The Squirrel

 

Come on, Squirrel.  Get up and do your freaking job.  

Love and Literacy

Happy to report that I have partied through my last Valentine's Day of my teaching career.

 I  usually steer clear of doom-filled sentiments about how teaching used to be dreamy delightful, and today verges on nightmare, but sometimes facts must be faced.

Valentine's Day in the elementary classroom has taken a concerning plummet down the tubes.

Its whole purpose in years past centered on the cards. Passing them out.  Reading each goofy line of love while munching on candy hearts.   Kids called  out sweet comments across the room like, "Thanks, Scott.  You know I love cats" and "This is so funny, Ally!" If a card was more on the lovey-dovey side, you would see kids smiling, huddling with friends to whisper about possible implications of that simple missive, "BE MINE."

The card meant something back in the day but today's valentine is merely a piece of trash connected to a ring pop  or a package of  "fun dip." Cards, if they exist at all, get gathered up with the candy wrappers and tossed in the recycling bin even though I've told them thousands of times that food wrappings can not be recycled. 

I told #1 Son that I was thinking about writing about this decline.  He said, "You can begin with the title, 'The Day Our Children Forgot How to Love.'"

That's extreme. Which may have been his point. But let's not scoff at the significance of this cultural shift. If we all work together, we might be able to reverse this troubling trend. My message is simple. Let's bring literacy back to the Day of Love.  It's not too late. 

The Olecranon

 Husbandman visits a good bakery on Saturdays, to pick up breakfast pastries and treats for afternoon tea. I usually have a scone and a pecan bar. This Sunday past, he slipped on ice and came down hard on his olecranon, the pointy tip of the elbow. 

X-ray technology showed us that Husbandman's arm suffered an "extensively comminuted fracture of the olecranon process of the proximal left ulna. The main fracture fragment is displaced posterior superiorly by 1.5 cm."  

He had surgery yesterday and now has six screws and a metal plate restoring his shattered elbow to its original form. Good news for Husbandman is that he will not lose use of his triceps. Come to find out, the tricep isn't worth a plugged nickel without the helpful olecranon. 

The best news of all is that Husbandman, in extreme pain and distress, successfully picked up the box of pastries, and delivered them to our home safe and sound.  

The Feelings Check

Like you, I've been feeling feelings as I witness what's happening in Minneapolis and elsewhere. The people there are so incredibly brave.  Feeling:  Awed inspiration.  I then read nothing but hypocrisy and lies from our despicable thuggy government.  Feeling: Raging disgust.  I make phone calls and donate money. Feeling: Slightly diminished powerlessness. (Just a smidge). 

 

A teacher once told me, "Feelings are your best friends."  

In that spirit, I address you, Seething Rage, and invite you in. Please make yourself at home. You can sit and chat with Overwhelming Sadness while I work on e-Learning plans and make another useless call to yell at the greedy heartless folk who run this state. 

The Hoosiers

Challenge:  Can you find this small house in Asheville

Hoosiers are heading to the Natty.  I'm not a football aficionada, but I am a long time fan of happiness and this team has spread the cheer to the people of B-town. We'll take cheer anywhere we can get it at this point. 

IU fans have been through the gosh darned mill. Verily, the pathos of past seasons lingers still in the collective memory. Specific personal examples follow: 

•  #1 Son considering Michigan for college, "If you're going to college, you might as well be at a place with a winning football team."
• Mall shopper sobbing to friend after another loss, "No bowl game?"
• Husbandman's squashing of optimism after a rare victory with, "They played East Overshoe State.  It means nothing." 
• Notre Dame fanatic father asking repeatedly, "What happened to IU?  In the 40s under Bo McMillin they were champions." 

Despite the dismal scores through the winless decades, Hoosier fans have kept on fanning. Tailgating Revelers in RV's travel in from hither, thither and yon for weekends of camp chairs and cornhole, bbq and beverages. Some might wander in to the stadium to watch actual games. I'm not sure.

Read more about the curious phenomenon of the dedicated tailgators here if you feel like it.  Here's an excerpt if you're short on time.

New Year’s Eve is not postponed because of a blizzard. Thanksgiving is not if a grocery store runs out of turkeys. Nor is tailgating abandoned because the home team is in a slump....

In the words of Carmel’s Angie Park, part of three couples who have consistently upgraded their tailgating into a super-sized RV and a restaurant-sized spread of eats over a dozen-year period, “We’ve never lost a tailgate.”

The prolonged "slump" is temporarily over. IU fans travelled down to "Indianta" for the Peach Bowl in droves. Kudos to all the teachers at the compound who went down to represent and help the team get the job done. We were short on subs, but we all have to do our part.  

I hope the Hoosiers win the Natty.  We need this. 

HOO HOO HOO HOOSIERS!

The Resolutions of Danielle deSpare

New year, new me  

2026

 my time 

 to gossip and bad mouth

judge others

watch reality tv nonstop

spend money on things i don't need, can't use

scroll my phone at dinner

limit myself to 1,000 steps

or less 

each day

talk trash and borrow trouble

miss appointments 

roll my eyes

live in fear

hold a grudge

dare the world to

knock the chip

off

my shoulder

The Trip to Asheville

It's the day after Christmas

and I'm sitting here

in an Asheville apartment

with biscuits and cheer

Leaned in to this holiday

with garlands and greenery

made merry with music

and lights, mountain scenery

here are some photos

some great times we've had

with Lucinda the Shoe-Eater 

and Quinn her jazz dad

could give more examples

in this charming verse

or just wrap it up

'fore it gets any worse

 

The Carillon

Saturday was full of fall foliage fun.  I prefer meeting up close and personal with individual trees, rather than taking in fall forest vistas from afar, so we walked about admiring the plethora of excellent trees in town.  Bloomington has been designated as a Tree City of the World so we're the perfect spot for autumnal foliage mongering. 

With his color blindness Husbandman occasionally points to a green tree and says, "that one's great."  I try to break it to him nicely most of the time. 

Walking on campus, we were surprised by a carillon recital in the arboretum.  A recital flyer announced, "If it's not baroque, it's not on the program." There were only 15 of us listening, but everyone seemed pleased.  

Carillons are on my mind now.  I wonder how many kids major in carillon?  I would like to think I would have given my full support if carillon had been #1 Son's choice, but I'm not going to lie.  It would have been tough.  On the other hand, the U.S. is considered one of the great carillon countries, sporting 24% of the world's carillons.  There are about 700 carillons on the planet and you can find some on every continent. Hence, carillon grads probably do just fine in terms of gainful employment. 

To earn the title of traditional carillon, your carillon must have 23 bells and you may not have computerized or electronic components.  Metz Carillon in our town is a traditional, GRAND carillon with over 50 bells.   

We left before the end of the carillon concert, which is unfortunate, because I've now learned that we could have toured the carillon at the end of the recital.  Damn it to hell.  A carillon tour would have been the icing on the cake of a super pleasant Saturday.

The Playground Tragedies

 3rdLanders screamed to me at recess to come over to see something weird.  I was blown away by this writhing black string thing dancing atop a dead katydid. We did some research on my phone.  Come to find out, this is a horsehair worm. Harmless to people, deadly to bugs.  They have been known to appear after rainy days.  Sometimes people find them in their toilets.  

Tragic fact: Horsehair worms can place their larva inside a cricket or katydid.  When the larva grows up, it INFLUENCES its host, causing said host to jump into water and drown. 

 Note that this influence doesn't occur unless the host is already near water.  It will not travel long distances to drown itself.  

No one knows how this happens, but if you're a katydid next to some water, and a horsehair worm emerges from your body, my feeling is you would most likely jump in disgust and horror, inadvertently landing in nearby water, unhappily dying as you watch your horsehair worm cheerfully swimming away. 

Last month the 3rdLanders found a swarm of flies partying about a smelly deer leg, easily identified by a hoof at one end.  We had some disagreement about the deer's age. 3rdLanders believed the leg belonged to a baby deer (fawn).  I surmised that an adult deer lost this leg.  We wondered together about who dismembered the deer.  Fox or wild dog were 2 possibilities.  A few optimists asserted that, whatever its age, that deer could adapt to living with 3 legs and could have a long happy life.  

I didn't dash their dreams, but come on people.  Think it through. 

If you're ever on our school playground, keep your eyes peeled.  There's a lot going on out there. 

Thirdland Week 7

 

Yellownecked Caterpillar

My job has not been offering many pleasant experiences so far.  A few good moments.  A few engaged students.  Overall, mostly bedlam and chaos. 

Yesterday I got so exasperated at the constant talking while I'm talking that I looked up at the ceiling and moaned plaintively to no one, "I just want this to be over."

A few kids seemed to notice, but most kept on with their rigamarole and folderol.  This is the kind of thing I'm dealing with right now:

Episode 1:  While they were sitting on the rug not listening to my brief directions for their writing assignment, one kid secretly poked the kid next to him with a pencil.  Over and over again.  It's sad that the poked child would prefer the pain of a pencil jabbing into his thigh over telling the kid to stop so he could attend to the teacher's directions. When I finally caught on and stopped the pencil poking, 10 other kids decided to poke at each other, play rock-paper-scissors, or lay down on their backs while humming loudly.  

Episode 2: I was attempting to describe the book choices for our upcoming lit. circles and mentioned the covered wagons of Sarah, Plain and Tall and The Indian School.  A kid yelled out, what's a covered wagon.  Everyone knows the pioneer experience is a big part of second grade curriculum and yet, 4 kids started explaining covered wagons all at once.  6 others began talking among themselves about who knows what.   2 others then decided they needed water bottle refills.

Episode 3: Out for extra recess, one kid faked injury when my whistle blowing signaled the end of recess.  He lay on the ground screaming.  Kids crowded around him to help and yelled out to me, "He's hurt!  He's hurt!!!"    I ignored this and waited with the others at the line until I couldn't take it any more. I yelled across the field for them all to get to line NOW.  That's when the injured kid got up and sprinted to line with the rest of them. 

There are other episodes to share, but  I'll save them for another day.  The upcoming week will bring additional moments where I experience despair and a frustrating sense that I lack even a modicum of efficacy where pedagogy is concerned. 

The 3rdLanders are, perhaps, decent enough people in and of themselves but the classroom collective is a nightmare.  Every day is a series of reminding and thanking and ringing chimes and singing directions and blahblahblah.  

On Friday afternoon I took them out for a long recess.  There was no point in working on the owl pellet lesson.  As I sat on the bench, ruing my lack of teaching proficiency, a kid sat with me telling me about his weekend plans to organize all the foods in his kitchen cabinets.  He went through various items and identified their categories.  When he said cheezits would go with cheese, I asked, "Wouldn't cheese go in the fridge?"  He nodded but offered no alternate grouping. 

Redirecting the conversation to me and my problems, I asked him, "Am I over-reacting here?  Am I being overly sensitive to the constant disruptions?"

He thought a moment and then said, "Maybe a little." 

He's probably right.  In addition to everything, self doubt plagues me right now.

The Happiness

 Instead of Gross National Product, we can talk about our Gross National Happiness.  GNH got started in Bhutan.  When countries keep track of four pillars:  environmental conservation, sustainable development, cultural preservation and good governance,  they can come up with a GNH ranking. Finland has the highest GNH. Has been for years.   We're #21, which sounds right.  I see a lot of unhappiness going around these days. 

I can't figure out how Israel could be #5.  Israel has a hideous government.  Israel does care about cultural preservation, but cares little for the cultural preservation of their neighbors.  

Bhutan wasn't ranked last year because someone forgot to collect data on the 4 pillars, but they got an honorable mention.  Bhutan is a happy place where I would love to visit.