rush hour today. I will be hoping that none of the people that I know commute on that line were injured or killed.

Yes, this is the line that serves CUA. Yes, this is the line that I use to get downtown as much as I can (driving in the District is not fun). I'm sure that it will be snarled up for days.

I am listening to the press conference about the school closing. One of the big issues is that the SATs were scheduled for this school on Saturday.
Another issue is that student privacy is being probed pretty hard, since the media would like to report the epidemiology to give an idea of the risk.

Dr. Weast just stood up and gave a strong, strong defense of student privacy. Good man. He compared it to some of the reactions in the early 80s to AIDS cases.

The medical officer explained the difference between suspect, probable and confirmed cases. She also mentioned that Atlanta is still the only place that MD can get probable cases turned into confirmed cases. The CDC was aiming to have test kits to the states on Friday, but MD doesn't have one yet and is assuming a delay at the CDC in confirming the accuracy of the test kits.

The special election is close. There is only a separation of 87 votes and 500-600 absentee ballots to be counted tomorrow.