Today was the "Catch a Rising Star" assembly at the kids' elementary school. The assemblies are conducted once a month and, over the course of the year, each child is called up on stage to receive an award. The program was initially implemented by the evil principal we had. The awards were given out in three categories: Achievement, Effort, and Community. It always seemed to me that it was presented that way too: Some children have achieved something, some tried but couldn't achieve anything, and the rest just contributed body heat or something. Alisa says I'm overly cynical. Our new principal has reconceptualized the program so that teachers write a freeform statement about something special for each child and then he let some categories emerge from what teachers had written. At the assembly, he had categories like "Determination" and "Original Voice in her Writing" with one to three kids in each category. When he put up the category "Kind and Caring", Alisa thought it would be all girls, but I predicted Daniel would be in the category and he was. He trotted up on stage and the principal got down on one knee to read Daniel's praises. I try to never forget how lucky I am to have two such wonderful little boys.
I wrote a posting today about 
"square haiku" in the Japaneskoj mailing list. I can't remember where I first read about square haiku, but I liked the idea. Instead of having three lines with a 5-7-5 syllable pattern, you have four lines with a 5-5-3-5 pattern. You basically get one extra syllable, but it lets you put greater emphasis on a particular part. I've been writing some haiku with the pattern for years and it was fun to go back through my haiku and pick out a few that used it. I think my favorite is
some people and birds
the early morning
chattering
at the coffee shop
Not a great haiku, perhaps, but it deals with nature and has enough of a seasonal aspect to be haiku and not senryu. I like it.
But I find I'm not writing much haiku lately. A big part of the reason is that I can't write with my Palm anymore. I used to write haiku in my Palm all the time. But then was then I could use it to write. I learned to use Graffiti, the original alphabet for the Palm, and got to be quite good at it. But when I got my new Tungsten, Palm had switched to different writing system that they say "offers a more natural and intuitive way to enter text". Bullshit. As far as I'm concerned, Graffiti 2 is simply unusable. It has a stupid little keyboard that makes the device not entirely useless, but not being able to write makes the device worth a lot less. There are reports all over the net of people looking for any way to get back to being able to use their original Graffiti. I really liked my Palm device, but I don't think I'll ever buy another one, unless I can get one with the original Graffiti again.
I've been through boingboing of the travails of John Perry Barlow, who was arrested for controlled substances while travelling. Most of the attention has been on the fact that the TSA, while supposedly searching for "threats", is clearly also searching for anything else they can come up with against people. But I was struck by this statement
The "phone" in my cell could only make local or collect calls. I didn't know anyone in Redwood City and cell phones won't accept collect calls. Furthermore, they'd taken my address book and my cell phone and calls to directory information were not permitted. I was left with the few land line numbers I still keep in my head.
That seems like it qualifies as a RISK: What happens if you get arrested and no-one you know has a land line anymore?