New Year's resolutions

     If I resolve not to make any New Year's resolutions, have I failed from the start, or succeeded ?

a day without shopping

     Try choosing one day of the week to "not shop". It may be good for your finances. It may slow down or correct any bad shopping habits you may be developing, on the internet or elsewhere. And it may improve your resourcefulness--you will learn to get along or make do without running back out to the store every time you want something. Your ancestors survived the weekly closing of the shops, and so can you.

edubabble

     The phrase "teaching to test" is repeated as if it were a bad thing to test students on what has been taught. Wrong. It would be a bad thing to test students on what has not been taught--for instance, to spend weeks talking about what everyone did on vacation, and then test students on material that should have been covered during the vacation discussions.
     As for teaching just to improve scores on standardized tests ( achievement tests ), this is probably not possible. The teacher might drill students all day in vocabulary and basic math skills, and that might, or should, improve standardized test scores. But since the teacher doesn't know what the questions on the standardized test are going to be, this could not really be "teaching to test". Drilling in vocabulary and math would be a vast improvement, anyway, on drilling in "imagination and creativity"--which are not covered on standardized tests.
    The emphasis a teacher places on "imagination and creativity" may be meant to hide the teacher's own lack of basic skills--especially when "imagination and creativity" seem to be taking the place of education.

has anyone read "The Autobigraphy of Benvenuto Cellini"?

     Many people are familiar with The Autobigraphy of Benvenuto Cellini--it is republished every time there is a new set of the classics of western literature. My parents had a copy of it, but I didn't read it. I read some of the other "classics", but not that one. As a young woman, I bought a copy of it--but I didn't read it. I eventually gave it away. When my daughter, now grown, was in school, I bought a copy of it again, in case she wanted to read it--she didn't. I have recently come into possession of yet another copy,  but I haven't read it--yet.
    Considering how often the book has been published, it is surely very little read, despite the good intentions of those who mean to read it--some day. We might form an un-book club, and perhaps even read the thing one day. Or we might save The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini to challenge those who claim the ability to read through osmosis, psychic power, or other forms of mystic divination. If no one has read it, no one could give them the answers--through the ectoplasm, or with cell phone vibrations, or the like.

generic holiday greetings

     Generic holiday greetings aren't new. Many cards simply said "Happy Holidays" years ago. Everyone who gets days off with pay gets a day off with pay. Anyone who works gets extra pay. That will have to do for a generic, all-purpose, garden variety holiday. May yours be merry.

a TV childhood

   TV is so violent and gory these days. When I was a child, we watched more wholesome fare. There was a western nearly every night, with cowboys out in the fresh air ( this was before the movies felt a need to impress upon us with everything but smell-o-rama that cowboys didn't bathe regularly--the "bad guys" just needed a shave ). The cowboys came to town and visited the saloon, where the good guys were always polite to the dance-hall girls, and never, ever cheated at poker. The good guys were always good shots, and won the weekly gun fight every time.
     

my grand theory of history and some other things

Stuff doesn't happen--people do stuff.