Fred Klonsky’s PREA Prez Blog

JD’s bone marrow.

There’s not much going on in the world of education blogging during the holiday break. Not much posting. Not many hits.

Which leads me to the Chronicle of Bone Marrow.

Back story: When we come to spend the holidays with our family in NY we often go out to eat Christmas Eve. One year it was at Mambo Italiano in Bay Ridge, Queens that featured a lounge singer performing That’s Amore! and where the food is served family style.

Another time we went to one of those Japanese Benihana-type places called Airrang. It is also in Bay Ridge. You eat around the grill and the cook flips shrimp at your plate. They serve drinks with umbrellas and big slices of pineapple and a cherry.

This year we were thinking of Ruby Foo’s, a tacky tourist place in Time’s Square.

Instead we went upscale. My daughter had heard that the Beacon in Mid-town was kid-friendly. That would be good for Lucy. And my daughter had heard that the food was pretty good. We went early. We ordered the fixed price menu. It was all good, particularly the wood-fire roasted oysters.

Back to the Chronicle of Bone Marrow.

Yesterday I posted recipes for tzimmes and borscht. Things are slow and I was just goofing. I have used tzimmes and borscht as a posting title. The names of these Eastern European Jewish dishes are a Yiddish idiom. Mixing tzimmes and borscht roughly translates as “mixing apples and oranges.”

The recipe I posted for the cabbage borscht includes bone marrow.

Yesterday JD2718, a NY math teacher and blogger, posted a recipe for his winter soup. It also included bone marrow.

He commented on the almost amazing coincidence: Two ed bloggers posting about bone marrow on the same day. I suggested a Chronicle of Bone Marrow. JD responded that the blog The Spamwise Chronicles also had posted on bone marrow. We were now a thread, a blogging category, a section of a blogroll, if not a movement.

To close the circle, The Spamwise Chronicles’ bone marrow was included in a post describing a dinner they had at the very same Beacon restaurant in Mid-town.

As I said, this is a slow time for ed bloggers.

Update:

JD has now produced the Carnivellette of Marrow and we both are included (with one small factual errors (I am a K-5 Art teacher, not a kindergarten teacher) on the Teacher Pot Luck Carnival.

TZIMMES

1 (6- to 7-lb brisket

1 3/4 teaspoons salt

1 teaspoon black pepper

3 tablespoons olive oil

4 cups chicken stock

3/4 cup Sherry vinegar

2 lb carrots, peeled and cut crosswise into 2-inch-long pieces

4 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 2-inch pieces

2 3/4 cups dried pitted prunes

Put oven rack in middle position and preheat oven to 350°F.

Pat brisket dry and rub all over with 1 teaspoon salt and 1/2 teaspoon pepper. Heat oil in a 17- by 11-inch heavy roasting pan (3 inches deep) over moderately high heat, straddled across 2 burners, until hot but not smoking, then brown brisket, starting with fat side down, on both sides, about 5 minutes per side. Remove from heat, then add stock and vinegar to pan. Cover pan tightly with heavy-duty foil and braise brisket in oven 2 hours. Add carrots and potatoes to pan and braise, covered, 1 hour. Add prunes and braise, covered, until meat is fork-tender, about 30 minutes more. Cool meat, uncovered, to room temperature, about 1 hour, then chill, covered, at least 12 hours.

Put oven rack in middle position and preheat oven to 350°F.

Transfer brisket to a cutting board and slice across the grain about 1/4 inch thick. Discard as much fat as possible from surface of vegetables and sauce, then return sliced meat to pan and reheat, covered with foil, until heated through, about 40 minutes. Sprinkle with remaining 3/4 teaspoon salt and remaining 1/2 teaspoon pepper, then arrange meat with tzimmes and sauce on a large platter.

CABBAGE BORSCHT

1 lb. top rib

2 cans (10.5 oz) beef consomme + 2 cans water

½ cabbage, thinly sliced2 medium onions, thinly sliced

1 lg. can diced tomatoes + ½ can water

1 bay leaffresh thyme sprigs or dill

salt and pepper

¼ cup sugar

2 marrow bones

juice of one lemon

1 tbsp. balsamic vinegar

Simmer all ingredients in large soup pot, except marrow bones, lemon juice and vinegar. Remove meat when tender (about 2 hours). Keep warm. Add marrow bones and simmer 45 minutes longer. Remove marrow bones and save marrow to spread on toast or chop fine and return to soup. Add lemon juice and vinegar. Taste to adjust seasoning for salt, pepper, sugar, lemon juice or vinegar.

Best made a day ahead so that you can refrigerate and remove fat.

One of the advantages of being in New York (or LA) during the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day is that movies are opening this week that we don’t get in Chicago for a while. They need to play here to qualify for Oscar nomination.

There Will Be Blood is playing at one theater in Manhattan. It stars Daniel Day-Lewis and it is directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. Anderson also directed Boogie Nights and a terrific little move called Hard Eight.

I was blown away. It is a movie you have to go out for coffee after and allow about an hour to discuss.

It is political. It is the most political movie I’ve seen in a very long time, a parable on capitalism and religion. Aren’t these the subjects you’re not suppose to bring up at a party?

Now you have an excuse.

From 5th Avenue in NY on Christmas eve, from all my family featuring granddaughter Lucy, a wish for a happy holiday and a better New Year!

NCLB? Put a fork in it. NY Times front page left column above the fold. My favorite quote is from John Edwards, “You don’t make a hog fatter by weighing it.” I kind of like those country boys. Even when they are multi-millionaire personal injury lawyers.

Ed Notes ponders the similarities between Shankerism and Clintonism and its impact on teacher unionism, especially in NY’s UFT.

Diatribune: “If you needed a perfect example of the Bush Profiteer, you might consider the first “senior education advisor” he imported from Texas, the architect of NCLB himself.”

The Bush-packed National Labor Relations Board says unions don’t have a right to e-mail. Better put it in your contract. We did.

“My daddy marched with King,” says Mitt. The Boston Phoenix reports: The Washington Post’s “Fact Checker” has upgraded the Romney claims from two pinocchios (”significant omissions and/or exaggerations) to four pinocchios(”whopper”).

Atfaluna is a school for the deaf in Gaza City. Watch the video here.

Earlier in the week the alarm went off at 5:30 AM, the usual time, and I just wanted to roll over and stay in my nice warm bed.

Anne said, “Let’s set the alarm for 5:30 on Saturday just so we can turn if off and go back to sleep.”

This morning the alarm went off at 5:30 AM. Just as Anne promised she turned it off and with smiles on our faces we pulled the blanket up and fell back to sleep.

Traffic was light for coffee at Peets. It is foggy and drizzly with temperatures in the mid 40s. We just checked the temperature in Mexico (where we will be New Year’s eve) and it never gets above 85 or lower than 78. Perfect.

• Struggle in the fields.

My union brother and IEA blogger, Dan Chambers posts:

You might think modern employers are all caught up to speed on that whole ‘13th Amendment’ thing… But, apparently not.

• Merry Christmas! Bush “Scrooges” kids on Medicare and Medicaid funding.

The Washington Post reports:

The Bush administration yesterday eliminated about $700 million a year in Medicaid reimbursements to schools, sidestepping an attempt by Congress to block such a move.The new rule, issued by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, is expected to save the federal government $3.6 billion over five years, transferring those costs to school districts.

• OK. I know this is weird.

I know the idea of an 80 minute documentary about Helvetica type (this is the 50th anniversary of Helvetica) may not be your idea of a great Christmas movie, but Anne and I are both type-face junkies. Helvetica is the best film on design (not a huge category) I have ever seen. And when designer Paula Scher explained the relationship between Helvetica type and the Vietnam and Iraq wars, it was brilliant.

Today was the Holiday Sing. Two shifts. Half in the morning and half in the afternoon. The kids were dressed spiffier than any of us could remember. I was taking no chances with paints or crayons or markers. Even if they were wearing their paint smocks, I wasn’t about to take responsibility.

So I showed a collection of Pixar cartoons. I talked a little about the old days when each cel had to be drawn individually. OK. Done with the education part. On with the cartoons. I thought it was funny that the kids who laughed the hardest were the first graders and the fifth graders.

It’s a great collection by the way. It begins pre-Pixar with a 1984 Lucas Film cartoon called The Adventures of Andre and Wally B. and ends with a 2007 digitally animated short called Lifted. The DVD was twenty bucks at Target and you can bet I’ll use it again.

Anne and I are heading for Brooklyn on Sunday, whether permitting. And then a couple of days South of the border. This is the point where I say I’ll do limited posting. But then I post anyway. We’ll just see how it goes.

We’ll be seeing the family and celebrating the holidays in Brooklyn. I have a grandson due at the end of January. What I wish for my grandchildren, I wish for all kids. It’s a long list, but it begins with an end to our terrible wars.

Of all the songs that get sung this time of year, my favorite is Jackson Browne’s The Rebel Jesus:

All the streets are filled with laughter and light
And the music of the season
And the merchants’ windows are all bright
With the faces of the children
And the families hurrying to their homes
While the sky darkens and freezes
Will be gathering around the hearths and tables
Giving thanks for God’s graces
And the birth of the rebel Jesus

Well they call him by ‘the Prince of Peace’
And they call him by ‘the Savior’
And they pray to him upon the seas
And in every bold endeavor
And they fill his churches with their pride and gold
As their faith in him increases
But they’ve turned the nature that I worship in
From a temple to a robber’s den
In the words of the rebel Jesus

Well we guard our world with locks and guns
And we guard our fine possessions
And once a year when Christmas comes
We give to our relations
And perhaps we give a little to the poor
If the generosity should seize us
But if any one of us should interfere
In the business of why there are poor
They get the same as the rebel Jesus

Now pardon me if I have seemed
To take the tone of judgment
For I’ve no wish to come between
This day and your enjoyment
In a life of hardship and of earthly toil
There’s a need for anything that frees us
So I bid you pleasure
And I bid you cheer
From a heathen and a pagan
On the side of the rebel Jesus

Whitney Tilson, the wealthy hedge-fund manager, school profiteer and DFER angel, continues his crusade against Linda Darling-Hammond. Darling-Hammond is a highly respected academic authority on teacher quality and she is an education adviser to the Obama campaign.

What is the sin of Linda Darling-Hammond?

She’s no fan of a Tilson pet project, Teach for America.

And Obama had the nerve to have Darling-Hammond as an adviser without asking Whitney if it was OK with him? I mean how white and rich do you have to be before a presidential candidate asks you for permission to bring on board an expert in her field?

By the way, more than a week later, no-one from the Obama campaign has contacted me about the LDH travesty (despite many being on my email list).

I mean, jeez! He’s got Obama people on his e-mail list for Christ’s sake.

I posted a few weeks ago about the new Denzel Washington movie, The Great Debaters.

It tells the inspiring true story of the debate team at the Historically Black Wiley College in Marshall Texas which in 1935 won the National Championship.

The Chicago Sun-Times published a story of the response of some Chicago high school debaters who got to go to a preview screening of the film.

The film features one female debater, Samantha Booke, the first in the school’s history. Sylvia Nelson Jordan, manager of the Chicago Debate League, estimated that females accounted for 60 percent of Wednesday’s packed audience.

During an early debate in the film, Booke’s character says, “The time for equality is right now!”

The young audience cheered.