Not All Who Wander Are Lost

Getting Better All The Time

It's no secret I'm tired; I've been saying so for days and days and hardly blogged at all. But today was mostly running around, then sitting in the middle of a surrounded stage for three hours in my suit waiting to hand out a single prize for the Senior Class day assembly, and helping people find their way into and through the Commencement Eve Dinner Dance, an event moved indoors -- like all other graduation weekend events -- due to hurricane-severe winds and rain coming in from the stormy midwest.

I've been on the go since 10:30, and it's 9 again now. On Saturday. And to tell the truth, it felt like a day in the park.

Some people think that teachers have got it easy. Maybe it's just been awhile since they themselves were in school; maybe they're members of that scarily large percentage of the population that just doesn't get it in general. Maybe they see their kids get home while the sun is still high, long before their own tired arrival, and assume that their teachers' days end with their kids'. Maybe they've just watched too much Boston Public, where the seats around the table in the teachers lounges are always full, and, although the teachers complain about being tired and overworked, they have plenty of time to sit in bars afterhours and relax.

Probably, though, they just don't realize what the job entails.

I work a twelve-hour day six days a week from September to June: classes in the mornings, media center coordination and minor courses in the afternoons, dorm duty at night, working with teachers to tinker with their pedagogy in amongst it all. On my occasional day off I tend to spend an hour or two chasing email, helping with homework, unlocking doors for the kids in the hall. To-be-graded papers stack up on my desk; I average five hours of sleep a night. And when you live with your students and coworkers, you're never truly away from work. Leaving the house means donning the invisible mantle of authority figure and community elder; any contact with teachers is an opportunity for them to ask a question on teaching and technology; just getting the mail or eating in the dining hall means stepping into the role-model-role.

To top it all off, we do work we love so that our charges might leave us with that love. Our communities grow only to dry up, peel, and drift away in the wind every summer. It's a shock to the system, a tear at the heart.

Today, the seniors and their teachers and parents stood as a family and cried together while the valedictorian told us of her own family, trapped by Sars in a Hong Kong province, ten thousand miles away. Tomorrow they will blow away like so much fine sand in the hurricanne.

I saw a mug once in one of those cheesy knick-knack mallstores that said the three best things about teaching are June, July, and August.

And, while it is true that the best things in life are time, and the timelessness of the family moments to come, Darcie and the baby and me on the small rug dragged out to the lawn, while the cat climbs the maple tree and the dog licks herself in the grass, in a true vocation -- and good teachers can't afford for it to be any other way -- the time we spend nurturing our charges is the best of all, for it is time planted for a richer harvest, a better universe of kids who make a difference. And that's not easy. Not at all.

Backyard Poem II

I'm almost back to blogging mode;
the kids are almost gone.
But while I wait for my brain to gel
I wrote this little...um...song.

6 legs designed to stick
on surfaces we see as smooth:
on ceiling corners, walls and windows
gravity-less, insects move.

But from a petal's underside
this tiny bee-like bug has fallen.
Even petals fall, like rain,
when insects slip collecting pollen.

It doesn't hurt the bug at all
despite his petal ceiling's fall.

The original Backyard Poem is here.
I wrote it several years ago,
the first lines scavenged from a piece
now lost, written in high school.

Okay, so it doesn't rhyme.
The important thing is, I wrote it.

Smallthoughts

I was a zonked out mess during dorm duty tonight, fullsteam o' head and a bit crisp at the edges. For three hours I tried to keep the dorm under control while a parade of students-in-need waited in line by my elbow for proofreading, last minute web publishing, and quick-bounce brainstorm check-ins; for the final hour I played the worst games of ping pong in my life and managed to win anyway, because when you live with the table for five years, you get good enough to win most of the time, and there's something eminently satisfying about beating adolescents, sick though the urge to do so may be. Maybe it's because I can't really beat them, even when they're having baby powder fights in the hallway.

I keep thinking about that perfect double rainbow this evening. I wish I had something more interesting to say about it than I keep thinking about the perfect double rainbow this evening, but see below. I really need more sleep, but a Magic Hat Fat Angel beckons from the fridge. The beer, a paler shade of ale, is sweet and light, but it's the pithy saying under the cap I really need. Tonight's capnote: Don't Zap your only Map. And speaking of short little ideas...

It's a good thing Newsweek doesn't come more often. Who has time to read the news every day anymore?

A monkey on the back is worth an infinity at the typewriter. After all, who needs another Hamlet?

If bits and bytes were tics and mites we'd something something something. Feel free to finish that one.

What if the light at the end of the tunnel is just a giant magnifying glass?

You know what's weird? Everything. Once you realize that, life becomes much easier.

Mr. Osborne, may I be excused? My brain is full...

I've got way too many tasks piling up; the back of my hand is so full of impending-ink "to do" notes that I'm about to run out of skin surface. Grading's overdue, I have no plans at all for my penultimate Media Literacy class tomorrow, the web project I was assisting with dropped a virus on the school website, and I've got conference calls scheduled for early morning tomorrow and Thursday to plan for this summer's academic technology training trip to Bangladesh. The baby's stuffed up with a cold that keeps her from sleeping well; I've hardly seen her for days, and I miss her. Students kiss shirtless outside my office window on the first sunny day in what seems like a month, thumbing their nose at my pain and pressure by their very lighthearted existence.

Every year at his time I teeter on the edge of a full-blown nervous breakdown, and every year it seems like this year's the one I'm gonna blow. I've always prided myself on working well under pressure; just gotta keep reminding myself to expect miracles -- it's always worked so far. But if it wasn't for the looming light at the end of the tunnel that is the final stretch to graduation on Sunday, I'd be in the pit of despair already.

I hate to sound like those whiny adolescent bloggers -- you know the type, the ones who make the rest of us seem like A-listers -- but it seems impossible from here and now. So read Shaw's blog (it lives in my comments), and browse the archives (ever wondered what I was doing on your birthday?), but expect little newblogging for the remainder of the week. I'll try to post a little something each day, but it may not be much, and, given how little time I have for browsing and collecting of the world wide waste, it will likely be egocentric. We will return to our regularly scheduled daily outpouring of verbosity and poesy starting Monday. I promise. Gotta run...

Oh, and sorry for the rant length. As Twain said, I would have written something shorter, but I didn't have the time.

Obligatory Matrix Post

With Morgan Freeman as Himself.

The thrill is gone: In a major shift of pop theology, Matrix sequel comes in a distant second to new Jim Carrey vehicle "Bruce Almighty" only one week after release.

Ha. Told you so. And I haven't even seen The Matrix Reloaded yet. (And it seems I'm not alone.)

Still, On The Radio

I'd like to say that each show leaves us like dew in the morning sun by preference. That the deliberate esoteric impermanence of each show is medium-appropriate, air being inherently unarchivable. Sound, after all, must determine its own pace, its own place and space in the world. Stopping sound to take a closer look only creates silence.

Mostly, though, we've just been too lazy to record our shows. And then here we are at the end of the year with the long drought upon us: the school year is over before next Monday; no shows for months ahead. A real shame, that. After all, it's all my favorite music, a moving mood, up and down and up again over an hour or two every week. It rearranges me 'till I'm sane, you might say; time to put me back in my head.

We could, I suppose, come in each summer week and broadcast to an empty campus.

Anyway. Here's tonight's playlist, retroactively blogged [UPDATE 12:28 p.m. 5/27/03] to create the illusion that we knew what we were still to play 21 minutes before the show actually ended. Listen in your head, if you can.

Beck -- Devil's Haircut
Trout Fishing In America -- Happy That You're Here
Bob Dorough -- Too Much Coffee Man
Spacehog -- Senses Working Overtime
Skavoovie and the Epitones -- Aquaman
Cake -- Manah Manah
They Might Be Giants -- Nightgown of the Sullen Moon
Keller Williams -- Anyhow Anyway
Ben Harper -- Steal My Kisses
Ani Difranco -- Angry Anymore
Trey Anastasio -- Cayman Review
Peter Gabriel -- Blood of Eden
Be Good Tanyas -- House of the Rising Sun
Alison Brown -- Banjo Mambo
Something by The Poets of Rhythm
Patty Larkin -- Different World
Mo' Horizons -- Hit The Road Jack
The Story -- Perfect Crime
John Gorka -- Oh Abraham
Aimee Mann and Michael Penn -- Two of Us
Deb Talan -- Forgiven
Sarah McLachlan -- Rainbow Connection
David Wilcox -- Burgundy Heart-Shaped Medallion
Marc Cohn -- She's Becoming Gold
Nikki Boyer -- Brain Damage
Maura O'Connell -- Long Ride Home
Mark Erelli -- Take My Ashes to the River
Emmylou Harris -- Red Dirt Girl
Sarah Harmer -- Open Window

Radio BLOG

After an entire year of coming home every week tired at midnight and staying up until the wee hours of the morning transcribing our radio show playlist into the blog, it turns out that this ancient Konqueror-enabled computer in the radio station is web-enabled after all.

It'd be too annoying to blog while we go for a number of reasons, including the distraction factor and the fact that blogger prompts me for a password after a waiting while. But, geez, it would have been nice to know.

And what do you mean you haven't done your Monday Mosh yet?

Monday Mosh

Today's Monday Mosh accomplished early morning after falling alseep with the baby at 6:30 p.m. Sunday and sleeping until 9:00 Monday morning. It's about time...

What song did you mosh to?
The theme song to the Muppet Show

What did you step on / bump into? (bonus points for breakage)
Stepped on some already-chewed pretzel pieces, which smushed rather than break, so I don't think that counts. Also bumped into the TV/stereo cabinet; the lamp atop it shuddered but luckily didn't fall, as I was carrying the baby and wouldn't have been able to catch it -- now that would have netted some major bonus points.

Why did you stop?
Honey, the baby really needs a nap....

The meme continues: after you've done your own Monday Mosh, either blog it and leave a link in the comments below, or go ahead and put your mosh stats in the comments directly. Have fun, kids!