lucky 13

Spring fishing was mostly done with the new-to-me Heddon #13 split cane rod. This model is known as '#13 Lucky Angler'. Mine is from either 1940 or 1941, as these were the only two years to use the orange wraps with black trim. The varnish had deteriorated, peeling and sticky, though everything else was in good nick. The first refurbisher had stripped the nasty old varnish already, so there wasn't much to do. A couple of fresh coats of spar varnish had it looking near-new again.

We have been out a number of times and I did not live up to it, getting skunked many times in many trips, on trout and bass then carp. The long winter of fishless discontent finally broke on a warm spring day, with the fish moving and feeding. First three little bluegills, tremendously handsome little fellows but rather overmatched by the rod.

Then a bass came roaring up from the deeps, hammered the streamer just below the surface, ran and jumped several times, a good start to the warmwater year.

A second bass, smaller but still a most welcome acquaintance.

The first bass plug I ever owned was a Heddon Tiny Lucky 13: "owned" rather than "bought" since at the time my brother and I were boys with no money. We fished the local pond for the vlei kurper, a small species of tilapia much like bluegill, and aspired to catch the monstrous great carp we saw. Those carp were well-educated though, and not easily fooled. One day I saw the plug hanging on a weeping willow some 30 feet out, swam out and retrieved it. This gave us the idea there might be bass there - turned out the pond had just been stocked. They were mostly small, but flinging home-tied bugs on spinning outfits with ultralight lines got enough distance to catch numbers. That's where my bass fishing started; Heddon Lucky 13 evokes a multitude of happy involuntary memories for me, a sort of fish-flavoured madeleine, as it were.

And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory - this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me it was me. I had ceased now to feel mediocre, contingent, mortal.

Shortly after writing this I came across EM Forster's comment on Proust in the Moncrieff translation, which is a marvelous thing. 

A sentence begins quite simply, then it undulates and expands, parentheses intervene like quick-set hedges, the flowers of comparison bloom, and three fields off, like a wounded partridge, crouches the principal verb, making one wonder as one picks it up, poor little thing, whether after all it was worth such a tramp, so many guns, and such expensive dogs, and what, after all, is its relation to the main subject, potted so gaily half a page back, and proving finally to have been in the accusative case.

Returning to our muttons, I still have that plug, since I have swum out to retrieve it from trees or underwater stumps every time it snags or hangs up. At first it was out of necessity, having no way to replace it. Now it is out of sentiment alone. I'm a bit embarrassed about it actually, an old man swimming out to retrieve his lures is on the pathetic side. Maybe the next time it snags in an obvious place, I'll break it off and leave it there for the next boy to retrieve.

Earlier we had attempted trout, in a painfully clear and empty stream.

The only trout of  the year happened just before finishing the Heddon, so it was taken on the South Bend 359 instead. A sturdy strong rainbow, returned with thanks. In the picture I got the rocks beautifully sharp in focus, the fish not so much.

A long streak of skunks on the carp dropped me back to a graphite rod, just in case it could help change my luck. It was the warming weather rather than luck in the end.

He was caught in an urban pond with a walking trail nearby, on a Sunday afternoon. A large audience gathered. One little boy retreated in horror and took his mother's hand, when I lifted up the fish to show him. Clearly it was a fearsome great carp. A conversation earlier that day with a little boy on a scooter: him, excitedly, "oh ! a fishing rod !" sadly, "I had a kids fishing rod once, but it broke." cheerfully departing, "Good luck, I hope you catch something."

As a bonus that day, the crappie (no really that is the fish's name) had moved shallow, caught a number of them mostly by accident. They would grab the fly as it sank in front of a carp that was the real target. I didn't mind a bit, like to see these bright creatures. Never caught one there, before or since - suspect with a relatively large lake and no-boating regulations, the deeper water functions rather like a sort of marine reserve. Fish can feed and grow unbothered in the deeper water, where they are quite inaccessible. This makes for good fish but sporadic fishing.

The carp spawn started up at that pond, so abandoned it and tried at a larger cooler lake. I prefer not to bother the spawners - how would you like it, after all ?

Started at the inlet which was cold and carpless, 56deg water. Moved on to the flats, warmer and carpless, 62-3deg. There were lots of bass though, a few nice 12-14", so that was just fine. 

This was the first outing for this Browning reel, which is a re-badged Martin LM 78. It came off ebay pristine, with the original grease still sparkling clear. A good solid US-made reel, for less than $20. Really I cannot think of any reason to buy Chinese-made reels for hundreds of dollars.

The first fly was a Sculpiny Mcsculpinface intended for carp which worked well on the bass too, but broke it off stupidly on a backcast into the woods.

Not skunked today, not at all. It was in fact a perfect hour: cottonwoods alive with birdsong, clear green water and plenty of fish, flashing in and out of view in the sunny water. The only blot on the landscape was the imminent necessity of returning to work.

The state of the skunked is pitiful at best. As singlebarbed observes,
"I realized that “getting bit” was akin to Popeye’s Spinach, how without the ability to torture things smaller than me, I was a caricature of my former self."
Sad but ineluctable, as I noticed myself, in the last paragraph here.

Life involves maintaining oneself between contradictions that can't be solved by analysis.
- William Empson, note to the poem "Bacchus". 

Common Core alias PARCC alias Pearson in the wild

High-stakes punitive testing regimes run by for-profit companies like Pearson are not education. Colorado is subject to the PARCC testing. The sins of the fathers are now visited upon the sons: as long as the parents allow PARCC to rule the children will suffer its meaningless testing.

Here is a story from a teacher in New York about a fourth-grade PARCC reading test. This story was censored by PARCC on both the original weblog and on Twitter, on the grounds of copyright infringement. At what point did public education in the USA become subject to copyright infringement ? Why are the taxpayers of the USA paying for Pearson to copyright and profit from testing our children ?

Story follows:
Here is the critique of the 4th grade PARCC exam  by an anonymous teacher, as it originally appeared on Celia Oyler's blog before she was threatened by PARCC and deleted key sections.  See also my post about my tweet that was deleted  after PARCC absurdly complained to Twitter that it infringed on their copyright!

As an act of collective disobedience to the reigning testocracy, I urge all other fellow bloggers to paste the below critique and copy it into their blogs as well.

As the teacher points out below, "we can use these three PARCC prompts to glimpse how the high stakes accountability system has deformed teaching and warped learning in many public schools across the United States. "

No high-stakes test that is used to judge students, teachers and schools should be allowed to be kept secret to escape accountability for the test-makers -- especially ones as flawed as these!  

The PARCC Test: Exposed

The author of this blog posting is a public school teacher who will remain anonymous.

I will not reveal my district or my role due to the intense legal ramifications for exercising my Constitutional First Amendment rights in a public forum. I was compelled to sign a security form that stated I would not be “Revealing or discussing passages or test items with anyone, including students and school staff, through verbal exchange, email, social media, or any other form of communication” as this would be considered a “Security Breach.” In response to this demand, I can only ask—whom are we protecting?

There are layers of not-so-subtle issues that need to be aired as a result of national and state testing policies that are dominating children’s lives in America. As any well prepared educator knows, curriculum planning and teaching requires knowing how you will assess your students and planning backwards from that knowledge. If teachers are unable to examine and discuss the summative assessment for their students, how can they plan their instruction? Yet, that very question assumes that this test is something worth planning for. The fact is that schools that try to plan their curriculum exclusively to prepare students for this test are ignoring the body of educational research that tells us how children learn, and how to create developmentally appropriate activities to engage students in the act of learning. This article will attempt to provide evidence for these claims as a snapshot of what is happening as a result of current policies.

The PARCC test is developmentally inappropriate

In order to discuss the claim that the PARCC test is “developmentally inappropriate,” examine three of the most recent PARCC 4th grade items.

A book leveling system, designed by Fountas and Pinnell, was made “more rigorous” in order to match the Common Core State Standards. These newly updated benchmarks state that 4th Graders should be reading at a Level S by the end of the year in order to be considered reading “on grade level.” [Celia’s note: I do not endorse leveling books or readers, nor do I think it appropriate that all 9 year olds should be reading a Level S book to be thought of as making good progress.]

The PARCC, which is supposedly a test of the Common Core State Standards, appears to have taken liberties with regard to grade level texts. For example, on the Spring 2016 PARCC for 4th Graders, students were expected to read an excerpt from Shark Life: True Stories about Sharks and the Sea by Peter Benchley and Karen Wojtyla. According to Scholastic, this text is at an interest level for Grades 9-12, and at a 7th Grade reading level. The Lexile measure is 1020L, which is most often found in texts that are written for middle school, and according to Scholastic’s own conversion chart would be equivalent to a 6th grade benchmark around W, X, or Y (using the same Fountas and Pinnell scale).

Even by the reform movement’s own standards, according to MetaMetrics’ reference material on Text Complexity Grade Bands and Lexile Bands, the newly CCSS aligned “Stretch” lexile level of 1020 falls in the 6-8 grade range. This begs the question, what is the purpose of standardizing text complexity bands if testing companies do not have to adhere to them? Also, what is the purpose of a standardized test that surpasses agreed-upon lexile levels?

So, right out of the gate, 4th graders are being asked to read and respond to texts that are two grade levels above the recommended benchmark. After they struggle through difficult texts with advanced vocabulary and nuanced sentence structures, they then have to answer multiple choice questions that are, by design, intended to distract students with answers that appear to be correct except for some technicality.

Finally, students must synthesize two or three of these advanced texts and compose an original essay. The ELA portion of the PARCC takes three days, and each day includes a new essay prompt based on multiple texts. These are the prompts from the 2016 Spring PARCC exam for 4th Graders along with my analysis of why these prompts do not reflect the true intention of the Common Core State Standards.

ELA 4th Grade Prompt #1

Refer to the passage from “Emergency on the Mountain” and the poem “Mountains.” Then answer question 7.

7. Think about how the structural elements in the passage from “Emergency on the Mountain” differ from the structural elements in the poem “Mountains.”

Write an essay that explains the differences in the structural elements between the passage and the poem. Be sure to include specific examples from both texts to support your response.

The above prompt probably attempts to assess the Common Core standard RL.4.5: “Explain major differences between poems, drama, and prose, and refer to the structural elements of poems (e.g., verse, rhythm, meter) and drama (e.g., casts of characters, settings, descriptions, dialogue, stage directions) when writing or speaking about a text.”

However, the Common Core State Standards for writing do not require students to write essays comparing the text structures of different genres. The Grade 4 CCSS for writing about reading demand that students write about characters, settings, and events in literature, or that they write about how authors support their points in informational texts. Nowhere in the standards are students asked to write comparative essays on the structures of writing. The reading standards ask students to “explain” structural elements, but not in writing. There is a huge developmental leap between explaining something and writing an analytical essay about it. [Celia’s note: The entire enterprise of analyzing text structures in elementary school – a 1940’s and 50’s college English approach called “New Criticism” — is ridiculous for 9 year olds anyway.]

The PARCC does not assess what it attempts to assess

ELA 4th Grade Prompt #2

Refer to the passages from “Great White Shark” and Face the Sharks. Then answer question 20.

 Using details and images in the passages from “Great White Sharks” and Face to Face with Sharks, write an essay that describes the characteristics of white sharks.

It would be a stretch to say that this question assesses CCSS W.4.9.B: “Explain how an author uses reasons and evidence to support particular points in a text.”

In fact, this prompt assesses a student’s ability to research a topic across sources and write a research-based essay that synthesizes facts from both articles. Even CCSS W.4.7, “Conduct research projects that build knowledge through investigation of different aspects of a topic,” does not demand that students compile information from different sources to create an essay. The closest the standards come to demanding this sort of work is in the reading standards; CCSS RI.4.9 says: “Integrate information from two texts on the same topic in order to write or speak about the subject knowledgeably.” Fine. One could argue that this PARCC prompt assesses CCSS RI.4.9.

However, the fact that the texts presented for students to “use” for the essay are at a middle school reading level automatically disqualifies this essay prompt from being able to assess what it attempts to assess. (It is like trying to assess children’s math computational skills by embedding them in a word problem with words that the child cannot read.)

ELA 4th Grade Prompt #3

25. In “Sadako’s Secret,” the narrator reveals Sadako’s thoughts and feelings while telling the story. The narrator also includes dialogue and actions between Sadako and her family. Using these details, write a story about what happens next year when Sadako tries out for the junior high track team. Include not only Sadako’s actions and feelings but also her family’s reaction and feelings in your story.

Nowhere, and I mean nowhere in the Common Core State Standards is there a demand for students to read a narrative and then use the details from that text to write a new story based on a prompt. That is a new pseudo-genre called “Prose Constructed Response” by the PARCC creators, and it is 100% not aligned to the CCSS. Not to mention, why are 4th Graders being asked to write about trying out for the junior high track team? This demand defies their experiences and asks them to imagine a scenario that is well beyond their scope.

Clearly, these questions are poorly designed assessments of 4th graders CCSS learning. (We are setting aside the disagreements we have with those standards in the first place, and simply assessing the PARCC on its utility for measuring what it was intended to measure.)

Rather than debate the CCSS we instead want to expose the tragic reality of the countless public schools organizing their entire instruction around trying to raise students’ PARCC scores.

Without naming any names, I can tell you that schools are disregarding research-proven methods of literacy learning. The “wisdom” coming “down the pipeline” is that children need to be exposed to more complex texts because that is what PARCC demands of them. So children are being denied independent and guided reading time with texts of high interest and potential access and instead are handed texts that are much too hard (frustration level) all year long without ever being given the chance to grow as readers in their Zone of Proximal Development (pardon my reference to those pesky educational researchers like Vygotsky.)

So not only are students who are reading “on grade level” going to be frustrated by these so-called “complex texts,” but newcomers to the U.S. and English Language Learners and any student reading below the proficiency line will never learn the foundational skills they need, will never know the enjoyment of reading and writing from intrinsic motivation, and will, sadly, be denied the opportunity to become a critical reader and writer of media. Critical literacies are foundational for active participation in a democracy.

We can look carefully at one sample to examine the health of the entire system– such as testing a drop of water to assess the ocean. So too, we can use these three PARCC prompts to glimpse how the high stakes accountability system has deformed teaching and warped learning in many public schools across the United States.

In this sample, the system is pathetically failing a generation of children who deserve better, and when they are adults, they may not have the skills needed to engage as citizens and problem-solvers. So it is up to us, those of us who remember a better way and can imagine a way out, to make the case for stopping standardized tests like PARCC from corrupting the educational opportunities of so many of our children.

on the desert air

boys at the edge of illimitable oceans
throw stones only to watch
flight, splash, descent
into an imagined peace
this is my stone

for #worldpoetryday also here.

robodog II - the sacrificial socks

Robodog 1 was only partially successful, so we had to try again. Here's Artie, bold and resolute, duct-taped and skid-plated, ready to throw himself into the fray of swamp-pheasant hunting. "Gentlemen: we can rebuild him. We have the duct-tape." 

In the course of the previous hunt, one of the $40 dog boots was left behind somewhere in a field of deep hard-crusted snow. I lose more boots (money) that way. Perhaps it's time to fabricate a pair of suspenders to keep the boots at least loosely attached. On the other hand, between the black leather look of the duct tape, and the suspenders, the whole endeavor is becoming a little disturbing. For Robodog II we went with a pair of sacrificial socks under the tape. This provides the warm, durable, yet stylish, armored leggings seen above.

The skid plate is for the low-slung underparts. His belly has a rich assortment of scars from all the cat-tails and other undergrowth he goes crashing through. If I could get him to slow down a bit it would help, but he doesn't do slow.

Artie started dragging his right paw while running, so it gets abraded on top and bleeds. Here is the early season Robodog version 0.9, on the Wyoming operating table (an ATV is useful for about everything, up on the farm) as Ken wraps the paw. Tau meanwhile looks alertly at the woodpile which is emanating suspicious scurrying sounds. Small rodents are also known as 'snacks!' to the dogs. If there aren't any birds around and they get bored, will usually starting hunting independently for a little supplementary protein.

Later that day we visited Ken's neighbor Casey, who had been working on AI in his barn. He had some computer troubles so Ken and I attempted to troubleshoot, concluding eventually it was hardware and not susceptible to our software wiles. Casey listened to us discussing it and observed, "I don't understand a single word you boys are saying, but I bet if I got you out in the barn to do AI, you'd be completely lost." We had to agree. This is of course Artificial Insemination cowboy style, rather than AI in the software sense - wrestling cows, with sensitivity. A good AI man or woman is hard to find, commanding high rates. We can conclude AI is a career with excellent prospects wherever you practice it, on the high plains or in the wretched hives of scum and villainy where software developers fail to mechanistically extract wisdom from data.

First hunt of the season, showing once more the kind of nonsense up with which the poor dog has to put. In the middle of the picture, there is a V of calm water with a black dot at its apex. That's Artie, swimming out to fetch the bird I didn't hit hard enough.

Glory be to God for dappled things. For the overcoat of burrs on the fur, not so much.

Two very truly run-after dogs loafing in the sun. It takes six hours of hard running in the snow to get them stationary for a photograph.

Midseason. Today Artie had to cover ground for three hunters, which he did beautifully as always. That means for every twenty yards we walk forward spaced twenty yards apart, he has run eighty yards up and down the line of hunters, two or three times. Do this across a fifty-acre field with deep cover a few times, add in a quarter-mile sprint down the dirt road after a running bird followed by a triumphant trot back with the bird in his jaws, and he needs a lift up into the car at the end of day.

We don't have a rustic barn with comfortable wood stove unfortunately, so have to make do with a bed in front of the gas fire for recuperation.

Here's a barn pic, from when we were all much younger.

Late season, looking for pheasants in the corn stubble. In these conditions the birds can see, smell and hear you coming, so they fled hundreds of yards ahead of us.

In the evening we huddle under the cottonwoods watching for the evening flight of pheasants into the swamp. The dogs are back in the barn resting so that the birds are not molested or disturbed on their way to bed: this is just bird-watching, the hunt is over. In the spring a pair of sandhill cranes nested here, successfully raising their chick and leaving with the fall flights south, their valedictory rattling bugle calls floating down to us.

Above us hundreds of blackbirds, which used to migrate away from Wyoming in the winter, back when there were reliable winters.

Sunset over the barn mediated by branches and cloud. It was a good year.

Colorado's season goes on for a month after Wyoming closes. For the first time in a decade, a wet spring and summer brought good cover so most of the broods could reach adulthood, and the pheasant population was up. We went out once. This was an historic occasion for me - ten years of hunting in CO, and this was the first time I'd actually fired a shot. It's not a blood sport the way I shoot, much to Artie's regret.

When Artie was young, he would render a chew toy into shreds within a day, so I stopped buying them. His cousins from Australia sent him some new ones which have survived for months now. Instead of getting a shoe to welcome me downstairs in the morning, or home from work in the evening, I get a hedgehog (above), white rat or badger. Of course now I feel terrible that I deprived the dog of his mouth-comforts for so long.

Anno Domini: measuring him by dog years, Artie and I are the same age this year; that is to say, in the prime of life. We'll have to get in some extensive hunts before we are old next year.

a Weasley clock

tbornottb built an actual functioning (digital) Weasley clock, to show the location of family members:

It is perfectly wonderful.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. 
- Arthur C Clarke, 1973. 

This may be a borrowing, possibly unconscious, from H. Rider Haggard's fiction She (1886),

Have I not told thee that there is no such thing as magic, though there is such a thing as understanding and applying the forces which are in Nature?

Of course,

Don't believe everything you read on the internet.
- Ben Franklin, or was it Abe Lincoln ? hard to find a definitive source for this one.. 

However the wiring diagrams and other tech for the clock seem quite plausible.

Continuing with the quote theme, one of my favorites:

Oh, oobee doo (hoopdeewee)
I wanna be like you-hoo-hoo (hapdeedoobydoowop)
- Louis Prima, 1967