Mischief, thou art afoot.

Caught Julius Caesar at the Shakespeare Theatre last night. What a rip-off. The guy, Caesar, gets killed before intermission.

The performance is good but not great...it somehow lacked the gravitas of its theme -- I wasn't sold by either Brutus or Marc Antony's speeches after the death of Caesar, although overall Brutus -- played by Tom Hammond -- is great. In fact, since Brutus is basically the star of the show, Hammond's part is crucial, and he carries it well.

As always, the set design is inventive but not fussy, even if the set did cause Andrew Long, the original Marc Antony, to, um, break a leg for real. OK, so he just ruptured the achilles tendon, but it's enough to cause the Post to speculate on a "curse on Harmon Hall."

Having not really paid much attention to Julius Caesar since high school, I was struck by how much this play says about the fickleness and violence of the mob -- or as we might say these days, the common man. John Steinbeck had a theory about mass actions, and he explored it in such works as In Dubious Battle, a strike novel set in California's apple orchards. He called it the "Phalanx," and his interest was in figuring out how individual wills and intentions become subsumed to a group-consciousness.

Marc Antony's speech "to bury Caesar, not to praise him" incites the very masses who only a few moments ago were praising Brutus to now seek his death, and it's clear that Antony understands that power lies not in the Senate but in the street, as he declares, "Mischief, thou art afoot. Take thou what course you wilt!" Even further, Antony realizes that once loosed, the public wrath is not under anyone's control, and the mindless beating of Cinna the Poet only reinforces the unguided savagery, in the wake of which Octavius, Antony, and Lepidus seize power.

And poor Brutus, the "noblest man in Rome," who turns against his friend in the name of the state, learns all too late that the cause of the country -- "pro patria" -- is not a site of universal agreement, but rather an empty signifier that everyone claims.

In case you happen to be in London with time to kill.

I can't believe it, but I actually saw a Cy Twombly I liked. Normally, I don't think of art and Cy Twombly in the same sentence, mainly because his crap is so juvenile and derivative -- and by derivative I don't even mean it's a good copy...I mean it's watered down shoddy nods toward something that's already been done. However, I was checking out the Guardian's piece on Twombly's show at the Tate, and one of the preview pieces I found very nice:

It makes me think of waves crashing against the shore. There's a mood to it, and energy. "Untitled, Part VII" he calls it. Other than that one, the pictures strike me as the sort of dreck I've always associated with Twombly. No concept, no originality, just a lucky time: he happened to be painting when Rothko, Pollack, Johns, Warhol, and Lichtenstein were popular, and somehow critics mistook his juvenelia for art. Jesus, you can't even compare him to those other five. It's like comparing Coldplay to Radiohead or U2.

Rhee-treads anyone?

What do you do when you preside over one of the biggest education disasters in recent history? Why get a job with DCPS of course!

Cleveland, of all places, is chortling over the Rhee Regime's luring of several notable Cleveland failures to the District's system:

We knew something strange was going on when Lisa Ruda, the chief of staff for the Cleveland schools back in their heyday of horror, got hired to play the same role in the Washington, D.C. school district [“Thanks, D.C,” August 7]. She may have been part of Barbara Byrd-Bennett’s Dream Team that invented attendance numbers, bungled the $1.5 billion construction project, and helped the district earn a reputation for the Worst Education This Side of the Mississippi. But we never would have believed that someone else wanted to repeat our experiment in abject failure…

Needless to say, Cleveland isn't exactly upset about the District's "poaching" their "talent." In fact, they're ecstatic that Ruda, once she landed in the nation's capital, began hiring her cronies, although Lisa Rab, the reporter covering this strange rhee-incarnation of failure, was admittedly perplexed and tried to connect the dots. Here's the connection between DCPS and Cleveland:

Turns out that Byrd-Bennett, the former Cleveland schools chief who led Ruda and the rest of the disastrous team, also has a new job in D.C. She’s a director for New Leaders for New Schools, a non-profit that trains principals to – get this! -- turn around failing schools. Which means, unfortunately, that one of Cleveland’s most-hated government flunkies is now spreading her wisdom to younger generations. According to the Washington Post, she’s been advising D.C. schools chief Michelle Rhee on some issues, too.

Amazing. A corrupt former schools chief and her corrupt cronies are imported almost whole-cloth into the District. New Leaders for New Schools is one of those organizations -- like Rhee's own New Teachers Project -- that found there was money to be made (and lots of it) consulting and providing head-hunting services for the public schools.

Byrd-Bennett, unlike her underlings, is not working directly for DCPS; instead, her organization is providing the "vetting" or litmus test for principal hires in DC. Byrd-Bennett is not well-liked in Cleveland and beyond. In fact, the ACLU went after her for trying to circumvent Ohio's "sunshine laws" that ensure public disclosure of school business. Incidentally, Michelle Rhee already won a court battle in her attempt to keep public school budget numbers from the public until it's too late...but it's possible the DC Council might get some backbone to stop the nonsense...doubtful, but possible.

Ebb and flow.

I have a conundrum. Or a challenge. Here it goes:

The water pressure in our house is incredibly low. I'm not talking temporary as in fixing a water main break low; I'm talking ongoing for several years now low. In the shower we have a hose that reaches the ground. If you put it on the ground upside down, the water trickles out...maybe shoots in the air about two inches. Our kitchen sink produces no force from the faucet, as if the water is simply falling out.

Yet the flow from the front and back hoses, as well as the utility sink in the basement, is strong.

I've been looking for valves along the water lines that would differentiate between those different outlets, but I can't find any that aren't open wide.

From what I know about water pressure in general, the larger your pipe the more water you need to maintain pressure...or to put it a bit more scientifically, water pressure relates to the speed at which water must move to get through an opening. There's a severe volume problem with both the kitchen sink and shower. Hmm.

It's like watching a good friend slide into dementia...

Anyone else notice the Post's editorials slipping from moderate to right-wing lately? On June 12, their lead editorial was a paean to the public-money-for-private-schools experiment foisted upon us by the U.S. Congress during one of their darker right-wing days. Oh sure, it sounds great: 1,900 scholarships handed out to low-income families so their children can attend private schools. It's an amazing piece of largesse from the radical right-wing leadership that attempted to strip public funding from social services across the board...but not from giveaways that would undermine public education.

Seriously, who wants to be against giving children more access to education? It sounds insane until you start asking the same questions of other Constitutional issues, like "who wants to be against law enforcement?" or "who wants to be on the side of the terrorists?" -- in other words, it's a trojan horse.

For starters, these vouchers aren't the kind that will get you to Sidwell Friends, St. Albans, or any other high-end private school. These vouchers are basically enough to get you to Catholic school, which I'm not knocking, but let's not pretend that these vouchers "level the playing field" and let's not forget that in D.C., the Catholic church -- one of the largest tax-free landholders in the District -- is backing away from its mission to provide education for its parishioners and trying to turn its private schools into public charter schools. Essentially, the vouchers provide a public subsidy to private schools, and in their amounts, they are providing de facto public subsidies to religious institutions.

I wonder if the Post would be so enamored of the program if instead of providing education vouchers, Congress decided that it should get in the business of providing free subscriptions to the Washington Times to help District residents with "media choice."

Interestingly enough, the Post sees in the likely demise of this federal program a plot against Mayor Fenty and Chancellor Rhee's school "reforms," as they put it. Never mind that the federal voucher program predates the Fenty/Rhee takeover of the District's schools and never mind that a federal program to subsidize private enterprise should have absolutely nothing at all to do with how the mayor conducts reform of public education...just read the Post's bombastic fear-mongering conclusion:

Much, though certainly not all, of the opposition to vouchers is rooted in Democratic interest-group politics and the traditional resistance of teachers unions to change. And that is what should worry Mr. Fenty. If this worthwhile program can be sacrificed, so can the many vital reforms he and Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee are hoping to put in place.

Oooooo! It's the big, bad "Democratic interest-groups" and the "teachers unions" who are to blame for trying to scuttle a Constitutionally suspect federal giveaway to religious institutions. I'm surprised they didn't take a swipe at the ACLU while they were at it. And what are these "vital reforms" of Fenty and Rhee that the Post alludes to? Doing away with due process? Finally scuttling that "quaint notion" that job decisions should be based on performance?

If you put two and two together, though, you realize that someone at the Post is on an anti-union crusade...after all, the Post as a business is fairly aggressive with fighting its own employees. Today, the second editorial decried Montgomery County government for its inability to stand up to what the Post calls "union bullying." Honestly, if I put the editorial up without attributing the source, readers would most likely conclude it was from the Washington Times, the Wall Street Journal, or the John Birch Society.

Apparently the Post believes that unions -- those organizations that gave us things like child-labor laws, weekends, health-care benefits, paid vacation and sick leave, workplace safety standards, and in general higher standards of living -- are little more than self-interest groups.

Frankly, I'm getting sick of the Post.

Disturbing news, but no one cares.

So you've been in charge of DC Schools for a year...schools tend to be in the business of educating students, yet it's only now, after a full year, that you admittedly decide to turn your attention to academics?

No, I didn't make that up.

Chancellor Rhee has finally figured out that DCPS is in the business of providing education, and so she's pledged that in her second year on the job she would concentrate on academics. How refreshing:

Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee said the focus in year two will be on boosting student achievement levels.

Wouldn't you hope that boosting student achievement levels would be the focus of a schools chief every year everywhere?

Rhee and Fenty were busy yesterday touting their education bona fides and listing their accomplishments. What they left off the list was one of the most important things: "Left in place every one of former Superintendent Janney's curriculum programs -- until two days ago when She-Who-Is-Not-To-Be-Questioned effectively ended or delayed continued implementation of the Columbia University Reading and Writing Workshop." Obviously the administration shouldn't be terribly proud of record, since Rhee's snap decision at the very end of the academic year throws training for new hires into utter disarray...but what does she care. Here's what the Post tells us about the Fenty/Rhee achievement list:

A five-page, mostly single-spaced handout detailed 46 initiatives. They include a new textbook distribution system, refurbished high school athletic fields, spruced-up buildings, more art and music teachers and digitized personnel files that eliminated 4.6 million documents in disarray.

These are all good things. Even though Rhee overstated the textbook distribution problem, it's good to have a more transparent one in place (though it's not the first time DCPS officials have claimed to have streamlined textbook delivery); many DCPS fields were a disaster -- demoralizing and dangerous to students; many buildings obviously needed an overhaul; art and music should not be treated, as they were for years in DCPS, as luxuries (though Rhee's art and music initiative will not hit the classroom until fall 2008, and her seeming largesse comes at the cost of both the Weighted Student Formula and the Small-School Subsidy); and finally, the state of personnel and other files in DCPS needed to be addressed before accountability, both academic and financial, could be enforced.

However -- and you knew that was coming, right? -- only one of these highlighted initiatives touches academic achievement. Two of them are clear facilities issues and two others are business operations -- meaning they lie completely outside the need for the involvement of educational experts.

So what has our chancellor been doing for the past year...oh yeah, exactly what people who aren't educational experts do.

Anatomy of a hit.

If you want to understand the Rhee modus operandus in a nutshell, look no further than the Benning Elementary story in the Washington Post today. Leaving out the details, here's how it works: 1) meet and greet the community 2) pretend to hear their concerns, make promises, and assure them you are on their side 3) make decision that completely ignores or dismisses those concerns and promises 4) pretend you knew nothing about the community's concerns.

It's a pattern that's very transferable and has happened at a number of schools, although the Benning Elementary closure is certainly extreme -- Rhee uses this method for decisions great and small, because it's very effective: you've essentially bought time by making promises you have no intention of keeping, but by the time the community figures that out, they're fractured, shocked, and dismayed by your astounding duplicity.

Here's what happened at the end of last school year at Benning, a school suffering from deteriorating facilities and low enrollment (who wants to send his or her child to a school where the roof leaks?):

In an elegant white jacket, she [Rhee] walked the dimly lighted corridors and soiled carpets with Fenty and a platoon of cameras, chatting up students and teachers, promising to fix what ailed Benning. Fenty (D) picked the Northeast Washington school for Rhee's debut, aides said, because it crystallized many of the technical and academic challenges she would face.

Act I, the photo-op. The promises to fix the school. Fast forward to the end of the school year, and Benning Elementary is being closed:

A year after Rhee's whirlwind tour, the leaky roof remains, as does most of the worn-out carpet that kindergartners sit on each day. Other things got better, teachers and staff say. For the first time on Principal Darwin Bobbitt's three-year watch, the school had math and reading coaches, as well as an art teacher. All classroom teachers got new computers. Although maintenance personnel weren't able to fix the school's cranky air conditioning, they were far more responsive when it went down, staff members said.

In other words, fix the things that can move, like the computers and the personnel. Allow the students to spend each day on filthy rugs under unsound roofs, because all along Rhee knew her promises to keep Benning open were simply shell-game shuffles, designed to placate the parents committed, despite all its failings, to their neighborhood school.

Act II, then, begins with signs of improvement -- new computers, more academic support -- yet the larger structural problems remain unaddressed. That is classic rising tension...it reminds me in ways of Ibsen's An Enemy of the People, in which the town's outward signs of economic success are belied by the poisons whose eventual discovery will compromise that economic recovery.

Act III, and this is a 3 Act play, comprises the climax and denoument so far. Rhee drops the hammer. Parents are stunned:

"What can I say? My word means nothing," said Tamika Jackson, mother of a second-grader. Like many Benning parents interviewed, she said she is looking to charter schools as an alternative.

Another of Rhee's goals accomplished: public school parents leaving the system for charter schools, those quasi-public institutions that believe they shouldn't be beholden to public oversight even as they swill at the public trough...

The play would not be complete, however, without Rhee's protestations that she did no wrong, broke no promises:

Rhee said she does not recall complaints about the roof, but tried to make what improvements she could. She said she does remember being impressed with Bobbitt, calling him a strong leader, and eventually offered him the principal's job this fall at Malcolm X Elementary in Southeast. As for the closing, she said it was unavoidable.

Bobbitt, for his part, retains a role in Rhee's next production and is understandably grateful, since Rhee has been replacing more successful principals with her friends and associates.

And that's the story so far, a sad tale of raised and dashed hopes, of promises unkept, and of the miscreants escaping justice. I fought the law and the law won, as the song goes.

I'm want to see the ending rewritten, perhaps expanded out to a five act, in which Rhee's hubris finally encounters sustained community solidarity, and she's held to account, made to justify her actions, and unable to do so, is summarily deposed by the mayor...or perhaps we will have to wait, like Fortinbras, for a final tragedy to clear the way for rejuvenation...