Mr. Dennette (Abu-Hurairah) Harrod, Jr
dennette@wiz-worx.com
URL: http://www.wiz-worx.com/

aharnor@css96.cv.com (Andrew Harnor)

Dear Andrew,

I hope you'll forgive me this "public" communication, but I have a lot to say, and I wanted to keep it. :-)

Brucilla's hard-drive ate itself a few weeks ago, and since I needed to install Linux on a virgin drive anyway, I decided to replace Slackware Linux with RedHat Linux (4.1) and get a kernel that will support multiple Internet domain names (and IP addresses) through a single PPP connection. This also gave me the Apache HTTP server to replace the NSCA server I'd been using with Slackware Linux.

The Good News is that the PPP daemon is Really Smart … it comes up at boot and redials automagically in 30 seconds when the modem disconnects, so I don't need the "webchk" script I wrote last year. The Bad News is that through a problem with protection on a routing file on my ISP's end, I spent two weeks trying to make a valid PPP connection … we'd see the login and IP address negotiations, but I could not ping any nodes or be pinged.

Well, all that's behind me now, and Virtual Water Holes™ is back on the air … I'm no longer in the deep funk that enveloped me around the first of the month when the hard drive crashed. But that's not what I wanted to talk about.

I just spoke to my mother, who had just returned from her first acupuncture session at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, DC. (Long story short: Pop's a retired officer, so the whole family's primary health care has been through Walter Reed … Mom had half of her stomach removed by a Surgeon General, a great honor for a civilian!)

They're doing acupuncture to relieve her arthritis pain. When she first told me about it, I was very optimistic and enthusiastic about the prospects, and told her that at the state run hospitals in China, birthing mothers get acupuncture instead of an epidermal. Then I told her about you and how acupressure (reflexology) had cured your liver problem through foot massage.

The reason I'd called her was that I had a question relating to her former profession … Guidance Counselor. There's this 18 year old kid in my neighborhood who cannot read at a sixth grade level, even though he's a senior in high school and plays on the football team. It's a Real Struggle for him to keep up his scholastic average to stay on the team. Otherwise, he's a Very Bright Lad … he just has a reading disability.

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts has just decided that all High School seniors will have to pass the GED (Graduate Equivalency Diploma) exam in order to graduate … this is the national standardized test administered to adults who never completed High School, and is accepted as the equivalent of a High School diploma, a requirement for some jobs.

This kid could not pass the exam because he cannot read the essay portions and multiple choice questions in the allotted time. But he would score much higher if someone could read them to him as if he were blind.

Well, I made some phone calls, and found out that there are forms to apply for time extensions based on documented disabilities, and there are audio-taped versions for the blind … but nobody has tried testing a group of "underachievers" with the audio versions!

I think that even if they cannot count the higher scores a valid, at least it would help their self-esteem to know that they are not as "dumb" as everyone seems to think they are, and it would give them an incentive to work harder in their remedial reading classes (which the young man in question is currently taking, BTW. :-)

So … in making these telephone inquiries, people have been asking me why I'm concerned about it. First, I tell them that I was a 16 year old college drop-out who didn't bother to get a Bachelor's degree until I was 34. Then I tell them about my nephew who had a similar problem … when he was in the third grade, I assumed that he would have trouble graduating from High School, but his condition was identified and my family had the resources to get him special education until he was ready to be main-streamed with others his age, and today he's in his second year of college and doing Very Well.

This young man is the person my nephew might have become without help, and I'd really like to see him be able to achieve the limits of his True Potential … him and all the others who are in his situation. The Commonwealth has ignored the problem for too long, and we need to make some accommodations for their failure to identify and treat the problem while they were in the lower grades, or else they will not be able to grow and develop as productive members of society.

Like I said, I had a lot that I wanted to share, so that's why I made a Web page … the spell-checker is not confused by the HTML tags when I use MS Word, and besides, I wanted to test this new "stencil" file for my Internet correspondence.

This whole thing today has reminded me of a quote by Robert F. Kennedy …

Most people see things as they are and ask, "Why?" … I see things as they could be and ask, "Why not?"

It also gives me a chance to share some Polaroids with you … click with the right button to enlarge them, or click the dates below.

Keep the faith,

DAHarrod
Journeyman WebMaster