Dual-doggler forecasting is still the best way to predict weather

Northeast Ohio TV stations are waging weather wars again.

It always happens this time of year: Every station worth its (road) salt has some kind of fancy doodad to predict if tomorrow will bring snow, sleet, black ice, toxic rain or that Holy Grail of rarities, sunshine. Viewers are inundated with Doppler radar, Power of Five radar, Dual-Doppler XL radar; forecasts beamed from Michigan, from fishing trawlers on the shores of Lake Erie, live from the far side of Uranus (“Hey, Beavis, he said Uranus”); and information from local weather watchers who do little more than stick a ruler into snow on windowsills as an official gauge of precipitation.

All this before TV roosters start crowing about closings and delays, available on air in scrolling bars (one bar for alphabetical lists by county, another for “breaking news” cancellations), online and via text messages straight from the weather gods to our cell phones.

In the days of old when knights were bold, we sat next to a little transistor radio in the kitchen, its one speaker crackling musty hits by Linda Ronstadt, Frank Sinatra and the Turtles, waiting breathlessly for an announcer to intone our school’s name. Sometimes, we received news that school had been cancelled only after we had suited up in thermal underwear, boots and coats and waited glumly by the door for the bus. When word came, Mom stuck spoons in our mouths to keep us from swallowing our tongues during this communications convulsion.

Last month, I received school closing news by an automated phone call from my district, a text message from Channel 3, postings from teacher friends on Facebook, and on the TV, all within 30 seconds -- from the superintendent’s lips to God’s ears, as they say.

My wife still had to stick a spoon in my mouth, but at least I didn’t have to put on long johns and wait by the door.

As nice as all this instantaneous news is, it’s usually TMI. Where the weather is concerned, I’m not too worried about what’s coming tomorrow or later in the week, but with what’s going on right now.

To that end, my preferred form of weather communication is not Doppler radar, but Doggler radar, information gleaned from sending my faithful hound, Molly, into the back yard well before dawn every morning.

If she comes back wet, it’s raining. If she comes back white, it’s snowing. When she’s so white I have to sweep the snow off her back, it’s serious accumulation. On those rare occasions when I hear her toenails scrabbling for purchase on the back porch, it’s icy.

When she doesn’t come back at all, I’ve either forgotten to latch the back gate or it’s so temperate that she’s sunning herself on the lawn. (When it’s the former, a long-suffering neighbor drags her by the collar to the front door. If the latter, prodigious coaxing with biscuits is necessary.)

Forecasting has come a long way in the last few decades, and early warnings have no doubt saved many lives that might otherwise have been lost in tornadoes, floods, and other extreme weather situations, but for run-of-the-mill weather, it’s generally more than we need.

Most of the time, TV weather turns the audience into a pack of Pavlov’s dogs: when some handsome or pretty face tells us to stay tuned to learn if the latest storm is going to wreak havoc with our commute, we practically salivate on cue and stay glued through another set of moronic commercials, only to learn that the weather pattern du jour has veered south somewhere over Pennsylvania and skies will be clear.

Or it hasn’t, and they won’t.

Either way, the sun will come up tomorrow -- even if we don’t see it -- and I’ll send my four-legged Dick Goddard doggedly into battle, reading her communiques from the front without corporate sponsorship, network chest-thumping and pesky ads.

I wrote this in January 2011 for The Alliance Review. Molly was two dogs ago, but dual-doggler forecasting works with any canine. 

Real-life superheroes we really need

From 2009 or thereabouts comes this column about real-life superheroes. I tried to find an update about Master Legend, but the only information out there was a 2011 story from the Orlando Sentinel (linked below). 

Master Legend may be the world’s best-known Real-Life Superhero.

Featured in a December Rolling Stone article by Joshua Bearman, Legend has shot to semi-fame and full notoriety for his dedication to a way of life that hitherto existed only in comic books: He puts on a costume to fight crime, cruising around the streets near Orlando, Fla., in a 1986 Nissan pickup dubbed the Battle Truck.

And Legend, who is exactly one bullet or concussion away from becoming Myth, isn’t the only one. A visit to the World Superhero Registry online reveals dozens of similar folks who have decided the day of costumed vigilantes has dawned. Perhaps they’ve been inspired by glum headlines of late, by political and economic misfeasance and malfeasance, or CGI-enhanced movies where Bat suits and armor look less like four-color gimmickry and more like something one could wear in the real world.

Whatever the reason, the registry is filled with folks like Queen of Hearts in Jackson, Mich., whose laudable goal is to “quell domestic violence by teaching our youth and others how to recognize and prevent it”; Nostrum in Louisiana, who is “a firm believer in moral absolutism and will fight for the greater good of society as I have done in secret for several years now”; and Geist in Rochester, Minn., who targets the plight of the homeless and is “prepared to make citizen’s arrests if necessary.”

Most of the heroes have links to MySpace and Facebook pages where they are shown in costume and with their various accouterments – painted elbow and knee pads, snow shovels (Polar Man in Canada shovels for the elderly) and rabbit tails (Cincinnati’s Shadow Hare claims to have fought off “crazy hobos with pipes”).

Maybe they’re onto something, even if most seem to be unemployed and at least as big a menace as the evildoers they claim to fight. Twenty-first-century life is annoying, and we could use a few costumed do-gooders to set people straight.

To wit: Where is Arid Man, whose job is to hose down people whose body odor and breath are repellant? Or his trusty sidekick, Perfuma, whose task is to ask those who wear excessive cologne or body spray to tone it down a little? What about Hy-Genie, who pours antibacterial soap on the villains who don’t wash their hands in public restrooms?

We also need Captain Civics, dressed entirely in spandex shaped like the Constitution, whose job is to buffet non-voters smartly about the head and shoulders whenever they complain about government or elected officials. Courtesy Kid could get lots of work by confiscating cell phones when people use them in movies, in line at the sub shop, or anywhere else where their attention is better focused on the situation at hand.

And Ear Plug Pal, who makes a citizen’s arrest each time complete strangers interpret “How are you?” as an invitation to actually tell you all their woes. Or Mort U. Weary, who shoots embalming fluid from a squirt gun every time some wide-eyed voyeur breathlessly asks, “Didja see who died today?”

We mustn’t forget the Traffic Terror, who flattens the tires of anybody who doesn’t know how to make a right turn on red or how to turn on their headlights in fog or snow. And the Volumizer, who hunts down people who keep library materials after the due date, especially the ones that you really want or need. Kill O. Watt could give grief to folks who are still displaying Christmas decorations, even though the holiday is long over, and Anticipatory Man could take retailers to task for already selling Cadbury Crème Eggs when Easter is 94 shopping days away.

I myself live in dread of the Printer’s Devil, a little guy who whaps columnists over the head with a rolled-up newspaper when they’ve overstayed their welcome.

I’ll be right back. Somebody’s knocking at the door.

The Children's Blizzard

This year's One Book One Community selection in Alliance is The Children's Blizzard by Melanie Benjamin. Readers who have participated in past OBOC events in Alliance will be familiar with the structure: various presentations over the next several months dealing with issues in the book, climaxing with a personal appearance by the author. 

Despite its somber subject matter, Benjamin’s book is an enjoyable read. Based on a real-life tragedy, the book tracks the story of two (fictional) siblings, Gerda and Raina Olsen, and the very different choices they make on January 12, 1888, the fateful day when a sudden and violent prairie blizzard strikes Nebraska and the Dakota Territory. Saying which sister makes the right choice and which the wrong would rob the book of much of its suspense, so I’ll avoid dropping spoilers.

The book also provides insight into the practice of using very young women— girls, really—as school teachers in the West. Raina Olsen is sixteen at the time of the story, just one year older than her oldest student. Young women like Raina and Gerta were responsible not only to teach all subjects to a single room full of students of diverse languages and needs, but also to clean the building, ensure a supply of wood or coal for heat, and occasionally make life-or-death decisions that would tax even today’s highest-paid superintendents. 

Benjamin does a great job of describing in detail the suddenness of the storm, the bone-chilling cold and low visibility that resulted, and the many deaths, some of which were not discovered until the spring thaw. She contrasts the story of the homesteaders, lured in many cases, out west under false pretenses with the story of Omaha-based newspaper writer Gavin Woodson, responsible for some of the flowery copy that falsely painted Nebraska and the surrounding areas a garden of eden ripe for the picking. 

Comparisons to Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books are inevitable. A quote from Oprah Daily on the back cover notes that Wilder fans will also like this novel, which is probably accurate. Benjamin also invites such comparisons through “Little Schoolhouse on the Prairie,” an afterword in the paperback edition that delves into the responsibilities of prairie schoolteachers and references the long-running television series based on Wilder’s books. 

Benjamin’s work is more nuanced because it takes into account injustices faced by American Indians, displaced by the government and forced to live on reservations, their children schooled by institutions that sought to strip them of their heritage. The Children’s Blizzard also provides a Black American perspective through the character of Ollie Tennant, a bartender in Omaha who moves his family to a different part of the city once it becomes clear that white residents do not prioritize his children’s education or physical health. 

These are important reminders that much of America’s legacy has been stamped over the unwilling sacrifices of others. These scenes don’t overwhelm the narrative, but they deepen it. 

The novel also underscores, even in the halcyon days of the nineteenth century, the role of mass media (in this case, newspapers) to shape reality and to support the welfare of big businesses (the railroads). Woodson, who sets out to redeem himself after writing glowing puff pieces that coax people out west, instead becomes a participant in growing his paper’s circulation through romanticized stories of heroism involving the blizzard. His is a dubious redemption. 

I recommend The Children’s Blizzard. It spotlights a largely forgotten incident in American history, evokes a sense of bone-chilling cold, and provides plenty of food for thought. 

To learn more about the Alliance OBOC program for 2023, visit the Rodman Library website. 

A lesson in communication for the teacher

For the last few years, I have included my personal cell phone number on my syllabus.

This may horrify some teachers. But to my way of thinking, it’s only fair. I don’t have regular office hours at the community college where I teach—or even an office. (Adjuncts are the knights-errant of the academic world. Have class, will travel.)

The phone number comes with caveats. The biggest is that email is my much-preferred form of contact.

When I review the syllabus with students, I provide an example of a situation that might warrant a text or phone call: A student who leaves town at the last minute for a family emergency and is traveling to a destination with no Internet service. This student can maybe—maybe!— think about texting me to ask for a deadline extension.

There are polite chuckles all around—isn’t most student laughter polite?—but the point is made: My phone number is like a fire alarm on the wall. Undeniably there, but not something that most of them will ever pull.

Emphasizing how rarely this option should be used allows me to humble-brag to colleagues about the inclusion of my personal number without actually having to deal with any of the ramifications. Until last semester, that is, when something strange started to happen.

Students started to call and text.

And not just one or two, once or twice. Multiple students. Multiple times. For reasons big and small:

Hey, I won’t be able to make it to class tonight.

Sorry, I don’t understand this assignment.

Why did I get this grade? I worked really hard.

I even had the leaving-town-for-a-family-emergency scenario. Twice!

And the communication—mostly texts—came at unusual times: While I was standing in line outside a restaurant on Saturday night, mowing the lawn on Sunday afternoon, in the wee hours of weekday mornings. Sometimes when I was teaching the very class where the student was supposed to be.

I wracked my brain to figure out what was different last semester. One section of the course, for example, had far more students using the cellphone option than the other, so I wondered if I had explained it differently or forgotten to share my usual admonitions.

The messages were in earnest. These students wanted help, explanations, or simply validation, and they wanted them at times outside the customary hours of a teacher.

Maybe it was the pandemic, loosening the boundaries between classroom and home with so many virtual options. Or the intrinsic nature of late-afternoon and evening classes, which many community college students take because their days are filled with jobs, kids, other commitments.

These students work on assignments while their children and significant others are sleeping, or in stolen moments on well-deserved work breaks.

Once I got over the initial “aw, shucks, somebody is actually taking me up on this!” reaction, I started answering the messages. Often, it took only a few words: “See pp. 135-137,” “check the assignments folder in Blackboard,” “I’ll take a look at the grade and get back to you.”

I bucked the era of so-called “quiet quitting” by adding an extra dimension to my job: communicating outside the parameters of the classroom and the workday, meeting students where they were — and often when they were — and offering help in real-time.

Did it pay off?

It seemed to. In the course evaluations, multiple students mentioned communication as one of my strengths. Some said they’d never had an instructor respond to them so quickly. Some mentioned other classes where instructors responded days later. Or never.

More importantly, though, it paid off in student achievement. That extra support — I hate the term “scaffolding,” but it fits — may have been the difference between some students successfully completing the course or dropping it. Between students sticking with a challenging writing assignment or gravitating to a chatbot to write it for them.

Granted, students need to recognize boundaries. Calling multiple times on a Friday night, as one student did, is too much. In some cases, I slow-walked answers to serial texters, lengthening the amount of time before sending a response. Occasionally, I texted back “see your email” to direct them to a type of teacher/student communication that was less intrusive — and one where it was easier for me to share the detailed responses their questions warranted. I urged each of them to have a class buddy, somebody—not me—with whom they could communicate when they had questions about the content of a missed class.

Don’t get me wrong: It’s acceptable and necessary for teachers to take time off to be with their families and friends, to recharge their batteries between classes. Being honest with students about this is more than fair. They, too, should set aside times not to be working, to do the things they enjoy.

And Google Voice allows teachers to share a number with students for interactions like the ones above, minus the personal phone number. I need to consider that alternative.

These caveats notwithstanding, I believe I did more right than wrong last semester. Education, like every other profession, is changing rapidly. The old ways of doing business, which include King Kong-sized walls of separation between instructors and students, between “school” and “home,” have to dismantled.

Or broken through, as happened last semester by students who took me up on my offer.


chris.schillig@yahoo.com

@cschillig on Twitter

A real person wrote (most of) this column

A retired colleague texted the other day to ask if any of my students had used artificial intelligence to write their essays.

Honestly, I don’t know, but it’s certainly possible.

Artificially generated student work is a growing concern among educators, at least based on the number of emails I’ve received, discussions I’ve heard, and articles I’ve read in the past month alone.

The latest focus of the let’s-stay-one-step-ahead-of-student-dishonesty debate is ChatGPT, a program from OpenAI that “generates human-like responses in a conversational context,” a line that was itself generated by the ChatGPT program when I asked it to write an essay about the topic.

Like many a penny ante dictator, the chatbot referred to itself in the third person as it explained that “as it interacts with users, it can improve its understanding of language and become more adept at generating appropriate responses.”

Chatbots themselves are nothing new. Chances are good that you’ve communicated with them through the online customer service departments of large companies like AT&T or Starbucks. Or whenever you’ve asked Siri what song is playing on the radio.

Education has a long history of bucking new trends in technology on the grounds that they are bad for learning. I was a student during the calculator wars of the late ’70s and early ’80s, when administrators and teachers couldn’t decide if the device was the savior or antichrist.

Before that, teachers debated erasable pens, and before even that, fountain pens. In the dim past, the profession no doubt criticized the written word itself because it short-circuited memorization.

Still, ChatGPT and programs like it are enough to give even the most progressive educator pause. As a test, I asked it to write an essay about student mental health, using scholarly sources. In less than a minute, it spit out a 466-word response that referenced the World Health Organization and the American College Health Association.

Sources were both paraphrased and quoted directly. Full citations, in pristine American Psychological Association format, were included at the end of the piece.

More importantly, however, the writing itself was sharp and clean, integrating the outside evidence in a way that I work hard to instill in students throughout the semester.

So, am I worried about ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence programs in the classroom?

Of course, but not overly so.

For one thing, the new technology speaks to the importance of something most language arts teachers I know are doing already: flipping the classroom. This means students write while they are at school, under the guidance of teachers who help them formulate claims and integrate evidence (and who monitor that the work is the students’ own).

Additionally, the issue emphasizes the need for more student choice in selecting topics. Students who are intrinsically invested in a topic are more likely to complete their own research and do their own writing, versus students who are mandated to write about things in which they have little interest.

The current kerfuffle also speaks to the necessity of ongoing conversations with students about what AI can do and what it cannot. When I made a second attempt to have ChatGPT generate a response (write a 500-word essay on the lack of effectiveness of current animal welfare laws in Ohio), the results were less promising. Sentences were awkward and repetitive, and the argument was presented in the stilted five-paragraph-essay style (albeit in six paragraphs).

Still, it probably would earn a passing grade in most classrooms.

Financial Times notes that student access to ChatGPT means colleges and universities — I would add junior high and high schools — need to become more creative in their assessments. Not every course or topic needs a formal essay for a final project.

What won’t work is doubling down on originality-detection software like Turnitin or trying to ban programs like ChatGPT. The first does nothing but enrich the coffers of the same people who develop transgressive programs in the first place; the second is like trying to close the barn door after the horse is already out.

That last sentence ends with a cliche, maybe the best proof that some of us are still doing our writing the old-fashioned way.

To see the full chatbot responses mentioned above, click here. 

Reach Chris at chris.schillig@yahoo.com. On Twitter: @cschillig.

(I originally wrote this for the Dec. 21 edition of The Alliance Review in Alliance, Ohio.) 

More than feuding families in 'Romeo and Juliet' lawsuit

There was a time in education when high school students experienced a remarkably fixed canon of writers and works, regardless of where they went to school.

Ninth-grade English was especially moribund. The curriculum often included “The Most Dangerous Game,” that classic short story about hunter versus prey; To Kill a Mockingbird, a treacly tale of racism in the 1930s that focuses more on the white attorney and his family than the actual victims; a selection or two by perennial horror and sci-fi favorites Edgar Allan Poe and Ray Bradbury; and, of course, Romeo and Juliet, the perennial story of love in bloom across two feuding families.

And chances were good that if students trudged gamely through that last work, listening to parts of it and reading other parts aloud, haltingly and in “accents yet unknown” as Shakespeare himself once wryly forecast, they were rewarded with a viewing of the movie.

Romeo and Juliet has been adapted multiple times by Hollywood, yet saying “the movie” is appropriate because the one to rule them all (to paraphrase Tolkien) is the 1968 version, directed by Franco Zeffirelli and starring Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey as the star-crossed lovers. It’s fast and colorful and full of action, the script shaving off much of Shakespeare’s language in favor of visual spectacle.

But if you’re a teacher, one scene gives pause, sometimes literally.

In Juliet’s bedroom just after the couple’s wedding, viewers spy Romeo’s buttocks and Juliet’s breasts. This scene, too, is fast and colorful and full of action, guaranteed to wake up all but the most deeply sleeping students.

Some teachers exhibit the film as it is, trusting their students to be mature enough to handle the content. Others know exactly where to mute the screen to avoid the naughty bits. One teacher I knew created an edited version on videotape that cut out those few frames altogether.

As a teacher of freshman English for many years, I followed all three paths at various points, even borrowing the VHS version once. Early in my career, I just rolled the film uncut. Ironically, several of these screenings were in a private Catholic high school.

Later, when the times had become more conservative, I opted for muting the screen, much to the consternation of students, who wanted to “see it all.”

In the last few years, however, many English language arts curriculums have diversified, and Shakespeare is often taught by excerpt only, if even then. Additionally, fears that Romeo and Juliet somehow glorifies teenage suicide (a perspective that can be easily rebutted by even a casual reading of the text) has further relegated the work to the sidelines.

But even if the above changes and concerns did not exist, and even in districts that still enshrine R&J as canon, a recent lawsuit brought by the two stars might give teachers who still show the ’68 version pause.

The lawsuit alleges that director Zeffirelli took advantage of Whiting and Hussey’s naiveté when filming the love scene, telling them that they would be clad in flesh-colored bodystockings, and later that the scene would be edited to obscure their body parts. Neither option occurred.

Using a temporary suspension of the statute of limitations for child sex abuse in California, the two actors are citing emotional and financial damages in the decades since. The lawsuit is seeking $500 million in restitution.

That’s more money than the Capulets and Montagues were worth combined and will almost certainly be reduced as the studio and the actors’ lawyers wrangle inside and outside court.

The two stars were underage at the time of filming, making the situation even more fraught and leading to a series of questions for teachers.

Is showing the PG-rated film tantamount to supporting child pornography? Could it lead to potential liability for educators and districts?

(One could also argue that showing the film at all in a public setting is likely a violation of the license extended for private home viewing, but that’s a matter for another time.)

It is possible that the film could be a jumping-off point for an honest discussion of consent and how minors cannot give it. And how the entertainment industry sometimes takes advantage of young actors and profits from their lack of experience. And how a gross overstepping of boundaries, such as filming two underage actors in the nude, could be glossed over and hidden in plain sight for so many years.

All of which are discussions that could be had without viewing the film, but merely by sharing an article about the current controversy.

I won’t speculate about the merits of the lawsuit and whether the film victimized them repeatedly for 54 years and simultaneously diminished their box-office appeal in other projects. 

But I would no longer feel comfortable showing the film to classes, even if I were still teaching freshman English. Maybe the Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes version from 1996 (which I haven’t seen all the way through), or one of the West Side Story renditions, instead.

Or, better yet, I would students stage some of the scenes themselves, in “accents yet unknown” at the time of Shakespeare’s writing. That’s more creative than staring at a screen, anyway, and less likely to embroil teachers in a controversy.

What We Read in 2022

 

 

Since the beginning of the pandemic, my wife and I have resumed a practice from earlier in our marriage: reading aloud. 

In 2020, we read 35 books, many of them by James Patterson and his various co-authors. They were fast and went down easy. In 2021, we read 31 books, expanding our list of authors to include Linda Castillo, John Grisham and John Hart. 

Last year, as the world slowly returned to normal (meaning we got out of the house more), we read only 25 books. However, several were longer (including Billy Summers by Stephen King and The Camel Club by David Baldacci), so they occupied more of our reading time. The full list is at the bottom of this post. 

Our favorite? We were torn among No Exit, a thriller by Taylor Adams (which was adapted into a good movie); Where the Crawdads Sing, that ultra-popular novel by Delia Owens (which also became a good movie); and Hold Tight by Harlan Coben.

I enjoy everything that Harlan Coben writes, but sometimes his conclusions seem forced, as if he feels compelled to tie up every plot strand and connect every dot. This was not the case with Hold Tight, which played with themes of parents and children and the lengths the former will go to protect the latter. Everything meshes in that novel, and the surprises at the end feel earned. 

Honorable mention goes to Blacktop Wasteland by S.A. Crosby, a compelling heist novel with a likable, though flawed, main character. Which is probably what makes him likable. 

I also liked News of the World, a revisionist western by Paulette Jiles that reminded me of Cormac McCarthy’s work. It was the last book we read in 2022, a high-quality ending to our literary year. 

The worst? Well, the usually dependable Lisa Scottoline started strong in What Happened to the Bennetts, but the book really dragged in the middle before the main character was implausibly reinvented as an action hero in the last third. It wasn’t a bad novel, just not her best. Baldacci’s The Camel Club was okay, but it was the first book in a series, and neither my wife nor I felt enthralled enough to continue with the next installment. 

Here are all the books:

1. Win by Harlan Coben

2. Billy Summers by Stephen King

3. After Anna by Lisa Scottoline

4. Deal Breaker by Harlan Coben

5. Feared by Lisa Scottoline

6. No Exit by Taylor Adams

7. Don’t Go by Lisa Scottoline

8. Cold Storage by David Koepp

9. Six Years by Harlan Coben

10. A Gambling Man by David Baldacci

11. Rough Justice by Lisa Scottoline

12. Fallen by Linda Castillo

13. The Chase by Candice Fox

14. Thick as Thieves by Sandra Brown

15. Caught by Harlan Coben

16. If It Bleeds by Stephen King

17. The Camel Club by David Baldacci

18. Accused by Lisa Scottoline

19. Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

20. The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn

21. Blacktop Wasteland by S. A. Cosby

22. The President’s Daughter by James Patterson and Bill Clinton

23. What Happened to the Bennetts by Lisa Scottoline

24. Hold Tight by Harlan Coben

25. News of the World by Paulette Jiles

As a solo reader, I revisited many of my favorites as part of classroom assignments (the pleasures and the perils of teaching). I also finished, after decades of attempts, American Gods by Neil Gaiman, which I wrote about here. 

What did you read in 2022? Feel free to share. We welcome new titles and authors.