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.
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
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.
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