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".