and...

I am going to see Nick Flynn read tonight. He's reading from his new book, but I have always liked this poem.

Bag Of Mice


I dreamt your suicide note
was scrawled in pencil on a brown paperbag,
& in the bag were six baby mice. The bag
opened into darkness,
smoldering
from the top down. The mice,
huddled at the bottom, scurried the bag
across a shorn field. I stood over it
& as the burning reached each carbon letter
of what you'd written
your voice released into the night
like a song, & the mice
grew wilder.

effective delegation

So I have those two students who come "help" me "early" in the morning before school (I say "help" because they are not always helpful and I say "early" because I am not always early). Today, I handed one a pile of dialogue journals and said, "here--respond to these," because frankly, I get overwhelmed and he asks good questions.

"Um, ok, should I respond as you or as me?"
"As yourself. Or as 'a student'."

Just now, I looked at what he wrote, and had to laugh at how dead-on he captured the "teacher voice." Here's one journal:

Dear Ms. D,

Calvin and Hobbes were playing on there [sic: spelling word] tree house wen [sic: another SPELLING WORD!!!] the baby siter [sic of misspelled words] comes and tells Calvin to go to bed.... blah blah blah....

and Yonathan wrote:

Dear Walter,

Are you enjoying the book? Can you relate that to someone? I never had a baby siter. Do you think they're mean to kids? Sincerely, from a student

***

I wanted to write about the new Wilco album that I finally listened to all the way through. I like it better now than the initial listen, but I still think maybe he mixed up the first track and the last track by accident. Song #1 sounds like the end, and song #12 sounds like the beginning. Also, when I turned my car on in the middle of track #11, I thought it was the emergency broadcast system for about three minutes.

***

This weekend, I bought blank CDs (for me) and charcoals (for Jeff). Last night I graded and he sketched. Some trashy sitcom was on in the background, but neither of us paid attention. I was wading through the thorns and burns of misspelled words and lazy sentence structure, and he was shading a face. Tonight I'll knit. It's all so tactile.

well, THAT was impressive

I've never had a student actually self-inflict vomit to get out of a detention before, but I must say that after several rounds of dry heaving he produced quite a bit of stomach acid. I even (and this is very generous because NO ONE leaves the room during detention EVER) offered to let him get a drink of water, which he declined because he is a first class Jerk, capital J.

It was a landmark teaching day in another sense: I got called "Mom" for the first time. She immediately slapped her hand over her mouth and turned beet-red, but the damage was done. In that instant, I gained MAJOR blackmail material, and like seven gray hairs.

it's official

I can dish it out, but I can't take it.

Sunscreen and Sweat

Or, pictures from Austin City Limits Music Festival 2004.



Be warned: Most band pictures are for documentary purposes only, since they were taken from far back. Who has the energy to battle crowds when it's one million degrees outside?

how we fought the sun, and won (but just barely), at ACL 2004

shade


fan


hat


cloud


towel


umbrella


blessed, blessed sunset

Not pictured: sunscreen, water, sno-cone, Mr. Mister, pithy comments ("Hot enough for ya?"), water, water, water.

I had a great time. Pictures and commentary to come.

Vaaacation

I'm off to Austin for ACL Festival part II, because part I was totally worth it. I will be drinking lots of water, eating crunchy chicken cones (what a GREAT idea!!) and tamales, and glaring at anyone who stands in front of my collapsible canvas chair and too hot to think about doing anything else.

In the line-up:

Neko Case
Sloan
Patty Griffin
Broken Social Scene
Ryan Adams
Franz Ferdinand
Sheryl Crow
The Greencards
Cat Power
Old 97s
Modest Mouse
Dashboard Confessional
The Pixies
American Analog Set
Calexico
The Roots
Ben Kweller
Elvis Costello
Jack Johnson
Spoon
WILCO

and of course I'll be thinking about last year, standing in the field between two stages when I returned that phone call.

Every Monday should start like this...

I was well-rested and full of grande vanilla latte when I reached my classroom door at 7:30. Well-rested because I hit the snooze button three times. Well-rested because I woke up in a shiny, clean apartment next to a warm fuzzy body (who awoke sleepily and stumbled to the kitchen as I poured her some breakfast. Ah yes, cat food, did I mention that we have cat food again?)

I was fumbling for my keys when I saw Y----- and F----- waiting outside my door: two students I recruited to help on a one-time before-school project, who have been coming early ever since.
"Miss--you're late!"
"I'm not late, I'm early. What are you doing here?"
"We picked up your copies for you."

Sure enough, each student held a five inch tall stack of papers, hot off the presses from the copy room. I informed them that they were my favorite people today, and set them to work stapling said copies.

I felt like a rock star teacher. Ms. D------ has a posse.

man versus beast

scenario: I am standing outside holding my cat (who has been a very very BAD CAT) by the neck, Jeff waits by the door.

me: OK, when I count to three, I'm going to drop her and run back. You close the door as soon as I run in. Ready? 1... 2... 3!
(a second later)
Jeff: OHHHHHH! SHE BEAT YOU! SHE TOTALLY BEAT YOU!

music that shaped my formative years

(thanks to I-Tunes)

tori amos
def leppard
bryan adams
boys II men
amy grant
wilson phillips
meat loaf
gin blossoms
hootie and the blowfish

and... yes...

michael w smith

I'm not proud that one of the first music CDs I listened to over and over was a Christian "rock" musician, but in my own defense I did not know at the time. I don't even think my parents knew, but I like to think that they, too, would have been mortified. Instead, my dad was listening to Sade and my mom was listening to musical theater. It wasn't until years later that I discovered the hidden messages of Mr. Smith, and took great delight in torturing others with them. ("Hey Sarah--don't stay out too late, or I'm going to play the 'don't have sex until you're married' song again.")

At the time, I was listening to his album The Big Picture (rented from the library) and reading my favorite books at the time: Tamora Pierce's The Song of the Lioness quartet.

For fun, I looked up the Amazon reviews of these books (it's been years since I looked at one) and discovered many variations on this review:

"These books are created for children and in them they contain explicit sex scenes, and inuendo that I know is not appreciated in children's or even young adults books...What kind of role model for young girls sleeps around, she finishes with one man just to move on to the next, and it seems to be excuseable because she is a knight. "

funny... I don't remember explicit sex scenes...

So allegedly, at this time, I was reading books telling me to sleep around, and music that was telling me not too. In any case, I don't remember feeling any conflict about the issue, so perhaps they cancelled each other out. (Or maybe because I was, like, 8??)

please don't breed

Warning: this post is catty.

So I'm sitting in Cafe Artiste grading my 110th "My Name" composition (it's a good thing they all have different names, or I'd be going batty by now) and there's a couple sitting in a booth next to me chatting first-date style, and I say this not only because how they are interacting (she's sitting Indian style with a bottled water, he's nursing a Coke) but because of their conversation topics: "get to know you and your views on the world" type stuff.

And I overhear her talking about presenting in an undergrad class, and how most of her class was born in 1984, except for one girl who nervously admitted that she was born in 1986. So our heroine (Indian-style girl) goes on to say how the class seemed shocked to learn that she was born in 1982, and how she didn't realize that they were all so YOUNG!! It was at this point that I almost wanted to lean over and say, "oh yeah? I was born in..." just for shock value, and because it seemed to be such an enthralling topic for her.

Mary, why are you listening and why do you care?? OK, well I care because she went on to complain about September 11th, and how people seem so shook up about it, when really SHE was the one who had family in New York, and actually people were calling HER on that day, and, you know? (No, I don't know, I comment to myself. What do you want, a medal?)

Their conversation went on like this (as did my grading... 111...112...113...) and the poor boy just kept sipping on his empty coke, unable or unwilling to get a word in, and I wondered if it bothered him that she kept on making stupid obvious observations with the confidence that surely she was the FIRST person to ever make such an assumption.

I don't know why it irritated me so much. Maybe because she was beautiful, and I sort of knew she'd get another phone call no matter what she said. Maybe because she reminded me of a younger, arrogant me. Maybe because she was talking too loud and not drinking coffee in a coffeeshop.

Anyway, the moral of the story here is that I really don't think that other people should date, at least not around me.

[/catty]

Cause for concern

scenario: Jeff and I are sitting in his living room. I am grading papers (yes--do you see this, students who should not be here, I am grading YOUR papers on MY holiday and some of you did not even proofread) and Jeff is watching a documentary about the Mafia.

J: "So, I guess you'd be against money laundering and trafficking and other illegal stuff like that?'
M: "Umm... why."
J: "I want more money."
M: "You don't know what trafficking is."
J: "What about tax fraud?"

Wordperfect leaves a bad taste in my mouth

Hey Kevin, what was that free pseudo-Word program you mentioned awhile ago? Also, I haven't talked to Sarah since before I bought it, but I think she and I have matching cars now!

This could have been done in an email. Oh well.

Hope the rest of you are bbq-happy and laborless today. Happy birthday to Debi (yesterday), my dad (the 9th), and my little brother who is turning (god help us) 21 on the 13th.

progress report

I waited three weeks to set up my electronic gradebook because:

a. Student schedules are all wacky; they've been coming and going... which results in more typing for me
b. The keys on my laptop decided to go wacky, too, making me sound like I'm typing with a mouth full of peanut butter. Since "h" and "g" are prominant letters in Spanish surnames (hello? Hernandez, Gonzalez, the only way I'd be more screwed would be if the "z" went out), as well as the alphabet, this is unacceptable.

So it's three weeks into school and the students want grades and I want them off my back. Tonight on the new laptop, I installed Making the Grade and spent 30 minutes setting up one class period.

Only to find that it's a demo copy and CANNOT SAVE CLASS FILES.

I give up. You all get A's.

what goes in your writer's notebook

I was trying, unsuccessfully, to explain the difference between writing in a diary (a log of one's day) and writing like a writer: zeroing in on something small, and intriguing, and looking at it a new way. Ralph Fletcher says that writers are like ordinary people, except that they LOOK at things differently, and react to it, and write it down. A difficult and abstract concept for most people, including my seventh graders (who are mostly concerned with how many pages I expect them to fill).

So when I asked M----- to share what she had written in class, and instead she blushed and admitted that she hadn't written anything, but instead had drawn the figure of a horse she saw in the clouds outside, and 26 heads swiveled and looked out the window and said "ooohhhhh...." (and, I imagine, immediately saw horses and kitty cats and bicycles and low-riders and whatever) ... I wanted to hug her.

This year's batch is fresh out of the oven, steamy and chocolately goodness. They're bright, friendly, and down-to-earth. I like 'em. Saying this, I reserve the right to change my opinion in a month, which you will listen to, and accept, with a grain of salt, as you are apt to do.

Say hello to Kavalier, the new laptop. (hi.) All his keys work. He's purty.