Monthly Archive for September, 2009

End Seniority Hiring and Bumping in Providence Public Schools

Published on September 24, 2009 in Politics and Providence. Closed

I came across this great petition to show support for putting an end to seniority-based teacher assignment and hiring as well as “bumping” in Providence Public Schools. If you’re not familiar with bumping, it’s basically that if an employee (in this case a teacher) gets laid off and they have a certain number of years under their belt (regardless of their qualifications or the quality of their teaching), they can bump a junior employee (again, in this case a teacher) from the position, transferring the lay off to that teacher. Again, this does not take performance, qualifications, or the quality of their work into consideration. It is purely seniority based. The unions love this, the residents don’t. Seniority, especially in the case of teachers, does not coincide in the least bit with quality. In fact, in many cases, seniority means dead weight and getting paid a whole lot more. Should we be paying extra for lower quality teachers simply because they have been teaching the longest? Experience only goes so far. Twenty years experience teaching is not twice as good as 10 years if you’ve been teaching the same subject.

If you live in Providence, you should support this petition. The Rhode Island Education Commissioner signed an order to put an end to this practice and force school districts to hire and promote based on interviews and actual performance rather than seniority. The Providence Teachers Union, disgustingly, filed a lawsuit to overturn this order.

Petition to end seniority hiring and bumping in Providence Public Schools

Help a Phan Out

Published on September 24, 2009 in Fun Stuff, Music, Phish and Travel. Closed Tags: .

A friend of mine is trying to raise money to get to Indio, CA to see Phish on Halloween at Festival 8. Unfortunately, he lost his job recently. It’s quite a sob story. He’s a cool guy though, and I wanted to help him out and cheer him up.

So please help TiJ see Phish

Phish Joy Review

Published on September 13, 2009 in Music, Phish and Review. 3 Comments

The latest album from Phish, titled Joy, was released last Tuesday. Though it had been leaked to the internet and then posted for streaming from Phish’s MySpace page a few weeks prior, I had waited until the official release to listen to the album in full. Overall, I would say that as a studio album, this is one of the band’s strongest. Steve Lillywhite’s production is impeccable and each song stands on its own. The one complaint is that the album isn’t really cohesive. Considering it’s from Phish, I’m not overly upset by that. They most definitely aren’t known for their studio work. From the perspective of each individual song, it’s their strongest album, but as a whole, the last album Lillywhite produced for them, Billy Breathes, is better.

The album opens with “Backwards Down the Number Line” a song written from a poem Tom Marshall had sent to Trey. The song is probably the poppiest song on the album, but not in a bad way. It’s a well written song with great lyrics. Like most Phish songs, it’s better live than on the album, but it certainly doesn’t make me think of Trey’s Shine, an album known for being all catchy pop music and one of Trey’s worst musical works.

The second song on the album, “Stealing Time from the Faulty Plan”, is a nice psychedelic rock song that really showcases the “new” Phish. The guitar riffs and lyrics are a bit darker and contrast nicely with the easy listening opening track.

Up next is a song Trey had written for his sister who recently passed away after a battle with cancer. The title track of the album is a beautiful uplifting ballad, slowing down the music for a bit.

The fourth track is a Mike song called “Sugar Shack”. This is a fun funky tune that brings visions of New Orleans (at least to me). It has a hint of a reggae beat. It’s a classic Mike tune that goes down as one of his best.

In the fifth spot is the laid back groove of “Ocelot”. This was a much anticipated song for me. It’s a great easy listening song with a catchy tune, but by no means poppy. The laid back grooves make this a perfect song for a lazy summer Sunday afternoon.

Following “Ocelot” is probably my least favorite song of the album, “Kill Devil Falls”, a straight up rocker. The song itself is pretty good, but it’s almost out of place on the album. The initial guitar riff makes me want the song to be a bit faster and harder rocking than it is. It could be a great 60′s surf rock song, but it’s just a tad too slow.

The next song, “Light”, has an intro that they can extend and practically turn into its own jam when they play it live. The song is one of the best songs on the album. It’s got a nice slow build from the ambient intro into a powerful tune, much in the same style as “Piper”, though the building intro isn’t as long. It’s a nice rocking song, similar to some of Trey’s later solo work from Bar 17 or 18 Steps.

“I Been Around” is a short bluesy Page song that provides a nice little interlude before the epic 13 minute composition of “Time Turns Elastic”. TTE has become known as a set killer when they play it live. While it may someday make a great closer for the first set of a show, only the ending of the song is really worth hearing live. It’s much better on the album than live. Though I did also buy the album Time Turns Elastic with the 30 minute classical composition written with Don Hart and loved it that way, the song just doesn’t pop coming from Phish. I think if they can really work out some better improv with it and sway from playing the exact composition for much of the song, it can be awesome live. Until then, it’s a long bathroom break.

Closing out the album is “Twenty Years Later”, which is a retrospective on life. It’s a slow rocker, again showing some of Trey’s newer writing similar to some of the stuff off Bar 17.

Overall, the album is one of their strongest, only beat out by Billy Breathes for both production and cohesiveness. While Rift is always a fan favorite, the production quality of this album is worlds away. I’d rank Phish’s studio albums something like this:

  1. Billy Breathes
  2. Joy
  3. Rift
  4. Story of the Ghost
  5. Picture of Nectar
  6. Junta
  7. Farmhouse
  8. Hoist
  9. Round Room
  10. Lawn Boy
  11. Undermind

We’ll see what happens when I receive my Joy box with the Party Time album included. I also didn’t include the Siket Disc or the White Tape in my list, though the White Tape would probably fall near the bottom and the Siket Disc is more ambient jamming than a real studio album.

Epic Beer Night

Published on September 13, 2009 in Ale, Beer and Review. 1 Comment

Two nights ago, I decided it was time to finally crack open a couple of very special bottles of beer that I had acquired. They each stand near the top of their own specific styles of beer and, in my opinion, near the top of the beer world in general. They’re both from New England breweries, which makes them even that much more special to me.

The first beer was the famous Kate the Great from Portsmouth Brewery in Portsmouth, NH. This small brewpub in this small New England city first made headlines when they released their imperial stout a couple years ago. Since then, the hype has grown and the release day has become a national event. I attended it in February and bought my two bottles of the 900 available that day. While the beer on tap was simply amazing and beyond comparison, the bottled version at about 7.5 months old was just as amazing. This is easily the best beer I have ever tried (even when compared to Dark Lord Imperial Stout from Three Floyds in Indiana or Westvleteren 12, the rare Belgian quad only available at the monastery). It’s chocolate, roasted, dark fruit, and even a slight cognac flavors meld together to create a true work of art. The beer is thick, black with a slight ruby color and a small dark tan head. If you haven’t tried this beer, you should do yourself a favor and give in to the hype. The beer is better than the hype (unlike those other two I mentioned).

The second beer is a slightly lesser known beer from a lesser known brewery in Portland, ME. The beer is the 1260 Triple IPA from Stone Coast brewery. The brewery closed last August shortly after this beer was released to the public. The brewery was famous for its 420 IPA and 840 Imperial IPA, along with a host of other great beers. I was saddened when they announced they were closing as the 420 was my favorite IPA from the New England breweries. It was a New England beer with west coast flavor. The 840 was a great double IPA with big bold flavors and a hint of caramel mixed in. The 1260 built upon the 840 with an even bigger flavor, and even though the bottle is over a year old (it was a birthday present last year), the hops were still very present. Upon reading the bottle, you learned that the beer was actually brewed in 2007 and aged for a year before they bottled it and released it to the public. The hops and malt flavors in this beer were terrific and perfectly balanced, creating one of the best double IPAs I have ever tried. I’d take it over a Pliny the Elder any day (have never had the pleasure of Pliny the Younger). The beer is a red amber color with a nice fluffy head. It’s one of the darker IPAs I have seen. It had some of that caramel flavor from the 840, but the hops of the 420. It was perfect in every way, even after a year in my cellar. Stone Coast is the one brewery I will miss. They were one of my favorite New England breweries. Luckily, the Sunday River Brewing Co. is still alive and kicking in Bethel, ME. You can still get some of the Stone Coast beers there, including the 420 and the Alt, which is also fantastic.

Fueling the Flames: Unions

Published on September 7, 2009 in Politics. Closed

I hate politics, mainly because my political views don’t fall into a single category. I tend to side with the Democratic party as my views lean towards the liberal. In fact, many of my views are socialist. However, I also tend to have many libertarian views. This creates a bit of a political paradox, which confuses some of the people I meet. I post some things in the comments of certain local blogs (yes, I’m talking about RI Future, which I am glad is no longer in the hands of Pat Crowley as Brian Hull is a much better writer, not as biased towards unions, generally more balanced in his views, and has promised a much needed redesign for a site that has some of the poorest web design I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen bad web design). I get flamed because I’m not “progressive” enough and should “join the Republican party”. Those flames come because I tend to be anti-union. Now, this does not mean that I don’t believe in the right of workers to collectively bargain. Workers should have that right in any position. However, I don’t believe that workers should be forced to collectively bargain. After all, if the so-called progressives believe in Free Choice Act, shouldn’t that extend to giving people the choice to not join a union?

Here’s what I mean… let’s take public school teachers as an example. If you apply to become a public school teacher, union dues are automatically deducted from your paycheck and sent over to the NEA. This means that you don’t have a choice. Your salary and benefits are all pre-set based on what the NEA has bargained for you with the school district. You didn’t have to do any work to get better pay, more vacation time, etc. However, there comes a time when a school district can’t afford the NEA’s demands. The NEA gets pissed off and threatens to strike. Eventually, they’re left with no choice, the teachers go on strike. This leaves the children without school. It does nothing but harms the children. As a teacher, you now have a choice, you can either cross the picket lines and go into work while being called pretty nasty things by your co-workers, or you can join them on the picket lines. This is the only choice you have.

My issue with unions is two-fold. The first part of it is that they tend to only reward based on longevity and not based on performance (I won’t even go into how to rate performance of a teacher, that’s for the experts, and I’m not specifically talking about the teachers’ union). This means that your pay raise is based on years of experience, but not experience outside of the school district. It only rewards you based on your experienced within the school district (though I’m sure a public school teacher could switch districts in the same state and still get the same salary). If you had previously taught for 5 years in a private school, you’re not going to start in the public school district at level 5, you start at the bottom. Yup, you’re at the same level as a new teacher. Now because of the seniority-based pay increases, you’re rewarded for hanging around. And the longer you hang around, the more you’re protected. After a certain period of time, the most senior of employees can bump the junior employees, even if the junior employee is more qualified for the position. The effect of this is that it protects the lazy employee that has been there the longest, solely because union leaders believe that seniority and longevity should be rewarded over performance.

This leads into the second part of the two-fold issue I have with unions. Unions hold back strong performers while protecting the lazy. Because of the way collective bargaining works, a strong performer is not encouraged to continue to perform beyond the minimum. In fact, that’s frowned upon. Because of the union and the fact that you’re only going to get a pay increase based on the length of time you’ve been an employee, you have no reason to go above and beyond the call of duty for your position. This creates a lazy atmosphere.

So I say to all of you union-loving “progressives” out there… how is it progressive to push for free choice, when free choice only goes one way?

The best example of why unions don’t work is the state of RI. The state employees get the nice cushy job and don’t leave because they don’t have to lift a finger. After all, there’s no reason to work hard and the longer they stay, the more money they make for doing no more than the bare minimum. There are many reasons our state is in such financial troubles, but one of the causes is the waste in the state government. The governor (of whom I am not a fan) wants to get rid of some of the union employees. The “progressives” want to protect them (I don’t blame them completely, after all, layoffs suck for everyone involved). But until the waste is cleaned up in the state government, we will continue to have financial issues, even as the rest of the country pulls out of this recession.

Phish Hartford Review

Published on September 7, 2009 in Music, Phish and Review. 1 Comment

I know it’s several weeks since the Phish show in Hartford on August 14, but I wanted to make sure I re-listened to the whole show before I wrote a review. Much of the show is still fresh in my head. After all, it was probably one of the most memorable shows of the summer. I’ve finally had the chance to listen to the show straight through and most of my thoughts are still the same as they were after the show as they were after the listen.

I’ll start at the beginning, leading up to the obvious highlight of the show. The band was scheduled to come on around 8:00 pm. They usually start late. So it was expected that they wouldn’t actually start until around 8:30. That night, the band didn’t hit the stage until almost 9:00 pm. In doing so, they allowed the sun to go down and the sky to go dark. Shows tend to have a different feel after dark. Usually, you only get the pure darkness for the second set. This show was special in that the whole show was performed after dark. The first set started out really strong. Punch You In The Eye was a powerful opener that basically said to everyone that this show was gonna rock. AC/DC Bag came next with a strong showing, but nothing overly jammed out. They quickly went into NICU, again strong, but nothing over the top. Then came the bust-out of the first set with Colonel Forbin’s Ascent->Fly Famous Mockingbird. The crowd went crazy at the first notes. It was really strong, but the combo lacked the narration that usually precedes Famous Mockingbird, which was a little disappointing. The rest of the first set was pretty mixed up and definitely not as strong. The Bird of a Feather that followed Mockingbird was strong with a good jam. Lawn Boy, while always fun, seemed more of a distraction. That was followed by a strong Stash with a great dark jam. I Didn’t Know, again a fun one, provided some of the “Phishiness” with the Fishman vacuum solo. Middle of the Road was fun and followed by a decent Character Zero. The songs, in their own right, were all pretty strong, but the first set as a whole was pretty disjointed.

The second set, however, was probably the best single set of the whole summer. The band came back with the pounding bass intro to Down with Disease. They extended the jam a bit and reached some territory they only rarely hit throughout the summer. It quickly came to a stop as the band started up Wilson, a song rarely seen outside the opening spot in a set. Continuing along with odd placement, the Wilson jam went into Slave to the Traffic Light. This song is normally not seen outside the set closer spot. This is the new Phish. Anything goes nowadays. Continuing the long segue, the band started up a rocking Piper that segued into a nicely placed Water in the Sky, which provided a little breather from the strong jams and perfect segues for the beginning of the set. Little did we know what was coming next. The band started up Ghost, which had a great extended jam that continued with the rocking theme of the show rather than going to the funk that is usually sees. The jam led to the beginning notes of the Talking Heads’ Psycho Killer. It was at this point, we knew the show was gonna be special. The pre-show house music was the Talking Heads, including Psycho Killer, which everyone was singing along with. This was the second time the band had ever played Psycho Killer, totally blowing away the first set’s bust-out. The band brought the music into an electronic 80s video game beeping sound. Apparently, there was a guy in the front row totally dancing to it. Trey put down his guitar and started making fun of the guy and then asked Fishman to dance to it. The “Phishiness” of the show was just beginning. They then started singing Catapult, after which, Trey began a rant about kids and their technology and how no one ever reads anymore while the band started up Icculus. The crowd went absolutely crazy and the band segued into You Enjoy Myself, which lacked much of a Trey jam as he had put down his guitar to do some more dancing, but this allowed Mike to step up and lead the jam. Some wanted a full out guitar jam, but I felt this was a stellar jam and the vocal jam that ended the set had the band leave on an eerie, if not freaky, note. They came back for the encore with the Beatles’ While My Guitar Gently Weeps. While it wasn’t the best playing (Trey made some mistakes), it was a great finish to an awesome show.

This was only the third show I had seen this summer. As I was waiting for Susan in the bathroom, I saw a few friends walking out. They all had the same thing to say… Set. Of. The. Summer. And it was. There were only 2 shows remaining for the tour. One was average at best and the other was very strong throughout (with the awesome bust-out of Harpua). No single set, however, touched the second set of Hartford with the perfect segues and the classic Phishiness that we all missed during the post-hiatus period. This show has gone down in my books as the best show I have seen live. Coming in second in that list is the 10-8-99 show from Nassau with Tom singing the Who’s We’re Not Gonna Take It from Tommy.

Now back to planning the Vegas originating RV trip to Indio, CA for Festival 8 with my new friends from Twitter.