Found Poetry

We have a neighbor who goes by the name of Peach. I've never been formally introduced to her, but I know her well from the rather loud conversations she has at the pool with anyone who will engage with her. I know, for example, that she was devastated when Tim Russert died, she is feuding with her sister, and she doesn't care too much for cats.

Who knew she was a post-modernist stream-of-consciousness poet, though? Take a look:

their are rules in condo living one is Noise and another is Trash when to bring it out when not to tonight a bag of trash was left outside all broken up i kicked it over found a letter with address on it walked it back to its owner . the owner of the trash came out and looked at me like a deer in headlights and said Oh i was going to walk it down later when i get the baby to sleep i handed her Her Trash

I like it.

Goldilocks and the Three Balloons

We had our school-wide science fair last week. The way we run it, all students create a project and all staff members are judges. Even though the event is ultimately a very positive and successful one for the majority of our school community, this policy can create some conflicts, too.

For example, one of the projects I judged was a blank board. I honestly did not even notice until I picked up the evaluation sheet and fastened it to my clipboard. When I looked up, I laughed. The student smiled and shrugged. "So, tell me about your science fair project," I said. She didn't even bother to explain the absence of the Introduction, Materials and Procedures, Results, Graph, Pictures, and Conclusion. She simply plunged in with a description of her experiment which involved balloons filled with different amounts of helium, static electricity, and hang time on the wall.

And she almost had me. I could imagine a situation where she had not been able to produce the required elements for her display, and the experiment itself seemed fun and interesting-- the benefit of the doubt was all hers. "But why?" I asked when she told me her results, "why do you think the middle one stayed up there the longest?"

She shrugged. "Who knows?"

"Could it have been the helium in the bigger one pulling up?" I tried.

She looked at me blankly.

"Or the weight of the smaller one pulling it down?"

"Maybe," She looked bored. "Or the other one was probably just right."

Take It Easy

It's always fun to browse through iTunes and look for the holes in your music collection. For a couple of bucks here and there, you can wile away the hours lost in nostalgia. Sometimes it's shocking to realize what you don't own, especially given its prominence in your past. Such was the case today when I downloaded the Eagles Greatest Hits.

When we were teenagers my mom used to blast that album on the 8-Track player and let it loop endlessly while she cleaned the house on weekend mornings. That and the vacuum were kind of hard to sleep through, but we did our best.

To Market

We are down to the last 6 quarts of tomatoes that we canned last summer, so today seemed like a perfect time to shop for seeds. Each packet that I added electronically to my virtual cart came along with a thumbnail photo of what it would eventually yield, so that I could practically envision my garden as I checked out. I've got to hand it to the company-- that colorful column of herbs, tomatoes, eggplant, okra, peppers, squash, pumpkins, and daisies certainly made parting with my money a lot more palatable.

Enough Rope

We have a student this year who is totally invested in being "bad". He's a smart kid, smart enough to have figured out that grades lower than a C get you the kind of trouble he doesn't want to deal with, and smart enough to know that an unending series of annoyances may get you isolated temporarily from the class but rarely will result in a referral to the administration. Still, he is eleven, and so a miscalculation here and there is inevitable.

Today was team t-shirt day. This is an annual tradition: the front is always designed by a student and voted on by all the kids, and the back has their names written in their own handwriting, so it's pretty cool. This year they were extra awesome given the fact that students had the choice of two tie-dye shades, and it was with a lot of excitement that they received their shirts this morning.

I was prepared for a bit of distraction in each class, but when I walked over to see what this guy was doing instead of the assignment, I was surprised to see him blacking out names with a permanent marker. "Are those the kids you don't like?" I asked in a bit of disbelief.

"Yeah!" he answered me enthusiastically (remorse is really not his thing), "and I've highlighted the names of the kids I like!"

"Yeah, I''m going to have to take that from you," I told him.

"OK, but don't look at the names of the people I like," he said cheerfully. "That would be embarrassing."

I assured him I wasn't really interested in that information, and then continued on with the lesson. After class he asked for his shirt back, but I told him I was going to have to hang on to it for a while.

It was much later in the day when I looked at his handiwork. I was on my way to speak to the principal about him, and grabbed the shirt as one more example of his inappropriate behavior as I headed to the office. My jaw dropped as I walked. Not only had he marked other kids, but he had also applied his system to the faculty names. Oh, I was highlighted (lord knows why), but the principal was crossed out.

I'm pretty sure there are going to be some consequences for that.

Duty Done

The courtroom was silent when I entered this morning, despite the ten people scattered about on the polished wooden benches. I checked in with the juror coordinator and then took a seat near the back, near the wall. I was impressed by the room. Ten stories up, it had 30 foot ceilings and a blockbuster view from the full-length windows behind the jury box. It was way nicer than anything I've ever seen on TV or in the movies.

It turned out that I did know someone there, the clerk of the court. I met him at a couple of parties almost 20 years ago, and our paths have crossed here and there, at restaurants, meetings, and dog parks since then. He was on the county board for several years, and I had forgotten about his more recent appointment.

Anyway, after our orientation, we moved to the jury assembly room, more high ceilings and awesome views, but the squeakiest door I ever heard-- after a while, anytime someone went for water or coffee, it was excruciating. They gave each of us three crisp ten dollar bills and then at 11 announced that the only case for the day had been settled and we were free to go, ineligible to return for three years.

So that was it. My big experience with our justice system kind of slowed to a halt like a roller coaster on a steep hill, and for a moment, my day hung there motionless until I realized what I could do with such unexpected free time. And then I was racing down the track-- lunch at my favorite sandwich place, grocery shopping, picking up the CSA share, a hair cut, and back to school for writing club and a wrestling match, then on to the gym, and home to cook dinner.

I Am Number Eight

I was talking to a colleague in the hall this afternoon about the possibility that I may have jury duty tomorrow, when a passing parent overheard our conversation.

"Jury duty!" she interjected and I liked her enthusiasm. It had just the right mix of awe and surprise to capture my own feelings about this unprecedented experience, and when I explained to her how it works, that you never know until 5 PM, whether you have to report, her sympathetic grasp of this colossal inconvenience was also quite gratifying.

"My husband's a litigator," she confided to me. "He always says 'no teachers on the jury!'."

"Why?!" I gasped.

"Oh, it's not just him, either," she continued. "It's like a lawyer's rule of thumb."

"But why?" I asked again.

"Oh you teachers," she said. "It's your job to get up in front of people and convince them of things. He's afraid you won't be on his side, and then you'll sway the whole jury. It's too risky."

A couple of hours later I checked in with my official juror ID. Yep. This teacher is scheduled to report tomorrow at 9 AM. Look out litigators! Here I come.