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As a high school English teacher for 27 years whose salary flat-lined after 17, one might think I would support the merit pay component of Obama's Race to the Top.  However, as I see it, all three prongs of the Race to the Top trident skewer teachers.  

A friend of mine with a PhD remarked, "Why would you be against merit pay?  Everyone knows who the good

We all laughed at the spaced-out Miss South Carolina when she babbled about education and South Africa in 2008. But Santa Cruz has its own brand of crazy babbling. I guess it could happen anywhere, any time someone starts a speech without thinking through what they'll say. This must be why people fear public speaking.

Does it reflect badly on our town? The

Purple - Return to My Republican Roots

"George W. Bush will go down as one of the top five presidents in history," "Obama is the next Hitler," and "I have a loaded gun in my car." My husband Daniel and I heard these remarks in South Dakota, where we ventured for a celebration of my mom's 90^th birthday. Republicans surrounded us for four days.  If you've

Not Even a Coconut

Since I am a mix of blue and red state cultures, I created similar internal tension in the protagonist of my murder mystery series. My heroine, Carol (Carolina Guadalupe) Sabala, is half Mexican-American.  Since I am una gabacha, I made this choice with some trepidation.  Yet, the feeling of having a foot in two different identities I

Purple - Religion

My husband is Jewish, so we don't observe Easter.  Still the spring air, the riot of freesias, and the time off work demanded celebration.  Five guests congregated in our kitchen for margaritas.  We were not all flaming liberals.  One of our guests worked as a rocket scientist for Lockheed.

Since it was Good Friday, the conversation veered

Purple - Wholly Unholy

Confess.  Did you migrate down to the new Whole Foods?  Was the ten dollars off on a fifty-dollar purchase too irresistible?  Did you cave in to your friend's excitement?

My resolve had been never to set foot in the store just as I have never patronized the downtown Borders.  If you want quaint and varied local stores, you have to be

Purple - A Really Inconvenient Truth

Watching a world population clock frightens me.  The current world population is well over six billion, and the number jumps every second.  I can feel my heart rate quicken with each numerical leap.

The computer program at Monterey Bay Aquarium squirts more adrenaline into my veins; black dots sprinkled over an atlas

I wasn't able to sleep, and judging from the noises coming from the washer, drier and Jake's room in the wee morning hours, neither was Jake.

We both had a 4:30 AM wake-up to get the lad to SFO for his 8:05AM direct flight to Dulles airport in D.C. for his Congressional Youth Leadership Council trip to the inaguration of President number 44, Mr. Barak

Purple - Twilight

I ventured into the blogosphere to explore the overlap of my blue state and red state influences-the political purple that is me.  But today I imagine the light purple of twilight, the color of dusk, of transition. 

On November fourteenth my best friend's nineteen-year-old son died in an off-road vehicle accident.  Unfettered by a seat

Purple - Give Me Some Purple Prose

In spite of my identity as a mix of red state and blue state, as an English teacher I bristle at the use of namby pamby language to cater to a supposed centrist audience.  Not only the Bush Administration, but the main stream media, sucks the life blood right out of our language.  Both are trying not to alienate their

Purple - Guns

After the Virginia Tech slaughter, news anchor Brian Williams asked President Bush, "What do we do about these guns?"

The president rocked back on his heels and stammered about it being a time for the nation to heal, that policy would be discussed later.

 If Bush could speak articulately, his response to this vague question would have been

Purple - NIMBYism

Not in my backyard!  NIMBY.  In Santa Cruz, being a NIMBY is like standing butt naked on a street corner and shouting that you've been abducted by aliens.  Actually, the latter probably would not rate a second glance, whereas people spit out the word NIMBY like a bite of worm-riddled fruit. But, I not only practice NIMBYism, but also

How I Came To Be Purple

Combine my South Dakota upbringing, west river and as red as it gets, with my adult life in Santa Cruz, California, as blue as it gets, and one receives a deep, rich, intoxicating purple. 

People in South Dakota are overwhelmingly Republican.  With a state of under a million, politics remain personal.  Senator E.Y. Berry of my