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The United States Has an I.D.E.A. Let's Use It.

There is a steady, measured campaign going to in this country to deny children of protections of their civil rights. A friend of mine recently posted on Facebook a link to a late-2017 WaPo article describing how the federal Department of Education rescinded 72 policy documents that outlined the rights of children with disabilities. It is now almost ten months later, and what's going on has gotten worse--IMO, much worse. Links to Obama-era documents, including documents about countering exclusionary discipline and mitigating the school-to-prison pipeline, have been removed from Department of Education websites. In addition, the federal Department of Education recently changed its policy regarding the investigation of alleged civil rights violations, saying that it was an unreasonable burden to investigate settings where multiple violations had been reported, and so those investigations are being dropped. As expressed by the New York Times, the "new protocol...allo
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Cheat Sheets for Little Johnny or Jamilah

Let's talk IEPs. It's coming to the time of year when parents and teachers are thinking about thinking about returning to school. In the social media world, families are once again beginning to share templates for cute little cheat-sheets that summarize the strengths and deficits of their kids with disabilities, listing the accommodations and teaching strategies that have been included in their children's IEPs. I know that teachers appreciate this. And I know that parents do this all the time. Such cheat sheets can be helpful. After all, teachers have a lot of children to teach. The children have many needs and the teacher is just one person. Teachers have countless IEPs and 504s, and it's a lot to handle. But, for a moment, imagine people in other professions making the same sort of statements. Imagine a surgeon saying that it's hard to keep track of the information about all of his or her patients. Imagine a sports coach saying that it's diffic
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Remembering

Who was that Congressman who wrote down every thing he did at every minute of the day on an index card he kept in his shirtpocket? Why would someone do that? Did he have an overinflated sense of self-importance, believing that his eternal reputation would depend on his notes? Or just a poor memory? I have enough trouble remembering to write down telephone messages, let alone a continuous diary. I wonder if he has AD/HD from constantly switching his attention between reality and his journal? I wonder if he's switched to chronicling his life in a PDA? Are his thumbs now worn out from texting? What will we do if our Congressman can no longer use his thumbs? BTW, my mother is at her first oncology appointment and I'm trying not to think about it.
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Can They Hear It?

I had a complete abdominal ultrasound today.  And a mammogram.  I wonder what they found.  I won't know for another 2 weeks.  14 days.  336 hours.  20,160 minutes.  1,209,600 seconds. I wonder how many seconds I have left.
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A Day in the Life

I just had a weird memory. Many years ago I took a philosophy class that met in the same Manhattan building as the Iraqi embassy.  I'll never forget arriving late in a rainstorm.  I burst into the little lobby soaking wet, hair dripping all over the marble floor, and almost ran over a guy whom I later realized was Tariq Aziz, Iraq's former Deputy Prime Minister who's now in prison in Baghdad.  He was very tall.  And surprised. I don't know why I thought of that just now.
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Greatest Opening Line.Ever.

"Mother died today.  Or, maybe, yesterday;  I can't be sure."  The original?  "Aujourd'hui, maman est morte. Ou peut-être hier, je ne sais pas."  From Camus' The Stranger. The French title, L’Étranger, can be translated as:   overseas, stranger, outsider, foreign, alien.  Or:  extraneous, unconnected, unknown, or irrelevant. Will I be the Mother who dies?  Will I die irrelevant, unconnected, extraneous?
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The End is the Beginning

By the way, I think I am going to die soon.  More on that later.
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