Friday, March 25, 2005
Ultimate frisbee team is coming
Thursday, March 24, 2005
Snow and Good teaching day
Meanwhile, I had a sterling but exhausting day yesterday in my teaching: maybe because I had the least orderly class first thing in the day, and they were both extremely orderly and extremely engaging kids, and maybe because I was party to a situation where an excellent veteran teacher was having a struggle with a good but disrespectful kid (and this was what he called himself in a piece he wrote for me, which became part of the whole exchange, so I felt part of more than just standing up and entertaining), and maybe it was just that the kids were glad to see me two days in a row, and maybe because it was a more-or-less new lesson that I was intent on figuring out how to deliver (on writing monologue– not that I've never done that before, but I haven't featured it in a while, and this is leading to the presentation for the school later in the year). And then the evening novel class was excellent–I'm beginning really to like the intimacy of the small class, and of course having strong students, strong personalities, a lot of the teaching comes from them– I was very satisfied with the day.
And the tiredness didn't seem a negative, but a positive, until my mind started rushing over all the things I have to do, have failed to do, will never do. Meanwhile, I have to prepare my monthly Coalition meeting. And tomorrow the Ultimate team arrives to eat spaghetti and sleep in our house! Twelve kids, but at least Joel is one of them. If we want to see him, we'll have to go watch him play ultimate frisbee down at Rutgers forty five minutes away!
Friday, March 18, 2005
Beings Unvisited by Angels--George Eliot's World View
Beings Unvisited by Angels
....No radiant angel came across the gloom with a clear message for her. In those times, as now, there were human beings who never saw angels or heard perfectly clear messages. Such truth as came to them was brought confusedly in the voices and deeds of men not at all like the seraphs of unfailing wing and piercing vision,–men who believed falsities as well as truth, and did the wrong as well as the right. The helping hands stretched out to them were the hands of men who stumbled and often saw dimly, so that these beings unvisited by angels had no other choice than to grasp that stumbling guidance along the path of reliance and action which is the path of life, or else to pause in loneliness and disbelief, which is no path, the arrest of inaction and death.
George Eliot, Romola, in The Best-Known Novels of George Eliot (Modern Library edition: New York), p. 1163.
Beings Unvisited by Angels
....No radiant angel came across the gloom with a clear message for her. In those times, as now, there were human beings who never saw angels or heard perfectly clear messages. Such truth as came to them was brought confusedly in the voices and deeds of men not at all like the seraphs of unfailing wing and piercing vision,–men who believed falsities as well as truth, and did the wrong as well as the right. The helping hands stretched out to them were the hands of men who stumbled and often saw dimly, so that these beings unvisited by angels had no other choice than to grasp that stumbling guidance along the path of reliance and action which is the path of life, or else to pause in loneliness and disbelief, which is no path, the arrest of inaction and death.
George Eliot, Romola, in The Best-Known Novels of George Eliot (Modern Library edition: New York), p. 1163.
Thursday, March 17, 2005
St. Patrick's Day
Also cut lettuce from under the umbrellas and dug up parsnips and carrots planted last April, baked them with potatoes, had salad and ham, a funeral gift.
Wednesday, March 16, 2005
Family photo
March 16, 2005
This is an unusual picture of my sister, my mother and me. My father passed away a week ago after several years of being sadly disabled, and we were gathered in West Virginia for the funeral and remembering and celebrating him. The celebration came largely in the form of many of his former students who came to the funeral home and the funeral to say he had been their best teacher.
Wednesday, March 09, 2005
Nightline Bloggers
The Nightline reporter was all portentous and pompous about this new phenomenon while appearing to remain remarkably clueless about the impulse to communicate and participate in this enormous amorphous thing of proto-democracy on the Internet.
Sunday, March 06, 2005
Week-end at Brown
His demands have always told me what I want to do. Well, I'm thinking about when he was a baby and I was an ignorant old mother. Then there was a message on the phone when we got back, from him, asking if he could bring twenty or forty ultimate player friends to sleep on the floor before a tournament at Rutgers! Mercy upon us.
I'm thinking about how first there is imagination; then there is experiencing; then there is memory. I"m good on 1) and 3), and less good on the experiencing. I'm thinking about Italy, and about yesterday, and how already yesterday has started to glow: when we arrived and saw Joel coming toward us with his skully on and Ellen yelling "The Chia pet!" (for his hairstyle) and Joel's room very neat with the Indian blanket cover over his comforter, and the floor clear, and shirts hanging in the open closet. And really good omelettes at Rue d'espoir. And a kind of bronzed gentle hanging out in his room, him showing us books, things on the Internet, Phil and Kyle in and out. Walking around campus, always so beautiful even in dirty snow weather, eating dinner at theBombay Club and driving around busy gay Providence, some big event at the Performing Art center or else the Dunkin Donut arena.
And fast fading some of the actual experience: an upset stomach, no place to sit, feeling hot, sleepy, at different times. But it smooths out in memory–I guess Italy did too, but it's so far now that I really have to stretch and make an effort to recall the discomforts, the squabbles
In looking for some online pictures of Brooklyn for my biography page, I found a nice painter named Ella Yang who paints a lot of things, but I especially like her paintings of Brooklyn. She responded promptly to my e-mail and gave permission for me to use her work on my website as long as I gave the title and a link. Take a look at her website!