Here we are, already six days past our human deadline, and I'm having trouble letting go of zombies and Mayans, although the one is just a currently-more-entertaining-but-arguably-less-interesting-than-vampires social commentary and the other is a unit I've already taught and won't look at again until November 2013, if then.
Good grief, if such a beast there be. I kind of miss the vampires. They're queerer than the zombies.
As I have spent the day scouring the local arts associations and Hallmark stores and trolling the internets for blog fodder, I have also downloaded my favorite ten-year-old's (formerly?) favorite book, I am Number Four, so I can give it a read really quick before New Year's.
Flashback to Halloween weekend, 2012 (shameless self-hyperlink warning), when I was composing my post entitled "Revisiting." Over the course of a few days, the 10-year-old watched the movie version of the book that he'd already read, on a loop, about 17 times. I am happy to say that sometime during that weekend, I too somehow got to see the film in its entirety. I never watched it start-to-finish, but I did see all parts of it in a nonlinear fashion.
My Kindle tells me I'm 15% done. As I read, I can find many things within the story that are relatable to me because they are, or were, high school archetypes: the letterman-jacket clothed bully, the nerdy kid, the pretty girl...and I wonder what it is that the ten-year-old finds relatable about I am Number Four. What do the intervening 25 years of existence add to, or take away from, the experience of the story? I would love to discuss this with him, but I suspect that he will have moved on to a new favorite story when I see him here in a few days.
Will I be able, at a vantage that perches happily just five years away from my retirement to Springdale, UT or Barcelona or Panajachel or really ANYWHERE except San Bernadino...be able to convince the now-10-then-35-year-old to reread this piece and tell me what he gets from it? I'll probably be too busy skiing or surfing or kayaking (after an offering to San Simon) that I will totally forget to bring it up.
Let us be happy that such a far-out future does indeed exist.
As you can see, the Memoir of Narrow Escape is going to be a useless stream-of-consciousness raving until such time as I can sit down over tapas with Krista, whose Wannabe, I am happy to announce, is far more successful than Single...Apocalypse was, and figure out a plan, a path, a direction. I do love wordle, by the way, good job Krista! I know the head is from a different type of word art software. Perhaps my next post, if indeed the signals will let me compose one from Weidman, will be a Wordle of Resolutions.
Until then, may you look quizzically at the ten year olds in your own life and wonder what the heck is swimming around inside those heads of theirs.
Thursday, December 27, 2012
Tuesday, December 25, 2012
The Cartography of Gratitude, or: DUST
HOORAY!
False alarm.
Crisis averted.
Let us take a moment to observe the passing-into-oblivion of the blog known as "Single Girl's Guide to Impending Apocalypse" as it morphs into "The Memoir of Narrow Escape."
A couple of loose ends to tie up from the 21st:
Were you laughed at for polishing up your crossbow and hoarding cases of Aquafina? Never mind. Haters gonna hate. You will simply come out on top in a home invasion and not get caught up in the mad rush during the next nature-induced power outage. Skills are skills. Once aquired and practiced, they can only enrich our lives, and not diminish them.
I did the math, and attendance in my classes hovered around 35%. That's 35 out of 100% that showed up for the Day of Multiple Disasters That Didn't End Up Happening.
Imagine. Just imagine the number of potential disasters that Just. Never. Happen. How many are there every day, every minute? Billions? Trillions? Gajillions? As many as sands on the dune beaches or stars in the sky. More about the dune beaches later. In the meantime...if every person who decided on Friday that potential disaster was going to keep them from showing up stayed away EVERY day, the students agreed (in fact, they were the ones who said it. I didn't. They only said what I was thinking.), learning would occur and school would be fun and everyone would get along sunshine-and-kittens-and-rainbows. I said, "Write your congresspeople, kids. Write your congresspeople."
The final loose end to tie up is of course the Other Thing that happens on December 21st of every year, the Winter Solstice. I was reading the other day on a website called Time and Date that, "Although winter was regarded as the season of dormancy, darkness and cold, the coming of lighter days after the winter solstice brought on a more festive mood. To many people, this return of the light was a reason to celebrate that nature’s cycle was continuing."
The return of the light.
Come to think of it, the return of the light was the exact reason for the human sacrifices in ancient Aztec and Mayan cultures.
Now we have narrowly escaped the Formerly-Impending Apocalypse. We are on borrowed time. Of course, we have always been on borrowed time, but now we're more aware of it than ever. I seek in the next several months to explore the theme of what exactly one should do with borrowed time.
While you, my dear 12 loyal readers, wait for the lame result of such a haphazard theme, I suspect that some of you still have a hankering for the old pre-narrow-escape Zombie lore. If so, please accept my recommendation (already seen on goodreads.com if you're my facebook friend) of a novel called DUST. It takes place in Northwest Indiana, from whence this blog post is being composed. It follows Jessie, a teenage zombie, through the many trials and tribulations of her zombie life, including a great big plague that hits the entire world, human and zombie alike.
This book, in a word, is fantastic. OR maybe I only enjoyed it more because I knew I didn't have to hurry and finish it before the world ended or something. Fantastic.
And now it is time to tuck the border collie in. Let me know what you think of the book.
False alarm.
Crisis averted.
Let us take a moment to observe the passing-into-oblivion of the blog known as "Single Girl's Guide to Impending Apocalypse" as it morphs into "The Memoir of Narrow Escape."
A couple of loose ends to tie up from the 21st:
Were you laughed at for polishing up your crossbow and hoarding cases of Aquafina? Never mind. Haters gonna hate. You will simply come out on top in a home invasion and not get caught up in the mad rush during the next nature-induced power outage. Skills are skills. Once aquired and practiced, they can only enrich our lives, and not diminish them.
I did the math, and attendance in my classes hovered around 35%. That's 35 out of 100% that showed up for the Day of Multiple Disasters That Didn't End Up Happening.
Imagine. Just imagine the number of potential disasters that Just. Never. Happen. How many are there every day, every minute? Billions? Trillions? Gajillions? As many as sands on the dune beaches or stars in the sky. More about the dune beaches later. In the meantime...if every person who decided on Friday that potential disaster was going to keep them from showing up stayed away EVERY day, the students agreed (in fact, they were the ones who said it. I didn't. They only said what I was thinking.), learning would occur and school would be fun and everyone would get along sunshine-and-kittens-and-rainbows. I said, "Write your congresspeople, kids. Write your congresspeople."
The final loose end to tie up is of course the Other Thing that happens on December 21st of every year, the Winter Solstice. I was reading the other day on a website called Time and Date that, "Although winter was regarded as the season of dormancy, darkness and cold, the coming of lighter days after the winter solstice brought on a more festive mood. To many people, this return of the light was a reason to celebrate that nature’s cycle was continuing."
The return of the light.
Come to think of it, the return of the light was the exact reason for the human sacrifices in ancient Aztec and Mayan cultures.
Now we have narrowly escaped the Formerly-Impending Apocalypse. We are on borrowed time. Of course, we have always been on borrowed time, but now we're more aware of it than ever. I seek in the next several months to explore the theme of what exactly one should do with borrowed time.
While you, my dear 12 loyal readers, wait for the lame result of such a haphazard theme, I suspect that some of you still have a hankering for the old pre-narrow-escape Zombie lore. If so, please accept my recommendation (already seen on goodreads.com if you're my facebook friend) of a novel called DUST. It takes place in Northwest Indiana, from whence this blog post is being composed. It follows Jessie, a teenage zombie, through the many trials and tribulations of her zombie life, including a great big plague that hits the entire world, human and zombie alike.
This book, in a word, is fantastic. OR maybe I only enjoyed it more because I knew I didn't have to hurry and finish it before the world ended or something. Fantastic.
And now it is time to tuck the border collie in. Let me know what you think of the book.
Thursday, December 20, 2012
[Insert SuperAwesome Title for Last-Ever Blog Post Here]
I did not mail out the Christmas cards in time for the Apocalypse. Dag! Nabbit! EPIC. FAIL.
In other news...
If he really looked deep into his own heart, perhaps even James Wesley Rawles would agree that you can prepare and prepare, for whatever tragedy, and you can still not be quite ready when it happens. You have kind of a vague understanding in your mind that things are going downhill, and then they do. When they do, no matter how slowly they've been sliding, the real end always feels like a crash.
I am sad that this will be the last-ever post on "Single Girl's Guide to Impending Apocalypse," although now that I've racked up 8 loyal readers (as opposed to the only-four loyal readers I had on "Another Celebrator of Seven-Day Weekend), I think I'll leave the URL intact for ease of access. I planned and planned my last post, but then as I reviewed the concept in my head today, it just didn't seem appropriate. It wasn't inappropriate, but it wasn't as exactly right as I thought it would be. So! In addition to "there goes the world," there goes my brilliant last-ever post, as well.
As has so often happened since last January when I cannibalized my personal blog to make way for this one, something else came to take the place of my brilliant last post, and that thing was the school shooting in Connecticut.
That shooting jacked EVERYTHING up. It jacked up collaboration by forcing an all-staff meeting to discuss rumors in the district that people with guns will be storming campuses all over Las Vegas tomorrow. It jacked up 2nd hour when some kid leaped out of his seat screaming, "OHMYGOD I SEE A SHOOTER!" and I replied, "Tell the dean all about it, kid," and wrote him up. It jacked up my plan to say to my students tomorrow, "In the unlikely event that the world ends tonight, I have enjoyed teaching you," because several of my students intentionally got suspended so as not to come to school tomorrow, and others' parents are keeping them home. It jacked everything up so much that one of my students actually asked this afternoon, "What is it again that we're not supposed to talk about? Is it the end of the world, or is it shooting?"
That's how jacked up everything is.
At least two students in each of my five classes asked me if I am coming to school tomorrow. I replied, "Of course I am! It's my job. I also predict that I will have the possibility of receiving gifts!" I was able to take the opportunity of the confusion to say something along these lines to each of my classes: "We have structures and procedures in place for emergencies, and we promise to keep each of you as safe as we possibly can. HOWEVER! You know that anything can happen at any time. [Insert funny disaster scenario, such as getting conked on the head by a falling projector, here.] But we don't live in fear because fear does us no good. What does us good is coming together here and learning and talking together." Fourth hour listened and smiled and nodded. Fifth hour hooted and hollered and generally fell off the geography train. I didn't mention any of any of this to 6th hour, because I was too jazzed about driving across town on a last-minute Christmas errand.
Know what else is jacked up? On 1/2/12, I took YES! Magazine's "How Resilient Are You?" quiz. Since earning my initial "off to a good start..." I have made arrowheads from pointy rocks. Even though they were only four feet high, I have scaled cliffs. I have maimed paper zombies with actual, real-live guns. I've rubbed elbows with the scary-looking lady at the honey stand. I have stockpiled food storage, harvested lint, learned how to use magnesium to its best advantage and come on people! I've knitted scarves! Tonight, when I took the "How Resilient Are You?" quiz, I got...
(drum roll please)...
off to a good start.
Readers, thank you for taking this journey with me, especially if you literally took it with me like Miss Gokey or Jodi or Krista or Dana or Amanda did. (Because I would run out of room if I mentioned everyone, I'm only listing my top-five most frequent mentions. Don't be offended.) As we get "off to a good start" on the next one, best wishes, and I leave you with Jack Kerouac:
"Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life."
In other news...
If he really looked deep into his own heart, perhaps even James Wesley Rawles would agree that you can prepare and prepare, for whatever tragedy, and you can still not be quite ready when it happens. You have kind of a vague understanding in your mind that things are going downhill, and then they do. When they do, no matter how slowly they've been sliding, the real end always feels like a crash.
I am sad that this will be the last-ever post on "Single Girl's Guide to Impending Apocalypse," although now that I've racked up 8 loyal readers (as opposed to the only-four loyal readers I had on "Another Celebrator of Seven-Day Weekend), I think I'll leave the URL intact for ease of access. I planned and planned my last post, but then as I reviewed the concept in my head today, it just didn't seem appropriate. It wasn't inappropriate, but it wasn't as exactly right as I thought it would be. So! In addition to "there goes the world," there goes my brilliant last-ever post, as well.
As has so often happened since last January when I cannibalized my personal blog to make way for this one, something else came to take the place of my brilliant last post, and that thing was the school shooting in Connecticut.
That shooting jacked EVERYTHING up. It jacked up collaboration by forcing an all-staff meeting to discuss rumors in the district that people with guns will be storming campuses all over Las Vegas tomorrow. It jacked up 2nd hour when some kid leaped out of his seat screaming, "OHMYGOD I SEE A SHOOTER!" and I replied, "Tell the dean all about it, kid," and wrote him up. It jacked up my plan to say to my students tomorrow, "In the unlikely event that the world ends tonight, I have enjoyed teaching you," because several of my students intentionally got suspended so as not to come to school tomorrow, and others' parents are keeping them home. It jacked everything up so much that one of my students actually asked this afternoon, "What is it again that we're not supposed to talk about? Is it the end of the world, or is it shooting?"
That's how jacked up everything is.
At least two students in each of my five classes asked me if I am coming to school tomorrow. I replied, "Of course I am! It's my job. I also predict that I will have the possibility of receiving gifts!" I was able to take the opportunity of the confusion to say something along these lines to each of my classes: "We have structures and procedures in place for emergencies, and we promise to keep each of you as safe as we possibly can. HOWEVER! You know that anything can happen at any time. [Insert funny disaster scenario, such as getting conked on the head by a falling projector, here.] But we don't live in fear because fear does us no good. What does us good is coming together here and learning and talking together." Fourth hour listened and smiled and nodded. Fifth hour hooted and hollered and generally fell off the geography train. I didn't mention any of any of this to 6th hour, because I was too jazzed about driving across town on a last-minute Christmas errand.
Know what else is jacked up? On 1/2/12, I took YES! Magazine's "How Resilient Are You?" quiz. Since earning my initial "off to a good start..." I have made arrowheads from pointy rocks. Even though they were only four feet high, I have scaled cliffs. I have maimed paper zombies with actual, real-live guns. I've rubbed elbows with the scary-looking lady at the honey stand. I have stockpiled food storage, harvested lint, learned how to use magnesium to its best advantage and come on people! I've knitted scarves! Tonight, when I took the "How Resilient Are You?" quiz, I got...
(drum roll please)...
off to a good start.
Readers, thank you for taking this journey with me, especially if you literally took it with me like Miss Gokey or Jodi or Krista or Dana or Amanda did. (Because I would run out of room if I mentioned everyone, I'm only listing my top-five most frequent mentions. Don't be offended.) As we get "off to a good start" on the next one, best wishes, and I leave you with Jack Kerouac:
"Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life."
Thursday, December 13, 2012
I've Said It Before...
...and I'll say it again: alea iacta est.
I'm not skipping blogging tonight, I'm just writing Christmas cards instead. After all, I'm committed to the idea of the Christmas cards arriving at their destination before next Friday, so that everyone can know that I was thinking fondly of them at the end.
Tomorrow, I'll be tempting Fate, and I will let you know how that turns out.
Otherwise, tomorrow is C1's birthday (ugghhh! I shudder to hyperlink that particular disaster of a post), so send the good vibe towards the Vega.
Also, it is raining here. Signs and omens.
Ferias felices!!!
I'm not skipping blogging tonight, I'm just writing Christmas cards instead. After all, I'm committed to the idea of the Christmas cards arriving at their destination before next Friday, so that everyone can know that I was thinking fondly of them at the end.
Tomorrow, I'll be tempting Fate, and I will let you know how that turns out.
Otherwise, tomorrow is C1's birthday (ugghhh! I shudder to hyperlink that particular disaster of a post), so send the good vibe towards the Vega.
Also, it is raining here. Signs and omens.
Ferias felices!!!
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
Stranger in a Strange Land
In addition to alluding to a 1960s sci-fi novel that I've never read, this post title accurately sums up how I feel this evening as I am sans Subaru, seeing as she is in the shop waiting to be diagnosed. Again. Last time, my trip to the auto-repair gurus turned up lots of fodder, but not this time, so you'll have to be content to read about how I packed.
Miss Gokey graciously offered me a couch to surf on and a ride to work tomorrow, as well as the next day, if need be. A coworker followed me to the dealership and then dropped me off here at the house. Last night while planning all of this debacle, Miss Gokey intelligently suggested that I pack a few changes of clothes just in case.
In all my years of domestic and international travel, I have learned to pack light. But this past year of reading up on the potential apocalypse blew the "travel light" theory out of the water, so into my coworker's car I put:
- the Guatemalan duffel bag filled with clothes enough to last me through Saturday and a laptop
- my satchel, which I always have with me, filled with various sundries
- a green grocery sack filled with student work and unfinished Christmas cards (don't worry, they're on their way!)
- two blankets
- one outsized towel
- one pillow
- an extra packet of toiletries
- breakfast and lunch through the end of the week
I think that as long as we went grocery shopping at Sam's Club beforehand, I would be ok staying here through the 21st, actually. Again in the words of Melissa Ferrick, "everything I need is right here in my hands."
Now that you've suffered through that, I'll tell you what people do that results in more money for them: sing in their cars on their way to and from work. You'd better Belize it (that's my favorite geography joke, and a particularly timely one as we cover the countries of Latin America this week), I was singing at the top of my lungs all week. Granted, it was mostly singing to encourage the car to keep going and last until Winter Break, but be that as it may...
This weekend, while grading notebooks and finishing decorations on my little tree that I don't even get to look at since I'm not at home, I tried watching NBC's Revolution online. Not a bad little show, thanks for the recommendation, Dana!
I just find it funny that after the power goes out or the world ends on whatever show, most people go back to wearing frockcoats and tailcoats a la 1850. Here's an interesting article on 1800s fashion from Godey's Lady's Book. It's extremely instructive both from a living-through-hardship standpoint and from a down-with-the-patriarchy standpoint.
Enjoy!
I'll be back on Thursday, hopefully with good news of my car's clean bill of health. Finally.
Until then, happy Indiana Day! Y'all should get a day off like we do here in the Battle Born State.
Miss Gokey graciously offered me a couch to surf on and a ride to work tomorrow, as well as the next day, if need be. A coworker followed me to the dealership and then dropped me off here at the house. Last night while planning all of this debacle, Miss Gokey intelligently suggested that I pack a few changes of clothes just in case.
In all my years of domestic and international travel, I have learned to pack light. But this past year of reading up on the potential apocalypse blew the "travel light" theory out of the water, so into my coworker's car I put:
- the Guatemalan duffel bag filled with clothes enough to last me through Saturday and a laptop
- my satchel, which I always have with me, filled with various sundries
- a green grocery sack filled with student work and unfinished Christmas cards (don't worry, they're on their way!)
- two blankets
- one outsized towel
- one pillow
- an extra packet of toiletries
- breakfast and lunch through the end of the week
I think that as long as we went grocery shopping at Sam's Club beforehand, I would be ok staying here through the 21st, actually. Again in the words of Melissa Ferrick, "everything I need is right here in my hands."
Now that you've suffered through that, I'll tell you what people do that results in more money for them: sing in their cars on their way to and from work. You'd better Belize it (that's my favorite geography joke, and a particularly timely one as we cover the countries of Latin America this week), I was singing at the top of my lungs all week. Granted, it was mostly singing to encourage the car to keep going and last until Winter Break, but be that as it may...
This weekend, while grading notebooks and finishing decorations on my little tree that I don't even get to look at since I'm not at home, I tried watching NBC's Revolution online. Not a bad little show, thanks for the recommendation, Dana!
I just find it funny that after the power goes out or the world ends on whatever show, most people go back to wearing frockcoats and tailcoats a la 1850. Here's an interesting article on 1800s fashion from Godey's Lady's Book. It's extremely instructive both from a living-through-hardship standpoint and from a down-with-the-patriarchy standpoint.
Enjoy!
I'll be back on Thursday, hopefully with good news of my car's clean bill of health. Finally.
Until then, happy Indiana Day! Y'all should get a day off like we do here in the Battle Born State.
Friday, December 7, 2012
Come Waste Your Time With Me
As I was driving home today, I saw the strangest sign spinner. He was the MOST enthusiastic sign spinner I had ever seen. I always wonder what inspires some sign spinners to be so enthused making $7 an hour, but this one was magnificent. There used to be one by my first apartment here at Flamingo and Wynn. He had to dress as a clown in the 115-degree summer, and I often saw him sitting on a crate, smoking a cigarette and listening to headphones. When I saw today's young man throwing his sign dozens of feet into the air and then catching it seamlessly, I thought of the apocalypse, because here is a character who makes his every move like it's his last. I also thought of Dr. Martin Luther King's advice to "be the best street sweeper you can be," and of my former student who handed me my morning mocha through the drive-thru window, and how she is the best mocha-maker at that particular mocha-making chain.
As I was driving IN to work (just before the mocha, matter-of-fact), they were talking about the apocalypse on the radio. If I leave my house during a certain 3-minute window of time, I get to hear "brain dead trivia." Sadly, a google search to hyperlink it results in nothing. Somehow the subject of 12/21/12 came up, and the on-air personalities joked that they each knew a few people who were taking this...I won't call it hysteria...instead, I will continue to call it...industry...seriously. They said, "I can't wait to call them on 12/22 and ask if I can have some of that extra water they've stored."
No, *****. That water is part of my normal emergency plan, so step off.
And the radio announcers are not alone. The U.S. government has officially stated that "the world will not end of 12/21/12, or any day in 2012." Check it out. After all, if the government says it, it must be true. Apparently NASA has been receiving tons of letters from frightened children. Um...I have enough trouble finding apocalyptic fodder for this blog...WHO is telling children that the world is about to end??? NASA is attempting to debunk the "rumors."
Incidentally, the same google search that revealed the NASA news also revealed several random and unflattering photos of...yours truly. Would that I had that many more than my 5 loyal readers, that I should warrant being a google search result. Perhaps it's a fluke born of the fact that the search is coming from my own ip address. If it's NOT a fluke and you try it, please be amused by the Flaming Marshmallow 2012 photo taken on Mt. Charleston by Miss Gokey.
I'm going to miss Mt. Charleston.
Anyway, the trivia revolved around the following question, of possible interest to one of the hardest workers I have ever seen, this afternoon's sign spinner: people who do THIS tend to make more money than those who don't. I'll reveal the answer in my next post.
Although I am a day late again, I have definitely not been wasting time. The title of this post is actually from a Phish song. This evening I have cleaned the kitchen, sanitized the dishes, made a favorite casserole from Molly Katzen's Enchanted Broccoli Forest cookbook, trolled for chocolate chips, located a recipe that calls for chocolate chips, and graded two whole crates of interactive notebooks. Next up: the candy canes. My tree only has the lights and tinsel on it, still. But first, I must take an 8-hour nap, lest I collapse.
I like to call what I'm doing, "apocalypse nesting," which I don't think is a bad thing.
In closing, I will say to you what I say to my students each day:
Manage your time, kids. Manage your time.
As I was driving IN to work (just before the mocha, matter-of-fact), they were talking about the apocalypse on the radio. If I leave my house during a certain 3-minute window of time, I get to hear "brain dead trivia." Sadly, a google search to hyperlink it results in nothing. Somehow the subject of 12/21/12 came up, and the on-air personalities joked that they each knew a few people who were taking this...I won't call it hysteria...instead, I will continue to call it...industry...seriously. They said, "I can't wait to call them on 12/22 and ask if I can have some of that extra water they've stored."
No, *****. That water is part of my normal emergency plan, so step off.
And the radio announcers are not alone. The U.S. government has officially stated that "the world will not end of 12/21/12, or any day in 2012." Check it out. After all, if the government says it, it must be true. Apparently NASA has been receiving tons of letters from frightened children. Um...I have enough trouble finding apocalyptic fodder for this blog...WHO is telling children that the world is about to end??? NASA is attempting to debunk the "rumors."
Incidentally, the same google search that revealed the NASA news also revealed several random and unflattering photos of...yours truly. Would that I had that many more than my 5 loyal readers, that I should warrant being a google search result. Perhaps it's a fluke born of the fact that the search is coming from my own ip address. If it's NOT a fluke and you try it, please be amused by the Flaming Marshmallow 2012 photo taken on Mt. Charleston by Miss Gokey.
I'm going to miss Mt. Charleston.
Anyway, the trivia revolved around the following question, of possible interest to one of the hardest workers I have ever seen, this afternoon's sign spinner: people who do THIS tend to make more money than those who don't. I'll reveal the answer in my next post.
Although I am a day late again, I have definitely not been wasting time. The title of this post is actually from a Phish song. This evening I have cleaned the kitchen, sanitized the dishes, made a favorite casserole from Molly Katzen's Enchanted Broccoli Forest cookbook, trolled for chocolate chips, located a recipe that calls for chocolate chips, and graded two whole crates of interactive notebooks. Next up: the candy canes. My tree only has the lights and tinsel on it, still. But first, I must take an 8-hour nap, lest I collapse.
I like to call what I'm doing, "apocalypse nesting," which I don't think is a bad thing.
In closing, I will say to you what I say to my students each day:
Manage your time, kids. Manage your time.
Tuesday, December 4, 2012
All These Things...
This is the first post of the last month of the world! It's also the first post that I compose under the light of my Socialist Christmas tree, which is decorated with lights that I bought from Wal-Mart in the year 2000 (still working, I've never had to repair them!), and tinsel that I *think* came from BCA's trash bin in 2002, but I don't really remember. It is socialist because it leaned to the left until Thanksgiving 2010.
It's about a tweenage romance novel called All These Things I've Done. It was a good book up until the end, when it just...ended. It was as if someone called Gabrielle Zevin and said, "Finish the book now. It was due a while ago, and if you want to get it in the gradebook before the quarter ends, you'll have it on my desk tomorrow morning." Of course, if you followed the link you know that it's one of a series, the next book in which is called Because It Is My Blood. Yeah, I don't know. If I have $10 leftover after Christmas shopping, maybe I'll get it. Probably not.
There wasn't much that was instructive as to the apocalypse, but the setting was interesting. It was in a future three generations hence (the currently-rising generation would be the dying grandparents of the novel) where New York's museums had been converted into nightclubs. The lakes and fountains had been drained, and the Statue of Liberty had been disassembled. Things that are perfectly legal now are illegal in the future the novel imagines, and the heroine is a daughter of the New York branch of organized crime that controls the supply of an illegal substance. So. That's what it's about, and the setting is worth reading it for.
What bothered me was the fact that all the way through, the heroine keeps hinting that the neo-Prohibition will be lifted. Then it ends so abruptly that you get the impression you were supposed to forget about the whole, "back-in-those-days" tone in which the book had been written. See? During these past two paragraphs of review, I've gotten all confused as to verb tenses and subject pronouns. I blame the book. This is what happens when a teacher of teenagers gets to reading a novel that is marketed to her students' age group! (Funny, that didn't happen with certain other favorite novels whose titles shall not be repeated because by now you should have read about them all over this blog and other blogs and goodreads.com.)
Now that I look more closely, I see that Jen warned on the now-archived Book Envy blog that fans of the apocalypse would not be satisfied. Her much more revealing review is archived here.
Sometimes, we know our time is running out, and we still waste it reading tweenage fiction! Astounding.
Lucky for us, we have people looking out for us, sending us ads for ammo like this one, which comes from my dad and I have no idea where he got it:
Note that *this is not a toy*. Ammo, kids, not books. Ammo. And a plan. I have one. For 12/21, and another one for the day after. Do you?
It's about a tweenage romance novel called All These Things I've Done. It was a good book up until the end, when it just...ended. It was as if someone called Gabrielle Zevin and said, "Finish the book now. It was due a while ago, and if you want to get it in the gradebook before the quarter ends, you'll have it on my desk tomorrow morning." Of course, if you followed the link you know that it's one of a series, the next book in which is called Because It Is My Blood. Yeah, I don't know. If I have $10 leftover after Christmas shopping, maybe I'll get it. Probably not.
There wasn't much that was instructive as to the apocalypse, but the setting was interesting. It was in a future three generations hence (the currently-rising generation would be the dying grandparents of the novel) where New York's museums had been converted into nightclubs. The lakes and fountains had been drained, and the Statue of Liberty had been disassembled. Things that are perfectly legal now are illegal in the future the novel imagines, and the heroine is a daughter of the New York branch of organized crime that controls the supply of an illegal substance. So. That's what it's about, and the setting is worth reading it for.
What bothered me was the fact that all the way through, the heroine keeps hinting that the neo-Prohibition will be lifted. Then it ends so abruptly that you get the impression you were supposed to forget about the whole, "back-in-those-days" tone in which the book had been written. See? During these past two paragraphs of review, I've gotten all confused as to verb tenses and subject pronouns. I blame the book. This is what happens when a teacher of teenagers gets to reading a novel that is marketed to her students' age group! (Funny, that didn't happen with certain other favorite novels whose titles shall not be repeated because by now you should have read about them all over this blog and other blogs and goodreads.com.)
Now that I look more closely, I see that Jen warned on the now-archived Book Envy blog that fans of the apocalypse would not be satisfied. Her much more revealing review is archived here.
Sometimes, we know our time is running out, and we still waste it reading tweenage fiction! Astounding.
Lucky for us, we have people looking out for us, sending us ads for ammo like this one, which comes from my dad and I have no idea where he got it:
Note that *this is not a toy*. Ammo, kids, not books. Ammo. And a plan. I have one. For 12/21, and another one for the day after. Do you?
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
For Your Review
Well, I promised a book review. It's of a teenage romance novel that takes place in a futuristic dystopia; sadly, I haven't finished it yet.
I'm also a day late, but lucky for me, occasionally tardiness does have it benefits. Most of this post is based on some VERY interesting information I came across in a Review-Journal that was laying around in the auto shop. This "news" is actually about a week old. Anyone who watches the nightly news is already informed of these things, all of which blew my tired little car-problem-addled mind.
First of all, the Moapa band of Southern Paiutes has made a deal with the city of Los Angeles to let them rent land for a solar farm. This means that the Paiutes will be selling solar power to L.A. as early as 2016. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you can read about it here. This is momentous. Did I already use the word momentous? Somebody besides me must have read Suzanne Weyn's teenage novel, Empty.
REVISION!!!
I nearly forgot about this video featuring my Wittenberg sorority sister's daughter and her classmates.
Secondly (that's right, there's more), MEXICO has decided to rent Lake Mead for water storage and to therefore GIVE UP part of its rights to the Colorado River! WHAT??? This long but super-delicious story includes a MAP (map! map!) of the water allotments for the seven areas that split the water from the Colorado for hydration and power. *drool* The agreement is only good for five years, but it's a major step toward fairer use of what is arguably the planet's most important resource. At least, it's the planet's most important resource when you live in the desert.
AND THEN!
Finally...the selfsame issue of the RJ handed me the following transition, which otherwise could have been horribly awkward, on a silver platter with this opinion piece about the Twinkie. Yeah, yeah. But this opinion piece is actually awesome. My favorite part is: "Flags in the schoolyards of childhood memory immediately were lowered to half-staff." Well said, John L. Smith. Well said.
The day of the 2012 Hostess debacle or the next day, Sue Phipps linked this video clip on facebook. It's from Zombieland, a movie I had never seen. Sue, and her sister Kristy, spoke so highly of Zombieland at the delicious Thanksgiving dinner that they cooked, that I just had to see it. I now own it, love it, will keep it forever and HIGHLY, HIGHLY recommend it if, like me, you are late to the party.
Twinkies are a recurring theme in Zombieland.
I had to stop on my way to the movie clip to watch a Miles Jai fanmail video. Beware profanity. We love Miles Jai.
So, that's that. Next time, All These Things I've Done, which I read about on the now-defunct but still archived Book Envy blog. The fact that the blog is archived means that I'm late once again when it comes to reading this novel. I think I'll skip tomorrow, my regular updating day, and then return you to your regularly-scheduled Apocalypse Blog next week.
I'm also a day late, but lucky for me, occasionally tardiness does have it benefits. Most of this post is based on some VERY interesting information I came across in a Review-Journal that was laying around in the auto shop. This "news" is actually about a week old. Anyone who watches the nightly news is already informed of these things, all of which blew my tired little car-problem-addled mind.
First of all, the Moapa band of Southern Paiutes has made a deal with the city of Los Angeles to let them rent land for a solar farm. This means that the Paiutes will be selling solar power to L.A. as early as 2016. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you can read about it here. This is momentous. Did I already use the word momentous? Somebody besides me must have read Suzanne Weyn's teenage novel, Empty.
REVISION!!!
I nearly forgot about this video featuring my Wittenberg sorority sister's daughter and her classmates.
Secondly (that's right, there's more), MEXICO has decided to rent Lake Mead for water storage and to therefore GIVE UP part of its rights to the Colorado River! WHAT??? This long but super-delicious story includes a MAP (map! map!) of the water allotments for the seven areas that split the water from the Colorado for hydration and power. *drool* The agreement is only good for five years, but it's a major step toward fairer use of what is arguably the planet's most important resource. At least, it's the planet's most important resource when you live in the desert.
AND THEN!
Finally...the selfsame issue of the RJ handed me the following transition, which otherwise could have been horribly awkward, on a silver platter with this opinion piece about the Twinkie. Yeah, yeah. But this opinion piece is actually awesome. My favorite part is: "Flags in the schoolyards of childhood memory immediately were lowered to half-staff." Well said, John L. Smith. Well said.
The day of the 2012 Hostess debacle or the next day, Sue Phipps linked this video clip on facebook. It's from Zombieland, a movie I had never seen. Sue, and her sister Kristy, spoke so highly of Zombieland at the delicious Thanksgiving dinner that they cooked, that I just had to see it. I now own it, love it, will keep it forever and HIGHLY, HIGHLY recommend it if, like me, you are late to the party.
Twinkies are a recurring theme in Zombieland.
I had to stop on my way to the movie clip to watch a Miles Jai fanmail video. Beware profanity. We love Miles Jai.
So, that's that. Next time, All These Things I've Done, which I read about on the now-defunct but still archived Book Envy blog. The fact that the blog is archived means that I'm late once again when it comes to reading this novel. I think I'll skip tomorrow, my regular updating day, and then return you to your regularly-scheduled Apocalypse Blog next week.
Thursday, November 22, 2012
Possibly the Last Thanksgiving Ever
I did not participate in facebook's annual "30 Days of Thankfulness" movement or whatever it is, and it occurred to me earlier today that it may have in fact been my last opportunity to do so. Here, then, is my attempt to make up for all 30 days by listing anything that I have been thankful for, pretty much ever. This would have been a much easier task if I'd had 30 days to think about it instead of just one. Be that as it may, here we go. In no particular order.
This list will become comprehensive if you add to it the following thought: if you yourself have ever enjoyed any of these things, with me or without me, then you are included in my thankfulness, and I am thankful for you, too.
1. the greater Chicagoland area
2. the loving, stable home where I was raised, which was filled for my benefit with comfort objects and school supplies
3. French: language, literature, cinema, braids, fries and kisses
4. the interstate highway system
5. the back roads
6. planes, trains and automobiles, especially Subarus
7. corn fields
8. museums
9. libraries
10. school, and school breaks
11. Springfield, OH and Bloomington, IN
12. salaried jobs
13. national parks
13.5 bear lockers in which to store things that smell good
14. Twentynine Palms, CA and the uppity Joshua Trees
15. a roof, under which there are working utilities
15.5 a beautiful, motley collection of people I know would help keep me in #15
16. food: slow, fast, homegrown, store-bought, American, ethnic
17. soothing sounds that come out of acoustic guitars
18. other people's children, and the fact that they are other people's
19. blank pages, and filled pages
20. I'm just gonna go ahead and say it: vodka.
21. TWE, graphic organizers, reproducibles, templates, and everything else that makes my job easier
22. cascading reel slot machines
23. the postal service
24. the military-industrial complex
25. wireless internet, because it enables me to stalk you quite effectively
26. the Sierra Nevadas, and pretty much all other mountains
27. sparkly things
28. the $5 billion zombie apocalypse industry
29. enough time, energy, and money to be able to do THIS twice a week (more or less)
30. pine trees, especially bristlecones and pinyons
Also: I'm thankful for three days to recover from the inevitable bodily backlash that will come from my having eaten some things I don't normally eat during today's Celebration of Genocide feast. If it's to be the last one, then darnit, I'm doing it right.
Oops! I forgot to mention those years in North Manchester on my list of things I'm thankful for. This song should cover it.
Happy Thanksgiving.
This list will become comprehensive if you add to it the following thought: if you yourself have ever enjoyed any of these things, with me or without me, then you are included in my thankfulness, and I am thankful for you, too.
1. the greater Chicagoland area
2. the loving, stable home where I was raised, which was filled for my benefit with comfort objects and school supplies
3. French: language, literature, cinema, braids, fries and kisses
4. the interstate highway system
5. the back roads
6. planes, trains and automobiles, especially Subarus
7. corn fields
8. museums
9. libraries
10. school, and school breaks
11. Springfield, OH and Bloomington, IN
12. salaried jobs
13. national parks
13.5 bear lockers in which to store things that smell good
14. Twentynine Palms, CA and the uppity Joshua Trees
15. a roof, under which there are working utilities
15.5 a beautiful, motley collection of people I know would help keep me in #15
16. food: slow, fast, homegrown, store-bought, American, ethnic
17. soothing sounds that come out of acoustic guitars
18. other people's children, and the fact that they are other people's
19. blank pages, and filled pages
20. I'm just gonna go ahead and say it: vodka.
21. TWE, graphic organizers, reproducibles, templates, and everything else that makes my job easier
22. cascading reel slot machines
23. the postal service
24. the military-industrial complex
25. wireless internet, because it enables me to stalk you quite effectively
26. the Sierra Nevadas, and pretty much all other mountains
27. sparkly things
28. the $5 billion zombie apocalypse industry
29. enough time, energy, and money to be able to do THIS twice a week (more or less)
30. pine trees, especially bristlecones and pinyons
Also: I'm thankful for three days to recover from the inevitable bodily backlash that will come from my having eaten some things I don't normally eat during today's Celebration of Genocide feast. If it's to be the last one, then darnit, I'm doing it right.
Oops! I forgot to mention those years in North Manchester on my list of things I'm thankful for. This song should cover it.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
So close you can almost taste it...
...or so it would seem, what with my closest teaching neighbor constantly blathering about the dead bird that he soon intends to eat!
I'm just gonna say it once, because it's true, and then I'll drop it for the duration of the world's existence:
I am supposed to be in Peru right now, but I am not.
Lucky for us, Peru is still populated with tourists, and you can read about my friend's adventures there here, where she compare/contrasts independent and group travel. I have a preferred side of that fence, and I am hoping that by the end of her trip, she will be converted completely to my side. Let's keep tabs on her movements in Latin America.
Two more notes before we get down to business, both dealing with your Greater Chicagoland media. Please join me in impatient anticipation of Shiloh's new album by perusing this lite blurb in the Chicago Reader dealing with the record release which we will never get to experience due to pandemic/cataclysm/megaquake/polar reversal. Please ignore the bit about the puppets, and go to the Empty Bottle because I myself cannot, seeing as I have to teach the very next day in North Las Vegas.
And then, from our friends at the NWI Times via my dad:
Sometime over Fall Break, while riding through the corn fields having a fabulous time, I think I heard this song, which may be content-blocked for copyright reasons when you click on it, on a radio station that my clever friends tell their 10-year-old is Radio Disney.
Immediately, I knew that I would watch Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. And take notes. Here's the plot synopsis in case you forgot what an awesome year 1985 actually was.
(A saxophone will come in handy after nuclear annihilation.)
Max (12-year-old Mel Gibson with luxurious hair) wanders into Bartertown to retrieve his stolen car and makes a bad deal with Queen Tina Turner. At the last moment, he refuses to kill his opponent in the Thunderdome and is sentenced to gulag (ohhh, the 80s!). Halfway there, his horse collapses and is swallowed in a sandstorm, at which point he is rescued by his helper monkey.
He eventually collapses but is once again rescued, this time by a mysterious stranger who turns out to represent some happy people who live in the Narrows at Zion (though the movie was actually filmed in Australia). This canyon is filled with horribly noisy children and others who all believe that Max is their messiah. He handily destroys their worldview.
He punches a woman in the face and for some reason isn't immediately killed.
Of course she runs away anyway and a cohort of happies ends up back in Bartertown. They kidnap Bartertown's brain-person and the inevitable showdown in the middle of the desert ensues.
The good guys win, but Max ends up wandering around in the desert, and whose baby is that?
There you have it. You may now skip watching it, and you may thank me now or later. However, I recommend that you review it because Tina Turner will always be hott. Of course, I was looking forward to the appearance of Grace Jones at the end of the movie, but apparently I was confused, as she never showed up. I don't think I've ever seen Conan the Destroyer, nor do I think I ever want to, so I don't know what kind of short-circuit happened in my brain on that one. :/
This has been a movie review.
After I review the Last Thanksgiving Ever coming up before week's end, it will be time to turn my attention once again to young adult fiction.
This weekend is historically the busiest travel weekend in America. Be safe out there: make sure your apocalypse doesn't happen sooner than it has to.
I'm just gonna say it once, because it's true, and then I'll drop it for the duration of the world's existence:
I am supposed to be in Peru right now, but I am not.
Lucky for us, Peru is still populated with tourists, and you can read about my friend's adventures there here, where she compare/contrasts independent and group travel. I have a preferred side of that fence, and I am hoping that by the end of her trip, she will be converted completely to my side. Let's keep tabs on her movements in Latin America.
Two more notes before we get down to business, both dealing with your Greater Chicagoland media. Please join me in impatient anticipation of Shiloh's new album by perusing this lite blurb in the Chicago Reader dealing with the record release which we will never get to experience due to pandemic/cataclysm/megaquake/polar reversal. Please ignore the bit about the puppets, and go to the Empty Bottle because I myself cannot, seeing as I have to teach the very next day in North Las Vegas.
And then, from our friends at the NWI Times via my dad:
Sometime over Fall Break, while riding through the corn fields having a fabulous time, I think I heard this song, which may be content-blocked for copyright reasons when you click on it, on a radio station that my clever friends tell their 10-year-old is Radio Disney.
Immediately, I knew that I would watch Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. And take notes. Here's the plot synopsis in case you forgot what an awesome year 1985 actually was.
(A saxophone will come in handy after nuclear annihilation.)
Max (12-year-old Mel Gibson with luxurious hair) wanders into Bartertown to retrieve his stolen car and makes a bad deal with Queen Tina Turner. At the last moment, he refuses to kill his opponent in the Thunderdome and is sentenced to gulag (ohhh, the 80s!). Halfway there, his horse collapses and is swallowed in a sandstorm, at which point he is rescued by his helper monkey.
He eventually collapses but is once again rescued, this time by a mysterious stranger who turns out to represent some happy people who live in the Narrows at Zion (though the movie was actually filmed in Australia). This canyon is filled with horribly noisy children and others who all believe that Max is their messiah. He handily destroys their worldview.
He punches a woman in the face and for some reason isn't immediately killed.
Of course she runs away anyway and a cohort of happies ends up back in Bartertown. They kidnap Bartertown's brain-person and the inevitable showdown in the middle of the desert ensues.
The good guys win, but Max ends up wandering around in the desert, and whose baby is that?
There you have it. You may now skip watching it, and you may thank me now or later. However, I recommend that you review it because Tina Turner will always be hott. Of course, I was looking forward to the appearance of Grace Jones at the end of the movie, but apparently I was confused, as she never showed up. I don't think I've ever seen Conan the Destroyer, nor do I think I ever want to, so I don't know what kind of short-circuit happened in my brain on that one. :/
This has been a movie review.
After I review the Last Thanksgiving Ever coming up before week's end, it will be time to turn my attention once again to young adult fiction.
This weekend is historically the busiest travel weekend in America. Be safe out there: make sure your apocalypse doesn't happen sooner than it has to.
Thursday, November 15, 2012
The Four Horsemen of Vegaspocalypse
1. A sign on Craig Rd. reading, "Were gonna miss u juicy." Ugh. Functional literacy must be SO overrated.
2. The Great Internet Streaming Fail 2012.
3. The devastatingly handsome pizza delivery boy was sleepily slurring his speech tonight.
4. Southern Nevada will get a new area code in 2014.
Aside from all that, the Wedding at the End of the World was a splendid bacchanalia of debauchery. Check facebook for photos in the coming months. The happy honeymooners are hanging out here, in advance of the world blowing up:
Consider that a mental health moment.
Every time I passenge (I suppose the correct word is "pass") through rural Indiana, I am blown away. Mostly because of the impressive collections of gigantic windmills that interrupt the tranquil flatness of the horizon. I gasp and squeal and am seized with delight. And then we ride past the inevitable giant banner that says, "Pray and fast to end abortion," or "No mask can hide your sin from God," and I remember that I'm in the middle of fire and brimstone.
Yesterday I received this image from the bride:
and I think that explains a lot. It says, "Hell and destruction are never full, so the eyes of man are never satisfied."
Neither are the eyes of children with Christmas toy catalogs in their paws. Now that we pulled off the wedding (or, as Beth's girls would say, "rocked it!"), and Peru is canceled...'tis the season. The million dollar question is: should we bother buying Christmas gifts? I mean, given the Pandemic that's trending on the Doomsday Dashboard, what's the point?
In the spirit of full disclosure, I went ahead and booked my Winter Break ticket. I believe in keeping all of my options as open as possible. More about that on Tuesday.
This short (happy Veteran's Day!) week has gone by crash-boom-bang, and I have an appointment with favorite pajamas. I'm going to turn myself into a zombie of the screen variety and save my pandemic/economic crisis/2012 cataclysm worries for another evening.
2. The Great Internet Streaming Fail 2012.
3. The devastatingly handsome pizza delivery boy was sleepily slurring his speech tonight.
4. Southern Nevada will get a new area code in 2014.
Aside from all that, the Wedding at the End of the World was a splendid bacchanalia of debauchery. Check facebook for photos in the coming months. The happy honeymooners are hanging out here, in advance of the world blowing up:
Consider that a mental health moment.
Every time I passenge (I suppose the correct word is "pass") through rural Indiana, I am blown away. Mostly because of the impressive collections of gigantic windmills that interrupt the tranquil flatness of the horizon. I gasp and squeal and am seized with delight. And then we ride past the inevitable giant banner that says, "Pray and fast to end abortion," or "No mask can hide your sin from God," and I remember that I'm in the middle of fire and brimstone.
Yesterday I received this image from the bride:
and I think that explains a lot. It says, "Hell and destruction are never full, so the eyes of man are never satisfied."
Neither are the eyes of children with Christmas toy catalogs in their paws. Now that we pulled off the wedding (or, as Beth's girls would say, "rocked it!"), and Peru is canceled...'tis the season. The million dollar question is: should we bother buying Christmas gifts? I mean, given the Pandemic that's trending on the Doomsday Dashboard, what's the point?
In the spirit of full disclosure, I went ahead and booked my Winter Break ticket. I believe in keeping all of my options as open as possible. More about that on Tuesday.
This short (happy Veteran's Day!) week has gone by crash-boom-bang, and I have an appointment with favorite pajamas. I'm going to turn myself into a zombie of the screen variety and save my pandemic/economic crisis/2012 cataclysm worries for another evening.
Wednesday, November 7, 2012
Election Apocalypse?
Nah.
Sadly, again with the Jakob Dylan...I can't find a downloadable electoral map anywhere online that I can rip off and glue here.
I was sharing with my students today how I remember the election of 2000 and staying up until 2 a.m. in a hotel room in the rural underbelly of one of the Midwestern states. My coworker and I, being wherever we were for a regional conference, finally fell asleep and waited until the next day to find out that Al Gore had conceded the election to GWB. I was shocked at how quickly it was over last night. I mostly avoided the hype out of a desire to soak up the apocalypse as completely as possible, but I did watch various coverages of the election returns on the youtube election hub. And yes. I, too, enjoyed Diane Sawyer's display.
Many thanks to a faraway cousin of mine for posting the following as his facebook status:
"All of this political griping is ridiculous! Did you all forget the world is ending next month!"
And that's how I've been feeling about the whole election. Of course, I'm an issue voter and I have issues, so my decision was made a long time ago.
Too bad about the map. I did find something else to rip off and glue:
During Halloween staycation in North Las Vegas (during which, I must say, there were a gaggle of ghouls of the "terminally cute" variety!), I caught just a glimpse of Doomsday Preppers on the National Geographic channel. Although I have mentioned it in this blog before, lamenting that I cannot watch it, but following the Doomsday Dashboard with wild abandon...the best part was making fun of the preppers with Miss Gokey.
Interesting that mega-earthquakes are only trending at 15% on the Dashboard tonight, given that the Guatemalan president has announced 48 deaths resulting from the 7-and-a-half quake that hit San Marcos today.
Speaking of Halloween, Jodi sent me an interesting article about a real-life military training exercise which was of course in the beautiful locale of San Diego. Apparently, the soldiers and sailors took part in a zombie apocalypse exercise. The president of the Halo, Corp. security company that was running the exercise (sounds a little bit Resident Evil, no? Umbrella Corporation, anyone?) said that news of the simulated zombie invasion, useful because in many ways zombie actions replicate terrorist actions (zombies are terrorists!), invited calls from "whackjobs." Haha. You can read about it here.
That's about all I can say about the end of the world tonight. I have a lot of work to do that has nothing to do with apocalypse skills and everything to do with teaching strategies and the manipulation of the minds of little ones. By little, of course, I mean 14 years old.
I *do* have this, courtesy of the Northwest Indiana Times via my dad:
Creepy, huh? Don't worry, there's more where this one comes from.
Keep me apprised of any new developments in your own preparations, and I'll do the same.
Sadly, again with the Jakob Dylan...I can't find a downloadable electoral map anywhere online that I can rip off and glue here.
I was sharing with my students today how I remember the election of 2000 and staying up until 2 a.m. in a hotel room in the rural underbelly of one of the Midwestern states. My coworker and I, being wherever we were for a regional conference, finally fell asleep and waited until the next day to find out that Al Gore had conceded the election to GWB. I was shocked at how quickly it was over last night. I mostly avoided the hype out of a desire to soak up the apocalypse as completely as possible, but I did watch various coverages of the election returns on the youtube election hub. And yes. I, too, enjoyed Diane Sawyer's display.
Many thanks to a faraway cousin of mine for posting the following as his facebook status:
"All of this political griping is ridiculous! Did you all forget the world is ending next month!"
And that's how I've been feeling about the whole election. Of course, I'm an issue voter and I have issues, so my decision was made a long time ago.
Too bad about the map. I did find something else to rip off and glue:
Interesting that mega-earthquakes are only trending at 15% on the Dashboard tonight, given that the Guatemalan president has announced 48 deaths resulting from the 7-and-a-half quake that hit San Marcos today.
Speaking of Halloween, Jodi sent me an interesting article about a real-life military training exercise which was of course in the beautiful locale of San Diego. Apparently, the soldiers and sailors took part in a zombie apocalypse exercise. The president of the Halo, Corp. security company that was running the exercise (sounds a little bit Resident Evil, no? Umbrella Corporation, anyone?) said that news of the simulated zombie invasion, useful because in many ways zombie actions replicate terrorist actions (zombies are terrorists!), invited calls from "whackjobs." Haha. You can read about it here.
That's about all I can say about the end of the world tonight. I have a lot of work to do that has nothing to do with apocalypse skills and everything to do with teaching strategies and the manipulation of the minds of little ones. By little, of course, I mean 14 years old.
I *do* have this, courtesy of the Northwest Indiana Times via my dad:
Creepy, huh? Don't worry, there's more where this one comes from.
Keep me apprised of any new developments in your own preparations, and I'll do the same.
Thursday, November 1, 2012
Don Quixote says, "alea iacta est."
Just now, I peeled myself up from the awesome leather couch and began crossing toward the Marco's pizza box when Miss Gokey happened upon me and noticed that I was gasping and crying.
That's right, kids. I just finished re-reading Going Bovine.
I have received quite a bit of submission fodder in e- and regular mail, but since I'm here enjoying a staycation in a gated neighborhood in North Las Vegas, and the submission fodder is on the east side where I live, it will have to wait, and I will have a built-in post for Tuesday. Until then, my five loyal readers have to deal with a series of text messages I received today along with my weird literary grief.
Although one text message in the series I read at lunchtime eloquently enumerated items that the sender hated at that moment in time, it was an "I hate everything" message. We all have our days. My previously mentioned "heterosexual life partner" says, "You can never go home again." Sometimes the die is cast, and we must trust when we look in the mirror that we are where we need to be to learn whatever lesson we need to learn. As I read the message, I came to the conclusion that it's not about the boss, and it's really not about the clients, either. It's about me. It's about each of us. What can *I* learn today?
I understand:
When it comes to reading materials, tastes are highly personal. I would hate to love Going Bovine as passionately as I do, and then suggest it to you only for you to hate it as much as I love it.
With so many brilliant minds out there composing new art for us to consume, why return to an old favorite?
A second reading of a favorite book always teaches a different lesson than reading #1.
Although...I'm fairly sure I've liberally quoted these exact same words from Libba Bray at some previous point in time. Read it now with an "apocalypse" flavor.
"Maybe there's a heaven, like they say, a place where everything we've ever done is noted and recorded, weighed on the big karma scales. Maybe not. Maybe this whole thing is just a giant experiment run by aliens who find our human hijinks amusing. Or maybe we're an abandoned project started by a deity who checked out a long time ago, but we're still hard-wired to believe, to try to make meaning out of the seemingly random. Maybe we're all part of the same unconscious stew, dreaming the same dreams, hoping the same hopes, needing the same connection, trying to find it, missing, trying again - each of us playing our parts in the others' plotlines, just one big ball of human yarn tangled up together..."
November is National Novel Writing Month. May it produce for someone, somewhere, another Cameron Smith on whose journey we can ride along. It may be the last National Novel Writing Month ever. So...if you've ever wanted to write a novel, tonight is a good time to get started by typing your first 2,000 words. 2,000 words a day will earn you a "finished" badge, which is something that I've never gotten. November is, after all, smack in the middle of the confusion of quarter 2 on the front lines of public education in America.
Now, after all of this re-visiting, it's time to kick it into gear. I have a kit to prepare for the girl who hates everything (at least for a moment in time). This is because, in the words of some nonfiction writer whose books I've never read (named Ian Frazier), "Every once in a while, people need to be in the presence of things that are really far away."
FREE THE SNOW GLOBES.
That's right, kids. I just finished re-reading Going Bovine.
I have received quite a bit of submission fodder in e- and regular mail, but since I'm here enjoying a staycation in a gated neighborhood in North Las Vegas, and the submission fodder is on the east side where I live, it will have to wait, and I will have a built-in post for Tuesday. Until then, my five loyal readers have to deal with a series of text messages I received today along with my weird literary grief.
Although one text message in the series I read at lunchtime eloquently enumerated items that the sender hated at that moment in time, it was an "I hate everything" message. We all have our days. My previously mentioned "heterosexual life partner" says, "You can never go home again." Sometimes the die is cast, and we must trust when we look in the mirror that we are where we need to be to learn whatever lesson we need to learn. As I read the message, I came to the conclusion that it's not about the boss, and it's really not about the clients, either. It's about me. It's about each of us. What can *I* learn today?
I understand:
When it comes to reading materials, tastes are highly personal. I would hate to love Going Bovine as passionately as I do, and then suggest it to you only for you to hate it as much as I love it.
With so many brilliant minds out there composing new art for us to consume, why return to an old favorite?
A second reading of a favorite book always teaches a different lesson than reading #1.
Although...I'm fairly sure I've liberally quoted these exact same words from Libba Bray at some previous point in time. Read it now with an "apocalypse" flavor.
"Maybe there's a heaven, like they say, a place where everything we've ever done is noted and recorded, weighed on the big karma scales. Maybe not. Maybe this whole thing is just a giant experiment run by aliens who find our human hijinks amusing. Or maybe we're an abandoned project started by a deity who checked out a long time ago, but we're still hard-wired to believe, to try to make meaning out of the seemingly random. Maybe we're all part of the same unconscious stew, dreaming the same dreams, hoping the same hopes, needing the same connection, trying to find it, missing, trying again - each of us playing our parts in the others' plotlines, just one big ball of human yarn tangled up together..."
November is National Novel Writing Month. May it produce for someone, somewhere, another Cameron Smith on whose journey we can ride along. It may be the last National Novel Writing Month ever. So...if you've ever wanted to write a novel, tonight is a good time to get started by typing your first 2,000 words. 2,000 words a day will earn you a "finished" badge, which is something that I've never gotten. November is, after all, smack in the middle of the confusion of quarter 2 on the front lines of public education in America.
Now, after all of this re-visiting, it's time to kick it into gear. I have a kit to prepare for the girl who hates everything (at least for a moment in time). This is because, in the words of some nonfiction writer whose books I've never read (named Ian Frazier), "Every once in a while, people need to be in the presence of things that are really far away."
FREE THE SNOW GLOBES.
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
Blah de Blog
1. The Thanksgiving trip to Peru with Krista (who has been busy finishing all sorts of projects you should read about) is canceled for me. I feel bad for flaking out on her, especially when it involves a place that would be so cool to see in advance of the apocalypse. I now have a more vested interest in hoping the Maya are wrong, so that I can live to get another stamp in my shiny new passport with the uncracked spine.
2. There was a big gnarly hurricane on the east coast a few days ago. I find it difficult to blog about the apocalypse with an actual one in progress for some people, while I am personally insulated from it in the mostly-loving embrace of the Mojave Desert, where I lectured today about our ancestral natives and how they used cliffs for their homes. I trust that the photos you'll see here on the Orlando Sentinel site are real, because I found the story from Tom Skilling's weather page.
3. I must keep this post short, as I have a date with the end of Going Bovine (read 2) right now.
She must have known that it was Tuesday, because Miss Gokey sent me the following quote in a text message this morning:
"The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be the beginning."
It is that thought with which I leave you on this fine evening, loyal readers.
2. There was a big gnarly hurricane on the east coast a few days ago. I find it difficult to blog about the apocalypse with an actual one in progress for some people, while I am personally insulated from it in the mostly-loving embrace of the Mojave Desert, where I lectured today about our ancestral natives and how they used cliffs for their homes. I trust that the photos you'll see here on the Orlando Sentinel site are real, because I found the story from Tom Skilling's weather page.
3. I must keep this post short, as I have a date with the end of Going Bovine (read 2) right now.
She must have known that it was Tuesday, because Miss Gokey sent me the following quote in a text message this morning:
"The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be the beginning."
It is that thought with which I leave you on this fine evening, loyal readers.
Friday, October 26, 2012
(Re)visiting
Now, here at the end of October (only one more post after this one in my favorite month), it's time to regroup and reflect, generally going over our memories and getting our lives in order for the coming of the theoretical end of the world. Get ready for the most shameless self-hyperlinking ever.
I laughed. I cried. I re-read the first 147 pages of Going Bovine on the airplane.
"'These are not the grades you wish to assign me, teacherling. You will reach for a higher letter or taste the righteous mojo of my Ultimate Peace Weapon.'"
That was one of the parts where I laughed. I cried on page 105 of the paperback, and I won't quote that part because, in the words of one of my bosses, "I don't want you to cry. I want you to kick a$$."
Now for some updates on recent blog posts:
1. In the chars post, I mentioned the 2012 presidential election. When the students saw my sticker proudly displayed, they told me about a series of youtube rap battles between Obama and Romney. Then they were shocked when I told them I actually watched some of them. I forced Jodi to watch one, but will not link it here. There are several different versions. Some are stupid and some are hilarious. Enjoy.
2. In off the top of my head, I blather about interactive notebooks. However, last weekend I strongly encouraged students to turn in their notebooks to get an important assignment graded. Most students did, and I was overwhelmed with the amount of reading that I had to do. It took me three four-hour sessions over a span of three days to grade them, and at certain points during the process, I actually fell asleep (beware inappropriate language).
Speaking of falling asleep...
Recently, an easterner I know traveled to SoCal and posted photos on facebook. Being the overly-sensitive type, I got REALLY upset that they didn't call, didn't write, didn't even send a postcard. This was not the traveler's sole and unique fault. It is part of a pattern that has been established for a while. And now, here I am in Indiana, enjoying a moist, cold day in which the multicolored leaves are just beginning to fall from the trees...doing the exact same thing to them.
Despite my obvious hypocrisy and resolution to concentrate on that which I have instead of always focusing on what's missing, it's important to me to be able to say to these people that I now understand and reiterate that my not inviting you does not mean that I don't love you. It doesn't mean that I don't miss you. I doesn't mean that you have fallen off of my Christmas card list.
I located another Sinead O'Connor song called "The Healing Room" from her Faith and Courage album. It's just bizarre enough to still be super-soothing, and to help calm the anxieties of the approaching apocalypse. Look it up if you want.
Well, time to go. Jodi and I are off to find some geocaches, an old hobby of mine that I'd like to revisit just once or twice more before the end.
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Chars
Far be it from me to steal thunder from Don Belt and Jonas Bendiksen's article in National Geographic, but that's what I'm about to do. While searching in vain for some writing-prompt-fodder, I happened upon their story and my jaw dropped.
It's about...
Bangladesh.
I sent the article to the literacy specialist to have her figure out the FK/Lexile/whatever-we're-calling-it-these-days, but the end of the population unit passed before I received any feedback. Therefore, instead of having my students read and mark it for themselves, I verbally paraphrased/summarized it for them, and they were...quiet. I might even say rapt. A teacher's genuine amazement can sometimes do that to children.
Here's a summary of the summary I told the kids, generously peppered with large quoted chunks from the story.
The population of Bangladesh continues to grow, but "climate change (if you believe that sort of thing)" is causing the level of the ocean to eat the coastline. In the meantime, the country's three main rivers are constantly flooding, so, in an
ADAPT OR DIE
mentality, "hundreds of thousands" of people have become char dwellers. A char is a temporary island in the middle of a river. The river floods, and an island (char) appears. When the river floods again, the island disappears and another one pops up downstream. So...all of the people who live on char 1 pack up and haul themselves to char 2. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
Here's a quote:
"Ibrahim Khalilullah has lost track of how many times he's moved. 'Thirty? Forty?' he asks. 'Does it matter?' Actually those figures might be a bit low, as he estimates he's moved about once a year his whole life, and he's now over 60. Somehow, between all that moving, he and his wife raised seven children who 'never missed a meal,' he says proudly."
Abe's house is made of sections that can be disassembled and rebuilt in mere hours, and he always keeps the suitcases and legal documents within arms' reach.
He says: "We're all under pressure, but there's really no point to worry. This is our only option, to move from place to place to place. We farm this land for as long as we can, and then the river washes it away. No matter how much we worry, the ending is always the same."
Other news from Bangladesh: they have implemented a fairly successful grassroots family-planning program, and they have an intentional brain-drain because their main goal is to combat overpopulation by getting people out. The story ends when Bangladesh is compared to a little boy who fell asleep on a median in crazy urban traffic there.
Adapt or die.
This painfully heartwarming and inspirational tale of...well, real-life perennial disaster, can be found here.
In the meantime, since it may be my last chance ever to help my electors choose a president, I figured I would go and vote tonight. Here's proof:
Dear society,
It's about...
Bangladesh.
I sent the article to the literacy specialist to have her figure out the FK/Lexile/whatever-we're-calling-it-these-days, but the end of the population unit passed before I received any feedback. Therefore, instead of having my students read and mark it for themselves, I verbally paraphrased/summarized it for them, and they were...quiet. I might even say rapt. A teacher's genuine amazement can sometimes do that to children.
Here's a summary of the summary I told the kids, generously peppered with large quoted chunks from the story.
The population of Bangladesh continues to grow, but "climate change (if you believe that sort of thing)" is causing the level of the ocean to eat the coastline. In the meantime, the country's three main rivers are constantly flooding, so, in an
ADAPT OR DIE
mentality, "hundreds of thousands" of people have become char dwellers. A char is a temporary island in the middle of a river. The river floods, and an island (char) appears. When the river floods again, the island disappears and another one pops up downstream. So...all of the people who live on char 1 pack up and haul themselves to char 2. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
Here's a quote:
"Ibrahim Khalilullah has lost track of how many times he's moved. 'Thirty? Forty?' he asks. 'Does it matter?' Actually those figures might be a bit low, as he estimates he's moved about once a year his whole life, and he's now over 60. Somehow, between all that moving, he and his wife raised seven children who 'never missed a meal,' he says proudly."
Abe's house is made of sections that can be disassembled and rebuilt in mere hours, and he always keeps the suitcases and legal documents within arms' reach.
He says: "We're all under pressure, but there's really no point to worry. This is our only option, to move from place to place to place. We farm this land for as long as we can, and then the river washes it away. No matter how much we worry, the ending is always the same."
Other news from Bangladesh: they have implemented a fairly successful grassroots family-planning program, and they have an intentional brain-drain because their main goal is to combat overpopulation by getting people out. The story ends when Bangladesh is compared to a little boy who fell asleep on a median in crazy urban traffic there.
Adapt or die.
This painfully heartwarming and inspirational tale of...well, real-life perennial disaster, can be found here.
In the meantime, since it may be my last chance ever to help my electors choose a president, I figured I would go and vote tonight. Here's proof:
Dear society,
Take that.
Love,
Love,
One of the kids who falls asleep on medians.
Thursday, October 18, 2012
Drop, Cover and Hold On!
This post is brought to you by the number, "3."
My #3 goal for the day was, "compose a brilliant blog post." But instead, I forgot to write down the school district's definition of an earthquake and exact steps for conducting an earthquake/evacuation. So, what you read is what you get. I've acquitted myself from being brilliant.
That's right, kids! Today was the day of the Great Nevada Shakeout. The website linked here makes it a thing, and it is, but at the middle-school level it's really nothing more than a duck-and-cover followed by a fire evacuation. I say "fire evacuation" instead of "fire drill" because while making high-pitched whining noises to Miss Gokey about it, she reminded me that my middle school's regular old fire drills, because they entail walking 1/4 mile and gathering on the athletic field, are actually evacuation drills.
Earthquake drill!? But WHY, Ms. H, WHY???
Well, you see, here in Southern Nevada we live on top of a hairy network of tiny normal faults. (Incidentally, we also live on top of 1/6 of the Old Spanish Trail, but that's besides the point.) While not as beautiful or interesting as strike-slip faults like the super-destructive San Andreas, the normal faults have made Nevada #3 in the nation for the number of large earthquakes, according to the Nevada Seismological Laboratory.
Oh, San Andreas...
The worst thing about the San Andreas is that it's not my fault. Heheh.
Speaking of, this band I am connected to by one tenuous little drop of blood JUST TODAY posted a link on soundcloud.com to a song they wrote called, "It's Not My Fault." Learn it. Love it. BUY it (when you can). Oh, San Andreas...(and, ok, that there may have been the stroke of brilliance I was going for.)
Whilst a wav file played over the P.A. (hard to hear above my 38 shuffling advisory students), we all crouched down so that our heads were lower than the tables/desks for sixty seconds. Then the wav file announced, "this drill is now over," and we headed out to the athletic fields.
The burning question that was on all students' minds as we walked to the fields: In the event that an earthquake occurs and the ground is shaking beneath us, why would we leave the building and go strolling around on the shaking ground!? Valid point, tweenage brains, valid point. Answer: we assume that the building is going to fall apart, and that outside will thus be safer.
We may in fact have had a chance of passing the drill...if the gates to the athletic fields hadn't been locked. Let's be honest, though, in real life...
Well, in real life during an earthquake, unless it's huge and large pieces of furniture are flying, the students pretty much just stay in their seats and their eyes get wide until it's over. The teacher (me) puts out their (my) hands in a surfing motion and sort of sways along. I've never experienced an earthquake in Nevada. One happened, but I was oblivious to it. Come to think of it, I was oblivious to the one in Xela, as well, until the students kind of all looked at each other and one of them whimpered. As the students' eyes got wider and wider, the shaking got more vigorous and I was reduced to the surfing stance.
In real life you don't get to participate in a meeting to let you know that there is going to be a "shakeout," so. I forgive the athletic fields for being locked. What's an athletic field to do?
Earthquakes are currently trending at 3% on the Doomsday Dashboard.
I encourage all Nevadans to check out the Seismological Laboratory website for a complete guide to your earthquake preparation. For the rest of you, even the New Yorkers (heheh), I take the liberty of offering you this one little vital piece of info for your kits, which I ripped off from the Seismo Lab. Enjoy!
My #3 goal for the day was, "compose a brilliant blog post." But instead, I forgot to write down the school district's definition of an earthquake and exact steps for conducting an earthquake/evacuation. So, what you read is what you get. I've acquitted myself from being brilliant.
That's right, kids! Today was the day of the Great Nevada Shakeout. The website linked here makes it a thing, and it is, but at the middle-school level it's really nothing more than a duck-and-cover followed by a fire evacuation. I say "fire evacuation" instead of "fire drill" because while making high-pitched whining noises to Miss Gokey about it, she reminded me that my middle school's regular old fire drills, because they entail walking 1/4 mile and gathering on the athletic field, are actually evacuation drills.
Earthquake drill!? But WHY, Ms. H, WHY???
Well, you see, here in Southern Nevada we live on top of a hairy network of tiny normal faults. (Incidentally, we also live on top of 1/6 of the Old Spanish Trail, but that's besides the point.) While not as beautiful or interesting as strike-slip faults like the super-destructive San Andreas, the normal faults have made Nevada #3 in the nation for the number of large earthquakes, according to the Nevada Seismological Laboratory.
Oh, San Andreas...
The worst thing about the San Andreas is that it's not my fault. Heheh.
Speaking of, this band I am connected to by one tenuous little drop of blood JUST TODAY posted a link on soundcloud.com to a song they wrote called, "It's Not My Fault." Learn it. Love it. BUY it (when you can). Oh, San Andreas...(and, ok, that there may have been the stroke of brilliance I was going for.)
Whilst a wav file played over the P.A. (hard to hear above my 38 shuffling advisory students), we all crouched down so that our heads were lower than the tables/desks for sixty seconds. Then the wav file announced, "this drill is now over," and we headed out to the athletic fields.
The burning question that was on all students' minds as we walked to the fields: In the event that an earthquake occurs and the ground is shaking beneath us, why would we leave the building and go strolling around on the shaking ground!? Valid point, tweenage brains, valid point. Answer: we assume that the building is going to fall apart, and that outside will thus be safer.
We may in fact have had a chance of passing the drill...if the gates to the athletic fields hadn't been locked. Let's be honest, though, in real life...
Well, in real life during an earthquake, unless it's huge and large pieces of furniture are flying, the students pretty much just stay in their seats and their eyes get wide until it's over. The teacher (me) puts out their (my) hands in a surfing motion and sort of sways along. I've never experienced an earthquake in Nevada. One happened, but I was oblivious to it. Come to think of it, I was oblivious to the one in Xela, as well, until the students kind of all looked at each other and one of them whimpered. As the students' eyes got wider and wider, the shaking got more vigorous and I was reduced to the surfing stance.
In real life you don't get to participate in a meeting to let you know that there is going to be a "shakeout," so. I forgive the athletic fields for being locked. What's an athletic field to do?
Earthquakes are currently trending at 3% on the Doomsday Dashboard.
I encourage all Nevadans to check out the Seismological Laboratory website for a complete guide to your earthquake preparation. For the rest of you, even the New Yorkers (heheh), I take the liberty of offering you this one little vital piece of info for your kits, which I ripped off from the Seismo Lab. Enjoy!
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
Off the Top of My Head...
If you've been holding your breath for that much-anticipated post about Bangladesh, you'd better exhale. This isn't it. Nope. This is a post with the alternative title,
"How the Interactive Notebook Changed My Life."
Stick with this post, and you'll be rewarded.
The interactive notebook has probably been a thing for decades. I know it's been a thing since I began teaching in 2006. There was a professional development about it in spring 2008 for math teachers, so I borrowed Gen Imhoff's to see if I could adapt it to teaching and learning about the continents of the world.
Gen's notebook, filled with angles and degrees and definitions, was so neat and organized that I knew I could never pull it off. Then I migrated to MHS and quite frankly forgot about the concept. I tried notebooks last year with my Explorations classes (the 8th-grade version of which became, 2nd semester, my "zombie apocalypse team"), but gave it up after three weeks, when they completely disbanded the whole class and repopulated it with different people.
This year I vowed to stick with it. It's an "interactive notebook" because the children are supposed to record their notes in it, then take it home and study/highlight their notes, then bring it back and write summaries 24 hours later. They are also supposed to fill in intervening pages with whatever suits my fancy for them to write. I consider it "interactive" because my thoughtful feedback in the notebooks is the only real interaction these kids get with their frazzled geography teacher.
Last week Wednesday, when my boss came in to formally observe my 5th period class, I didn't realize what we were doing. Instead of working in the notebooks, we were filling out a worksheet. The worksheet is entitled, "The Geography of Oil: Global Interdependence." On Tuesday, the students had mapped the worldwide oil trade by drawing a network of multicolored arrows on a map of the world. On Wednesday, we discussed and answered the writing prompt on the back, "Write a few scenarios for what you and your family would do to meet your needs if the U.S. stopped importing oil." The worksheet specified that we should think about food, shelter, clothing, transportation and communication.
"So basically," one of the students commented, "doomsday preparedness."
Oh, dear. There is Apocalypse Blogging, and then there is Teaching, and the twain aren't supposed to meet. But they did, and we came up with a whole bunch of common-sense approaches to what to do about each of these commodities, ostensibly "at the end of peak oil," but we all know the truth is, "in the apocalypse."
It was a pre-writing activity for an expanded essay/story/manifesto (nobody chose "manifesto," and I was unclear on how exactly to explain it) discussing how the student would realistically deal with one or more of these needs in the event of a fossil-fuel shortage. I had already asked them a similar question as a closure activity on Tuesday, and the answer, across the board, was "WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!" I encouraged the children to write about what would happen on the way to the inevitable truth that, "No one here gets out alive."
Since childhood I have trolled the insides of homes and lockers and backpacks looking for journals to read. As such, the only question that I have to ask myself is why I haven't been assigning journals since day one. Grading them is so instructive. You can tell who is optimistic, who is pessimistic, who plays video games, who has seen what movies (only if you ask, mind you), and you can tailor your conversations with groups based on the information you glean from the notebooks.
Today the children took notes about population and were assigned to take their notebooks home to do the previously-mentioned study/highlight routine. Thus, here is some of what the students came up with, paraphrased and according to the title of this post. I am using the quotation marks lightly. These aren't actual quotes.
"It would suck because students would have to carry all their papers in their hands. There would be no more binders."
"It's amazing how much a tiny fifth grader can get from selling freshly-ripened tomatoes!"
"Our life now is called a 'living nightmare.' We are homeschooled and eat only canned food that we had stored."
"We wash our clothes by hand and we learned to sew and knit."
"He made a list of everything that he would need and then began searching the house top to bottom for supplies (In this case, the "he" in question is the front man in a famous boy band)."
"The entire town of Searchlight was blown off the map, so people had to wait for ambulances to come and take them to Vegas."
"His dad started inventing things like electric stoves and solar cars (I actually had a talk with this child today about electric stoves. Don't worry)."
"Scientists are searching for alternatives." This one was COMMON. These kids have unwavering faith in science.
"Scientists found the answer two weeks later (this from a student whose character fell into a 7-month coma after injuring his head in a football game). Water became the new oil."
"Our way of life is not the way it used to be. It's hard. But life isn't over. It's just different."
So there you have it. The odd-yet-hopeful ramblings of tweens.
Today they asked me who I'm voting for. Of course I told them I will never tell. Today's bellringer was, "Aren't natural resources there for humans to find and use up?"
I ranted about the fact that we were clever enough to dig up black rocks from the ground and turn them into electric light. Won't we be clever enough to invent something new when the black rocks are gone? They all stared at me blankly. They're not used to hearing that argument. In fact, it's hard to google and find ANYONE making that argument. So, if you know of someone, let me know.
More news from middle school this Thursday.
Consider yourselves duly warned.
"How the Interactive Notebook Changed My Life."
Stick with this post, and you'll be rewarded.
The interactive notebook has probably been a thing for decades. I know it's been a thing since I began teaching in 2006. There was a professional development about it in spring 2008 for math teachers, so I borrowed Gen Imhoff's to see if I could adapt it to teaching and learning about the continents of the world.
Gen's notebook, filled with angles and degrees and definitions, was so neat and organized that I knew I could never pull it off. Then I migrated to MHS and quite frankly forgot about the concept. I tried notebooks last year with my Explorations classes (the 8th-grade version of which became, 2nd semester, my "zombie apocalypse team"), but gave it up after three weeks, when they completely disbanded the whole class and repopulated it with different people.
This year I vowed to stick with it. It's an "interactive notebook" because the children are supposed to record their notes in it, then take it home and study/highlight their notes, then bring it back and write summaries 24 hours later. They are also supposed to fill in intervening pages with whatever suits my fancy for them to write. I consider it "interactive" because my thoughtful feedback in the notebooks is the only real interaction these kids get with their frazzled geography teacher.
Last week Wednesday, when my boss came in to formally observe my 5th period class, I didn't realize what we were doing. Instead of working in the notebooks, we were filling out a worksheet. The worksheet is entitled, "The Geography of Oil: Global Interdependence." On Tuesday, the students had mapped the worldwide oil trade by drawing a network of multicolored arrows on a map of the world. On Wednesday, we discussed and answered the writing prompt on the back, "Write a few scenarios for what you and your family would do to meet your needs if the U.S. stopped importing oil." The worksheet specified that we should think about food, shelter, clothing, transportation and communication.
"So basically," one of the students commented, "doomsday preparedness."
Oh, dear. There is Apocalypse Blogging, and then there is Teaching, and the twain aren't supposed to meet. But they did, and we came up with a whole bunch of common-sense approaches to what to do about each of these commodities, ostensibly "at the end of peak oil," but we all know the truth is, "in the apocalypse."
It was a pre-writing activity for an expanded essay/story/manifesto (nobody chose "manifesto," and I was unclear on how exactly to explain it) discussing how the student would realistically deal with one or more of these needs in the event of a fossil-fuel shortage. I had already asked them a similar question as a closure activity on Tuesday, and the answer, across the board, was "WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!" I encouraged the children to write about what would happen on the way to the inevitable truth that, "No one here gets out alive."
Since childhood I have trolled the insides of homes and lockers and backpacks looking for journals to read. As such, the only question that I have to ask myself is why I haven't been assigning journals since day one. Grading them is so instructive. You can tell who is optimistic, who is pessimistic, who plays video games, who has seen what movies (only if you ask, mind you), and you can tailor your conversations with groups based on the information you glean from the notebooks.
Today the children took notes about population and were assigned to take their notebooks home to do the previously-mentioned study/highlight routine. Thus, here is some of what the students came up with, paraphrased and according to the title of this post. I am using the quotation marks lightly. These aren't actual quotes.
"It would suck because students would have to carry all their papers in their hands. There would be no more binders."
"It's amazing how much a tiny fifth grader can get from selling freshly-ripened tomatoes!"
"Our life now is called a 'living nightmare.' We are homeschooled and eat only canned food that we had stored."
"We wash our clothes by hand and we learned to sew and knit."
"He made a list of everything that he would need and then began searching the house top to bottom for supplies (In this case, the "he" in question is the front man in a famous boy band)."
"The entire town of Searchlight was blown off the map, so people had to wait for ambulances to come and take them to Vegas."
"His dad started inventing things like electric stoves and solar cars (I actually had a talk with this child today about electric stoves. Don't worry)."
"Scientists are searching for alternatives." This one was COMMON. These kids have unwavering faith in science.
"Scientists found the answer two weeks later (this from a student whose character fell into a 7-month coma after injuring his head in a football game). Water became the new oil."
"Our way of life is not the way it used to be. It's hard. But life isn't over. It's just different."
So there you have it. The odd-yet-hopeful ramblings of tweens.
Today they asked me who I'm voting for. Of course I told them I will never tell. Today's bellringer was, "Aren't natural resources there for humans to find and use up?"
I ranted about the fact that we were clever enough to dig up black rocks from the ground and turn them into electric light. Won't we be clever enough to invent something new when the black rocks are gone? They all stared at me blankly. They're not used to hearing that argument. In fact, it's hard to google and find ANYONE making that argument. So, if you know of someone, let me know.
More news from middle school this Thursday.
Consider yourselves duly warned.
Thursday, October 11, 2012
Three Babies: The Enduring Sinead
This post isn't anybody's business. I shouldn't even post it. So. If you choose to go on this journey with me, do your best to let it be whatever thing it is.
(Incidentally, I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got was one of the first two CDs that I owned, my cassette tape of the same having been ruined during our annual class field trip to the Indiana Dunes. The tape got filled with sand and never played again. But that's a snippet having nothing to do with anything, within a post we can accuse of having the same problem.)
The woman who calls herself my "heterosexual life partner" because our friendship is devastatingly codependent refers to her students as her babies, which is totally cool for her. I do not refer to mine that way, because for the past 22.5 years my brain has been under the profound influence of the potentially-disgusting, definitely-depressing and infinitely soothing song "Three Babies." The song says:
"...for myself/I ask no one else/will be mother/to these three."
I also have this thing about the Whole Child and personal agency and besides, who could possibly take on the burden of having (roughly) 1,477 babies in just 6.5 short years? Of course that's impossible. Not all of the children make that kind of an impression. It is my hope that they make their impressions on other teachers, so that there will always be a mentor who is cheerleading silently for them from their own personal sidelines.
"and of course/I'm like a wild horse/but there's no other way/I could be."
Last night was our school's Hispanic Fest. I invited Gokey to come and eat nachos with meh, but she was already en route to Faith Lutheran to watch a soccer game.
*slight onset of social anxiety*
I sent a message to my former student aide, C1, and invited him.
Gokey doesn't tweet much, but she is brilliant when she does, and there's a particular tweet from 4/27/11 which reads, "Hmm...not enough time to do anything yet too much time to do nothing." That was the situation in which I found myself yesterday afternoon, so I decided to grab some McDonald's and joyride around the parking lot until I had burned enough time to feel comfortable returning to school for Hispanic Fest. I was in charge of the between-entertainers playlist and also the selling of water and pop.
"Each of these/my three babies I/was not willing to leave..."
I got my food and sat gobbling french fries whilst trolling the social medias and listening to my special playlist entitled, "My Commute Sucks Even Harder Than It Ever Has Before EVER." The last song on the playlist is One Republic's "Good Life." Seeing as this was the song that was played as we mourners filed out of my Key Club advisee Stephan Ripsom(1991-2011)'s funeral on January 6, 2012, I oscillate between it making me feel joyful that he lived and that I knew him and it making me gasp and cry because he doesn't anymore and I never will again.
"Each of these/my three babies/I was not willing to leave
Though I tried/I blasphemed and denied/I know
They will be returned to me."
Except of course the one that won't.
And every day I look to find the thing about each kid that will make it OK that they still get to live and learn while he does not.
I made my way back to Hispanic Fest and soon received a text from C1 that he was on his way. He didn't go to the middle school where I teach. He went to a different one with the exact same footprint. One where I have never taught, but maybe next year...LOL hahahahahahaha. My heart was warmed that he and his devastatingly codependent friend (or "girlfriend," whichever) would choose to spend an hour with their former teacher.
After about 10 minutes of this hour had passed, in walked another former student, C2, with his little brother and his girlfriend. (C2's girlfriend, not the tiny brother's.) There was an initial awkward moment of shuffling around (to hug or not to hug?), then finally the hug, and then a questioning process like pulling teeth to try to get at what we'd both been up to in the intervening two years. "I heard that you were here, but I didn't know..."
It probably wasn't him, it was probably me. C2 ran away and went off to experience Hispanic Fest while C1 stayed and said the words that every teacher longs to hear from her grown man of a once-upon-a-student: "What should I do with my life?" The contrast was instructive. As student aide, it was C1's job to clean up my mess, comfort me when I was in tears, and calm me in my panic. Once, I even put him in the extremely awkward position of having to type in my One True Password, which at the time was an eloquent string of words no minor should have ever had to see, much less type.
C2's helping role in my life was different, and it occurs to me just now that it is still his charge cord that I use to juice up my iPod, which occasionally sings to me,
"[you] proved things I never believed..."
I can only hope these two are happy, and that I was once able to help them through their own daily crises, as well.
I am happy to announce that C1 does not blame me for his struggles in his college science class, and I'm proud to say he's doing well in his politics class.
So there you are. The mixed-up story of three of my grown-up "babies," converging in the rainy quad of my current place of employ. I am beginning to suspect the quad may be a vortex.
Somewhere in this jumble, there has to be an apocalypse. And so I pull my own lessons from it but deny you them, therefore offering to you personal agency as a Whole Child of the Universe. Don't expect the agency I give you to last long. Despite this rant and others, I'm still committed to my previous resolution: "Give the people what they pay for." Next time...Bangladesh. Maybe.
"no longer mad like a horse/
I'm still wild but not lost/
from the thing that I've/
chosen to be."
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Le Vent Fera Craquer Les Branches
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Here's that image. Just so you know...it is currently my favorite month of the year.
Friday, October 5, 2012
Memoriam
"Social media executors" are a new trend.
???
I'm glad you asked! A "social media executor" is the person you designate to preside over/dispose of your social media accounts in the event of your untimely death. Here's a nice short video about it. Something to think about in the unlikely event that we die off in the 1st phase and our loved ones live on to the 2nd or 3rd. I say "unlikely" because, after all, we're the beastiest people we know, so...
This post...did not start out being what it is. The event that inspires it wasn't even something I'd planned to blog about, but being so far behind after having skipped a week, I thought the large sheets of foam core created an apocalyptic landscape in Krista's house.
When Krista asked me if I wanted to be a model for a new style of photography that she is trying, I was excited for the opportunity because I have loved her photos since way back in 2007. It was a double opportunity: I got to sit for a portrait from a very talented photographer, and I also got to support the business of a close friend. Because she is (get ready for a shameless self-hyperlink) brilliant, Krista casually said, "How do you want to be remembered after the end?" And the "Memoriam" post was born.
I am able to paste two of Krista's images of me below because SHE GAVE ME THE PHOTOS FOR CHRISTMAS. The photos can be a Christmas gift due to the following reasons: Krista owns a photography business by which she makes money taking people's photos. Krista is the person that Walgreens is trying to protect when Walgreens says, "Please verify that you took/own these photos and/or have permission to copy them."
A few people on facebook have said that these photos are beautiful, and I agree.
HOWEVER
There are only three aspects of them that portray me the way I would like to be remembered:
1) I have good taste in hair color.
2) I look fantastic in baby blue.
3) I have laugh lines. I love my laugh lines.
If you have ever met me IRL, you know that I have facial flaws like scars and moles and outsized hair follicles and...well, I'm sure I have other unsightly flaws as well.
You will notice that Krista has removed every one of them. She also put makeup on me and styled my hair. Then she painstakingly posed my reluctant limbs.
Is this how I want to be remembered?
Or would I rather be remembered sweaty and gasping at the top of Multnomah Falls, warts and all, with one eye squintier than the other?
Or?
...
(here's a thought)
...
both???
Krista knows all of this about me. As the photo session began coming to an end, she said, "You can at least ACT like you are having fun!" I said, "You know me well enough to know that I can in fact be having lots of fun with my natural scowl on my face!" She said, "And YOU know ME well enough that you know I pick on you." :)
If you are considering having a portrait done, so that those loved ones who mysteriously outlive your beastie self can have a more-perfect-than-you image to remember you by, I sincerely hope that you have a photographer like Krista: someone who knows you well enough to be able to painstakingly pose you.
The latter photo, the one of me having struggled up a one-mile stretch that is probably simple for many, is the one I want those family members who display photos of me to put up in their living rooms. The former photos, where I struggled to relax my fingers and to smile with my eyes, are the ones I want displayed on Krista's website.
They would be a nice memorial to me. But they are a far more appropriate memorial to Krista, along with the portraits of the other five women that she has transformed.
Here was an artist who took a rock and tumbled it to polished.
I think these last two posts of mine have been particularly good. The fact that I skipped a full week hasn't changed, but I consider myself all caught up now. I have an image to introduce you to for last Tuesday's post, but I'll do it next Tuesday and bring you back to your regularly-scheduled Apocalypse Blog. After that, look forward to some amazing information coming out of a little country called Bangladesh.
Until then, love and light, and may you always smile with your eyes.
HOWEVER
There are only three aspects of them that portray me the way I would like to be remembered:
1) I have good taste in hair color.
2) I look fantastic in baby blue.
3) I have laugh lines. I love my laugh lines.
If you have ever met me IRL, you know that I have facial flaws like scars and moles and outsized hair follicles and...well, I'm sure I have other unsightly flaws as well.
You will notice that Krista has removed every one of them. She also put makeup on me and styled my hair. Then she painstakingly posed my reluctant limbs.
Is this how I want to be remembered?
Or would I rather be remembered sweaty and gasping at the top of Multnomah Falls, warts and all, with one eye squintier than the other?
Or?
...
(here's a thought)
...
both???
Krista knows all of this about me. As the photo session began coming to an end, she said, "You can at least ACT like you are having fun!" I said, "You know me well enough to know that I can in fact be having lots of fun with my natural scowl on my face!" She said, "And YOU know ME well enough that you know I pick on you." :)
If you are considering having a portrait done, so that those loved ones who mysteriously outlive your beastie self can have a more-perfect-than-you image to remember you by, I sincerely hope that you have a photographer like Krista: someone who knows you well enough to be able to painstakingly pose you.
The latter photo, the one of me having struggled up a one-mile stretch that is probably simple for many, is the one I want those family members who display photos of me to put up in their living rooms. The former photos, where I struggled to relax my fingers and to smile with my eyes, are the ones I want displayed on Krista's website.
They would be a nice memorial to me. But they are a far more appropriate memorial to Krista, along with the portraits of the other five women that she has transformed.
Here was an artist who took a rock and tumbled it to polished.
I think these last two posts of mine have been particularly good. The fact that I skipped a full week hasn't changed, but I consider myself all caught up now. I have an image to introduce you to for last Tuesday's post, but I'll do it next Tuesday and bring you back to your regularly-scheduled Apocalypse Blog. After that, look forward to some amazing information coming out of a little country called Bangladesh.
Until then, love and light, and may you always smile with your eyes.
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
My Sweet Sweltering Mojave!
It's not Thursday. It's not even Tuesday. Via apathy, distraction, and a brief love affair with German movies, I managed to skip three whole blog posts, even though I swore while leaving Krista's house four days ago that I would attempt to backdate two that very afternoon.
I'm hoping that the magic of the internet will render it impossible for you to REALLY know when this post is being composed. Watch for similar deceptions after the apocalypse!
Speaking of...you may be aware that the Maya calendar ends on 12/21. Coincidentally, this is also the date that my teaching week ends before winter break. Which means that I'll be spending the apocalypse in Vegas. Thus this post's title. As I commuted home this afternoon, the temperature reader in my Subaru reported an outside temp of 102. Weather.com reports that my car exaggerated by 4 degrees. But weather.com has a vested interest in making people feel good. My Subaru does not.
Even if I were spending it in Indiana, however, I would still be warm. The first time I saw the little gadgets I'm posting about, I scoffed at them thinking, "as long as I have a copy of City Life and a baggie full of dryer lint, I can start a fire." And that's true. However, after seeing it work just one time during a trip to Great Basin, I was converted. The firestarter is a much more efficient tool for making and sustaining the force that gives life back to frozen appendages and makes marshmallows toasty, delicious, and possibly carcinogenic.
Here's the process:
1. Buy a fundraising candle from your favorite schoolchild and dig your melon baller out.
2. Fill the cups of a used cardboard egg carton with dryer lint you have previously harvested.
3. Set some water to heat on the stove while you attack the fundraising candle with the melon baller.
4. Pull a tin can from the trash (Vegas) or recycle bin (everywhere else) and get ready to float it in the warming water double-boiler style. (I took the liberty of hyperlinking "double boiler," because I get frustrated when tasks call for materials or ingredients and I have no idea what they are.)
5. Throw the candle shavings into the tin can.
6. Put your heat-resistant glove on and get to melting the wax.
7. Drizzle the melted wax over the lint in the egg carton.
8. Repeat the entire process several times until the wax just holds the lint together, ensuring it won't blow away if it is windy on the mountaintop. *ahem* I mean...if it is windy on the long and winding road you take to wherever it is that you will choose to go on 12/22.
Remember: your new preparedness toys may prove to be fairly useless if you don't take them for a test run. It is also still in the low 100s, so you'll want to do your test run in a place where nights are nice and chilly and you can wear sweaters and hoodies and possibly wool socks and funny hats.
*Flash forward: mountaintop/long, windy road...
When you arrive to the destination where you will build your fire, rip one of the cardboard cups off of the egg carton and position it neatly under your firewood. Because Miss Gokey made a carton full of firestarters in a demonstration lesson, perfectly integrating the Components of an Effective Lesson in an I-do-we-do-you-do scenario, we had plenty of firestarters and I used three of them along with a trusty Bic (because we've come to the time of our last year ever when it is prudent to conserve our magnesium, having practiced and verified that we can indeed use it) to come up with this:
while we enjoyed this:
(them's some Doritos @ 8,000 ft!)
and gazed upon this:
So, although the impending end of the world seems all-bad, preparing for it doesn't have to be. Stay toasty warm (or cool, if, like me, you're sitting on a desert patio tonight) out there, loyal readers!
I'm hoping that the magic of the internet will render it impossible for you to REALLY know when this post is being composed. Watch for similar deceptions after the apocalypse!
Speaking of...you may be aware that the Maya calendar ends on 12/21. Coincidentally, this is also the date that my teaching week ends before winter break. Which means that I'll be spending the apocalypse in Vegas. Thus this post's title. As I commuted home this afternoon, the temperature reader in my Subaru reported an outside temp of 102. Weather.com reports that my car exaggerated by 4 degrees. But weather.com has a vested interest in making people feel good. My Subaru does not.
Even if I were spending it in Indiana, however, I would still be warm. The first time I saw the little gadgets I'm posting about, I scoffed at them thinking, "as long as I have a copy of City Life and a baggie full of dryer lint, I can start a fire." And that's true. However, after seeing it work just one time during a trip to Great Basin, I was converted. The firestarter is a much more efficient tool for making and sustaining the force that gives life back to frozen appendages and makes marshmallows toasty, delicious, and possibly carcinogenic.
Here's the process:
1. Buy a fundraising candle from your favorite schoolchild and dig your melon baller out.
3. Set some water to heat on the stove while you attack the fundraising candle with the melon baller.
4. Pull a tin can from the trash (Vegas) or recycle bin (everywhere else) and get ready to float it in the warming water double-boiler style. (I took the liberty of hyperlinking "double boiler," because I get frustrated when tasks call for materials or ingredients and I have no idea what they are.)
5. Throw the candle shavings into the tin can.
6. Put your heat-resistant glove on and get to melting the wax.
7. Drizzle the melted wax over the lint in the egg carton.
8. Repeat the entire process several times until the wax just holds the lint together, ensuring it won't blow away if it is windy on the mountaintop. *ahem* I mean...if it is windy on the long and winding road you take to wherever it is that you will choose to go on 12/22.
Remember: your new preparedness toys may prove to be fairly useless if you don't take them for a test run. It is also still in the low 100s, so you'll want to do your test run in a place where nights are nice and chilly and you can wear sweaters and hoodies and possibly wool socks and funny hats.
*Flash forward: mountaintop/long, windy road...
When you arrive to the destination where you will build your fire, rip one of the cardboard cups off of the egg carton and position it neatly under your firewood. Because Miss Gokey made a carton full of firestarters in a demonstration lesson, perfectly integrating the Components of an Effective Lesson in an I-do-we-do-you-do scenario, we had plenty of firestarters and I used three of them along with a trusty Bic (because we've come to the time of our last year ever when it is prudent to conserve our magnesium, having practiced and verified that we can indeed use it) to come up with this:
while we enjoyed this:
and gazed upon this:
Thursday, September 20, 2012
Can We Talk About the Weather?
Using NLV and Las Vegas's brilliant network of surface roads, I was able to meet up with Krista tonight, because apparently we are planning a trip together! I refuse to tell you anything about it until it happens (unless you already know about it), because it will be really good blog fodder and I want your anticipation to build all the way up through Thanksgiving. I bring this up because at the end of our visit/planning session, we discussed how late our blogs have been posting recently.
On my way home, I stopped at my trusty CVS for provisions and hair dye. They were out of my preferred color, "spiced truffle." They have apparently dropped the truffles in favor of the pralines. I hate fashion. I have met the pralines before. I have a special word for praline. I call it, "orange." Therefore, I'll keep this post short because I have an appointment with something called "medium golden mahogany brown." Seriously!?!? A.k.a. "chocolate carmel." Post-apocalypse I shall use my handy teacher scissors to cut off my hair myself and let my natural gray do its thang with reckless abandon.
Whist trolling the aisles at the CVS, a day late and a dollar short I came upon the September issue of National Geographic. Cover: "What's Up With the Weather?" Photo: Huge tornado that Tom Skilling would call, "ominous."
Apparently, there were 14 extreme weather events in the United States last year, more than there have ever been. Each cost at least a billion dollars in damage, and worldwide the cost of weather-related disasters totaled more than $150 billion.
Signs and omens, kids, signs and omens.
Other news from above-the-fold: avoid armadillos. Apparently they cause leprosy.
I have been put in charge of finding a writing prompt for next week's departmental assessment. There's a video. I used to have a nifty youtube downloader tool, but I no longer have that. You can see the video here, but the children can't. The poor, poor children will have to...ugh!...read. Most students agree that maps will go the way of the dinosaurs. Most students don't believe in the upcoming zombie apocalypse.
To their credit.
We're going to ask them to write about it.
I hope that they do a good job. Wish us luck.
On my way home, I stopped at my trusty CVS for provisions and hair dye. They were out of my preferred color, "spiced truffle." They have apparently dropped the truffles in favor of the pralines. I hate fashion. I have met the pralines before. I have a special word for praline. I call it, "orange." Therefore, I'll keep this post short because I have an appointment with something called "medium golden mahogany brown." Seriously!?!? A.k.a. "chocolate carmel." Post-apocalypse I shall use my handy teacher scissors to cut off my hair myself and let my natural gray do its thang with reckless abandon.
Whist trolling the aisles at the CVS, a day late and a dollar short I came upon the September issue of National Geographic. Cover: "What's Up With the Weather?" Photo: Huge tornado that Tom Skilling would call, "ominous."
Apparently, there were 14 extreme weather events in the United States last year, more than there have ever been. Each cost at least a billion dollars in damage, and worldwide the cost of weather-related disasters totaled more than $150 billion.
Signs and omens, kids, signs and omens.
Other news from above-the-fold: avoid armadillos. Apparently they cause leprosy.
I have been put in charge of finding a writing prompt for next week's departmental assessment. There's a video. I used to have a nifty youtube downloader tool, but I no longer have that. You can see the video here, but the children can't. The poor, poor children will have to...ugh!...read. Most students agree that maps will go the way of the dinosaurs. Most students don't believe in the upcoming zombie apocalypse.
To their credit.
We're going to ask them to write about it.
I hope that they do a good job. Wish us luck.
Tuesday, September 18, 2012
Clocking Face Time: The Nth Version
MEDIA!!! Is SO distracting!
Case in point #1: today at Office Max. I was waiting to check out, started talking to the magazine rack, and ended up in a coversation with five different patrons of the North Las Vegas store about politics and politicians. Before I got out the door, the conversation had morphed into a debate over the virtues and vices of e-readers.
Case in point #2: I think my speakers just broke. They are making a sound similar to the sound the front passenger-side speaker used to make in my 89 Subaru. Thoughts of my 89 Subaru make me smile. Mentioning her reminds me that to you, readers, I am disembodied typeface possibly created while joyriding around the back of Frenchman Mountain.
Case in point #3: Tomorrow morning is trash pick-up. It's a good time to go through the junk mail pile and throw out all the bridal magazines. I've said it before, bridal shop. Make a note: I'm *NOT* the bride!!!
How, in our plans to prepare for the apocalypse, can we minimize the distractions that present themselves?
AND, dear readers, you can stop reading here if you'd like, the remainder of this post being dedicated once again to the confused psychobabble that has become my m.o. recently...
The point is that I was only in the North Las Vegas Office Max tonight (instead of the one in Charleston Commons, where no similar conversations have ensued) running errands in advance of attending the Division 28N Key Club DCM (monthly meeting) to chaperone the second 1/2 of the meeting with Miss Gokey's Mojave students while she left for her own Parent Night.
So, still and again, I find myself far from my village. You know the village that it takes to raise a child? Or, perhaps it is more apt to say that I live far away from my neighborhood, by which I mean...the people in my neighborhood. Haha. Of course, "far" is relative, and 13 miles never stopped me or anyone I cared about from saving someone broken down on the side of the road 13 miles away.
It occurs to me that I live in North Las Vegas, even though I sleep on the East Side. So, although my presence at the DCM was not strictly necessary, shiny uniforms. New haircuts. New ASL words (I can now say, "like a boss"). Witty banter. A hug. I love all of these things. So...why not?
One year ago, I would never even have considered attending a DCM. In fact, I would not drive onto the district-controlled property surrounding Mojave H.S. Why did I deprive myself for so long? Perhaps the most bitterly contested divorces are just like that.
Many thanks to Mojave Key Club and to Mr. Rael for scheduling Parent Night to coincide with a DCM. In the spirit of optimism, let us assume that we all live to at least the 2nd phase. It will be a difficult healing process. But we can do it. We can come out the other side to hear the old familiar screechy yell, "HOW DO YOU FEEL!?!?!"
No one can take the past away from us, and it is not our right to try to sabotage the future. When the 2nd phase arrives, all we can do is help one another rebuild from the ground up.
Case in point #1: today at Office Max. I was waiting to check out, started talking to the magazine rack, and ended up in a coversation with five different patrons of the North Las Vegas store about politics and politicians. Before I got out the door, the conversation had morphed into a debate over the virtues and vices of e-readers.
Case in point #2: I think my speakers just broke. They are making a sound similar to the sound the front passenger-side speaker used to make in my 89 Subaru. Thoughts of my 89 Subaru make me smile. Mentioning her reminds me that to you, readers, I am disembodied typeface possibly created while joyriding around the back of Frenchman Mountain.
Case in point #3: Tomorrow morning is trash pick-up. It's a good time to go through the junk mail pile and throw out all the bridal magazines. I've said it before, bridal shop. Make a note: I'm *NOT* the bride!!!
How, in our plans to prepare for the apocalypse, can we minimize the distractions that present themselves?
AND, dear readers, you can stop reading here if you'd like, the remainder of this post being dedicated once again to the confused psychobabble that has become my m.o. recently...
The point is that I was only in the North Las Vegas Office Max tonight (instead of the one in Charleston Commons, where no similar conversations have ensued) running errands in advance of attending the Division 28N Key Club DCM (monthly meeting) to chaperone the second 1/2 of the meeting with Miss Gokey's Mojave students while she left for her own Parent Night.
So, still and again, I find myself far from my village. You know the village that it takes to raise a child? Or, perhaps it is more apt to say that I live far away from my neighborhood, by which I mean...the people in my neighborhood. Haha. Of course, "far" is relative, and 13 miles never stopped me or anyone I cared about from saving someone broken down on the side of the road 13 miles away.
It occurs to me that I live in North Las Vegas, even though I sleep on the East Side. So, although my presence at the DCM was not strictly necessary, shiny uniforms. New haircuts. New ASL words (I can now say, "like a boss"). Witty banter. A hug. I love all of these things. So...why not?
One year ago, I would never even have considered attending a DCM. In fact, I would not drive onto the district-controlled property surrounding Mojave H.S. Why did I deprive myself for so long? Perhaps the most bitterly contested divorces are just like that.
Many thanks to Mojave Key Club and to Mr. Rael for scheduling Parent Night to coincide with a DCM. In the spirit of optimism, let us assume that we all live to at least the 2nd phase. It will be a difficult healing process. But we can do it. We can come out the other side to hear the old familiar screechy yell, "HOW DO YOU FEEL!?!?!"
No one can take the past away from us, and it is not our right to try to sabotage the future. When the 2nd phase arrives, all we can do is help one another rebuild from the ground up.
Thursday, September 13, 2012
Teaching and Learning Relationships
Here you have it: the post I've been all cranky about for a good long couple of weeks! Prepare yourselves. It's agonizingly verbose.
Who knows how it will turn out? All I know is this: I survived my 7th Parent Night. The research on this fact is so solid that even the textbooks reflect it: the family is the primary agent of an individual's education. It is also every individual's most important agent of political socialization. Imagine my shock when that smart, quiet kid (who seems like he should be bumped up a level into Accelerated) walked into my classroom with one parent who was definitely totally wasted and another who may or may not have been.
Imagine the opportunity with which I was presented when the ADD 6th grade brother of one of my students marched up to my computer mouse and started playing with the freerice.com game I had projected on the whiteboard. "Is this Hungary?" he asked. "Click it and find out. Yay! It WAS Hungary. Good job!"
"What country is this?"
"How can you find out?"
He clicked it. I turned to his mother and said, "This is kind of how I teach."
The fact of the matter is that by and large, it is only the smart, motivated students whose families will show up for Parent Night.
So imagine my delight when that smart, motivated AVID student walked in holding an 8-month-old little sister with whom he was clearly and obviously totally in love. Delight that multiplied when he plopped her down into the chair where he sits and said, "One day maybe you'll sit right here," and a face-cracking grin spread over her precious lil face.
One day, maybe.
I am presently reminded of an e-mail that I have to send to the counseling office about one of my students. Soon, the school will open up a new section of World Geography and take some of my students away. It is vitally important to me that I get to keep her, because one special long-ago day, her father (whose mere presence in the same room as mine had an obscene talent for inspiring me to cry) put his hand upon my shoulder and said to me, "You are the first teacher I have ever known who has begged for my permission to KEEP a child in a classroom."
The past 35 years of my life have taught me, though, that those things which are vitally important to me are the very things that are likely to be taken away. There was a moment when I chose to try not to let anything be vitally important anymore. It's a script that I'm trying to flip. But in this particular situation, I vow to ride the wave and be okay with the outcome, whatever it may be.
The school day that ended with Parent Night was not the best day in the history of my career, so before the event I dreaded her father coming into my classroom. Surely, without a doubt...I would have burst into tears. Imagine, then, my illogical disappointment when that family was absent from Parent Night.
I respect and value the contribution to my life that certain people who love me have made.
"You have to let it go."
I respect and value the position of letting it go.
But I have much love for those members of my families, bio and chosen, who have agreed to disagree with that remark.
This afternoon I was blessed with a soliloquy from one of my esteemed new colleagues. I shared my heart with him and asked him the million-dollar-question. I have posed it many times before and will pose it many times again. Are we interchangeable parts, or are we unique individual manifestations of the human spirit?
Will the answer matter on the day the world ends?
For those of you who read this who have never been public school teachers, I pose this question: if you had had a different history teacher, would you have turned out to be a different person? The answer, about which I have no clue, has long been a mystery to me. It is an intriguing question.
My new colleague continued by announcing his theory that we would all sink if we didn't have each other.
We are all creative people, drawn to other creative people. This is why we sit around campfires basking in each other's awesomeness, asking each other what OTHER people do when they sit around campfires because let's be honest: clearly, no other campfire-sitters can come anywhere close to being nearly as awesome as we are. But they all ARE, aren't they?
The aforementioned esteemed new colleague shakes his head vigorously when I insist that Rome has fallen and we're headed for the next Dark Ages.
"No way. This is the Pax Romana," he says.
Is it?
Who knows how it will turn out? All I know is this: I survived my 7th Parent Night. The research on this fact is so solid that even the textbooks reflect it: the family is the primary agent of an individual's education. It is also every individual's most important agent of political socialization. Imagine my shock when that smart, quiet kid (who seems like he should be bumped up a level into Accelerated) walked into my classroom with one parent who was definitely totally wasted and another who may or may not have been.
Imagine the opportunity with which I was presented when the ADD 6th grade brother of one of my students marched up to my computer mouse and started playing with the freerice.com game I had projected on the whiteboard. "Is this Hungary?" he asked. "Click it and find out. Yay! It WAS Hungary. Good job!"
"What country is this?"
"How can you find out?"
He clicked it. I turned to his mother and said, "This is kind of how I teach."
The fact of the matter is that by and large, it is only the smart, motivated students whose families will show up for Parent Night.
So imagine my delight when that smart, motivated AVID student walked in holding an 8-month-old little sister with whom he was clearly and obviously totally in love. Delight that multiplied when he plopped her down into the chair where he sits and said, "One day maybe you'll sit right here," and a face-cracking grin spread over her precious lil face.
One day, maybe.
I am presently reminded of an e-mail that I have to send to the counseling office about one of my students. Soon, the school will open up a new section of World Geography and take some of my students away. It is vitally important to me that I get to keep her, because one special long-ago day, her father (whose mere presence in the same room as mine had an obscene talent for inspiring me to cry) put his hand upon my shoulder and said to me, "You are the first teacher I have ever known who has begged for my permission to KEEP a child in a classroom."
The past 35 years of my life have taught me, though, that those things which are vitally important to me are the very things that are likely to be taken away. There was a moment when I chose to try not to let anything be vitally important anymore. It's a script that I'm trying to flip. But in this particular situation, I vow to ride the wave and be okay with the outcome, whatever it may be.
The school day that ended with Parent Night was not the best day in the history of my career, so before the event I dreaded her father coming into my classroom. Surely, without a doubt...I would have burst into tears. Imagine, then, my illogical disappointment when that family was absent from Parent Night.
I respect and value the contribution to my life that certain people who love me have made.
"You have to let it go."
I respect and value the position of letting it go.
But I have much love for those members of my families, bio and chosen, who have agreed to disagree with that remark.
This afternoon I was blessed with a soliloquy from one of my esteemed new colleagues. I shared my heart with him and asked him the million-dollar-question. I have posed it many times before and will pose it many times again. Are we interchangeable parts, or are we unique individual manifestations of the human spirit?
Will the answer matter on the day the world ends?
For those of you who read this who have never been public school teachers, I pose this question: if you had had a different history teacher, would you have turned out to be a different person? The answer, about which I have no clue, has long been a mystery to me. It is an intriguing question.
My new colleague continued by announcing his theory that we would all sink if we didn't have each other.
We are all creative people, drawn to other creative people. This is why we sit around campfires basking in each other's awesomeness, asking each other what OTHER people do when they sit around campfires because let's be honest: clearly, no other campfire-sitters can come anywhere close to being nearly as awesome as we are. But they all ARE, aren't they?
The aforementioned esteemed new colleague shakes his head vigorously when I insist that Rome has fallen and we're headed for the next Dark Ages.
"No way. This is the Pax Romana," he says.
Is it?
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