Maggie's Farm

Re: filling school seats. Where I live, the Board of Education and the teacher's union turn a blind eye to students from the adjacent urban slums sneaking in to our expensive schools . I could not figure this out, and other parents and I over the years have turned in lists, names, license plates, etc. of kids seen walking over the border from the adjacent city to our school buses or being driven to school in cars with plates from the next state (and we are not talking about the kind of people who have a company car).

I could not understand how this went on year after at a time when the schools were overcrowded, class sizes were increasing, etc. Until a long time administrator said to me: "Simple. It's to protect themselves during the lean years. If you allow in hundreds of kids from adjacent communities and never require proof of residency, you will never have to close schools or fire teachers during the inevitable years when there are fewer students in the cohort." Duh. Grrrrrr. Funny thing, virtually all the students there under false pretences are in the groups requiring massive extra services, so it is not simply the standard 14,000 plus per student that us taxpayers are being ripped off for, but the tutoring, group therapy, ESL, etc. And they are the same kids who make school police officers necessary because of their in your face behavior.

Still, it is sadly true that kids across the spectrum smoke, do drugs openly in our school. My kids have reported kids rolling around drunk in class (one boy was a little rotter I pegged for trouble in toddler play group where he used to steal all the other kids' toys and whack protesters with a Fisher Price hammer. Mother in denial). Where we are, the mandatory punishments for being caught drinking or drugging are so severe that no teacher with an eye to career progress risks the ire of a well-connected parent if little Sweetums is slammed and expelled for toking in the playground. So they get away with it. If teachers could humiliate them by sentencing them to writing 100 lines on the blackboard in the cafeteria during lunch, whilst wearing a stupid and unflattering shirt, they might deter them...

As for your angel, whatever turns you on BUT: I wonder how she feel in a few years when one of her kids finds the photo? Or if she finallly meets a nice guy after porn sleazeballs, only to have him break off the engagement because of such pix?

As far as Mardi Gras goes, nothing in this country can hold a candle to Mardi Gras in Rio. You want to ogle beautiful women, ogle em there. They make your angel look like a sweet witless soda jerk.

For a good movie to rent, try the classic "Black Orpheus". The Portuguese is simple and you'll follow if you have minimal Spanish. Orpheus and Eurydice set in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro at Carnaval. Doomed love, my favorite. Gorgeous people, music, and story pillaged from the Greeks can't be beat!

Now somebody get that girl up there some clothes and tell her to enroll in night school and go to church and find a nice young man with prospects....