I never read Cookie Magazine. Nor Modern Bride or Elegant Bride. I did flip through Gourmet magazing once. Matter of fact, I think I even bought a subscription of it for a holiday gift one year for a friend.

Yet now they will be no more. News just announced by Conde Nast is that the plug is officially being pulled by the powers that be.

The question is, should I be troubled by this?

On one hand, yes, because I may not get to eat as many really great cookies as I would hope to eat in this lifetime so from a simple stomachal POV, there’s an off chance that my own intake of sweet treats might be negatively impacted by this latest cookie development.

Yet, on the other hand, I do kind think there is a glut of too many magazines out there. I mean when I look at all the different titles being published every month, I think to myself, “Who reads these things?”(Then again, who am I to judge? If people want to read about collecting pushpins or sewing duvet covers or whatever, more power to them. At least they are reading, right?)

So on one hand, maybe this is just the natural form of economic Darwinism taking place. There were too many magazines being published and now there will be less until the demand for more rises. On the other hand, maybe it’s that all magazines are dying due to the internet and soon none of them will exist in paper format? First the newspapers, then the magazines, finally the books… it seems to be a pattern that might play out.

But as the power to determine what gets published gets consolidated and the power to control what is or is not on our electronic devices becomes less and less in our our own control, how long is it before no more Cookie Magazine means no more George Orwell because his material is deemed unfit?

We already saw what happened when Orwell was zapped by Amazon… what happens when it becomes purposeful due to ideological beliefs about the content?

Are we in the age where all science fiction is actually going to play itself out? And is the end of Cookie Magazine my awakening to this fact? I mean I used to think an Orwellian dystopia was far flung stuff… now I see the pieces falling into places like dominoes.

And what am I doing about it? Hoping someone will still pass along recipes to others on how to bake really great cookies because as we know, if you just feed me sugar, you can numb me to the hard realities of every other aspect of existence.

Today would have been my father’s 67th birthday. He passed in 1994.

Never met my wife.
Never met my daughter.
Never saw me win Teacher of the Year for the state of California or publish a book… much less 9 of them (to date).

Died at the age of 51 from diabetes. (He was a juvenile diabetic.)

In many ways the life of my father was an absolute train wreck. And the shadow he cast over my life still colors vast amounts of psychological real estate in my own world today.

And yet, to oversimplify it all as if things are all black and white, as if he was a purely calamitous influence on me wouldn’t be right. (Though tumult, he did bring.)

But man, did my dad have a great laugh. And wow, was he smart. Wicked smart. Not quite smart enough to realize that being the smartest guy in the room could be a booby trap instead of a catapult but smart enough to graduate high school 2 years early and go to law school at UPenn.

It’s over 15 years since he passed and I still find myself thinking of him, being influenced by him, seeing the lives of my siblings being influenced by him so, so frequently.

Does the son ever stop being living underneath the umbrella of their father? And even if we could, would we want to? Though the pain was great, the love was great, too. I never doubted that my dad loved me but WOW, did he blow it over and over and over again.

You know, I know there are no guarantees in life but on days like today, I gotta admit, that if I only get 51 years on this planet, that would leave me with only about 8 more to go.

Geesh, if that thought won’t wake you up in the morning, nothing will. Sure brings some of this school nonsense I deal with on a daily basis into perspective though, huh?

Dads: they certainly cast a shadow, don’t they? Happy B-Day Pop.

(Note: that’s my dad’s headstone in the b.g. — it’s his mother’s headstone, my grandmother’s who just passed away this January in the foreground.)

We fired a bunch of teachers due to “budget cuts” at the end of last year. And yet, guess what? We currently have a few long term subs in place in some of our core classes — STILL, right now, in the sixth week of school! — because we have job openings for teachers that have not yet been filled?

Hmmm.

And in this story, D.C. is letting go of hundreds of teachers about 2 months into the new school year. I’m sure that’s not going to cause any chaos/demoralization/bitterness/grumbling/chain reaction types of negative impact by-products though.

Now I don’t want to go down the road of “how in the world are schools supposed to thrive in the midst of all this administrative dysfunction” right now, but really, “how in the world are schools supposed to thrive in the midst of all this administrative dysfunction”?

I know for a fact that there are schools all across the country that still do not even have their basic staffing issues resolved yet. And it’s October!

Are the teachers to blame?
What about when some kids get changed into your class 6 weeks into the school year so that you have a room of mix and match kids where a few students have been there from Day 1 and others are just experiencing Day 1?
Will NCLB take this into account this year when looking at API and AYP scores?
Will my “merit pay” evaluation reflect these “considerations”?

Though I have said this before, while it’s easy to blame teachers, aren’t we really having a crisis of leadership in American education? Principals are overworked, school districts are out of touch and parents are kicked to the curb. I mean we have educators around here with over 240 students on their total roster… but it’s going to be the teacher’s fault if we don’t see marked improvement in these English Language Learners this academic year?

What a farce. I mean can you really blame the cook on the Titanic is his lobster bisque tastes like seawater? After all, he wasn’t piloting the boat — just cooking and doing the best job he could at what he was hired to do. Instead of wearing business suits to work, some of these people ought to be wearing red noses.

Jim Burke turned me onto this NY Times article about the “Napsterization of Books” and I gotta say, it kinda sends a chill up my spine. Why? Well, because first and foremost, I am an author. I feed my family, pay my house bills and supplement my teaching income working in a high school (because who, in California, can afford to “merely” live on a single teaching income… another story all together) through writing books.

And I just finished my 9th title. (I have 3 more works that will be on the shelves by the summer of 2011). It takes me years to write and publish a book and the idea that it can be pirated in seconds well, let’s just say that I am hoping for a little regulation of the Wild West on this front and that somebody somewhere learns a lil’ somethin’ somethin’ from what happened to the music industry.

I mean it’s one thing if I choose to give away my own material free on the internet (which I do in many ways, shapes and forms) but it’s entirely another if someone takes what is mine and posts it. Last I checked, that was called stealing.

Now, the thing is, it’s not like I have a problem with digital media, 21rst century technology and even an evolution off of Guttenberg’s printing press — but if it comes at the expense of legitimacy, well, this one strikes home BIG TIME.

And all the authors I know are fearful of this kind of scenario. I mean we write books and if people do not like the content, the price, the subject matter and so on, they do not have to buy them. But if they do want to read the stories, text, information, etc… why in the world is it just cool to take it?

Just because one can?

J.K. Rowling was pretty much on welfare when she wrote Harry Potter. Does she not deserve a wee bit of a payday for the work she did? If Potter was napsterized and read by as many people as it was yet Rowling was still on the dole because of illegal downloading, would that be just?

Yet, is that not the way this could potentially be headed?

Right now the book piracy problem is in its infancy — especially when compared to movies and music. But for how long?

And what can be done?

I’m not afraid to say it, The Napsterization of Books Freaks Me Out!!

Now no, I am not objective and yes, I already feel threatened by Google’s plan… though they are working with the Author’s Guild to create a system that is financially fair to all.

But how does this play out going forward? I mean if no one ever had to buy a book again because all books were free (due to the illegal availability of them) how does the world of writing — both fiction and non-fiction move forward?

I know not — and when you have skin in the game, it can make for sleepless nights.

Turns out that Bill Gates lost 7 billion dollars last year. That’s billion with a B. I gotta say, he’s a better man than I cause if I had lost even a mere 7 million last year — that’s million with an M — I’d certainly be doing some very vocal complaining to whomever would listen right now.

Funny thing is though that I don’t really get a sense that this loss affected his life all that much. I mean did he suddenly start carefully selecting where it makes fiscal sense to eat based on the prices in the restaurant? As a teacher, I do this all the time. I mean I’d love to eat sushi WAY more often than I do, but I don’t simply because well, hey, it’s kinda expensive. And does Bill Gates now have to think differently about the type of car he drives, the cost of gas per gallon, or the price tag of a new shirt?

Probably not. So here it is that this guy loses 7 billion and it doesn’t impact him all that much (it’s probably a quaint little joke; Ha-ha, lost 7 billion this year… only 50 billion left, time for coupon clipping!) and yet my school district gives us a 3% pay cut and raises our insurance premium and I suddenly have to go through my entire lifestyle to see where edges can be trimmed.

And I am a salaried professional with a Masters degree and 2 full time jobs (teaching and writing — 3 if you count speaking). Makes me kinda wonder how folks making an hourly wage with no health insurance are actually making it in this world.

Actually, they are not. Nickel and Dimed is a a great read for those who want to explore more on this but let’s face it, when it comes to getting by in America these days, the older generation has left us in a less advantageous position than the generation prior to theirs left them.

And we have got to turn this puppy around because it’s bad for all of us when the children of our nation have “less” than what we ourselves had.

Of course, where does it all start? In my opinion — D’uh — education. Gotta love those school budget cuts, right? Good for today, great for tomorrow.

According to a new report by the Center for Disease Control, 9 out of every 10 teens are not eating enough of their recommended fruits and veggies.

You mean Hot Cheetos aren’t a vegetable?

Am I the only one that has kids walk in at 7 a.m. in the morning gulping down processed sugar? I mean we are talking about a breakfast that consists of a frosted Pop Tart, lunch that is a bag of salty chips and a soda, and then an after school snack of cupcakes or cookies — or more chips until dinner (which is so often, fast food). That’s the average teen diet these days.

As teachers, we see this every day. Thing is though, if you check the bottom left hand drawer of most desks (of teachers) you are probably going to find a Snickers Bar or a mini-bag of Chips Ahoy. It’s not just the students that are eating poorly — it’s the educators as well.

Me, of course I try to eat my fruits and veggies. Try, that is. Yet it seems as though I have to actively choose a pear while my hands just naturally gravitate towards peanut M&M’s without any real effort on my own behalf at all (peanut M&M’s cause they don’t make my keyboard too sticky when I blather on as a blogger, of course).

The fact is, the quickest way to get our ELA staff to buy into being engaged for an entire department meeting begins with good ol’ fashioned chocolate. Forget erudite discussions of Kafka, Orwell and Dickens. You want to get an our English department fired up, put out a tray filled with Oreos or Keebler Fudge Stix!! Then we’ll talk dis-aggragated data and methodologies to differentiate and accommodate for all sorts of learning styles in the classroom til the cows come home.

Fudge cake is the engine that drives a good meeting and really, I am not sure why more people don’t recognize this about teachers. We don’t really care about merit pay… but we all respond to homemade brownies.

Look, if we’re gonna nag kids about the junk food they eat, we’re pretty much the pot calling the kettle black. And if kids can smell anything, it’s the words of a hypocrite.

So Roman Polanski was snagged in Swiss territory and now there’s a whole lotta hullabaloo over the nerve to extradite him to face charges.

And why, because he is an “artist”? As an artist myself — a term that I never, ever apply, btw, but hey, if he can hide under the umbrella, then I can take some shelter as well — I call HOGWASH!

I mean would we see international film superstars lobbying for Burger King fry cook in a similar situation? I doubt it. Of course, we all know justice is supposed to be blind, and we all know that though it purports to be blind but much, much data is out there to suggest that it isn’t — yet at the end of the day, why do “celebrities” think that the law doesn’t apply to them? That’s what irls me about all of this.

I mean why do the likes of Scorcese, Woody Allen, Harvey Weinstein and the such think that just because the Mr. Polanski is a irrefutable cinematic giant feel that he should get a free pass on the accusation of “drugging and raping a 13-year-old child”?

(For those of you that do not know, Roman Polanski is accused of feeding a 13 year old girl a qualude and some champagne then filming himself having lewd sex acts with her while she’s in a stupor? Owch, right?)

And how does going on the lam for a few decades lessen the crime/guilt? I mean why don’t these filmakers encourage all people accused of like crimes to become fugitives? Especially if they can win an Academy Award. Then they should get off on little stuff like this, right? (Note: last sentence = dripping with sarcasm).

I mean I don’t even see the other side of the coin. It’s not like anyone is making the argument he was railroaded. It’s not like anyone is claiming he didn’t, as an adult, get a 13 girl drunk and have sex with her. And he did flee as oppose to face the courts in this country, regardless of the supposedly spotlight seeking actions of the judge.

But now that he is finally in custody — like over 30 years after the incident — the industry of Hollywood wants him to be set free. Why? Part of their statement/petition about this matter says, “The arrest of Roman Polanski in a neutral country, where he assumed he could travel without hindrance … opens the way for actions of which no one can know the effects,” said the signatories, who also included actresses Monica Bellucci and Tilda Swinton and directors David Lynch, Jonathan Demme, John Landis, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and Wim Wenders.

What kind of actions? And are they worse actions than feeding a 13 year old a qualude and champagne then filming lewd sex acts with her while she’s in a stupor? (Allegedly.)

I just don’t get it. If Polanski washed cars for a living and it was one the 13 old daughters of one of these Hollywood establishment people, they’d be the first to sign a petition saying a man like this should be extradited regardless of our international agreements.

And if it was a teacher, forget it.