Since the storm is coming, I'd remind you of this page I'm collecting snow poetry on. ORD was showing 5 hour delays a few minutes ago and there are expectations of 6-10 inches.
UPDATE: Wednesday, March 5 2008. Ann Arbor Public Schools closed. Check the Arborwiki sledding page for your favorite place to slide.
Ann Arbor City snow desk 734-994-2359
Ann Arbor Public Schools closing info 734-994-8684
For Ann Arbor school closings information, consult your second grader, who is planning a play date. If you don't know about that you can check the Ann Arbor school closing information page which says in part:
Inclement weather may require closing schools or changing school schedules and bus routes. The decision is made after an early inspection of road conditions and school facilities, as well as current or forecasted weather conditions. When schools are closed or schedules and/or bus routes are changed, information is sent immediately to the major radio and television stations-by 6:00 a.m. if at all possible.
If you know of good Paczki in Ann Arbor, Arborwiki would like to know abou them. On my block downtown they are being sold at Amadeus.
If you have a kindergartener starting in the fall, it's time for the Ann Arbor Public Schools Kindergarten Roundup schedule. The Burns Park dates are 2/11/08 and 2/19/08, and if you have any questions as a new parent to the school I'd be happy to help find someone to answer. The 2/11 date is National African American Parent Involvement Day, which was founded by Joseph Dulin:
"Every parent wants their child to have a better quality of life than they themselves had. It is the American dream, and for many African Americans, this dream has not been realized as a result of their child's failure in school. Education is the key to success and parents are educators' greatest allies." Joseph Dulin
Elliot Soloway on the Scoble Show talked about building educational software for cell phones. (and a bunch of other stuff). I had the good fortune to be walking down the right street in Ann Arbor this morning and spent twenty minutes with him talking about his new company, GoKnow Learning.
from Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking February, 1977, as rescued from the Internet Archive.
There is a JSTOR version of this with good formatting, and at least one other copy in the wild. Thanks to John Hritz for the pointer.
Apologies for the � marks which are a sign of uncertain provenance. In deference to copyright I have included only the first section of the article.
Monetary Theory and the Great Capitol Hill Baby Sitting Co-op Crisis
By Joan Sweeney and Richard James Sweeney
Sole responsibility for the views expressed here is the author�s. In particular, this does not represent a statement of Treasury views. The authors wish to thank Sevn W. Arndt, David Klock, Dennis E. Logue, Eric Olsen, Jean Willett, and Thomas D. Willett for helpful comments.
Joan Sweeney is Mrs. Richard James Sweeney. Richard James Sweeney is deputy director, Office of International Monetary Research, United States Treasury.
Two of Washington D.C.�s most splendid institutions�the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the Capitol Hill Baby Sitting Co-operative�are currently fighting their own separate battles against the scourge of inflation. Neither seems to be winning.
Whatever the lessons of the board�s experience, the lessons from the co-op�s are clear. (1) The co-op has been increasing its money supply ("scrip") per capita, by running budget deficits, and this has generated inflationary forces. (2) However, the main "commodity" this scrip money buys is baby-sitting time, and the price of baby sitting is constitutionally pegged at one unit of scrip for every one-half hour of baby sitting. Hence, this system of price controls means the inflationary pressure does not drive up the scrip-price of baby sitting, inflation is suppressed, and shortages are found. (3) The political process of rectifying the situation holds little hope. Few members see the problem as fundamentally monetary, but instead believe others are not doing their part in removing the shortages.
For the uninitiated, it may help to know that there are several forms of baby-sitting co-ops. One popular form is the bookkeeping system. In the most rudimentary version, members earn one credit for each hour of sitting, and lose one credit for every hour someone tolerates their kids. A co-op at this stage develops rules�for fairness, usefulness, for expediency�and to make the thing go at all. For example, people want to go out on Friday and Saturday more than on other days. Either there are rules�"If you go out on weekends, you must sit on weekends"�or there are rewards�"Time-and-a-half on weekends." And, of course, there must be rules to keep people from moving away when they�re "down" on hours.
The major alternative to the bookkeeping system, if there are many people involved, is a "scrip" system�the scrip is pieces of heavy paper. In the Capitol Hill Baby Sitting Co-op, a splendid organization to which we belonged for two years, a unit of scrip "pays" for one-half hour of sitting time. There are good reasons for preferring scrip to bookkeeping. An arithmetic bookkeeping mistake will show members as a whole "ahead" or "down" in hours, and the problem can be hard to resolve. With scrip, the hours earned automatically cancel against the hours spent when the sitter is "paid."
The co-op has enjoyed vicissitudes that make Nixonomics look good by contrast. A few years ago the co-op had a recession. Few people felt they could go out but many wanted to babysit. Now there is great difficulty rounding up sitters for all those who want to go out. This is a classic sort of inflationary pressure�too much money (scrip) chasing too few goods (sitters).
ANN ARBOR -- What started as a scare over a suspected elementary school measles outbreak has become a mystery Thursday when officials discovered an error with the test that supposedly confirmed the virus in an Ann Arbor school girl.
"We now know this is not what we were told it was. It is not measles," said Michigan Department of Health spokesman T.J. Bucholz.. "But we still don't know what it is. It could be a rash or something else."
A mix-up at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta apparently resulted in officials in Michigan getting erroneous confirmation of measles. Bucholz said there was an apparent "transcription error" involving a real measles case in Texas.
The investigation into just what has afflicted nine elementary and preschool-age children will continue, said Bucholz, but authorities believe whatever it is, it's probably not life threatening.
Waiting for confirmation from the school system, county health department etc. about this.
I'm not going to try to give an authoritative report on the measles outbreak that has hit Ann Arbor, but rather to direct you to the places that have the current information as it changes. You'll see whatever news I've bookmarked in the daily posts here or on the delicious tag annarbor+measles
Google News aggregates news - there was an AP story that went out globally, and the most local reporting is from the Ann Arbor News. See a Google News search for Ann Arbor measles for current information. The Snooze has its own search engine, hidden away; search MLive for measles which covers blog news from that site too.
Time for back to school! Here's a roundup of the best posts I've found.
Our school year has started well, and we're adjusting to new routines. I went to the first day of school with Saul at Burns Park, met a bunch of parents at the PTO coffee, and am eagerly awaiting the new school directory so we can know who our new neighbors and schoolmates are. Days have changed, wake up time has changed, pretty much everything says school and not summer.
I went through a bunch of back-to-school stuff on the net - mostly not the back-to-school shopping things, but the first week of school stuff - and pulled out a bunch of highlights relevant to this year.
When you’re putting together the perfect family schedule, you have to do more than just tack up a Puppy Of The Month calendar on the wall.
The Regular Schedule
Book clubs. Soccer practices. Or, if you’re like us, physical therapy appointments. Some appointments are regularly scheduled, and the times don’t change week-to-week, but rather month-to-month or quarter-to-quarter. Rather than write down the same information every week, have one whiteboard or poster board with everybody’s regular schedule Mon – Sun.
Deb and I maintain our calendars two different ways - hers is paper, mine is mostly electronic - and there are enough standing dates on the calendar that this sounds like a great idea.
Top 10 Back to School Tools, #9: Perfect your note-taking skills this semester—get a primer on how to take study-worthy lecture notes using the Cornell method, and customize and print Cornell templates to get started.
I've written about Cornell Notes before, but somehow missed Ryan Stewart's Cornell-Notes.com. The template is nifty. Another nifty thing I've found recently in the print-your-own-pages world is Page Packer for making pocket-sized books from PDF files.
3. Cool Mom Picks Back to School Guide 2007 is a shopping guide. Saul ended up with a new used bike (garage sale plus brake work rehab at Ann Arbor Cyclery) and new backpack from Land's End. Cool Mom Picks found this source for book plates to put in your books from One Good Bumblebee:
Library card bookplates are so so cool, and help insure that the books your kids brings to school come home with them too.
4. Parent Dish's Angie Felton notes that here in Michigan schools start after Labor Day (to make sure that tourist dollars flow freely) and unearths this fun MasterCard commercial on the backpack theme:
Lisa Wever Koski, a Miami-Dade teacher, is surprised that more people don't use this simple tool -- a monthly calendar. She prints hers from the computer, attaches a magnetic strip and hangs it on the refrigerator where everyone will look at it several times a day. She puts all family members' activities, meetings, appointments and birthdays on it. ``I see that kids do not consult their parents about their schedules. They will sign up for an activity, pay the fee, then back out because they didn't know it was their grandmother's birthday.''
Starting in 1st grade, schools with computer labs allow children to spend time creating pictures on computers. In second grade students start to do research for projects using the school computer lab. Before third grade they are allowed to store files on the school's hard drive related to the work they are doing in a computer lab. In 4th grade, the school tech office creates private (password protected) folders for students to store their work. I have heard some students using word processing or spreadsheet software for school projects as early as 3rd grade but defintely by 4th.
Saul, who is starting 2d grade, has been using a computer for a while now - some of his drawings of Ann Arbor Fairy Doors are up on Flickr.
It's that time of year again. Back to school. Some Moms are thrilled. Some Moms unsure. Some are just in a state of shock over the hit the wallet takes. One thing consistent about it all: there are moans from kids heard around the country that their summer is ending. But the Moms? Ahhhh, the Moms have other ideas.
Personally, I always get a bit freaked out as if it was my first day of school when they start up. But that probably has more to do with the fact that they have not yet instituted a "start at noon" school day with our public school system. Now that would rock my socks off! Alas, my cries to let my kids (and when I say my kids, I of course mean me) sleep in late and then go to school.
DO plan a get together with other families before school starts. Get a class contact list from the school and invite the parents and kids over for a play date. My friend, Laurie, invited new classmates to her daughter's birthday party (which happened to fall two weeks before the first day of school) -- it presented the perfect opportunity for the parents to get to know one another and for the kids to get to know each other before the big day.
The Burns Park PTO organized a picnic at the playground for each of the incoming classes, and we all had a great time talking to the other 2d grade parents. I'm organizing our Math / Science Night this year - and the PTO has an event calendar that it looks like you can subscribe to with iCal.
I'm selling a bunch of Pokemon cards. Why? Because my kids sneaked them into my shopping cart while at the grocery store and I ended up buying them because I didn't notice they were there until we got home. How could I have possibly not noticed they were in my cart, you ask? Let me explain.
The winning bid was $142.51 (with 53 bids), which just goes to show you how much writing well can help you.
My friend Rick Klau was part of a team that put together SaferToys.org , a news aggregator site that collects and rates stories of toy safety issues. From his announcement:
With that, I present SaferToys.org. SaferToys is running on Pligg, an open-source Digg clone. Users can submit stories (links, original commentary, etc.), or they can simply visit “upcoming news” and look at what others have submitted. Any stories that a user feels are worthy of increased attention, that user should vote for the story. The more votes a story gets, the more visibility it gets. (By contrast, the more people who ‘Bury’ a story, the less likely that story is to be seen.)
A note on upcoming news: to seed the site, I have Pligg monitoring a number of different sources for stories. Google Blogsearch, Google News, and Del.icio.us are all feeding SaferToys.org with stories that may be of interest. You’ll see stories submitted by “STANbot”, where STAN = SaferToys Automated News. Seemed cute at the time, now, not so much. Whatever.
There's a Mattel lead paint recall in the news today, which is the proximate cause of this going live now, but it's been in the works for a couple of months. Well worth a look if you have kids.
I called the Dexter Blueberry Farm this morning to get the opening date of the blueberry picking season. The recorded hotline (734) 426-2900 gave the first day of picking of the year as "no later than July 18". The web site says that the season generally goes through September 10, and U-Pick is $1.35/lb.
The farm is at 11024 Beach Road, between Dancer Road and Lima Center Road north of Dexter-Chelsea Road between Dexter and Chelsea. Take I-94 Exit 162.
Saul and I went this morning. As of 6/23/07 it's nearing the end of the strawberry picking season - there are still plenty of berries to be picked, but there are also some mooshy ones and you should look under the leaves for best results. We picked two quarts in no time flat.
They also have peas for the picking - we picked a peck of podded peas pretty promptly, and right now it's a great time for pea picking.
The farm is Rowe's Produce Farm, which is in Ypsi Twp. Exit I-94, go south on Rawsonville Road to Martz Road, turn right and it's on your left 1/4 mile down clearly marked. Phone (734) 482-8538 ahead of time for conditions and hours - they were open 7am-8pm when I called. Get on their mailing list. The web site includes a photo essay of picking strawberries.
A2Brooklyn A neighborhood mailing list for people on my block and in Lower Burns Park in Ann Arbor, as noted in the New York Times "Circuits" section.
Ann Arbor District Library My local (and favorite) library. I'm on the library's technology advisory board.
Arborparents For parents and prospective parents in Ann Arbor, MI and the area, this is a great Yahoo group.
Assistive Media High quality audio recordings of short-subject fiction and non-fiction for the visually impaired and for anyone who loves reading, copyright approved. I'm on the board of directors.
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