Not All Who Wander Are Lost

From Beards To Bangladesh

The grizzly bear look didn't seem right for Phillips Andover, so I set the alarm, and woke early into a frigid blustery day. I was itching for a shave. Pressed khakis and a semi-casual light blue buttondown, brown shoes and tan cardigan vest, overlong taffy-pulled woolen scarf and slate grey cord greatcoat, a kiss and a sniff of that nasal ambrosia that rises from a baby's head took me swirling through the dizzy galeforce streets to first one and then another barber shop, all closed Mondays.

Finally found one in Greenfield. After a buzz over the jawline and a too-short moustache trim, I hit the road. Two hours later, I pulled out of a Dunkin' Donuts parking lot after dropping my vest button into their toilet, and turned into what most folks know as Andover, and those in-the-know call P.A. Andover is a bit like NMH, but suburban where NMH is rural, square angled quads where Northfield follows the rolling hills and their paths. It's seen, I think, by all of us as a bit more elitist, and perhaps a secret mite better; after years of getting our butts kicked by Deerfield, our athletic department seems to have cast them as their new rival, with ourselves the perennial underdog. All I can say is, I liked it, but it wasn't home.

Mostly there were meetings in large computer labs and small offices and classrooms with those desks attached to their chairs -- meetings about safety abroad, about teaching technology to teachers, about schools and learning and malaria shots. Lunch was in there somewhere. Plans began, vaguely but oddly better than expected, towards a modular approach to the 7 day teacher workshop Henry, Margaret and I will be leading in Bangladesh this August. We're still not in the groove together, but I think the potential is there, and I'm glad. And Chris and Mary, the coordinators of His Highness Aga Khan's International Programs -- I kid you not -- are eager to help me get from Bangladesh direct to Vancouver and the cruise in Alaska with my whole family that last week before school starts up in the fall.

Summer's shaping up nicely, then. School ends the first weekend in June; week-and-a-half camping with Willow and Darcie and Ginny and volunteering at performer check-in at Falcon Ridge Folk Festival the last weekend in July; two weeks in Bangladesh and rightaway one week cruise in Alaska in the last three weeks of August. A summer that starts slow and relaxing and gathers momentum. A roller-coaster summer.

I really am going to Bangladesh. Weird.