A Dog of a Year

A regular reader of this blog might conclude that the Critical Eye was unable to wax sentimental about the passing of that old dog, 2014. Amen!

Though it featured cataract replacement which allowed me to appreciate autumn as I have not in years and new insight into the term “medical miracle.” Mid-July I knew personally no less than a half dozen people having that surgery. One experienced infection, another initial encumbered vision. Most of us, unlike humans of the ages who went blind as they aged, see better than we have in 50 years. Easy to become jaded about miracles.

Biggest turd from the old 2014 dog has to be the reject of my book, Adventures among the Awesomes—a Boomer Teacher Memoir by a local publisher. I realize the proper subjects for memoirs are sex, particularly incest; drugs, and assorted sleaze, and that a hard line look at what is really going on in the classroom is not, but it does reveal why reform after reform yields no change in education stats.

            Critical Eye is trying to keep the passing of a dog from contaminating hopes for the coming year, especially the Cascade Spy Project, the true story John Yates Beall, a Confederate soldier who spent the summer of 1862 here and was hanged 150 years ago as a spy.