Duchy in the hands of CAOS!

The Duchy has fallen into the hands of CAOS, the international organization of evil and Maxwell Smart is nowhere to be found. The new Queen Liz, obviously being held hostage by agents of CAOS, keeps sending out pigeons asking the villagers not to panic, it only seems like chaos and things will be all right. The CAOS agents are apparently heavily armed with weapons with odd names like RIF and DIT, SLA and MBU and maybe bumper cars? (Everyone is very worried about bumping.) The Duchy treasury has apparently been looted and there is no more money for the villages and teachers. The new President is trying to come to the rescue with a new weapon called a "stimulus package". However, CAOS is poised to spring into action and divert the stimulus package to "professional development" and shove the Duchy even further back in time. The village councils have had strategy meetings to decide how to defend themselves. Some decided that they needed an extra kindergarten teacher instead of a village headman. That attempt has already been foiled by CAOS. Agents from the castle told the village councils that there was still plenty of money for the councils to travel and see new and innovative educational experiments like DisneyWorld, Six Flags, and the Osama Bin Laden Preschool and Terrorist Training Camp. The village councils, ever alert, heard the operative word in that announcement...money. "You mean there's money!? We could have a kindergarten teacher after all!"

"No, no, no. It's money only for new and innovative educational experiments."

"We want a really innovative and educational kindergarten, with a teacher and everything. We'll even hire a new teacher for it. Let us have the money!"

But CAOS was adamant. The money is not for spending on fripperies like teachers and new pigeon roosts for the Duchy's increasingly elderly pigeons. (If they don't get newer, faster, healthier, pigeons soon, they be spending even more money on pigeon nursing homes, and pigeon medicare programs!) It can, however, be spent on the kind of resort visits that got the Black Queen in trouble!?

Questions for the Black Queen

The Black Queen has repeatedly told Dotland that there is no Library Services in the Duchy. This is pretty much true. Even though the Queen's colleagues speak strongly about service and about having a customer service attitude in the Duchy, the Queen is not about service. Librarians are pretty service oriented, always trying to help people find things out. That's probably why the Queen would prefer that there be no libraries. However, what the Black Queen says that what she means is that there can be no central Department of Library Services because all expenditures must be made at the sites and all decisions must be made at the sites. It's called Site Based Management. If we look at the budget we see that, sure enough, under M&O there is no department of Library Services. Instead there are catalogers working for the Queen in the Department of Teaching, Learning and General Mismanagement. However, if we look at the capital budget, there IS a department of Library Services. (No employees, but they have capital?) The capital budget allocates a couple of pittances for library type things and then 4.8 MILLION for "Technology Plan - Curriculum". Could this be why the district inventory lists pages and pages and pages of classroom equipment that "belongs" to the non-existent Library Services? If it's classroom technology and all decision-making and budgeting is supposed to be site based, why isn't that 4.8 million in the site budgets and that equipment in the site inventories? Is it possible that while the Black Queen wants village headmen to be able to choose between a librarians and a classroom teacher, she doesn't want them to be able to choose between technology and, say, adequate classroom supplies? Could it be that she thinks her beloved technology might be rejected? We're not likely to get answers to any of these questions since the Black Queen is not inclined toward open communication with anyone and certainly not the Dots of Dotland. The Black Queen says "Perception is everything." The problem is that it is very hard to control someone else's perception. The Queen tries to control perception by controlling information. This pretty much ensures that she will be perceived as a micro-managing bitch. Hey, I guess perception is everything!
On a sad and serious note, one of the Bus Monitors died today in an accident near Dotland. In a heartbeat the day changed, lives changed. We really do have to live as if every day will be our last.