Thursday, April 03, 2003

Sick and Stupid

Signs of sping today. Restaurant porchsitting; vivid purple crocuses opening up out of last year's skeletal leaf remains in the small patch of grass by our front door; drowning worms in driveway puddles. The change in the weather's brought the baby's first cold; when she lies down to sleep her nose gets all stuffy and she chokes herself awake crying. It's scary, but scarier still is realizing that this is just a cold -- no fever, no real pain, just discomfort and all our lives turn upside-down.

We drove up up up raindrenched mountains to Shelburne Falls this evening, mostly so she could sleep sitting up in the car for a while. She awoke as we drove over the bridge in this tiny arty town, and we killed some time admiring some blownglass in an artist's gallery above the smalltown's raging riverbed until the restaurants opened for the evening. Sat on the porch at Bottle of Bread enjoying a mostly organic beer and root-based meal, brie and mushroom tarts and a gluey chicken and dumpling soup, turnips and carrots and perhaps as much as half a stick of butter in the one bowl alone, while the baby ate Cheerios and bits of fished-out chicken with her mouth open, breathing raspily through her mouthfuls. Back to school and evening dorm duty, less boring for Molly's weekly visit.

Oh, the stupid part? NMH dismissed eleven kids allatonce this week. Tuesday morning the student centers looked like a refugee camp, over a hundred students crying and hugging each other and standing around looking stunned like they just found out their other grandmother died. Tonight the debate over whether the students should have been given a second chance rages on in our school online forum. But here are the facts: the students broke into a house up on the ridge behind the school, went through the owner's stuff, and partied (sex drugs and rock and roll, reportedly) over a period of two days. Let's see...trespassing, breaking and entering, smoking, illegal drug use, underage drinking...and coming back to do it all again the next day...what would you have done, really, if you were the school? As an added bonus, the cabin in question is the summer home of the grandson of the school's founder. It was good and surely shrewd of him to refuse to press charges. I'll miss them all.

posted by boyhowdy | 12:00 AM |

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