Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology

 Here is an interesting article in the Washington Post by a student who attended the Thomas Jefferson High School of Science and Technology in Fairfax County, the best technical public high school in the land. The author made the most of the education opportunity presented but laments that the school hasn't kept up with the changing demographics of our nation as represented by the population current makeup of the county and suggests that it would have been better to attend a local public high school for a better life experience which would or could have led to a more productive and rewarding life.

This is interesting to me since my oldest child attended TJ for four years and certainly would have had a more productive or at least a more rewarding life if he had attended a local high school in the city of Falls Church or the county of Arlington instead. He squandered his magnificent opportunity by attending this school (which was his choice because he could have otherwise attended an elite top-ten boarding prep school, Lawrenceville, perhaps the Stanford of high school education instead), staggered out of TJ with the bottom high school diploma of three grades in Virginia (about equal to a GED diploma after four years at the premiere public technical school in the nation), a general diploma rather than a regular  high school diploma or a magnet school diploma. This was during the multi-year, quarter-million-dollar divorce engineered by his mother during which, in my opinion, her covert narcissistic predilections overcame the immature wills of our three minor children through the perpetuation of PAS (which many persons knowledgeable of its pernicious scourge label a form of child abuse) for her own petty personal aggrandizement of her sense of her self.

Our oldest child, a talented, bold, smart, athletic pre-teen, a mega-achiever when pushed or nurtured, never went to college after being let out of TJ with his shop-class diploma, and lapsed into internet gambling, being a boy-Friday for the scumbag divorce lawyer who took his "case" to sue his father for fiduciary breach during the divorce (the case was thrown out of court, with sanctions assessed) and perpetrating ever-incomplete schemes on go-fund-me pages.  In his foisted-upon bitterness as a child (by her coterie of mercenary adult "professionals"), the lad, now a fully mature adult, changed his name, lived I think at his mother's next husband's residence and hasn't communicated with any Lamberton (the name he eschewed on his 18th birthday) for over fifteen years.

So I think the article's author might be right.  The experience my oldest child received at TJ wasn't representative of any child's that I know of, when I was effectively shut out of any involvement by TJ of any involvement (or even discussion, really) of my child's continuing high school education by TJ administrators who absolutely adhered aggressively to the fallacious, sexist common principle prevalent in domestic law that "mother knows best."  I'm sorry for you, Jimmy; perhaps TJ wasted your life; instead you could have gone to Yorktown like your brothers who both graduated from VCU, or Lawrenceville where your grandfather (Carleton, Yale Law School), your uncle (Yale, Wharton MBA), and I went (CU, UVA Law School).

More dining in the age of coronavirus

My neighbor used the chain link fence that runs down my driveway separating her house from mine to grow a cucumber vine upon.  It grew several fat cucumbers just hanging down.  I would show you a picture of the one I selected for a meal, after I asked my neighbor if I could have one, but this blog stopped importing pictures from my computer a few months ago and aside from pictures already in my blog posts, I can't get pictures to populate here anymore.  (Shrug)

I cut off the cucumber and hurried inside.  I had already laid out three plate with slices of sour dough bread on them.  After I rinsed off the cucumber, I slathered a little bit of light mayo on the bread slices and partially peeled the cucumber, making it look striped.  I sliced the cucumber medium thick and laid a single layer of sliced cucumbers on the bread and sprinkled a light dusting of sea salt on them.

I put the top slice of bread on the creation and enjoyed a delicious sandwich which was very filling.  The key was eating the sandwich within five minutes of taking the cucumber off the vine.  I took the other two sandwiches next door for the lady whose cucumber I used and her husband.  They said they enjoyed it very much, that previously they had only created a vinegar brine for cucumber slices to enjoy them that way.

The next day my neighbor brought me a cucumber sandwich she had made with a fresh cucumber in the same way but with additions.  She added guacamole to the sandwich along with finely chopped red onions, which made the sandwich even more tasty than my simpler sandwich was.  The possibilities are endless.  And I didn't have to travel further than my driveway in these perilous times to enjoy a sumptuous lunch.

Dining Out in the Age of the Coronavirus

Dining out seems to be one of the things lost in this year-that-wasn't, thanks to the coronavirus, but I've made do by turning my front porch into a dining area.  A friend frequently comes over since she lives in an apartment in the city and doesn't have access to any outdoor seating by her unit and we sit at the Little Tykes table I've set up on my porch along with two plastic chairs.

We sit six feet away from each other, take off our masks and eat the fare we've carried out from nearby restaurants, pizza--bagels--frothy cold soup concocted like a smoothie.  We throw bread pieces into the yard and draw birds in to gobble up the dough balls for our amusement.

My friend has downloaded an app (Merlin) on her phone that tells us what the bird likely is when she uploads a picture of it--the app has identified house sparrows, northern mockingbirds, cardinals and bluejays.  The last two we didn't need help identifying.

I sit in the same dining area twice a month and have a FaceTime lunch with a friend and former colleague from work--he lives in Florida currently--and eat egg salad sandwiches I make and drink a beer or two as we recount out twenty-five years of work together.  We haven't forgotten a single one of those good times in the past.

Visions of ice-cream bars

I have been hunkered down since March, taking only essential trips while fully masked such as to BLM Plaza in the District in early June to confront those silent, foreboding, anonymous soldiers in full combat gear in a line keeping the people away from the people's house.  Yesterday I traveled to INOVA Blood Donation Center in Annandale to donate whole blood.

A disconcerting sign greeted me upon arrival, telling me to leave immediately if, within the last 14 days: "You have traveled to an area with an outbreak of COVID-19. Currently the CDC has identified outbreaks in the following areas-All areas of all countries worldwide [including] cruise ships or riverboat travel anywhere in the world." I looked real hard at it to see if it was a Trump Tweet, it was so ridiculous. Yes, I ignored the warning sign and donated blood because I think I am not currently sick and perhaps sick or injured people currently could use a little O+ blood infusion (very sought after).

I had wanted to get into some kind of plasma therapy program because I think I might have had the coronavirus in February because I was as sick as I have ever been for two weeks with a cough-your-lungs-out respiratory illness but there is no antibody test I can get ("You only had the flu" said the doctor I talked to over the phone last month, who would have had to write me a prescription to get an antibody test but, she assured me, Kaiser doesn't do antibody test anyway) so I just donated whole blood.  Oh well, dumping a bag of whole blood in twenty minutes is a whole lot better for me anyway than spending 90-120 minutes hooked up to a a centrifuge machine that takes fluid out, whirls plasma out and returns the blood because it takes 6-8 units of blood (your body's entire volume) to get a unit of plasma.

After the donation, I went to the post-blooding refreshment center where I noted with pleasure that the center had added frozen ice cream bars to the water, juices and cookies that have always been provided.  I opened the freezer and identified the ice-cream bar I was going to enjoy but I left it in the freezer while I finished the orange juice I was drinking.  Meanwhile another old man like me shuffled in and stood socially distant from me between me and the freezer while he temporarily removed his mask (as I had) to drink his bottle of water.  Suddenly he erupted in a big, juicy cough into the crook of his elbow but without a mask on and I stared in horror at the freezer on the far side of him.  In it was the ice cream bar I had already identified as being to die for and which I really wanted since I haven't had ice cream in over 100 days.  I could, however, figuratively see an 8-foot square area of expelled droplets swarming around this man, directly between me and that freezer in this restricted indoor space.  Practically crying out in despair, I immediately executed a 180 degree turnaround and walked very fast out of the center.

Three months to go . . .

Thank goodness that hot, long July is behind us.  Three months (and three days) to go to starting to restore America's former greatness, which is all gone now in three and a half chaotic, unstructured  years, poof!

Postpone the November election, really?  That wasn't done even during the heights of the Civil War or World War II.

Mail-in voting is "a mess?"  Sez who, the liar is chief?  Mail-in voting has been going on for years, decades, without any problems and it works well, especially in these times of a totally mismanaged national pandemic which has already killed 154,000 Americans in a mere five months because of Trumps's disorganization, incompetence or laziness, or all three

.

I'll be visiting city hall on the very first day of early voting to cast my ballot.  I can't wait.