We must begin to hold all physicians accountable, regardless of specialization, to certain quantifiable measures of health, namely cholesterol levels, blood pressure, weight, and BMI. All patients assigned to a physician must meet specific annual minimum standards of health. Bad doctors will be those who do not meet their patients’ annual minimums, and they may be subject to certain penalties if the health scores of their patients do not improve in a reasonable amount of time.

The analogy doesn’t always hold up, and some readers will probably think that certain points would be just as good an idea in medicine as they are in education. But the core points are pretty solid:

I can predict some of the responses that physicians might make: “We can’t control what our patients do or eat outside of our offices to maintain minimum levels of health. Also, these variables — BMI, cholesterol, blood pressure — are limited and don’t adequately measure a healthy person. And one other thing, you can’t expect us to be evaluated based on all patients equally, regardless of family history, poverty, and other complications.”

No. Kidding.

Of course, the difference is that in this country, medical care is mostly private and education is mostly public. We have all these high expectations for Return on Investment when our taxes contribute to something, even though of course most of us pay far more for health care than we do for education. And the government has more room to stretch its regulatory muscle over a public service like education than when it’s “interfering in private companies.”

I still think we need public health care desperately; tying health care to full-time employment is insane and amounts to giving every poor or working-class person in this country the finger. And, for the same reasons, we need good public education. But this analogy does help me see part of the conservative argument against public health care: what if we screw it up the same way we’ve screwed up public education? (…How about we try to fix both now please?)

But clearly the craziest part is how she advocates against Dewey:

“No Dewey decimal system?”

It was what labeled her a rebel in bibliophile circles. She was a heretic to some for her views on the archaic cataloging system. “I advocate shelving books in ‘neighborhoods’ based on subject matter. It makes more sense to patrons and is easier for them to use.”

Bryce seemed to like the idea. “You must be a very persuasive and busy woman.”

This is a romance novel, you guys. Click through for more excerpts. This one’s a winner.

Please, if you know what’s good for you, watch:

Maurice Sendak on the Colbert Report

and then listen to:

Jack Gantos on Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me.

Seriously, though, I think the show does a brilliant job of exploring — or at least addressing in passing — the myriad of things going on in England immediately pre-WWI and during the war. The show seems to have the same sort of conflicted attitude about the economic and social inequality that I imagine (based on things I’ve read, not any personal experience) many modern English people have. Lord Grantham is a benevolent dictator of a beautiful home, and it’s easy to see Downton as a sort of wish-fulfillment paradise, but we never forget that Grantham is a dictator, and that any decent lives his servants or children have is entirely due to his indulgence. In other words, we know this social structure is horribly imbalanced and wrong, but oh my goodness the dresses.

I could go on and on about this show, and probably will at some point. But this is supposed to be about books. Staircase Wit posted this intriguing list of Downton read-alikes, divided into fiction and non-, adult and YA. Can’t wait to try some of them!

I’d like to add The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, by Laurie R. King: Older Sherlock Holmes and his young sidekick Mary Russell team up to solve mysteries in WWI England. Utterly delightful.

Any other suggestions?

Which in turn reminds me that I never posted this fantastic 50th anniversary interview with Norton Juster and Jules Feiffer in School Library Journal last October.  They were roommates my age when they wrote and illustrated the thing (which turned out to be one of my favorite things of all time) as a way to distract Norton from the book he was supposed to be writing, and are still friends 50 years later. The interview is delightfully crotchety about the publishing industry and book critics:

Feiffer: Even the good reviews, many of them, indicated that, well, this was a book for gifted children, for very bright children… [B]ut in many cases, the most important responses I got were from kids who had some learning disability they had to get past, and they did perfectly well with the story.  So that whole idea that this was a book only for gifted kids was insane.

Juster: …. And to top it all off, of course, this was 1961; critics said that fantasy was bad for children because it disoriented them…. You had to be very careful about what you put in a children’s book, [because they believed] no child should ever run into anything that he didn’t already know about in a book.

And later:

Feiffer: There was another element in all of this back then, and even more so now. That is, most of what people know is based on their own tight little world, and what they think is acceptable and what isn’t acceptable. And then a book breaks through, as it did with Maurice [Sendak’s] Where the Wild Things Are or with Norton and The Phantom Tollbooth, and rather than learn from that, they think these books are just exceptions. If anything, it reinforces their prejudices.

But one of the wonderful things about children’s books is that a kid can read something and find in the book a friendship, an ally, something he doesn’t have at home…. And then he can look back on this book and others, as one of the big changing moments in his life. If you turned all editorial judgment over to the people in charge, those moments would never ever happen.

The whole thing is very much worth reading.

(I should also mention that Post-a-Day technically ended on Monday. I missed 11 out of  35 days. Oops. Still, it got me out of my posting stagnation, so I’ll call it a win.)

Remember how John Green was starting his tour at my school? They changed the venue to the public middle school nearby, which was a good call, because it was way bigger than our auditorium. But I still got to volunteer, and my students and colleagues still got to attend, with fancy reserved seats in the second row. We are so special.

So here’s the thing about this “book tour”: whatever you’re picturing — signing, reading, Q&A — was only maybe 50% of the event. John’s brother Hank was also there, playing his nerd rock songs about Harry Potter and deep-sea anglerfish. Together they lead a huge online community of people who call themselves Nerdfighters; hence the 750-person immediate-sell-out packed auditorium for a “book signing.”

An example of what this looked like might be in order. At one point, John announced that his wife was about to come on stage (a big deal for fans, since she avoids John’s videos and all the internet hoopla — wise woman), but we got Rickrolled by Hank in a dress:

Almost five years ago, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows came out. My friends and I attended a massive concert in Harvard Yard featuring Harry and the Potters and Draco and the Malfoys. The line we still quote is, “Are you ready to save the world from Voldemort… BY READING?!?” Followed, of course, by an entire university green’s worth of geeky kids and adults screaming and waving books in the air.

The Wizard Rock and Nerdfighting communities, as you might expect, have a lot of overlap. (We met the founder of the Harry Potter Alliance, who was sitting in the row in front of us.) At one point John explained, completely without irony, “My brother and I are part of an internet community that fights to make the world a better place.” And an auditorium full of smart, funny, thoughtful, self-possessed, caring, amazing high school and college students cheered their heads off… and then stood up to shake their booties to a song about quarks. My friends, I cannot tell you how beautiful that was. People my age (which is also the Greens’ age) like to talk about how we wish the internet had been around when we were in school, and for me, this is why. A whole community of kids who celebrate their nerdiness and want to save the world by reading? Who might I be if I’d had that then?

After the show, I said to Arianna, “I feel like I just got hit by a truck of awesome.” The whole experience gave me warm, fuzzy hope — something I (and all of us) really need these days. Cheesy to say, but I walked in as just a fan of John’s books; I walked out a Nerdfighter.

She was also a writer. When I was born, she wrote me a poem — her first granddaughter. My uncle, in high school at the time, illustrated it. It has hung in every room I’ve lived in. I wanted to read it at her funeral, but that is not the way military funerals roll, in my experience. So I will share it here.

There is a place where each of us stays
Separate.
It is most holy ground.
When one draws near, we tremble, because it is
Inviolate.

–Patricia Waller, December 1978

Rest in peace, Grandma. Thank you for everything.

We thought it would be fun to interview each other on each others’ blogs. My responses to Allegra’s questions are here. Here are Allegra’s responses to mine (with my comments in italics):

What are your 5 favorite books of all time?
Tiger’s Curse by Colleen Houck Ed.: I’d never heard of this one! It’s added to my reading list.
Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare
Angels and Demons by Dan Brown
Alex Rider Series (because I just cannot pick one)
The Princess Bride by William Goldman Ed.: Nice; a definite classic.

Which book character would you choose to come live with you in our world and why?
Alex Rider from Anthony Horowtiz’s Alex Rider series because I think that his character is so much fun and he can do so many things. I also think that it would be fun to be friends with someone who works with the MI6, don’t you?
Ed.: If he wouldn’t have to kill me for knowing too much!

You have $10,000 to give to a person or organization. Who gets the money and why?
I would give the money to The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust as I feel they are doing an honorable thing. They rescue orphaned elephants mostly but they also rescue rhinos and help get them better. I currently am the foster parent of two baby elephants named SHUKURU and MAKARETI and I would want to give the money to that trust as I feel that they organization is amazing.

You can go spend the summer anywhere you want. Where are you headed?
I would want to head out to Greece and Italy because I want to visit the historical places and try and translate the Latin text as Latin is currently my favorite and best subject.

What piece of advice would you give yourself of two years ago?
I would tell myself to get my act together with organizing. It took a lot of effort for me to get organized

Who’s your biggest book crush?
Well, this is a hard one. I have read so many books with great characters who I would love to be my love :). It is hard to choose between Ren and Kishan from Tigers Curse but I may even throw in Alex Rider. :)

If you could do 5 really expensive things or own 5 really expensive items what would they be? (I had so much fun thinking about that, I figured you should get the chance, too!)
1. I would want to buy a really large house
2. I would want to fill the entire house with books
3. I would want to get myself some cats to keep my company
4. I would want to travel around the world (or maybe to space – don’t know which one to choose)
5. I would want to travel out to Africa and have a tour of there and visit the exotic animals.

What TV show do you have to watch every week?
I currently have to watch Terra Nova which is on FOX every Monday night at 8. But if I got CW I would want to watch The Vampire Diaries. I would also watch Hawaii Five-0 (2010) if I could stay up that late.
Then there are the old TV shows which I still watch such as Stargate: Atlantis, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Angel. So yeah. A little dose of all of those and I am good to go. Ed.: Yay people still watch Buffy!

It’s your birthday! How are you going to celebrate?
I would want to spend time with my entire family and go out to dinner to The Moss Nook in Cheshire, England.

What’s your favorite holiday and why?
My favorite holiday is Christmas because I get to fly on over to England and visit my entire family and I get to catch up with everyone.

What 5 websites do you spend the most time on?
Well, this is hard to figure out as I spend WAY too much time online (my mother keeps reinforcing that point.)
Well I love FOG.com which is a great gaming website but do not go on there as frequently as I used to. I spend a lot of time on Facebook but I have started managing my time. I spend a lot of time on YouTube listening to music. I go onto places like CBS, NBC, CWTV, NICK (I know I still like some Nick shows :) ) and watch re-runs of some TV shows.
I also spend an insane amount of time on my blog writing and deleting and re-writing posts.

Thanks, Allegra! Sorry I was such a slacker about posting it, but I really had fun with this interview exchange.