Grammar Beef

I'm the last person who's (notice the CONTRACTION) allowed to criticize anyone for their grammar, but the recent run on plural nouns punctuated as possesive makes me NUT'S!! (haha)
Meanwhile, those inquiring minds that asked what Polish chicks look like as adults can check here or here depending on how inspired you felt by yesterday's post.

Chicken Saddle

No, it's not for Barbie(TM) to ride the ol' gal but this chicken saddle will spare her dorsal feathers . . .

Over dinner this evening we were discussing that the local ice cream stand "Hot Licks" has opened for the season. The other seasonal venue across the street is called "Bun on the Run" (cinnamon rolls). Of course, "Bun" is operated out of a kiosk in the Beaver Sports parking lot. So within fifteen walking feet are three local businesses worth punning yourself into a corner over. Steamed milk almost came out of Alexander's nose when we decided that Hot Beaver Bun Licks would cover all the bases.

Now Reading

1. For my current farmophilia: This book is proof that one doesn't need excellent plotting or exemplary subject matter to create a masterpiece. And remember, "every single skein of wool the whole world 'round begins with a sweaty person and pissed off sheep [shearing]".

2. For social justice: Tim Wise is kindred. We read Affirmative Action as the final book in the FNSB School District's "diversity book club" (and how I've come to loathe that overused, trumped-up, self-satisfied term 'diversity'). If we really, actually believed that POC are no less smart and capable as whites then we would not have silently taken part in an educational system and economy that doesn't represent POC in percentages equivalent to that of the general population. Why aren't more blacks in med school, college, whatever? Either you choose to believe they are incapable, or you choose to "believe" that institutional racism is real. Stop thinking it's the other white guy who's messing up here, folks. And get past the guilt and pandering 'color blindness' cowpies you keep stepping in.

3. For inner dreamscape needs: Antarctic Navigation

Imagine opening a shipment box filled with these (P.S.and a life update)

I worked with a fun, gregarious fellow last year who called the one adult Polish Crested chicken we had at Overlook "Eighties Rockstar Chicken". Unfortunately, the day we moved the 26 goats and kids to a new pen the crazy chicken was trampled to death. It was my day off that day, I remember that. Anyway, the chick barn at Alaska Feed is almost completely full, and I'm also enjoying some hours on the weekends where I am the unofficial 'poultry info, petting zoo, and chick packaging moderator'--able to i.d. a gosling breed from six feet away while rescuing banty chicks from an untimely death-by-drowning in the water dish. I've asked for higher management responsibilities in this company and The Big Boys are still navel-gazing and wondering "where did SHE come from?" while reading a barrage of recommendation letters from my wonderful friends and staring at my resume. The manager they may or may not replace is great to work with and he believes in me. The Big Boys just need some time, I think. In the meantime I accepted a summer position with the Fairbanks Borough as a 'Summer Youth Supervisor' at Pioneer Park. I get a running crew of young men and women in our city's "Alaska Disneyland" where major public events are held throughout the season. It should be fun. It's not even three miles of my house. Alaska Feed is a ten minute walk from my house. I just got a bike and my commutes are minutes long.

I won't be going to graduate school at UAF this fall. Instead, I'll be getting a dairy science certificate through University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign through their distance ed program. It's sad that until recent years I felt that all things exciting, interesting, and fun were happening at UAF. Now the more I deal with them and hear about their dealings through others employed there, I just get the stark feeling that they are part of the overarching over-mechanized problem in our community. In March I went to a sustainable agriculture conference here in town and the schism was real. UAF researches and CES people were suited and dressed to present grant-funded research on fruit trees that none of the rest of us--namely the growers selling crop shares at the Farmer's Market--could find applicability in. The reality is that real original and creative thinking just isn't finding its place at UAF these days. My rejection from their graduate creative writing program for the second time (after the first time I met with a department member who told me what I could do differently and I did THAT this time) is the personal testament to this. I spent January writing an original critical paper on Toni Morrison that went with my creative writing submission. It was good.

I've also been doing some vet teching out at North Pole as a temp. Last Wednesday I partnered with Tom from Calypso Farm to bring a sheep, goat kids, chicken, rabbits, and his sheepdog to Arctic Light Elementary to do a day-long ag-ed program. We had great fun. It furthered my dedication to that kind of educational programming and I'll be going back to working on my non-profit farm drafts soon. Of course, there we were with livestock on the playground and it was military firing practice day . . .
Gotta go, chick barn needs to be cleaned before the Saturday rush.

Everything Plays

There's a "famous" (if you work in those circles ;) children's book Everyone Poops but there should be another called "Everyone Plays". The more species I deal with the more I'm moved by the universal development of 'play' in the young, how parallel we are with puppies, lambs, hamsters, kittens, and now goslings and other poultry. We begin our lives solely focused on nutrition, warmth, ad rest, then our muscles start to exert themselves, start to stretch-stammer into clumsy movement, then we are suddenly intensely interested in toying with the skills that are the hallmark of the species we're a member of. In humans, it seems to be language, co-play, building/creating. In lambs it's flocking, running, nibbling, in kittens it's pouncing and biting. In geese it's water! I was moving between brooding boxes, having just left some week-old goslings with fresh shavings and water, when I heard massive commotion, the muffled thundering of web-feet all astir. I walked back over and the six goslings froze in place, water glistening on their yellow-brown down, dripping off their beaks, and spreading under their feet. I'm told that if they get much larger before being sold we give them swim breaks.

Computer skills I coulda/shoulda learned years ago . . .

How I wish I could fulfill my continuing education requirement for my vet tech license by going to this instead of the same lame (pun intended) "increase your dental revenue with preventative care" educational fare at our annual state meeting this fall. I have to do 10 CE credits before the end of the year, and I'm considering some online CE, but there still is virtually nothing on farm animal/ruminant health care. Even I am surprised at the dearth of resources. We do have U.S-based American Association of Ruminant Practitioners but I'll still have to do some petitioning to get any CE through them. And I don't think attending the 50th annual sheep-shear-a-thon will count with the Alaska State Board of Professional Licensing.

I'm subbing again today. Tomorrow Suze and I are giving two high school classroom talks--at different schools!-- that's after I take care of the chicks at the feed store and before I go work at North Pole Vet Clinic for the day. "Giblet", our impaired turkey chick, died the morning after we got him, but the guys replaced him with two other bantam chicks. I think they'll grow up to be barred rock chickens, the ones that look dressed in houndstooth cloth. Sexing them is still hard for me. I'm thinking we'll just wait and see who lays eggs. Meanwhile, they are hysterical with worms! They chase each other and fight if you don't give them each one!

I taught myself PowerPoint and am feeling very self-satisfied with that. Tania also schooled me up in html tags, and I'm still enjoying the power and the novelty of that as you can see. . .

Roundup in chick corral!

In the chick barn at the feed store there's a five-foot-long cattle watering trough in the center of the room set up to be a brooder to nearly 100 yellow-fuzzy Cornish crosses. To clean out the dirty shavings and the water-tower I get to take an enormous peice of corrugated cardboard and "herd" the whole peeping group of alarmed babies into one half of the brooder, then reverse it to clean the other side. A few tough-guy hold-outs get to experience the dreaded HAND -- my human arm lowering, chasing them around, then scoopong them up like a nerf-ball and pitching them back in with the group.

A half-dozen brooders of ducks and geese are set up, and of course the one brooder of bantam chickens. I'm still reading up on my chicken history, but bantams are essentially scaled-down versions of regular chickens. They come in most of he regular "flavors" and varieties (of which there are >130 !!). Why we humans developed miniature chickens may be related to why we created mini poodles . . .? If for no other reason I'd say it's because chicks the size of toothbrush heads are so damn cute you can't stand it. As you might guess, they aren't as popular for purchase as broilers or layers (don't get me wrong, you can broil a bantam, and a bantam hen will lay, Karl suggested humans developed bantams when they were more realistic about portion control!), so when the feed store orders a bath of bantams they usually come in packaged like a Whitman's Sampler, but without the flavor map. A few of every kind. Best guess wins.

Anarchy

I have time to write this today because, in responding to a request for a sub "teacher's aide" at Lathrop High School my job for the entire day is sitting in the discipline office with a single student taking the HSGQE -- that's the 'high school graduate qualifying exam' (insert eye roll here). Yesterday I was a custodian and, despite doing good work all day, the evening custodian 'ripped me a new one' when he came in and found me checking my e-mail in the custodial office instead of checking the roof drains. I went to the school office in tears, this guy following me, and admin "yelled" at him and the whole thing was a mess. All day I was begging for something to do, the lunch lady said "don't bother cleaning 'cause there's XYZ club in here after school' and I said I would just 'spot mop to keep busy' . . . you get the idea. Today the principal of Lathrop logged me onto the computer "'cause you'll need something to keep busy for 7 hours". AAAAAA!

Independent of this, (I was thinking about this yesterday even before being unfairly verbally attacked as someone 'stealing money by doing nothing') I think this ineffective socialized education system just needs to go. Let's look at this a different way. If you're hauling water up a hill to pour it into a big bucket and HALF the water is draining out of the bucket each time . . .what do you do? Do you keep doing the same thing and pouring into the same vessel? If we are "losing" half our kids -- if half are kids are being left behind in every way spiritually, academically, and functionally -- can't we begin to understand that there is something structurally wrong with public education? OK, so it's the "minorities" being left behind. . . let's pour money into "diversity" programs. No. "Minorities" ARE America. These are OUR children. Let's stop fooling ourselves. The future of a democratic America isn't white. We are continuing to try to function in a system brought over by Europeans that was formally developed in the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth centuries when literacy and the sciences were the property of a moneyed and paternal religion. Every other culture in the world at that time was educating with peer-group oriented apprenticeships and tasks.
It is just so weird for me to stand in these public education rooms and begin every day "pledging allegiance"to a flag "under God" and "indivisible", then starting lessons standing next to globes and "save the earth" while being the person who collects hundreds and hundreds of pounds of plastic lunch trash because we don't cook or wash dishes in the schools. Lunch is sent up from Outside in plastic peel-and-eat packs, of which each child gets two.

On a lighter note, there's a free-to-good-home potty trained house-rabbit in the newspaper today. The catch? "To a snake-free home." Umm . . .

Questions at Woodriver Elementary

1. Do boys EVER learn to flush?!? Is this a form of creative expression that girls simply don't need? Do we teach them differently?

2. What is a "country steak finger" ??? Does it have anything to do with GMO food and artificial insemination?

apparently it does:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23921668/wid/11915773?GT1=31037