IWP, Prompt- Write about your name

Growing up in Phoenix, we had a neighbor accross the street who was from Alabama. She always reminded me of  Polly Holliday's character, Flo Castleberry on the TV show 'Alice.' Whenever she'd see me, she'd call me "Theodore," but her thick accent made it sound to me like she was calling me "Theatre."


My parents insisted that my name was "Ted" on my birth certificate and that they made it that short because they never wanted anyone to shorten my name or give me nicknames. Which is ironic because classmates were always calling me Fred, or Ned, or wet-Head or "Farmer Ted."

When I was growing up, the only other Ted I knew of was Ted Night on the Mary Tyler Moore Show, who was a pompous ass.

In Spanish class, we were assigned translations of our given names, and while I personally liked "Teodoro," my class mates preferred "Tero-DORK-o." Leading me to adopt "Theo," the more urbane monicer of a character on the Cosby Show.

It means gift of God. In a way I passed it on to our first daughter by naming her "Grace."

POEM: Feed Me

Gotta eat to live
Gotta read to write
How do people THINK without reading?

I feel like a baby bird
beak stretched open wide
waiting for a worm

Like a suckling newborn
seeking milk
wondering why it is now outside its mother
now taking as much of its mother into itself as it can

Like a ravenous dog
a lumbering, slobbering Mastiff or St. Bernard,
slopping up raw hamburger and eggs from its dish
on the floor in the corner of the family kitchen
licking and slurping and lapping
wanting more, always more

Some greasy Hemingway
Some grainy Steinbeck

Savory salad with lots of garlic,
that's Vonnegut

A pitcher of ice cold ppilsner,
that's Robert B. Parker

Some James Patterson French Fries
Fried Grisham and Crieghton

Cut into thick, medium rare Viktor Frankl

St. Paul and St. John are merlot and cabernet

George Orwell is a little like oysters on the half shell,
should I sprinkle them with Robert Bly's lemon pepper?
Or have it on a bed of Nikki Giovani's mustard greens?
Perhaps a dash of red hot Henry Miller?

Warm pots of William Carlos Williams and Carl Sandburg Garrison Keillor are brewing for later.

A slice of Jean Shepherd pie to go with that?
Or Bill Bryson, David Sedaris, and Mark Twain?

I can't decide between the Mike Royko or the Molly Ivins.
Maybe some H.L. Melkin on rye.
No! J.D. Salinger on rye and a side of Richard Kinsella.

Some Hunter S. Thompson, but put it on ice,
just a splash of Jimmy Buffet, now that would be nice.

Where did I put that Flannery O'Connor?
It must be on the shelf with the Fannie Flagg.

I think I spilled some Jerome Lawrence and Robert Lee on the Harper Lee.

No thank you, I'll pass on the Jane Austin,
I'm still finishing my Richard Hooker

I don't think I could handle another bite of Bradbury, Asimov or Roddenberry

Oh but for some more Doctor King!
if only the whole world would consume more Doctor King
perhaps there'd  be less indigestion.

Gotta read to think
Gotta eat to live
Call me a glutton,
I just can't get enough

Yet ANOTHER Summer Book Report

The Twilight Zone: The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street by Rod Serling


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Our English teacher had us read this as a short story back in 7th grade. I've always felt that it had a powerful message about human nature and paranoia. I suspect since Rod Serling wrote it in 1959/60 it probably is a thinly veiled commentary on the "Red Scare" of cold war McArthyism not unlike the Arthur Miller's 1953 play "The Crucible" about the Salem witch trials of the 1600's. I'm convinced that 50's and 60's horror movies, Invasion of the Body Snatchers and the original zombie flick, Night of the Living Dead were too- conformity, political pressure, anxiety, mistrust- you name it. So... I feel like 'Monsters on Maple Street' is as meaningful for our times today, as it was 50 years ago (hyper-partisanship, terrorism, jingoism, xenophobia...)the more things change, the more they stay the same. At any rate, I thought it would be a good addition to my classroom library for Drop Everything And Read (DEAR) time (Which I happen to have with 7th graders). And to my 7th and 8th Grade English Teachers, Mr. Hodgson and Mr. Harmon- Thanks for turning me on to the likes of Rod Serling, Gene Rodenberry, George Orwell and Ray Bradbury. What a legacy!

View all my reviews >>

Summer Book Report

Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court by John Wooden


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Just amazing. It's organized by themes, not chronologically- and it is not a memoir, yet when I got to the part when he told his team he had decided to retire, I cried. I've been using his Pyramid of Success for almost 10 years now as a coach, but I still found new insights and different ways of understanding what he teaches in it. Excellent book, up there with '7 Habits' by Covey, 'Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten' by Fulghum, and POSSIBLY even 'Man's Search for Meaning' by Frankl as one of the most inspiring reads outside of Scripture.

View all my reviews >>

Summer Book Report

School Days by Robert B. Parker


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
A little slow starting, no Susan or Hawk this time- but as usual once he got going, Parker's Spenser is smart, sarcastic, and unstoppable. Once again he's the toughest tough guy with the big heart and tenacity second to none. Complete with "ripped from the headlines" issues, a loyal German short-haired Pointer names Pearl and a Steve McQueen-cool Mustang!

View all my reviews >>

Watch This Space

I know, I know, it looks like I've pretty much abandoned blogging here, doesn't it? I guess I've gotten too used to sharing pictures on facebook, so I hardly use this as a photo-blog anymore. I haven't written my column for almost 2 years now. And when I do write, it ends up being in my religious blog, "Prophet, Priest, and Pirate."

But I think that the old flagship here may be seeing a lot more action later on this summer when I attend the Iowa Writing Project at Morningside University. It's 3 week course in July, partly to help teachers integrate writing across their curriculum, and partly to practice the lost art. For years I've done okay with opinion and humor essays, but I think I need to learn some more about fiction. We'll see how it goes. At any rate, I imagine that I will post some of what I work on here.

Meanwhile I have been working on getting all of my blogs to link to one another and compliment one another. I figured out a way to have the posts from most of them automatically show up on facebook, and after much consideration and some consternation, I'm even giving Twitter a try. Much of these developments are due to the conference my wife Bethany and I recently attended at Buena Vista University on technology integration and instruction for 21st century learners (TICL).

As usual, I also plan on cleaning, rearranging, streamlining and updating all of my blogs a little bit this summer. It seems to me that this one in particular could stand a little sprucing up.
Please feel free to explore them all and leave comments on any posts you like. Notice that they all have a similar navigation bar of buttons on the right side to help you explore.

If you'd like a brief explanation of each site, you could visit the "Internet Empire" links page on my new wiki, Mr. Mallory's Art Dog Wiki, which is still under construction, but promises to be a useful way to provide resources for and communicate with students.

If you're interested in reading any of my new writing next month- make sure you look for the link over on the right, toward the bottom that will let you become a "follower" of this blog. I promise that most posts will be a lot more entertaining than this one.

In the meantime, have a great summer and come back soon.

New graphics for the new Web site

Here are the new graphics for my new wiki- http://dogart.wikispaces.com 

Like 'em? I used a Bulldog for Boyer Valley, but I used a French bulldog instead of an English bulldog because I am zee Art teacher, viva la Paris, no? Oui, oui!

In case you hadn't heard, I attended a tech conference for teachers this week.They recommend that teachers use wiki-pages for their classes. So, I thought I'd better at least try to learn how to do it, whether I end up using it for school or not. Please look around and be sure to come back again later, as it's obviously still under construction for now.

They also suggested Twitter. Now, I don't want to be a twit, and I'm still not sure how much I'll tweet, but if you want to follow me or want me to follow you, this is me there- "@tedmallory" or http://twitter.com/tedmallory, I'm still not really clear on how it works. 

Thank a Vet for their service

Here's my Dad, Sgt. M.C. Mallory, USMC working on his AD-W3 in 1953. He was a crew chief.  I'm not sure if he's on the USS Bennington, a carrier in this picture, or at the US Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The AD3W, made by Douglas (before it became McDonald-Douglas) toward the end of WWII and the first bit of Korea. Like a Corsair or a Hellcat, but it could carry as much weight as a B-17, and sat 3 (pilot, radio man, and mechanic- like Dad). Same engine as a B-29 (only just one, not four- obviously).

Air Reconnaissance squadron. VMC-2 was the original composite squadron in Marine Corps aviation. It was commissioned at Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point on September 15, 1952 evolving from the former Airborne Early Warning and Electronic Counter Measures section of the Wing Headquarters Squadron. 

VMC-2 was part of the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing. VMC stands for "Visual Meteorological Conditions," but VMC-2 and VMJ-2 were known for electronic and photo reconnaissance missions. On the one hand, I figure my dad was fortunate to be an aviation mechanic in the Caribbean instead of an infantryman in Korea. On the other hand, he tells stories of surviving hurricanes that overturned planes and trucks and tossed around jeeps.  

VMC-2 merged with VMJ-2 and became the VMCJ-2 in 1955. My Dad was still on reserve duty when VMCJ-2 documented the buildup of Soviet supplies in Cuba in 1960. He expected to get called up to active duty during the Cuban Missile crisis.

Turned out that dad had an allergy or bad skin reaction to something in jet fuel as opposed to whatever they used in these WWII era prop planes, so he didn't continue as a mechanic- but he did work for American Airlines for more than 40 years mostly in their air freight.

I beg you're pardon?

I drew this along with the assignment I gave to 7th graders. Students keep asking me "why does it look evil?" That's probably a good sign, the fact that they're asking must mean that I don't actually look this crabby all the time.

Jade Zen

One of the best things about being a high school Art teacher is that once in a blue moon, I actually get to paint. I know that English teachers force themselves to read, but I don't know how many find time to write. This acrylic on canvas has been very therapeutic and relaxing to work on- especially with all the grades and paperwork to get done since it's the last week for our Seniors. 

Last lap encouragement for all of you fellow teachers out there

With only a few weeks left, you may be feeling overwhelmed with all you still have to get done, or you may be excited to get done and start vacation, or maybe you're pulling your hair out because your students have already mentally checked out. Well, don't give up. At track meets I think that the most important shouts of encouragement from coaches come in the final lap, when the kids are stretched to their limits and would just assume collapse as make it those final few yards to the finish line.

Let this post be like that final shout of encouragement for you. During DEAR time, I'm reading a book on psychology by William Glasser, first he was a teacher, then a psychologist, then got his MD so he could practice psychiatry. He believed that everyone has basically two needs, to have human connections and to feel worthwhile- love and purpose, empathy and responsibility... "relevance and rigor."

Anyway, he felt that the most important job of therapists (and by extension parents and teachers) is to help people learn how to fulfill those two core needs without preventing others from doing so, in other words to become responsible rather than irresponsible. In order to do that, Glasser stresses that the learners have to trust that the teachers are there to help them learn how to become responsible.

As the old maxim goes, "they won't care what you know till they know you care." You people care. You give a rip. If you didn't, you wouldn't still be here in April, because God knows August through March wasn't exactly a cake walk. 

If nobody's taken the time to thank you for giving a rip, allow me. Thank you for caring kids, because I work with them to, so I know not all of them are easy to keep caring about. Keep up the good work, you're almost to the finish line.

More on Arizona's new immigration law

Pima County (Tuscon) Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, a Republican opposes the law. His Department already arrests and turns over to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) more illegals than any other law enforcement agency in the nation. I already told you that the Arizona Association of Chiefs of Police opposes it, right? Dupnik's problem is that the law doesn't give public safety officers any tools to do this job but it does mean that more people will sue policemen and departments (keep that in mind when I tell you about the law's author in a couple paragraphs). He doesn't like the fact that this law also puts the economic burden squarely on local departments to hold/house/feed/care for/and prosecute illegals, where as currently they are handed over to ICE, a federal agency to deal with. Dupnik (again- a Republican)says that he believes the only reason this law was created was racism or possibly to create political division.

This law wasn't even written by Arizona legislators, but by Kris Kobach, a lawyer from Kansas, at the legal arm of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR),which the Southern Poverty Law Center has listed as an anti-immigrant hate group since 2007. Joe Arpaio had already been paying Kobach $1,500 per month, plus expenses and travel, plus $300 per hour to teach Maricopa County Sheriff personnel how to racially profile immigration suspects.

Kobach has a conflict of interest because he is also Kobach is senior counsel for the Immigration Law Reform Institute, which describes itself as representing “citizens experiencing injury resulting from illegal immigration.” In other words, he stands to profit financially from people who are hurt by the very law he helped craft!

Republicans should probably oppose it because Nationally Hispanics voted for Obama 2 to 1, in AZ it was something like 54% to 41% and that's over home state favorite McCain. Hispanics constitute the fastest growing minority group in the US., making up almost 15% of our population. 30% of Arizona residents happen to be Hispanic! This issue may activate the tea-party base, but it's bound to erase whatever gains the GOP thought it was making over health care reform.
I knew that the GOP had gone crazy, but I didn't think it had become so foolish that they didn't even CARE if they got back into power or not. Wouldn't a political party WANT to appeal to the fasted growing segments of society? They proved that they're the party of the rich by opposing Wall Street reform, now they're proving that they're the party of white racists too. Keep it up Republicans, you're helping the Democratic Party more than all the elitists in Hollywood ever could