It's Official

I saw the first Christmas commercial of the season last night. Even though it was for spending the holidays at Disney and it aired on the Hallmark Channel?

It still counts.

Happy Holidays, y'all!

Borderline

"Excuse me!" a woman hailed me from the other side of the chainlink fence that surrounds our community garden. Our plot is on the perimeter, and so the sidewalk and street are right there. Most of the time passing pedestrians ignore me as I work in the garden, although I do get an occasional greeting or wave, but as the season progresses and the herbs and flowers grow up along the fenceline there is a bit more privacy. But yesterday, I had just finished clipping the dry stalks of some sunflowers and zinnias, and there was a clear view of me and my garden.

"Yes?" I replied politely, standing up from where I had been gleaning the last of the sun gold cherry tomatoes.

"How does this place work?" she asked. "Do any of you ever sell your vegetables?"

I explained that it was a community garden where we grew produce for our own use. "We do donate extra to the food pantry," I finished.

"But no one sells anything?" she repeated.

I shook my head apologetically.

"But those tomatoes! That basil!" she pointed at the plot next to mine.

"She has some beautiful stuff," I agreed.

"What about you? What do you have growing?" She looked over my shoulder.

"All I have left are some hot peppers and the tail end of the tomatoes," I said.

"We love hot peppers!" she told me. "We eat those more than anything else!"

I laughed at her brazen hint and shrugged. "Well I've got extra," I assured her and went to the potting bench for a bag. 

I picked a half dozen heirloom paprika peppers and was on my way to hand them over when she called, "What about a few tomatoes?"

I nodded and pointed to the gate where I could hand her the bag.

"Thank you so much!" she said sincerely.

"You're welcome," I answered, and walked back to my garden shaking my head.

RIP Name Drop

For a couple of years, The New Yorker Magazine had an online puzzle that I kind of loved. Name Drop was published every weekday and readers had 100 seconds and six clues to identify a mystery person, someone from the arts, history, or politics. The fewer clues it took to guess the person, the more points awarded, and there was also a witty bit of praise (Congratulations, George and Amal would be impressed!) or reproach (Just think if today were opposite day, you’d have the highest possible score.), depending on one’s results. 

Here’s an example: 

Clue 6: My album “Van Lear Rose” (2204), which I released at the age of seventy-two, was produced by the White Stripe’s Jack White, who was forty-four years my junior.  

Clue 5: In a feminist anthem that was reportedly banned by dozens of radio stations in the seventies, I sing, “This old maternity dress I’ve got is going in the garbage/ The clothes I’m wearing from now on won’t take up so much yardage.”  

Clue 4: I was close friends with Patsy Cline before her untimely death; I named one of my daughters after her, and, in 1977, I released the tribute album “I Remember Patsy.”  

Clue 3: My sister, Crystal Gayle and I performed a duet medley with the Boston Pops Orchestra in 1989, which included portions of my songs “We’ve Come a Long Way, Baby” and “You Ain’t Woman Enough (to Take My Man).  

Clue 2: Sissy Spacek won an Oscar for playing me in a 1980 bio-pic which shares its name with a 1970 hit in which I sing about my humble upbringing in Kentucky, in “a cabin on a hill in Butcher Holler.”  

Clue 1: I was a country singer whose hits included “Don’t Come Home A-Drinkin’ (with Lovin’ on Your Mind),” “The Pill,” and my signature song, “Coal Miner’s Daughter.” 

Not to brag, or maybe to brag a little bit, but I nailed that one on question 6, to which the game replied, “Congratulations you are officially the smartest person who ever lived.” 

In addition to the challenge of the trivia quiz, not surprisingly, I often learned new things about these folks, and sometimes I even learned about people I was not familiar with. The game also revealed my cultural and generational bias; more often than not the subjects I could not identify were people of color, especially young people of color. Even so, it felt good to own up to that shortcoming and work in the smallest of ways to overcome it. 

Clue 6: The street formerly known as Congress Parkway, which runs from the Jane M. Byrne Interchange to Grant Park was renamed for me in 2019.  

Clue 5: After taking over as the editor of the Free Speech and Headlight, I wrote about the murder of my friend, Thomas Moss, a co-owner of the People’s Grocery.  

Clue 4: I often published under the pen name “Iola” and I’m best known by my maiden name, although I married the attorney Ferdinand Barnett, in 1895.  

Clue 3: The journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, whose display name on Twitter references me, co-founded a center that’s named after me at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.  

Clue 2: In 202, I was awarded a posthumous Pulitzer Prize for my reporting on lynchings across the U.S., in such publications as “The Red Record” and “Southern Horrors.”  

Clue 1: I was a journalist and activist who led the Alpha Suffrage Club, a pioneering Black women’s organization in Chicago, and I participated in the founding of the N.A.A.C.P. 

The answer? Ida B. Wells, which I could not get either the first time or, shamefully, the next time (today) I took the quiz, considering how important her work and how accomplished she was. 

Suffice it to say, that Name Drop was a fun and edifying part of my day, and so you can imagine my distress, a few weeks ago when I noticed that every time I tapped the link for the new daily quiz I was met with an old puzzle, which I knew because I recognized the clues. It took days of searching before I finally found The New Yorker’s announcement that the last new game had been published on September 8. They had ceased publication without warning or explanation, replacing it with a random generator of old quizzes. 

When confronted with this sad news, I confess to feeling a tiny void in my life, one that I have not been able to fill quite yet. I miss that little dose of biography that gave me the chance to engage with a notable individual and, humbly (sometimes), be inspired.

Terrors of the 21st Century

For the warm-up today, I asked the students what scares them, and I was a little surprised at how delighted most of them were to answer. Unlike other questions, very few said "Nothing" or even "I don't know". There were 27 different responses from 60 or so kids, and whenever anyone walked into the room and looked at the tally on the whiteboard the reaction was the same: Oh! Is this what scares us?

In addition to ghosts and zombies and spiders and snakes, the list included teachers and tests (which was relevant today in class!) and bad grades (which sadly, was also somewhat relevant today after class). There were also answers that kids have given for generations, like creepy people, small spaces, the deep ocean, spooky noises, broken bones, and death, but my favorite answer was the kid who simply posted Bad wifi, because when we read it? 

Everyone shuddered.

Write the Writing You Want to See

The 6th graders have to write an introduction to themselves, so using the guidelines and planning questions we gave them, I composed my own. Enjoy!

Hello! I am Ms. S. and I am really glad to be teaching you this year! Here is a little information about me:

I was born in Washington, D.C., but we moved out to Falls Church when I was one year old. After that my family lived in New Jersey and then Saudi Arabia. I went to high school in Switzerland and college in New York before returning to Virginia. I've taught sixth grade English here at Jefferson since 1993, but it never gets old or boring. 

 I'm the type of person who likes to stay busy, so in my spare time I cook, work in my garden, read, play pickleball, and go hiking. I also do yoga and write every single day, because I think regular practice is important in building skills. During the pandemic I started baking bread, and I still do that once a week. I also have a goldendoodle named Lucy, and I love spending time with her and my two cats. 

 My goal for this year is to combine learning and fun. I like to think that although school is mandatory, it doesn't have to be boring. I hope we can all work together to make our English class the best it can be. Are you with me? Okay! Let's do this!

Friendly Yes, Helpful No

"How are you today?" a smiling young man asked me as I pushed my cart down an aisle of an unfamiliar grocery store.

"Good, thanks," I said and then paused. I looked at my cart, full of everything on the list with the exception of a single item. "Can you tell me where the rice is?"

"No, no, I cannot," he answered, still smiling.

I frowned and shrugged. "Oh, well," I replied, "I guess I'll find it." I trolled around a bit more. Rounding a corner and finally spotting the rice, I saw that the guy was there, too. 

"Here it is!" he said.

"There it is!" I agreed and, my shopping complete, I headed for the checkout.

All in the Family

"Can I leave this bag in your room?" a seventh grader asked this morning. "It won't fit in my locker."

"Sure," I shrugged, peering at the long thin parcel she carried on a strap over her shoulder. "What is it?"

"It's lacrosse gear," she told me. "My friend Addie is going to teach me how to play after school."

"8th grade Addie?" I responded, and when she nodded, I said, "She was in my homeroom!"

"I didn't know that!" she laughed.

"That's right," I confirmed. "You were in here last year, and she was here the year before. She's like your older homeroom sibling."

"I like that!" she smiled. "I'm going to tell her when I see her!"