Weather's nice. Wish you were here.

It was a beautiful day in Houston today. Let me amend that: it's hot. It's always hot this time of year. But the sun was shining and we were spared our 15 minute afternoon thunderstorm that always seems to strike in-between going in the grocery store and coming out. And five hours to the east, a city is drowning.

I have nothing terribly original or thought-provoking to say on the matter. What strikes me, of course, is what always seems to strike me: how things could have been otherwise. Teach For America was a gamble in more ways than one: I didn't know where I was going, what age I'd be teaching, who I would meet there in the meantime, whether I would stay. I could have said no to Houston, but I had no reason not to. I would have said yes to almost anywhere. I would have said yes if they had given me my number four choice, New Orleans, instead of number three. I could have said yes to pre-K or high school or special education. It would have been a completely different experience.

And so I think about those new teachers, in their classrooms for only a week only to be suddenly and violently dislocated. And I think about their students and their students' families: the ones you see on the news reports, stranded and soaked with only a shoe to their names. I think about the schools that won't start up again until December, and wonder what a person does in the meantime, this localized Armageddon.

And all this while gazing at the pollen fuzz on my windshield, thinking "I should really run it through the wash."