Degrees of Separation

We wake up to news on the radio every morning, and I often lay abed visualizing the conditions described in the traffic and weather reports before I rise. I was actually up and about the other morning though when I heard the news that there was a huge fire nearby. This time I didn't have to imagine a thing, I simply looked out the balcony door from our bedroom and saw hundreds of flashing lights surrounding a grayish-orange glow in the sky.

I'm ashamed to admit that my first thought was to whether all that activity would make it harder for me to get to school rather than for the people who were in danger of losing their property and so much more. Later, after I made it to work without any problem, I heard that a 73-year-old man had died at the hospital after being rescued from the burning house, and just today? I found out that he was the grandfather of some former students. We're going to reach out to them tomorrow from school.

I've written before about how I learned years ago that it's a mistake to be aggressive or rude on the road around here. You just never know who you might be flipping off. This lesson was (literally) driven home to me when I encountered a rather impatient driver on my way to summer school on the first day. The light had just changed when she laid on her horn, gave me the bird, and whizzed around me to shoot up the crowded drive. Traffic being what it was, she wasn't that far ahead of me when we both pulled into the middle school parking lot, but she made haste in getting inside the building before we met face to face. All her efforts were in vain though, because ten minutes later, in the staff meeting, I was introduced as her supervisor.

Now that was instant karma thrash, but I tend to believe that everything else is, too, we just don't recognize it as such.

Be good!

Trade Offs

There's this graphic I saw recently that I keep going back to-- it shows that half of the U.S. population lives in 146 counties, leaving the entire rest of the nation to the other half!

Living in one of the more populous regions as I do, I find myself fantasizing about life somewhere a little less crowded: Like somewhere you didn't have to show up 20 minutes early to a movie just to find a seat and still sit shoulder to shoulder with all the other patrons. Or maybe someplace where you could find a restaurant you liked where the wait for a table on a Saturday night was less than 45 minutes.

All that sounds great until I wonder if in those wide-open spaces the movie I want to see would even be playing and then consider just how far I'd have to drive to get to that restaurant.

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!