The Mystery Signs of Augusta, Maine

Down the block and around the corner from my home in Augusta, Maine I noticed some strange markings on the pavement over the summer. This was not too unusual as over the past two year, two natural gas companies have been competing to win new customers as they have been bringing fresh new Canadian natural gas to the capital of the United States' northeastern most location. The process has involved lots of digging and the "Dig Safe" guys have been working overtime marking and re-marking where various underground utilities were laid.

So, I assumed that one of the gas companies was expanding their customer base and would be soon digging up the street yet again. But these markings were odd and pointed to a location where there was only a stand of trees. Perhaps the squirrels and birds in that location had saved up and were planning for a very warm winter.

The initial markings on the street cryptically stated: MDOT-sign. Soon, these were followed by more colorful signs suggesting that there were no underground utilities in the location and that it was apparently save to dig here. What followed - the signs

themselves - are truly confusing. As you can see in the images, they implore the public to "Post No Signs" - we got a bit of a conundrum going here, or haven't you noticed. They posted a sign to state - DON'T post a sign here. And they didn't stop with one - they got lots of them (see additional photos).

I have yet to figure out what the C.O.A might be - I'm hoping this post might generate some response. Some hint comes from the larger sign that appears below the "To Reverse Direction" sign which reads, "Controlled Access Highway - Official Highway Signs Only."BTW, this intersection is one of those famous "tea cup handle" arrangements where traffic heading in one direction on Western Avenue (a major road that has a center island preventing u-turns or crossing traffic except at intersections) can "reverse direction" without driving into some businesses' parking lot which they do anyway, despite the signs. I always thought these signs - "to reverse direction" - were rather enigmatic and perhaps a bit philosophical. Way too complicated for the average American with a 5th grade reading level to figure out.

Now, the fact that there are no signs posted in this location other than the Post No Signs signs that have recently been posted, and in the 19 years I have been in this location, I have never seen any signs posted here - even the temporary election signs, is a bit disturbing. Is it possible that these are in response to someone's complaint? Could there be a new law on the books that insists that our hard-earn tax money be spent frivolously on useless and cryptic signage that no one, other than me, will ever bother to look at?

Your guess is as good as mine.

In the meantime, the mystery continues. Post something if you got an idea!

The News from Lake Woebegone

I think most Mainers are fairly familiar with Garrison Keeler’s mythical hometown from his weekly Prairie Home Companion radio show on Maine Public Radio. In the closing of each Lake Woebegone story he notes that it is the place where the “...women are strong, the men are good looking and the children are above average.”

Many Maine folks, like many rural folks around our country, think that Lake Woebegone could be their town, instantly recognizing people from their own communities who resemble the qualities of the cast of strange characters who inhabiting the small Minnesota town. It is a comforting feeling because the Lake Woebegone folks, despite their eccentricities, always seem to finally find a way to get along.

This pastoral image of Maine was rocked recently when the Governor of the State, Paul LePage and his Commissioner of Education, Steven Bowen published a State Report Card showing that indeed the children in many of Maine’s communities are...well, NOT “above average.”

Much has been written about the Maine School Performance Grading System in the press and elsewhere in recent days. Most of the comments I've read are pretty damming and many people have been rallying to support the teachers and schools in their communities particularly those in the communities that were, well let’s just say more below average than they would like.

Many years ago I used to reach Educational Tests and Measurements to pre-service teachers in several colleges in Maine and Pennsylvania. I also taught Educational Psychology in those same institutions and in all those courses we examined the problem with normative assessments and, in particular,  the use of grades based upon comparisons between or within groups. All of my hundreds of future teachers knew by the end of the semester of the fallacy of that old fashioned grading methodology. Indeed, I suspect just about everyone who has studied to become a teacher in the last 50 years has learned the same lesson which is: attempting to reduce human behavior to a simple five letter grading scale is just... well, plain stupid.

Clearly the governor and his commissioner of education never took my course.

The alternative to a normative, letter-grading system calls for the use of criterion-based assessment and the educational derivative of this is most commonly referred to as Standards-Based or Outcomes-Based Education. The movement to this methodology began in earnest in the US in the early 90s and Maine was one of the national leaders establishing a universal set of standards called The Maine Learning Results. In this method individuals are measures against a set of criterion. Basically you either meet or exceed the criterion or don’t meet the criterion. And if you don’t meet the criterion, you keep working at it until you do. Outcomes-based methods are designed to focus on continually teaching to master the criterion and not dwelling on comparing individuals with other individuals.

But we Americans, with our penchant for competitiveness don’t like to just PASS something, we NEED to be BETTER than everyone else; we NEED to BEAT the opposition. We NEED to all be “above average.” We NEED to be from Lake Woebegone.

But alas, we are only from Maine where, just like everyone else, about half of us are above average and half of us are not.

“And that’s the news from Lake Woebegone….”

Read about the Lake Woebegone Effect...

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Photo credit: Image licensed through Creative Commons by Web Fryer.

Wine Glasses

I’ve moved a number of times over the years and, during the years 1990 to 1996, I managed to cover two states, four homes and a many hundreds of miles. Perhaps it was all that packing and unpacking that caused me to get so lazy that when I finally settled in Augusta, Maine I ended up just stacking boxes in closets and cabinets, never opening and displaying the contents.

Sixteen years later, I am settled and not considering any new moving ventures. So, when I broke a wine glass tonight, I figured it was safe to finally open a dusty box of wine glasses that I had stored on the shelf of a cabinet I have in the dining area.

My first surprise was the fact that behind the dusty box of medium sized wine glasses there was another box containing six smaller desert-wine glasses. These were sealed with masking tape that I think may have been last used when I lived in New Hampshire. That would make the sealing job be circa 1983; I washed the glasses very thoroughly.

The box containing the medium size wine glasses that I was replacing had only three left. This means that I have destroyed a grand total of three wine glasses in 31 year. At this rate, and including the three larger goblets I still have on the shelf, I’ll be good until 2042. If I count all of the glasses, I'm good until until 2120. I'll be 182 years old.

Cheers.

Spring Snow

So, alright already. I overslept this morning. I didn't have to get up for anything.

So, at 7:45 am I rolled over. And I did that again at 8:45.

But then I slept until 10:07 am and had to really drag myself out of bed.

But I almost jumped back under the covers when I looked out the window and saw patches of snow on the ground and the cars in the parking lot covered. I felt like Rip Van Winkle and thought I had slept through the remainder of spring, all of the summer and most of the fall. Was it already late October?

It sure looked like it. Ugh.

Thinking this was just a brief setback, I went out and got bagels. Fortunately, the ice scrapper was still on the floor of the back set of the car 'cause I had to brush off the snow to be able to see.

Throughout breakfast it continued to snow and sleet, but the accumulations had stopped. Then, at about 11:30 am, it started to snow even harder...those big wet flakes that you get in spring snow storms in March.

When it started covering the ground again, I got out my trusted camera and took this video.

I'm thinking about going back to bed...

First Snow

I just recorded the first snow of the season in Augusta, Maine. The forecast is that it will be warming during the night and turning to rain. So since it will likely (hopefully) be gone by morning, I took these at 9:00 pm - November 30, 2008.

Enjoy.

~j