Clash Day

"The clash of ideas is the sound of freedom."-Lady Bird Johnson

Today was "Clash Day", part of Spirit Week at school. Students - and some teachers - wore wacky, mis-matched clothing combos in wild patterns and colors. It is harmless fun and results in a lot of good-natured banter, even from those who choose not to participate.

Today my Reader feeds contained posts by:

• David Hoff: "Senate aides last night circulated a discussion draft of sections of NCLB. The draft addresses issues that aren't controversial, avoiding topics such accountability and teacher pay."
• Annoyed Librarian: "I'm not saying many, and perhaps even most, librarians aren't dedicated to library users. I'm saying it's time librarians stopped claiming that user satisfaction is all they're interested in, or pretending that public library service is somehow more noble than going out to work for the Man. If librarians were interested only in user satisfaction, they wouldn't complain about library outsourcing in such a knee-jerk manner."
• Library Thing Blog: "In defending Linden I want to make it clear that I am not a high-volume user of Second Life. I visit about once a week, usually for something like the BookMooch/LibraryThing meet-up... Until now, I enjoyed the site, but I wasn't passionate about it.Now, Doughty Lindens, I am on your side!"
• LifeHack: "While it makes good sense to teach your children to be aware of themselves and their surroundings in the company of strangers, the feverish panic that breaks out every year in the weeks before Halloween is way out of proportion to the actual threat posed to your children."
• Christopher D. Sessums: "While I regularly use both a PC and a Mac, the Mac generally makes me happier."
• Karin Chenoweth: "Hardly anyone ever talks about it, but the thing about schools is that most of them are incredibly sloppy, organizationally speaking."
• Clarence Fisher:"There are enough tools and filters available to track kids online and ensure they are "safely" closed off from being able to make meaningful connections and become digital citizens. Instead, this is about teachers and students being able to develop profiles of their learning online."

In my connected world, there are always new concepts to ponder, old beliefs to question, people with whom to begin or continue a dialog.

Color, pattern, clash and compromise: I love this environment!


"Change means movement. Movement means friction. Only in the frictionless vacuum of a nonexistent abstract world can movement or change occur without that abrasive friction of conflict."- Saul Alinsky