Independent Reading

"So, what are you reading?" I asked and sat down next to one of the boys in my class as he worked today.

He shifted a little uncomfortably. "It's on my iPad," he told me.

"Okay," I said, "do you have it here?"

He punched in the security code, launched the iBook app, and handed his device to me.

"At Any Price," I read from the title page. "I've never heard of it. What's it about?"

"It's a grown up book," he said, "I just started it, but it's really good."

"Hmmm," I frowned and swiped the screen to reach the first pages. "Do your parents know you're reading this?"

"Oh yeah," he shrugged. "They know."

"So what's the conflict?" I asked him, since that was the assignment we were working on.

"Um," he hesitated as my eyes scanned the display.

Artemis, Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, Iphigenia? What's up with all the Greeks? I wondered and then my eye fell on the final line of the prologue:

The right to my virginity will be ceded to the highest buyer.

I raised an eyebrow and looked sternly at the student.

"I might change it," he said.

Time Marches On

Just two weeks ago I was rushing through dark, unfamiliar streets searching for the home studio of my ukulele instructor desperately trying to avoid arriving late for my first lesson. It was with relief that I knocked on his door at 5 PM sharp.

The following Thursday I bolted out of school with plenty of time to spare, but the warren of one syllable street names seemed no more familiar to me. The light of day also confused me, and I wondered if perhaps I had the time wrong... would I be half an hour early? But 5 o'clock again found me on right on time.

Tonight? The last light of day was still draining purple in the western sky as I carried my tiny instrument to my car following the lesson. It may be only January, but spring inexorably approaches.

Power Walk

One of our neighbors was recently profiled in a national magazine as "the most important person you don't know." Around here? Those are teasing words. 

"Considering you were on network TV last night until after ten, you're up pretty early!" I commented when I ran into her this morning out walking her dog.

"Oh! The traffic was terrible yesterday for NO REASON!" she explained. "It took me 57 minutes to get work, and I can't be late this morning."

"That's right," I agreed, "because you're the most important person we don't know."

"But you do know me," she replied.

"True," I shrugged. "Actually, you're the most important person I do know."

She leaned over to pick up her dog's poop. "Lucky you."

Practice What You Teach

The dawn of 2015 saw the advent (arrival, from the Latin ad meaning to and vent meaning come) of my third Word-a-Day calendar, as well. A couple of years ago a student gave me one as a holiday gift, and I've been hooked ever since. One thing that always delights me about it is how much the students like it, too: rarely a day goes by that one sixth grader or another does not comment on the word, and some even ask if they can have it to keep. It's such a conversation piece that more than one former student has stopped by to check the words for their coming birthdays.

I always set aside any page with a word that fits our word study parts, and most recently that word was transpontine. It is particularly timely, as we happen to be learning about the prefix trans this week. My friend Mary, who also teaches sixth grade English, noticed that page on my desk this morning when she stopped by.

"Transpontine," I said. "What do you think it means?"

"Across something," she answered.

"What does "pont" mean?" I asked. "Like Ponte Vecchio?"

Mary took Russian in high school, though, so my romance language clue was not very helpful. She is Catholic, though. "Pontiff is pope," she said.

I frowned. She was right. "Pont means bridge," I told her, my brain working away at the pope puzzle.

"The pope is a bridge..." Mary was thinking out loud.

"Between heaven and earth?" I finished.

"See how we did that?" she said.

Sing Along

"So, did you sit around all week playing ukulele while Heidi sang?" my uke instructor joked when we sat down for our second lesson.

I shook my head, but the image of it made me giggle. Tonight as I practiced what I learned, Heidi sat down next to me on the couch. "Hey, that sounds familiar," she said.

I pushed the sheet music closer to her. "I hear it now," she told me.

"Sing it!" I said.

And as I picked carefully, she verrrrry slowly sang, I keep a close watch on this heart of mine...

and continued until the very end, when Josh joined in, too, Because you're mine, I walk the line.

And then we all laughed. I can't wait to tell my teacher about it!

The Woods are Trees and the Trees Are Wood

Another day another movie, and this one we saw to the end, which was a good thing-- that Stephen Sondheim is one witty lyricist.

A Mysterious Emergency

With about 7 minutes left in Unbroken, I was reclining in a luxury movie seat, well aware of the irony, when suddenly the screen went dark and the house lights came up. A strobe light flashed halogen-bright and a mechanical voice quietly announced that An emergency has been detected in the building: please proceed to the nearest emergency exit and evacuate immediately.

All around me, people blinked, some straining to hear the message, others straining to comprehend it. Soon we filed in an orderly line to double doors down and to the left of the screen. I wasn't afraid, but I was alarmed as we entered the unheated concrete corridor beyond. We followed it to a wide stairway, also concrete, our footsteps echoing coldly, until we reached another set of metal doors and pushed through them into the night. 

Back at the entrance people were streaming through all sorts of anonymous doors that I never associated with the theater. There was no sign of emergency, but neither was there any sign of management or even other personnel, and hundreds of folks shivered in groups of three or four discussing their options. "I think it's just a drill," a child confidently assured the adults in his group, and of course he did. At school, it must seem like we are forever interrupting kids' routine activities and forcing them to file outside for no apparent reason.

At last we agreed that, since we knew the ending, and any sort of on the spot compensation would take some time, that it would be best to leave with our ticket stubs and worry about recompense later. So far, despite my efforts, I can't find out what happened-- it's more of a cliffhanger than the movie.