Newtown School Shooting

It's less than 12 hours after the horrific shooting, of 20 elementary school children and six staff, at the the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, and people across the state and nation are still trying to process the information - that the murderer was the son of an elementary school teacher there, he used a cache of assault weapons in his killing, he had a history of mental illness, he shot the kids at close range, and more is likely to come.

As a teacher, we prepare for shooters in buildings, an unfortunate reality. We have lockdowns. We practice what to do to keep children out of harm's way if there is an intruder in the building. But the problem was, the assailant in this case gained access to the school despite a locked front door. Perhaps he was known by the front desk person or office staff, and was trusted. He allegedly shot and killed the school principal in the office and then made his way to several kindergarten classrooms, where, apparently, he shot and killed every child in one. His mother, a kindergarten teacher there, was apparently not working and was shot at her home. Why the man would go to her workplace and carry out this violent act, killing young children, is unknown.

All across the country people are talking about the unspeakable crime, putting themselves in the place of grieving parents, praying for them. This afternoon, I was thinking of all those Christmas gifts beneath 20 Christmas trees which will remain unopened in Newtown. The unimaginable sorrow for these families. You think that a school is among the safest places you can send your child. And Newtown is among the safest communities in Connecticut.

The debate over guns is taking center stage, as it should. I, for one, believe that humans, as a collective species, have not demonstrated that we are responsible enough to own guns. I'm sorry. It is true that many legal gun owners have owned guns for many years, blah, blah, blah, but what is it going to take for gun laws to change - another elementary school schooling, maybe a shooting at a church, a library? Frankly, it doesn't get any worse or senseless than a shooting in an elementary school classroom.

What should happen as a result of this tragedy?

1. Metal detectors in all schools, coast to coast.

2. Immediate cease production of all automatic or semiautomatic weapons for civilian purposes in the United States.

3. Strict scrutiny of criminal records of gun owners. These people commit a misdemeanor, they lose their gun license.They drive with a suspended license, they lose their gun license. Gun owners have to realize that having firearms is a privilege.

4. Amend the second amendment. It was created during a far different time, when people owned rifles. not AK-47s.


Gun advocates are saying today that people calling for tighter gun laws are having a knee-jerk reaction to this event. Bullshit. How many more shootings of this magnitude will it take for a change to be made? It is true that there are massive numbers of guns in the hands of people who shouldn't have them. The black market is also flooded with these weapons. If the best thing that our government is doing is holding gun buyback programs, we are in gerious trouble. And right now, that is the only thing that seems to be happening.

It is time to create laws that limit the types of weapons civilians can possess. And it is time to finance and prioritize a system that monitors those people who legally have guns. It is not too late to act. But if we don't, we are inviting another tragedy just like this one.





 

Not A Compliment And Not Healthy: Looking Old For Your Age

I was listening to NPR yesterday, and after spending most of the newscast on post-election deconstructing and analysis, out came this little story about a link between "looking old" and some specific physical characteristics, and an increased risk of having a heart attack.

Here are the main signs you want to avoid, according to this study.

1. A bald patch on the top of your head
2. A small vertical crease in your earlobe
3. Receding hairline
4. Fatty deposits on the eyelids


Um, this does not bode well for a majority of men over 40.

Here's the story:


Can looking old for your age increase your risk of getting heart disease?

Having baldness, receded hairline, crease in earlobes and fat deposits on eyelids increases your risk of developing heart disease.

By Joseph Brownstein, MyHealthNewsDaily

A bald patch on the top of your head or a small vertical crease in your earlobe may seem likerelatively harmless signs of aging, but a new study says signs like these may signal an increased risk of heart disease.

Danish researchers found that people were 39 percent more likely to have heart disease, and 57 percent more likely to have a heart attack, if they had at least three of these four signs: baldness on top of the head, receded hairline, a crease in the earlobe, and fatty deposits on the eyelids known as xanthelasmata.

The researchers accounted for people's ages in their results.

Therefore, the study shows "looking old for your age, by [having] these aging signs, marks poor cardiovascular health," said study researcher Dr. Anne Tybjaerg-Hansen, a professor and chief physician in the department of clinical biochemistry at Copenhagen University Hospital.

While the exact reason for the links between these signs and heart disease risk remains unclear, the study "validates the common clinical practice that the clinician examines the patient, and often looks at whether a person looks older or younger for her age," Tybjaerg-Hansen said.

The researchers used data from the Copenhagen Heart Study, which included 10,885 people who were over the age of 40. Over the 35-year study, 3,401 participants developed heart disease, and 1,708 had a heart attack. Researchers examined six physical features associated with aging, but found that two — gray hair and wrinkles — did not appear to be linked with increased risk of heart problems.

The study included 5,828 men and 5,057 women. When the researchers considered the genders separately, they found that hair loss in women was not linked with an increased risk of heart disease. However, among the 737 men who had a receding hairline, 82 suffered a heart attack, meaning there a 40 percent higher risk in men with hair loss than those without.

Previous research has looked at whether hair loss may be a warning sign of heart disease, but results have been conflicting. Some studies have linked the severity and type of baldness with the risks of heart disease or heart attacks to varying degrees, but others have found no connection. Because the risk of both heart disease and baldness rise with age, it can be difficult for researchers to separate the two in studies.

Tybjaerg-Hansen said the four signs identified in the new study should give clinicians greater incentive to treat patients who have them. "The suggestion is that lifestyle changes and lipid-lowering therapies should be intensified, because their risk is higher," she said.

However, the area needs more research, because "it would be nice to know why these [varying factors] would be associated with increased risk," she said.

Tybjaerg-Hansen said, for example, that hair loss is linked with levels of testosterone in the blood, so the new study suggests the hormone also plays a role in heart disease, but there's "no hard data there at all, [it's] only speculative."

She said the group for whom the new results would raise the greatest concern is men between ages 70 and 79. In this group, 45 percent of those with all four aging signs developed heart disease, versus 31 percent of those with none of the four.

"This study underscores the importance of doing a good physical exam, in addition to any testing we're going to do for risk for heart disease," said Dr. Nieca Goldberg, director of the NYU Center for Women's Health and American Heart Association spokesperson, in a statement in response to the study.

While the researchers adjusted their results to account for other risk factors for heart disease, Goldberg noted that, for example, xanthelasmata is a sign of high cholesterol levels, a traditional risk factor for heart disease.

Goldberg concluded that while the length of the study made the results compelling, doctors "need to continue to monitor our standard testing for heart disease risk, such as measuring cholesterol, blood pressure, glucose for diabetes."

The researchers are presenting their findings today (Nov. 6) at an American Heart Association research conference. The findings have not been published in a scientific journal.

Pass it on: Four signs of aging may be linked with heart disease risk.

Election Withdrawal

Most people today are thrilled that the election is over. No more attack ads, debates, polls, phone calls, or, in the case of Linda McMahon, burying the general public in your obscene propaganda, but that's just one guy's opinion.

Not me. It's only one day later, and I already miss it. I feel an acute sense of emptiness. Today, I'm going through Election Withdrawal.

Don't get me wrong, there are some things about an election cycle that get annoying, such as the proliferance of obnoxious political yard signs, peoples' continous posts on facebook. Apparently, some people think that an excessive number of posts for one side or the other is going to result in changing the minds of their friends.

One or two posts is enough.

But I will miss the - even I can't believe I'm saying this - media coverage of the presidential campaigns. While the best candidates often do not reach the general election ( the richest usually do), how people do not get excited about the process of electing a president and Election Night itself is beyond me. We do live in a democracy, despite the fact at the Electoral College is out of date, and it's simply inspiring that we live in a free society in which we elect our president and other public officials.

Watching presidential debates, for me, is like watching the World Series - this year even more so, given the teams playing in the World Series. I could have easily watched two or three more debates. In what other scenario do the final two candidates for the nation's highest office grapple over our
most important issues? Even if they stand on the stage and don't answer questions, that tells you a lot about these guys. On its lowest level, it's pretty entertaining.

This campaign was unexpectedly compelling. Who would have thought Romney would put the late charge that he did? Who foresaw Obama's terrible first debate?

Four more years for the president, and hopefully they will be prosperous ones for America. Until then, we will all wait to see who will emerge as the nominees in 2016. And while I will miss this year's campaign coverage, I'll welcome the break, at least for tonight, and go to bed early.

On the overwhelming need for a child to be first

I have a seven year old son, which means that for the last year, besides LEGOs and baseball cards, something that matters a whole lot in his world is being first. The other day, he announced that he was the first kid IN HIS SCHOOL in the morning. He supposedly beat everyone.

I guess that, developmentally, a child in first or second grade really values this premise. Winning, too, is incredibly important at this age. So is racing to places. During a basketball practice a few weeks ago, when the coach said not to run while dribbling, of course half of the kids sprinted. And my son was right in front, trying to be first, cutting the corners, even cheating a little.

And even though there is NO GOALIE and no one keeps score while playing Grade 1/2 soccer, a few of the kids privately keep track and tell their parents what the score really was on the ride home.

I remember some of this from my childhood - racing my friend to the car when my mother picked us up from school and bragging about who won. Counting the number of home runs we hit when playing baseball in the neighborhood. When I was in elementary school, the bus stop was right in front of my house, and a bunch of us used to try being the first one on the bus every day. It got so bad that my mother had to create a rotating order so that each of us had a chance to be first.  I recall seeing the list on the refrigerator door.

Is this need to be first and constantly have to win due to an evolutionary survival skill? Our way of adapting to our society's culture of competitiveness? Or is racing/ winning/ being first while doing things that are not innately competitive a child's way of bragging, feeling good about themselves, a raising of the ego, because they know that no one likes a loser?

I'll have to ask my son about this the next time he tells me he comes in first - or how he feels if he comes in second.

My Commentary in Education Week

What will happen to cursive penmanship in an age of "21st Century Learning," with kids learning via iPad and having to integrate multimedia through the new Common Core Standards?

It will probably get lost in the tableau of most teacher's days. At one time, I thought that attention on cursive penmanship mattered, but as I watch my own kids using technology with great ease and knowing how critical it will be for them to use computers effectively in school and beyond, cursive writing instruction, I fear, is indeed not a priority.

I explored the idea, along with the fact that my own students for some years now have not been able to read my half-cursive, half-printed script when I hand back assignments.

Here's a link to the piece, one of the currrent commentaries for the paper:


http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/10/17/08polochanin.h32.html?tkn=LQUFaQG4LlsPKfffj2aHrQiaH3tBws1VYzfb

M*A*S*H Theme Title: Who Knew?

Why I found myself humming the theme to M*A*S*H the other day, I'm not sure. But when I learned that the title of the song is "Suicide Is Painless", I was a little disturbed. Evidently, the song was written by 14 year old son of one of the producers, which maybe is even more scary.

My Hartford Marathon Mix

I will labor incredibly over the right mix of music for certain situations. Like I used to do in high school, I enjoy making music mixes – using my iTunes library, though, not cassette tapes - for birthday parties, casual friends-over hangouts, family dinners, and, what I plan to do tomorrow, the Hartford Marathon.

I am running only the 5k, though to test myself more strenuously, I’m planning to run it twice. (Shhhhh. Don’t tell anyone.) But, as many runners will tell you, at least those listening to music – the Hartford Marathon people discourages, but doesn’t ban, the use of headphones – the right mix is important, critically important. The right mix, having songs with fast beats, uplifting, motivating lyrics, and positive associations, can put you in a “zone”, and is one of the tricks of the trade for runners. Well, that, and good sneakers, the right breakfast, and, of course, some training (or a fearless attitude) helps.

But the music is what echoes in your head while struggling to get up hills; music is what encourages you to push yourself during a race when you are running out of steam. When there isn’t an encouraging person – sometimes a police officer – standing on the sidewalk, a runner’s choice of music can give them a little edge.

Yesterday, I put the finishing touches on my mix – different from mixes of other races I’ve done, complete with a few new songs. I told myself: No slow songs this year. No thoughtful ballads that might seem inspirational, but are too slow on the course. There’s nothing worse than that, or a goof-up, like an inadvertent shuffle to the Beatles’ “Yellow Submarine.”

So, I will lay bare, my top 10 picks from my iTunes 2013 Hartford Marathon mix, for all to see and scrutinize.

1. “Some Nights” by Fun.. This year’s number one song. The drums and the choral chanting in the background bring the energy to this song. Memorable line: “This is it, boys, This is war. What are we waiting for? Why don’t we break the rules already?”
2. “Hearts on Fire” by John Cafferty. Who could forget this one from Rocky IV? USA vs. Soviet Union. Rocky doing situps hanging upside down in a barn. Memorable line: “Hearts on fire. Strong desire… rages deep within.”
3. “Party Rock Anthem” by LMFAO. Cool synthesizer music and drum machine gets the adrenaline flowing. Memorable line: “Party rock is in the house tonight. Everybody just have a good time. And we gonna make you lose your mind.”
4. “Crazytrain” by Ozzy Osborne. Just a psycho song, from beginning to end. Makes you mad, gets you hyped. Memorable line: “I’m going off the rails on a Crazy train.”
5. “Centerfold” by J. Geils Band. Going old-school again, I know, but this one is upbeat and fun. Memorable line: “My blood runs cold. My memory has just been sold. My Angel is the centerfold.”
6. “Home” by Philip Phillips. This one got me this past summer as I watched the Olympics when they showed the athletes’ highlights after winning medals. Memorable line “Don’t pay not mind to the demons. They fill you with fear.”
7. “Empire State of Mind” by Jay-Z. You just feel tough listening to this song, almost as tough as Rocky. “New York. Concrete jungle where dreams are made of. There’s nothing you can’t do. These streets will make you feel brand new, the lights will inspire you.”
8. “Last Friday Night” by Katy Perry. The only female featured on my mix. Memorable line: None appropriate for a family newspaper. But the “TGIF” “TGIF” chant toward the end is pretty cool.
9. “Panama” by Van Halen. When David Lee Roth was the band’s lead singer, the first time, this band rocked. Eddie Van Halen’s guitar pulses. Memorable word: “Pa-na-ma! Pa-na-ma-uh-ah-uh-ah-uh!”
10. “No Easy Way Out” by Robert Tepper. Another Rocky IV song. When Rocky takes a drive in his Lamborghini, reflecting on the purpose for his next fight, who cannot get inspired? Memorable line: “There’s no easy way out. There’s no shortcut home.”

It may sound strange to say, but I am psyched to come into Hartford early on a Saturday morning, as I know thousands of others are. Like them, I will have the right shirt, pair of shorts (even though they’re calling for an overnight frost!), and, of course, a fully charged iPod with my carefully selected mix of songs.

Will my music make me run faster? Perhaps. Perhaps not. But as long as I think it does, that’s all that matters.

Jim Calhoun: An Appreciation

The UConn men's basketball team takes the court for the first time tonight without Jim Calhoun as head coach. Last month, when Calhoun announced his retirement, I submitted this to the Hartford Courant, but a lack of space and another UConn article prevented me from getting it published.

So I submit it here, today.


We were lucky.

We were lucky that, for the last 26 years, Jim Calhoun, who retired Thursday as UConn men’s basketball coach, chose to make his coaching home in Storrs, where he built the program from relative obscurity in 1986 to a national powerhouse. Love his style or not, and many didn’t, he is the main reason why UConn won three NCAA titles, played in four Final Fours since 1999, and he helped make winter a season to look forward to in Connecticut.

We owe this to his fiery spirit, his passion for winning, his command and knowledge of the game. It should now be clear that, even when he was questioned by the media and fans for his coaching decisions – and in a place this small, every move you make as a high-profile coach is questioned – he knew what he was doing all along.

Just look at the way he retired – so late in the process that the university had no choice but to name his recommendation, Kevin Ollie, as the new head coach.

Having attended more than a hundred UConn basketball games since my freshman year there in 1990, I derived as much entertainment from watching Calhoun act on the sidelines as I did seeing his team play, perhaps even more so. On TV, I would have paid an extra fee to have a separate camera locked on him for the whole game, his body swaying, arms gesturing, having “conversations” with officials that were largely one-sided.

It is true that his courtside dialogue was often not PG-rated. From the second tier of the XL Center, as a season ticket holder I could hear him chew out one of his players after calling a timeout ten seconds into a game. The arena would turn library quiet, just to catch a few words of what he was saying. Though embarrassing for the player involved, the public criticism, which usually stemmed from playing lazily, usually worked.

His relationship with referees could best be described as tenuous. While most coaches stayed near their assigned spot in front of the bench during a game, he often wandered five feet onto the court. Calhoun stomped the floor if a player didn’t box out on a rebound or if he made an errant pass, and I saw the coach more than once put his dress shoe into the UConn Club sign on the bottom of the scorer’s table in a fit of fury over something that didn’t meet his expectations.

And of course, this is exactly what I liked about him, what many of us liked about him. His attitude.

After all, this was the guy who refused to throw out the first pitch at Yankee Stadium one year, staying true to his Boston roots.

It’s this attitude and his passion that I’ll most miss, as I’m sure his players will. It’s this passion that propelled UConn from a promising basketball program in the late 80s to one that became a favorite, year after year, to win Big East championships. It’s this passion that made elite high school athletes perform so well at the collegiate level. As any coach knows, it takes more than mere talent to win games.

While Calhoun’s retirement was a national story – ESPN called on its team of basketball analysts on Thursday for commentary during their off-season – its statewide implications will be felt the most. For the last 20 years, the UConn men have been expected to win, and because of this, between 10,000 and 16,000 fans filled seats in Hartford and at Gampel Pavilion to witness this greatness. And hundreds of thousands more watched on television, often at the edge of our seats.

Jim Calhoun’s retirement was not unexpected – he did not commit to return as coach until the end of summer last year – but Thursday will go down as a sad day for Connecticut sports, on par with the announcement that the Whalers were leaving Hartford in 1997. When Geno Auriemma decides to retire, we will feel a similar void.

UConn basketball is arguably the closest thing we have to a men’s professional sport in our state. Whether you agreed with his antics or not, if you cared about Connecticut basketball for the last few decades, you are going to miss Jim Calhoun. I know I will.

David Polochanin of Marlborough is a teacher and freelance writer.

Slave labor?

All right, so when I looked out the window and saw the kids not only raking the leaves in the yard but they were doing so ON THEIR OWN, WITHOUT BEING TOLD, ON A TARP, I admit, I felt a little guilty, I felt a little useless.

Long Live Paper!

A professor at Tufts argues why we shouldn't, as our Secretary of Education believes, abandon paper. He's talking mostly about the future of textbooks, but also about one's ability to concentrate well while reading on a computer or some other electric device. Answer: You get distracted.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/10/opinion/long-live-paper.html?ref=opinion?hp&_r=0

Old people smell funny

It's amazing, but true. Old people smell, well, old. You might think that The Onion might publish this. But in the New York Times? http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/04/the-telltale-scent-of-old-people/

Essay About Christmas Undecorating

Good news on the writing front - the Hartford Courant yesterday ran this essay I wrote about when to take down Christmas trees and holiday decorations. Got the idea from passing by a house on my way to work that, as of Friday, still had its tree up. A little late, I thought...


When Should The Christmas Tree Come Down?
Holiday Dilemma: So, when is the right time to undecorate from the holidays?

By DAVID POLOCHANIN

January 15, 2012


Their tree is still up, its large, old-school glass bulbs aglow in the front doorway, as I pass by each morning. It's now Jan. 13, well past Christmas. I wonder when the homeowners will take it down, and then privately wish they wouldn't.

At least, not yet.

The small white bungalow in Glastonbury shines a light on an interesting seasonal question: Just when is the socially acceptable date to take down the Christmas tree and its related decorations?

Opinions vary, but it was my understanding that New Year's Day generally meant curtains for the Christmas season. Those who like to hold onto the holiday feeling leave the tree up until Jan. 6, when the Epiphany is celebrated. For many Christians, this is an important day. For others, it justifies prolonging packing up ornaments.

Our tree is currently on our back deck, still in its base, near the grill. My wife removed all of its decorations and lights and then hurt her back dragging it through the living room during the early morning hours on Dec. 26, before I woke up. She feels the need to cleanse our house of the clutter that inevitably gathers around the tree, such as dirty socks, magazines and used paper plates. While I would have enjoyed a few more days with the tree, what's done is done.

I don't sweat it anymore, and at least I didn't have to personally remove the tree, which I should add gave me two weeks of poison sumac after cutting it down. I learned that calamine lotion doesn't work.

At some point when I have a few minutes, I will carry the tree out into the woods behind some live evergreens and toss it beside trees from previous years, which resemble brittle skeletons of their former selves.

While Christmas trees are one matter, the outside lights and decorations still clinging to life can become, dare I say, a tad tacky, a tiny bit embarrassing, even an eyesore. In some neighborhoods I have seen those fake icicles dangling from the front gutter all year long. Is this some kind of personal statement, or simply the manifestation of a common syndrome: man being lazy?

Getting up on a ladder and removing the icicles would only take an hour, but there are so many excuses for leaving them up, and I can hear them now: It gets dark before 5 o'clock; it's too cold to do it; there's a game on soon; they look good next to real icicles; they could increase the value of our home if we decide to put it on the market in January; and, of course, the obvious: Why would anyone remove them if you have to put them up again in another 330 days? Not that I would use any of these excuses myself, but being a home project procrastinator, I understand every one of them.

This year, we took the family out one Saturday night in December and drove around admiring Christmas lights, an occasional tradition. With our two young children in the back seat, LITE 100.5 on the radio (have they stopped playing Christmas carols yet?) and hot chocolates in our hands, we enjoyed the lengths that some people go to when celebrating the holiday. The flashing light displays, the wreaths, the figurines of Santa and Frosty and Rudolph, and in one yard, Homer Simpson, were all a delight for us to see. That is, until we had to pull over and my son had to go to the bathroom in a parking lot. His bladder, it seemed, was bursting with hot chocolate.

It was a joyous season, but I'm happy to have moved on with the Christmas holiday. Still, when I pass by the front of the white bungalow, I hope to see the tree in that door, for just a little while longer.

David Polochanin, a teacher in Glastonbury, lives in Marlborough.

On Writing

It's the second day of the year - and I've just tied last year for total number of blog entries.

I kind of took last year off in the blogging world. (If you're reading this on facebook and want to see my actual blog, it's http://the30somethingsuburbanguy.blogspot.com)

But 2011 was a pretty good year for me writing-wise. I had my first poem published in October, in an anthology by Native West Press. In June, the Hartford Courant published an essay I wrote about my observations taking a walk around Glastonbury. And in August I had an essay published for the website of an educational journal, Middle Ground. Three pieces is not a remarkable number if all I was doing was freelance writing, but for having a fulltime job, it is respectable. I've definitely done worse.

The biggest news I received last year related to writing was that my request for a sabbatical leave from teaching for next year was approved. This is unquestionably huge. For many years, I've dreamed of taking a sabbatical to pursue opportunities to write (and hopefully get published) and next school year, this will be a reality. I have proposed five writing projects, including books of poetry and short stories for readers in grades 6 through 10, as well as three professional education journal-type articles. This will officially merge my experiences as a writer and journalist and teacher. For three years, I worked fulltime at big New England newspapers (Boston Globe, Providence Journal), and then went back to school to become a teacher, which I've been doing now for 14 years. Since I started teaching, I have written articles, essays for the Courant, the Boston Globe, the Christian Science Monitor, Education Week, and some websites. Since 1998, I'd guess, I've had more than 30 pieces published in all. My sabbatical will afford me the time to develop and market substantial writing projects for children, which I plan to use in the classroom when I return to teach.

Having this year off will be a gift, and I am grateful. It's been a goal of mine for the last 7 or 8 years to take a sabbatical for the purposes of writing, and I now have 7 months to plan what I'm going to do. (A lot of this planning has been done already.) Someone has asked that I blog each day while on sabbatical, and while I think the idea is interesting - tempting, even - I plan to pour most of my writing energy into poems, short stories, and professional articles. However, I do plan to post more to this blog, to "keep the tools sharp", as my former journalism professor Wayne Worcester used to say, and share random opinions as well as the relatively ordinary things that happen to me.

Hunting for Better Television

It is a typical Friday or Saturday night. The kids are in bed, probably not sleeping, but at least they have retreated upstairs for the evening. After checking emails and maybe facebook, the adults have the TV and the night to themselves. We surf, and surf, and surf. Since getting rid of the DVR, we are committed to watching live TV, which is usually not very good. And so, what we end up watching, for the millionth time, is House Hunters. It’s the only thing we seem to agree on.

House Hunters is not actually terrible. It is entertaining, or I wouldn’t watch it. But it is not that great, either. There are varying degrees of House Hunters quality. Seeing a young couple get a first apartment is not interesting. Actually, watching the house hunter(s) look at anything worse than my own home is usually grounds for not watching the show. Why would you do that? Of course, I have, but the point is to get a peek inside a home that you cannot afford. To gain an inside look at a really exclusive place, with a pool, outdoor kitchen, five bathrooms, a palatial lot, three or four car garages, 3 or 4 fireplaces, etc. We do not want to look at a house like our own, a colonial built in 1973 that has cracks up and down the driveway, a rear gutter that’s literally hanging from the roof, a damp garage, electric sockets that don't work, a bad washing machine hookup, and a water filtration system that is about to give out at any second.

But we’ll even watch those episodes, the crummy ones. It’s amazing how the producers make the cities look attractive to live in. Many times, the personalities of the people buying the home leave a lot to be desired, but in this reality TV world, that’s the catch.

So, when/if people ask(ed) what we watched, or what we did on Friday or Saturday night, if we were being honest, we would probably say, “Watched House Hunters again.” This is so lame.

It seems the only truly good network show out there is “Parenthood.” There was just a great write-up about the series in the New Yorker. Awesome cast, good plot lines, just good dramatic television. In a time when everything is either reality-based or a spinoff of Law and Order or CSI, “Parenthood” is refreshingly, well, old. It isn’t sensationalistic, it’s not violent, it’s just a bunch of intertwined stories about a family, from grandparents to their grandchildren, most of whom have very real flaws, that is really engrossing to watch. Maybe this is because I’m a parent myself and can relate to some of the stories, but I can’t think of a better show on TV right now.

I’m sure there’s some better programs, or maybe as good. Some like “The Good Wife”, but I can’t get into the idea. “Mad Men” has won tons of awards, “Weeds”, which I’ve seen, is good but too far-fetched for me to buy into it. I’ve also seen “Nurse Jackie” on some most popular lists.

What you won’t see on there is House Hunters, but it’s probably what we’ll still be watching, every Friday and Saturday night, right until the very end, when the couple picks from the three homes they toured - as long as the house is better than mine.