Monday evening, the Richardson ISD Board of Trustees had a special called meeting with a single item on the agenda: a closed meeting for "Superintendent's Evaluation."
Long story short, we still don't know the end of this story. The school board met in closed session for over five hours and adjourned without returning to open session, taking any votes, or making any announcements. But don't let that stop me from speculation.
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* Dallas City Council.
Regular readers will know how I've been recommending that Richardson's Code of Ethics get strengthened since the embarrassment of the tenure of Mayor Laura Maczka, convicted of bribery and tax fraud and awaiting sentencing. OK, I've been screaming for it, although the City Council, in its infinite wisdom, has taken a status quo ante attitude that there's no trouble here in River City.
I was pleased to see that the City of Dallas, with even greater problems than Richardson, is taking an important step to combatting public corruption. D Magazine has the details.
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After the jump, more random thoughts.
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That moment has passed. Nearly two decades later, I would now cross the street to avoid some of the people who were at my New Year’s Eve party. They, in turn, would not only refuse to enter my house, they would be embarrassed to admit they had ever been there. In fact, about half the people who were at that party would no longer speak to the other half. The estrangements are political, not personal. Poland is now one of the most polarized societies in Europe, and we have found ourselves on opposite sides of a profound divide, one that runs through not only what used to be the Polish right but also the old Hungarian right, the Spanish right, the French right, the Italian right, and, with some differences, the British right and the American right, too."
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This is Anne Applebaum's personal account of the decline of Western liberal democracy and the rise of authoritarianism.
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At the November 15, 2021, Richardson ISD school board meeting, roughly thirty people spoke during the public comment section of the meeting. By my rough estimate, the speakers were evenly divided. Call it what you will. Left vs Right. Liberal vs Conservative. Masked vs Unmasked. Vaxed vs Unvaxed. Pro-DEI vs Anti-CRT. I became increasingly annoyed at something that I couldn't quite put my finger on. Then it struck me. It was like watching improv at a comedy club when the actors don't know the first rule of improv.
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"June 10, 2019, is a big day," Superintendent Jeannie Stone said. "It's a big, big day." It was the day that the Richardson ISD Board of Trustees adopted the RISD Equity, Diversity, Inclusion (EDI) Policy in a unanimous 7-0 vote. "Once approved, trustees and members of the public delivered a standing ovation."
That was 2019. It was the same year that RISD adopted a 5-2 single-member district voting system, putting to rest a lawsuit against the district for violating voting rights of minorities. It was the same year the Texas PTA named Dr. Jeannie Stone "Superintendent of the Year." All of that was just two years ago, but somehow it now seems like so long ago.
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"Indians," like Jews, Gypsies, slaves, and "free negroes," wrote the
Georgia Journal in 1825, were "a kind of citizens of an inferior
order." What was to be done with them? By the 1830s, the expression
"the Indian question" was circulating widely in the United States."
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The answer to the question posed by Georgia whites in 1825, was voluntary self-deportation, forced expulsion, or not necessarily as a last resort, extermination.
"RISD’s diversity is a community strength, and as educators we have an obligation to curate an inclusive academic and social culture rooted in equitable practices and opportunities."
So states the Richardson ISD. The policy was developed by the RISD community. Apparently not everyone is on board.
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The Richardson ISD is performing its first-ever redistricting exercise, having just adopted single member districts in 2019. Monday night, at the meeting of the RISD Board of Trustees, the three maps that the district is considering were shown to the public for feedback.
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| From 2019 11 21 Kom Ombo and Edfu |
Today's photo-of-the-day is from Edfu, Egypt. It shows a dress shop.
The City Council of Richardson held three secret meetings to set their Council Goals for the 2021-2023 term. I say secret because there were no videos. There were no minutes. The only way for you to know what was said, and by whom, was if one of the three members of the public who managed to find their way upstairs to the chamber of secrets told you what happened. Your faithful correspondent was one of them. You can read about that part of the story using the links at the bottom of this post.
Today's photo-of-the-day is from the exhibit "Van Gogh and the Olive Groves" at the Dallas Museum of Art. It includes a series of paintings made between June and December, 1889, while Van Gogh was a patient at the asylum of Saint-Rémy. The man was clearly on a roll in the last year of his life. One Van Gogh painting (not in this exhibit) sold at auction in 2017 for $81 million dollars. Going by that, this one small room in the DMA contains perhaps a billion dollars worth of art. The exhibit has a letter from Van Gogh to his brother on display in which Van Gogh said he was working on a series of of paintings of olive groves with a hope of selling them for "ornamentation for bourgeoisie homes." That's some decoration!
Click for a bonus photo.
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The trustees of the Richardson ISD school board held a three hour training session Tuesday night on team-building. You might think this was well-timed, given recent events, but it's been on the board calendar all year. Texas State law requires team-building training every year. This week was RISD's turn. The trainer was Kay Douglas from the Texas Association of School Boards (TASB). She was excellent. She is knowledgeable, experienced, and generous with sharing her learned wisdom.
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After the jump, more random thoughts.
There's a gaping divide in politics today, and nowhere is it on show more than in schools across the country. Richardson ISD is no exception, where the school board president abruptly resigned, in part no doubt because of public invective hurled at her and in part perhaps because of a split on the school board on how to deal with a pandemic.
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His cousin Freddie brought him on the heist one hot night in early
June. Ray Carney was having one of his run-around days—uptown,
downtown, zipping across the city. Keeping the machine humming. First
up was Radio Row, to unload the final three consoles, two RCAs and a
Magnavox, and pick up the TV he left."
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It's a heist novel. It's a character study of a man halfway between legitimate businessman and small-time crook. It's a study of a society that makes it hard to tell the difference.
Earlier this week we looked at how redistricting was going to affect Richardson's representation in Austin. I described it as Richardson being scattered to the winds. Today, we look at how redistricting is going to affect Richardson's representation in Washington, DC. It's the same old story.
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What do Richardson and Rockwall have in common? They are both represented by Justin Holland in redrawn Texas House District 33. He, along with Angie Chen Button and Ana-Maria Ramos, will represent Richardson in the new redistricting maps passed by the Texas legislature. (Correction: Plano's Scott Sanford will also represent the tiny northwest corner of Richardson, at least until the 2022 election.) Say goodbye to Jeff Leach, whose Texas House District 67 has been redrawn and shifted far to the northeast in Collin County.
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"Can you imagine us years from today
Sharing a park bench quietly?
How terribly strange to be seventy."
I wasn't yet twenty when Simon and Garfunkel released the album "Bookends" and I first heard those lyrics from "Old Friends" that would haunt me all my life. Fifty years on, I don't find it terribly strange to be seventy. What I find terribly strange is to reflect on the fact that there are no songs about what it feels like to be 120. The milestones in my life are piling up behind me. The road ahead is becoming less congested. The horizon is ever closer. Melancholy fills me. That is what I find to be terribly strange.
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| From 2019 11 21 Kom Ombo and Edfu |
Today's photo-of-the-day is from Edfu, Egypt. It shows a fresh air butcher in a street market.
Bonus photos after the jump.
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| From 2019 11 21 Kom Ombo and Edfu |
Today's photo-of-the-day is from the Temple of Horus in Edfu, Egypt. It's a relatively modern shrine, if you can call 2,000 years old modern. it was built in the Ptolemaic Kingdom between 237 and 57 BC. Greek pharaohs. Greek architecture. Those columns would look at home in ancient Athens (or on a federal building in Washington, DC). It is one of the best preserved shrines in Egypt.
Source: New Yorker.
Since I was a young boy in the 1950s, I remember hearing the lure of electricity generated by nuclear power. "Too cheap to meter" was the promise. Fission nuclear reactors never delivered on that promise and turned out to have such serious shortcomings — think Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima — that fewer fission power plants are being built today than are being retired.
Fusion power promised to solve all those problems. No meltdowns, no leftover radioactive waste, no need to mine or handle uranium or plutonium. Fusion power always seemed to be right around the corner. Today I learned, it's still right around the corner, but we're not even trying to get there anymore. At least not seriously.
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Ever since you were a boy, you've dreamt of being Kung Fu Guy. You are
not Kung Fu Guy. You are currently Background Oriental Male, but
you've been practicing. Maybe tomorrow will be the day."
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Is it a screenplay? Is it a memoir? Is it a comedy? Is it a satire? Is it an indictment of Hollywood and American racism? Yes to all.
What the Customer Wanted
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In 2010, the City of Richardson embarked on the long journey of revitalization of the West Spring Valley Corridor. It started with a series of community meetings. The residents were clear on what they wanted to see in southwest Richardson: Urban. Mixed-use. Walkable. Pocket parks. Think Parisian boulevard.
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The poker game at the Horseshoe Saloon was getting interesting. On one side of the table were arrayed seven regulars. Across from them, with all eyes on him, was "Hot Chicken" Kirk. Although not a regular player, "Hot Chicken" played frequently enough that he knew each player's tics and tells. Would this be the game he used that knowledge for his own advantage?Source: Casino Royale.
