Oh My God...I Think I Just Blogged!

Now that Naomi's put a picture of gnomes on the blog...I guess it's time for me to chime in. Danno here, btw, coming to you straight from Chocolate City. I have to say that I have mixed emotions about blogging. Part of me thinks they're great, part of me thinks they can get self-indulgent...which is at odds with my protestant family history. So, if I ever start reading like an Andy Rooney piece on 60 minutes, please...you have my permission to whack me.

Ok...that's out of the way. I'm sitting here in DC, in graduate school, I'm pushing 40, my dogs are just as neurotic as me, my sister's about to drop twins...wow...how did that happen? Sometimes I look around and realize a lot has happened in the last year.

I'm in grad school. Me... When I graduated from college way back when, that was it, baby. I was done! Things change, I guess, cuz not only am I in grad school...I'm getting a Masters in Special Ed. Yes, you read correctly, Special Ed. Basically I thought general ed. would be to EASY...yeah...that's it. too EASY. I went to a grad school fair about a year ago, met a woman from the University Maryland Special Education department...talked with her, set up an appointment, met a couple professors...started applying and what do you know--they accepted me! I gotta give some props to my buddy Bruce at this point. He was the person who kept telling me to stop THINKING about all this and just do it. His help was invaluable to me, and I owe him big time. More on that later. So, now I'm in school, careening towards a teaching career...go figure. It's great and I love it, stress and all.

I know Naomi's already mentioned our feelings about DC, but let me just add a couple of things. First of all, it's a beautiful city. The neighborhoods, the architecture, all the monuments, parks...it's a pretty place. Having said that, there is something weird about it. I know we'll probably go on and on about this as we post more, adding our latest theories as to the weirdness of DC. Here's tonight's installment. As I was walking the dogs tonight, it suddenly occurred to me that this city is full of people who's lives are somewhere else. They are here for their stint in DC, doing whatever work they're doing, but they don't bring their lives here. It's like they've put huge parts of lives on hold, or they're keeping them going in the city they came from, and probably will return to. It makes for an interesting community dynamic to say the least. You've got this huge part of the city that doesn't invest in the city they live in, and another huge part of the population here, who have built community and lives here, who don't have the resources or municipal infrastructure, or representation to invest in the city the ways they'd probably like to. We've all heard about the schools, the crime, the poverty, the racism, the plantation mentality of our capital city. The amazing thing to me is that all that's going on while money is simultaneously floating all around this town. Someone told me the other day that something like 3 of the 10 richest counties in the US are in the DC metro area. But in the actual city, there's more people living poverty than I've ever seen before. By far. It's interesting that I'm learning all the nuts and bolts of No Child Left Behind. It seems to me that the first child left behind was, and continues to be, Washington DC.

How's that for a first posting! Sheesh--I guess that Andy Rooney reference didn't take long to materialize! Didn't mean to get so damn serious there...quick---LOOK AT THE GNOMES!! happy happy gnomes.

I'll sign off on a lighter note, really. We going up to NYC this weekend to hang out with buddies and go to the San Gennaro Festival!! Woo hoo! Man I'm going to eat my way through Little Italy! I'll be sure to eat a cannoli for y'all! Maybe I'll get a tattoo! What?

Stay tuned!

Dan(OhMy!)