Staples (Not the Store)

I have been trying to get my bathroom prepped for painting, and I'm removing the old celotex ceiling tiles in part of the bathroom. Of course, nothing is ever easy. They'd been stapled REPEATEDLY to the ceiling. I've spent the past hour pulling individual staples with a pair of pliers.

May I just say that this isn't my idea of fun. A fine grit falls from the ceiling every time a tile comes down. I am wearing some of my oldest and rattiest clothing, a dust mask, gloves, safety glasses and a do rag for this job. This, of course, is one of those stylish outfits sure to bring out an emergency trip to somewhere with no time to change or a really cute guy.

I decided to take a break from the crap falling from the ceiling and eat some lunch. How long can one linger over potato soup? Dessert, anyone? I will have to get back to it soon to make sure I get it primed today, but geez, I hate this.

Money! Money. Money?

Today was Shopping Day for July. I dragged myself into town and fought the crazy battle to provender myself for the next 30 or so days. It made me more tired than it should have, and I don't think it was because of the giant Sam's Club refugee cart I grabbed at Wal-Mart.

This constant struggle to keep my head above the quickly-rising financial waters is making me tired. I found myself looking at an item in the home improvement store today that wasn't really expensive and telling myself I couldn't afford such a luxury right now. When I got home, two different doctors and my monthly credit card statement were in the box. That precious paycheck, the one I had waited so long to get, is already gone, gone, gone.

I shouldn't complain. After all, I have all I need, and I'm really lucky to have as much as I have. I just wish I could reach a point where I didn't have to worry every month about paying everything.

I know this isn't something unique to my situation. I read in Time the other day that at least 41% of middle class working families can't afford health insurance. How did we get into this situation? When did it become so hard for people who are working non-McDonald's full time jobs to remain financially solvent?

Well, that's enough of that, probably. I just have to focus on the positive and keep my nose to the grindstone. Maybe once I can get through with this second MA, I'll be able to stay afloat without so much frantic baling.

Fear

For L.D. because he said I should...

After I asked my last question last night, I started thinking about where the horrible things we do to one another come from. My current obsession with CI undoubtedly fueled this pattern of thought as well since the writers of that show often utilize things that I fervently hope they had to strain a mental muscle to create but fear actually happened somewhere in some form or another.

Whenever I get interested in a topic, I pretty much chew it to pieces until I feel like I've reduced it to whatever truth I can find and keep. Now, as to whether or not these truths I dig out of situations that confuse or horrify me are universal or not, I wouldn't attempt to judge. All I can say is that they work for me. With that caveat in mind....

Pondering the motivations behind the horrors we humans so gleefully perpetrate on one another, I came to the conclusion that the motive behind all these actions is a type of fear. I'm not talking about monsters-under-the-bed fear here. I'm talking about fears that go down to the bedrock of our identities. Some examples might be: Robbery: the fear that one will never be able to possess the things one desires without taking them from someone else; Rape: the fear that one will never be respected or seen as powerful or desirable so one decides to use violence to simulate these things and fulfill an image of potency; Racism: the fear of something different from what one is used to by way of appearance, language, or cultural norm causing one to strike out rather than to reach out for understanding. I thought about it for a long, long time last night, and I feel that fear is at the bottom of it all.

I believe these fears start small: tiny seedling doubts that whisper in the ear of the soul. At first, it's easy to shrug them off or to pretend they're not even really emotions we have. All of us have to struggle with those doubts. I don't know of anyone who could truly say they never have to fight those insidious whispering fears. Those thoughts must drive down their hair-like roots and then lead to words: words of hate, racial epithets, angry arguments, and expressions of dark desire. Once they've been talked about, the thoughts take on a terrible physicality. They lose some of their abstraction and begin to seem reasonable, even arguable. Words blossom into action and another fear-born sliver of humanity's worst is the fruit.

I John 4: 18 talks about the opposite of fear: "There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love." I John 4:18 Note the use of the phrase "drives out." That says to me that once those tiny doubts get going, they send deep roots into us that something has to come and remove to prevent them from maturing into great evils. That also says to me that my fumbling efforts, my search for truth, aren't enough. There has to be an outside force, love, that can kill the fear.

This passage defines that fear-killing love as God (see the chapter linked above for the exact wording). For me, personally, I have found that to be the truth. I don't think this to be a pat answer or an easy solution to a Gordian problem. To receive that love, one has to go to God and be honest. There's nothing that is so difficult as to confess these fears because I think they're tied to us in a very personal way. I also don't think that coming to God is a one-time panacea. I think this coming, this taking of love and killing of fear, must be a daily thing. In the same way that an invasive plant springs up unexpectedly after being sprayed with "weed killer", I think these fears can come back if we don't constantly apply love from the source of love, God.

As I said above, these are just my thoughts on an issue that troubled me. This is the truth that I'm working on right now, that I'm trying to come to a deep understanding of to help myself move forward. You may take it with the proverbial grain of salt, si quiere.

Charger Lust

We took a trip to see my uncle in the northern part of the state, and as we were passing through the city where my mom bought her vehicle, we left it at the dealership for service and took my car on the trip. The dealership had one perfect silver Charger sitting a little to the side of the other used cars.

It gleamed in the afternoon sun like a katana blade. The muscular front end curved toward the ground like the chin of a predator crouched to spring. I swear, I could almost hear the thing whispering to me, soft rustling murmurs of big engine and fast acceleration.

I wanted to trail my fingers across those shining curves to see if it would purr. I wanted to sit behind the wheel and feel those huge tires eat the pavement. I decided that when we got back, I would cast caution to the winds and find out how much they wanted for it.

I knew from the beginning that there was no way I would walk out of there with that gorgeous car. My pittance of a salary would never allow me to make the payments, even if they financed them for a hundred years. I just had to ask. What harm could come?

While they were running the credit checks (a process that increasingly scares me with it thoroughness...next they'll be requesting my shoe size and wanting to know how many serious relationships I've had, why they failed, and what I plan to do now), the dealer threw me the key and said, "Take it for a spin." I wrapped my fingers around the heavy, chunky, key and turned in anticipation. This, this was the moment I'd waited for since I first saw a picture of a Charger in a magazine.

I slid into the seat, slipped the key into the ignition, and the big engine came to life with a throaty rumble. I took it out of the parking lot and I swear it wasn't so much like driving as it was like using the reins on an intelligent animal. I took it out to a four-lane section and put the pedal down. I could feel the power immediately. The back end grabbed like a panther gathering itself for a lunge and the engine roared. I was at 60 in seconds.

I know it's not girly, but there is something inside me that absolutely thrills to those big engines. I wanted to keep it on the floor and run until the gas was gone from the tank. I wanted to roll down the windows and scream "WHOOHOOO!!" I wanted to catch the Mustang that was sedately cruising down the same strip and blow the doors off it. The car went straight to my head.

I forced myself back into the land of reality, and I took the car back to the dealership. Once I was back inside, the news was both what I expected and better than I expected. Of course I couldn't afford it. Had I bought it, I surely wouldn't be writing this. I might be in Mexico by now flying down the highway. I wasn't really disappointed since I never truly expected to get it, but the good news was that my credit check came up with good credit, just not enough to swing a payment low enough to be affordable.

The good news is that after I finish my second MA and my pittance increases to something more like a living wage (super-pittance?), I might actually be able to get one. It might be a "midlife crisis" type of thing, but I want a Charger. I want to get out on the highway and be a danger to myself and others (not really). I want to pull out to pass something and not have that sickening moment of hesitation before the engine hits passing gear.

Even though I didn't come home with that gorgeous machine, I did finally get behind the wheel of one. Like any addict, a taste just makes me crave more, but at least I can say that I've driven one.

Five Questions to Which I Expect No Answers

This is another one of my silly list posts. Here are five things I'd like to ask various people. Keep in mind that some of these people are no longer living:

1) To the assembled Congress: When are you really going to get serious about education and do something other than make unenforceable and useless policies and regulations/kill trees for paperwork?

2) To Jane Austen: Were you satisfied with making the choice to live the life of the mind and the pen instead of settling for a man who may have been good but didn't move your soul? Did you regret not following the expected paths?

3) To my former friend Alexa: Why?

4) To Vincent D'Onofrio: How is it possible to become all the diverse characters that you play? From where to you pull them? How much of them is in you and do they leave any traces when you're done with them?

5) To those willing to kill in the name of their religion: Do you really believe that a loving God calls for you to slay his children and creations? How do you reconcile that?

Just random musings from somebody who should probably go on to bed.

Animal Day

Dillon is still very much in the land of the living. He (I did finally get a chance to flip him, and I think it's a he...it's very young yet) has already earned a nickname PT, short for Pocket Tiger and in honor of PT Barnum's famous axiom about suckers being born every minute.

PT/Dillon is exceptionally loving. All he wants is to be rubbed, scratched and held. He loves belly rubs, chin scratches, rubbing between the ears, and if you'll just hold your hand still in front of him, he will enthusiastically just sort of throw himself at it. To be as tiny as he is, he purrs like a miniature buzz saw.

He's still very staggery, though. I don't know if he's just young and uncoordinated or if he sustained damage yesterday. He can walk on his own, and he even jumped over my hand to get to his little Japanese teacup/dish of fishy food. We will just have to see how everything goes.

I was feeling kind of sick this afternoon, and I lay down for a nap. When I got up, I checked on Dillon and Roux came to see me. One side of her face is swollen. It looks like she got stung by a bee. She's poky this afternoon, too. Being a pit, she's not showing any pain, but if the swelling doesn't go down by tomorrow morning, I guess I'll have to load her up and take her to see the vet.

It's just been an animal day. I hope we'll all be as well or better tomorrow.

People Stink

About 7:30 tonight, Missy started barking her "there's something here" bark. I assumed it was my neighbors out for their evening walk, and I really didn't think about it much. I walked over to the door to call the dogs in for the evening, and Missy was sitting sphinx-style in the yard, tail wagging, in front of a pile of something I couldn't make out. Standing there, I suddenly saw it move.

I was out the door as fast as I could slip on my flip flops and go. As I got closer, I realized it was a kitten by the pointed ears. I had thought it was a rabbit. Sometimes the dogs catch young or unwary rabbits in the fields, but they never bark about it. The kitten was tiny. There was no blood on it, but it was meowing pitifully and didn't seem to be able to move.

Grabbing it as gently as I could, I ran for the house. Its shoulder looked disjointed, and from the wetness of its fur due to Missy's mouth, I couldn't tell what was wrong with it. I found a box from a recent eBay shipment, placed a dishtowel in, and took the box into the kitchen and the strong lights there.

I was so relieved that there was no blood. I figured Missy's prey drive kicked in when she saw the tiny furry moving thing and that she had broken and punctured with her huge powerful jaws. The kitten continued to mew. It tried to hiss at me a couple of times, but mostly, it was confused and afraid.

Taking an old vet syringe, I fed the kitten four full measures of milk. At this point, I wasn't sure if the kitten would even live more than a few moments. It was breathing so hard, and I couldn't tell whether or not Missy had paralyzed it. All I could do was try to make it feel as safe and comfortable as possible for whatever time it had left.

I checked in on it, gave it some more milk, and talked to it and petted it. I was almost shocked to see the tiny front claws knitting as I stroked it gently. If it could move its front paws, maybe it wasn't really paralyzed totally.

I went to eat at Mom and Dad's and came back with a can of soft cat food (mine don't eat cans) and steeled myself to find whatever I would find when I looked in the box. The kitten raised its head and meowed at me. I fed it tiny spoonsful of the fishy canned food, and it ate as if it hadn't had food in a long time. After it ate, it actually pulled itself up for a minute. If it can do that, maybe nothing is broken after all.

I don't know if the kitten is male or female yet. I don't want to traumatize further by turning it over to look. It rolled over when I was rubbing its belly, but its tail was in the way. I decided to name it Dillon after Dylan Thomas because all I could think of when I first put it in the box was "Rage, rage against the dying of the light." The name will fit a male or female. I don't know if it will live yet. It may have injuries inside that I don't know about. All I can do is give it the best home I can for as long as it's with me, the same as I do with all my other animals.

The thing about this whole situation is this: when I picked the kitten up from the yard, I saw a white van parked down the road in the pull-off to our pasture. A person was standing in the pasture looking toward the house. I know, even though I can't prove it, that these are the people who threw this kitten out on me. If Missy was a little more violent and a little less used to cats, she could have torn that kitten into pieces, literally.

Those people were not only so irresponsible that they had not spayed or neutered their adult cats, but were so totally uncaring that they flung a nearly helpless creature out into a yard with a pit bull, and I guarantee they saw Missy when they stopped because she was out and about at that time.

If I could find them, I would shoot them for both actions. Both were acts of senseless, thoughtless cruelty to something too tiny, too innocent and fragile to survive it. Actions like these make me really despise my race. I don't know if Dillon will survive, but I hope that those people never get to own another animal again as long as they live. They don't deserve it. What they do deserve, perhaps some form of divine justice will provide.

Not Much to Say

Today was an odds-and-ends day. I finished out some paperwork for the classes I'll be taking in the fall, filed some stuff, and contacted some people about the various conferences I have to go to next month.

When it cooled off some outside, I went out and started the process of trying to reclaim one of the shrubs in my yard from the muscadine vines that have invaded it. It took me about an hour and a half, but I got a tunnel cut between the privet hedge/muscadine thicket and the thorny apple I'm trying to save. I will have to get Dad's truck and stand in the bed with a saw to cut the rest of it, and that may be more than I get done in the next few precious days of freedom before the rush toward the school year begins.

I did other pruning, too. I finally bought a set of bypass pruners, so I was able to take some large limbs off the chestnut tree and one of the cedars that had gotten out of control. There wasn't a whole lot else to do. I can't really mow since everything is so dry, so I have bahaia sprigs everywhere. I hate bahaia grass. It makes me sneeze and it looks so ugly in my yard.

I'm going to start reading some of the old Conan stories tonight. I borrowed the books from Dad, and we'll see how it goes. I have been doing some online research about Howard, too, and I find it interesting that I have discovered him 100 years after he was born. This is the anniversary year.

Well, as the title said, there wasn't much that was exciting to relate today. It was just an ordinary day. Those are nice to have sometimes.

The Old Place

The land where my mother and uncle grew up is referred to as The Old Place. It's way back on dirt roads, and the only building still standing from the original homestead is an old barn. I don't know how many acres are there, but it's a generous country space.

The parcel that was my grandparents' has been cut into two sections and eventually, each of the three grandchildren will get a segment of it. At one time, Indians lived there. Arrowheads sometimes wash up from the red clay. It was a working farm when my grandparents lived there. Now, we mostly use the various parts of the property as hay fields, tree farms, and animal pasturage.

My uncle and cousins hunt there sometimes, and it's a wonderful place to animal watch. There are turkeys, deer, rabbits, all manner of smaller creatures such as raccoons, and today I startled (as much as it's possible to do) an armadillo. I figure we've also got bobcats there somewhere, but I've never seen one.

Toward the back side, a small creek cuts through the property. In part of the property, there are three fields stepping down to this creek and one across it. It is, quite simply, one of the most beautiful places on earth to me. I used to go every time I was home from Japan and take pictures just to be able to take it with me.

Sitting in the pastures, no sound of the outside world intrudes. It's so rare to find any place now where the sound of traffic doesn't trickle in, but at the Old Place, the main sound is the sighing of an ever-present wind through the tops of the trees. It sits high in the clay hills surrounding Podunk, and because of its position on a high ridge, there is always moving air. The only real sign of modern civilization are an old car rolled up in the edge of the woods and left to die and the silvery flash of a cellular tower two or three hills away. Planes don't fly over often, and traffic is infrequent.

The sky is clear, too. Even though there are deep woods elsewhere on the property, the fields are open enough to watch the weather changing. At night, there is simply no light pollution and it's possible to see the entire sky.

There are times when it becomes absolutely necessary for me to go back there. Today was one of those days. I was wrestling with a big issue and I really couldn't even think at home. I went out to take care of running the church bulletin, and almost without thought, I found myself skidding down the dirt roads and at the gate to the Old Place.

Even though I wasn't wearing "Outdoor Clothes", I slid under the gate and walked into the second field, the Red Field, and just sat down. The sky was golden with the light that only comes just before a storm. As I sat there, I watched the ballooning storm clouds roll across the horizon. It was almost hypnotic. I wish I had taken my camera.

Through the magic of cellular technology, I was finally able to call a friend and talk about what was bothering me and find some relief. I don't think I could have made that call if I hadn't been there. The line from Gone with the Wind comes to mind where Rhett tells Scarlett that she draws strength from the red clay of Tara. For me, it's not an antebellum plantation, but I feel that way, too.

Someday, I want to build a house there. Maybe only a small one that I can go to on the weekends or something, but I would like to have a place there in all that peace that I can go to when I need to recharge.

The Whole Wide World

I got a copy of this film today and watched it. I think it's one of the best movies I've seen lately. Without trying to spoil anything, I cried like a baby at the end.

Dad has always loved Robert E. Howard. He has most of the Conan series in tattered paperbacks, both Howard's and the fruit of those who followed him. Even though I was raised up on Michael Moorcock's Elric with dashes of Lovecraft and later masters like Brooks, Cook, Anthony, and scores of others, I have read very little of Howard. He was the original grand master of them all. Between Tolkein and Howard, almost all of the world of fantasy is spanned. Too many modern fantasy authors are bad imitations of one or the other style, like an image that's been photocopied so many times it's lost its original resolution. I stopped reading the genre about two years ago because I was so bored with the predictability of it. Only a few authors still interest me, Salvatore, Jordan (when I can summon up the patience to make a flow chart to keep up with all his dadgummed characters), but maybe I need to go back to where it all began and rediscover there. Now I am fascinated, and I'm going to have to borrow those books from Dad.

The portrayal of Howard absolutely broke my heart. Howard had universes in his head and the gift to get those out and onto paper. He understood the value of those places and was willing to go there and tell anyone who didn't support that to go to hell. I respect that. He was focused on the thing that he most needed to do and he understood what that thing was. I don't think he fully understood, at least based on the film Howard, how to reach for and hold the human love that would have allowed him to truly flower and live. What would he have become if he'd had someone to be the bedrock from which he sprang? The place to return to from soaring on strong wings? Could he ever have actually drawn from that stability or was he doomed from the start? That story calls to me.

I, like most of us mere mortals, have never been able to get my universes any farther than my conscious brain to play with them. I cannot write fiction worth the proverbial tinker's darn. In the film, Howard says something to the effect of you can't do something else and write, too. I think maybe that's true. Maybe that's why my fiction has always been one step up from toilet tissue. I don't put any time into it, not the sweat and blood immersion that it needs. The most detailed fiction I've done was for use in a game, not for the actual telling of the story. I have stories I'd like to tell, but I don't think I have the discipline to tell them.

For that matter, my poetry suffers from my not taking enough time to let it flow. For me, the instance of inspiration is more like an inescapable cloud burst that has to be channeled at that moment or lost rather than the deep river in which he seemed to wade. It comes over me and I have to write. I have to put it down. Later, I come back to it and tinker. Usually, during that first phase, I write it down as fast as possible, and then I have to get away from it. It bursts out and it clears away whatever thing inspired it. It doesn't really take its final form for a long time after that.

I have often wondered what it would be like to simply take a year and write. A friend of mine from college used to tell me that I needed to do that. I'd like to move somewhere like Costa Rica and spend a year in a shack on the Pacific Coast. Something Elizabeth Bishop. However, I don't know that such a luxury will ever be mine. To do that, one has to have some means of support, and God knows I am so deep in the financial hole now that I may never have large amounts of disposable income again.

The film left me moved as few films do these days and curious. Both of these things are good things in my book. It brought back to me several things that I haven't paid enough attention to lately. It made me hungry for those wonderful worlds of my childhood. Not the childish worlds, but the worlds of swords and albino kings and dragons that shaped me. It's been too long since I took the time to dive deep into those rivers and let the current take me.

Getting Something Done

Today I finally escaped the inertia of the couch and started working on my bathroom. So far, I've gotten the top layer of the old contact paper off the walls. I am working on the paper layer underneath. Hopefully by the end of the day tomorrow, I'll have clean walls to work with.

It's nice to finally get something started, if not completely done. This month, money has been tighter than usual, and for some reason, that's made me very lethargic. I suppose not being able to go through our local home improvement and get inspiration or knowing that I can't afford the paint and other things that I need have killed off my drive to get this going, but now that I've stripped this first layer, I am starting to regain some of it.

The bathroom won't be fancy when I'm done, but maybe it won't look like such a badly cobbled-together mess. It's the worst-looking place in the whole house right now. I am going to finish the walls, and with some clean paint and something done to the floor, maybe it can change. Unless I stencil Day-Glo clowns all over it and installed shag carpeting, I don't really see how it can get worse.

Well, I'm in the final stages of a major Goren fix (thank you USA Network), and I think I might actually be able to go to sleep before 2:00 a.m. Maybe my insomnia has been caused by the horrid bathroom? More likely, my recent indulgent sloth is responsible, but isn't it handier to blame it on the inanimate? :) Of course, I do have another Greg Iles sitting on the kitchen counter. I know if I crack the covers, I won't be able to put it down until I'm done. Temptations, temptations.....

Nothing Lyrical Here, Folks

Just one more thing to say before I go to bed....I saw another CI with the other set of detectives. Are they going to get better? They need to get personalities and strong ones fast, or I think I'm going to cry. I really liked Chris Noth in other things I've seen him in, but what's going on here? It's like they've got him reined in tightly or something. I know he's good; they need to let him out of the box some.

Of course, you know I'm prejudiced. How can anybody compare with the lovely and delectable (a word I did tell my AP kids not to apply to people, but it fits) Det. Goren and his intelligent and witty partner? Maybe I'll get my Goren fix tomorrow night. Oh that the real thing was running around somewhere....all 6'4" of him....

Sean Connery, etc.

I'm watching the AFI award for Sean Connery, and I am swept with affection for this man I do not know. It occurs to me that I have never seen a movie he's been in that I didn't enjoy. He brings something, that indefinable element that made the great stars, to all his projects. After all, not everybody could have pulled off a red doublet and eyeliner in Highlander. Not everybody could have addressed a woman as "Plenty O'Toole" with a straight face.

He has always been sexy. I won't lie and say anything different. Men like him don't exist free range. He was always charming and elegant, even when he was scruffy or gruff, and most importantly to me, he always seems to be having fun with his job and his life. Every interview I've ever seen with him reflect his love of his career and his profession. I've never heard him act like he was better than the rest of the world or somehow entitled because of his success.

There aren't many like him left, I think. Many of today's stars seem so caught up in the fame part of their job that they always seem conscious of it. Tom Cruise is to me the prime example of this. There's never that submersion of himself into his character that I think has to be there. Tom Cruise is always Tom Cruise in everything he's in. The ego overrides all, and I must say he scares me. I keep waiting for him to declare himself God or some stupid thing like that.

Now, I'm not necessarily knocking attitude. After all, I LOVE Bette Davis, and we all know she was the queen of attitude. The thing is, her attitude, when she flexed it, was always appropriate within her roles. Those big stars all projected an inner fire. The great stars were famous because of what they accomplished. Their drive took them into the public eye.

Now it seems like celebrity is THE only goal. So many of the modern ones just seem like voids. They don't seem to be having any fun with it. It must be a demanding job to force yourself into somebody else's mold every day all day and be believable at it; why would you do it if it wasn't fun? I think that if a person didn't truly love it, it would have to suck the marrow out of him or her and leave him or her a shell, especially since there's no such thing as a private life for a public figure. Maybe that's what's so wrong with so many of them.

Maybe they're supposed to be that way. God knows I know NOTHING about acting. It's never been a calling I felt much inclination toward. The closest I come to acting is creating persona in poems or in the imaginary stories in my head. However, I am grateful to the ones who do it well and make it great. Even if I don't understand the sacrifices and the processes necessary to create these great and lasting characters, the Bonds, the Norma Desmonds, and the Baby Janes, I am lucky to have them preserved to cherish again and again.

Small Pleasures

It was a banner day for me today. I made four major errors in our church bulletin. I still don't know how I screwed it up that badly, but there you have it. It was also my turn to play the offertory tonight, and that always makes me a little nervous. You'd think that it would pass after all these years, but the tiny butterflies of nervousness never fail to flutter. The offertory went better than it had any right to based on my amount of practice, but by the time church was done, I was in need of a little treat.

After church, I drove down an old highway toward a small town near Podunk that has fast food. Podunk, bastion of civilization that it is, is far too tiny to have even a McDonald's. Most of the time, that's a nice trait, but occasionally one needs an infusion of grease and salt. This other town is probably three or four times as large as Podunk, and it has an alluring assortment of grease with the additional assuring factor that none of my students will be behind the counter of these places like they might be if I went in to the town in which I teach. Anybody whose ever been a teacher can appreciate the potential importance of that.

There are two ways to get to this place, one a major interstate and one a rural highway. I like to take the highway. It goes past fields, through patches of deep woods, and over river sloughs. When I was a child, hundred-year-old oak trees lined the road and were like a canopy shading it on even the hottest summer days. Those oaks were cut long ago; too many drunks did themselves irreparable harm by crashing into them, I suppose.

Dirt roads intersect the highway at regular intervals, and almost all of them look like you could take a left or right turn on them and disappear into the lush piney green through which they slice their tiny knife-thin red lines. I always entertain the thought that one night, I'll just pick one at random and head off into whatever may be out there. Of course, since I don't have the Evil Jeep anymore, that's become a riskier proposition than it once was. PT Cruisers, as I've noted before, aren't really good for dirt road exploration.

Sunday nights are when MPB, our state's public radio station, broadcasts Echoes and Hearts of Space. I have been hooked on these since high school. The music is good for just drifting in the world of thought. Rarely are there interpretable lyrics, and the international mixture of artists sends spirals of thought through me like drops of dye slowing dripping into a basin of still water. They make interesting patterns. Those two shows were the first two experiences I'd ever had with ambient music. Now, of course, it's everywhere. Satellite radio can provide aficionado with 24-hours of commercial-free feed. Then, though, it was a special treat that only came on Sundays.

Now, I still enjoy it on Sunday nights. Driving down the old highway in the indigo gloaming, my imagination always runs wild. The open fields of a huge farm span both sides of a mile or two of the road. At this time of the year, there's a crop of corn and a crop of sunflowers growing. Because it's open farmland, there's very little light pollution, and on a clear night, the skies are wide open. It would be an excellent place to take a blanket and watch stars. It looks like something out of a dream. During the summer, the music and the light mix, and my heart always feels calm.

It's a small pleasure. I don't go every Sunday night. Sometimes, I come straight home after church or wind up staying late to work on something. Sometimes I just stay and talk. On the nights I do make this journey through rural Mississippi, I always try to hold the peace and carry it with me for whatever the week ahead may bring.

Rain and Falling Trees

"The elements have come to destroy us..." (just for Clip, who will understand)

We finally got rain today. We've been very lucky that we're not as dry as Texas and some of the western states, but things have been dry. Even going down the driveway has raised a cloud of good old red Mississippi dirt.

We didn't get a huge amount of water, but another wave of the front is supposed to move through. At least now maybe we'll be able to breathe and the danger of fire will be suppressed. For some reason, every fool in the free world decides to burn when we haven't had rain for a long time. I don't exactly understand their reasoning. Perhaps there's no reasoning to understand.

Before the rains, there was a huge and powerful wind. It came up suddenly, and the trees were swirling in those scary, tornado-like circles like inverted wind-driven pendulums. It was the kind of wind that makes me feel as if I might be able to spread my arms out and fly. Of course, if that actually happened, I don't guess it would be like my childhood dreams of flight and would probably, at some point, involve smacking into something immobile.

Since Katrina, we've had lots of trees die from hidden damage or come down, so I was anxiously going from door to door and watching the skyline. Isn't it funny what sorts of irrational things you do in situations like that? Really, I have to laugh at myself. What was I going to do if a tree DID fall toward the house? Use my superpowers to make it go away? Catch it?

Anyway, I did pace and fret, and I stepped outside to secure a garbage can on the south porch. As I was tinkering with it, I heard a huge thud and saw a movement from the corner of my eye. The giant dead pecan tree in my front yard had fallen.

It was nothing more than a leafless trunk, and at some point this summer it was going to be removed anyway, but I have many childhood memories of that tree and have to admit that I was somewhat sorry to see it fall. That pecan, one of three big ones in the front yard, was our monkey swing tree. My two cousins and I spent hours and hours entertaining ourselves with the simple wooden round and rope swings that hung from the strong limbs of that tree. I'll never forget being at the top of the swing arc and having the rope break. I was actually airborne that time; unfortunately, the landing pretty much knocked me out.

The tree I remember has been gone a long time, though. It started dying when I was in college, and pieces of it have been falling for years. Today's wind didn't really destroy my memory tree. I'll always remember all the games and injuries my cousins and I garnered playing there. Tomorrow or the next day when the rain clears, Dad and I will use the tractor to remove the husk. The memory will stay.

Things I'm Not

I'm having an odd moment, and this is what's come of it. So often, we try to define ourselves by what we are. This doesn't really come up to the standard of self-defining, but I was thinking about some odd things in my sleep-deprived state and, thus, the list was born:

I am not:

- patient (although I really do try)
- wise (although I want to be)
- short
- a person who suffers fools gladly
- good at math
- riddled with existential angst
- afraid to ask questions about anything
- athletic
- able to sleep right now
- in Japan, Thailand, Costa Rica, Ireland, or England (but, Lord, I wish I was)
- a good eBay seller, apparently, although I tried
- tolerant of my own weaknesses
- going to go raid the fridge, despite the knowledge that cheese awaits me
- an organist who practices enough
- ever going to meet the wonderful Vincent D'Onofrio
- filled with regret
- sure about where I'll be in five years
- always good and/or kind
- knocking myself, but rather, I'm being brutally honest
- fencing right now, but I soon will be (Yippee!!)
- designed to teach little kids
- going to tolerate being backed into a corner
- easily impressed or intimidated
- usually at a loss to express my opinions
- always careful enough to express my value of the opinions of others
- ever going to be tired of Roux hugging me when I come home
- ever going to be chic or ultra-stylish
- unhappy with who I am
- having any luck with eHarmony
- rich enough to afford a full set of Fire King Restaurant Ware plates
- in contact with my friends enough
- eating fried chicken or green curry
- going to bore you with any more of these random things

Goodnight, one and all.

Collections

I was just making my evening check on my eBay auctions, both bidding and selling, and I was thinking about the things we collect. As I've said in a previous post, one of the best things about eBay is that no matter what your particular passion is, somebody on eBay is bound to be selling at least one type of that thing.

What is it that our collections say about us? I'm sure a psychologist/psychiatrist could have a field day with this topic, but I really wonder. What does it say about me that I collect Fire King Restaurant Ware, PEZ, vintage scarves, maneki neko, vintage tablecloths, and old fashioned Santas? I have friends who collect GI Joe, porcelain clowns, NASCAR, teacups, ladybugs, lunchboxes, horse figurines, nutcrackers, and all kinds of other stuff. What is it about these objects that satisfies? Is it simply the thrill of acquisition?

I used to think that the collection bug was primarily an American thing, but I was disabused of that notion the first time I went to Costa Rica in college. My host mom there collected geese. Her whole house was filled with goose things. My Japanese friends collected everything from purses to porcelains to Hello Kitty. Everybody has something.

Do we do it just so our friends and family can give us gifts? I've often thought that everybody ought to be required to collect something just so people can find something for special occasions without having to go generic with a gift card. My best friend does the ladybug thing. I am always on the lookout for something interesting with ladybugs for her. It's almost as much fun for me to find something unusual for her as it is to find some new trinket for myself.

Do we define ourselves with these collectibles? I could probably do some amateur analysis on myself and say that I have a strong connection to vintage and kitsch based on my list of collectibles. I am not conscious of collecting these things for that reason. I don't think anybody I know is making a conscious statement about his or her life based on his or her collection. I guess somebody might collect something because it was expensive, to show that he or she can afford it. Maybe that's a conscious thing. I wonder if the people who collect for that reason get the same joy from their collections.

I can walk into my office, flip on the light, and my PEZ collection never fails to bring a smile to my face. I can remember finding or winning most of them. Going into Dollar Tree and seeing a new seasonal display of PEZ always quickens my pulse and rifling through the bins and coming up with a full set of the latest release always gives me a "PEZ rush." I guess as long as I can be made happy for about $4, I shouldn't question it.

The Search for the Dog

Tonight Missy played a cruel dog joke on me. Since the weather was not quite so hot today and since my cat Yoda is about ready to kill anything that moves (and somethings that don't) from dog-induced stress, I left Missy outside today. She usually comes in during the middle of the day and sleeps during the hottest part of the afternoon. Today, she came and peered in the door with her right ear aloft quizzically, but I didn't let her in.

About six, I started trying to get the dogs in for supper. Yelldo came running with his perky little tail wagging as usual, but no Roux. I called and called, received no response, decided that Missy wasn't ready to come in yet and sat down to eat my own supper. Seven came and went; no Roux looking in the screen door.

At eight, I started calling her and walking around the yard. I checked the ditches and the pasture. No Roux. I started getting really worried and not a little panicked. When the last of the day faded, I came to the house, got Roux's training clicker and turned on every outside light attached to the house. With the porch lights blazing, I made the rounds again calling and clicking. No Roux.

I grabbed my car keys and got in my car. I took my poor little PT Cruiser out into the pasture to the far end and called and clicked. No Roux. I managed to back and turn without hitting a tree or a terrace row and crept back up to the house. I love my car, but it wasn't made for off-roading, even in a recently mown pasture.

I decided to go up and down the road and check the ditches again. By this point, I had already started crying. I couldn't stop thinking about Britta and how similar the situation was. I was on my way down the driveway, and I heard the faint jangling of a collar tag through my open windows. I slammed on the brakes, looked in my rearview mirror, and there was Missy. I literally felt my heart unclench.

I jumped out of the car and grabbed her. She was panting heavily like she'd just come a long distance or had been running hard. It's possible that she followed me from the far end of the pasture. I don't know where she came from, but I am so happy she's back. I loaded her into the car and we came back up the driveway. When we got back to the house, I brought her in (on a leash) and she went directly to her water bowl and drained it. I fed her, she ate, and she immediately curled up on the loveseat and went to sleep. She seems exhausted.

I guess all this was her way of paying me back for leaving her to her own devices all day. I have some news for her....it's going to be a LONG time before she gets to have an outside-all-day day again soon. Of course, that may have been the point to begin with.....

Cleaning

I forced myself to take a break from reading today and actually accomplished some cleaning. I worked on the back storage room. It's not done by any stretch of the imagination, but I have this Clean Sweep euphoria about being able to see even the tiny patch of floor that I opened up today.

That room has been a convenient dump site for years. It is the last bastion of crap-in-boxes, that phenomenon anyone who has moved a lot is painfully familiar with. My goal is to make it all go away. The room will probably still have a bunch of stuff stored in it, but I want to be able to walk in and not have to vault over stuff to get to wrapping paper or my store-in-inside holiday stuff. This past year, I simply didn't put out all my Santas because I couldn't get to them. Absurd.

One day, I'd like for that room to be a bedroom again, but I have to clean out the storage van (an eighteen-wheeler trailer) first. That's not a task to start when the day''s base temperature is over 100. Maybe I can do it in stages. A lot of it needs to be thrown out or sent to someone who can use it. Who knows? Maybe I'll find something wonderful to eBay and be able to afford some shelving for the van. Right now, there's a really scary system of old doors and wooden spools holding everything up. Every time I go in there, I am secretly afraid the whole thing is going to fall down like a house of cards.

Once I get everything out of the back of the house and to its final destination (charity or the dump), I will be a happy woman. Hopefully this week will be the magic week in which all that stuff and the big stuff that's collected near the barn will all leave my place. Increasingly I feel like Thoreau about things. The railroad is riding on me in the form of the seemingly neverending piles of junk I have to shuffle from place to place in this house. I want it Zen, stripped to the bone essentials.

Actually, that may not be strictly true, else why would I keep eBaying? I guess it's better to say that I want things of my own choosing and that are useful rather than things that have followed me from another life somewhere and no longer function for me. The guy on Clean Sweep (and believe it or not, I cannot think of his name as much as I've seen that show) always talks about not confusing keeping an item with keeping a memory. The first time I heard that, it really struck me. I don't have to keep the set of ceramic geese Granny bought at a yard sale somewhere to remember her. To be honest, I do have a lot of things that I love and won't get rid of because they were this person's or that one's, but this guy's philosophy has helped me get rid of lots of things that hopefully have gone to make somebody else happy.

Well, Law and Order: CI is on, and even though it's not Goren and Eames, I am going to watch it and go to bed. Where is Goren? I need a tall, cute, smart guy fix....

Law and Order: CI

I have gotten hooked on Law and Order: Criminal Intent. I have seen the other varieties of the show, but I love CI. Each evening, I tune in to USA's seemingly endless stream of Law and Order episodes and watch Goren and Eames tear it up. I always love to see the little details that give away the criminals.

My favorite part of the show is the closing of the trap at the end, though. I love the way they mess with the criminal's mind to make him or her confess. Goren always find the right psychological buttons to push and it's fascinating.

I also have to admit that I'm sort of infatuated with Detective Goren. How could you not be? The character is incredibly passionate about what's important to him, super, super intelligent, and, I have to say, very easy on the eyes. I have no idea what the actor who plays him might really be like, but I bet the character's intensity comes from the actor.

Knowing that TV is highly unrealistic, I wonder if any of what goes on in these shows is like real police work. I don't mean the various ways people find to be evil to each other. That I believe is real. I wonder about the solving of the crimes.

Police work is something I don't think I could ever do. I don't think I could ever get the requisite distance to be able to focus and solve the crimes. I think I'd just cry over every victim.

Well, another bad guy has been successfully foiled, so I guess it's time to go get supper from somewhere. Sometime around 10:00, they'll be on again....

Summer Evenings

Tonight is one of those most wonderful of summer evenings in the South. The humidity has abated this week. I don't know what meteorological fluke is responsible for this, but I'm grateful. It's cool enough to enjoy working outdoors and to have the windows and attic fan on in the evenings. The sun stays out until past 8:00, and those final wonderful lingering hours of sunlight are the golden part of summer. I wish I could catch that light in a jar and carry it around with me always.

There's a softness to Southern summer nights like this that I've never found anywhere else. The air always smells of fresh-cut grass, late-blooming honeysuckle, or gardenias. Right now, the sweetness of it is rushing in through my windows replacing the stale, recycled air that has been trapped in for so long when the A/C is running. The flow of it and the fragrances make me feel centered and, for lack of a better description, home.

Nights like this always bring out the urge to go walking in the woods. I wish I had a good walking path cleared out that I could use when the world turns velvety like this. Katrina felled huge trees onto the only good path on my property, and we've not cleared them, so I suppose that urge will have to be suppressed. It's probably just as well. Snakes and other critters are bound to be enjoying this gentle summer, too.


I'll probably be up much too late tonight with a good book (Greg Iles may become a favorite author if this book continues to be this good), my two crazy dogs, and the soft comfort of Mississippi wrapped around me like the coolness of a clean white cotton feed sack quilt.

Yard Redux

Guilt dragged me back outside yesterday, and I finished off the yard. I used the trimmer, and it looks a lot better. In fact, the trimmer made things look so good that I was inspired to pull out my pruning shears and hedge clippers. I suppose I got a bit carried away.

It's nice to be able to walk around the yard and have it look like somebody reputable lives here, though.

Well, that's it for tonight. Just a quick note. Maybe I'll get philosophical or have an exciting day tomorrow.

Yard

I have to admit, I'm not much into yard work. My mom spends every sunlit hour outside building, landscaping, and grooming. Her yards are a work of art. Mine are more like a velvet Elvis painting.

I do mow once a week or once every two weeks depending on rain. My big orange Husqvarna zero turn helps that be a relatively pain-free task. It's a big grownup go-cart, and I still get a kick out of riding it.

I do not keep them up like Mom does, though. I don't like the weedeater and I absolutely hate the push mower. My yard, because it has steep grades in some places, requires both. It usually winds up with neatly groomed flats and raggedy slopes.

Right now, it's about due for me to get out with the trimmer and the push mower again. I generally wait until I just can't stand to look at it anymore before I can force myself to do something to it. I think today is that day. Maybe, though, I can just ignore it until it gets too dark to do anything and escape the chore for another day.

Selling on eBay

Today I joined the ranks of sellers on eBay. I am trying to clean out some things that I don't use and to which I have no great sentimental attachment.

When I moved into this house, the cabinets and closets were full to bursting with things from my grandparents and other family members. I have slowly been sorting through it all. Right now, I'm auctioning off a set of Frankoma Plainsman dishes. Granny got them at some garage sale somewhere anyway, and I am not attached, so we'll see how it goes.

Now that the items are listed, I feel a little anxious. What if nobody bids? I feel almost protective towards those blue green dishes. Strange, but true. I am not looking to make millions, but I do hope the items go "to a good home."

Well, it's late, or early, depending on your point of view, and I think I'll try to go on to bed. Tomorrow promises to be busy. Dad is going to come down and we're going to try to finally finish off the great water heater problem and install a ceiling fan on my porch. Hopefully, we'll not have a machine curse day and we can get everything done.

Word Glutton

I have been reading non-stop since school dismissed Friday. I've plowed through two and 3/4 novels between house cleaning, eBay perusal, construction projects, and catching up on overdue appointments and obligations. The sheer luxury of taking a few hours to rip through a book is almost intoxicating.

This is summer, and if I do nothing else in summer, I always feed the word hunger inside me. I'm not talking about lofty literature. I'm talking about the simple pleasure of letting pulp and ink sweep me away into someone else's life, someone else's dilemma. I'm talking about armchair travel, finding out whodunit, and what's going to happen next.

As I've probably mentioned before, I read almost everything. Most of my students probably think all I read are the lofty classics, but the simple truth is I love pulp fiction, chick lit, sword-and-sorcery, general fiction, Southern authors, biography, history, mystery, and so forth every bit as much as I love Jane Austen (okay, mostly as much...Jane's a special case). The only books I studiously avoid are those with a political or philosophical mission. I can think for myself, thank you. There's nothing more dull than a bunch of allegorical characters blathering on about the dark, pointless nature of existence. Please. They always strike me as anorexic models with no grasp on the realities of life. I can almost see them, their frail bodies draped in black, cigarettes waving through the air in exaggerated arcs of gesture, having conversations that mean nothing to anyone, not even themselves.

I also don't like books that focus entirely on "man's dark struggle to survive." As I've said time and time again, every individual's daily life has enough darkness in it to meet whatever universal requirement there may be for that. There's no need to wallow in it and seek it out in fictional doses. William Blake, fantastic looney that he was, believed in an Organized Innocence, an acknowledgment of the evils, a willingness to fight them, but an absolute refusal to let that darkness close off the windows of light and good. Good for him. So many works people tout as "essential" have far too much of that focus on dark to the exclusion of good. I find it depressing and pointless most of the time.

I am looking forward to a summer of good reading. It may not all be reading of AP's "works of literary merit", but I am quite sure that my brain cells will survive the insult. It's time to dust off the library card, fling the cats from the crocheted comforter, pour a big glass of Red Diamond, and luxuriate in the selfish gluttony of the written word. I think I can balance my addiction with the feelings of guilt and the need to do something "productive" and get my summer to-do list checked off while I catch up on my books. Well...most of it, anyway....

School Ends

It's finally done. I've been fighting a relapse of the crud, trying to get things finished up at school, and I really haven't felt much like blogging. Now, everything has come to a close, and I think you'll start seeing more posts from me.

I lay on couch and read most of today. The rest of the day, I was helping Dad wrestle with my ancient water heater. It went belly-up earlier this week and getting it out turned out to be more of a hassle than one might imagine. Apparently, it was installed just about the time I was born and had rusted away to almost nothing. Trying to move it caused flakes of rust to come off. To get a good grip, we just sort of punched through the side and made a handhold. Once again, only that great magic, kind force of the universe was holding all that rust together in the semblance of a water heater. By all rights, as far as I can tell, it should have disintegrated long ago.

We're still working on it...plumbing sucks. I have water all over the house again, though, and the water heater for the back of the house is still working, so we can drink and bathe. (Well, I can bathe. The cats and my dogs take care of that in other ways.)

I have started a couple of minor renovations on my main bathroom, just moving stuff around and spray painting a couple of smaller items. I am going to try to get the ancient contact paper stripped off the walls (no, I didn't put it up) and paint. I may get crazy and put down some self-stick floor tiles to try to do something with the horrid floor. It's nice to have summer to tinker with stuff. I miss my tinkering time fiercely during the school year.

I also got a new laptop. Well, I'm using a new laptop. I can't say it belongs to me. Our school system bought laptops for all their teachers to use. They're Gateway, and they're "da bomb." (Do people even say that anymore? Should people say that anymore?) It's wireless, and will command a wireless projector they're in the process of mounting to my classroom ceiling. They're also tablet PCs, so I can draw little stick men for my classes. :) Maybe this way I can get my instructions across more clearly.

In all seriousness, this is exciting for me. I finally have the tools to do some serious tech stuff in my teaching. Before, I was having to rig a bunch of stuff and pray for good results. Now it's all simply right at my fingertips. It's almost overwhelming.

Well, I'm off to play with my fantastic machine for another night. I should be sleeping, but hey, it's a tablet PC and school's out for the summer. Life is good.

Fable

There's a story I want to tell. Consider it a modern fable, if you will.

Once upon a time, there was a senior. That senior had worked very hard for the past thirteen years (K-12) earning academic honors and the trust and respect of the senior's teachers and peers. Suddenly, during the senior's last year, the senior decided to slack off a bit. The senior's grades began to slide and the senior was forced to consider the fact that the almighty GPA might fall.

This is when the senior made a fateful choice. The senior chose to access the grades through the school's computer and change those that did not meet the high expectations everyone, including the senior, had for the senior. The senior was crafty and subtle. It was a process that was painstakingly done over the course of an entire academic year. Finally, the day after the last final, the senior logged in once more, edited the last of the grades that offended, dashed off a condescending email requesting the senior's final grades from teachers, and with a smile, left campus for the last time until graduation practice.

Through a regular checking of the grades, the changes were discovered. All hell broke loose. Administrators and teachers were angry and disappointed. Trust and respect which had been established shattered like a ceramic cookie jar dropped by a pillaging child. Ultimately, everything the senior had worked for over the course of time was taken. No graduation, no honors, no speaking at graduation. It was all gone. The senior would lose rank, prestige, and even the right to attend the senior's own graduation. Nothing would be left to show for thirteen years of work except a stripped-down diploma which would be mailed the day after the grand ceremony.

What makes somebody throw away all those years? It's a question to ponder. The moral of this modern fable might be that there are some gambles it's better not to take. It might be that there are some gains that are meaningless when they are earned by force and dishonesty. Finally, though, I think it has to be that there is never a good time or a right time to abandon the things we know are right. None of us are ever above ethics, even if our time in a certain place has come to a close. It's never too late to have it all taken away because of a poor choice.

Ears

I, par for the course, have been very, very sick lately. Apparently, I have bronchitis, a sinus infection, and my right ear is so infected that it has completely closed off. I take a huge handful of pills every day and am using a frightening albuterol puffer thing. I have drops for my ears and nasal spray. To be brief, it sucks.

The part that is taking the longest to get over is the ear thing. I damaged my ears in Japan with an ongoing infection and bizarre medical practices. They've never been "strong", but after that, they seem to get much more irritable much more often.

I was sick in a place in which I did not speak the language, so I was reluctant to go to the doctor. The infection finally reached the point where my ear was continuously draining, and I finally got up the nerve to ask my boss to take me and translate. He agreed, and we went to a local clinic in my neighborhood.

The doctor made some cursory inspections, and the next thing I remember was him coming toward my face with a small wire. I grabbed his wrist right about the time I realized he planned to stick the wire, which was actually a camera, up my nose. My boss thought it was the funniest thing he'd ever seen. Apparently, Japanese doctors don't feel the same compulsion to tell you what they're going to do before they do it that American doctors have. It was a tense moment.

Finally, though I sat there and cried while he looked at the inside of my head with the little camera. I can't describe that feeling, but it still makes me shudder to think about it. He gave me some little packets of medicines and told me I'd have to come back every day for treatment. Every day for three weeks, I had a breathing treatment and that horrid little camera up my nose. I didn't get well until I managed to get back home and get some medicines based on my body weight. To this day, it ranks among my worst memories.

This ear infection has brought it all back. I'm still pretty weak from the other, too. I spent all day Saturday and Sunday in bed. Mom and Dad, my wonderful, wonderful parents, took care of me. I don't know what I'd do without them. I think I need a keeper.

Anyway, that's what's going on in my world. There's more. My seniors are gone, and their leaving was actually graceful and lovely. I'll write about it later on. Right now, I have to go take round two of medicine for the evening, and then I need to fall down again.

After the AP

Yesterday was the day of the AP English exam for my seniors. I nervously waited to hear how they think they might have done. I saw two or three of them, and they said they felt confident, but they had big problems with one of the essays. Oops. They got a passage from Oscar Wilde and it threw many of them.

I feel so relaxed now that it's over for this year. I have been working on my plans for next year for quite some time, but now I can begin to do so in earnest. I want to get some final feedback from this year's class, and then it will be almost time to start all over again.

Since everybody was gone 2nd and 5th yesterday, I used the time to create webpages for my classes. It's something I'd thought about doing half a dozen times, but a colleague of mine brought it back up to me again, and since I had the time and couldn't focus on anything else, I decided to go for it. I used Google's Pagemaker. It's about as basic as possible, but it was plenty to do what I needed. I'm not a corporation, after all, and although the current trend of thinking about education often refutes this, I am not trying to sell anybody anything.

There are many changes I want to make for next year. I am switching out some works, reducing the total number studied, putting poetry into a chronological order, and several other things. I want to make it harder and better. It's become sort of a hobby for me. I don't know what that says about me, but it's true.

Well, I am currently giving a test, so I guess I should get back to it. It's strange to be doing this from school. I wonder how long this strange reprieve from being banned as "tasteless/obscene" will last?

The Poem

This is the poem I've been promising to post for so long. For some odd reason, I can get to blogger from work today, so here tis:

Sisyphus Days

Too often my life becomes
the tritest of Greek tragedies.
The worn wood door opens on my classroom –
I step in as Prometheus
ambrosia-fed
Dickinson and Plath
Frost and Cummings
fill heart and battered brown tote
with fire to transfigure, refine,
burn away the dross
of unthinking childhood.

By the end of the day
I am battered and bruised.
The gods are sullen or filled with ennui
and do not interfere.

The boulder I have been pushing
uphill
with such foolish optimism
crashes across me
as it races
unthinking
bell-driven
to the door
to the bus
to the sweet Lethe
of television-video-game-all-night-phone-call
and I sit in the abandoned room
alone.

The Joys of Teaching

Payday has come at last. It's always such a novelty to walk to the refridgerator, open the door, and see it full.

I feel like I am provisioning myself for a great artic voyage when I do my payday shopping. My cart is always overflowing with dog food, milk, cheese, toilet tissue, and the other day-to-day necessities. I see other people staring at the cart in sort of perplexed wonder as I struggle to maneuver it, and I want to tell them, "If you had to buy everything you need for the month in one fell swoop, you'd shop like this, too."

This is teacher life. We live from once-a-month payday to once-a-month payday for a pittance. No other profession would do this. I can't for the life of me figure out why we do, either. Oh, there's the great argument that "we love what we do, so money shouldn't be the issue." There's something to be said for that, I suppose, but I grew up in a teacher household, and I am now a teacher household myself, and I am all too familiar with the problems money could ease. After all, no amount of love for one's job can put a new roof on one's house.

The crappiest part of it is that every year, the legislature plays a coy game with funding for education. They pretend they are going to fully fund us, but then they put it off, take bits of the budget for other things, give themselves payraises, and tell us to make do. It doesn't really matter who gets elected, either. Every election year is filled with the propaganda of education reform and funding. Every following term is filled with fattened off-shore accounts and personal purses for the legislators and tighter belts and more sacrifices on the part of the teachers.

I received less than two hundred dollars of classroom monies this year. I use my own money to provide Kleenex, pencils, cleaning supplies, paper for my printer, ink cartridges, and other "luxuries." I'm not the only teacher who does this by a long shot. Our already meager income is further reduced by trying to fill in the gaps for our funding. Why not spend the $200? Well, I have spent some of it. I used part of it to purchase some new instructional materials and to get supplies from our district warehouse. I'm hoarding the last $50 to try to have a chance to purchase some textbooks next year. To try to make you understand if you don't, last year I had to decide between buying whiteboard markers and having a filing cabinet that wasn't broken and useless. I chose the markers. After all, it was only my empty purse and a VCR I'd purchased with my own money that I put in the filing cabinet each day and hoped were safe.

I think that teachers are a people of hope. I don't know where it comes from. I think that deep down, we truly believe that one day the scales are going to fall from the political machine's eyes and somebody will say, "Hey! Did you know that teachers are molding the next generation. Maybe we'd better make sure they have enough food to do that with. Maybe we should give them something besides sticks and dirt to teach with!"

I don't know why I'm on this tangent tonight, or why the sight of two jugs of Red Diamond tea should have launched me into this, but it felt like the right thing to discuss. If you are a teacher, I know you understand. If you are not a teacher and you have the chance to kick one of our esteemed legislators down a steep flight of stairs, do if for all of us who wish we had the chance. In the meanwhile, we, the "few, the proud" will continue to do what we can.

Silence

During seventh period today, my printer inexplicably stopped working. No, that's inaccurate. It works, but the printer carriage moves back and forth across the page only about every minute or so. I tried everything I knew to do to fix it. I went so far as to uninstall and reinstall the printer. I rebooted endlessly. The stinking thing is still messed up.

The only thing I know of that might have caused it, and for the life of me, I don't see how, is that I changed to a new print cartridge. To test that theory, I put the almost used up one back in, and, voila, happy but inkless printer. How is it possible for a cartridge to SNAFU a printer? I'll know for sure tomorrow when I put in the new "new" cartridge I purchased at Podunk's office supply store. I hope that's all it is. I really can't take another day of fighting with it.

I got so upset with it that I almost hurled it out the window. I don't respond well to inanimate defiance even when I'm well-rested and full of patience. I'm neither right now, so I am sure you can imagine.

When I walked out to the car, the silence was like aloe on a sunburn. I turned off the stereo and rode home. I could barely even tolerate the quiet sound of my car engine. Everything, every sound was like someone touching a bruised area. In fact, I still feel bruised.

It wasn't the printer, or at least, not mainly the printer. This week has been long and stressful. Even though the state test is over, it's going to take me some time to recover from the buildup to it. As you know, once the adrenaline stops pumping, the body truly reveals its weariness. I need some time to just sit under a tree or lay in the sun until this feeling passes. I know I won't be able to get it anytime soon. I just hope that I can continue to keep going on whatever tattered reserves I have left. I have a feeling that I'll need lots of afternoons of silence.

State Test

It's over! I don't know if the kids feel as much relief as I do, but I am sure happy. As soon as we handed in the test materials, it felt as if a huge stone was lifted. I hope everyone did their best on it. Even though I know I'll have a few who won't make it through, I can say that I felt confident going in this year. That was new.

This will be very brief. I'll try to get back to regular blogging soon. One more poetry mention before I go. I rediscovered Blake's "Poison Tree". Very good. I especially love the art he did to go with it. Check it out if you have the time.

John Donne. Holy Sonnet 14.

John Donne. Holy Sonnet 14.

I am teaching metaphysical poetry right now in my mad dash toward getting the seniors ready for the impending AP test. I don't know that they are getting very into it, but I am rediscovering the beauty and power of John Donne.

I always liked Donne, but it's been quite some time since I read him. As I've come back to Meditation 17, Valediction: Forbidding Mourning, and Death Be Not Proud, there has been real joy for me. His poems are what I hope mine will grow to be. There is a personal nature to all his poems. They are slices of his heart laid before God, and now before us as well.

The poem that has moved me most is the one linked above, "Batter My Heart, Three-person'd God". The imagery and the diction are stunning. The violence of the language is not what you'd expect from a prayer, but it fits. I have felt like Donne, helpless, besieged by my own sinful nature, unable to help myself.

I particularly love the totality of his request. He holds nothing back because he knows that only if God possesses him, breaks him, reforms him can he be whole. Not necessarily a comforting poem, but one that is honest to the bone.

If you haven't read any of Donne's stuff, check the poem above, and then find "Death, Be Not Proud". Let me know what you think of them.

Once a Week

Well, we're back to the once a week postings. There's not much to tell. I had a peaceful Easter break, discovered the joy of electric hedge trimmers, and generally tidied up around.

This week is going to be rough. As of today, we are officially 7 days away from the state test. All else has pretty much ceased until that's over. Thursday is the awards ceremony for the poetry contest, and I'm scheduled to read. We also have an all day, off campus review session for all our 10th graders Thursday. Thursday night is Senior Awards night, and I don't think I'm going to be able to get to all those things. I love my seniors, but I might have to skip the awards ceremony.

I tried to use my Rollei this weekend. I think I managed to ruin a roll of film and possibly get one photo. It took me forever to figure out how to load it, and I discovered my counter must not work. I'm sure the people at our local "photo shoppe" (the pretentious e is deliberate) will charge me an arm and a leg to develop that one image and laugh at my ineptitude. Oh well.... we live, we learn.

I promise to get the winning poem up soon. I haven't forgotten. All other life has just gone away for the time being. I was doing really good to get this together. Don't give up. There will be more later. It just may have to wait until after the 25th.

Lazy Saturday

Saturday night is your big night. Everybody used to fry up fish and have one hell of a time. Find me playing till sunrise for 50 cents and a sandwich. And be glad of it. And they really liked the low-down blues.
Muddy Waters

This quote doesn't really have all that much to do with my post, so don't get too excited. I just love Muddy Waters, and I'm in a bluesy mood, so I picked it from the quote site.

Today was about as low key as it's possible to get. I got up, did laundry, put away some, cleaned up the kitchen, and mowed the yard. I played with my dogs, stripped and remade the bed, and read on the couch. It was wonderful.

There were numerous things I should have gotten done today, but they'll keep. It was nice just to do what appealed to me when it moved me.

Verdant

There is no other place that fills my heart like Mississippi in the spring. There is a quality to the light here always, a dusting of gold that coats everything in the late afternoon. In the spring, that quality expands and the simple act of driving home becomes a moment of epiphany.

The trees are becoming green again. It's so subtle at first that you can't be sure if it is real, a breath on a cold window pane. When it strengthens, there are a million shades of green among the trees. Sturdy pines mix with the delicate paleness of new dogwood leaves. The live oaks tassel and drop last year's leaves. Even the sluggish pecan has started to show the knobby buds that will eventually unfurl to clothe them.

Yesterday, the day was perfect. The sky was a blue that was right out of a Crayon box. Rising to the top of a highway hill outside of Podunk, I could feel my heart swell, and I felt a little like the Grinch when his heart grows so suddenly and breaks the bonds that had held it.

I came home, loosed Missy (whose nickname has become Roux), and sat in the chair in my shaggy backyard with a book. I read for awhile, but I also found myself just staring up into the live oak watching the shifting greens as the wind dragged its fingers through the canopy, opening and closing windows to the sky. I pity those who don't have a similar place of peace.

My yard won't ever win any awards for horticulture, and admittedly, my grass needs cutting more often than I am able to get to it, but there may never be a sweeter or prettier spot than that plastic Adirondack under the lush verdancy of the live oak in my back yard.

Unexpected Gift

I didn't mention it because I genuinely didn't expect it to come to anything, but I entered and won our local poetry contest again this year. I entered both an essay and the poem, and I think both are going to be published. The prize is just for the poem, though.

It was a nice surprise. This is the time of the school year when both the students and we are completely sick of each other. There are many other responsibilities that are coming together right now, and I have been more than a little stressed.

I haven't had much if any time to work on my writing this year. It's been pushed to the side in a big way. I almost didn't even enter anything because I didn't feel that I had much that was ready. I hope that I have more time for writing this summer. I'm going to try to take the summer off (as much as possible) and recover.

I want to get something permanent (as much as anything can be) with the prize money. Right now, I'm thinking a tree for the yard. I don't know. As you can tell, I'm not very focused. I just wanted to share this good thing that happened.

A Month?

Today was a mixed up kind of day. It was "grades in the computer" day, which is never very encouraging as I realize how many of my students haven't quite figured out that passing might involve turning in a homework assignment. There are always some who have that magic change of heart and suddenly start doing what they need to, but there are also even more who just continue to slide down. It's a helpless feeling sometimes.

My AP classes are starting Chaucer, and I'm sure there will be a full-fledged blog post about it later. I love Chaucer. He was such an acute observer of humanity. His characters have all the same silliness and weakness of real people. I respect writers who can do that. We're all so full of little quirks and flaws, but I think a lot of writers are scared to touch that. To me, that's one of the best parts of us. I know I have enough "quirks" to fill a wheelbarrow. I would probably have been excellent fodder for Chaucer. I'm just ridiculous enough most days....

After school, I went on a quest for 120 film and discovered that there is none to be had here in Podunk. Nor is there any to be found in the slightly larger Podunk City to the east. In fact, in Podunk City, I was told that the 120 was on backorder and that they hoped they might get some NEXT MONTH. A month? What is this? Pony Express days? Are they having gnomes mine it out of a hillside and craft it by hand? Is it elfin magic? Impatience, impatience, impatience....

I suppose I'm going to have to go to Jackson to get the film. That will be okay. I've been looking for an excuse to head that way to see my best friend who lives out that way, anyway. I haven't been able to go visit with her for awhile. I'll probably have to wait until Blessed Payday gets here and then I can make the film and a couple of other things I need my April Splurge. Until then, I will have a good chance to practice my "patience skills", always sorely in need of betterment. Maybe I'll just go hold the camera some more and *pretend* there's film in it.... :)

TLR and Other Things

I got my Rolleiflex yesterday. I am so proud of it. It's a physically beautiful piece of machinery. To me, all things should be made that way, substantial, with great attention to detail, function with beauty.

I have to spend some time learning to master it. It's going to be a big change from my Nikon. So much of the Nikon is automated that I can use it like a glorified point and shoot. This Rollei is going to require more intelligence on my part. Gee, I hope I can swing it. :)

I also got shot down by three or four more candidates on eHarmony. I have really begun to hate that website. The people it matches me to live on the other side of America and invariably want stick-insects to date. Since there's no refund, I won't cancel, but unless a miracle happens, I won't renew, either. Screw it.

Well, I am going back to my Wednesday night addiction, Ghost Hunters, and then I'm off to bed. Tomorrow is "Friday Eve" and I will be one day closer to playing with my Rollei.

The New Doctor Who

I am an old-school Dr. Who fan from way back. When I was still in elementary school, our Public Broadcasting channel (one of only three we could pick up) used to show Dr. Who every Saturday afternoon. Whatever my family was doing, we'd always stop and watch it together. I have good memories of it.

Since it went off the air, several attempts at reviving it have come along. The last one I saw was several years ago, and it just didn't have the right tone. The Doctor was more like a Romantic poet than a Timelord.

I saw the new Sci-Fi channel Dr. Who last night, and I have to say I was pretty happy with it. I like the guy they chose to play the Doctor. He's quirky, but it doesn't seem forced. He also doesn't seem to be deliberately imitating any of the previous Doctors.

The first episode even had some of the cheese and camp of the old episodes, too. When I saw the mannequins moving, I had to laugh. I don't mean the it wasn't creepy. After all, that's probably a common nightmare/phobia. But their movements and the whole arm through the elevator door thing reminded me of the Cybermen, etc. The scene where the arm comes to life and tries to kill Rose and the Doctor was almost MST3K-ish. It was great.

The second episode hearkened back to some of the great space station episodes of the past. Lovely costumes, but nothing too over the top, good, but not top-of-the-line CGI effects, all of it was the perfect tone for Dr. Who.

I want to see more episodes. If it holds its own or gets better, then it's going to be my favorite show. I'm just excited that it's back again. I have also realized that I have missed a lot of storyline history along the way. I've got to try to catch up. Apparently Gallifrey (sp?) was destroyed. When did that happen?

Oh well, more to enjoy. It's kind of nice to have something to look forward to again.

Sunset Boulevard

"I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille." -- Norma Desmond

One of my favorite films is Sunset Boulevard. I generally like Billy Wilder films. He and George Cukor are probably my favorite directors of that generation. I don't know enough about the art of movie making to talk about technical details, but neither of them ever makes an unremarkable film.

I watched SB tonight. I don't watch it as often as I run some of my other favorites. It needs time between the viewings to soften and blur before coming to it again. I love the gothic elements of it from the opening scenes with William Holden dead in the swimming pool to the dead chimpanzee to Norma herself.

The best scene in the movie is the last one where Norma is coming down the stairs performing for the news cameras. There is tragedy there, but also a regal presence you can't dismiss. That's what makes it so captivating, both for the other characters and for the audience. I love the line about "all those people sitting out there in the dark" that she makes. It's sort of startling to be addressed suddenly.

I first saw SB when I was at IU. They had a film series put on by their film studies department, and they had screenings of old films the way they'd have been seen in the theater during their heyday. It was great. I got to see Easy Rider, Casablanca, Sunset Boulevard, and Double Indemnity that way. It was a favorite weekend destination for lots of people. You could bring in food and sit there with other fans and enjoy.

The Bloomington Parks and Recreation service also showed old movies on the side of an eighteen-wheeler trailer in one of the parks during the summer. That was great. You could take a blanket, whatever you wanted to partake of, load up kids and dogs, etc., and head to the park. I got to see The Awful Truth that way. I still love that film as well.

I wish there were more opportunities like that around here. In some cities, I know Memphis does it, at least, they take one of the grand old movie palaces and use it for that purpose. Nobody around here seems to think that's a profitable enterprise, though, so they don't do it. At least I have my DVDs. I can indulge any time I want. Now I just have to figure out a way to drag my TV outside and I guess I can have the complete experience.

Pointless

There's a line in You've Got Mail where Meg Ryan's character asks one of the guys who works in her store if he's online. He replies with something like, "The internet is just another way for me to be rejected by women." I am beginning to sympathize.

My eHarmony experiences have not been very good so far. The few guys I've gotten to the open communication stage with have been nice, but there's been no spark of any kind thus far. I posted pictures and had two guys tell me that they are "pursuing other relationships" and close the matches with me. I'm pretty sure that was their polite way of saying, "Oh NO, NO, NO" after seeing the pictures.

As you can imagine, this has been a tremendous ego boost for me. I don't know how much longer I'm going to keep this up. It's bad enough not to be able to find anybody locally. It's much, much more depressing to find out that not even the much touted eHarmony computer can find a match for me. I feel like a sideshow freak.

My membership with them runs until May, so I'll play it out until then. I just don't know how many more rejections from anonymous guys I can take. Even though I'm trying to stay positive about it, it just reinforces ideas I have already been fighting on a daily basis for years about my attractiveness and the possibility that a member of the opposite sex will ever see me as anything other than a friend.

Those voices are hard to fight, especially in the face of so much evidence to the contrary. I have always been the girl friend and never the girlfriend. It was made excruciatingly clear to me in the past that I didn't have what it took to be a girlfriend in the attractiveness department.

Sorry. I didn't intend for this to turn into a pity party. Well, chin up, laugh, clown, laugh, tomorrow's another day, and any other cliche that might apply.

The Joy of the Nap

I don't feel old. I don't feel anything till noon. That's when it's time for my nap.
Bob Hope

I got up today with the best of intentions. Today was going to be the day I did a lot of those dirty outdoor chores that have been piling up. I even made it outside and got halfway into one of the worst jobs, raking the live oak leaves away from the foundation of the house.

Suddenly, though, the sun was just too tempting. I laid aside the rake, grabbed The Secret Life of Bees, and sat down in the plastic chair in my back yard. That has become one of my great pleasures. I want to build a patio area back there, but I'm not sure about how to go about it despite the numerous HGTV shows I've seen on that topic. Next month, I may also get this incredibly tempting round lounger thing from Wal-Mart.

I read for a couple of hours. The combination of the warm sun, the cool winds, the sounds of the birds at the feeders, and the whuffling of the dogs was as potent a sleeping draught as any drug imaginable. The next thing I knew, I was sprawled out in the chair with my head thrown back and my book dangling by two fingers.

I decided to give up. I came in, shuffled my cat Yoda off the covers, and settled in. I feel better now than I have in a long time. Apparently, I wasn't as recovered as I thought I was. At least I've got Spring Break to make up for lost time. I hope I can get another day to just loaf and read. I really can't imagine a tropical retreat that would be any more pleasurable.

Miss Eudora's Photographs

A long time ago, I read about and saw a couple of the photographs Eudora Welty did for the WPA. I was struck by them at the time, and put it on my list of "things to explore". It fell by the wayside somewhat, as many things on that list tend to do when faced with the awesome demands of time and funds that is day-to-day life. Still, the idea of them was hovering around my memory.

About a month ago, I got to attend a seminar on Welty's fiction at Millsaps. Part of the seminar included a tour of the library's collection of photos from Welty. They were amazing. I loved her composition and the way she captured the spirits of the people she was photographing. I resolved to go ahead and actually get one of the collections of her photographs and explore further. I came home, went to my trusty laptop and amazon.com, and sent for Photographs, the collection of her work.

Today was the first time I've had time to do more than cursorily glance through. I sat today and savored each one. It's amazing how she was able to record the positive. It would have been so easy in that time and place to find darkness, despair, resistance, and resentment. We're talking about the segregated, poverty-stricken South of the 30s. What she found, however, was the indomitable, the joyous, the quietly hopeful, and the noble in her subjects. She records the dignity and the regal humanity of even the poorest of them. Even if I had never read her stories, I would love her for that alone.

I wish I could have known her. There are numerous anecdotes about people just sort of wandering up to her Jackson home and talking to her. I would never have been bold enough to do that. It would have been an inexcusable intrusion into a person's privacy. I still wish I had been fortunate enough to have been introduced and had a reason to know her. Not that I could have come up with intelligent conversation, but I think she would have been a great person to visit with. She seemed to have that now hard-to-find Southern class that comes not so much from money, but more from the constant awareness of others and a general concern for them. It's a graciousness that is in sharp demand and short supply these days.

I'm currently pursuing a Rolleiflex on eBay. I don't know yet whether or not I'll be lucky enough to win it. I want to try my hand at seeing through that lens. I am sure my amateurish efforts will never have a tenth of the clarity and...magic...of hers, but I think just the act will be wonderful. I enjoy trying to see the world through my Nikon. Perhaps I can achieve that clarity she found and revive my view of the basic goodness of humanity through the viewfinder of the Rollei.

Stupidity

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt. -- Abraham Lincoln

For some reason, I have a huge surge of energy that's keeping me up tonight, so I was cruising through amazon.com. I decided I'd look for another good book on pit bulls, especially one that deals with their health issues. When I came to the reviews for Pit Bulls for Dummies, I was disgusted by what I found there. Several miscellaneous fools had used the review site as a forum for their prejudiced and, in most cases, sadly misinformed diatribes about pit bulls.

Now, I'm not even going to dignify the "big bad scary evil dog" argument with a rebuttal. Throughout the past 20 or 30 years, there has been a dog breed that, for whatever reason, has been the "killer dog" du jour. It was Dobermans (Dobermen?) for awhile, then Rotties were on the hot seat. Now, pit bulls are the hunted ones. For more on the truth of these dogs, what they are and why they are what they are, please see a reputable site like The Real Pit Bull or expert trainer Diane Jessup's site. If you've read any of my previous postings, you know I am the proud owner of a beautiful red nose pitty princess, and I love this courageous, loyal, and exuberant breed.

What hacked me off about amazon wasn't just the rank and file stupidity of the "reviews", but more that they weren't reviews at all. None of those people then owned, had owned, or were planning to own either a pit bull or the book. My question is this: How in blue blazes did they get to be a published "review" at all? Is it a review if nobody is talking about the book?

There are forums for expressing personal opinion, for grandstanding, and for soapbox lecturing. I just don't think the review section of amazon.com is the place. If you read the book in question, great. Tell me what you thought. If you have no idea what the book is about, don't display your overwhelming vacuity to the entire e-universe. Get yourself a blog or a personal website and type yourself blue in the face. After all, that's what the polite rest of us do.

AAARRRGGHHH!!!

I feel like I'm going to die. My temperature keeps spiking. I went to school today, possibly one of my least considered choices ever, and I clung to the edges of control by tooth and nail.

I wish I could just stay home and not worry about it. I don't know why I drag myself up there when I'm sick. Deep down, I suppose I feel that unless I'm on life support, I should go.

Add to this the fact that we're in state testing season, and you have a perfect cocktail of guilt designed to pry me from the blissful comfort of my bed and my Kleenex. If only it weren't the week before Spring Break. If only it weren't the week before the writing test.

Despite all these things, if I feel as bad tomorrow morning as I did this morning, I'm staying home. Yup, the walls may collapse on my end of the high school hall, but I'm not able to put myself through what I went through today.

Sick Again

The creeping crud has crept up on me and caught me unawares. Yesterday, I started to cough a little and it hurt. Today, I feel as though a truck has backed over me and I'm running a fever. Joy.

When am I ever going to get any immunity? I know that all the kids and most of the teachers have been hacking and sniffing for awhile now, but it seems like every time I turn around I'm sick. Shouldn't I be building up some tolerance by now? This is almost the end of the second year.

I already called in and asked for a sub since I'm running fever. No point in my spreading it further. I'll go see the doctor tomorrow, get a hip full of decadron and some antibiotics that hopefully won't make me ill, and go back to school on Tuesday. Life goes on.

On a separate subject, I am looking at just about the cutest thing in the world. My pit bull has commandeered one end of my couch and my little golden beagle/dachshund has taken the other. They are both knocked out. The pit bull snores. :) That is what happiness is for me right now, a couch full of warm, content, snoring dogs.

I'm about to go join them. I slept about 14 hours today, but I'm still exhausted. Maybe tomorrow I'll feel better.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern

I've been working on R&G now for about 3 weeks with my AP classes, and their reception of the work has been less than warm, to say the least. It's been downright depressing at times.

It's not so much that I care whether they like the play or not. That's a personal thing, and no classroom full of people is ever going to like any work universally. That's fine. In fact, I'd be deeply worried by that kind of bandwagon consensus.

It's that they can't seem to find anything redeeming in it. I know they're young. I keep telling myself that. When I was young, I probably wouldn't have enjoyed it, either. Heck, it's not my all-time favorite now, even as a member of the English-geek tribe. I just hate seeing them act like they are.

I expect too much of them, I think. I expect them to be something more than senior. I expect them to hunger to learn, and I forget that frequently teenagers don't give a crap about school, even the "cream of the crop." I just want for them to make the best of all the latent ability they contain. I know they'll walk different paths, but I learned long ago that everything you learn, every tiny shred, opens up the world exponentially.

I don't think I'm going to teach this next year. If I approach it at all, I'll let them watch it at the end of the Hamlet unit rather than a video of Hamlet. I think that will be a better compromise. Maybe we can get through it without my being saddened.