something pleasant

Morgan had homework last night. From time to time in first grade they're going to give him homework assignments, some of which are to be brought back to school and some of which are just to do at home. This one was a sheet of number and counting exercises, like "name any number larger than 17" or "count up to 21 from 7".

Interestingly, one of the first exercises was "count to 3 but start at 19", which seemed to me like one of the more advanced tasks on the list. It definitely freaked Morgan out, so I skipped it. He was also a little unsure about "count by nickels to 50 cents," so I introduced the concept of counting by fives. The rest of it he got with flying colors: he's great with counting and knows his numbers up to a hundred (though he gets a little hazy on whether fifty comes after forty, and seventy after sixty, and stuff like that).

My favorite part was where he was supposed to compare the number of stuffed animals and board games in the house. They provided a row of little boxes for each category, and then a space to write the total number of each. The idea obviously was that you should go through your collection of toys and mark an X for each one you found, then afterwards, count up all the Xes and write down the number you get. Morgan instead went upstairs, counted the number of animals he found, then came back down and wrote down the number in each box. Then the same with the board games. He found 40 stuffed animals and 70 board games, and we had to draw several extra rows of boxes for each category.

Makes me regret that this wasn't an assignment to bring back to school. I'd love to know what his teachers thought of that.

police blotter

I dropped off the formal written complaint at the police HQ today.

Thanks to all of you for your support and suggestions, especially psongster and jwg for your suggestions for people to contact. I sent mail to Henrietta Davis and to Cara Seidelman, and (at the suggestion of Michael Halle of the Cambridge Bike Committee) Sgt. Kathy Murphy, who heads the bike patrol. Seidelman agreed that I had done nothing wrong, and that the responses of the officers I interacted with indicate a serious problem with the CPD's approach to bicycles. She got ahold of Sgt. Murphy, who tried to call me in several different places (when I was unfortunately out and did not have my cell phone). Someone also rang some bells with a Sgt. Burke who works in IA, and who contacted me urging me to submit the written complaint.

So after the holiday I'll have lots of leads to follow up. Hopefully some of them will bear fruit!