Welcome to the next issue of the second year of Special Education Today. As I assemble this issue, it’s the 21st of August 2022. We’ve been busy with lots of activities and the coming week promises to be a doozy for this old man.

Regular readers might expect commentary about the many pals who interact with the Web site...people who drop “likes” (and especially, comments) in response to the contents I publish. Yay for them! They are the coursing life-blood of SET. There was a shipload of ya’ll, and I appreciate it.

There were also boatload of new subscribers. They included people from regions of Earth I’e never visited (my inadeuacy!), but who kindly communicate in English and have good ideas.

All you regular readers, though, should know that SET (and me) have a very special place for you. Hundreds of you show up every week on the site (sometimes > 1000 in a day)! Thanks to you, SET gains currency. Some of your pals come visit, too. And your (and your pals’) visits make the Intertubes (e.g., Google, Alexa, and etc.) take notice that SET is a desirable destination.

[Maybe I should insert a photo of a guy in a speedo and very tight tummy walking with a gal in a bikini——click-bate, you know. Nope...sorry if that’s what you were hoping to find...though you will find a photo later in the newsletter!]

Instead, you get the usual. Here are stories from last week:

* Last week’s news letter:

• Friday Photos featuring Hill Walker

• Couldn’t princes open doors for you? (some did for me!)

This past week, that shipload of you readers dropped likes and notes. You peeps make the river flow. Thanks for keeping up with SET!

Speaking of which, here’s a picture of the Meachums River as it flows mostly south-to-north toward the place that it joins with the Mormans River (Dan Hallahan and I have paddled a conoe at that junction). [Note: This photo is a couple of miles upstream where Dan and I put into the river.]

Pat and I walked (with a huge group of peeps) to a bridge on the Mechums; together, the Meachums and the Mormans Rivers form the North Fork of the Rivanna at “Free Union.” Miles later, the North and South Forks of the Rivanna join just northeast of Charlottesville A few miles later, a couple of substantial creeks (Meadow and Moores—Moores passes just a few meters by our house) join the Rivanna. Then it flows by Mr. Jefferson’s Monticello and keeps on going, other creeks coming into it as it goes.

If you put in a canoe or a raft near Monticello and you had a lot time, you could float the Rivanna all the way past the area that I am hoping to recognize in respect for the people who were enslaved at the place where my forebears lived and the people who are buried at the same spot by previous owners of that land...right where the river flows. A lot of time later, you would get to “Point of Fork”; you would reach the James River. You’d be on your way to the “Falls of the James” near Richmond—(the geographic feature that marks the piedmont (“foot mountains”) to the west and the “tidewater” to the east—and then you would be in the navigalble part the James, if you were driving a sailing ship from the 16-1700s. And then, still floating, you’d be in the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic. What a trip!

Meanwhile, I’m working on posts about “d.i.” and math. What matters in research. What speficic studies report….And more!

In case anyone was wondering, as nice as retirement is, there are still plenty of things to do (like walking to lovely views of rivers!). Please don’t let that catalog of activities dissuade you from remembering that I hope you are maintaining appropriate social distance (especially inside), practicing good hand hygiene, wearing seatbelts, caring for each other, and (of course) teaching your children well.

JohnL, Charlottesville

SET should not be confused with a product with a similar name that is published by the Council for Exceptional Children. SET predated CEC’s publication by decades.