Leroy Gray Memorial

The memorial for my former teacher, Mr. Gray, was Saturday, and what an experience it was. It was exactly the kind of day I remember from when I was a kid--bone-chilling cold. The sky was overcast, and the 30 mph wind cut right through our jackets. It was supposed to be 50 degrees, but it was only 42, with a wind that made it feel like 12.

We left at 6:30 that morning and arrived at 11:00. We walked into the track meet, and I immediately started looking for friendly faces, aged 25 years or so. Ironically, the first one I found was Mrs. Gray, my English teacher and mentor, and Mr. Gray's wife. She was surrounded by family, and her face lit up when she saw me. "Don't tell me--Jim!" she exclaimed, and I nodded and hugged her. There were plenty of other former students there to see her, so I gave her some space and kept searching the crowd. Magi had Sera bundled up and huddled against her in a blanket. As more and more people started to arrive, recognition would wash over our faces and we would just start gushing. A couple people passed me a few times with a puzzled look on their faces, as if they wanted to say something but just couldn't place my face. I let them off the hook, though, as I was a lanky 200 pound (yes, 200 pounds is lanky when you're 6' 4")18-year old kid when they last saw me.

Old students and athletes of Mr. Gray's began to assemble, and my former next-door neighbor Kellie Amidon started warming up her cornet to play the Star-Spangled Banner. I kidded her that she used to play the trombone, and she responded that she kept trying to play bass clef when reading the music which she had taped down because of the winds. Nancy Markham had a prepared speech and was going over it while Paul Williams, my former basketball coach and recently-retired athletic director tried to get the public address system going. I stayed busy catching up with Denise Shively and Rhonda Cochrane.

Nancy (Markham) Klein

A break in the track meet was called, and people assembled around the home stands. Nancy gave a heartfelt speech, followed by a 21-gun salute by the Cadillac Area Honor Guard, given in respect to Mr. Gray's service during the Korean War. Taps was played and a flag was raised to half staff, then lowered and given to Mrs. Gray. Nancy had arranged for the flag to be flown over Washington, D.C. last year. A new flag was raised over the stone memorial and Mrs. Gray graciously thanked everyone in attendance, showing off her still-booming voice that always commanded attention in the classroom.

Mrs. Gray

The Memorial Stone

On our way home, I pointed out the exit to the small town where the Grays lived (and where Mrs. Gray still lives) while they taught in Mesick. Magi expressed her admiration at the dedication it must have taken to drive 70 miles round trip to work every day for 22 years. I, for one, cannot thank them enough for the impact they both had on my life.

Update!

The Cadillac News covered the event here. They have exerpts from Nancy's wonderful speech.

I have created a Yahoo group for alumni of Mesick High School here. Stay in touch!

Mesick

Mesick, Michigan is my hometown. I have lived in well over a dozen towns: In Michigan, I lived in Delton, Hastings, Mesick, Williamsburg, Traverse City, Delton (again), Hastings (again), Hamilton, Allegan, Naubinway, Tustin, Mesick (again), Kalamazoo, Otsego, Oshtemo, Paw Paw, and Kalamazoo (again). Since graduating from college, I have lived in Indiana: Michigan City, Mishawaka, and Osceola.

Most of the moving was done when I was very young. I only completed one full school year in the same elementary school, and that was when I was in Hastings for all of third grade. After I went to live with my father, he settled us in Mesick the summer before I started junior high and promised me that I would graduate from Mesick High School. He kept that promise, and I am better for it. I have a hometown.

Having attended part of Kindergarten and a month of first grade in Mesick, I already knew some of the kids there. My grandparents had retired to the small town of 375 and my father moved us right next door to them in a little trailer. Those days were the best of my young childhood. I went to Kindergarten in the morning, walked home (can you imagine a Kindergartener walking home now?) and ran over to my grandmother's house next door, where she would make my favorite lunch, tuna salad sandwiches with tomato soup and Fritos. To this day, this is my most comforting of comfort food.

My parents divorced while I was in first grade, but even as I was bounced from city to city and school to school, I always returned to Mesick in the summer and at Christmas when my brother and I visited our father and grandparents. We played on the school playground, and went to baseball games that my old friends played in. I was allowed to practice with them, but I couldn't play in the games because I didn't live there. It was a place of stability at a time when there was no other stability in my life.

When I returned for good in the summer of 1977 (Star Wars, anyone?) we lived with my grandparents for a while, and then my dad bought another trailer on the other side of their house for us to live in. When I started school a month later (remember when school started the Tuesday after Labor Day?) I was reunited with my friends. Puberty was not easy on me, like most people. I sweat like a pig, my face broke out, and my hair was greasy. I showered every day after P.E., and then at home too, and the problem persisted. It was tough at times being the tallest kid in class as well as the most awkward, but I found that my sense of humor could overcome a lot of those feelings of inadequacy. One of my teachers, Mr. Neahr, saw my discomfort and tried to save me from being an outcast by recruiting me to play in his role-playing game club, but I thought the people in the group were a little weird. I was right, but little did I know that they were my kind of weird. I wouldn't discover that until years later. Sports were what ended up preventing me from being alone.

The only organized sport I had ever played was baseball, and that was for one year when my dad volunteered to help coach the local little league team in Tustin the year before. In my dark years with my mother and stepfather, playing a summer sport would have been out of the question. I had been forced to quit playing on the 6th grade basketball team after one day because I hadn't done a good enough job shoveling the driveway, so that gives you an idea of the importance they placed on having kids participate in activities in school. In Mesick, though, it was different. My friends desperately wanted me to play because I was tall. I had no skill whatsoever, but I was 5' 7" in seventh grade, which was pretty tall. I did the drills and learned to shoot layups off the right foot, and that was enough. I didn't shoot well, because I had never been taught how. I thought I was so bad that I didn't even encourage my family to go to the sports banquet at the end of the season. I found out the next day that I had won the Most Improved award, and that was the last time I skipped one of those. Positive reinforcement was what I desperately sought at that time, and I had denied myself the opportunity for relatively large-scale recognition.

The next summer, baseball was back on the schedule, and I happily played. I had been the best player on my sixth grade team in Tustin, but on the Mesick team, I was average. Kids were allowed to throw curveballs now, and I had real trouble with them. That didn't stop me from enjoying what I was doing, though. We played the entire summer without losing a game, traveling from town-to-town in the back of a pickup truck covered by a cap. Again, can you imagine this today? After we won, we were treated to ice cream cones at the Dairy Pit (yes, that's what it was actually called), and if any of us hit a home run, we were uprgraded to a banana split.

The acceptance that sports gave me lasted on through high school. I eventually did become better coordinated, even gaining recognition as an all-conference athlete in football and basketball. I got an honorable mention vote in baseball, but that was only for my defense. But the way I was treated because of my athletic career was important to me not only because it helped me to make the right kind of friends who would stay out of trouble, but it helped me with my eventual career choice. I helped a good deal of my teammates stay eligible academically. My teachers helped me to cement that future career.

Mr. Neahr, my junior high math teacher had seen me as walking wounded, and he was perhaps the only one of my teachers to see that. I had some other teachers who didn't look past my insecurity and simply assumed that I was just a sarcastic jerk. I was a sarcastic jerk, but there was a reason behind it.

In high school, things were different. Mesick High School was small, so we had some of the same teachers in high school as we had had in junior high. One new teacher made a big difference in my life and that was Betty Williams. Betty was a good friend of my grandmother's and she was a wonderful teacher. I still remember taking her world history class and taking time out to watch the first flight and landing of the space shuttle Columbia. I also remember one of her favorite expressions of affirmation was, "Surely." I also remember answering in Leslie Nielsen deadpan, "Don't call me Shirley." We had a great time in that class. Mrs. Williams' husband passed away while I was in high school, and the outpouring of student support at his funeral had to have really touched her. There were at least 100 students there. I had Mrs. Williams again for civics as a senior, and rumor has it she taught just one last year because another favored student and I were going to be in her class. Either that, or she retired after that year because I drove her to it. Either option is equally likely.

Mrs. Gray was another very important teacher for me. As one of two English teachers in our school, we were likely to have her two or three times in high school. I was an exception. As a junior, she was my teacher four times a day--in consecutive periods! I had her for third period vocabulary and grammar. For fourth period she was my speech teacher. I was her student assistant fifth period, and she was my creative thinking teacher sixth period. You would have thought we would get tired of each other, but that really didn't happen. She helped me with the ins and outs of teaching. I maintained her gradebook, ran off copies, and did all of her errands. She, in turn, took an interest in me and showed me what a good teacher does. Her husband also taught at our school and they both traveled 40 miles one way to get to work. Despite the long travel time, Mrs. Gray worked long hours after school with the Future Problem Solvers program and with the Drama club putting on plays. She took several of us to dinner and a play in Traverse City one night at her own expense. It was an extremely generous thing for her to do, especially considering how poorly teachers were paid at that time. Mrs. Gray remains one of my most valued role models.

Communities like Mesick are few and far between. In such small town, students are called upon to play many roles. Football players play in the band. The Future Farmers of America are scholars. Everyone has to be active in many different activities to make the whole system work. Because I was allowed, even encouraged to do so many things, I became a well-rounded individual. In my senior year alone, I was student council president, varsity club president, and class treasurer. That's in addition to playing three sports and going to vocational school half-days because I only had two classes left to take. In the afternoon, I had civics, study hall and pre-calculus. These experiences were an essential part in helping me learn to manage my time as an adult.

At the time I was in Mesick, our sports teams were conference champions again and again. Our band scored the highest marks time after time. The community was so proud of our achievements at the time that they purchased billboard space to promote all the good things that were going on in our small town. During my junior year, our basketball team lit up the town. We rolled though our season, demolishing nearly every team that came into our small gym. The crowd would literally start the slow clap, slowly increasing its intensity until it involved stomping on the bleachers so hard that you could feel it down on the floor. My ears nearly ring in the memory of some of the cheering that was done in support of our basketball team. The adrenaline rush that the sound provided was addictive. One thing our coaches made sure to instill in us, though, was sportsmanship. We didn't gloat when we won, and we didn't pout when we lost. If we knocked someone down, we offered our hands to pick them up afterward. We would do good things for people, too. I remember as we prepared for the distric tournament that year, our team bus stopped where a person had driven off the side of the road in snow. We piled out of the bus and twelve strong young men nearly lifted that car back up to the paved surface.

The capstone had to have been our state championship in baseball. I have written about this here, but I may not have been thorough enough in describing what this did for our town. If there had been someone of a mind to, they could have looted our entire town, because just about everyone was at the game. When we returned victorious, the streets were literally lined with townspeople welcoming us back. There was a huge spaghetti dinner the next night in the high school gym, and the place was packed. I have never felt such a sense of belonging as I did that year and that night. It made me proud to wear my varsity jacket around other towns. It always amazed my grandmother when people in a town thirty miles away would recognize me and say nice things about our team and our town.

Tomorrow, the Mesick Track Invitational will be held, and one of my teachers, Mr. Gray, who was a track coach and who passed away a short time ago, will be honored. Mrs. Gray will be there, and I will get to introduce her to my daughter and tell her just what an inspiration she and her husband were in my life. I hope I see all of my friends and all of my teachers and coaches.

I hope I have made them proud because tomorrow I'm going home.

A Night at the Cove

My buddy Eric and I went to the first Dollar Monday of the South Bend Silverhawks' season last night at Coveleski Regional Stadium (the "Cove"). It was a perfect night for baseball, with mild 73 degree weather at game time, cooling off over the course of the evening. The Silverhawks, as I have mentioned before, are the low-A minor league team of the Arizona Diamondbacks. Several current Diamondbacks are former Silverhawks, as are a number of quality players from around Major League Baseball. Brad Penny, Lyle Overbay, Dan Uggla, Matt Chico, Javier Lopez, David Dellucci, Brian Bruney, Ross Ohlendorff, Chris Capuano--all are former Silverhawks.

Dollar Monday is a nice promotion to get fans out to the ballpark. Reserve seat tickets, hot dogs, and 12-oz. sodas are all one dollar apiece. It truly makes for an affordable family outing. We got there early last night, and the rush that usually coincides with Dollar Monday was taken care of by a swift move by their food service people. They already had several hot dogs ready in bins, with condiment packets available to help avoid long lines at the kiosk they normally employ. They served their dollar sodas as 12-oz. cans of pop on ice. These replaced their standard paper cups, which take a bit to fill and are clumsy to carry to one's seat. Everyone was able to get their fill and get seated before the game began. It was a 1000% improvement over last year.

The game itself was very enjoyable. Despite the Silverhawks' dismal 2-14 record, they played cleanly, with no errors and displayed skills that will serve them well in advanced play. They were hitting to opposite fields, fielding well, and the pitching was sharp. The Silverhawks scored early with a leadoff triple and a base hit to right, both executed perfectly. Although the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers tied the game in the top of the eighth inning, the Silverhawks scored to retake the lead with another triple and a sacrifice fly in the bottom half and the lead held up.

One thing you really have to watch out for in minor league games is a foul ball. The stands are so close to the field that foul balls can be especially dangerous. A guy in the stands about 50 feet from us got drilled right in the ribs by a left-handed batter. He left the stands with help in the fourth inning and I didn't see him back in his seat until the ninth.

The Silverhawks' mascot Swoop got a makeover this year. He looks less frightening (Sera will be relieved) and now has blue eyes instead of green. He has a new uniform too.

Another nice touch to the game last night was added by the public address announcer. Not only did he announce the batters and pitchers, but he also added a classic Ernie Harwell bit. Every time a foul ball landed in the stands, he said something like, "A fan from Wakarusa caught that souvenir," or "A young man from Mishawaka will take that one home." Most fans might not have caught that it was an Ernie Harwell riff, but I sure appreciated it.

With the Silverhawks victorious 5-4 in their first home win of the season, we left happy and satisfied. The evening was beautiful, shared with a good friend, and baseball was played.

What more could anyone ask?

Testing

Today we are taking the NWEA (NorthWest Evaluation Association) Levels Test. We'll be taking it part of tomorrow as well. It's a good test, geared toward students' actual abilities, which is determined by a "locator" test, which was previously given. Those abilities will be compared to last year's NWEA results to see how far students have come in a year. I really like this test and what it shows, and I'll have the results back in about two weeks or less. I'll be able to make corrections specifically based on student need. If Sally needs improvement in number sense, I can address that. If Jamal is a poor problem solver, I can tailor instruction to help him overcome that deficiency before the school year is over.

Earlier in the year (the school year, that is, it was September, 2007), we had ISTEP+, the Indiana Statewide Testing for Educational Progress-Plus, which is three or four days long; it's a bad test. It actually doesn't check for progress, like the name implies. It simply measures what the students know of the standards they were expected to have mastered the previous year. It doesn't compare what they know now to what they knew then, it simply determines what they know now. There is no way to even make a comparison to last year's performance, since the tests are entirely different. Ironically, this is the test used to determine whether our students have made Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), a key component of No Child Left Behind. No, we still don't have those individual results back, but we do know which of our subcategories did not make AYP. By the time we do get the scores, it will only provide a snapshot of what the students knew (and didn't know) seven months ago. And if I'm worth anything as a teacher, I know that already because of my own evaluations. And by the way, the ISTEP+ costs millions of dollars statewide. We taxpayers pay millions of dollars to find out what students knew seven months previously when it's too late to do anything about it. Well, we also pay those millions so the federal government can assign blame for student failure to promote their private school voucher agendas.

I have an idea. Why don't the people who are trained professionally to evaluate individual students' strengths and weaknesses assess students at the beginning and end of each instructional unit? They could create an assessment based on the Indiana Standards to determine a student's previous knowledge, analyze strengths and weaknesses, and then teach according to what is needed most. At the end of the unit, a post-assessment could be given, and reasons for passing and failing could be given with specific, personal attention paid to students who demonstrate poor performance. Those poor performers could have instantaneous feedback, and reasons for bad test results could be addressed.

I can tell you, for example, which of my students has parents who do not know how to do the math that I teach them. I can tell you which of my students's parents do not require them to finish their homework before they turn on their video games. I can even tell you which of my students won't see their parents or any other adult tonight when they go home. I can tell you which of my students are responsible for the care and feeding of younger siblings or even younger cousins, placing far too much responsibility on their young shoulders, leaving them no time to practice the skills that I am trying to pass on to them.

Unfortunately there's nowhere to bubble that in on their ISTEP+ score sheets.

2,288 Miles, Day 3

On Monday, we took the day off. No obligations, no family to see, just peace and quiet on the beach. Magi doesn't go to the beach too much, so I took Sera down myself. She saw the rolling dunes along the boardwalk and said, "Snow!" I laughed and gently corrected her, so now she knows what sand is. We walked down to the end of the boardwalk and took her sandals off and Sera looked like she was walking on the moon. She waddled down to the water with me, smiling all the way. She was having the time of her life. I took her by the hand into the water, and when a wave lapped over her knees, she almost jumped into my arms. It was cold, but it wasn't that cold.

We walked back up a ways and set out our things on a towel. Sera immediately took the shovel we had bought her and started digging in the sand. As we dug a nice hole, she started throwing sand with her hands...both hands...at the same time! This went on for a while, until she discovered the most amazing thing: a seashell! She was fascinated by it, and when I suggested that she put it into her spare pail, she put it on her arm like a purse and started looking for more. She found about a dozen that she liked shouting "I got it!" each time, rejecting the broken ones, and she had a great time. I took her back up to the pools, where Magi joined us, but the pools were still a little cold for her tastes.

As Sera took her afternoon nap, I got to read. I had picked up a copy of The Godfather for five dollars at the local Books-A-Million and dove in. The last time I had the opportunity to really relax and read was almost a year before, when the last Harry Potter book came out, and Magi and Sera were on vacation without me. If you love the movie, you should really read the book. At this moment, I'm watching the movie for the first time since reading it, and like most good adaptations, the movie is well-supplemented by reading the book immediately before. Some of the scenes make a lot more sense now, and my memory fills in the subplots, almost entire chapters that had to be left out for the sake of time. Brilliant work, both novel and movie!

The evening presented quite a treat, as Magi's mother, Sheila, drove down from Mobile to watch Sera so that we could go out to dinner alone for the first time in over a year! Magi's sister Kati had suggested a new place called Cosmo's in Orange Beach, so we tried it. Let me just say that we now have a new favorite restaurant in the area. A basket of warm bread was brought to the table, which is nothing unusual, but this bread was. It had kalamata olives baked into it, and was served with a creamy garlic butter that was just out of this world. We had the Firecracker Shrimp as an appetizer, which was very tasty, just spicy enough. For dinner I had their seafood pasta, which I'll just copy and paste from their menu: "Fresh gulf bay shrimp & blue crabmeat sauteed with broccoli and snow peas, with lemon pepper linguine tossed in a sun-dried tomato Chardonnay cream sauce." It was amazing! Magi ordered their special, which was baked flounder. It was a little dry on the outside, but they made everything right for us. By that time she was full from all the food we had already eaten, so they took it off the bill and gave us a free dessert. We chose the Red Velvet cake, and that was wondeful too. It was quiet, it was romantic, and it was just what we needed after a year. It was perfect.

2,288 Miles, Day 2

On Sunday we woke up late with a cool breeze coming in off the Gulf and with overcast skies. We got dressed and drove to Hazel's Nook for breakfast. Now I didn't grow up in the South, but I did have the pleasure of eating southern cooking my senior year of high school when I boarded with the LaFountains after my father moved away from Mesick. Joyce LaFountain was a foster mother with three adopted children of her own. Her son Ken and I were classmates in school. When I lived with the LaFountains, Joyce cooked up huge batches of pancakes, eggs, bacon and grits. I had never had grits before, so Joyce's breakfasts were extravagant and exotic to me. Hazel's has breakfasts like that. They have a buffet that includes homemade biscuits, bacon, sausage patties, scrambled eggs, grits, potatoes, corned beef hash, pancakes, french toast, and fresh fruit. They also have a cook standing by to make omelets with any ingredients you want. It's just sensational! One of the things I like to do at Hazel's and have already passed on to Sera is to eat a plate of breakfast and then split some biscuits on my plate and cover them in fresh strawberries from the fruit bar. The strawberries in spring are just so sweet!

Later on, we headed up to Magi's father's bay house. He and his wife Nora had the house built after Hurricane Katrina, which slowed its construction, but was it ever worth the wait! Huge cathedral ceilings, an office/loft overlooking the living room, lush bedrooms, a screened in deck, everything was luxurious! We dined on freshly caught crab, followed by steak and fish on the grill. Magi's sister Kati and her family came over (they had caught the crabs in traps off their dock next door) along with Magi's mother, who also lives in Mobile, and we spent the evening there together. I didn't have the greatest time, only because I had to watch the Tigers get blasted by the White Sox on the plasma TV. After that, though, we watched the Tennessee (Nora's alma mater) women's basketball team come back and defeat LSU for a trip to the NCAA women's finals.

We picked up milk for the condo and made our way back home. Once again, the surf and the breeze made it easy to go to sleep after a full day.

2,288 Miles, Day 1

Finally, a breather! Monday night I had to get some plastic tubing to divert sump pump water away from the house before it accumulated to a small pool a foot away from the foundation, and Tuesday we had to finish our taxes and get them sent in. No, we didn't procrastinate. One of our statements comes very late into tax season and we have to wait on it.

Our spring break was one of the best ever! Three years ago, we didn't go to Gulf Shores because we had a July wedding in New Orleans to attend. Two years ago, we stayed home because we had to travel for a long weekend in May for Magi's sister's wedding. Last year we were in China. So this was the first time in four years that we got to return to Gulf Shores for spring break!

We took off Friday night at 5:00 with a cooler full of sandwiches and drinks and didn't stop until we got to Elizabethtown, Kentucky, our new halfway house. It isn't really halfway to Gulf Shores, but it's just far enough away from home to get a full night's sleep and have a much more relaxed 12-hour drive the next day. We stayed at the Comfort Suites, which comes with a more than decent continental breakfast, just enough to get you on your way without stopping at a fast food place.

Our next stop was in Franklin, Tennessee, just outside of Nashville, where me made a very happy accidental discovery. We were looking for a place to stop and have lunch, and when I accidentally went straight after being told to turn, we saw a Wolfgang Puck Express. We immediately knew where we were having lunch! I had the Rotisserie BBQ Beef Melt on focaccia bread with mushrooms, carmelized onions, BBQ Sauce, and mozzarella. It was served with horseradish Ceasar slaw, which was so good that I got a to go order to take with us. Sera had the Butternut Squash Soup, which she loved. Magi ordered the Smoked Salmon Pizza, which was good at first, but she got a really fishy bite and sent it back. They replaced it with the Chicken Pesto Focaccia, which was similar to my sandwich but with chicken instead of beef. Very tasty! As we were about to leave, Sera yelled, "Doggie!" and sure enough, there was a guy at the Starbucks across the parking lot with a dog sitting on the back of his motorcycle, talking to women. He had obviously trained the dog to sit on the motorcycle, because he had goggles for it to wear while riding. I'm not sure how well-trained it was, though, because it came running to Sera as soon as she yelled.

We pulled into Gulf Shores at about 9:00 PM local time and stopped for dinner at Magi's favorite restaurant in town, Mikee's. Mikee's remodeled after suffering serious damage during Hurricane Katrina, but it had the same feel as it did before. It's a local place, the best kind for seafood.

We had a round of raw and steamed oysters, which I never would have eaten before I met Magi. She started me with fried oysters several years ago, and let me build up to steamed and then finally raw oysters. Now I eat just as much of them as she does! For dinner I had the all-you-can-eat fried shrimp, because by then it had been nine hours since lunch. Mikee's shrimp are large fried shrimp without tails. It's like popcorn shrimp but full-sized, and they are delicious! Magi had the seafood combo, with shrimp, oysters, and fish, and Sera helped her with that meal. She even ate a fried oyster...for a minute. After one reorder, I was done and ready for bed.

We made the last 15-mile drive down Fort Morgan road to the Gulf Shores Plantation, where we checked in, got Sera off to bed, and sank into the pillow-top bed with the window open, listening to the Gulf waves crashing onto the shore. Sleep came quickly, as it always does when we can hear the water.

The Spirit is supposed to wear BLUE! Updated

For crying out loud, why can't Frank Miller just leave things alone? First he destroys Batman, and now in his movie version of "The Spirit," he changes the look of the character nearly beyond recognition by putting him in black and red (see left). The Spirit wears BLUE, Miller! Look to the right and tell me what the heck is wrong with blue? He's only been wearing it for 68 years!

And yes, those of you who know me might recognize the color scheme from a character of mine. Geez.

Update: He wears white-soled tennis shoes, too. You can see it in the trailer by clicking the link on this page.

Vacation

I haven't completely disappeared off the face of the earth. I'm on vacation in Gulf Shores, Alabama. The internet connection here is a bit slow for loading pictures, so I'll be writing about the trip when I get back. On Monday I expect I'll be able to start giving a full account of this wonderful trip. Sera is having a wonderful time at the beach! This picture was taken yesterday at the zoo. She had a great experience, much better than last year when she was indifferent to everything at the zoo except for the fish.

News to Me, Part 3

Overheard in my classroom today: "Ain't El Salvador in Mexico?"

Gotcha!

Today is the anniversary of when we met our daughter, Sera. My wife has a way of putting things so much better than I do, I will simply link to her blog:

http://kaffee-klatsch.blogspot.com/2008/04/one-year.html

Election Season

Think about this: Opening day for Major League Baseball was yesterday. It is a long season, 162 games in 180 days. Then with the Division Series, the League Championship Series, and the World Series, also known as the fall classic, another month passes. After seven months have passed and the 2008 season is over, a new World Series champion will be crowned.

And the presidential election will still not be over.

Happy Anniversary!

Today is my wife's and my eighth wedding anniversary. We're not doing anything special today; we agreed last week to forgo the usual gifts and ceremony in order to return to the scene of the crime next week for spring break: Gulf Shores, Alabama.

My wife is the kindest, smartest, and most considerate and beautiful person I know. She is not only a wonderful wife, but a true friend to me and a fantastic mother to our daughter. She has made a life and a home for me that I never would have thought possible.

Before we married, I was hopeless. Literally. I had gone through a divorce, was living in a terrible apartment, and was driving a beat up old car. Okay, I'm still driving that same car, so I wasn't a total loser, but I didn't see a bright future ahead for myself. Now, over eight years later, I look forward to coming home to a nice house, sitting down to dinner with my family, and sharing my day with someone who understands the profession and can share similar experiences.

We make a great team in other ways, too. She cooks and I grill. Her cooking dominates the winter, and my grilling becomes the norm in the summer. When we got together, she took it upon herself to educate me on food and to develop my palate. I learned that cheese came in other varieties than what you buy in individually wrapped slices in the grocery store. I taught her her the wonders of the Mexican Fiesta Omelet. We even watch the Food Network together!

I love baseball, and she loves musicals; but we both support each other's interests and truly enjoy them. She knows what the infield fly rule is; do you? We both love movies and watch the Oscars with interest every year to see what we missed. We are both readers and enjoy some of the same books, and that's really a nice thing to have for a couple. It's like having a micro-book club.

We really get into "Lost." It's a high point of my week to watch that show together so we can talk about it during the commercial breaks to figure out what's going on.

What I enjoy the most about our marriage and my wife is that we are true partners. We make decisions together and talk everything out and if one of us gets sick, the other can take over everything. I can count on one hand the number of times we have raised our voices to one another.

Happy anniversary, Sweetie. I would be lost without you.

Change of Heart

I wrote three posts that were reminiscences of our trip to China last year, but I deleted them today. Have you ever written something from your memory only to find that your writing of the memory changes the essence of the memory itself? I have that problem sometimes. I will reread something that I have written and the description somehow taints the memory. That's one of the main reasons I haven't written that much about my childhood. I don't want my writings of that experience to alter the way I remember it. It's too important and so is the way I met my daughter.

It's funny how it's not the same for reading my wife's blog. When I go back and read her descriptions of the trip, I remember it with more clarity, if anything. I suppose when I'm reading her writing I am looking at it critically, comparing it to my own recollections. But when I am trying to pull up a thought of my own to transcribe, the images undergo a process that changes the way I see them in my mind. It's weird, but it's the way my brain works.

The Beach Boys

When my niece Theresa was very young, about two, I remember my mother playing the Beach Boys for her and she just plain rocked out. She especially liked "Barbara Ann."

Sera has been home from day care for the past two days. She had a fever on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, and the day care rules say that a child has to be fever-free for 24 hours before they return. Magi stayed home with her yesterday, and today was my turn. She hasn't had a fever since yesterday afternoon, so she's been feeling pretty good. I haven't had what either of them had yet, so I'm feeling good too. So naturally, we went to Eddie's Steak Shed for breakfast. We were enjoying our normal repast, when over the restaurant's speakers came a Beach Boys song. As far as I know, Sera's never heard one before. Her arms start moving, her head started swaying back and forth, and she was acting just like Theresa used to. Then it came to me: Sera is about to turn two as well! As soon as the song ended, replaced by Michael Jackson's "Wanna be Starting Somethin'," which did nothing for Sera. She started asking for more, more, more, and even signing more, which is something she hasn't done in a while now. She pointed vigorously at the speakers on the ceiling and repeated "More," over and over.

So after breakfast, we headed over to Borders and picked up The Beach Boys Greatest Hits, Vol. 1. As soon as I put it in the minivan's CD player, she was in heaven. When we got home, she didn't want to get out, because she was enjoying the music so much. Every song is her new favorite. I just put her down for her nap and put the CD in her DVD player to put her to sleep, and that might have been a mistake, because I can see her on the monitor, rocking out.

I have to say, it sure beats The Wiggles.

I'm Dreaming of a White...Easter?

Look at this mess! Baseball's opening day is a week away, the first day of spring is two days gone and we have snow on the ground. Disgusting! Ordinarily I love snow and winter and the seasons and all that, but come on! I want to go outside. I want to see a ballgame. I want to fire up my grill and grunt like Tim Allen. Enough already!

News to Me, Part II

I was showing my advanced class how to graph the quadratic function y = x^2. I had just plotted several points and drawn the parabola:













Suddenly, one of my students blurted out, "That's that uterus thing!"

The classroom erupted in laughter. I literally had tears in my eyes from laughing so hard. The student who had said it was laughing, too, but she didn't quite get the joke. As it turned out, she only knew what a uterus looked like from a diagram in her health book. A caring student whispered it into her ear and a look of realization washed over her face, followed by a flush of embarrassment. She took it well, though.

Afterward, I graphed a few more points, including (4,16) at which point I said, "This one goes up a bit higher on the graph...at the top of the pelvic bone."

Retraction

Forget what I said here.

I'm still a good teacher. I have a student who is currently in foster care and wants to make a way out for herself. She told me that when she started in my class she wanted to do that. She sits away from the troublemakers, takes notes of what I show them how to do, and does her homework. Surprise, surprise, she gets all of the questions right when we take a post-assessment over the chapter.

My failure in teaching is reaching the troublemakers. I just can't seem to do it. There's no simple formula. It's not a lack of parenting; my exemplary student has no one driving her and she motivates herself.

One of the things I notice is that I cannot penetrate the culture in which some of my students live. Fighting is their favorite topic of conversation. They have pit bulls that they fight against other dogs and they think it's okay. Some of my students are so careless about life that they fully expect to be dead before they have the opportunity to graduate from high school. What kind of carrot do you dangle in front of those kids? Some of my students think that their chances of being professional athletes are better than even. I did a demonstration the other day with flipping two coins and comparing that probability of getting two heads as a result with shooting dice (Craps in official venues) and even after the students flipping the coins lost hundreds of simulated dollars, they still insisted that they "always win with dice." There is simply no sense of reality that I can impose on their world views.

Increasingly I teach in a world where emotion and pride dominate logic, reason, and compassion for others. The slightest insult can escalate into violence in an instant. At the high school level, any fight participants are taken away in handcuffs and arrested, and yet there is no stigma attached. It's simply the way business is done here.

I can't imagine ever being put in handcuffs, and maybe that's my problem.

A New Car

We wanted to wait as long as possible after our PT Cruiser was paid off to buy a new car. Our plan was to trade in my old '93 Geo Tracker for a new minivan. Well, sometimes the best laid plans...you know.

Last week I heard a rattling from under the hood of the PT Cruiser, so I took it in to get repaired. I expected a $1000 estimate. It's always $1000. I had the best protection/warranty known to the human race, and the bill always came back $1000. Bumper-to-bumper, everything covered? Great, that will be $1000. Powertrain 100% covered? No problem, that will be $1000. Oh, you have a 10% off coupon from the phone book? $1000.

This time they tricked me! No coverage at all now that your car is paid off? Yeah, we're going to need $4,100. They ticked off a laundry list: Struts, blushings (that had been replaced once already at 52,000 miles), Clutch plate, A/C compressor, new tires (not even a year old, mind you, but the front end alignment we just did? Wasn't right.) They were telling me that the parts alone were going to be $2000, and the squealing belts they didn't fix correctly the last time I took it in? Yeah, that's because of this new problem that apparently was undetectable when they addressed the problem a year ago. This part is hilarious; they blamed whoever installed the last set of struts for the bad work that was done. As I was cleaning the car out Friday night, I found the receipt. Guess who had done the work? Awww, you guessed!

One of the problems I had taken it in for last March was the radio. It was always cutting out when I turned the steering wheel. They ordered a new one and replaced it. As I was driving out of the parking lot, I turned the wheel and it cut out again! This time when I told them about the problem not being fixed the last time when it was still under warranty, they were "unable to reproduce customer complaint." That's funny because if you drive the car for more than 60 seconds and turn the wheel at any time, it will go out. I guess that's not a diagnostic that they perform.

So anyway, this was Gurley-Leep in Mishawaka, Indiana, the service department apparently owned by Scrooge McDuck, because they have a money bin with my money in it that you could swim in.

We took the car to a new dealership after some careful research about minivans and traded it in. So here's our new 2008 Chrysler Town and Country. The Honda Odyssey is the best minivan out there, but it's also $10,000 more, and that took it out of our price range. We have Stow 'n' Go seating, automatic side and rear doors, heated seats, adjustable pedals, all kinds of cool stuff. We got a good deal on it simply because the dealership in Elkhart where we bought it is phasing out its Chrysler products. They're being squeezed by Gurley-Leep, who now sells just about every brand of car in our area. Gurley-Leep just bought out the dealer next door to them.

I'm guessing most of the people who buy their cars take them elsewhere for service.

Best Television Show...Ever?

Okay, "Firefly" just got left behind on my list for the best television show ever. It only lasted 13 episodes anyway.

The winner and new champion is..."Lost." Last night's episode was simply brilliant. If you don't know about "Lost," I'm not going to tell you about it. There's nothing I could tell you in a few thousand words that would do it justice. I've heard people describe it by asking, "Isn't that the show about the plane crash?" Yes, just as the entire history of the world's space programs is about Sputnik.

Today's television shows are almost as predictable as an episode of Scooby Doo, but without the wacky hijinks. Between three Law & Orders, three CSIs (plus an NCIS), and the oh-so-different Cold Case, Without a Trace, Numb3rs, and the like, Lost is a breath of fresh air. Law & Order even gives blurbs about the "Law & Order twist," like it's something unusual. What, the perp is guilty or not guilty? You can flip a coin and be as surprised by the result. "House" is pretty good, but it still boils down to a simple formula. Sick person comes in, House calls everyone idiots, and either cures the person or doesn't. I guess the next closest thing to a good show is "Battlestar Galactica," but I'm pretty sure Galactica jumped the shark last season by revealing that half the main characters were actually Cylons. They had me, then they lost me.

Don't even get me started on "reality" shows. The only one I watch is Major League Baseball.

No, Lost is something else entirely. Each episode reveals a little more about the vast mystery that is The Island, and each revelation opens up a dozen new questions. Between compelling storytelling techniques, complex characters, and true plot twists, Lost is a novel told in episodic form...only better.