January 13, 2022

Yankees introduce Rachel Balkovec as first woman manager in Minor League Baseball

https://www.baynews9.com/fl/tampa/sports/2022/01/12/yankees-introduce-rachel-balkovec-as-first-woman-manager-in-minor-league-baseball

The New York Yankees introduced Rachel Balkovec as the new manager of the Tampa Tarpons, a Class-A level team in their minor league system.

"When players meet me there’s a level of curiosity, which that’s normal — change is change,” Balkcovec said. "I was curious, I was like, 'Geez, what am I going to look like in a uniform?'”

The job makes Balkovec the first full-time female manager in the history of affiliated baseball. But Balkovec is confident she can earn the team's respect and trust.

"I just know within five minutes — I walk into the room, the presence that I have, how I speak confidently, I’m bilingual and that’s something that I learned,” she said. "I’m from Nebraska, I’m not from a bilingual home. As soon as I open my mouth and start speaking — I’m speaking in Spanish and English, and they hear what I’m saying, and they know I know what I’m talking about, it all just goes away.”





Good on the Yankees.

January 12, 2022

COVID school policies set me adrift from my tribe.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/01/democrats-botched-public-school-covid-policy/621183/


Until recently, I was a loyal, left-leaning Democrat, and I had been my entire adult life. I was the kind of partisan who registered voters before midterm elections and went to protests. I hated Donald Trump so much that I struggled to be civil to relatives on the other side of the aisle. But because of what my family has gone through during the pandemic, I can’t muster the same enthusiasm. I feel adrift from my tribe and, to a certain degree, disgusted with both parties.

I can’t imagine that I would have arrived here—not a Republican, but questioning my place in the Democratic Party—had my son not been enrolled in public kindergarten in 2020.

Late that summer, the Cleveland school system announced that it would not open for in-person learning the first 9 weeks of the semester. I was distraught. My family relies on my income, and I knew that I would not be able to work full-time with my then-5-year-old son and then-3-year-old daughter at home.

Still, I was accepting of short-term school closures. My faith in the system deteriorated only as the weeks and months of remote-learning dragged on long past the initial timeline, and my son began refusing to log on for lessons. I couldn’t blame him. Despite his wonderful teacher’s best efforts, online kindergarten is about as ridiculous as it sounds, in my experience. I remember logging on to a “gym” class where my son was the only student present. The teacher, I could tell, felt embarrassed. We both knew how absurd the situation was.
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Interesting article though both the original title Democrats botched public school covid policy and the revised title Why I Soured on the Democrats.... seem a bit harsh and clicbatey... esp for The Atlantic

January 5, 2022

School banned Jingle Bells due to racism concerns

https://rochesterbeacon.com/2021/12/23/jingle-all-the-way-maybe-not/

“Jingle Bells,” explained Council Rock principal Matt Tappon in an email, has been replaced with other songs that don’t have “the potential to be controversial or offensive.”

Tappon and other staff confirmed by email that the decision to remove the song was based in part on information in a 2017 article written by professor Kyna Hamill, director of Boston University’s Core Curriculum. Hamill’s article is a deep dive (nearly 12,000 words including appendices and footnotes) into the origin of “Jingle Bells,” the life of its composer, James L. Pierpont, and the popularity of sleigh songs in the mid-1800s. She found documents showing that the song’s first public performance may have occurred in 1857 at a Boston minstrel show. Minstrelsy was a then-popular form of entertainment in which white actors performed in blackface.

But when told that Council Rock has removed ‘Jingle Bells” based partly on her research, Hamill responded in an email: “I am actually quite shocked the school would remove the song from the repertoire. … I, in no way, recommended that it stopped being sung by children.”

When I shared Hamill’s response with Council Rock staff, Allison Rioux, Brighton Central School District assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction, offered a different reason for removing “Jingle Bells.” She wrote:

“Some suggest that the use of collars on slaves with bells to send an alert that they were running away is connected to the origin of the song Jingle Bells. While we are not taking a stance to whether that is true or not, we do feel strongly that this line of thinking is not in agreement with our district beliefs to value all cultures and experiences of our students.



This reminds me of the Picnic is racist lunatics or the Black Hole is racist lunatics

Sometimes we are our own worst enemy and really are looking for things to be offended by.