Trail Markers

After 12 hours on the road, we are home from our vacation in Maine. Something I love about hiking up there are the cairns that mark the trails on the granite ledges at the top of the mountains in Acadia National Park. I admire the elegant and functional transaction between humans and nature that these deliberately stacked sets of stones represent, and I'm glad for their guidance as well. Furthermore, unlike a modern GPS device, they offer their navigational advice in silence. Much appreciated, cairns.

Persistence of Memory

We’re listening to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on this trip. All of us have read it, but for different reasons we want to re-visit the book. Personally, my motivation is two-fold: One of my brightest students last year read it over and over, assuring me that it was the best book of the series (if not the best ever written!).

The other reason is that when Deathly Hallows was released, I pounded through the book in a little less than 24 hours. At our house we had two copies, one each, and we spent the entire weekend reading and talking and reading. Three years later I find that I don’t have a very good memory of the book.

When I was a teenager, it used to amaze and amuse me how little recall my mother had of the plots of novels we knew she had read. My brother and sister and I mocked her mercilessly for her chronic case of literary amnesia. Of course at that time my brain was like a sponge, and it was easy to remember even the smallest things in minute detail. How could we know that it wouldn’t last?

Like everything about growing older, no matter how much you’ve seen it happen to others or even have come to expect it for yourself, such signs of aging seems incredible when they actually happen to you. Thus the Harry Potter audio book—it’s almost as if I’m experiencing it for the first time, and you know what? My student has an excellent point—it’s a good book.

Dog Years

I read a novel in verse a few years ago called Sharp Teeth, by Toby Barlow. Near the beginning he writes:

Everyone has a dog story to tell...
Each dog marks a section of our lives, and
in the end, we feed them to the dark,
burying them there while we carry on.

Today is my dog's birthday-- she's seven. Seven in people years, seven times seven in dog years. According to that common calculation, she is now older than I am.

Happy Birthday, Isabel.

Pancake Madness

Probably the most popular food item on our vacation has been, not lobster, but pancakes. We found a product called The Batter Blaster at the local Walmart. It is organic pancake mix in a whipped-cream-style can. The boys loved it for the wacky novelty of such a thing, so much so that they have each been motivated to cook their own pancakes for breakfast every morning. Of course they started with wild Maine blueberries, but soon they branched out to chocolate chip, then peanut butter. After that there have been all manor of flap jacks flipped around here this week.

I believe it's possible that The Batter Blaster is kind of a gateway food. Think about it-- once they're hooked on it, all someone has to do is slip them some real homemade pancake batter. Soon they'll be jonesing for pancakes seriously enough to start stirrring up their own batter, and after that it won't be long until they're cooking breakfast for everyone.

Yeah, that's it.

Lights, Camera, Action

It rained again up here yesterday, so we took the boys to see Despicable Me at a local cinema. It was definitely a retro experience, a lot like I remember the movies of my childhood. The theater itself was a simple cinder block structure, hung with some heavy velveteen drapes on the wall. The floor was poured concrete and the seats were no frills-- sensible upholstery over modest padding. They did not go all the way down to the screen, thus preventing that unpleasant neck-craning that is sometimes unavoidable if you arrive late to a popular show. It only cost us $27.50 for all five tickets-- twenty dollars cheaper than it would have been at home. The concession stand was also quite reasonable-- six bucks bought a small drink, a small popcorn, and a box of candy. The small drink really was small, too, far less than the 32 ounces they customarily serve in the theaters near us.

We sat back and watched the trailers, and then just as the feature attraction was to start, the lights came up and the manager announced from the rear of the theater that there was "a situation." We exchanged bemused looks. It turned out that 50 kids from a Y Camp were on their way to see the movie, too, and the manager wondered if folks would be willing to move forward to free fifty seats together. "The kids will really appreciate it," she said. Our audience was quite willing to oblige, so they held the movie, and the kids were seated in a little more than five minutes.

Somehow, I just can't see that happening at home.

Breadwinner

The bread machine I mentioned a couple of days ago has been getting quite a workout. We've had fresh bread every day of our vacation. Back in the 90's, these appliances were super popular and those cube-shaped loaves they turn out were everywhere. Was it the Atkins craze or just staleness that pushed them to the back of the cupboard, like many a crockpot before them? Who can say, but today bread machines are like dodo birds. All of that is prehistory to the teenagers in our family, and judging by their initial fascination with the contraption, I'd say bread machines may be poised for a comeback.

I don't really remember being impressed by the quality of the bread they made back then, and the convenience didn't lure me in, either. I never owned one of the devices. In fact, I was only humoring Josh the other day when we purchased the ingredients for his bread, but I was interested and attentive as he poured them (in the order they were listed, as directed) into the square bucket and snapped it into place before pressing a bunch of beeping buttons, closing the lid, and walking away. And a few hours later, the loaf of garlic herb bread that we sliced and dunked into our soup was pretty good. The next day, I read the other recipes myself, and it has been I who has been dumping and pressing and cooling and wrapping the freshly baked bread cubes ever since.

There is something profoundly gratifying about baking a good loaf of bread. It is sort of magical to take such common ingredients and turn them into food so nourishing and so sustaining. In that respect and to my surprise, the bread machine has not made the experience any less satisfying-- fresh baked bread is fresh baked bread. Whole wheat with raisins, walnuts, and pecans, anyone?

Small Blue Thing

Consider the wild Maine blueberry-- so small, so full of flavor and antioxidants. They are in season right now, countless tiny clusters of them ripe beside the trails and along the granite ledges, inviting hikers to pick and eat the sun-warmed fruit as we climb or descend. Each berry a sweet little burst of tart juice-- they make you stop; they keep you going.

I'm sure no one is keeping track of such things but me, so I'll crow just a little: this is my 500th blog post without missing a single day. Yay for writing!

Pleasant Company

Our godson, Josh, has been spending three or more weeks with us each summer since he was six. At that time, his mom was a single parent working hard and long, and as much as she missed him, those weeks were fun for Josh and a break for her. Over the years we’ve traveled to Maine and California, done Niagara Falls a couple of times, and camped out on Lake Erie. When he was younger, we used to enroll him in a summer program, too. He played soccer, went to roller blade camp, learned to sail, and took art and photography courses. We always try to have a lot of fun whenever he’s around.

Things have changed for his family—his mom has married a great guy and Josh has a younger sister and brother now. At 14, the time he spends with us now is summer tradition, but it’s also a chance for him to be the only child he was for the first 10 years of his life. There are other boys in our family close to his age, but he spends a good amount of his visits in the company of two women n their 40s. We worry that he’ll be bored with us, but so far it’s always worked out.

Take yesterday, for example: we’ve arrived in Maine a couple of days ahead of the other half of our group, which includes the other boys, so the three of us were on our own on a rainy Sunday. The night before, we had established that despite the big flat-screen TV in our rented house, television reception was limited—although we did all enjoy the broadcast of the graduation ceremony for the 15 8th graders at the local grade school. (Yes, we really watched it on public access; it was just the thing after 12 hours in the car and a nice lobster dinner.)

When Josh got up, he surprised us by tuning the radio to a classical music station, which we ended up listening to all day. “The radio is a lot like the TV,” he said, “not many choices.” He had noticed a breadmaker in the kitchen and pulled out the recipe book tucked neatly beneath it and decided to make garlic herb bread to go with the corn chowder we planned for dinner. When there was a break in the weather, we all headed down to our rocky beach, and 84 pieces of sea glass later we declared Josh King of the Beachcombers. And at the end of the day, while the bread baked and the soup simmered, he and Heidi sat side by side knotting colorful embroidery floss into friendship bracelets.

If these don’t seem to be the typical activities of your average baseball playin’ cross-country runnin’ teenaged boy, you must admire a kid so comfortable in his own skin he'll do whatever seems fun at the moment with whomever might be around.

Relax

It's a truism to say that these days it's not enough to work hard, everyone has to play hard, too, especially when on vacation. Rain on the first day of your long-planned trip might be viewed as terrible luck, then. No hiking, no biking, no kayaking, it's even too soggy for shopping the charming streets of that nearby town.

What to do? Today I opt for a rocking chair on the sheltered back porch of our clapboard cape, looking out over Eastern Bay. Someone thoughtfully placed a foot rail about 18 inches above the wide planks of the floor, and the soft, steady rain has chased the mosquitoes away. The mist over the water keeps shifting-- now I see the cove across the way, now not. When visible, the landscape on the other side is all shrouded gray and jagged pine. A loon traces the shore line, diving and surfacing, and a few other birds brave the wet weather, chirping loudly as they dash from the shelter of one tree to the next, and behind it all the sound of falling rain.

The sun is supposed to shine tomorrow, but today is fine, too.

Fingers Crossed

I like to travel and to spend time in other places, but I hate to leave home. I understand the paradox, but it doesn't make it any easier-- our departure is always an ordeal. Today we leave for ten days away-- once the door is locked and we're on the road, all will be well... it's just getting over the threshold that will be a challenge.

Wish us luck.

This Writer Reads

 Last winter I read The Magician's Elephant by Kate DiCamillo. It was an exquisite little book, all fine writing and character development. Last month, when I was re-shelving my classroom library after the renovation, I found Tiger Rising by her, a book I didn't even realize I owned. I read it the weekend after school got out, and again I was captivated by the jewel-like quality of her writing, the characters so finely wrought.

Because of Winn-Dixie has long been a favorite of my students, but I'd never read it; I finished it yesterday, and The Tale of Despereaux is next. This morning I visited Kate DiCamillo's website. There is a wonderful little essay about writing there, where she says this:

The world, under the microscope of your attention, opens up like a beautiful, strange flower and gives itself back to you in ways you could never imagine. What stories are hiding behind the faces of the people who you walk past everyday? What love? What hopes? What despair?

(You should read the whole thing-- it's worth it.)

During the school year I teach my students to approach their independent reading with the eyes of a writer, and I do the assignments with them, but many times they are no more than exercises. That is not so as I read DiCamillo's work; she has earned the admiration of my inner reader and inspired the writer in me, too.

Perspective

We took our nephews to see Winter's Bone the other day. The film won a Sundance Festival award and has been hailed as a feminist masterpiece by certain critics, with a stark Greek-tragedy-like plot. Clearly it is dramatically different than most summer fare, and I wanted to see it. Two of our four boys will be 18 next week, the other two will both be 15 by the end of September. The main character of the movie is a 17-year-old girl living in the Ozarks, and although she faces a lot of adversity that our guys hopefully never will, I hoped that her age and strength might be enough of a connection to draw them in.

I thought the movie was excellent, but the boys' reactions fell on a continuum from oldest to youngest: Eric thought the movie was pretty good; Riley thought it was "really fucking bleak;" Treat commented on the visual monochromaticism and "never said I didn't like it," and Josh wondered what the point was-- "Not a lot happened in it," he said.

Yeah... I'm still glad we saw it together.

Does it Bite?

We watched Shutter Island last night. A fan of both Scorcese and DiCaprio, I was looking forward to seeing this film. There were warning signs that I might be disappointed-- not only did it receive lukewarm reviews and earn a lackluster box office, but the producers postponed its release from Oscar contention time to late February. Still, I was hopeful.

Sadly, I found the movie to be a foggy, gray mess. A main character is agitated by confusing experiences-- this main theme of the relationship between identity, reality, and perception has been more handily addressed in many movies, for example The Sixth Sense, Blade Runner, and The Matrix.

Tonight we had dinner with a close family member who has Alzheimer's Disease. His grasp on the present becomes more and more tenuous each time we meet. At 86, he is well cared for and generally happy, although he is confused and agitated sometimes. It's hard to know how to react: should we be bothered by how he jumbles the past and present, upset at how he asks the same things over and over again, disturbed that he forgets what has recently occurred? Or should we simply try to make him as comfortable with his perceptions as possible?

In those movies, it is the revelation and subsequent understanding of the discrepancy between reality and their own perception that is devastating to the people caught in that situation. In both Shutter Island and The Matrix, characters make the choice to remain delusional rather than to face the bleakness of their "real" lives.

Maybe reality is a little over-rated. Even the most functional of us spend time in our own little worlds, and as long as we can avoid cognitive dissonance, what's the harm in it? Who's to say that it is an illusion at all?

Summer Blue

When I was a little girl growing up in the garden state, there were certain summer mornings when my mom would call us from work to say that she was coming home so that we could go to the beach. Sometimes on our way home from the shore we would stop at a pick-your-own blueberry place where we could pick (and eat) as much as we wished. Then there would be blueberry pancakes, muffins, pies, and jam, not to mention plastic containers full of frozen blue marbles that would last in the freezer until a time when those hot and sandy days of summer were only a happy memory.

Beware

In the wake of the firework perils of yesterday's post, this morning I woke to a gruesome story on NPR about table saws... an average of ten Americans amputate one or more of their fingers every day on this ordinary power tool.

Yikes! That every day sort of danger is terrifying. I take back what I said about being hard to scare; we were just telling the wrong kind of stories around the campfire.

Caution

While at the ranch we spent a couple of evenings sitting around our campfire telling scary stories, but it turns out that it's pretty hard to scare three teen-aged boys and a couple of forty-something ladies, so on the second night we had a few fireworks, too. They were really no more than glorified sparklers that we bought from a pair of wacky church ladies manning a tent in the Walmart parking lot in Luray. Even so, I confess to being a little intimidated, if not scared, by these incendiary devices, and I cautioned the boys more than once about their use.

When I was a kid, somebody always knew somebody else who knew somebody who had blown a few fingers off with fireworks. Urban legend or not, to me playing with firecrackers was like eating your Halloween candy without your parents checking it-- there could be a razor blade in your apple or LSD in your peanut butter cup.

The other night our pyrotechnics sparkled and burned bright and beautiful and without a hitch, but the same cannot be said for everyone this holiday. Here's a headline from the Washington Post: Police: NY Man Blows Arm Off With Party Fireworks.

See? It can happen.

Explosiony

This afternoon we saw one of those empty-headed movies that can be an entertaining way to wile away a too hot day. It lived up to our expectation of mindless diversion with the exception of misrepresenting Gandhi as a warrior's philosopher. To be honest that bothered me a little bit, but I soon forgot my concerns in the dazzle of all those white teeth and detonations. Ah, summer vacation.

Context

So often after I visit a place I develop an intense curiosity about it. As a teacher, I know how important it is for students to be able to make a personal connection to instructional material, how such a tie makes it easier to learn and retain skills and information. As an adult, I see this principle in action in myself. Researching activities and destinations for a future vacation in a place I've never visited is too abstract; the information slides from my brain like butter on hot teflon-- no more than a skim coat of retention. Once on site, though, I'm motivated to voraciously consume any material I can get my hands on, but it is usually unsatisfying, perhaps because I am distracted by actually being on vacation and all. Back at home, I spend lots of time researching the place I just left, a bittersweet experience because I'm essentially discovering every cool thing I missed on my visit.

Take my recent trip to Fort Valley, VA for example. I stayed for a couple of nights at a ranch there and took a trail ride through George Washington National Forest. It was beautiful-- the mountains of western Virginia at their summer finest-- all dappled light and fragrant hayseed fern, elder berry, hemlock, and mountain laurel-- and so much less inhabited than this urban area where I reside. Our bunk house cabin may have been a little rustic, but there were bull frogs and river otters just outside our door, not to mention all the stars in the sky which were only obscured by the blazing camp fire we had each night.

Once home, though, I found that this valley within a valley was not only the site of three iron forges destroyed by the Union Army because of the Confederate canon balls they were churning out, but also the location of the very first CCC installation, Camp Roosevelt, built in 1933. AND it is named Fort Valley because it was George Washington's fall back plan. The first access road was built so that the Continental Army could retreat to this naturally fortified place for a last stand against Cornwallis. Fortunately, the Battle of Yorktown made Fort Valley a footnote to history, but now that I know a little more about the place, I can't wait to go back.

Greetings

I continue to be fascinated by facebook: fortunately not in the spending-too-much-time-sharing-too-much-information way, but rather in the I-can't-believe-I'm-back-in-touch-with-that-person way.

Also in the look-how-many-people-wished-me-a-happy-birthday way. That's kind of cool.

Dispatch

My birthday today, and I write from the garden where I came to weed and water thoroughly before literally heading for the hills for a couple of days. (We're taking the older nephews to a ranch in the Blue Ridge for some cabin-camping and horseback riding.) A dead robin in the flower bed was a sad start to the morning, but the weather is glorious and a goldfinch perching prettily on one of the tomato cages was somewhat of an antidote to that gloom.

The birds like the water, and now there's a pair of finches hopping and playing in the sprinkler spray. They glow in the sunlight, and I choose them as the heralds of my next year.

Lucky

Yesterday I noticed a couple of wasps flying around my Adirondack chair. The weather here has been HOT and the end of the school year hectic, so I haven't spent much time in that spot. These wasps seemed a little too familiar with one of my favorite seats: an investigation was definitely in order. Having no pesticide handy, I grabbed a bottle of kitchen cleaner and set the nozzle to stream, then I used the sliding screen door for protection, took aim, and drenched those vespidae in that ammonia-based concoction. (Yes, I felt a twinge of guilt.)

Off they flew, presumably to nurse their toxic exposure, and I tipped my chair back to reveal a small but promising start to a paper wasp's nest. There were six cells, and one of them already contained eggs. I scraped it off and then sprayed the underside with insect repellent. The wasps returned a little while later, and perhaps I anthropomorphize, but rather than being as mad as the hornets they were, they seemed confused and upset by the loss of their fledgling colony. I sighed, but humans and wasps cannot co-habitate, as charming as we both might be. Eventually they flew away and did not come back.

I considered how fortunate I was. An evening or two later, a drop in the humidity, a lull in the chaos, I could have unknowingly plopped myself right on top of a wasp's nest. Even discovering it a few days down the line would have made it much harder to take care of. Of course the best case scenario would have been no nest at all, but then I wouldn't have known how lucky I was.

Greed

What is it about money? We have out of town visitors, and so we got tickets for the Bureau of Engraving tour. As our assigned-time group of thirty or so walked through the facility where half of our nation's paper currency is printed, the avarice was palpable. In fact, I wish I had ten bucks for every time someone said Do they give free samples? because then? I'd be rich!

Reciprocity

I had such vivid dreams last night that I woke a little disoriented. They were the kind that make you wonder, sort of like Karen Blixen, if they could possibly be one-sided.

Here is one of my favorite passages from Out of Africa:

If I know a song of Africa-- I thought,-- of the Giraffe, and the African new moon lying on her back, of the ploughs in the fields, and the sweaty faces of the coffee pickers, does Africa know a song of me? Would the air over the plain quiver with a colour that I had had on, or the children invent a game in which my name was, or the full moon throw a shadow over the gravel on the drive that was like me, or would the eagles of Ngong look out for me?

Blockbuster

Nearly seven months ago I wrote about how the trailer for Toy Story 3 brought me to tears. Today the preview delivered it on its promise to make me cry: I sat in the same seat in the same theater and wept through the whole dang movie-- boo hooed at how Andy is no longer an imaginative little boy, at the toys' moving response to mortal danger, at a final sacrifice for the good of those you love-- aye yi yi, the movie was devastating!

Was my weepy response genuine emotion? Could it have been stress or hormones? Take your pick, but in any regard, I vigorously scrubbed the tear stains from my cheeks as the lights came up. Maybe it was just the Gipsy Kings' rousing rendition of Yo Soy Tu Amigo Fiel.

Maybe not.

Effulgence

Summer vacation has come, as it does every year. Never one to relish transitions, my initial reaction is that of a teacher without a class: What meaning is there in that? I wonder.

Oh, I'll adjust. Soon, I'll be a gardener with a garden, a hiker on a trail, a reader with a book. Everything will find its equilibrium, and everything will shine.

Unexpected

Yesterday I told my students that we would spend most of our last day in homeroom groups. "Will we have cake?" my homeroom wanted to know, but I told them that we had no June birthdays. They were disappointed until someone said, "Hey, isn't your birthday next week?" I nodded. "Will you bring a cake for yourself?" he asked hopefully. I frowned and said no, but they were welcome to bring anything they liked to celebrate. In the general lack of enthusiasm that followed, we dropped the subject and moved on to when they would get their yearbooks.

My birthday was the last thing on my mind this morning in the mayhem of a last day with a few key staff absences. Running around trying to get several things settled at once, my patience was wearing thin when the same student I wrote about in my last two posts came running in out of breath and drenched in sweat. Chronically tardy, here he was-- late for the last day of school. I sighed with a little exasperation as he burst through the door. "Did I make it?" he gasped.

"You're fine," I told him, realizing that another unexcused tardy more or less was inconsequential. "C'mon in."

"I missed my bus!" he huffed. I made a sympathetic face.  He held out a plastic bag. "I missed my bus because I ran to the grocery store to get this, and when I got back to the stop the bus was gone, so I had to run all the way to school with my skateboard. Here!" he offered me the bag. There was a smashed up apple pie inside. "It's for your birthday."

Wow. I did not see that one coming.

Turn About

Today was the last day of regular instruction and my classes returned to those logic puzzles that I wrote about yesterday. What a difference a couple of days can make. The same boy who could not get over Keith and his doll became very engaged with the puzzles when I mentioned that his older brother had been good at solving them. He worked diligently on a complex matrix only to be frustrated by finding an error when he got to the very end. He asked me for another copy as the bell rang for lunch. I told him that he didn't have to finish-- it was really just for fun-- but he was determined, so I offered to go through it with him and he accepted. We sat side by side solving a scenario about five hikers, trying to determine the color of their t-shirts, their shorts, and what snack they had in their pack. It only took a few minutes for him to figure it all out, and he didn't even mention the fact that Frank was wearing pink shorts.

Diversion

Since most of the students have wrapped up their last writing pieces, we did a little logic puzzle in class the other day. This was a Perplexor, a matrix puzzle that starts with a brief scenario and then lists all of the possibilities in each category. To solve it, you use clues to both eliminate the incorrect and identify the correct answers.I thought it would be a fun way to spend a little time.

The puzzle that I chose started with the following story: Kathy, Keith, Ken, Kyle and Kirk all had a dumb habit of bringing toys to school so they had something to do while they were wasting time in class instead of paying attention. They brought cards, marbles, a toy car, a doll, and a yo-yo. They were all failing a different subject-- either math, reading, science, history, or English. Then you are supposed to use the clues to match the children with their toys and the subject that each was failing.

Working through the puzzle, it becomes apparent early on that Keith has a doll. I was shocked by the number of kids who took issue with that as we were solving it together in each of my classes. In the first group, one girl actually crossed doll off of all of the boys' lists simply on the strength of her belief that they shouldn't and wouldn't have one. In the next group, a student said that she didn't have a problem with Keith and his doll, because her grandfather was "like that" too. When pressed, she rephrased to tell the class that her grandfather was gay; even so, she could not accept that any heterosexual boy might have a doll.

When it came up in my third period class, one particular boy snickered loudly and giggled. "That's just wrong," he laughed.

"Why?" I asked him. "Why do you care if Keith wants to have a doll? What difference does it make to you?"

"I wasn't raised that way," he said. His eyes narrowed. "I can have my own opinion, right?"

"Right," I said, "but why are you judging someone based on what they like? Why can't he have a doll without having to worry about it?"

"He shouldn't worry about what I think," he answered.

"True," I conceded, "but would you treat him differently because of the doll?" I asked. "Would you make fun of him?"

"Maybe," he shrugged.

"That's bigotry," I told him. "You do have the right to be a bigot, but do you want to be one?"

He thought about it long and hard. "I still think it's wrong for a boy to play with a doll," he said. The bell rang, and he went off to his next class.

So much for a fun little puzzle the last week of school.

Outstanding

Last year at this time I wrote a bit of a screed about awards ceremonies, and I stand my ground on that issue (please read that Alfie Kohn quotation), but the counselor reminded me a couple of weeks ago that the last time she was in sixth grade (our counselors loop with the students), we did an alternate awards activity where the students nominated each other for some sort of positive school-oriented achievement or action.

When she said so, I remembered that I got the idea from those painful few classes after past awards ceremonies where some kids would come up and ask why they hadn't received some recognition. I think we always hope that they will just know, and learn from the experience of not being one of "the chosen". What do you think you should have gotten? I asked a student one time, and when he told me, I whipped out a blank certificate left over from the official event, filled it out for him, and shook his hand as I presented it. He seemed genuinely appreciative, and I knew in my teacher's heart that it was a meaningful gesture.

This morning, as I introduced the nomination process to the students I told them that they really knew each other better than we ever could hope to, and I saw many heads nod in agreement. They were asked to identify noteworthy traits in one or more other students and to explain why these kids deserved acknowledgment for those things. The completed forms were very sweet-- the kids saw each other as friendly, smart, hard-working, joyful, independent, funny, athletic, creative, supportive, dedicated, helpful, and kind, among other qualities.

Tomorrow, each student will receive one certificate that is a compendium of the strengths that their peers and teachers have recognized in them, and during the presentation we'll cite the words of their fellow students who distinguished them for these honors, although the nomination will remain anonymous. Also, although students could nominate anyone on the team, we do this activity in class-sized groups so it doesn't become tedious.

If it's anything like last time? It'll be a nice way to end the year.

Circumstance

I used to wonder what it would feel like to be a person who didn't celebrate a main stream holiday-- for example Christmas in most western cultures. Did those people feel left out or even envious? Today I think I have my answer, but it's taken 23 years, give or take, to reach it. That's as long as I have been fatherless. There is no father in my household, either, and although I love my family fiercely, the third Sunday in June is like any other for me, and I must confess that I don't miss the fuss one bit.

Pomp

Tonight I attended the graduation ceremony of the top high school in the country. As proud as I was of our graduate, I was struck by the mediocrity of the event. There were several cleverly contrived speeches by students, educators, and dignitaries alike, but none of them hit home for me, much less hit a home run for me. My mind wandered and I wondered about the objective of such an occasion.

Still wondering.

Rock

Sisyphus got nothing on me today: 

The kids came in tired and grumpy this morning. "Whaaaat is the point of even having school?" one whined, his head lolling to the side. "We aren't going to learn anything. There are only four days left."

I rolled my eyes.

"You know you feel the same way," he said.

"Oh yeah?" I fired back. "Did you learn anything the last four days? What about the four days before that? How about the first four days of school? These four days are no different," I harrumphed.

His frown acknowledged that my point was well-taken. A few minutes later the bell rang, and my home room left. "Why are we even in schooooool?" a first period student moaned on the way in the door. "We aren't going to learn anything..."

And so it went.

Scissors

Today was our big end of the year trip. An all day excursion, we take our team of 90 sixth graders to the beach and then on a dolphin watching cruise. It's about a three hour bus ride away, and the kids are always very excited. This was my tenth time taking the trip, but today there was a first: one student brought his homework to finish on the way. Oblivious to the hub bub around him, he whipped out a pair of scissors and neatly cut out the little squares on his worksheet, then as we rolled through the coastal countryside he produced a glue stick so that he could complete the assignment.

Impressive.

Paper

I spent way too much paper time today. It was spring writing sample scoring day, and for some reason I was the only one in the English Department who got the memo that, hello, it's a group effort. I had an all-day sub, and everyone just else dropped in when they could find the time, meaning I read A LOT more essays than anyone else. The writing was quite competent but ultimately completely uninspiring, and my head still hurts.

My other primary paper pushing activity was picking up the printed literary magazines. I'm so thankful for the miraculous turn-around-- I only finished the layout a week ago, and although the publication is far from perfect, the product is pleasant, and I am pleased to check that puppy off my to-do list.

Water

Our garden hasn't been thriving as I wish it would, and I've figured out that it's because it needs water: it's been a dry spring, and the truth is that we haven't compensated nearly enough. Even so, ever since we've had the garden, I keep getting caught in the rain. Yesterday I was actually watering when my mother and I were drenched in a downpour. (It had been threatening for days without a true drop, so it was hard to believe it would ever actually rain.) The rule in the garden is that the last one out has to turn off the water, and by the time we got the tools loaded and made our dripping way over to the far side, the rain had almost stopped, but there was a full arc of a rainbow in the Eastern sky.

Bring on the rain.

Reckoning

Today was the day when my students added up the pages and counted all the books that they had read this year. It's always pretty impressive-- even the minimum hundred pages a week for thirty-six weeks translates to 20-25 books on the average. They do a little reflection on their accomplishment, and one girl wrote, This is ridiculous-- I read more this year than in third, fourth, and fifth grade combined! Those who hadn't read as consistently as they should have showed some remorse and vowed to do better next year. A couple of kids recognized that this was a break-through year for them: I didn't use to like it, but now I'm a reader, one wrote.

Here are the numbers:

Average pages per student: 8,488
(That's over half a million total pages.)
Average number of books completed per student: 40
Most avid reader: 41,104 pages and 136 books
Reader most in need of acceleration and encouragement: 723 pages and 8 books

I also asked them to pick their top three books of the year. Most popular? The Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. Other favorites were the Maximum Ride series and the first two books in The Hunger Games trilogy, and of course, many vampire books were mentioned as well.

Mulch

Our county collects all sorts of lawn clippings, fallen leaves, and Christmas trees and grinds them into a gigantic pile of mulch which we then distribute for free to residents who request it. Our community garden always has a ready supply of the stuff-- a huge mound of it lays not thirty feet south of our plot. Today as I forked load after load into my wheelbarrow, I thought of all the yards and homes that had contributed to this blanket which I placed so hopefully and protectively around the plants in my garden, and I felt a tug on that deeply-buried root that connects us all.

Still Working On It

Twice in the last two days I have attended performances put on by kids. The first was the talent show at our school and the second was my nephews' final school of rock performance, this one a tribute to the Doors. I struggled with being an appreciative audience member for both of these events; I really admire the kids for getting up there on the stage, and there were undeniable moments of entertainment and, yes, brilliance in both shows, but in the end they were flawed at best.

You might think that as a teacher I would have made peace with the predictable weaknesses of such presentations and even come to enjoy them in spite of their blemishes.

You would be wrong.

(My nephews were great, though.)

Last Words on the Slam

This week I gave my students the opportunity to post their competition slam poem and a reflection about the experience for their classmates to read and respond to. I asked them to think about their writing process, their performance, and what it was like to be in the audience. By far, the comments were positive, and here's one that expresses some of what I hoped the students would get out of it all:

Personally I'm not a huge fan of writing poetry at all, but I like slam poetry a little better then regular poetry. The reason I like writing slam poetry better is because I know that I will be performing it for people, so if it can mean more then one thing then my actions will explain it. Performing was kind of fun when it was in the classroom, because I knew that it was only a practice round and that everyone there would be fine with what I do because they were just as scared as I am. That gave me more confidence so I could go on. But when I was performing in the auditorium I did not have that confidence because I knew that not everyone was performing like I was, but still I got up there and did what I needed to do. When I was in the audience I loved watching other people get up there and read some of the most funny poems ever. 

Not everyone was quite so affirmative about the slam, though. Here is what the most discontented of my students had to say:

I didn't like writing all the poems.  It just wasn't fun and we wrote about nonsense.  It also sucked even more because it was boring to listen to all the poems for a couple hours. Not only was there only one good poem, the other ones just plain sucked.  I would have rather done school work.  Plus I wasn't near anyone cool to talk to in the audience.  I think that it was a waste of time.

I don't take what he says personally, but I do take it seriously. I hate to shrug off any student criticism, because I haven't given up on the notion that it's possible to engage all of my students most, if not all, of the time. Obviously, I didn't quite reach him, and I'll keep his perspective in mind next time as I plan.

Dualities

We had the Tolerance Club kids do the "Harvard Bias Test" today. For those who are unfamiliar, it's an online exercise that measures your sub-conscious preference between two disparate types of people, for example Americans of African descent and Americans of European descent, old people-young people, abled-disabled, etc. Before you even take the test, you must agree to the disclaimer that you may receive an interpretation you disagree with.

The test is careful to tell you who you have a preference for, leaving unspoken the fact that by default, you also have one against the other group. In addition, the literature points out that most people have a bias toward the familiar, which of course means that the aggregate results are consistent with general demographics.

The kids were game; we allowed them to choose their bias test, and of course some were surprised by what the results revealed (Wrong! I do NOT have a preference for light-skinned people, one girl told us emphatically), while others were not (a sixth grade boy across the room announced his own results matter-of-factly: I have a slight preference for abled people... I have a preference for European people).

Yes, as heartbreaking as it is, there are times when people take the test and find that they are biased against themselves.

What Crosses Your Path

When I was a kid, spaying and neutering were only then becoming the responsible thing to do for your pet, and so our family presided over the birth of five litters of kittens and ten puppies before our cats and dogs went under the knife. Thankfully, my mom found homes for them all, but they were so cute and adorable, it was always hard for us kids to say good-bye.

Today I heard from a friend who adopted a cat that turned out to be pregnant, and so now my friend has four newborn kittens. Despite the fact that they're all jet black, I still think she's pretty lucky.

Run, Lead, Head, Control, Manage, Direct...

When I first started teaching there was a large rolling cabinet in my room. About 3 1/2 feet tall, 3 1/2 feet wide, and probably 3 feet deep, it had four giant drawers and a little pull out shelf on the top. I used it as the teacher before me had, as a massive teaching podium/desk, and made it the focal point of the classroom. I sat on a tall stool behind it and in front of the chalkboards and from that height and vantage point presided with great authority over the edification of my students.

A few years ago, I pushed it off into a corner in favor of an Adirondack chair over by a bookcase, and today it stands empty, ready to be rolled out of here forever. After the move out and back in, I realized that I don't need most of the stuff that was tossed into those big drawers, and I could really use the floor space for some pillows or another comfy chair for the kids to read and write in.

Oh, I still preside, probably more than I should, but I certainly don't need any furniture to help me.

Two Thumbs Up

I've decided to wrap up the year with book reviews. What better genre to integrate reading and writing? We have a couple more weeks, and this project will give my students the time and opportunity to use the writing tools they've acquired to reflect on the independent reading they've done this year.  Plus, the audience for these reviews will be next year's class. It turns out that these kids are pretty enthusiastic about creating a resource for the students who are coming up, and I find that very sweet. Their only question is why they didn't have the same benefit.

I'm flattered that they believe I've thought of everything already, but I told them that we've all got to have room to grow.

Patron Fairy of Teenagers

I was walking with my nearly fifteen-year-old nephew today and complaining about the weather. We have had several unseasonably hot and humid days, more like July than early June around here, and I don't like it. "I like this weather," he told me. "It's not too hot or too cold."

"But I don't like it," I repeated. "Not at all! Where's your empathy?" Before he could answer, I continued, "Maybe you're not old enough for empathy?"

"Yeah," he said. "That must be it. My adult empathy hasn't grown in yet, and I lost my baby empathy a while ago."

"Right," I agreed. "Did you put it under your pillow so that the Empathy Fairy would bring you something?"

"Yeah, I did," he answered with an evil smile, "but she didn't bring me anything, because she didn't care either."

"That's too bad," I said, "but I think you must have her mistaken with the Apathy Fairy."

Beets, Continued

Beets always make me think of the novel Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins. It's been close to twenty-five years since I read it, but the connection that he made between the smell of beets and immortality has stayed with me. At the time, I don't think I'd ever actually eaten a fresh beet, but I imagined the smell somewhere close to the scent that rises from corn when you shuck it, that earthiness that seems to originate in the tassels. I don't think I was that far off.

I read Interview With the Vampire by Anne Rice around the same time that I read Jitterbug Perfume, and while I was living with and caring for my dad who was terminally ill. I don't think you could find two more different perspectives on mortality and immortality than in those novels: Rice's vampires must die and give up human pleasures to live forever, and Robbins' characters must embrace life and live to the fullest to live forever; Rice's characters are trapped in a deathless existence, but Robbins' must be ever-vigilant; if they stop loving life, they will die. The juxtaposition of those ideas and my own experiences gave the twenty-three-year-old me a lot to think about.

Beets, anyone?

Let the Bounty Begin

The greatest thing about community gardening so far has been the other gardeners who give away stuff. Tonight we got a bunch of baby beets, some carrots, and an onion from someone down the way. Is it pity or generosity? Hard to say, but either either way these gardeners have considerable pride in growing more than a subsistence crop. I can't fault them for that at all, and plus we really appreciate their sharing.

(We also brought home basil and rosemary from our own plot, AND we gave some to our neighbor.)

Separation Anxiety

...not so much.

Maybe we feel ourselves being pulled apart by forces to which we are powerless, and so we start to withdraw, believing somehow that by hastening the inevitable separation we are exercising some control over it. Or maybe it's just been a long year, and the fatigue of working so intensely together is wearing on us, but whatever it is, my students are doing me the huge favor of driving me crazy.

I still love 'em, but because they are being so aggravating in the aggregate, it probably won't be too hard to wave good-bye to them in a couple of weeks, even knowing that I'll henceforth be their "old teacher", and they'll no longer be "mine". Oh, I'll be sad next fall when a whole group of strangers takes their places; I'll miss them then for sure, but for now, whether it's ma'a as-salaama, hasta luego, or see ya later alligator, the words will be on the sweet side of bitter.

My Money's on the Slam

My favorite part of the day today was when we gathered the twelve finalists who would be performing their poetry for 200 sixth graders and other invited guests, not to mention the judges. Several of them had written new material on their own, and our resident slam poet had brought three young poets to perform with the students, but also to coach them. The energy in the room was exactly what I wish for every day I come to school: the kids sat in groups with their writing out; they showed each other; they asked for advice from the visiting poets; they even took the "stage" in the front of the room and rehearsed their pieces. They listened intently to all the feedback they got, scribbling notes in the margins, changing words, adding phrases and stage directions to themselves. In short, they were a hundred percent engaged in the writing process. It was mostly because they wanted to do their best for the assembly, but those are the kind of high stakes that I can get behind.

Mountains to Scale

Oh so many projects and activities collide at this time of the year...

ONE: I'm trying to put the finishing touches on our school's journal of literature and art of which I am the editor. It is past deadline.

TWO: My room might be half-unpacked; it is serviceable.

THREE: Our last state standards assessment this morning; who thought the day after Memorial Day was a good idea for that?

FOUR: The culminating Slam performance-- there are cold feet among the finalists. Will the the microphone be in place?

FIVE: Our in-house writing sample, this is designed to show me the growth in my students' writing; it is informal, but still...

SIX: Field trips: Water Testing! Band Trip to amusement park! Dolphin Watching!

SEVEN: Finalizing my own vacation plans, all that calendar matching, emails, phone calls, and schedules of five nuclear families are finally coalescing into what promises to be an AWESOME summer. (Fingers crossed)

EIGHT: My poor garden. It suffers from neglect. I must fit it into my daily routine. I am best on an every day basis.

That's a steep list... See you at the top!

So Don't

The phrase "necessary evil" really bugs me. Um... who thinks any evil is necessary? Such a notion offends both my ethics and my semantics.

In some ways that expression seems like just another one of those platitudes that fall into the category of Everyone has to do things they don't want to sometimes. Sometimes I wonder what would happen if everyone stopped doing the things they really didn't want to do. I'm not being frivolous; I want to know what those things are, especially considering that almost any task can be no worse than innocuous if you know and appreciate the value of it.

So why don't we stop glorifying (as some sort of life lesson) the need to do unpleasant things, and rather let's re-frame the conversation to re-evaluate our priorities and objectives to figure out exactly what it is we "have" to do that we don't "want" to, and why we're doing that stuff anyway.

And then, for a good measure,  let's stop listening to people who wave away truly troublesome issues with insipid cliches like "necessary evil".