I Don't Think This Is John

8/29/10 John is alive and has sent a lauche comment below. He is mad at me for not publishing him. I thought I had. Here, John, I have published you. There, there. lee

Gentle Readers: Whoever wrote this below piffle is too gutless to sign his name. I don’t know if he is a hack for the pharmacist in the run-off with Griffin or a grammar maniac on the loose.

I recall that the druggist got a so-so review from Patrick Manteiga in La Gaceta. If the fellow has as much writing awareness as he displays in his unsigned squib to me, Patrick should have given him a higher evaluation.

His writing shows he has a brain—if the jagged essay is his writing: a constipated brain with misfiring synapses but better than nothing.

What I think is that this bozo is a ghost writer for the druggist. The druggist may not know language well enough to speak it and can only count pills. Dr. Pill Pusher may have got his degree online from Placebo U. But I wish the druggist indeed knew language well and got elected. He would be the most literate person prowling the halls of ROSSAC, and I would have someone on the board to banter with about the abuse of language.

If he reviews April Griffin’s blog, he will see a passel of grammar-punctuation errors. April has no college degree and is proud of it. She wants to turn the county high schools into tech emporiums.

Then the graduates would be as bereft of learning as she is.

If Dr. Pill Chit wants to beat April, he will have to be more forthcoming than he has been so far in the campaign. He must have the guts to confront Griffin on her trashing government in the sunshine by agreeing to everything’s being decided in the superintendent’s star chamber, put on the rolling consent agenda, and rubberstamped by the potted-plant board. He will also insist that Griffin confess to helping Elia create an empty job for the Alafia principal—the one whom parents rejected. The deal was that the failed principal would get the same principal salary as she made as Alafia principal in the created perch if she would only resign. Elia needed her to resign quietly to stop the bad press Elia was getting about the situation. April helped Elia in this dirty deal by going out to Alafia with Motel Breath Falliero to convince Principal Smith to resign.

If April were representing the taxpayers Instead of shilling for Elia , she would have acted like a good school board member and insisted that the superintendent fire the failed principal. This failed principal now sits in the book depository, paring her nails at taxpayers’ expense on a principal’s salary thanks to the collusion of Candidate Griffin and Motel Breath Falliero. Motel Breath will no longer adorn the board say the election results. I believe I contributed to her demise. I would like to think so.

I don’t think the druggist has the right stuff for politics. He didn’t answer my call when he first announced. A real pol answers calls no matter from whom the call is. And he has insufficient guts to sign his name to a critical email such as the foregoing. John indeed. Nothing to admire in this quarter. That’s the kind of people who run for the school board.

lee

Whoopee!

Motel Breath Falliero, late board member RIP

Dr. White: There are no specifics to your general comments on your candidate page. They are very high-sounding and abstruse. Are you sure you aren’t a school administrator with a degree in early childhood?

I would like a specific answer to this question. I was taught English at HCC for 28 years. The incoming freshman from local schools did not know grammar and punctuation basics. They did not know how to structure and develop the standard five-paragraph essay. It’s hard to teach Hamlet and Yeats to students of this caliber. There is nothing the college teacher can do but to take time out that should be devoted to higher-level writing and literature and teach the students what they did not learn in high school.

What specifically will you do if you win the run-off for the board to deal with this problem of the schools’ graduating marginally literate students? Would you be courageous enough to require an exit essay that demonstrated competence in grammar, punctuation, and construction of a standard five-paragraph essay?

Lee Drury De Cesare

Mr. Bartels: I assume that you and Dr. White are the run-off candidates.

Your platform is a mystery except for your promise to support the arts. I believe you specifically cite music. I am for that impulse. I do not get the impression that the current board is much interested in the arts. They are mostly interested in ripping off tax payers with flying around the country on larks for the ostensible purpose of boning up on how to be a superlative board member but really to lark about and investigate the ins and outs of room service in swank hotels; this they do while the poor children in the county can’t afford school supplies to participate in class. So you will be the leader in this arts quest if you can get it past the current traveling board harpies.

I see a picture of you on your site with flags draped around a stage that looks as if you are set to preside over a hoedown. That’s fine. I am fond of hoedowns. My Georgia family likes nothing better than a hoedown, and my daddy played the “fiddle,” i.e. the violin. He thought it pretentions to speak of a fiddle as a violin. All his witty relatives would have accused him of “getting’ above his raisin’.”

I myself like opera. Not the Grand Ol variety but the Wagner kind. If there is a Ring Cycle any place in the US or Canada, I am on a plane to get there for the 20 hours or so of the performance. I hope you will sponsor a Ring in the schools to testify to your love of music. That would represent real devotion to the arts.

If you win against the druggist, I will be interested to see how brave you are. The board members are entrenched in their ways, and I have seen Ms. Olson and Ms. Kurdell slap a board member silly for suggesting that it is not ethical to award no-bid contracts. To an average citizen, giving no-bid contracts to buddies and former administrators sounds like crime. But the board has its own protocols of crime. You will see if you survive in November and have the effrontery to think you have a right to your own opinion and represent citizens’ interests, not the administration’s and board’s, and won’t be slapped flat and shut up by the entrenched board commandos. I will be watching your performance, sir.

Lee Drury De Cesare