Royals

How strange that on the day that the longest reigning monarch of England, Queen Elizabeth II, turned 90, the artist once and for all known as Prince passed away.

One who was forced to grow up so early has grown so old, and the other who seemed somehow forever young will never truly grow old.

What a world.

Cause for Celebration

The day before National Poem-in-your-Pocket-Day is a busy one in my classroom. Students browse through thousands of poems in over a hundred poetry collections to find the perfect opus to carry with them the next day. They are also welcome to revisit all the great writing they have posted to our online poetry challenge and select an original work.

For some reason, these sixth graders were more excited and engaged than any other group I've ever shared the activity with. Can we have more than one? Can we trade with our friends? Can I pick something another student has posted?

The answers were, Yes. Yes! and YES! 

"It's like any holiday," I joked with them, "you can celebrate it any way you like!"

Yay! they cheered.

When I told my friend and fellow English teacher Mary about it? She said, "Look at you, creating a community of writers!"

Yes! Yes! and Thank you, Mary!

Kids These Days

Yesterday, I was recounting a bit of misconduct on the part of a particular student who happens to have Down's Syndrome, on our recent all-school field trip to a colleague who wasn't there.

"He just grabbed the map and speed-walked away into the crowd! So when I caught up with him, I grabbed his lunch box strap to make him stop, and then he tried to yank it away from me, telling me to let go or else! And the next thing I know we're standing in the middle of the convention center completely surrounded by thousands of kids from all over the area, and he's yelling that he doesn't want to fight me."

"Wow," she said only half-joking, "You're lucky nobody was filming you with their phones. That could have gone viral!"

Plane Food

While researching today's post, which was going to be about how addictive those Tasty food prep videos on BuzzFeed are, I stumbled upon a list of anti-glam food sites, and it was there that I was introduced to inflightfeed on Instagram.

Yes, it is all photos of airplane food! As current as the pictures are, there is a bit of nostalgia to the site for me as well, since here in the US, we don't have meals served to us on airplanes anymore. Speaking as a former air line cook, I recognize how that state of affairs may give us all one less thing to complain about, but it's still al ittle sad.

Don't worry, though, it seems that we just shipped all those tiny dishes overseas, because all the shots on inflightfeed are from Air India, Malaysia Air, Lufthansa, KLM, Azores Air, etc, en route to and from Mumbai, Delhi, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Oslo, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, Lisbon, and other such destinations.

And, while it doesn't look like the food has improved much in the last 25 years?  I sure would like to travel on a few of those flights.

Spring Run

Despite the fact that most cherry blossoms have been long gone these last two weeks, the unpredictability of nature had the Cherry Blossom Festival on the calendar for this weekend. Many, many tourists had booked their trips in advance, and as it was impossible to get anywhere near the Tidal Basin either yesterday or today, we redirected our dog walking to Roosevelt Island on Saturday and then Hains Point today.

To be kind, East Potomac Park is a real fixer-upper with plenty of potential and lots of location, location, location. That said, this place, which actually houses the National Capital Region Headquarters of the Park Service, is a dismaying mess of flooded and rotting sidewalks, flotsam-and-jetsam-littered green space, and breathtaking views. Even so, it is still a popular destination for city families and fisherman, and us, today.

We started our walk around the peninsula on the northern side across from the golf course club house. Sunshine, a nice breeze, and an unbeatable view of the waterfront across the Potomac Channel made it almost possible to ignore the trash and gaping holes in the walk way. Several folks greeted us as we walked, and as we went on, we noticed many people looking over the railing into the choppy water below. Pausing to see what all the fuss was, we were amazed by a ribbon of large silver fish swimming along the side. Hundreds flashed by in both directions on what seemed to be a super highway for fish.

"What are they?" a woman ahead of us asked a fisherman nearby.

"Herring," he told her. "They run every spring like this. They live in the ocean but return to the Potomac to spawn."

We watched in awe for more than a moment as an endless stream of Alewife and Blue River Herring darted below us, and as we continued around the point, it was impossible not to stop and check to see if they were still there.

They were, every time.

Unaccompanied Adult

There was a time, that doesn't seem that long ago, when we had seen all the latest kid movies, but these days it's increasingly rare. On my Oscar ballot this year, animated feature ranked right down there with foreign language and documentary feature as the category with the fewest movies I'd actually seen.

So when we asked our god-daughters what they wanted to do this weekend, I was really happy when seeing Zootopia was at the top of their list. And honestly? The Disney flick did not disappoint. Nor did the previews-- I'm definitely seeing Finding Dory when it opens in June, even if I don't have a kid to take me!

Tough All Over

Our sixth grade god-daughter is in town from New Jersey for the weekend, and she and I have spent the last few hours commiserating about school. "I use to like school before they made us get up so early!" she said.

"Tell me about it!" I answered.

"When we ask to go to the bathroom our math teacher always sighs and says, Is now really the best time?" she told me at dinner. 

"I know, but look at it from her point of view," I said. "A kid goes to the bathroom and then comes back and says, What are we doing? I was in the bathroom."

She laughed. "Well whose fault is that?" she admitted, and so we went on. 

And to be honest? It's been helpful and refreshing to hear the student side of the kind of sixth grade drama that seems to be fairly universal.