Word: magic
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Abra Quadbra! Pfoho residents got a break from the pressures of reading period Wednesday night when Samuel A. Wright, a Pfoho night guard of two years, put on a magic show at a special study break in the dining hall...
...like Madonna and Neil Diamond. Many Gleeks started sharing an online petition opposing the planned four-month interregnum. "I rearranged all of my classes so that I can watch Glee," writes distraught signatory Lisa Wright, a college freshman in Illinois. "For the love of God, don't put the magic on hold!" adds Shannon Smith, a fan in North Dakota. (See the top 10 TV series...
...reaction seems a tad overwrought, it may be because the magic isn't just about what up to 8 million viewers watch every Wednesday. It's also in the copycatting that Glee inspires off screen. With an assist from other corners of pop culture - including a karaoke contest on Oprah and NBC's first-ever a cappella-oriented reality show, premiering this month - Glee is inspiring its most hard-core fans to do some singing of their own. Once the butt of jokes everywhere except on a handful of college campuses, a cappella is making inroads all over...
...point lies in the surprises that jostle us out of our smug little certainties and invite us to weigh what we value, whatever our faith tradition. I'm reminded of the furor over kids' reading Harry Potter, which some conservative Christian parents rejected because the books dealt with magic and witches and wizards. I never understood why J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis' witches and wizards got a free pass just because the authors wore their missions on their sleeves. (You see it in the Twilight saga too; we're O.K. with vampires and werewolves as long as they're fighting...
While enthusiastic about the district's reform plans, Boasberg is the first to admit that some of its turnarounds - and, by extension, some of the turnarounds across the country - will not succeed. "If we had a magic formula for school success, we wouldn't be lagging behind other countries like we are right now," he says. "We have to be prepared that some of these efforts will fail, but I'm confident that on the whole, they'll do far better than what they are replacing...