The first forty years of parenting are always the hardest.

My wife and I, having shepherding two kids through visits to various colleges throughout the northeast (cold, damp, gray), finally have one who wants to go someplace interesting. His application filed, he now needs to audition at the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami. Great! we think, a long weekend trip to visit the school, audition, and see a part of the country we've not yet toured. What could be better than Miami in January? Our itinerary set, we're headed for "the U", South Beach, and the Everglades on our latest 2-1/2 day ADD tour. Jeff auditions at the college, and we have a nice dinner after walking around South Beach and dipping our toes in the ocean. Then...

... the phone rings at 10:45 pm, with our college sophomore daughter bringing news that she's broken down outside Gettysburg with a flat tire, a dead battery, no cell phone, no AAA card, and only her laptop with Skype with which to communicate. Then...

... Jeff is having cramps and pain in our hotel room. First we think it's gas, but after a couple of hours we realize that we need professional treatment, so off to the emergency room we go. Chris, meanwhile, has gotten our AAA number, and used Skype to get a tow truck to get her back to Carlisle, PA. After five hours in the emergency room, Jeff is diagnosed with acute appendicitis, which will require immediate surgery. Then...

... after the surgery, which took a bit longer than normal because his appendix was tucked up high, touching his liver, his temperature shoots up, as does his white blood cell count. No trip to the Everglades today! Then...

...we wait, day after day, for some information from a doctor. The surgeon drops by once each day sometime between 11 am to 11 pm, while the infectious disease doctor makes her visit between 9am and 2am! Communication is difficult, and there seems to be little sense of urgency. As one IV after another is hooked up, we have little knowledge of what progress is being made.
Finally, on Friday, a week after arriving, Jeff is released, and we can try to figure out how to get home before the snowstorm hits and has us diverted to Newark!

A few lessons here: hire good people so you don't have to be at work for the place to run well, be flexible, the DC area is blessed with great medical care compared to some other parts of the country, a good health insurance plan is critical (come on, Barak), and paradise isn't so great if you're spending it in a hospital room.

More bad electronic news

Our kids' brains are turning to mush! Well, not exactly, but from a story in The New York Times:

"The average young American now spends practically every waking minute — except for the time in school — using a smart phone, computer, television or other electronic device, according to a new study from the Kaiser Family Foundation... And because so many of them are multitasking — say, surfing the Internet while listening to music — they pack on average nearly 11 hours of media content into that seven and a half hours.

"While most of the young people in the study got good grades, 47 percent of the heaviest media users — those who consumed at least 16 hours a day — had mostly C’s or lower, compared with 23 percent of those who typically consumed media three hours a day or less. The heaviest media users were also more likely than the lightest users to report that they were bored or sad, or that they got into trouble, did not get along well with their parents and were not happy at school.

"The report is based on a survey of more than 2,000 students in grades 3 to 12 that was conducted from October 2008 to May 2009.

"On average, young people spend about two hours a day consuming media on a mobile device, the study found. They spend almost another hour on “old” content like television or music delivered through newer pathways like the Web site Hulu or iTunes. Youths now spend more time listening to or watching media on their cellphones, or playing games, than talking on them."

We've got ours, too bad for you!

The election results in my home state of Massachusetts yesterday seem to bode ill for the passage of health care reform. Of course, Massachusetts went through this exercise half a decade ago, and all state residents are now covered by a plan similar to the one pending in Congress. If I seem to have a couple of dogs in this fight, I do. At the Nora School, our health plan costs have been going up 20% each year, necessitating benefit cuts on our teachers to maintain reasonable costs. My adult son, the genetic inheritor of a pre-existing condition (type 1 diabetes), cannot get health insurance unless he works for an employer who offers it. Or moves to Massachusetts.

In case there was any doubt that our future is electronic.

Here's a 13-minute video by Alex Roman created almost entirely in a computer. There are a few digital photos used as part of it (the Milwaukee Art Museum has those cool wings), but the music and almost all the architecture and creatures were created in a computer. One photographer referred to it as a "soak," and I'd agree. Watch it full screen with the TV off and the lights out!

The Third & The Seventh from Alex Roman on Vimeo.

Homework help

A couple of new websites have crossed my browser recently which may be of use to students and teachers. The New York City Library has set up a deep website with lots of resources and live help between 4:30pm and 6:30pm every day. It includes an interactive whiteboard where students can draw their geometry or algebra problems and get live help. My understanding is that the service is not limited to students in New York City.
A second site requires payment, but tutor.com promises immediate and live help in almost any subject. It might be just the thing at 10pm when that quadratic equation won't fall into place! The pricing is reasonable (I've paid 3x this amount for a live tutor), but the 24/7 aspect is what really sells it.
I'd love feedback from anyone who uses either of these sites.

A new generation gap

The New York Times described on Saturday a new generation gap, between people born in '80s, '90s, and Oughts. Those in their twenties spend more time talking on the phone and using email, while their younger siblings (our current students) spend more time texting, and instant messaging. The author describes young children referring to the Amazon Kindle as "daddys' book" and drawing a finger across a computer screen expecting a response like the iPhone. All of which points up the importance of us Digital Immigrants to remain curious and keep on learning. Though I'm still not ready to tweet!