It’s a trip to the Rose Bowl for Wisconsin. Along the way, the Badgers lost one coach, but got another one (temporarily) back.
So how do they do?
Stanford’s about a touchdown favorite right now, but I think the Badgers win, present odds notwithstanding, 28-17.
What do you think?
Good morning.
Whitewater’s week ends with cloudy skies, but a relatively mild forty-one degree day.
It’s the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, and in the Washington Post there’s a moving story entitled, “A reporter remembers ‘the vision of death’ at Pearl Harbor.”
It’s a story about ninety-seven-year-old Betty McIntosh’s “account of the attack on Pearl Harbor [that] went unpublished until today. Now 97, she speaks to The Fold’s Brook Silva-Braga about what she remembers from that infamous day and her later work as a wartime spy.” The paper has a link to her account, itself entitled, “Honolulu after Pearl Harbor: A report published for the first time, 71 years later.”
A video interview accompanies Betty’s story:
1943 – USS-Wisconsin [was] Christened
On this date the USS-Wisconsin was christened by Wisconsin’s first lady Madge Goodland. The ship was re-christened by Mrs. Goodland in March, 1951 during the Korean War. The USS-Wisconsin was inactive for many years but was recommissioned in 1989. [Source: First Ladies of Wisconsin, the Governor’s Wives by Nancy G. Williams, p.181]
Google-a-Day asks about the Olympics: “Where were the games held when a female was awarded, for the very first time, a perfect score in an Olympic gymnastic event?”
Let’s assume, as with Whitewater’s 12.4.12 Common Council meeting, the city adopts sensible guidelines for filling vacancies by appointment. The vacancy process adopted at the meeting was the work of Councilmember Binnie and City Attorney McDonell, and one can find the draft of their work online in the 12.4.12 council packet.
As with a school board discussion from months ago, determining how to communicate a change can be as important as making the change. (Some announcements don’t have to be published in the city’s paper of record – as the city attorney correctly noted – but getting the word out needn’t be a recurring question.)
Here are a few suggestions:
Promote City Announcements on the City Website. Whitewater does this now, of course, but occasionally I feel as though the City of Whitewater’s website seems like an afterthought to some in local government. Discussions quickly shift from ‘lets put it on the website’ to talk of other media that will carry an announcement.
That’s too bad, because the City of Whitewater has a sharp-looking website that officials should promote at every opportunity. There’s more than aesthetics at work in using the city website, of course: official announcements should include publication at the city’s own site.
The first thing any member of council or government should say about an announcement (after explaining the content generally) is, ‘check our website,’ or ‘did you see it on our website?’
Create an Email or Text Address List of Every Place that Will Publish an Announcement. When you’ve a list ready in advance, someone just has to send one message to that list.
Most organizations, municipalities, and public agencies send press releases this way. One need not ponder these issues anew at each occasion; it’s much easier to have a distribution list at hand.
A simple reminder, still useful, I’d guess: thousands of smart and informed residents of the city, using their own email accounts, Facebook pages, Twitter feeds, and text messages are communicating well beyond the limits of an insider’s preferred newspaper, etc. For more along these lines, see New Whitewater’s Inevitability.
(I’ll also venture confidently that by maintaining an independent approach a website inexorably gains and retains more readers than through an alternative course.)
Reaching as many residents, in as many ways as possible, can be accomplished in less time than a repeated discussion of how to reach them.
Eighteen-month-old Giant Schnauzer Monty, 1-year-old Whippet-cross Ginny and 10-month-old Beardie-cross Porter are undergoing an intensive course with animal trainer Mark Vette to prove in a driving test live on-air that rescue dogs are just as worthy of human love and effort….
So far, all three dogs have driven a real car with human assistance — but Porter will be making his first unassisted drive on live TV next week on New Zealand channel Campbell Live.
Good morning.
Whitewater will see a slight chance (about 20%) of rain this afternoon, with a high of forty-five.
The Landmarks Commission meets tonight at 6 PM.
On this day in 1884, the Washington Monument was at last completed:
…in Washington, D.C., workers place a nine-inch aluminum pyramid atop a tower of white marble, completing the construction of an impressive monument to the city’s namesake and the nation’s first president,George Washington. As early as 1783, the infant U.S. Congress decided that a statue of George Washington, the great Revolutionary War general, should be placed near the site of the new Congressional building, wherever it might be. After then-President Washington asked him to lay out a new federal capital on the Potomac River in 1791, architect Pierre L’Enfant left a place for the statue at the western end of the sweeping National Mall (near the monument’s present location).
It wasn’t until 1832, however–33 years after Washington’s death–that anyone really did anything about the monument. That year, a private Washington National Monument Society was formed. After holding a design competition and choosing an elaborate Greek temple-like design by architect Robert Mills, the society began a fundraising drive to raise money for the statue’s construction. These efforts–including appeals to the nation’s schoolchildren–raised some $230,000, far short of the $1 million needed. Construction began anyway, on July 4, 1848, as representatives of the society laid the cornerstone of the monument: a 24,500-pound block of pure white marble.
Six years later, with funds running low, construction was halted. Around the time the Civil War began in 1861, author Mark Twain described the unfinished monument as looking like a “hollow, oversized chimney.” No further progress was made until 1876–the centennial of American independence–when President Ulysses S. Grant authorized construction to be completed.
Made of some 36,000 blocks of marble and granite stacked 555 feet in the air, the monument was the tallest structure in the world at the time of its completion in December 1884. In the six months following the dedication ceremony, over 10,000 people climbed the nearly 900 steps to the top of the Washington Monument. Today, an elevator makes the trip far easier, and more than 800,000 people visit the monument each year….
NASA offers new and truly beautiful photos of the Earth at night, as part of a recent, December 5th series. Here’s just one of them:
Following discussion at last night’s Common Council meeting, the City of Whitewater has posted a notice about a vacancy on our Common Council.
The notice, and a link to an application for those interested in applying for consideration, appears immediately below:
A Councilmember Seat for Member-at-Large is currently vacant, and the Common Council of the City of Whitewater is seeking applications from individuals who reside in the City of Whitewater, and who are willing to serve on the Common Council.
Council meetings are held at 6:30 p.m. on the 1st and 3rd Tuesdays of each month. Occasionally there are additional meetings. The Common Council will review applications from interested citizens, and will consider appointment of an applicant to the position at their December 18, 2012 council meeting. The appointment will be until April 2013, at which time the seat is up for election.
Applications must be submitted to City Clerk Michele Smith, P.O. Box 178, Whitewater, WI 53190 by 5:00 p.m. on December 11, 2012.
The Clerk can be reached by e-mail at: msmith@whitewater-wi.gov or by telephone at 262-473-0102.
Down in Janesville, there’s been a debate about whether to adopt a more detailed dress code. They’ve spent more than one school board meeting on the subject.
Just about any other discussion within that district, in that struggling city, would be more useful than an over-analysis of what teachers, administrators, and other employees should wear to work.
The amount of time and contention that Janesville has seen over this concern – peripheral to the substantive teaching of students in that school system – is a cautionary tale: the Whitewater Schools can and should do better than spending time on picayune matters.
It’s worth considering, contention by contention, the defense of an elaborate dress code that Janesville’s superintendent, Karen Schulte, offers. I’ll reproduce her recent remarks of 11.29.12 below, with my replies following thereafter, paragraph by paragraph.
Her remarks in appear bold, mine in a regular font:
As state and national policies in education continue to be examined, many issues are coming to the forefront. This is evident in statewide achievement testing, national common-core standards, global literacy and teacher effectiveness. Included in this reexamination of education in America are standards of professional behavior. Within these standards is an increased focus on staff dress codes. We are no different than other leading school districts across the country that are raising standards of professionalism.
It’s telling that of all the ‘state and national policies in education’ that ‘continue to be examined,’ Schulte doesn’t rank them in any particular order. State & federal, but all in common: a mishmash, a cook’s stew of trending topics.
Setting aside the passive construction (‘policies in education continue to be examined’), one wonders when policies aren’t being examined. There’s also no real explanation of priorities. Does Schulte see a difference in priority between core standards of substantive learning and a teacher dress code? One would hope so, but if she does, then she’s neglected or is unable to describe that priority succinctly.
The Janesville School District has a jointly developed “Standards of Professional Behavior” document, though the Janesville Education Association has not endorsed it. It is a guiding document and calls us to be our best at all times. However, it is vague regarding dress code. The Standards of Professional Behavior is the only document in the district that addresses employee dress by stating “I will wear appropriate attire.”
We are not alone in our focus on dress code. Other leading school systems are defining dress codes for their employees. Here are two samples:
“The Wichita School District is just one of a growing number in the nation cracking down on teacher apparel, and jeans are banned in at least one elementary school in New York City. … Several Arizona schools are strictly defining business casual,” USA Today reported July 30.
“The policies on professional attire adopted recently by districts such as Nicolet, New Berlin and Hamilton outlaw jeans and define the acceptable dress as ‘business casual.’ Most employees working under new dress codes said they thought it was acceptable to expect staff to dress nicely and that it was probably good for their district’s image overall,” the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported Oct. 1, 2011.
First things first. Schulte quotes from a JS story by reporter Erin Richards, but anyone reading the story would see that Richards’s assessment is a casual observation, and almost certainly not the result of a comprehensive survey of teachers in one of the story’s schools, let alone all employees in one of the story’s districts.
Schulte’s whole contention that leading districts are advancing stricter dress codes is too funny: Wichita, at least one elementary school in New York City, and some schools in Arizona. Over three-hundred million people, in fifty states, but the supporting evidence Janesville’s superintendent musters is a few motley anecdotes. An average student, from any of her high schools, should be expected to offer better supporting evidence than Schulte does in this essay.
Even if it should be true that employees elsewhere favor these codes, the kerfuffle in which Janesville finds itself only confirms that Schulte is unable to produce as smooth and agreeable a result as other districts’ leaders.
As we reflect on appropriate attire for all of our employees, it is important to examine the course the district is on in its Journey to Excellence.
One now learns the truth: Janesville is not on a journey to good work, or even a journey to excellence, but a Journey to Excellence. Whitewater needs none of this. We need substantive academic, athletic, and artistic accomplishment, responsibly funded. These accomplishments should be the true priorities of our community.
We’ll not find it by traveling somewhere, and certainly not by crafting bad slogans about metaphorical trips to places of supposed excellence.
Yet, if Schulte wished to travel somewhere, she might consider nearby Elkhorn. (It’s closer than Wichita, after all.) That district’s established a simple, one-page code, with none of the fuss that’s swirling in Janesville.
The district has chosen an evidence-based leadership model. This model embraces standardization of workplace practices to promote efficiency, alignment and quality. Part of the standardization of practices is having uniform policies. It is also about communicating clear messages and defining expectations.
Are you not reassured that our neighbors in Janesville have an evidence-based leadership model? What leadership would not have such a model? What leadership would expect credit for having one? There are, after all, very few places that tout evidence-free or wholly indiscriminate methods of leadership.
I believe all employees have a right to know what appropriate dress looks like, but that’s a difficult target to hit, so writing a dress code policy as a portion of the employee handbook is an attempt to define “appropriate” for all of us. This is no small task because we have 1,300 employees.
This is truly an admission of administrative failure. Schulte and her principals should have been able to create a consensus through coaching and dialogue. Her pleas for greater detail are only an admission of her lesser coaching. It’s not her fault, you see – she has too many employees in her charge.
On the contrary, it’s a more economical and likely explanation to say that the fault is in one superintendent rather than 1,300 employees.
Without a common understanding of “appropriate dress,” we might define it differently. This conflicts with our evidence-based leadership practices that we have defined as a foundation for the district.
Janesville’s superintendent asks for a common understanding, but her essay assumes – falsely – that a common understanding will come only from a detailed document. That’s not true at all. Other districts have not needed such documents or have simple ones, as Elkhorn now does.
I’d ask Superintendent Schulte a question: does she think a society can have law, and a consensus about the law, without a written constitution?
If she answers that it can, then she’ll have to explain why she can’t do for a small district what whole nations do for themselves: achieve consensus without always reducing fundamental principles to a single writing.
If she answers no, then she’ll have to explain the example of a nation like Britain, that is a free and orderly society without a written constitution. Schulte’s goal of a common understanding erroneously assumes it can come only from a detailed, written document.
It’s safer for others to assume that she and her principals have failed at a consensus, and now seek the crutch of a detailed document to support their hobbled leadership.
An employee handbook is an important document to codify and standardize our beliefs and a critical communication tool to share those beliefs with all of us. We are on the path to excellence. We are aligning our efforts, defining our beliefs, and raising the achievement bar for all of us—students and staff alike.
Here’s the unpersuasive conflation of an employee handbook with a detailed dress code. They’re not the same thing. One could have an employee handbook without wasting time on a fussy dress code.
Janesville is free to spend money for leaders who cannot manage to consensus.
No one in Whitewater, however, should make the mistake of thinking that a similar approach for this community would be anything other than needlessly wasteful. If leaders in our schools or school board waste time on a dress code, they’ll deserve not the slightest sympathy. There are better things to do with the limited time that public officials have.
A fuss over something like this is simply an exercise in wrangling & time-wasting.
Good morning.
A sunny Wednesday with a high of thirty-six is ahead for whitewater.
On this day in 1945, the tragic loss of a torpedo-bomber squadron led to decades of fanciful speculation about the so-called Bermuda Triangle:
At 2:10 p.m., five U.S. Navy Avenger torpedo-bombers comprising Flight 19 take off from the Ft. Lauderdale Naval Air Station in Florida on a routine three-hour training mission. Flight 19 was scheduled to take them due east for 120 miles, north for 73 miles, and then back over a final 120-mile leg that would return them to the naval base. They never returned.
Two hours after the flight began, the leader of the squadron, who had been flying in the area for more than six months, reported that his compass and back-up compass had failed and that his position was unknown. The other planes experienced similar instrument malfunctions. Radio facilities on land were contacted to find the location of the lost squadron, but none were successful. After two more hours of confused messages from the fliers, a distorted radio transmission from the squadron leader was heard at 6:20 p.m., apparently calling for his men to prepare to ditch their aircraft simultaneously because of lack of fuel.
By this time, several land radar stations finally determined that Flight 19 was somewhere north of the Bahamas and east of the Florida coast, and at 7:27 p.m. a search and rescue Mariner aircraft took off with a 13-man crew. Three minutes later, the Mariner aircraft radioed to its home base that its mission was underway. The Mariner was never heard from again. Later, there was a report from a tanker cruising off the coast of Florida of a visible explosion seen at 7:50 p.m.
The disappearance of the 14 men of Flight 19 and the 13 men of the Mariner led to one of the largest air and seas searches to that date, and hundreds of ships and aircraft combed thousands of square miles of the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico, and remote locations within the interior of Florida. No trace of the bodies or aircraft was ever found.
Although naval officials maintained that the remains of the six aircraft and 27 men were not found because stormy weather destroyed the evidence, the story of the “Lost Squadron” helped cement the legend of the Bermuda Triangle, an area of the Atlantic Ocean where ships and aircraft are said to disappear without a trace. The Bermuda Triangle is said to stretch from the southern U.S. coast across to Bermuda and down to the Atlantic coast of Cuba and Santo Domingo.
This day in 1879 was a happy one for Wisconsin’s animals:
1879 – Humane Society of Wisconsin Organized
On this date the Humane Society of Wisconsin was organized in Milwaukee. Inspired by Henry Bergh, a New York City philanthropist, and his Humane Movement, the state Humane Society was formed to protect both animals and children. However, with the formation of child protection laws in the early 1900s, the Humane Society of Wisconsin began to focus primarily on animal protection. [Source: Humane Society of Wisconsin]
Google has a sports question for today: “For what team did the NFL quarterback play when he was featured in the first famous Superbowl commercial?”
Good morning.
It’s another unseasonably mild day ahead for Whitewater, with sunny skies, a high of fifty-one, and a west wind of 5 to 15 MPH. We’ll have 9h 12m of sunlight, 10h 14m of daylight, and tomorrow will be two minutes shorter.
Whitewater’s Common Council meets tonight at 6:30 PM.
On this day in 1945, the U.S. Senate approved full American participation in the newly-formed United Nations Organization. Approval came on a 65-7 vote:
Washington, Dec. 4–The Senate passed by a 65-to-7 vote this evening the legislation to give the United States full, active participation in the United Nations Organization in accordance with the San Francisco Charter that it ratified, 89 to 2, last July.
Voting for the implementing measure, which now goes to the House, were forty-one Democrats, twenty-three Republicans and one Progressive. Opposing its passage were six Republicans– Senators Langer of North Dakota, Moore of Oklahoma, Revercomb of West Virginia, Shipstead of Minnesota, Taft of Ohio and Wherry of Nebraska, the minority whip–and one Democrat, Senator Wheeler of Montana. Senators Langer and Shipstead were the two who voted against ratification of the Charter.Passage came after seven days of the Senate contest, which reached its final show-down stage in late afternoon as Senators Wheeler and Willis, Republican, of Indiana, sought to require the President to obtain specific Congressional authorization before he could make armed forces available to the UNO Security Council to halt an aggression or to maintain peace.
On this day in 1933, Janesville fought against the inevitable demise of Prohibition:
1933 – Janesville Council Denies Prohibition End
On this date the Janesville Council drafted a “drastic liquor control law” that prohibited serving liquor. The law prohibited distilled spirits, but not beer, at bars, and limited liquor service to tables. Backrooms and “blinds” (closed booths) were also prohibited. The only place where packaged liquor was allowed to be sold was at municipal dispensaries. Further, bars were prohibited from selling packaged liquor. The next day, the city was uncommonly quiet as the 18th Amendment was repealed. For nearly 14 years, the 18th Amendment (the Prohibition Amendment), outlawed the manufacture, transportation, and sale of alcoholic beverages within the U.S. [Source: Janesville Gazette, December 5, 1933, p.1]]
From Google’s daily puzzle, a question about literature: “How many men accompany the sailor on his ship in Coleridge’s poem about the sinning seaman?”
November 2012 nannyism runners up, and winner.
Texas Schools Track Students with RFID Chips! (Nanny of the Month, Nov ’12) – YouTube.
Posted also at Daily Adams.
