video and weekend

So I was just watching this video for national coming out day, and I'm like 95% certain that one of the people in it used to teach at my high school. Exciting! Back in school, I was pretty sure she was gay, but she wasn't really out to the students (then again, what was she supposed to do: make a general announcement?) so if it is her, I guess it means she's become more activist in the past few years? But now I want to verify with someone, and I keep in touch with exactly zero people from high school. How weird would it be to email my old friends and be like, "hey, how are you doing, sorry we haven't talked in a couple years. listen, look at this youtube video and tell me if you recognize X." pretty weird. I'm thinking I might do it anyway.

um, in other words, I was in Chicago last weekend and it was awesome! Yes, yes, I was a lazy bum, and Paige and Sarah and I mostly hung around Sarah's house and watched the discovery channel (which of course was kind of a typical college experience, so it was very nostalgic) but I was so happy to see both of them!

My cousin got married on Saturday evening, and it was a great wedding. The ceremony was super short (15 minutes), and the bride and groom were really cute, because you could tell they were kind of nervous, but they were reassuring each other up at the altar. Everyone had really sweet toasts, and my uncle even got to make a stupid rhyme of "geo-hydrologist and neurobiologist" which we're pretty sure he worked on for months. On Sunday morning they had a brunch, and I got to see some absolutely adorable 9 month old triplets.

I kind of did the tourist thing on Sunday after the wedding brunch. I walked along Michigan Ave and bought Frangos at what would be Marshall Field's had Macy's not taken over the entire world. It was a little sad because there were all these upscale shops that were supposed to be quite the tourist attraction, but they're basically the same shops you see in every city in the US and a whole lot of cities all over the world, too. I did buy caramel corn at garret's popcorn shop, which is actually local, and I ate it in millenium park, got sick from too much sugar, and then headed to the art institute. By the time I made it to the art institute, I'd already been on my feet for a few hours, so I pretty much had museum fatigue before I even went in the door. However, I did manage to see a number of paintings so famous that their reproductions adorn the walls of every dorm room in the country. It was actually kind of interesting to try to force myself to look at those paintings with fresh eyes. Like yes, I've seen that Van Gogh self portrait 80 trillion times so my eyes are glazing over, but hey, it was probably pretty revolutionary when it was first painted. Compare it to the earlier stuff in the other room, and it's pretty different from anything that came before it.

So the art institute was a good time. Actually, the whole weekend was a good time. Of course now I'm exhausted (the flight that got me in at 1am didn't help!) but it was worth it.

education

so I've been reading this washington post forum about AP and IB education, and there's this one lady on the forum who's convinced that IB is this big socialist conspiracy to turn America's children into young pioneers. Also, everything that's wrong with US education today is the fault of the Liberals. (and Californians, but really Californian is a synonym for liberal.)

Her evidence for IB is that it's based in Geneva (those scary Swiss people are corrupting our minds?), it has an association with the UN (I guess some right wingers think it's a clever socialist enterprise to destroy America), and in her son's IB US History class, they had to read Howard Zinn. I really want to respond to her, but jesus christ, do I have to sit there and find sources to prove that the UN is not a socialist conspiracy? I'm lazy. Also, I'd want to be nice and polite about it because I can't post anonymously, but that removes like 98% of the fun, so I probably won't bother.

But the thing is, I was still thinking, "maybe I can prove to her that reading Zinn, as long as you read other history books too, is fine. After all, kids should be taught to evaluate their sources critically, and besides, he approaches history in a way not traditionally found in High School textbooks. For one thing, he remembers that women and minorities exist." So I started googling IB US History reading lists, and a couple things happened. First of all, I started feeling this weird nostalgia for my old history books Boller and Boyer. Let's consider for a moment that I barely even read the Boyer. what? It was boring. I liked primary sources. But still, it was funny to see their names on a bunch of reading lists again. Second of all, I started getting really grateful that I was done with high school. The syllabi had cutesy idiotic word puzzles to teach you the name of random European rivers, dumb map quizzes, and waay too much rote memorization for my taste. My high school wasn't that bad, but I wonder, with the kids all reading just a boring textbook and doing lots of mindless busywork, how does anyone in those classes graduate from high school liking history at all?