Bounty

Experienced gardeners will tell you that every year is different; one year may be great for tomatoes, or peppers, or squash, and in the same garden the same crop may struggle the next. Certainly, in my four short seasons, I have found that to be true. For me, this was the summer of tomatoes and butternut squash. I cannot complain about either. The tomatoes we have been eating and canning and fortunately the squash? 

Well, there's butternut chocolate chip ice cream on the menu tonight, and the other 20 will keep until fall nips a little harder at our door.

Aging Workforce

"Happy Friday!" a colleague greeted me as we walked in together. "Are you as wiped as I am?"

I nodded and made a confession. "I know how many more Fridays there are until the end of the year."

"Oooooh," she answered with sympathy, "that's pretty bad."

"It's not like me at all, " I agreed. "But, on the bright side," I continued, "I'm sure I'll forget before October!"

Ichi Ni San Hi Go

A young colleague and I sat with a parent in the library this afternoon waiting for a meeting to begin. The family was military and had recently moved back from Japan. We were there to be sure that the student was receiving the appropriate services after two years away from our district, but the meeting before ours was running late, and so we chatted with the mom about this and that. At one point, the subject of Japanese numbers came up, and my colleague quite capably counted to five. "I don't even know how I learned that," she told us humbly.

I did a quick calculation. "Maybe from watching Pokemon on TV?" I suggested.

She looked at me in exasperation. "That was a little after my time!" she said. But then her brow furrowed. "Well, maybe I did hear it when I was babysitting," she admitted.

Tighten Your Belts, Kids

Word yesterday that, here in the richest county in America, in addition to the continuing paper shortage in our school, the bus allocation for field trips has been cut in half and administration will no longer approve funds for extra buses. We have 17 buses for the whole year-- a generous calculation makes that about 1000 seats for a school of nearly 900. With the capital of the free world and all it has to offer right next door, we're funded for just one field trip per student per year.

These cuts seem drastic and fundamental. School without paper and buses? Could pencils and teachers' dirty looks be far behind?

Postcard from a Soulless Suburb

I've thought of my hometown in many different ways over the last 25 years since we adopted each other. Confusing, hilly, chilly, expensive, desirable, elitist, eclectic, friendly, kooky, and crowded come to mind, but "soulless suburb"?

Nope.

How long were you here, Senator?

The Other Side of the Story

I had a few errands to run this afternoon after school and so I found myself in the office supply store located in our school neighborhood. The parking lot was nearly full and as I walked in I recognized another shopper. Her sons are in 7th and 8th grade now and I taught them both. "I think the whole middle school is here!" she told me as we made our way to the entrance. 

I laughed at the hyperbole but she persisted. "No really. This is my second time here today and the store is full of school shoppers."

Sure enough, right as we entered I was greeted by one of my students. She waved her English binder and five dividers at me with glee. Truth to tell, there were several other familiar faces as well, including one of the employees who was a former student. 

I had only come for post-it notes and to exchange my Soda Stream carbonators, so it wasn't too long before I was in line. Behind me I could hear parents comparing notes about confusing school supply items, and I felt like a bit of an interloper. 

"I just don't under stand why you need both regular colored pencils and twistables," one mom said to her daughter.

I didn't understand either. "That's typical," another mom told her. "Last year we looked all over town for white erasers." She paused incredulously. "Pink ones evidently smear too much."

I just couldn't let that one go. "Those are really good erasers, though," I said.

They were not convinced.

Couldn't Drag Me Away

While I wouldn't say the weather was cool here today, it was much cooler, and so I took the opportunity to use vegetables from the garden to make a vegan chili for dinner. To the peppers, squash, potatoes, tomatoes, and sweet potatoes I grew I added onion, garlic, corn, beans, and barley. It was, for the most part, a New World dish made complete by a few Old World staples.

Years ago I went to an exhibition at the Smithsonian called Seeds of Change. It was marking, but not celebrating, the 500th anniversary of Columbus's exploration of the west, and as such it focused on the exchanges that inevitably occurred between Europe and the Americas. Even though at the time I was nearly 30 years old and pretty well-educated, the premise of the exhibition was completely new to me. I had never considered an Italy without tomatoes or an Ireland without potatoes. Of course, the atrocities committed to ensure a steady supply of sugar and tobacco were no less horrendous once put in historical context, but it did shed some light on the economic power of addiction.

Just as fascinating was the story of the horse. They became extinct in North America around the time that the wooly mammoth did, around 10,000 years ago. European, mostly Spanish, explorers brought horses with them. Escaped or abandoned animals thrived so well in the land that was once their home that soon there were vast herds of them roaming the American plains. But here's an interesting distinction: all of those horses were feral, not wild, because they were descended from domesticated animals.

There is no such thing as a wild horse.