An unprecedented hurricane disaster in the gulf and the president responds by saying he is cancelling the last two days of his vacation to survey the damage. How can anyone be that out of touch? He's going to cancel two days of a 35 day vacation. Well aren't we sorry about that?

Georgia Republicans have come up with yet another assault on public education and teachers. I'm convinced that they are making and effort to destroy public education as we know it. They don't care who it hurts because they see ways to benefit themselves. I believe it all stems from that basest of human instincts, self preservation, but taken to extreme it becomes that deadly sin . . . greed. This time they plan to ramrod through a new funding plan for public education in Georgia. They say the most hated taxation is local property tax for education. A media campaign will demonize property taxes as unfair. What is unfair about property tax? Simple. The rich pay it. The poor don't. But to me, that seems fair. This ploy is the same as the "national sales tax" to do away with income taxes. It will have that grade school ring of fairness until you see what a break it gives to the rich. The "education sales tax" would add 3 or 4 cents to the dollar on every purchase by consumers and shift school taxes from those with means to those without. If you make $20,000 a year, it is $600-800 a year in new taxes for you. If you live in a $2 million estate, you get an $18,000 dollar a year break before you start your spending. If you spent $200,000 dollars a year you'd put back $6,000 to $8,000 for a cool $10,000 a year salary increase. AND any payments you made on loans on your property, WOULD NOT BE TAXED. So the kind of payments the well off make are tax free, while buying bread for your babies is taxed. EXPECT TO SEE A MASSIVE ADVERTISING AND MEDIA BLITZ FOR THIS NEW "FAIR" SCHOOL TAX. A major point will be, "let tourists help pay for Georgia Schools."

What are other negatives? Control of funding for local schools goes from the county to the state. Legislators in poor areas will lobby and get a larger share of revenue than they currently get from their communities. Fayette County tax payers will subsidize the right to live in remote areas and have nicer schools. Fayette County Board of Education has already analyzed the state's proposal for funding and said it will cause a multi-million dollar decrease in funding for schools in Fayette County. The state has cut funding for schools in each year that the Republicans have controled the state government and Fayette County has had to tighten their belts. Class sizes are up 6 students per class as a result. The county does not see how it can continue to cut without personel cut backs. Let's see. If we just stopped funding Fine Arts, would that just about make up the difference? I believe so.

The major group that is leading the charge for this change is the School Voucher Adovates. Of course what they want most is for public schools to be declared a failure so they can get money out of the government to send their precious children to lily white, parochial schools, without those unnecessary government regulations on prayers, teacher certifications, and where doctrine can be taught and science avoided.

If you got this far in reading this blog. Hurrah for you! Don't vote for state government financial take over of local schools!

Two last examples of benefits. Wal-Mart will pay no more school taxes in it's communities. Everyone who shops at Wal-Mart will pay instead. My neighbor who owns 100 rental properties in the next county will stand to make $500,000 a year without paying any taxes for schools in that county. His tenants will be expected to pay his share. This another is another scam by Republicans to make life "fair." Or to say it another way, make life easier for the wealthy harder for the poor and elderly.

Fie! Fie on you greedy evil people! God will call you to account on that great gettin up morning, bye and bye.

Happy belated birthday to Carter. 53. And to Kent.25.

I'm sitting in the beach house. Mrs. G is gone shopping and it is quiet except for the ocean waves (wait that would be the dishwasher). As great as this house is, the dishwasher is 3rd class. We've got to get one of the quiet kind and right away. We bought one last year and sold it with the old house. What dopes! But the beach house with all it's windows is a terrific place to "while away the hour." There is a little green skink watching me from outside.

My room had a number installed yesterday. All this time with no number, 10 years, and now suddenly the chorus room is room 94. Hardly a number I would have picked for myself. I'm trying to think how to relate that to chorus somehow. I wonder why is doesn't just have a sign that says chorus room. Let's see, Mozart died in 1791. (Oooo that makes 2006 the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth and the 215th anniversary of his death). Purcell died in 1695. Brahms died in 1897. Copland died in 1990. Benjamin Franklin died in 1790, but he was strictly an amateur musician. Gershwin was born in 1898. Almost a match. Schubert was born in 1797. Bach's father, Johann Christoph died in 1695. Very close. More thought is going to be required. '94?

FYI Bob Dylan's real name is Robert Allen Zimmerman.

A communication revolution has taken place with the rise of the internet and the cell phone. Blogging is such a great way to keep up with people. And when you have a blog, it calls to you to write about what you are doing. I'm enjoying reading Dr. Fred's blog which is at womensing.blogspot.com . She is one of my favorite peers and lives in N.C. so I hardly ever get to see her, but her blogging let's me keep up with her life just a little bit.

Wednesday night is the night to go in to Golden's on the Square in Newnan, one of the South's great cafeterias. I will be stuffed before I leave. We meet friends there, other musicians and chat about the music business. I walked to school yesterday and Mrs. G took the golf cart back to school last evening for parent meetings. She got caught in a shower last evening, but I stayed dry on my trip. "The rain it raineth every day" of late. A nickel to anyone who can tell me the author of that quote without googling!

I've got to take more advantage of photos on these blogs. Dr. F's photos are worth a million. However the add image button on my Blogger screen does nothing when I click on it, so hmm, what to do about that.

Congress and the President have gone on vacation, as if the country is having a slow month and they can just steal away to rest until business picks up again. The newspaper men are also on holiday. No leaders to interview, so their must be no news. Funny how gas has gone up $.60 a gallon while they are on break. Shouldn't someone be concerned about that? Wouldn't there be investigations if there was a democrat in the white house?

When I look at the leaders of the right wing, I wonder how anyone can line up on that side. The people are such fundamentally bad people. Even if they represent your ideals in some way, don't you want to say "Get out of my sight" and get some better people to represent those ideals? Instead, the right just claims that their people are wonderful, when it is so easy to see they are not. If I were George Bush, I'd go see the lady down the road who lost her son. I wouldn't take the limo. I'd walk over. I'd sit in a lawn chair and talk to her (after all I'm on vacation). I'd hold her hand and listen to her talk about her wonderful boy and cry with her. How could that be a bad thing?

Neil Bortz is a local Atlanta right wing hate monger, with a nationally syndicated hate talk show. He still can't get through a program without making lewd remarks about Bill Clinton. I guess he just likes the titillation he gets from it. He's in the news because he has written a book talking about how great a national sales tax would be. It'll just solve everything and make taxation fair for everyone.

Neil's argument sounds pretty good, but you have to accept some fundamental principles underlying his whole idea that are loathsomely inaccurate. Neil want's things to be "fair" for everyone, rich and poor. The problem is . . . life is not fair. It isn't fair that I was born with loving parents who took care of my needs, fostered by dreams, paid for my higher education, and continued to encourage me in adulthood, while other folks usually get less than that. I like capitalism in that it creates opportunities and generates cash for the country. It is better that socialism, way better than communism, and beats the heck out of totalitarianism, oligarchy, and a bunch of other isms. However, capitalism sucks. I took boys to the ball game last week and on the way out to the car, one of them cried out "shotgun." He of course rode in the front by the passenger window. On the way back, he called it again before his friends and got the same seat again. Capitalism is like this. It's the firstest with the mostest. It's not about hard work. It's not even about ideas all that much. It's an I got it, you don't economy. It works for some really well. Neil Bortz works it to a tee. But since someone is already on the radio being a hate monger, that space is pretty much taken up (in his time slot anyway. I'll admit there are hate mongers on radio pretty much 24/7) and you'd have to really be something to displace him. He's set. He called shotgun a long time ago. Same for Coke and Pepsi. If you start your own soda, the moment you go public, Coke or Pepsi will simply buy you and you disappear. Think Microsoft. Ask yourself if you are satisfied with your microsoft products. Are they "great" products. Naaaaaaaaw. People hate the lame way computers work. Imagine if your cars worked as well as your computers! Alas I stray.

Capitalism is fundamentally unfair. The rich give their children jobs to make them rich. They don't have to be good at their jobs. They can be C students like George Bush. I was an A student. I graduated near the top of my class in h.s. and college. I knew C students. They were drunks, they were unfocused, they had a fundamental distaste for knowledge--"like please don't bother me with that. I mean who wants to know that anyway?" That sort of distaste for learning. They did not go to class. They laid on the grass and smoked it and pondered the sky or the passing babes. They were concerned about clothes and cars and running for student senate, and fraternity events. College was just a place to wait for adulthood, experiment with mind altering substances, and score babes. They made C's. Many of them graduated and went to work for Dad, or Uncle Bill.

A cool thing about capitalism is it rewards you for being first. Call shotgun first and you are a rich republican. You think of a dollar idea. People buy it a billion times and you are wealthier than many countries. Oh there is work involved, but the key thing was being first. Go Kleenex, Go Xerox, Go brand names! Capitalism also rewards the lucky. Just sit there on your farm. Let it run down. Live in a ramshackle tumble down building and scratch yourself. Don't worry about the future. Recipe for disaster, unless. . . Peremeter Mall Properties decides the land that grand daddy left you would be ideal for their mall and wants to pay you a million an acre for it. Be a lawyer, bill at $450 and hour. Be a teacher, bill at $35 an hour. Be a plumber, bill at $68 and hour. Why are people's hour's worth different amounts? It's complicated, but it's not because they are worth different amounts.

Anyway Neil Bortz. Taxation is a way for the governing bodies of your country to be unfair to the wealthy, who have unfairly benefited from capitalism, in order to benefit others who have also been treated unfairly by capitalism. Long live taxation. Let it never be fair.

Neil fails to mention that his tax plan is basically this. If you make a million a year, you skate out on $200,000 a year in taxes you would have been paying. Nice deal. You make $20,000 a year. You pay more.

Sorry to continue on football, but why is it a good thing to teach young men to find legal ways to hurt their opponents, because when he becomes afraid of you he'll get out of your way? What are we training them for?

There are a lot of good things in football. Teamwork, determination, body building, goal setting, brotherhood. But every year my boys learn how to break their arms and legs, tear their ligaments, bear up under surgery, and how to limp the rest of their lives, or to change their pencil grip after breaking their fingers. It definitely has a down side. It is thrilling to watch a long pass or a breakaway run isn't it? Why do we like that?

A separate blog for a political subject follows.

My little wife makes terrific chili dawgs. Since we both went to UGA all things "dog" must be spelled with an "aw." I was reading a blog about how to order at the varsity this morning, just for amusement of course since I know how to order at the varsity. We had two in Athens in the old days. Only one today. And I got a hankering for a chili dawg. The wife makes chili every so often (without the beans for me) and freezes some small containers of the fine stuff, just enough in each container to slather on two nekkid dawgs. Now if we can only figure out how they make those rings.

I remember my Dad taking me there in the 57 chevy, back about that time and how it frightened me when a man jumped on our car hood and started singing and spouting poetry. He was of course a "car hop" and took our order and brought us our food. About the only thing I would eat back then was a nekkid dawg. Stupid kid. You jump on someone's beamer today and they'll pull out a gun and shoot you. And it will just barely make the paper.

Our team lost its first football game 49 to 14 last night. This same team beat us 44 to 6 last year but had to forfeit to us because one of their players turned out to be 23. We don't do well in football. It looks like to me that maybe we should stop playing. I've been here for 10 years now and I don't think we've won 20 games in all that time. Couldn't we find something else to spend a million dollars a year on in our community? We have a new football field. We are talking dirt here. The old dirt was not satisfactory, didn't drain properly and all. So they took away our old dirt and we got $50,000 worth of new dirt and grass last year. They laid it down with a laser beam so the crown was exactly right. (The other day before the second preseason game ((That's right! I said preseason game. When exactly did high school boys start having preseason games? We also have games for ninth graders and junior varsity games)) we had a downpour and the field was under water on one end so we had to play the whole game going south. When teams got to the 50 we turned them around. Fortunately no one broke a long one and had to swim for the goal line.) And we also got a new stadium and press box and sound system. The place looks great. Every year the kids pour out to cheer for the first couple of games and then by the last game (I go to them all), you can throw a rock in the stands and not hit anyone. Do you know that the football coach is usually the highest paid staff member on almost every high school faculty. At least in Georgia that is the case. A half dozen years ago they published all the coaches salaries in the news paper. I was astonished to see that most made over $80,000 and some over $100,000. I think I was bringing in about $32,000 at the time and felt a little humiliated. And all that remuneration for the coach is good for principals as well since they have to make more than any faculty member. You guessed it. Principals are not against high salaries for football coaches.

I coach singers and I get a stipend for that too. I get the same stipend that the assistant baskeball coach gets.

An unusual treat on Sunday. I was invited to go to the Braves game where one of my students was singing the national anthem. She sang well and didn't seem nervous. She had made terrific preparation. The surprise was that they had gotten seats through a friend, right behind the owners' box. Oh my. I was about 12 feet behind the home batting circle and had a thoroughly good time. Of course it helped that Chipper, Kelly Johnson, Jeff Francour, and Ryan Langerhans all hit dingers for the Braves. What an exciting young ball club. When Anne was singing they had her projected up on the 10 story tall digital video screen, so I could see her and then a giant her up on the screen behind her. It was certainly different from any Braves game in the past. The vice president of the Braves walked us out through the owners underground route through the club house where I got to see Julio Franco. He's a pretty big guy.

Braves won 13 to 8.

Starting the school year is so difficult that it discourages even veteran teachers. It is easy to see why so few people stick around to become veteran teachers. We have an awful lot of new teachers that last only a year or maybe two before they are off to find something else, anything else to do.

The problem is trying to focus so many disparate beings all in the same direction. A teacher's function is to act as a polarizer. The students come in from every imaginable angle, trying to go every direction. You have to intercept their thoughts, alter their expectations for the next hour (polarize them) and send them all in the same direction. A class in school is only tangent to plane that is the student's life. I intercept them only at this one point. It is so difficult to pull them out of their plane to explore my circle of ideas. Their uniqueness is so inertia filled. Changing the direction of their thoughts is difficult.

Well I made it through the first week with no air conditioning, in Atlanta, and in August. Will I ever get air for my sweating students?

We had just over 300 students in the chorus room today with no air conditioning. Not even a hint of air movement and about 82 or better. They were not happy. Air is working in every other room in the school. I haven't seen the hvac men in my area at all. Am I on the hit list or something? It's impossible to sing. Half the lights are out and the wall sockets don't work either.

It was good to see the students. The beauty of youth.

I don't usually remember my dreams, but last night I dreamed about going to a rehearsal (in a place I am not familiar with, a church) with Mr. Shaw. Afterward as most people hurried away he sat down in the foyer on a bench waiting for a driver to come for him and he and I chatted a bit. That's a sort of reassuring dream for a conductor on the night before a first rehearsal day, isn't it? He told me an anecdote that I'd never heard before and now I wonder how in the world my brain came up with it, and if it is true or as I suspect, totally bogus.

Over 300 students today, wearing their new clothes, with new binders, glad to see their friends, sad to pick up a syllabus in every class.

I've had a hard week getting ready for school to start back on Monday. Lots of incompetent people have been in my way operating in a kind of perfect storm scenario to all have disasterous impact on me. The high points would be: 95 degree temps and no a/c, no computer, no internet, copiers out of paper, construction still going on in my area. Problems remaining as we speak: still no a/c and I'm expecting 71 students first period, half my lights are out, several outlets are not working, the floor was stained by water leaking and now can't be cleaned until Christmas they say, surplus material remains to be hauled away. All this got in the way of my planning during a planning week. I'm still not ready, but by working until 9 at night on Thursday and Friday and by working all day today and most of tomorrow, I'll be ready to go. Things were going so well this week that one new teacher came in on Monday and quit by Wednesday. Guess he didn't like the way things were starting. Me neither.

Oddly, we went back to work today. I thought teachers were off during the summer. Isn't August the first the definition of summer? There is no airconditioning in my room. They hope there will be some by next Monday. My room had a new roof put on over the summer and I have the largest water leaks I've ever had. Lots of water in the hallway, ensemble room and in the chorus room. But hey the cafeteria has no floor or AC either. It looks so unfinished I don't see how it can be ready by Monday.

Looks like I have lots of music for my choirs. I can't squeeze in all my choices for the year so I'll have to cut things. Ugh.

The new teachers were running around hither and yon today. They are terrified. I remember. The old teachers were sitting back with their feet up. I'm in between. I know what needs to be done, but there is still lots to do.

I saw one of my favorite former students tonight. She is as beautiful as ever. She glows with youth and health and happiness. Teaching has its rewards. She was a senior who I expected to have senioritis but who came on to be a tremendous leader. What about that? She's a sorority girl now, but making straight A's at UGA.