Long day

Today was long and frustrating, with too many people making too many unrealistic demands with which I have zero intention of complying in any meaningful way.

The good news is that three solid weeks of mandatory meetings should give me plenty of time to work on my novel.

If you look interested and break your lines in odd places, the presenter is usually too self-absorbed to realize you’re not actually taking notes. Just sayin’.

Emily

Dress for success

Do you think this was what Swayze had in mind when he told me to wear a college sweatshirt to school on Thursday?

I hope so, ‘cos I made one tonight with iron-on letters from Hobby Lobby. If anybody complains, I will simply point out that this shirt actually has a much closer connection to my alma mater than one might think: It actually originated on the Strip in Carbondale. Really. John Belushi was taking a theater course at SIU when he stopped in at Gusto’s one afternoon in 1971 to order a custom-designed sweatshirt with “COLLEGE” emblazoned across the front.

I think this goes well with my mandatory “college corner” bulletin board, which includes a photo of Old Main burning….

Emily

Signs of spring

I was exhausted today and spent most of the afternoon napping, but Ron reports two signs of spring: A robin has been hanging out in the backyard — presumably feeding on worms that have been driven to the surface by all the moisture we’ve had lately — and the garlic is starting to sprout.

Other than that, I don’t have much to report this weekend. I’ve been pretty unproductive lately.

Emily

Sprouts

I got bored and planted seeds last weekend. We now have cat grass, catnip, and shamrocks sprouting in containers on a shelf above the bed. When the cat grass gets a wee bit taller, I’ll bring it into the office and put it in the windowsill for Walter to nibble on.

On a completely random note, I have decided that Christoph Waltz needs to be the bad guy in the next Bond movie. Daniel Craig’s Bond is so very dangerous and so disturbingly charismatic that he really deserves an archvillain as deliciously terrifying as Col. Hans Landa.

Emily

Folk Thursday: OMG.

Whoa. That is all.

Emily

Hope and change

Somebody was making fun of President Obama the other day and asked me what “hope” and “change” — two of his big campaign buzzwords — meant.

I didn’t bother to answer, because the question was obviously intended to draw me into a pointless political argument at a moment when I was more interested in painting lawn gnomes and building dragons … but I thought about it later, and it occurred to me that as an urban high-school teacher, I probably understand the ideas of hope and change at levels people outside the profession can’t.

Hope is the academically challenged student who turns out a professional-looking fact sheet about her favorite cause on the first try.

Hope is the depressed boy who writes a note thanking me for caring about him after I let him make up some missing assignments.

Hope is the Cheshire-cat grin I give the administrator observing my class as the kids get into a spirited discussion that obliterates my carefully crafted lesson plan and teaches them far more than anything I could come up with.

Hope is the teachable moment, the unexpected compliment, the spontaneous hug, the fleeting but precious sense that maybe I’ve made one minute of one kid’s life a little better.

And change?

Change is what happens as a result of all those little reasons for hope.

In my classroom, hope and change are not campaign slogans. They are my raison d’etre, and I couldn’t function without them.

Emily

Genuine selfhood

“Man’s genuine selfhood is recognizable only in what is good and true.”
– Mary Baker Eddy

I saw something this afternoon that nearly brought me to tears.

I’ve been working really hard on knowing what is good and true about a particularly difficult student. I don’t always succeed in seeing it, but I’m looking for it.

The effort paid off today, when I appealed to this student’s sense of genuine selfhood as a means of eliciting cooperation on an assignment.

Rather than mentioning grades or class requirements to get the student to do the work, I talked about the possibility that a writing assignment on the student’s chosen topic might help someone else. This possibility evidently hadn’t occurred to the student, who proceeded to spend the rest of the hour diligently taking notes.

Threats and cajoling have never worked with this kid. But in asking the student to help someone else, I appealed to the student’s sense of genuine selfhood — which, in turn, revealed what was good and true about that self.

Beautiful.

Emily

Winter wonderland

Ron and I went for a drive Sunday afternoon. This is what the old alignments of Route 66 in Oklahoma look like after a winter storm:

The long-closed Tee Pee Drive-In on the Ozark Trail alignment just west of the Rock Creek Bridge near Sapulpa. I think this is going to be next year’s Christmas card….

Viaduct on the Ozark Trail alignment of 66.

Icicles cling to the rocks next to the road.

Honda should hire us to do their advertising. Does my tie-dyed hippie wagon not look totally bitchin’ against that snowy background?

Tank Farm Loop alignment of 66 west of Kellyville.

Pump jack on the Tank Farm Loop. This is sooooo Oklahoma … maybe I should use it for my Christmas card instead.

Seen at the entrance to a little strip of original Route 66 pavement that dead-ends on a side road between Kellyville and Bristow. The icicles on the right are not out of focus. They are fuzzy. Really: That blurring around the edges is actually fuzz made of ice crystals formed by freezing fog.

Long-abandoned motel at the end of the aforementioned dead-end stretch of road.

I loathe winter, but I love photographing 66 in the snow. Especially a deep, wet, fluffy snow that coats all the branches … and especially when that snow follows a half-inch of freezing rain so everything looks all glittery and pretty.

Hope you’ve found something beautiful to photograph this week, wherever you are.

Emily

Tucumcari

I came home from work tonight, made the most Southern dinner ever (hoppin’ John, collards, and cornbread, with leftover pecan pie for dessert), and fell asleep before 7:30.

This time 11 nights from now, I will be passing Exit 0 on an unavoidable stretch of I-40 between here and Tucumcari, my thoughts on nothing but blue architectural neon and the black vastness of a New Mexico sky.

It’s been a pretty good winter, but you have no idea how much I need a night at the Swallow to recharge my batteries….

Emily

24 hours in the yard

While I was snowed in the other day, I completed No. 49 on my woefully-out-of-date 101 Things list:

Not terribly exciting, but you can see the progress of the snowstorm, anyway. If the birdfeeder hadn’t been totally iced over, I could have filled it with seed and probably gotten more interesting shots. Oh well.

Emily