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As our dog ages, Heidi seeks ways to keep her sharp both physically and mentally. Not only do we have a daily dog walker who takes her to the park for exercise, but one or the other of us takes her for a walk each evening, too. When she was younger, Heidi did agility classes with her, and lately she has been thinking that such an activity would be fun for both of them to revisit.

I support my girls all the way, and today while I was researching class opportunities in our area, I came across a place a little ways south of here that sounded great, were it not just that much too far. Clicking on the "About us" link, I gasped when I recognized the proprietor as a former contestant on the reality show, Greatest American Dog. To be honest, it's hard to say if it was her or her perfectly groomed Maltese, Andrew, who caught my eye first, but there they were, minor celebrities, just an hour away.

We are no strangers to reality TV, particularly the pet sub-genre. Cesar Milan is a demigod in our home, and the person we trust to clean-up and clip our dog was on the second season of Animal Planet's Groomer Has It; she didn't win the show, but she won the doodle segment. 'Nuf said.

Written in Stone

I dipped my toe back into the genealogy pool at the end of the week last week. That type of research can be so consuming that it's hard to do a little at a time. It's also tough to keep track of all the little threads and questions once you get back a few generations, but it was spring break, and after visiting the Chapman family home and cemetery, I decided to devote a couple of hours to the folks on my own family tree.

There must be many mysteries in every family; there are definitely several in mine. One is the story of my great-grandmother. Born to Irish immigrants in Brooklyn, her mother died when she was a young child. Her father remarried shortly afterwards, but we have no idea what she did for the next twenty years when she somehow met and married my great-grandfather, a man from Massachusetts, and moved to Indiana. Her father ended up working in the laundry of the New Jersey State Asylum, where he died and was buried. Her older sister never married, and at some point moved to Indiana, too.

Most of the information we have is pieced together from census records, so there was some discrepancy as to the year she was born-- it varied from 1860 to 1866. In order to refine my searches I wanted to know which it was. I knew there was a record of her burial on the Find a Grave website, but there was nothing other than her name and the cemetery. That site is free and run mostly by volunteers; they have a photo request form, and if anyone living nearby is willing, you can get a picture of the grave.

I was surprised to hear back in less than an hour from a nice lady in Indiana who promised she would go out this week and take the photos I requested. Yesterday, she posted them. In them, the spring sunshine seems a little harsh and the shadows the stones cast are dark. The markers themselves are plain blocks of rough granite standing in grass that has not yet greened up, but I was moved to see them.

And one small mystery was solved: no matter what they told the census takers in the later years of her life, my great-grandmother was born in 1861.

Unwritten Rules

Three of us meet regularly on Fridays, but this afternoon two of us were waiting in the other person's room. She was nowhere to be found. We weren't worried-- 20 year veterans of teaching, we know how, especially in the name of responsive education, a meeting with a student or parent or counselor or team or administrator can come together in no time, and you're lucky if you have the opportunity to alert your colleagues to the conflict.

The two of us sat and chatted. It was the end of our teaching day, a time when I am often drained, especially if there's not another high-adrenaline event on my agenda to keep me going. We speculated as to where our third might be and made a swipe at our planned topic of conversation. "How long do they say you have to wait in college if your professor doesn't show?" my colleague asked. "Ten minutes?"

We laughed and then agreed that the moment for that particular meeting had passed, and presuming we would all be together again next Friday, we left the room to take care of the many, many items below it on our infinite to-do lists.

Lost in Translation

Our writing club students are fond of posing ridiculous challenges for each other. Today's was a good example: Write about green bananas and how they are valuable to the scientific community.

To be honest, it seems like appeal of the challenge thing is fading, because the only kids who chose to write to this one were the two French exchange students who were shadowing one of our regulars.

But their contribution was fascinating and luminous in its own way:

Bananas (Romeo & Juliet’s prologue)
By Marie and Lola

Two green bananas both alike in dignity
In fair Banania where we lay our scene
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny
Where civil juice makes civil hands unclean
From forth the fatal loins of these two green fruits
A pair of star crossed bananas takes their lives...

Not bad for a second language!

Reach Out

A few of my regular news outlets reported that today was the 40th anniversary of the first cell phone call

ever.

Of course the reporters marveled at how the world has changed, and some even took a few snarky pot shots at our current culture of constant connectivity. (To paraphrase Brian Williams: It's hard to imagine how we ever got along without them, although somehow we managed to win World War II and put a man on the moon.)

To me, the best observation was made by the man who made that first call, Martin Cooper. He noted that the mobile phone shifted our entire conception of the telephone: we used to call a place, but now we call a person.

Wow. It doesn't seem like it will be too long before the phrase, May I speak to... is obsolete.

Cooper also pointed out that every phone has an on/off switch, and that we should all remember who controls who. And he's right, because you may not always be home, but you are always you.

History 101

I have the New York Times website as my homepage-- I just like seeing the Grey Lady's perspective on the world every day. Tonight when I clicked over, I saw a banner advertisement that was hard to ignore: Experts say the first 150-year-old has already been born.

Imagine that!

The ad was interactive, and you could click on a time line to see some of the iconic headlines you might have known if you, yourself, had lived for the past 150 years. How could I resist?

But wait... mapping the human genome, the fall of the Berlin Wall, Maggie Thatcher's election? These were not exactly the first events that came to my mind for the last 35 years. I kept clicking back in time until at last I hit the one that I knew would be there, probably because it is always there: Titanic Sinks Four Hours After Hitting Iceberg.

Coincidentally, I just started reading a book about that tragedy today. People who know me may be surprised; not because I'm reading about Titanic, but rather because I've found a book that isn't a rehash of all those I've already poured over. You see, when I was a child, I was fascinated by the story of the doomed ship, which was then still lost on the floor of the ocean. The enormity of such a loss weighed heavily on my young mind, and it was nothing short of a miracle to me when the wreck was discovered in 1985.

Today, though, the book I picked up is a completely novel take on the ill-fated voyage that even after 101 years so many of us are so familiar with. It's called, Titanic: Deck Z.

And yes, Z is for Zombies.

I know, right?

Miss March and April

Over the twenty years I've spent in the classroom, I feel like I've become a bit of a school calendar connoisseur.

We start the day after Labor Day, and growing up in a region where school and September are synonymous, I'm fine with that. Columbus Day? Consider the holiday politically correct or not, a three day weekend at that point in the school year can revitalize students and staff alike.

Veterans Day on the other hand is nice, but not particularly necessary, especially with planning days and/or election day before and Thanksgiving soon after. Three days at Thanksgiving seems like a luxury, but it's a good idea given the number of families who travel.

In our system, we rarely get two full weeks for the winter holidays, but the one year that we did, it was awesome, and I keep my fingers crossed year after year for a repeat. Unfortunately, this coming year would be the best possibility according to how the holidays fall, and it's not going to happen.

King Day and Presidents Day are like stepping stones to spring break, but if that vacation week is early (as it is this year) then the rest of the term can really drag on, and Memorial Day is no relief; by then a holiday is a distraction-- everyone is ready to wind things up.

Summer is summer, and the merits of a longer or even year-round school calendar can be debated in another post.

Given all of the above, I must confess that as a career-long middle school teacher, this year's calendar has been one of the best ever. Why? Because as luck would have it, St. Patrick's Day was on a Sunday, and today, April Fool's Day, was a teacher work day.  That simple twist of fate has given us an entire year with no pinching and no pranking.

If only we could make that permanent.