What a wonderful feeling: I am basically caught up. I have a handful of papers to grade, but those should take all of 30 minutes to knock out before school tomorrow. Meanwhile, I’m done with all my lesson plans for the next couple of weeks, so I finally have a chance to catch my breath a little bit.

I spent most of this evening cooking. I have potato soup simmering in the Crock-Pot at the moment, and I made a big batch of meatballs from a recipe in my friend Dawn’s new book, which hits the shelves tomorrow.

I have to remember to make a batch of kettle corn after church on Wednesday, as our academic team is hosting a game Thursday afternoon, and the kids get very disappointed if my contribution to the pregame snack table does not involve kettle corn. (I tried bringing homemade chocolate-chip cookies one time, thinking that was a better treat, but I was mistaken. Kettle corn gets a much more enthusiastic response than cookies … which is fine with me, because I can crank out enough kettle corn to feed a dozen teenagers in less than 10 minutes, using maybe 50 cents’ worth of ingredients, whereas cookies require 10 times as much time and 10 times as much money to produce.)

Hope you had a productive day and a peaceful evening, wherever you are.

Emily

I’m closing out my weekend with a big dose of David Lanz while I finish up some grading and look ahead to next week’s lessons.

It’s been a productive weekend. I spent all day Saturday on some training, then went out to dinner with Ron and picked up a few groceries at Whole Foods. While we were standing in the checkout lane, I made an impulse buy: a remastered copy of the Beatles’ Rubber Soul. Lennon remains my favorite, but I think I finally understand the girls who were screaming and fainting over Macca in the ’60s.

I spent this morning at church, and then we went to Drysdales this afternoon before coming home to chop up firewood. I love our chainsaw. It’s bigger, louder, and more dangerous than any other power tool in my collection. Working assembly-line fashion, with Ron moving the logs into position and me running the saw, we chopped up the better end of a rick of firewood in under an hour. When we finished, I came inside and worked up a few lesson plans before heading over to the Rock Cafe for dinner. We took 66 on the way back home. Nothing particularly exciting was going on, but it was a good trip anyway.

I am now wrapping up a little grading so I can start my week with a relatively clear plate.

Hope your weekend was peaceful and productive, wherever you are.

Emily

I know I’ve posted it before, but I’ve had this song in my head for a couple of weeks, for reasons I will share sometime in the not-too-distant future.

Emily

Apologies for the silence; I had a trig test Tuesday night, church last night, and an academic bowl game tonight. I’ll try to clear my plate tomorrow so I can get back to blogging soon.

Emily

Our jack-o’-lanterns. The one on the left is a Webster High School logo. It looked better when I first carved it, but part of it started to sag as the evening wore on. I swiped the peace-pumpkin idea from my friend Trisha.

My weekend, by the numbers:

1:52:20: Hours, minutes, and seconds it took me to finish this year’s Tulsa Run. For the record, that’s nearly 11 minutes more than my last Tulsa Run, and over 21 more than my fastest. I’m woefully out of shape this season, so I have only myself to blame for my thoroughly abysmal time.
Three: Dollars spent on pumpkins at the church-run patch up the road.
Two: Number of jack-o’-lanterns I carved before the trick-or-treaters arrived.
Thirty-five: Approximate number of trick-or-treaters who showed up on our doorstep last night.
Five: Hours Ron and I spent cleaning the garage this weekend.
Seven: Number of cave crickets I killed while cleaning the garage.
One: Number of pickup loads of stuff we donated to Goodwill.
Nine: Number of contractor-sized garbage bags currently sitting on our curb.
Fifty-two: Ounces of soda necessary to rehydrate me after we finished cleaning the garage.
One hundred forty-nine: Number of trig problems I probably ought to work between now and 5:30 p.m. Tuesday.
Thirty: Number of trig problems I absolutely have to work between now and 5:30 p.m. Tuesday.
Zero: Number of trig problems I am probably going to work tonight.

Hope your weekend was as productive as mine.

Emily

What a productive day:

Attend parent-teacher conference … check.
Cover Algebra I class during plan time … check.
Teach good-natured freshman to isolate variables … check.
Listen to “Strange Fruit” six times … check.
Lead six class discussions about racially motivated violence … check.
Help with academic team practice … check.

I’m worn out after a whole day of listening to “Strange Fruit” over and over (for the record, its impact does NOT diminish if you listen to it six times in a row) and leading six separate discussions about an ugly, painful period in American history … but it’s a good kind of exhaustion, because I feel as if we got somewhere today.

Like the imaginary monsters that haunted the closets and dark spaces of my childhood, racism is a bully that lurks in the shadows but loses its power to frighten or harm when you drag it out of its hiding place and expose it to the light. Dragon slaying isn’t always easy, but it’s glorious to watch, and I’m proud of my kids. We’ve got some great swashbucklers in that bunch, and I expect one of these days, with their help, we’ll rid the world of that beast.

Emily

Sorry for the extended silence. Things have been nuts around here this week. We’ll just call the video above a belated Folk Thursday offering. I’m not sure Billie Holiday constitutes “folk,” but this is definitely a protest song, and I would go so far as to say it is quite possibly the most important protest song ever recorded.

It is also part of tomorrow’s lesson plan. The kids are going to start class by writing paragraphs about their perceptions of the media’s impact on race relations, and then we’re going to compare and contrast “Ballad of Birmingham” (a Dudley Randall poem about a church bombing that killed four young girls) with the lyrics to “Strange Fruit.” Powerful, yes, but I think that’s what scares me. I’ve taught “Ballad of Birmingham” before, but I’ve never taught “Strange Fruit.” It’s a pretty unsettling song, and I hope it doesn’t freak the kids out too much. I know they listen to violent music all the time, but this is different. It’s scary. It’s dark. And it elicits some pretty strong emotions.

I’m trusting my kids to turn those emotions into a productive discussion. This is something of a leap of faith, but the poetry unit always is. I think that’s what makes it so magical.

We’ll see how it goes.

Emily

… Your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him.
– Matt. 6:8

“My angels are exalted thoughts, appearing at the door of some sepulchre, in which human belief has buried its fondest earthly hopes. … By giving earnest heed to these spiritual guides they tarry with us, and we entertain ‘angels unawares.’”
– Mary Baker Eddy

I’ve had kind of a rough week. I received some bad news about two old friends this week, I’ve had a couple of extremely long days and a lot of unnecessary hassles to contend with, and some of my students have been unusually difficult to manage

I was feeling pretty frustrated and run-down by the time one of my girls stopped me this afternoon to hand me a little note telling me how much she enjoyed my class and appreciated what I was doing for her and her classmates.

She couldn’t have known it at the time, but her sweet note was exactly what I needed to turn my thought around.

From that point on, blessings seemed to pour in: A colleague told me about a grant she was writing that would allow both of us to do a project I’d been dreaming about; another colleague came to my rescue in an awkward situation; and when I got home, I found a sweet e-mail message waiting for me from someone who was enjoying my blog.

Not only does the Father know what we have need of before we ask, but he isn’t shy about directing his children to take the human footsteps necessary to meet those needs.

I’m very grateful this evening for the people who listen and follow those directions.

Emily

Just a thought this morning as I head out for an 11-hour day at school:

“… Keep your minds so filled with Truth and Love, that sin, disease, and death cannot enter them. It is plain that nothing can be added to the mind already full. There is no door through which evil can enter, and no space for evil to fill in a mind filled with goodness. Good thoughts are an impervious armor; clad therewith you are completely shielded from the attacks of error of every sort. And not only yourselves are safe, but all whom your thoughts rest upon are thereby benefited.”

– Mary Baker Eddy

My thoughts are resting upon several people this morning who could use an impervious armor. Please join me in filling your mind with Truth and Love today. There’s far too much error flying around. Let’s crowd it out, hey?

Emily

I just spent the past 10 hours or so building a set of shelves for all my computer equipment and reorganizing my office. I knew it was a mess, but I hadn’t realized what an unmitigated disaster it truly was until I got into it. This room probably isn’t even 100 square feet, but I’ve got so much stuff crammed in here that I had to drag half of it out just to find a starting point. I’m exhausted, but it’s a much nicer workspace now. I wish I’d thought to take before-and-after pictures, because it was really a mess.

It still looks pretty cluttered, but that’s mostly because Walter’s new furniture is in here. I bought him a kitty jungle gym at Target last night. It’s cute, and he likes it, but it’s a lot bigger than I was expecting based on the size of the box. It’s made of PVC pipe and parachute material, with some nylon mesh here and there for climbing. It had two toys hanging off of it, but Walter pulled one of them off this morning and brought it into the bedroom so he could play with it and pester us at the same time.

This is a little thing, but I’m really excited about it: I finally tacked up the racing bibs I had lying around. I’ve been procrastinating on that forever, for no particular reason. I started hanging up my bibs a few years ago to cover up the prissy-looking wallpaper border that goes around the top of this room. They look kind of cool. I’ll try to take a picture of them when I get to the end of the first wall.

Hope you had a productive day.

Emily