Another World...

I have just returned home from Florida, and have this weird feeling that I was in a strange and amazing dream-world, or even parallel universe, for the past couple of days.

In this parallel universe, that had almost zero relation to most of my life, except for some of the principle characters, I was in blazing sunshine, on green grass, next to the blue, blue ocean. I was surrounded by a host of friends almost non-stop (you can't get much more blissful than that in my book!). With these friends I was playing volleyball on the beach and watching the sun set over the ocean and going out to eat and bowling and playing games and talking and laughing a lot. And burying treasure in the sand, of course.

Oh ya, and two of the said friends were married! (Small detail there...) They were married in a beautiful, meaningful ceremony that celebrated the sanctity of what they were embarking on. And the music was killer (hee hee hee). I rejoice in the goodness of God, in bringing Jeff and Fritha together, and I trust for His continued blessing on them!

Most of you have probably already seen DJ's post w/ its link to an abundance of pictures (good job, Steph!). If you haven't, check it out!

Teaching Poetry

I'm teaching a wonderful poetry unit to the 7th and 8th grade now. I am discovering that junior high is not exactly the time when one's literary analysis skills are at their peak. This is good news for college professors, but it makes for some interesting moments for me. I love teaching middle school - I'm just discovering that I have to teach on a very basic level. There are some moments where light dawns. Those are wonderful and exciting moments in my teaching world. They usually happen with the 7th grade girls. The 8th grade boys are much more literal. Note the juxtaposition of these two classes last Friday.

7th Grade Girls

Me: So, girls, what do you think of this Raven in Poe's poem? What do you think it could represent?
Girl #1: Maybe death?
Me: Okay, good! We know that someone has died, and the narrator is thinking about that a lot. What else? Why do you think he asks the Raven questions that have such sad answers, when he knows the raven will answer that way?
Girl #2: OH! Maybe he WANTS to keep on feeling sad! He doesn't want to be happy!
Me: Exactly! He is so sad about the person who has died that he thinks the grief will last forever! Good! So now what do you think the Raven stands for?
Girl #1: sadness!
Me: Very good!

8th Grade Boys

Me: So, guys, what do you think of this raven in Poe's poem?
Boy #1: I don't get why he's stuck with it forever.
Boy #2: Ya, why doesn't he just shoo it out the window?
Boy #3: Or hit it with a broom or something?
Boy #1: He could move to a different house!
Boy #3 (with an evil glint in his eye and a sly grin which I instantly and accurately interpreted as the look associated with guns) OR, he could SHOOT it!
Me: Umm, well that's true... But maybe Poe didn't really want to write about a literal talking bird. Maybe he was using the bird as a symbol... (My voice fades as I look nervously at the clock).

I love teaching!!!

Qualifications on Nature Loving

(Editor's note: I may be mixing two nature stories together here. But hey, it makes for a better story.)

As the weather turns warmer, more and more of America is pouring out of doors to enjoy the sunshine. I happily joined them, recently, taking my blanket in one hand, my books and notebooks in the other, and traipsing out to the lawn to do lesson plans in the presence of Nature. I sat down and began to work.

Hm. I kept having to switch positions. The ground was really quite hard. No sofa cushions in the grass here. And no back of the easy chair to lean against either. I had to hold myself up, and try to keep my legs from falling asleep. Wheeee. Nature.

And I seemed to have plunked myself down right in one of those ant paths. I had to keep flicking the things off of me. And sometimes they would crawl in between my toes and suddenly feel intimidated and randomly bite me. Grrrr.

And THEN I looked down and saw that my book was covered in tiny little reddish brown bugs that hopped when you touched them. I quickly realized that if they were covering my book, they could be covering everything else in sight, too. That would include me. Ahhhhhh! I sprang to my feet and forsook nature. Enough was enough!

Nature is full of bugs and hardness and crawly things (oh, I forgot to mention the spider that was on me!) and sun in the eyes and probably many more gross and annoying things that I didn't even detect. Blah on nature.

However, the call of the sunshine is a strong one. So I got a rocking chair from the porch and carried it out in the grass to a place I could put my feet up on a convenient rock. I will enjoy nature on my own terms (a. comfort, b. no wildlife near my person), thank you very much.

Sigh. Thoreau would never have approved of me.

Just a Small Grammatical Note

(or a large one, as the case may be...)

A LOT IS TWO SEPARATE WORDS!!!

...A................LOT

ALWAYS

.

Okay, my tyrannical inner grammarian is appeased...for now.

Ahhhhh.....

I hope nobody checked this blog in the past 5 minutes, because I accidentally posted only the title. Oh well -- it pretty much says it all anyway.

Right now I am sitting on the couch in our den with four sleeping puppies in my lap, watching the Red Sox winning over the... well, you know who... and I'm NOT WORRYING ABOUT SCHOOL!!! How much better can life get? I have NOTHING due! I keep thinking, "I should be painti... no....I should be resear... no... studyi.... no..." NOTHING! After my math exam today I joined Lisa in that Universal Grin of Release. I couldn't decide if I wanted to laugh, or cry, or scream, or jump, or what... but oh man, what a spring in my step! (especially after returning my 10 or so spoot library books that I'm so sick of looking at)

Hopefully I will post more soon after being cut off from all civilization for a while, but I do actually have to go to bed earlyish tonight... I have an intense faculty vs. student art department volleyball match tomorrow, and I have to be in prime shape.

Life is good.

Community Living

RI is, as you all know, the smallest state in the union. And yet, it's not as if a short stroll will take you from one side to the other. I drive an hour to get to work! But little by little I am becoming more familiar with the state, its highways and byways, its quirks, its people (who might fall under the category of quirks in some cases).

But last week I experienced a moment that brought the state into focus as a cheery neighborhood full of dear friends. Okay, that might be a slight exaggeration, but hey, it sounded good. In any case, I did have one of those bonding-with-strangers moments that makes me so happy.

I was in the McDonald's drive-through (getting a fruit and yogurt parfait - yum!), stopped and waiting for my food, while listening to sports radio (now THERE is a subject for another whole blog - I love sports radio!). All of a sudden it was as if my radio had gone into surround sound or something. Huh? And then I realized that the Fed-Ex truck that had pulled up nearby was also blaring sports radio! Yay! We were so of one mind!

It reminds me of the time Lindsay started singing a song in the car, and the lady next to us at the stoplight sang the next line! Or when I walked out of the main house singing a song about summer, and a voice wafted down from up near the women's dorm with the next line. Or Claire's recent sneezing story on her blog. So many nice things that bring people together.

Oh! I thought of another one! I was sitting at a stoplight waiting to go, and there was an advanced green for the people coming our way. There was an elderly driver next to me who assumed his light must be green if theirs was, and he went! The car behind him drew up beside me, looked over at me, and shrugged in a mystified and amused way.

Of course, then there are the times in which the whole world seems to be a community, but you are on the outside. Okay, I really only have one example of this. Yesterday I was driving home from work, and suddenly realized that I hadn't gotten hung up in traffic yet, even though I was at the place where traffic usually slows. And then it began to be uncanny. There was no one going under the speed limit in the fast lane! What was going on?! People kept moving into the slow lane when I gained on them. What?! I began to wonder if there was some weird conspiracy going on. Where were all those people who go 60 in a 65? Was there some state-wide event everyone but me knew about? The mystery was never cleared up. I guess it was just a light day for traffic. Strange. But I'll take it!

MA Tax Dollars Put to Excellent Use

Last night saw the first Sox/Yankees game of the season. Big news. Also, it saw the Johnny Damon, now in pinstripes, playing against his old team. Even bigger news. But all of that was overshadowed by one of the most exciting/unusual outside-the-game moments I've seen in baseball.

Tim Wakefield is a knuckleball pitcher, and knuckleballs are really hard to catch. The new catcher was having fits trying to hold onto the pitches. It was starting to be a real problem. So yesterday, the Red Sox re-acquired Wake's catcher from last year: Doug Mirabelli.

Problem: Mirabelli was in San Diego when the deal went through. And Wakefield was pitching that night. Thus the mad dash.

Doug jumped on a plane and flew across the country (and three time zones), landing at Logan Airport at 6:48. The game was scheduled for a 7:05 start. A police cruiser was waiting (here's where the tax dollars come in), traffic was stopped, and Doug flew through the streets at maximum speeds (the radio guys said 100 mph, but I don't know if they were being literal or not). Doug's uniform was in the vehicle, and he arrived at Fenway all suited up, and ready to catch Wakefield, a little after 7:00. How dramatic!

The Red Sox beat the Yankees 7-3, and Doug didn't allow any passed balls.

[Bonus info: Veritek was going to catch if Doug didn't make it in time, and the back-up pitcher (in case anything happened to Veritek) was going to be Alex Cora. Cora is a utility infielder. He said he hadn't played catcher since he was 14 years old. But he wasn't worried. Instead he gamely pointed out that that was what 'utility' meant! I thought that was so cool!]

This morning the radio guys were arguing about whether Mirabelli should have had the police escort. Feel free to leave opinions on the matter if you so desire (I'm sure you can't guess where I stand).