“Katharine McPhee's Birthday Philosophy: Skip the Gym! - People” plus 3 more

Katharine McPhee's Birthday Philosophy: Skip the Gym! - People
New David Douglas superintendent Don Grotting says his ... - Oregonian
Breakfast with Socrates - The Christian Science Monitor
Ex-Scientology lawsuits reveal elite Sea Org group - San Francisco Chronicle

Katharine McPhee's Birthday Philosophy: Skip the Gym! - People

Posted: 27 Mar 2010 06:54 AM PDT

Albert Michael/Startraks

Katharine McPhee decided to give herself a break for her 26th birthday.

"My trainer texted me to come to the gym and do weights today," she tells PEOPLE. "But I just laughed. 'Haha, very funny. I ain't coming to the gym on my birthday!'"

McPhee wanted – and got – the mellow day she had hoped for. "I'm more of a homebody," she says. "I'm not one to make a big deal about birthdays."

So after sleeping in till 10 a.m., she decorated Easter eggs over lunch at the Pepsi Refresh cafe (which raised money for her favorite charity, Feeding America), where she enjoyed a chocolate cake. Then she visited her voice teacher and dug into a plate of Gorgonzola gnocchi for dinner with husband Nick Cokas and her mom at her favorite local Italian restaurant, L.A.'s Panzenella.

Last stop of the day: British jazz-pop artist Jamie Cullum's show at the Wiltern Theater in L.A., where a mutual friend introduced McPhee to fellow concertgoer Clint Eastwood.

"I kept my composure," she says. "I really enjoyed the show, and meeting Clint was a plus."

The gifts weren't too shabby either. While Mom got her two crystal chandeliers, her husband of two years followed up on an early present – a custom-made pave diamond initial necklace – with something more practical: gym clothes.

"He is so funny," she says. "I am the worst-dressed person at my gym. I always look like I'm in my pajamas, so he got me a bunch of proper gym clothes."

McPhee, whose sophomore album Unbroken was released in January, says so far 26 "feels great."

"I've had some years where I've woken up and I'm like, 'I'm so old,' and I'm not. People thinking 22 is old is unfortunately part of growing up in Hollywood," she says. "I'm not concerned with the number. I don't feel any different."

Next up for American Idol's season 5 runner-up, who starred in The House Bunny and recently guest-starred on NBC's Community: The network's new comedy pilot The Pink House, where she'll play a girl-next-door pharmaceutical rep.

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New David Douglas superintendent Don Grotting says his ... - Oregonian

Posted: 27 Mar 2010 06:04 AM PDT

By Kimberly Melton, The Oregonian

March 27, 2010, 6:08AM

Don Grotting
Don Grotting is moving west, leaving the eastern edge of Oregon to become superintendent of the David Douglas School District on July 1. For the past 10 years, Grotting has led the 1,200-student Nyssa district.

Grotting hasn't traveled the typical road of most education leaders. After graduating from Coquille High School, Grotting entered the military and spent three years in Germany before returning to work for the Georgia-Pacific plywood plant in Coquille. After 13 years, the plant closed, and Grotting, then 33, debated what he wanted to do next.

Encouraged by friends and having worked as a coach, Grotting decided to return to school to become a teacher. He jokes that he and his eldest son, Josh, often did trigonometry and other homework together. Grotting received his bachelor's degree in three years from Linfield College and took his first teaching job in Powers. From there, Grotting's rise to administration was swift. While teaching, he worked on his master's degree, spending summers at Portland State University. After two years teaching, he became the superintendent in Powers, where he stayed for six years before moving to Nyssa.

Age: 53

Family: Wife, Lisa; sons, Josh, 33, and Conner, 18; daughters, Kim, 30, and Kennedy, 12

Education: Undergraduate degree in elementary education from Linfield College; master's degree in education from Portland State University

Hobbies: Watching kids participate in athletics, coaching, fishing, buying and selling classic cars

Gold star: In 2005, Nyssa became the first school district in Oregon presented with a Closing the Achievement Gap Award by the Oregon Department of Education. About 60 percent of Nyssa's students are Latino, and nearly 70 percent of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches. But those students' successes come close to mirroring those of their white counterparts. In 2008-09, more than 70 percent of low-income students met state benchmarks in reading and math.

Grotting recently fielded questions about his experiences in Nyssa, his education philosophy and his decision to come to David Douglas. His responses have been edited for brevity and clarity.

Nyssa has gained state and national recognition for the success that you've had serving students of color and students from low-income backgrounds. What's been the key to doing that?

Other than being in the service, where I was able to experience a lot of diversity, I had never really been exposed to that until I came to Nyssa. But I had firsthand experiences with poverty. I grew up in a poor family -- six kids -- and we did not have indoor plumbing until I was a sophomore in high school. Part of it is being able to recognize that a lot of these students come to us with a lot of different issues especially if they're coming from poverty. Giving these kids skills to succeed is really important to me.

We're 60 percent Hispanic, and it's been an absolutely great experience for me. Regardless of race, socioeconomic status, I believe that every child has an unlimited capacity to learn. I believed it when I went to Nyssa. Once that belief is carried out through the staff, it resonated with students, who started achieving and going beyond what people expected of them.

I have a philosophy -- no excuses. There may be barriers as to why certain populations don't achieve. But we don't make excuses because of one's socioeconomic status or race.

Why did you choose to come to David Douglas? What do you aim to bring to the district from your experiences in Nyssa?

I have had multiple opportunities to go to many districts, but I had a loyalty here. I believe a superintendent needs to stay six or seven years just to see some of the things put in place will be sustained and not short-lived.

But I think it was time to get back west. My son and daughter-in-law teach in Sutherlin. I have a daughter in Hood River and a son going to the University of Oregon. There were several districts open in the Willamette Valley. We visited David Douglas, talked to employees and called past administrators and teachers. I decided to put in my application. I was interviewing them as much as they were interviewing me.

The board was very upfront with me with what some of the challenges were and the direction they would like to head. They want that connection with all aspects and parts of the community so they do feel they are connected to David Douglas.

The pressure's on me.

How have you been able to take the idea of believing in students and transform that into action and achievement growth in the classroom?

I have lots of people come from all over Oregon to find out what our silver bullet is. The silver bullet is believing in kids and doing the best you can with the resources that you have. That's the silver bullet if you can get that belief system throughout the community, throughout the staff. Once that's there, kids feel connected and they do absolutely amazing.

I'm not saying that education strategies don't help break down some of the barriers. It is pretty amazing what we're expected to do.

In Nyssa, 40 percent of kindergarten kids come in not speaking English. We do not have a dual language program. But, when I walk in towards the end of the year and kids are reading in English, I'm amazed at the work the staff does. The strategies are important. We double-dose kids with reading and sometimes math. But none of those strategies would work if the kids didn't have the belief system that we care about them.

A lot of people talk a good game. But the accountability is to look at the test scores and how kids feel through formal and informal assessments. If it's not really happening, it's not going to show up in the scores.

-- Kimberly Melton

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Breakfast with Socrates - The Christian Science Monitor

Posted: 27 Mar 2010 07:30 AM PDT

Is the unexamined life worth living?

It is Socrates who first declared, "No, it isn't." And after reading Robert Rowland Smith's new book Breakfast With Socrates: An Extraordinary (Philosophical) Journey Through Your Ordinary Day, you might just agree.

Smith moves from commuting to running errands to working out in the gym – all the commonplace mile markers in a typical day – and then proceeds to unwrap the philosophical implications of our most ordinary activities.

For many readers, the mere mention of philosophy might seem cause enough to hit the snooze button. But that's why Smith, an Oxford don turned management consultant, wrote this book – to counter the tendency of too many philosophers to keep "big ideas aloft rather than grounding them in everyday experience."

As we travel through a typical day with Smith, we hear from Thomas Hobbes (who would have applauded the stoplight) to Machiavelli (who explains why parties are about politics and not friendships) to John Stuart Mill (who, "If playing hooky had a patron saint ... might justly be canonized"). But it's not just names from your basic Philosophy 101 course. Interspersed between Mill and Aristotle, we find George Costanza from "Seinfeld." And we're just as likely to discover lines from "The Godfather" and "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" as to discuss the pages of "The Joy of Sex." Smith knows no bounds in his pop culture references and succeeds in keeping us on our toes.

But what makes Smith's book genius isn't just the ability to lay out an interesting, eloquent, and relevant piece of work – which he admittedly does. No, the kicker for "Breakfast with Socrates" is that it's just plain funny.

Smith has humor in spades: he uses the song "It's My Party (And I'll Cry If I Want To)" to describe the politics of friendships, explains how watching TV might just prove "how smart you are," compares fictional characters to Schrodinger's famous cat, and likens commuters traveling to work to brutal savages stopped by the one thing calling them to order – a red light. (The authority of which is more powerful than that of a traffic cop who, Smith explains, is "only one of us, after all.")

The humor does not dumb down the philosophy Smith interjects. While it's obvious we will not leave the reading of Smith's book with a thorough understanding of Karl Marx's most fundamental beliefs, we still leave knowing a bit more, becoming more aware of our surroundings, and thinking twice about many of the things that have become second nature to us.

If humor is the best part of Smith's book – and it might just be – then eloquence and neutrality tie for second place. It's rare to see so many competing ideas on the same page, not just for the sake of summary, but in order to make a point. Smith completely wins us over to one way of thinking – and then turns us on our heads and makes us see things in a completely different light.

It's a tribute to Smith's own purpose for writing the book – to get us to think – that it's impossible to pin down what he himself is thinking. His ability to convince us of the validity of two polar opposites without injecting his own beliefs is commendable. Many controversial topics play out in his book – socialism, idealism, religion, the ethics of food – but we never feel as if we are being chastised. In this way, Smith gains our trust.

As Smith sifts through the 18 chapters of our day, we gain a bit of distance from ourselves and are better able to understand how we operate. As the day, and the book draw to a close, it's hard not to regret that Smith's moments of introspection are over. We are now left to our own devices.

But not to worry, says Smith. He assures us, his readers, that, we will file his book away, "both literally," on our bookshelves, and also "metaphorically, in the possibly more chaotic library" of our minds, where it will mix and mingle with everything else we know and become just one more lens through which we perceive the days of our lives.

Kate Vander Wiede is a staff writer with the South End News in Boston.

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Ex-Scientology lawsuits reveal elite Sea Org group - San Francisco Chronicle

Posted: 27 Mar 2010 10:43 AM PDT