Fernando Renaissance!

First of all, I just have to tell you all that I spelled Renaissance right the first time! In college, as we were studying the Renaissance, I finally got disgusted with my 29 various spellings in my notes, and looked it up once and for all:) I did the same thing with Medieval. Those time periods sure are tricky... But since that time I was getting a little shaky, hence my delight at getting it right on the title!

Okay, now for the point: Fernando Ortega just came out with a new CD called "The Shadow of Your Wings." It is SO beautiful! But what impressed me most of all was the spirit of the CD as a whole.

The first CD I ever heard of his was a collection of hymns. It was beautiful. Then, as each subsequent CD came out, he seemed to move further and further from that (as artists are wont to do). When I first heard the CD right before this most recent one, my reaction, after hearing some pretty bizarre strains coming from my speakers, was "What is happening to Fernando?!"

Now don't get me wrong, he still had some incredible gems. It wasn't like I was afraid he was back-sliding or anything. But still, he had, um, modernized, shall we say.

And then I got this CD and heard the most beautiful hymns and Bible verses! And on the back he had written, "There's too little time for reflection in my life these days - too little meditation and quiet. As everything about our culture gets louder and more 'in-your-face,' my ability to concentrate on spiritual things feels thin and compromised. These songs were written in response to that dilemma."

Pretty impressive, eh?! It reminded me of those times in life where we're rushing this way and that, noticing this and that attraction of the world, and then suddenly are pulled up short to remember the "really real." We remember that the point of life is the pursuit of God, and not the pursuit of anything else.

So, all, if you're in need of new music, I recommend Fernando's latest. It dwells on what really matters, and cuts through all that other surface stuff. Yay Fernando!

Grumpy

WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO THE FREEDOMS OF OUR LAND?! I logged into blogger this morning, ready to dazzle the world with a stunning new post, when I was greeted with two little messages.

"Switch to New Blogger"
and
"Skip this step and go to Dashboard (you may only do this once)"

WHAT?! I decided to call their bluff and go into my old account twice. Nothing doing. They weren't bluffing. I was being forced to switch. AHHHHH!

So, dragging my feet and muttering under my breath, I went through the process of change. And then I started in on this post. Oh boy is the grumpiness mounting! Do you know how many times I had to enter my name and password just to get to this point?! Every time I wanted to move to a new page: fill in name, password, submit. I must have typed my crazy password 20 times already!

And now the worst part of all. Well, maybe second worst. I hate the new buttons for "save as draft" and "publish" and "comment" and "preview." They're so ugly! They're thin and uninviting, like someone's dissaproving, pursed lips. Ewww. I liked the old, fatter, welcoming buttons, that made you want to be a part of the whole blogging adventure!

But the worst part of all is all the security measures, where you have to override privacy settings every other second. It used to take me 2 clicks to publish a comment on someone's blog. Now it takes me SIX! That is just excessive. I'd rather have hackers galore! I thought modernization and change and progress were supposed to be for increased efficiency and ease!

Oy vay. I knew I was conservative for a reason. Maybe I was brought into the blogging world for such a time as this: to whine and complain about the inevitable. Wait. Somehow that doesn't sound right.

Sigh. I got used to the new kitchen, church, parlour, and front lawn. I suppose I'll get used to this.

(The upside of all of this is that when I first logged into blogger I didn't know what I was going to write about. At least this fiasco gave me fodder!)

[Okay, so I wrote my complaining, tongue-in-cheek post, then hit publish, and then (after being asked to enter my name and password, of course) ran into all kinds of blogger errors and LOST the post! So this is all a re-write, and, alas, I think I lost a little of my tonge-in-cheekness on round two.]

Differences Between Being a Student and Being a Teacher

At first it seemed to me that the difference between being a student and being a teacher was one short summer. May 2005 I was a student, Sept 2005 I was a teacher. No big deal - a few months. But since that time I've realized that that transition was actually a huge chasm, not a mere summer.

*As a student I would clear my throat, and my throat would be clear. As a teacher I feel congested, clear my throat, and instantly, guilty heads from all over the classroom whip around to see if they are the one being corrected.

*As a student I would stay up reallllly late the night before a paper and crank it out in a matter of hours. As a teacher I read papers and think "good grief! how dreadful! It looks like they stayed up realllllly late the night before this paper and cranked it out in a matter of hours!"

*As a student, missing a day meant getting make-up work. As a teacher, missing a day means scrambling about (in the midst of illness) to e-mail in modified lesson plans full of things that students can do with minimal direction, and then picking up the pieces after I return. Way easier just to go to school.

*As a student I could kind of fudge a bit if I was too overloaded, or too whatever, to get real work done. As a teacher, oh wait, as a teacher I still do that. I'm all about self-preservation:)

*As a student my motivation was A's on my report card. As a teacher my motivation is this terror that my kids will graduate without having received a quality education because of some huge hole I forgot about (like, you know, Shakespeare or something - although I know I've got that one covered!). [Okay, so that's not really my motivation. My real motivation is much more positive. This is just the dark side of my motivation...]

*As a student, my happiness came from a good grade earned through hard work. As a teacher, my happiness comes when my students have those "aha!" moments of learning. It is an unbelievable experience.

*As a student, when I screamed my teacher would tell me to be quiet. As a teacher, when I scream my headmaster tells me to be quiet... and that classroom order depends largely on the teacher, and good order is necessary for real learning, and we want our kids to have the best learning environment possible, etc. etc. (Fortunately I only get this talk about twice a year... and I know I need it... and he's always really nice about it. Sigh.)

*As a student I was surrounded with people who were also born around 1979. As a teacher I'm surrounded with people who were born in the 1990s! Good grief! And as a result I get comments like this.

So ya, the two are pretty distinct. But the most important thing in all of this is that I still get the same vacations as I did when I was a student:) I love teaching!

WHAT a MOMENT in the Life of ME!

Tonight I had a most exciting break-through moment. For a long time I have noticed a similarity between a noise my computer makes, and a song. I have mentally noted it, and even audibly. But TONIGHT is the NIGHT when I put it all TOGETHER!

The following is my feeble attempts to share this momentous occasion with you, via my cell phone video capabilities (which are slim at best). I apologize for the extremely poor quality, but I think the message is conveyed nonetheless... Of course, my cell phone will only record for 15 seconds, hence the extreme choppiness of this, my first "videoblog." (I put it in quotes because it is so far inferior to what a real videoblog should be, but hey, I had a jolly time.)

Dial-up users, see below for instructions on making this amazing discovery for yourselves. I don't think it will be worth waiting for if you don't have high-speed...

Okay, peeps with high speed: I couldn't actually get the video from phone to computer without downloading some $30 thing from apple QuickTime (I mean, I couldn't figure it out anyway), so you have to do it through links (ohhhhh, so sneaky!).

Okay, here are the links (in chronlogical order):

http://www.vzwpix.com/shareMessage.do?invite=CEUr442xPmzNSaooa0nU

http://www.vzwpix.com/shareMessage.do?invite=ZEEr4e2qPmzU2a6oohaQ

http://www.vzwpix.com/shareMessage.do?invite=SEUr4u2YPmze3LW7LQih

http://www.vzwpix.com/shareMessage.do?invite=eEKr4I2KPmz1NL57zkKL

http://www.vzwpix.com/shareMessage.do?invite=MESr4o2TPmz6HL9YhURx

And in case you want to know how the song continues (it's track 5 of the first CD), you can click here (it's just music, so you can skip it if you're sick of links - I'm just including it because when my computer makes that error noise and I start singing this song, I often sing into this cheery part...):

http://www.vzwpix.com/shareMessage.do?invite=KEhr4X2rPm7Iz5Fo8UEL


Dial Up Users (HIGH SPEEDERS, DON'T READ THIS UNLESS YOU WANT TO SPOIL THE SURPRISE!):

1. Go to Start Menu
2. Click on Control Panel
3. Click on "Sounds and Audio Devices"
4. Under "Program Events:" and "Windows", click on "Critical Stop"
5. Now click on the cute little arrow below (next to the "browse" button)
6. Take careful note of the noise that the computer emits. It is the little warning sound that you have committed some heinous sin in computer-world.
7. NOW pull out your Lord of the Rings soundtrack. The first one - "The Fellowship of the Ring."
8. Insert it into your computer, or a near-by CD player.
9. Play track 5, "The Black Rider."
10. AHHHH!!! It starts exactly the same way!!!!!!!
11. Be very awed.
12. Now, whenever you hear that heinous-sin-in-computer-world sound, you, like me, can break into song from the LOTR soundtrack!

ISN'T THAT AWESOME?!?!!?

Happy Sabbath everyone:)

PS. I couldn't possibly end this most exciting evening without giving a shout out to my dear cousin Liane, whom I love more than a diamond-studded hairbrush. Even more than a diamond-studded, gold-plaited hairbrush. With diamonds. And other things that are valuable.

OKAY!!!

I HAVE THE SCOOP!!!

And, I might add, the scoop is just too delicious for words.

Any guesses before I spill the beans?!

(heh heh - got to generate a bit more suspense here...)

Non-Icy Marauders

Several weeks ago there was a school shooting somewhere in the country. Our headmaster addressed the issue, and told us that if a stranger every tried to approach our doors from the outside (we all have outdoor access doors in our classrooms - locked, of course), we were to tell our kids to get down on the floor and, um, I forget what else...

Since then, of course, I've had these horrible episodes of imagining such scenarios. Stupid imagination. I can scare myself almost to death in ten seconds flat. But I console myself that no such thing would happen at MY little, innocent school.

I was teaching British Literature today. We were going over the kings of England or something (I'm teaching them this great poem: "Willi, Willi, Harry, Steve; Harry, Dick, John, Harry Three; etc."). They all had their backs to the window, so I was the only one to see a stranger walk by. This is a very unusual occurrence, since our windows face out onto our playground, and not a public street or anything. Being the mature, self-controlled teacher that I am I quickly sabotaged my lesson by saying "AHH! STRANGE MAN!" They all wheeled around and began speculating.

He had on an out-of-the-ordinary hat ("looks like it could fit a gun, huh Miss Murray?") and a black trench coat ("Come on girls, why are you nervous?" "He was wearing a BLACK TRENCH COAT!"). It was a very strange occurrence. The girls kept making scared noises (you know how two girls can work each other up... or if you don't, take my word for it), so I went to the door and peered about, but the man had vanished around the corner. "He's going to take on the Kindergarten class" I joked, untastefully (if that's a word).

I was about to resume my class when two things happened nearly simultaneously. First, one of my girls let out a Matt's-grandmother-esque gasp of horror, and second, I saw a black shape in my doorway. I leaped, and half-screamed (too scared for a real scream), and found myself about four feet away from the place I'd been a split second before. He was INSIDE the school, walking down the main hallway! And he had NOT entered through the front door, because he was walking the opposite direction. OH MY WORD! I went to the door and cautiously looked out, to discover him legitimately talking at the front desk. False alarm.

The school was so very a-buzz however. Apparently he had knocked at the 7/8 classroom door! The teacher (brave soul! I would have fallen over in a dead faint) waved him toward the front of the building. The next teacher (way-too-trusting soul! Or maybe, less-paranoid-than-I-soul) let him IN to her CLASSROOM and took him to the front desk.

And now for the ultimate anti-climax: I have no idea who he was or what he was doing. (Loud groans here, I know.) He was talking to the secretary (in a foreign accent, my students joyfully, and with relish, reported) about some philosophy or other, last I heard. Probably just some door-to-door philosopher. But WOW what an adrenaline rush I got!

My kids wouldn't stop commenting on how high I jumped - "Miss Murray can fly!" - and they gleefully reported it to the incoming class. I guess I was taking the classroom joking a little more seriously than I'd thought.

Thanks, Linds, for bringing this all back (because it happened SO long ago) with your fabulous Icy Marauders tale!

Another This and That Post

*WHAT a great GAME yesterday! Oh boy! The valiancy of the battling, battling, battling, hanging on by their fingernails, and finally pulling out a VICTORY! That was exciting. I love games that are tense the whole way through... as long as we win in the end!

*I finished The Count of Monte Cristo (the last of the three of us sisters to do so, slacker that I am) and it was WONDERFUL! I echo KJ's sentiments. And I am so excited about reading it with my 9th grade boys! They are going to love it.

*I did blogging by candlelight on Friday night. How Sabbatic of me:)

*I am steadfastly (or stubbornly) avoiding this switch to the new blogger thing. Why? Well, partially it's fear of the unknown, but also because when I comment on new blogs I have to hit all kinds of annoying buttons overruling security stops that ask me if I want non-secure items displayed. It is so trying! I'm sure there is a way to change my security settings to avoid that, but I have no idea how. Grrrr.

*Uncle Paul is one of the most incredible people I know. The other night he did one of those "say just the right thing at just the right time" things, leaving me all weepy (in a good way) in his wake.

*There was actually a winter advisory warning last night! What?! Winter?! Shocking. It's all gone now, though, have no fear. And not a flake to show for it.

*Go Patriots!!!

Happy Birthday Bing!

I would like to celebrate the birthday of Rudolph Bing, born in 1902, and opera manager of the NY Metropolitan Opera. His was a rich life - or at least a loud one. He had strong ear drums. And he liked music. Have a wonderful day in Heaven, Rudolph! (I assume he must be in Heaven since he's an opera lover. I kind of assume all those who wrote something beautiful ended up there, and since he saw to it that beautiful music was performed, he probably slipped in too. How's that for sound doctrine?!)

Also I would like to bring to everyone's attention that on this day in 1954 the coldest temperature in the history of Greenland was reported: -87 degrees F (hey! how do you make a degrees sign with a keyboard?!). So no complaints that today wasn't in the SIXTIES like Saturday was. (OY VAY!)

Way to go Steve D'Innocenzo for scoring 3 hockey goals in 12 seconds in a Massachusetts high school game in 1982. The opposing goalie must have been deep in contemplation of something like metaphysical poetry (kind of like my Brit Lit class today) to have been so out of it.

Today is also the 51st anniversary of the first appearance of "Dear Abby" in the newspaper. In honor of that day, I leave you all with this advice: if your friend gives you plants to take care of try to remember to water them at least once. If you forget, pull off all of the brown leaves before they return.

And, lastly, happy Feast of St. Adrian to all you Roman Catholics out there.

And God said unto her: You need to be more like Hamlet

So I had this revelation over Christmas break (two weeks off school has the amazing effect of allowing revelations, since your brain can wander over more than lesson plans and classroom management - ooo, funny story about that - I'll put it at the end of the post...): I realized that I need to be more like Hamlet. I'm not suggesting that I need to become a melancholic who analyzes everything thoroughly, is very depressed, and speaks in incredibly eloquent, meaningful, and iambic pentameter-filled soliloquies. But I am suggesting that I need to arrive at the place in which Hamlet arrived by the end of the play (Oh, wait, not the end of the play... Let us say the last act of the play!).

After extraordinary personal struggles, and questions of life and death and God, and then after a soul-searching experience in which he deals with man's mortality, Hamlet finally arrives at this truth: "There's a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all..." In other words, I cannot control my life or death, that is God's province. And He has it perfectly planned out. It is just my job to be ready for, and to accept, whatever He brings to me.

Over Christmas I realized that sometimes I am thrown for a complete loop if something doesn't work out the way I'd been planning. I ran into a big hitch with one of my Christmas presents, and was practically non-functional for hours because I was so distressed by it. And later I thought of Hamlet and realized that I can accept those annoying things as something that God allowed to happen for a reason. And He is good! Therefore, I don't need to go into tailspins at some little set-back. I can accept things at His hand. Where is the trust being worked out in my life if I think good things are from God but bad things are some mistake? Trust is believing that He is good in every situation, that He has a plan and reason in every situation, that His love is in every situation.

And I need to learn that lesson on the little things (like a glitch in a Christmas present), so that I'm ready for the bigger set-backs. God is good... ALL the time.

Okay, now about that funny story. I'm afraid it might have been a "had-to-be-there" (and not only that, but maybe also a "had-to-be-me-while-you-were-there" moment) but I'm just going to tell it anyway. We were in staff devotions, in which we've been talking about worldviews, and philosophies of education. My headmaster was making an important point about classical education, and about how it doesn't agree with modern philosophies about teaching methods. He expostulated on how, for us, modern methods classes are a waste of time, and he asked, "I mean, really, how many methods courses have you guys taken?!" While I saw eye-rolls and hand-gestures that indicated an infinite number of education courses, I wanted to burst out "NONE! Hee hee hee - the joke's on you guys for hiring someone who has NO CLUE!" I don't know that the joke would have gone over, though. I kept it to myself, in any case. So much of my amusement at the devotions-table is private. Sigh. It's almost a waste. But it makes me laugh on the inside, so I guess that's not a waste. Hurrah for laughing, whether inside or out!

Happy New Year!

I'm pretty excited about 2007. That seems like a cool year. Besides, it's close to 2008, which is exciting because of the Presidential election which (if it weren't so scary) should be quite the drama to behold!

Too bad politics are so serious, because otherwise they would be really fun! I still think they are kind of fun, but I have to take a deep breath when people start talking about culture wars, and realize that there is a lot at stake. Kind of like the Red Sox in the playoffs or something.

Speaking of which, Go Patriots! I'm so looking forward to playoffs. My high school boys were gloating today over all of the football they got to watch over Christmas break.

My Y key has developed the weirdest habit of flipping up sometimes! It just did it while I was typing "they." It's very strange - like Toshiba provides secret compartments for their patrons... built right into their laptops! Awesome. I wonder what wicked tiny valuable I can store in there. Of course, now that I've blabbed about it on my blog it's not so secret anymore. But at least all the people who don't read blogs (Amy, Bethany, and ummmmm, let's see, there must be more than that) won't be able to steal my super secret tiny valuable! (And you know they would try if they could.)

Well, that was fun stream-of-consciousness writing (step aside Virginia Woolf), but now my consciousness seems to have dried up (not a lot up there, apparently), so I guess that's it for now.

Oh, and (in accordance with my title) Happy New Year everyone!

PS. I hate it when you click on a link and you have another window open and the link takes over that window instead of appearing in a new one. ARGH! But somehow, life goes on...

PPS. First day back today - I can't believe I get to be a teacher!