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MichaelLorenzen, a candidate for the position of Library Assistant Dean ofPublic Services, will present "Academic Library Public Services in 2014and How to Get There" from 4 to 5 p.m. Monday, Nov. 9, in the LibraryPresentation Room on campus.Lorenzen is the head of Reference Services at Central Michigan University's Charles V. Park Library in Mount Pleasant, Mich.This presentation is free and open to the public.

Increased number of people qualified for G.I. Bill causes delay in tuition, housing stipends...

It was a sunny 60 degrees in Billings, Mont., when Western’s women’s soccer team defeated the Montana State University Billings...

The Western men’s basketball team opened their 2009-10 home schedule with a 111-58 exhibition rout of Quest University Monday night...

Michael Lorenzen, a candidate for the assistant dean of public services position in Western's Wilson Library, gave a presentation on...

Google Wave gives you a username in the form of username@googlewave.com. It looks like an email address, so I tried sending an email to mine. This is what I got back:

Delivered-To: username@gmail.com
Received: by 10.142.68.2 with SMTP id q2cs128805wfa;
Mon, 9 Nov 2009 08:07:48 -0800 (PST)
Received: by 10.142.201.18 with SMTP id y18mr791597wff.257.1257782838160;
Mon, 09 Nov 2009 08:07:48 -0800 (PST)
MIME-Version: 1.0
Return-Path: <>
Received: by 10.142.201.18 with SMTP id y18mr791597wff.257; Mon, 09 Nov 2009
08:07:48 -0800 (PST)
From: Mail Delivery Subsystem <mailer-daemon@googlemail.com>
To: username@gmail.com
X-Failed-Recipients: username@googlewave.com
Subject: Delivery Status Notification (Failure)
Message-ID: <000e0cd22a0c0faf950477f26437@google.com>
Date: Mon, 09 Nov 2009 16:07:48 +0000
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:
username@googlewave.com
Technical details of permanent failure:
The recipient server did not accept our requests to connect. Learn more at http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=7720
[googlewave.com (1): Connection timed out]

—– Original message —–
MIME-Version: 1.0
Received: by 10.142.201.18 with SMTP id y18mr791597wff.257.1257782838160; Fri,
06 Nov 2009 05:58:43 -0800 (PST)
From: =?UTF-8?B?w6ZuZHLDvGs=?= <username@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 2009 05:58:23 -0800
Message-ID: <152aefdf0911060558r6a4e7c75j55152d0c340f18de@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: What happens?
To: username@googlewave.com
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=000e0cd22a0ce641420477b43d62
What happens when I email this?

Maybe in the future this will be a wave to email bridge. In the mean time, there should at least be a more helpful bounce message.

This media course provides a brief overview of the ways in which U.S.media policy undermines the ability of U.S. journalism to meet the needs of our democratic republic, instead cause it to become an antidemocratic force. It will explore the nature of U.S. media policy debates and the myths that undermine meaningful public participation in those debates.The idea behind the Faculty GUR Group is that faculty -- as well as students -- need to sustain their general education. With this in mind, the Faculty GUR Group was formed to bring together faculty from different departments across the university in a learning community that will seek to enhance each participant's general education by relying on each other's domain of expertise.

Earn a B.A. or B.S. in Environmental Studies from Western Washington University's award-winning Huxley College of the Environment. Visit with the program manager for more information, November 12, 10 am-1 pm at Olympic College-Bremerton in the Bremer Student Center. Program details are on the Web at www.acadweb.wwu.edu/eesp/huxley/index.shtml or call (360) 417-6521.

The Western Gallery will present artist Geraldine Ondrizek's "The Sound of Cells Dividing" as its first major exhibition of the 2009-2010 academic year. The exhibit will be on display from Sept. 28 through Nov. 25."The Sound of Cells Dividing" will exhibit Ondrizek's recent film "Cellular" and its corresponding set of drawings of a blastocyst, a multiple-cell embryo, as well as her "Sound Wall" installation, which was created for the Center for Art and Technology (CAMAC) and housed in a 17th century monastery in France. "Sound Wall" will be recreated for the Western Gallery. In conjunction with the exhibition, Ondrizek will offer a lecture about her work on Wednesday, Oct. 21. For information on the time and location of her lecture, visit http://westerngallery.wwu.edu or call (360) 650-3900.Both the lecture and the exhibition are free and open to the public. Gallery hours are 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday, except Wednesdays, when the gallery is open until 8 p.m., and noon to 4 p.m. on Saturdays. Live music and poetry readings frequently are presented in the Gallery on Wednesday evenings. For more event details, visit http://westerngallery.wwu.edu/.

Mary Pickford
Originally uploaded by twm1340Last night my wife and I went downtown to take in a movie. Then we walked over to the ice cream parlor for dessert.

And it occurred to me: my grandparents, either set, could have done that in Plainfield, NJ, eighty years ago. We even saw the film at the Pickford Cinema, an independent theatre named after Mary Pickford.

Of course, I don't think my grandparents would have appreciated a dark and hilarios film like A SERIOUS MAN, and I'll be their icre cream parlor didn't have huckleberry, white pepper, or cardamom flavors like Mallard does.

With the change of the seasons, I crave different kinds of food. I rarely want soup in the summer, and I want food with more warmth in the winter. It is fun to look around you and find food inspiration in the changing seasons. And for me there has always been something about roasted root vegetables in the Fall. The color palette makes me think of the pretty colored leaves swirling around outside, brightening up a grey day. And when done right, these veggies taste delicious and melt in your mouth--talk about your comfort food on a dreary dark day.

The Nov-Dec 2009 issue of Vegetarian Times has a great quick and easy recipe for roasted root vegetables, only they have also thrown in a delicious dip that I think is one of my new favorite things.



Not only is the dip easy to make, it is full of flavor and a perfect accompaniment to these roasted veggie sticks. When we ate this a couple of weeks ago, we just added a green salad to the side and called it dinner! It was easy, tasty, yummy and very filling.

The recipe called for carrots, (cut into sticks, 6 cups) and red and gold beets (also 6 cups worth of sticks). I used carrots, yams, turnips, and red beets. I say just pick whatever your own favorite root veggies are and go with that, although I like how colorful beets make everything. Speaking of beets, I used to detest them when I was younger, and I never understood how my mother could love them, and now I can't get enough! I love them so much and every time I eat them, I realize I love them even more! I have no idea why it took so long for my beet-loving taste buds to kick in, but at least I finally have them now. And beets in particular taste great prepared simply and easily like this.



To make your own tasty meal, begin by preheating the oven to 450 and toss veggies with 1 and 1/2 tablespoons of olive oil. Arrange in a single layer on a baking sheet and season with salt and pepper. Roast until tender--the recipe says 25 minutes, but every oven is different and mine took closer to 45 minutes.

For the dip, in a food processor combine: 1 head of roasted garlic (you can wrap the garlic in foil and roast with the veggies, or roast separately in a garlic roaster), one 15 ounce can of cannellini beans (I used navy beans because I did not have any cannellini), 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice, 1 teaspoon grated lemon zest, 1 teaspoon dried basil, and one tablespoon olive oil. Combine until smooth and that's all there is to it! Enjoy!

On Friday I was in an elementary school classroom for 3 hours, meaning I've spent at least 6 total hours in that class this quarter. I love those kids, but I had a really hard time connecting to them. And now I'm bummed. :(

Part of the problem was that the class was in absolute chaos for most of the day. The teacher realizes that the class has a variety of students at different reading and math levels, so she divides the class into sections. Thus, a third of the class is working on one thing while the other two thirds are doing something completely different. Then, one part of the class will finish and run around while others are still working. Pretty soon, one group is running around killing time, another is working on spelling, and another group is taking a math test. Let me tell you, those kids do not want to do much of anything quietly. Furthermore, as soon as I figure out how to help a group of kids with a reading assignment, another reading group needs help, but their assignment is totally different, so I have to figure out the answer to a puzzle about a story I never read. Most of the time I feel pretty useless.

When I can't help them with their classwork, I walk around and try to chat with the kids about various things, but they don't seem like they want to talk to me; they want to do their own things with their own friends. How the heck do I reach these kids?

I left the school feeling pretty lousy about how I didn't reach most of them. Then I started thinking about what I would do with them if I was their teacher. I wouldn't allow for such chaos, for one thing. Because I'm the bad guy trying to get the kids to do their work rather than draw pictures and throw markers at each other, they would rather me not be there. Basically, the kids just want to play. And I understand that. School's boring. When I'm a teacher, I'll try to make the kids want to do the work. Easier said than done, though. It just seems like there needs to be more appeal in doing the work than in goofing off whenever possible.

Maybe I'm portraying this classroom incorrectly. These kids are very smart, and many of the students were trying very hard. But because of the chaos and confusion, few students were focused on finishing their work. After 15 minutes of struggling, they were ready to be done.

Okay, so how am I going to reach these kids next week? I definitely won't try to prevent them from being hyper elementary school kids. Last time I tried that, some kids got into a shoving match which I couldn't break up because I couldn't touch them. It was the teacher who yelled at them to get them to stop; that's her job, not mine. When I'm a teacher, I'll be the one in charge of keeping order in the classroom. But now, I'll be there to manage the kids that need help with the school work. Plus, the kids that were goofing off were the ones that had a pretty good grasp on the work they were doing.

I've been thinking about the management and organization of this classroom. There will always be several different groups of kids at varying levels in any classroom. How am I going to challenge the kids that are ahead and help the kids that are behind? Dividing up the work seems like a logical solution, but then the risk is of dividing up the class into "smarter" and "dumber." This is going on in the classroom where I volunteer, and the kids at higher level rub their intelligence in the faces of the kids that are behind. The kids are disrespectful in general. I can talk all I want about how I'll manage kids in my own classroom and how I'll do away with all disrespect and chaos while forming a utopia in the classroom, but I know it probably won't happen. I guess where my skills are lacking is in discipline. Psh, I know I'm lacking in discipline skills. But again, this is not my place to discipline kids.

Okay, my rant is over.

-Elie

I got an email about 15 minutes after the House passed the health care reform bill tonight. Got super stoked! Adrenaline rush. Does that make me a nerd?

I don't know all the details of the (2,000 page!?) reform bill but from the highlights it looks really promising. The bill apparently creates a new government division called the "Health Choices Administration" that will oversee the changes to our current health system. It also starts the Health Benefits Advisory Council, chaired by the surgeon general, that will set regulations on what mandatory benefits health insurance plans will include.


So who comes out ahead? Uninsured Americans. The Congressional Budget Office report estimates that 96% of Americans will be insured before 2020 which is good news for the 47-54 million uninsured today. Also, insured Americans will most likely see a spending cap on how much they have to pay in health costs each year ($5k for individuals and $10k for families). Wish this had passed before my ankle surgery cost almost $8,000 after insurance payouts.

The losers? Drug and insurance companies. CBO says they'll take a $150 million hit over the next few years. Does anyone care? They still have monetary incentive to innovate, the bill lets them restrict the production of generic forms of their drugs for 12 years after they're introduced, and their market has increased because the government is now a massive customer.


Lenny Kravitz remixed by Justice? Yesss:

I got an email about 15 minutes after the House passed the health care reform bill tonight. Got super stoked! Adrenaline rush. Does that make me a nerd?

I don't know all the details of the (2,000 page!?) reform bill but from the highlights it looks really promising. The bill apparently creates a new government division called the "Health Choices Administration" that will oversee the changes to our current health system. It also starts the Health Benefits Advisory Council, chaired by the surgeon general, that will set regulations on what mandatory benefits health insurance plans will include.


So who comes out ahead? Uninsured Americans. The Congressional Budget Office report estimates that 96% of Americans will be insured before 2020 which is good news for the 47-54 million uninsured today. Also, insured Americans will most likely see a spending cap on how much they have to pay in health costs each year ($5k for individuals and $10k for families). Wish this had passed before my ankle surgery cost almost $8,000 after insurance payouts.

The losers? Drug and insurance companies. CBO says they'll take a $150 million hit over the next few years. Does anyone care? They still have monetary incentive to innovate, the bill lets them restrict the production of generic forms of their drugs for 12 years after they're introduced, and their market has increased because the government is now a massive customer.


Lenny Kravitz remixed by Justice? Yesss:

Isabel Fernández López, master of the flamenco dance, will bring her company to Western Washington University's Performing Arts Center for an evening of flamenco dance and music beginning at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 7.The event, called "Flamenco Desde Abajo," or "Flamenco from the Ground Up," will feature Fernández López dancing in the company of Felipe Mato, with guitarists Morito and Jordi Albarrán, Diego Villegas in flute/harmonics, and singers El Trini and Sara Salado. On their tour, the artists also will perform in New York City; Washington, D.C.; Seattle; San Juan, Puerto Rico; and Panama.