rising like the phoenix

I think the Vietnamese thought of the war as being one of independence after the French, the Japanese, the French again, and then the US, they, like all people, would rather be oppressed by their own people than by strangers.  After they drove us out they deposed the evil Pol Pot in Cambodia, and they went to war with China itself, and acquitted themselves pretty well.  I haven't read much about them fighting among themselves,

I believe the states of the mideast have a long history of fighting among themselves.  It's just that we didn't pay any attention to it until Israel and the discovery of oil there.

 
Now that we have a lull in the discussion let me present the behavioral section of the Chicago Public Schools report card.  You'll note that my weakness was completing work on time.  I thought we might have a discussion on whether or not these are important criteria to judge a person by, but I have to say I think the public schools did a pretty good job of breaking things down.

But anyway, maybe this is as close as we get to a permanent record.  Although I have these in my possession, and I doubt that the school kept a copy.  Nowadays grade school graduates apply to several high schools, so maybe those high schools peruse the grades of the kids vying to attend them.

Of course in our day we had a simpler old school way of determining where you went.  If you lived north of 59th Street you went to Lindblom.  I'm not sure what the southern border was, maybe 51st Street and then you went to Kelly, otherwise you went to Gage Park, and I expect at that point your grade school permanent record went into one of those wire garbage cans and were set ablaze, so that the new you, like the phoenix, could rise into the sky of your destiny.

I don't know why they didn't make that part the closing of our graduation ceremony.  Probably because nobody would have paid any attention to the first part, waiting for the fire.