Nothing Wrong with a Good Head Scratch

There are awkward moments in certain conversations when someone mentions an idea or a person or an event that is unknown to you. What to do? Do you interrupt the speaker and declare your deficit, or do you nod knowingly hoping you'll be able to make some sense of the reference in context?

This dilemma might be intensified when another person in the discussion admits to not knowing the particulars and so asks to be brought up to speed. In order not to be enlisted in the tutorial, you must avert your eyes, but not so much as to reveal your ignorance.

Or, so I've been told.

These days, I'm not too proud to admit it when I read or hear a word I'm unfamiliar with. Such was the case today when I read Maureen Dowd's op/ed piece in the NYTimes. The starting point of her essay was the throw-back nature of Mitt Romney's popularity among white guys of a certain age; Mad Men was used as an exemplar, but then Dowd noted that that particular TV show "seems too louche for a candidate who doesn’t drink or smoke and who apparently dated only one woman"

Louche? Cool word! And the best part is I know it now.

Chicken-headed Folk on Penny-farthings

When you pay to stay at other people's homes you are hostage to their taste for the duration of your rental. For the most part, the place we are staying this weekend has been beautiful at its best and inoffensive at its worst. That doesn't rule out bizarre, though. You decide where on the spectrum this particular piece of art falls.

Home Away from Home

We are spending the weekend with my brother's family in a vacation rental about an hour and a half outside of town. The house is incredible-- definitely one of the nicest places I've  ever stayed in my life. Surrounded on water on three sides, it has wide, heart of pine floors, tons of windows, 5 bedrooms,  several porches, a huge kitchen with 2 sinks and 2 dishwashers,  and plenty of other amenities that made the harrowing drive down rutted dirt roads through pitch dark farm fields totally worth it.

Over the years we have rented a lot of vacation homes.. That sort of accommodation just fits our needs better than a hotel ever could. Plus it's fun to imagine what your life might be should you actually have a home in this location. Predictably, there has been much variation in the quality of the places we have stayed

I know the boys will never forget the place where palmetto bugs and centipedes shared their room. Then there was the gorgeous house in the middle of the woods-- once inside it was all hard wood and vaulted ceilings, but you had to get past the mosquitoes to enjoy it. Another time we stayed in a place in the California canyons that hadn't been touched since the 70s. It still had the original shag carpeting, velour furniture, and mirrored walls which Treat crashed into at full force. ( To be fair, it also had a fun little pool, a hifi stereo, a nifty LP collection,  and a pool table.)

There have also been lovely things like the adirondack chairs and ceiling fans on a certain porch in Maine, the crooked wooden floors in the upstairs of the same hundred year old fisherman's home.. I particularly liked the bread maker in one place we stayed, and you can never say enough about an ocean view and beach access. In other homes there have been fabulous kitchens, huge tables we could all fit around, bright sunrooms with comfy couches, and big living rooms with giant TVs and fireplaces.

In the end, it really doesn't matter as long as it's big enough for all of us to stay together.

No NaNoWriMo fo Me

I just got an encouraging email from the sponsors of NaNoWriMo.

...you might have finally started to come down from the creative high of week one. If you're feet have nearly touched the ground now, it's possible you've started to panic (even if this isn't your first year, you might have started to panic by now). There are all sorts of panic. Why am I doing this? Where do I go from here?

I appreciate their sympathy, not because I'm trying to write a 50,000 word novel this month, but rather because these days panic is pretty much the professional status quo in my neck of the woods. NoWri is unfathomable at the moment.

Even so, the contact was doubly valuable to me because today was the day when our writing club met. Believe it or not, 14 kids spent an hour after school writing and reading each others' work just for the fun of it. Amazing! Those kids regularly refresh me with their creativity and talent. Words and ideas flow from them like water from a spring. At one point, they were talking about using online document sharing to help a student who wasn't even there (she has a weekly conflict until December) work through being stuck in her novel's plot, and before they left, they tried to convince us to let them meet twice a week.

I wish I had the time to do that.

Haiku

The election is over,
and the world awaits.
Hasn't it always been there?

Catching Dreams

Twelve years ago tomorrow we sat in Bill and Emily's living room watching election results. It was Heidi's birthday, and we were there to celebrate. Vic and Judy were there, too, and Treat was 5, and Riley was 8, and the next day my sixth graders were making dream catchers, so the boys and I sat on the floor measuring yarn and counting out beads and pipe cleaners and feathers and zipping it all into plastic baggies.

At some point, I made a model of the project with a red, white, and blue color scheme and as a finishing touch, we peeled off our I Voted stickers and fixed them to the middle of the net. The evening wore on and as no clear winner emerged, first the boys went to bed, and then Vic and Judy headed home, and then we thanked everyone and went home, too.

Who could have imagined that the election would not be decided for 28 more days? Back then, that seemed like an eternity, day after day fraught with drama, but now, so much has happened in the time since, that it's hard to remember the angst of it all. Even so, tonight we'll sit down to watch this election's returns, with fingers crossed that there will be much less contention coming our way.

Today, before I left my classroom, I took a long look at that dream catcher. It hasn't aged a bit; the colors remain steadfast and the message is clear.

Light Bulb

Today was the last day of the quarter and I required my students to turn in all their work on the three poems I assigned a couple of weeks ago. Many were not finished, despite a clear deadline, but there were several mitigating factors, among them a storm called Sandy and a storm called middle school.

It's easy for those who are not familiar to shrug off what a major transition it is from elementary school to our developmentally crucial place at the focal point of education. Primarily, we are trying to ease kids from reactive to proactive agents in their own lives, and inevitably there will be stumbles.

I think that explains the freak outs and shut downs I tried to counsel my classes through today. Student after student came forward with anxious expression. "Is this good?" they asked, thrusting their writing at me.

"What do you think?" was my reply.

And at the end of each class, most kids proudly turned in work that represented a lot of writing, and perhaps more importantly, a lot of thinking.

Even so, not everyone was satisfied, and I completely understood why. Tonight when I got home I enthusiastically opened the Home Depot bag that I had prominently set on the dining room table. One of our lamps in the living room shorted out on Saturday, and as annoying as that was, I knew just how to fix it. Last night I got the parts, and today I was eager to get the job done. In under 10 minutes, I was turning the switch and illuminating the room.

If only every job could be like that one. Right kids?