An Old Fashioned Guy

"I try to give good service at a reasonable price."

That's what the appliance repairman said to me this afternoon after he showed up on time with the necessary parts and quickly fixed the dishwasher. What's more? I called him on Saturday, and he was able to come today. Heck, he even liked our dog.

"What's the point of not doing that?" he continued rhetorically. "No one will ever call you back." Before he left, he gave me an itemized bill along with the old parts he'd replaced.

You can bet I put his card in a very safe place.

See You Again Soon

This weekend marked the formal celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Girl Scouts. In honor of their birthday, the GSA organized a weekend of festivities here in Washington, D.C. called Girl Scouts Rock the Mall. There were exhibits, activities, a rally, a world-record flash mob, and of course a sing along.

Our favorite girl scouts, Allyn and Delaney, were in town for the event with their mom. They stayed with us, and it was a fun weekend. Not to compete with the scouts or anything, but we had perfect pool weather, great food (including a cupcake taste test), and good company.

As they packed their things to go, both girls wished that they never had to leave. "That's the sign of a good visit," we told them, "when you have to go home before you're ready."

Look it Up

Not long ago an excerpt from a new book popped up on the website I was reading. Sure the mention of Hemingway, as in It all began with Hemingway, caught my eye (who doesn't like a little Papa?), but it was definitely the word apposite that made me stop.

I don't know that word.

I like to think I'm fairly intelligent and pretty well educated, also I've been teaching English for nearly 20 years, and that ought to count for something, and quite frankly, it's not often that I encounter unfamiliar words in my reading, so I was a little bit surprised. I read on. Not two sentences later did the word appurtenance appear. I don't know that one either.

The narrative was engaging and the topic of interest, but it was clear that the vocabulary was going to be a stretch. Without hesitation, I bought the kindle version of the book on the spot, and for the first time ever, I used the glossary function to give me the definitions of those words; within moments I consulted it twice more (encomiums, scabrous) just while reading the Introduction. What a handy tool!

As has become my habit in many personal learning situations, I thought of my students and how my experience was relevant to theirs. There are a lot of words that sixth graders don't know, and it's always interesting how they approach them. Most treat them as if they are invisible or at least inconsequential to the text; they have a definite work around mentality that pretty much works. Others consider such obscurity to be a sign that the writing is completely incomprehensible to them and they stop reading.

Either way, very few look them up, but research shows that most fluent readers rarely break their stride to parse unfamiliar words. I wonder if that will change now that every definition is literally at our fingertips.

If You Cut Me, I Would Shine

I'm sure there are statistics on such things, but today it seemed my memories ranged well over a span of forty years. A conversation about soda flavors reminded me of grocery shopping with my dad-- we'd buy the store brand sodas at ten for a dollar; my brother and sister and I would each get to pick three and my dad would choose the tenth; it was always cream soda. Back then you needed an actual can opener to enjoy your soda; pop tops were a thing of the future.

Later in the day a colleague was describing his summer trip to Italy, and I was transported to the upstairs bar in Florence. That was the secret place that all the kids at my Swiss boarding school went to drink whenever they were there. The tequila sunrises were legendary, with gorgeous layers of fresh-squeezed orange juice and grenadine. They were the only alcoholic beverage I ever saw my Southern Baptist friend drink.

And not thirty minutes later, I remembered being at the end of the bench during the final girls basketball game ten years ago. Three minutes from an undefeated season, we were down by a few points against a school that in most years beat us pretty badly. Of all teams I've coached, I remember those girls for their heart. We won it at the buzzer. It turns out that one of my students now has a cousin who played for us then. I found that out by reading the profile piece that her classmate had written.

I love the poem On Turning Ten by Billy Collins. I don't consider it a melancholy meditation on aging at all, but rather a parody of those who stare wistfully out the window wondering where the years have gone. Once, when I couldn't sleep, I tried to remember one thing from every year of my life. I think I drifted off before I finished revisiting my twenties.

Watch Your Step

My students are doing a lovely job on their profile pieces. The writing is warm and witty, and so many of them have shown a knack for the style and voice that is most common in such articles. Oh sure, there have been a few missteps, but mostly they have been slight stumbles on the way to a knock-out profile. Here's an example of a minor mistake that made me giggle:

A plane flies into one of El Salvador’s airports. The passengers get their luggage, and start off the plane. One girl looks out into the country. The warm breeze touches her cheek. She walks off the plane, and steps on her heritage for the first time. 

Ouch!

Variable Weather

Yesterday I had a group of kids in my room ready for an outdoor field trip to conduct some local stream water testing. We had a few minutes before we were scheduled to walk to the park, and dark clouds gathered outside the window joining the sunshine and blue skies.

"Do you think it will rain?" a student asked me.

"Do you think it will rain?" I replied.

He and several other kids responded; it seemed like an even split of yeses and nos.

"Sounds like we have some pessimists here," I commented.

"Huh?" someone said, and scanning the room, I realized that she was not the only student unfamiliar with the term.

Forgive me for resorting to the obvious, but I drew a glass on the chalk board along with a line to show that there was liquid to the halfway point. "There!" I pronounced. "Is this glass half-empty or is it half-full?"

Just as with the weather, there was a pretty even split as the kids called out what they saw, although a couple savvy students answered, "Both!".

"Everyone's right," I said. "It's all about whether you look at what you have or what you're missing... have... missing... have... missing," I chanted as I pointed at the bottom and top of my illustration. "What kind of person are you?" I asked as I checked the clock and saw we still had a few more minutes before it was time to go.

And then Brandon had a total breakthrough. A spark ignited in his eyes and his body literally jerked. "I get it!" he said. "I get it!" he repeated to the kid next to him, and the understanding was clearly very profound. "Why can't you teach all of our classes?" he said to me. "The other teachers are--"

"Half full!" I reminded him.

"Exactly!" he answered, which was not quite the lesson I had in mind.

Turn Around, Bright Eyes

There's been a lot of press about the "Transit of Venus"-- that astronomical event, occurring even as I type, where Venus is actually visible to we Earthlings as a tiny dot on the sun as its orbit crosses ours. Much has been made of the fact that the next transit is not for 105 years (so see it while you can, folks!), but some of the coverage has focused on the practical aspects of viewing such a rare spectacle, reminding us that it is dangerous to look directly into the sun; in fact, I actually heard these words on the radio this morning, you can destroy your vision instantly... Yikes!

When I was 7 there was a total eclipse of the sun that was visible across North America. Thinking back, it seems like that was all anyone talked about for days. Both at school and at home we were warned again and again not to look right at it. At the same time, it seemed like everyone had a trick for being able to watch the eclipse without damaging your eyesight.

When the time came, my dad poked a hole in a sheet of paper and held it in the direct sunlight streaming through our living room window with another piece of paper below it. The idea was that the light shining through the pinhole would be eclipsed as the sun was. I don't think it worked, because I also remember watching the eclipse on TV.

Back then, I imagined that if we looked our eyes would ignite and burn away, and we would be left blind, but with that final image of that sun's corona dancing around the shadow of the moon burned into our brains forever.