september 12, 2000. "There was more than one Lassie, you know," recalls Pilar Wayne Upchurch, wife of the late actor John Wayne. She says her husband once played an all-night poker game with the handler of the famous collie. "The Duke won all the Lassies. The next day, the man was so devastated; that was his livelihood." Her husband gave the dogs back after a good laugh, she added. - the globe & mail Our subscription started today. It's hard work plowing through that first section for relevant articles, but at least I can accurately claim that it's homework. My social studies teacher wants us to have an ever-growing collection of resources, and a good paper is the cheapest way to do that. So far I've had the most luck finding articles on education itself. The self-reflexiveness of the whole thing is amazing - society never seems to be done examining the education process. As well it should; I just wonder if the questions asked are the most valuable. Banning Harry Potter is a silly question; parental control of curriculum is a much meatier line of inquiry. Today was a good day. I'm starting to really enjoy the people in my courses, and I liked the way our Special Education course began: the professor cut a scarred & ugly apple in half to show the star inside. Images like that really speak to me, it's a Donne way of looking at the world and I enjoy it. Very rare to see beauty for it's own sake these days, and very nice to hear something so unabashedly kind when I'm usually buried in issues of pedagogy. Anyway. I'm very tired & the nice people at the School of Ed would very much like me to be at class on time tomorrow, so I'll cut this short. All you need to know is that I didn't get scraped or scratched or otherwise marred today, which is a great improvement upon yesterday.