In Person

Punxsutawney Phil,
the world famous weather prognosticating groundhog,
visited my school recently.
Later, when composing my classroom newsletter,
I gave advice on attending Groundhog Day.
"If you want to see the groundhog in person,
you need to go early,
as you'll need to park in downtown Punxutawney
and take a bus to Gobbler's Knob."
I chuckled over seeing the groundhog "in person"
instead of "in groundhog."
Then I discovered I was unsure of what "in person" meant.
If I went to see James Taylor in person,
was he the person, or was I the person?
We both had to be at the same place at the same time....
I surveyed a few colleagues, with mixed results.
My googling was inconclusive as well.
I'm now expanding my survey to include you.
What do you think?

Kitchen Goddess? Not.

I think I have a pretty good vocabulary.
The Reader's Digest vocab tests aren't much of a challenge.
I can probably feed a small child on a visit to the free rice website.
I can hold my own in most games of Trivial Pursuit.
But my intellectual self-image took a major hit at the grocery store this morning.

Den and I were at the local upscale grocery store
so I could pick up some ginger root.
While he perused the seafood,
I ducked down the baking aisle to get dark molasses
and to escape the sticker shock I get at the seafood counter.
Across the aisle were pots and pans.
Doing a price comparison on an item I just sent to Tanzania,
I noticed an adjoining label said "saucepan."
Saucepan??
Pans are low. Pots are higher.
I teach that in first grade phonics.
But saucepans are high.
I never knew that.
I guess that explains why I've never been referred to as a kitchen goddess.

S.

A Winter Morning's Prayer

I recently read that people often have guilt
because their minds wander when they pray.
The author (Philip Yancey?) suggested that we
turn our stream of consciousness
into a prayer.
I've been trying it on my way to school.

Whoa! The driveway is slippery!
Keep Gilda away from that tree!
God, bless Aaron Adkins who sold us Gilda.
I think he's in Kenya now.
The election massacres are horrific.
Give the Kenyans peace.

Here's that curve
where I went into the snowbank twice last winter.
I would be sooooo embarrassed
to tell Denny and Dorretta
that it happened again.
Thank you for family and friends to share my shortcomings with.

Denny put the stonework in that ditch with his dad.
A local woman grew up
hiding from the communists
in a ditch during the Korean war.
Thank you for my life in America.

There's a lot of traffic on 322 today.
The top of the mountain must be pretty slippery.
I wonder if Shirley is in one of those vehicles.
God bless Shirley.

Put it in neutral to coast down the mountain--
I get braking on all four wheels
and save gas.
Give Paul and Katrina wisdom in their plans for next year.
If they have to drive more,
at $6/gallon,
gas will be a major consideration.

Stop at the Rockton post office for Mom's mail.
Help her to rejoice in this day. Me too.

I have now passed from the Susquehanna watershed
into the Allegany River watershed;
Rockton is on the eastern continental divide.
I remember visiting Colorado's divide,
when a tiny car drove up
and three guys unfolded out of it.
"This here's the continental divide.
That means half of the country is on this side,
and the other half's on that side."
Then they refolded and zoomed away.
Help my stupidity to not be too obvious.

The frost and light snow are on every tiny branch.
Luke used to call this a "magic day."
God, give Luke a big hug today.
Let him feel your breath.

There's the little cross where Marion Miles died.
God bless her grandchildren.

I'm passing the bus station.
Bus stations always make me sad.
May something good happen to that guy
when he gets to his destination.

There's Riverside's enormous flag.
I think that's the biggest flag I've ever seen.
Except maybe Fort McHenry in Baltimore.
God bless the people who serve in our military forces
and their families--
Jeremy
and Kasey
and Steph
and Luke
and the other Luke
and all Luke's friends--
and our Baltimore friends.

I'm almost to school.
God, put your hand on my family today.
Oh, and please heal that guy
that was in the accident in Tanzania.
Why is it that my thoughts are so often selfish?
What was that C.S. Lewis poem?
"... I am mercenary and self-seeking though and through...
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin.
I talk of love, A scholar's parrot may talk Greek.
But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin...."
I probably didn't get that right.
Hold my mind together.
Me again.

Parking lot. Take the keys.
It's crunchy cold. I love it!
Yessss!
And amen.

First Flakes

This year I am in a new classroom.
I inherited it from my surrogate sister,
Diane Bernardo (may she Retire In Peace).
The room has large, unfogged windows,
enormous windows,
a wall of windows looking out
on a scene so lovely
that it is featured in local publicity brochures.
Across a little stream
is a curve of flowering crabapple trees
framed by enormous oaks.
Within walking distance
are crayfish and cattails,
forget-me-nots and touch-me-nots.
We sometimes interrupt the routines
of reading and writing and math
to appreciate the changing seasons creekside,
but more often we go to the windows.
We note the shadows are still frosty white
while the sunny areas are bright green.
We watch oak leaves shimmy and shake
and break free and float down.
We watch the snowflakes...
SNOWFLAKES!
WOW!
The first snowflakes prompt us
to grab coats
and hats
and gloves
and dash outside for a snowdance.
We welcome those first flakes
with our tongues
and our feet,
whirling to the Chieftain's Irish music.

Some days it's easy to be thankful.

S.

You Must Be Proud....

Last week I congratulated six-tear-old Sam
on a neatly done, correct paper, saying,
"You must be proud of yourself!"

He looked me straight in the eye and replied,
"You know pride is a sin."

Powerpoint Lesson

This morning I went to a PowerPoint links class.
I've long appreciated the organizational aspects of PowerPoint,
and thought I could use it well.
... and I may,
but this morning's class taught me other lessons as well.
It reminded me what it is like to be a slow learner.

I arrived slightly before the class began
and chose a corner computer
where my lack of skills would not be as noticeable.
Ten minutes into the class,
a younger,
enthusiastic,
technologically skilled person
sat down beside me.
During the down time,
she zipped to the youtube site
for entertainment,
singing moms,
dance history,
shadow bunnies*,
and used a plug-in stick (?)
to show her son's first grade year.
I envied her prowess.
As we worked on PowerPoint (PowerPoints?)
hers danced
and talked
and had many colors.
Mine stared at me,
malfunctioning,
and it was my fault.
After trying whatever made sense to me
and some things that didn't,
I raised my hand for help.
My neighbor knew the answer before the teacher even got there.
How does she know that?

Eventually I got through everything twice;
the first time blindly following directions,
the second time writing things down
and beginning to understand the "whys."

On the drive home,
I had more sympathy for Holly
who seems to have no idea how adding works,
and Derrick
who has great difficulty with letters and sounds
and makes so many of his letters and numbers backwards.
They keep smiling
and trying their best
as they get individual attention.

When I got home,
I went directly to the computer.
Microsoft Powerpoint 2003...
It isn't the same as the school's.
Forget the links,
I tried three different times to find a way
just to make a second page.
No luck so far.
Aaaaaauuuuugh!

So instead I complain to you
and give thanks that most learning comes easily.
I will try again in a few minutes
praying for intuition.

S

*The shadow bunnies were AMAZING. Shadow puppetry to "Wonderful World." Click here. Maybe it will work!

Haikus for Jews

I had no school on Monday due to Veterans Day
(though what better place to remember than school?)
and I went to Ollie's,
my favorite cheap bookstore.
It was there I found Haikus for Jews by David Bader.
I laughed so hard the checkout that I distracted
the checkout people several displays away.

That night I reread it in bed.
Poor Denny.
Between my laugh decibels and my sneeze decibels
it's a wonder that he has any hearing left.

Following is a smattering:

Scrabble anarchy
after Putzhead is placed on
a triple word score.

Like a bonsai tree,
your terrible posture at
my dinner table.

The spitting image
of her father. Down the road
rhinoplasty, yes?

Today I am a
man. Tomorrow I return to
the seventh grade.

Left the door open
for the prophet Elijah.
Now our cat is gone.

Bare autumn branches,
the old crow sits. Mother, come
down from there at once.

Hava nagila,
hava nagila, hava--
enough already.

S.