Victor was wondering about the approval of his comments since he has posted before. To get your comments approved automatically, you need to do two things:
Since you posted before, the one of two things is happening:
1. You didn’t give your name and e-mail (Did you?)
2. It’s not working.
Please let me know which it is.
Bruce
Last week I wrote about how upset I was that people were actually shooting at the rescuers in the area devastated by Hurricane Katrina. A lot has happened in a week. For the last few days, army troops have been moving people left behind out of the city. Cities all over the United States are taking the people in, who are being referred to as refugees. Police, fire, Army National Guard, Red Cross and other workers from all over the United States are working in the area. The nightly news is now called the “Hurricane Katrina Update” as if there is no other news in the entire world. Driving down the street, you see people with cans raising money for victims. Every store seems to have something at the cash register for donations to the Katrina victims. Most gasoline is now about 35 cents more a gallon. The newspaper is filled with hurricane stories in all of its sections. The price tag for the cost to the federal government is now set at $100,000,000,000 (that number is 100 billion, about 800 billion RMB) The whole catastrophe is beyond the scope of one’s imagination, and yet it is so real and will effect so many people for the rest of their lives. One interesting aspect is that the people most effected by the hurricane were the people who did not have cars and credit cards to enable them to leave the area. The result is that the hurricane effected the poorest of the poor, some who were already ill, disabled or homeless. This has brought to forefront the problem of rich and poor in our country. There are no easy answers, but the problems brought by the storm are not going to go away.
Today was my first day teaching since I left for Enping in July. I teach adult school. Students don’t have to come to my class. There are many adult school classes to choose from. In some ways I have to treat my students like I was in a private school. The first year I taught adult school I had a couple of classes cancelled because I didn’t have enough students so I am alway concerned about the enrollment. My first class had me worried. They’re almost all elderly and they are starting to have health problems. However, when I got to class I had 15 students and then four more arrived later. The school likes to have at least 15 students to have a class so 19 felt very good.
My second class is for another district. The attendance was about 8-10 when I left in July, but that was summer vacation so I thought the attendance would go up. WRONG! Two new Spanish speaking students met me before class and said they wouldn’t be able to come to class today, but they’d be there tomorrow. Ten minutes into the class, I had ZERO students! I went to the office to get the clerk to print up a list of student phone numbers so I could call them and find out why they weren’t there. As the list came out, two Spanish speaking students showed up with a baby. (Babies aren’t allowed, but they were sisters so I let them stay with the baby for the day. I had a chance to call one student who said he and his wife would be there tomorrow. Four of the students were talking about moving before I left. The other 12 I haven’t had a chance to call. As of today, I will have three Spanish speaking students tomorrow (the mother will stay home with the baby) and two Armenians (who also speak Russian). Where did my Russian speaking students go? I wonder…
I just changed a setting in the blog so that you can register yourself and then write articles. Just in case there are “naughty” visitors to the site, you can only save your writing as a draft and then I have to approve it before it is published. To register, click in the lower right hand corner. Enter your name, user name you want and your e-mail. A password will be mailed to you soon after you submit your registration. Start writing right away by logging on. I will get notified when you write something that needs approval. As soon as I approve it, your writing will be on the website.
We’ll see if that works or if strangers abuse it. I want to give it a try.
I’ve just deleted the blogroll links and posted a number of blog links. Some of them may not be accessible because they are Blogspot. I think Dave Kee’s blog should be, and perhaps one of the other’s. Check them out and see if you can get to them. I hope so, but I know my own site was not available until I switched services.
Collette asked a great question in her comment: “What is a blogroll and what do these names have to do with Enping or ESL?” The anwer: NOTHING. This website is two days old. The software is developed by individuals who charge NOTHING for it. They placed their websites on the blogroll and I loaded it that way. A Blogroll is a list of blogsites that the owner of the blog keeps track of. I haven’t picked out any sites for the blogroll yet, but am going to do that soon. At that time, you will find links to some great ESL educators blogs. Until then…you will just have to wait.
I read a bit on the administrator side and found that I have set up the blog so that if you have had a post approved and you include your name and e-mail, your comments will be posted without me doing anything else. I can change it, but I think that you should be able to comment without my moderating. I did have another blog where robots found the site and posted advertisements for X-rated materials and I had to moderate. This blog is young and it will be awhile before robots find it. If they do, there are now some tools to guard against robot posing that I can set up. I hope I don’t have to.
I am still learning the program that runs this. As the moderator, I receive copies of all of your posts. Yesterday I approved the posts that I received via e-mail before they were posted. Today, I see that Victor has been able to post without my approval. I think that’s a good thing, but I have no idea how it happened! The point is that sometimes you may have to wait to see your post appear online because it is waiting for my approval. And, then maye other times, if you are lucky like Victor, you won’t! (I think when I approved him I must have approved him, and everyone who already posted, as a writer on the blog…but I am not sure!)
Victor asked about hurricane Katrina. Katrina struck the Gulf Coast (Remember “This Land is Your Land” where it talks about the Gulf sea waters?) Mississippi and Louisiana were most effected by the storm. Physically, California was not effected because it is over 2000 miles (3000km) away from here; two ranges of mountains, the Sierra and he Rockies, shield us from the effects of weather in the Gulf. Our storms move from west to east. We probably will not have any measureable rain until October or November.
(New York Times photo and text)
However, the storm has left over a million people without homes and an uncounted thousands have died. It has been the focus of news for days, as the tragedy overwhelmed the ability of local and federal government to meet the massive need. Tragically, some people took advantage of the situation, looting stores and actually shooting at rescuers, like it was some kind of video game. Thousands of people who were forced to stay in the city of New Orleans were in the enclosed Superdome, a football stadium, without running water or air conditioning (the climate is very similar to Enping’s). Now more than 250,000 people have moved to the neighboring state of Texas. So while hurricane did not physically effect Sacramento, it has psychologically effected our entire nation. As an American, I wonder what kind of people we have in our country who would shoot people who are trying to rescue other people. The figures and tales of suffering are hard for me to grasp. I wonder how long it will take that part of our country to get back to normal. It will probably be years and for many, their lives will never be the same. From a distance, I can only pray for God to alieve the massive suffering of so many thousands of people.
A couple of national news sources that are very good for this kind of coverage are the New York Times for print and NPR for audio
Victor asked me an excellent question: “What is this for? The blog, short for web log, is a place where I can write about things and you can respond to them and everyone can see our ideas all together. If you click on the “Comments”, you can add your ideas about what I say. Then we can share our thoughts, no matter what time of day it is in Sacramento or Enping.
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