Arellano's Orange County history

Young Sarah

She'll be starting kindergarten in a week or two. Wasn't she, like, a baby not long ago?!



The 5th photo is Natalie, who's approaching her first birthday. Next, Natalie, right, with her twin, Catherine; and mom.
Finally, Adam and Sarah "reading" the Cat in the Hat on my parents' iMac.

Rebel Girl's Poetry Corner: "long live life"

From this week's New Yorker, a poem by Mamoud Darwish, the Palestinian poet who died earlier this month.

Here the Birds’ Journey Ends

Here the birds’ journey ends, our journey, the journey of words,

and after us there will be a horizon for the new birds.

We are the ones who forge the sky’s copper, the sky that will carve roads

after us and make amends with our names above the distant cloud slopes.

Soon we will descend the widow’s descent in the memory fields

and raise our tent to the final winds: blow, for the poem to live, and blow

on the poem’s road. After us, the plants will grow and grow

over roads only we have walked and our obstinate steps inaugurated.

And we will etch on the final rocks, “Long live life, long live life,”

and fall into ourselves. And after us there’ll be a horizon for the new birds.

(Translated, from the Arabic, by Fady Joudah.)

Fuentes trumpets

Jubal over on OC Blog notes a brief mention of Tom Fuentes’ recent campaign event (Rick Rieff On Fuentes Campaign Event) in this week’s OC Business Journal:

It was almost like old times—a couple of hundred loyalists enjoying drinks and cigars at the Balboa Bay Club, conservative stalwart Bruce Herschensohn signing books and Tom Fuentes at the center of it all. The event launched Fuentes' re-election campaign for trustee of the South Orange County Community College District, job enough these days for the once-powerful chairman of OC's Republican Party. The old lion held court, told stories, trumpeted the college district's fiscal conservatism and blamed the GOP's woes on power brokers who value "money" more than "people" or "ideas." But a slowed Fuentes was gracious, and more philosophical than combative. He did not partake of the libations, a small price to pay, he said, for his new liver: An encounter with cancer "makes you realize what's really important."

For some reason, Tom chose not to trumpet our district's equally outstanding "accreditation brinksmanship" or its "50% Law cluelessness." And then there's its remarkably persistent "hostility, fear, and despair."

"Liver Boy"?

On Sunday, tylerh posted about the SOCCCD on OC Blog: Saddleback and Irvine Valley College Likely to Keep Accreditation.

Mr. T, a regular contributor to the popular conservative blog, noted that “Saddleback's and IVC's accreditation status has become an issue for this year's South OC Community College District (SOCCD) [sic] races.” Those opposed to the reelection of Tom Fuentes and Dave Lang, he said, are raising the “bogey man” of accreditation loss.

His retort: that’s “unlikely.”

Mining for anything to bolster his position, T found a chirpy remark in the Saddleback College Accred report: “the college and the district have made great strides in responding to the recommendations of the visiting teams....”

“This,” he announced, “is not the tone of a committee that intends to administer the educational equivalent of the death penalty.”

Tylerh is ignoring a crucial fact: that the Accreds have declared that they are no longer satisfied with improvement. All issues must be resolved once and for all by October, or else.

T referred readers to my post for a “different view” on the accrediting issue. I wrote that I am not as interested in identifying the odds of non-accreditation as in the reasons our colleges' accreditation was jeopardized in the first place. I explained that Mr. Fuentes is a major reason. That's why he should not be reelected.

T seems uninterested in such subtleties.

Tylerh’s post has received only three comments. On Tuesday, a “conservative prof” took the opportunity to slam SLOs (one of the Accreds’ recommendations to Saddleback College concerned SLOs).

Then someone named “Missy” opined as follows:

It's true that there's been some improvement, but the relationship the board and the chancellor have with the staff is still horrible. Morale among staff members is extremely low. ¶ If this were a K-12 district rather than a CCD there would be much greater public scrutiny and a recall might have been launched by now. ¶ Yes, improvement has been made. But only because there was nowhere to go but up.

Naturally, one of OC Blog’s conservative readers responded to Missy by declaring that “around these parts we don't launch recalls against conservative elected leaders like Tom Fuentes who stand up to liberal union bosses.”

Fuentes standing up to the nasty “liberal union boss.” That’s the picture that Fuentes is selling.

On Tuesday, during the union luncheon (held in IVC’s acoustically challenged gymnasium), Bob Bliss, the union-endorsed challenger to Fuentes, referred to Fuentes’ recent explanation for seeking reelection: “he needs to stay on the college board to help ward off liberal influence.” That was reported in a recent Frank Mickadeit column.

Bliss pointed out that he has been a registered Republican since 1964. Bliss, wrote Mickadeit, “wouldn't exactly qualify as a liberal.”

BTW, the title of Mickadeit’s piece is, I think, very odd: Liver Boy back in his element (8/14/08)

Fuentes has liver cancer and recently underwent a liver transplant.

“Liver Boy”?

IN THE NEWS:

• UCI again cracks top 50 in US News school rankings
• The Community College Enrollment Boom

Armando Ruiz still at Coast

On Tuesday, “Jubal” of OC Blog posted: Lawsuit filed challenging Ballot Title of Coast Community College Board Candidates. According to the Jube, somebody doesn’t think that candidate Charlotte Pirch is entitled to list her profession as “College Professor/Attorney.”

Never mind about that. Today, “Archstone” wrote in to say that the “real issue” in the CCCD trustee race is boot fanatic and "Friend of Raghu" ARMANDO RUIZ:

Jubal, the real issue in the election of the Coast Community College District board is Trustee Armando Ruiz, the pension double dipper who is trying to win re-election. Ruiz's actions in 2004, retiring from his part-time post as a Trustee and a full time job as a Counselor at Irvine Valley College, simultaneously, enabled him to double his pension, from $54,000/year to over $100,000/year. The legal loophole that Ruiz used to do this has been closed, but Ruiz has continued to serve on the Board, collecting his monthly paycheck, and his pension, all at the cost of the Coast District taxpayer. Ruiz is currently trying to gain the endorsement of the Orange County Democratic party….

You’ll recall that when Raghu Mathur was President of IVC, he sought desperately for allies and finally resorted to importing one from Saddleback College: Ruiz. Pretty soon, Ruiz, despite his manifest sleazitude and stupitude, became an administrator. After a year or two, however, he descended into disgruntletude when he wasn't promoted to the VPI job. (Glenn got the nod.) He retired and then commenced his double-dipping.

I think it was at that point that Mathur concentrated on his hot new administrative prospect Rodney Poindexter, who was fired when it became clear that he was, um, unstable.

Scott Lay on California's difficult education challenges

On the 19th, President and CEO of Community College League of California, Scott Lay, explained the major challenges that California faces with regard to education, especially at the state's community college system. He spoke at the Irvine Valley College's new Performing Arts Center.

Among Lay's points: that community colleges need to lay less stress on growth and more on completing the education of the students they already have.

I highly recommend that you view this short video (edited down from over a half hour to less than ten minutes).

Scott refers to these reports (pdf files):

America’s Perfect Storm: three forces changing our nation’s future

Rules of the Game: How State Policy Creates Barriers to Degree Completion and Impedes Student Success in the California Community Colleges

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