One day in early spring, I was struck with one of those “what if” ideas that sometimes come to writers, if they’re lucky. I talked with a friend about it and told her what I wanted to try. She immediately began throwing questions at me, pushing me to branch off in new directions and add layers to what I was thinking. My answers fell into place so easily it was more like discovering a story outline that already existed than working to create a new one; it was kind of an extraordinary ten minutes. I let the whole thing percolate for a few weeks, getting into a habit of frequently adding to a list of ideas on my phone whenever they came to me.
About a month later I spoke with Carrie, partly so we could discuss some client-agent business and so I could tell her about the new idea. She encouraged me to spend time reading books similar to what I had in mind, giving the ideas more time to develop, and then start working on it in earnest when I reached summer break. We agreed on a word count goal and a deadline for me, so I could share my progress with her.
Summer arrived and I slipped into a writing habit that was soon dominating my waking hours. I gave myself permission to put aside the list of summertime chores I had in front of me, instead investing that time into building the word count. The writing quickly jumped outside of my usual process; I wasn’t mapping things out but writing with only a vague outline, forcing me to figure out how the details came together, to learn who the characters were, and to discover the motivations and machinations that would drive everything forward.
This brought on another big change for me: Without realizing it at first, I was telling the story chronologically. This is kind of a big deal, since I usually jump around through the story then fit it all together later. So far I haven't needed to do that, because the part I've always wanted to write the most has been whatever happens next.
I reached the goal Carrie and I had set, even a few days early, which gave me time for some quick proofreading before I sent the first chunk off to her. Some of the writing was still very much first draft ugly, but some of it wasn’t. More importantly for me, the story was coming together in ways I was excited about.
It’s the last day of June as I write this. I’ve ended more days than not this month feeling physically and mentally exhausted in the best possible ways. I’ve worked on, and even completed, a handful of manuscripts in the past couple years, but those have all largely been misfires. That’s not the case with this one so far. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that I haven’t had a story fall into place as readily as this since the original draft of “Following Infinity,” which is giving me a lot of hope right now.
I don’t want to give much away, but, if you’re curious, I’ll tease you with some of the comparisons I offered Carrie back when I was first getting started. Think of it as “Ghostbusters” meets “The Sandlot” meets “IT,” with a healthy dose of the “Welcome to Night Vale” podcast thrown in the mix to weird everything up, and even a touch of Harry Potter, specifically “The Goblet of Fire,” for reasons I won’t discuss. As of today the word count sits just a little north of 27,000, which would translate into roughly one hundred double-spaced pages.
I’ll do another progress post at the end of July, both to let interested people know how things are going and to help myself stay accountable.
Until then, I’ve got some word count to build….
Friday, June 30, 2017
Monday, June 26, 2017
The K Word
There are days when I swear the only thing I’m going to be remembered for when my teaching career ends is the bunny suit. But just a few days ago, while drafting my new manuscript, I realized there was something else I have an unbreakable association with in the minds of many of my colleagues.
One day, a long time ago, I was picking up my students from the cafeteria after lunch. As they were returning their trays and lining up, one little scandalized tattletale came up to me with a look of earnest distress, telling me how someone else in class had said “the K word.” Of course I had no idea what she meant. I answered with what has become a standard response to such matters over the years: “Thank you for letting me know. I will speak to them about this later.” She walked away, satisfied that justice would be carried out.
Polite society demands that some offensive words are referred to by only a first letter, since using the words themselves has become justifiably unacceptable. I’d like to propose the time has come to add another word, an actual K word, to the list of verbal taboos:
Kiddo.
Years ago, if not decades by now, while enduring a specifically purgatorial staff development session, the presenter used the word “kiddo” what I would estimate to be approximately once every one hundred seven seconds. I became so preoccupied with waiting to see when it would come up again that I began doing something I hadn’t done since my undergrad days: keeping tally marks in the upper left hand corner of the composition book I was using to take notes. (I rely heavily on notebooks such as these during staff development; either they help me organize and process the important ideas of the day, or, if I’m particularly less than engaged for whatever reason, they’re great for writing down jokes to keep myself amused.) My tallies numbered well into the dozens by the time the session had ended, and I hadn’t even started at the beginning.
Then, sometime later, that word began to spread. Like a pathogen. Maybe it just started catching on or maybe it had always been there, and it just took the frequency of that one particular session to permanently tattoo the frustration on my brain. Either way, it had become impossible to avoid and only grew progressively worse as time went on. You know how health professionals tell us not to use antibacterial soap because doing so actually aids in the development of superviruses? In my school district, “kiddo” has grown to the point of being a verbal supervirus.
So what’s my problem with this word? What is it about “kiddo” that gets me so riled up?
1) It’s meant to sound endearing, but it’s not. It’s usually intended to be a linguistic compromise for people who want to come across as professionals in a professional setting, but also want to project how they have enough warmth and familiarity regarding children to keep from seeming clinical and distant.
2) It’s degrading. Maybe only mildly so, but still. Anytime someone calls someone else “kiddo” to their face, they’re sending a message about the relationship they have with that person, and usually the person on the receiving end is either younger or less experienced. You want proof? Ask Siri. Or here, I’ll save you the time and tell you what she says: “NOUN (informal) / used as a friendly or slightly condescending form of address.” Notice how she didn't just stop at "friendly."
3) At least in the educational world that surrounds me, it has devolved into becoming a tag so generic and overused that it has lost all meaning. I’m sure you know what that’s like. If not, pick any word you can think of and repeat it to yourself, out loud, at least thirty times. Listen to yourself say it. Eventually it will start to leave a bad taste in your mouth, and you’ll start thinking things like, “What does this even mean? How did this configuration of letters ever get put together to represent any kind of a concept? Do I sound like a complete moron every time I say this word out loud? I’m starting to think I do.” Don’t believe me? Try it. Here’s a word to experiment with: Soap. Thirty times, out loud, listening closely. See how you feel about it when you’re done.
4) For too many people, it’s become a code word, something akin to teen slang. If someone chooses to refer to any plurality of children as “kiddos” instead of “kids” or “children” or even, dare I say, “students,” they are making a choice to associate themselves with a larger group who does the same thing. They’re using lazy verbal shorthand as a way to communicate they're referring to students in a professional capacity, but are still trying to maintain a dose of warmth and fuzziness in doing so.
I can’t stand the word. I just used it in a manuscript because I wanted to convey something negative about the character who says it. I refuse to watch the movie “Kill Bill Vol. 2” because it’s revealed before the end that the real name of Uma Thurman’s character is Beatrix Kiddo. Whenever I’m sitting in a staff meeting and or any kind of professional development session with people I know and the presenter uses the word, I feel several pairs of eyes looking at me, waiting for my reaction. And even if people are subtle enough about it to not turn and look at me with a big smile and try to catch my eye, I know several of them are internally laughing at my pain.
So please, everyone. For my sake, and for the sake of whatever goodness and purity there still might be in our society, let’s all agree to put the “K word” behind us.
One day, a long time ago, I was picking up my students from the cafeteria after lunch. As they were returning their trays and lining up, one little scandalized tattletale came up to me with a look of earnest distress, telling me how someone else in class had said “the K word.” Of course I had no idea what she meant. I answered with what has become a standard response to such matters over the years: “Thank you for letting me know. I will speak to them about this later.” She walked away, satisfied that justice would be carried out.
Polite society demands that some offensive words are referred to by only a first letter, since using the words themselves has become justifiably unacceptable. I’d like to propose the time has come to add another word, an actual K word, to the list of verbal taboos:
Kiddo.
Years ago, if not decades by now, while enduring a specifically purgatorial staff development session, the presenter used the word “kiddo” what I would estimate to be approximately once every one hundred seven seconds. I became so preoccupied with waiting to see when it would come up again that I began doing something I hadn’t done since my undergrad days: keeping tally marks in the upper left hand corner of the composition book I was using to take notes. (I rely heavily on notebooks such as these during staff development; either they help me organize and process the important ideas of the day, or, if I’m particularly less than engaged for whatever reason, they’re great for writing down jokes to keep myself amused.) My tallies numbered well into the dozens by the time the session had ended, and I hadn’t even started at the beginning.
Then, sometime later, that word began to spread. Like a pathogen. Maybe it just started catching on or maybe it had always been there, and it just took the frequency of that one particular session to permanently tattoo the frustration on my brain. Either way, it had become impossible to avoid and only grew progressively worse as time went on. You know how health professionals tell us not to use antibacterial soap because doing so actually aids in the development of superviruses? In my school district, “kiddo” has grown to the point of being a verbal supervirus.
So what’s my problem with this word? What is it about “kiddo” that gets me so riled up?
1) It’s meant to sound endearing, but it’s not. It’s usually intended to be a linguistic compromise for people who want to come across as professionals in a professional setting, but also want to project how they have enough warmth and familiarity regarding children to keep from seeming clinical and distant.
2) It’s degrading. Maybe only mildly so, but still. Anytime someone calls someone else “kiddo” to their face, they’re sending a message about the relationship they have with that person, and usually the person on the receiving end is either younger or less experienced. You want proof? Ask Siri. Or here, I’ll save you the time and tell you what she says: “NOUN (informal) / used as a friendly or slightly condescending form of address.” Notice how she didn't just stop at "friendly."
3) At least in the educational world that surrounds me, it has devolved into becoming a tag so generic and overused that it has lost all meaning. I’m sure you know what that’s like. If not, pick any word you can think of and repeat it to yourself, out loud, at least thirty times. Listen to yourself say it. Eventually it will start to leave a bad taste in your mouth, and you’ll start thinking things like, “What does this even mean? How did this configuration of letters ever get put together to represent any kind of a concept? Do I sound like a complete moron every time I say this word out loud? I’m starting to think I do.” Don’t believe me? Try it. Here’s a word to experiment with: Soap. Thirty times, out loud, listening closely. See how you feel about it when you’re done.
4) For too many people, it’s become a code word, something akin to teen slang. If someone chooses to refer to any plurality of children as “kiddos” instead of “kids” or “children” or even, dare I say, “students,” they are making a choice to associate themselves with a larger group who does the same thing. They’re using lazy verbal shorthand as a way to communicate they're referring to students in a professional capacity, but are still trying to maintain a dose of warmth and fuzziness in doing so.
I can’t stand the word. I just used it in a manuscript because I wanted to convey something negative about the character who says it. I refuse to watch the movie “Kill Bill Vol. 2” because it’s revealed before the end that the real name of Uma Thurman’s character is Beatrix Kiddo. Whenever I’m sitting in a staff meeting and or any kind of professional development session with people I know and the presenter uses the word, I feel several pairs of eyes looking at me, waiting for my reaction. And even if people are subtle enough about it to not turn and look at me with a big smile and try to catch my eye, I know several of them are internally laughing at my pain.
So please, everyone. For my sake, and for the sake of whatever goodness and purity there still might be in our society, let’s all agree to put the “K word” behind us.
Saturday, June 17, 2017
Album of the Week: Hi Infidelity
When I was in seventh grade, REO Speedwagon’s “Hi Infidelity” was the biggest album in the world. It stayed at number one on the Billboard album chart for four consecutive record-setting months, according to Casey Kasem’s American Top 40, which I listened to regularly back then.
In a way, “Hi Infidelity” was one of the templates followed by most artists who released albums during the 1980s. It would not be inaccurate to say it was the album that gave birth, for better or for worse, to the power ballad. Songs like “Keep on Lovin’ You” and “Take it on the Run” were appreciated both because they were love songs, but also because they still rocked.
The band played with a power and ferocity that showed off their long career of playing on the road. Neal Doughty, the main keyboardist, hammered away at his piano and synthesizer solos with a speed me and my three years of piano lessons couldn’t comprehend. Guitarist Gary Richrath held the songs together with glittery melodies, explosive solos, and hammering acoustic strumming in the background throughout.
The only standard of cool that mattered in the junior high hallways was whether or not you had the REO Speedwagon tour shirt. Not the black concert t-shirt but the classic 80s concert jersey, with the tour design on a white background and black sleeves. Even the heavy metal burn-outs who populated my school bus had the band's logo sketched on the homemade grocery bag book covers of their school textbooks. I remember hearing about how the kids in choir wanted to use “Keep on Lovin’ You” in some performance, but the choir teacher shot it down because of something to do with inappropriate lyrics. To this day I don’t remember what it was that was so awful, but I think a decision like that stands as a testament to a more innocent time, when it wasn’t as necessary to release separate versions of albums with both clean and explicit lyrics.
My favorite song on the album was, and still is, the opening track, “Don’t Let Him Go.” It was supposedly a single toward the end of the album cycle, but I don’t remember hearing it on the radio until the band had crossed into classic rock territory. “Don’t Let Him Go” was all power and energy, and one of the best album openers I can think of. The off-beat cymbal splash you hear in the drum riff was something I tried duplicating many times in my bedroom, using my seventh grade band drumsticks, my practice pad, and a few of my dad’s hardcover spy novels borrowed from the living room to complete my imaginary drum set. I never quite felt like I mastered it.
I was still a few years away from my first real rock concert so I couldn’t go to the show, but I did get the LP, then recorded it onto a blank cassette so I could listen to it in my bedroom through the headphones and not irritate my parents. It wasn’t a very long album, so I was able to squeeze it onto one of the mythical 120 minute length blank tapes, where it shared space with at least two of my other junior high touchstones: “Foreigner 4” (we never called it “4,” it was always “Foreigner 4”), Styx’s “Paradise Theater,” Journey’s “Escape,” and Billy Squier’s “Don’t Say No.” Combined, those albums served as an early 80s hard rock starter kit/tutorial for an emerging music fan only months out of Catholic elementary school. They all stayed in heavy rotation on my cassette player (and loudly on the turntable when our parents weren't home) for at least eighteen months, until “Pyromania” was released and Def Leppard conquered the world.
I don’t know if music is like this anymore. I think it would be a challenge for anyone to name more than a small handful of bands who would release albums now that were essentially collections of love songs, most of which were happy, and all performed with undeniable musical talent. I don’t know of current artists that bridge genre so thoroughly the way this album did. If that’s something we’ve culturally lost, it’s really a shame.
In a way, “Hi Infidelity” was one of the templates followed by most artists who released albums during the 1980s. It would not be inaccurate to say it was the album that gave birth, for better or for worse, to the power ballad. Songs like “Keep on Lovin’ You” and “Take it on the Run” were appreciated both because they were love songs, but also because they still rocked.
The band played with a power and ferocity that showed off their long career of playing on the road. Neal Doughty, the main keyboardist, hammered away at his piano and synthesizer solos with a speed me and my three years of piano lessons couldn’t comprehend. Guitarist Gary Richrath held the songs together with glittery melodies, explosive solos, and hammering acoustic strumming in the background throughout.
The only standard of cool that mattered in the junior high hallways was whether or not you had the REO Speedwagon tour shirt. Not the black concert t-shirt but the classic 80s concert jersey, with the tour design on a white background and black sleeves. Even the heavy metal burn-outs who populated my school bus had the band's logo sketched on the homemade grocery bag book covers of their school textbooks. I remember hearing about how the kids in choir wanted to use “Keep on Lovin’ You” in some performance, but the choir teacher shot it down because of something to do with inappropriate lyrics. To this day I don’t remember what it was that was so awful, but I think a decision like that stands as a testament to a more innocent time, when it wasn’t as necessary to release separate versions of albums with both clean and explicit lyrics.
My favorite song on the album was, and still is, the opening track, “Don’t Let Him Go.” It was supposedly a single toward the end of the album cycle, but I don’t remember hearing it on the radio until the band had crossed into classic rock territory. “Don’t Let Him Go” was all power and energy, and one of the best album openers I can think of. The off-beat cymbal splash you hear in the drum riff was something I tried duplicating many times in my bedroom, using my seventh grade band drumsticks, my practice pad, and a few of my dad’s hardcover spy novels borrowed from the living room to complete my imaginary drum set. I never quite felt like I mastered it.
I was still a few years away from my first real rock concert so I couldn’t go to the show, but I did get the LP, then recorded it onto a blank cassette so I could listen to it in my bedroom through the headphones and not irritate my parents. It wasn’t a very long album, so I was able to squeeze it onto one of the mythical 120 minute length blank tapes, where it shared space with at least two of my other junior high touchstones: “Foreigner 4” (we never called it “4,” it was always “Foreigner 4”), Styx’s “Paradise Theater,” Journey’s “Escape,” and Billy Squier’s “Don’t Say No.” Combined, those albums served as an early 80s hard rock starter kit/tutorial for an emerging music fan only months out of Catholic elementary school. They all stayed in heavy rotation on my cassette player (and loudly on the turntable when our parents weren't home) for at least eighteen months, until “Pyromania” was released and Def Leppard conquered the world.
I don’t know if music is like this anymore. I think it would be a challenge for anyone to name more than a small handful of bands who would release albums now that were essentially collections of love songs, most of which were happy, and all performed with undeniable musical talent. I don’t know of current artists that bridge genre so thoroughly the way this album did. If that’s something we’ve culturally lost, it’s really a shame.
Saturday, June 10, 2017
Album of the Week: Magic
Ten years ago this fall Bruce Springsteen released “Magic,” the first album he had put out with the E Street Band at full force since 1984. Barack Obama’s election was a year away and a lot of America was still coming to terms with how the world and the country had changed during the two terms of George W. Bush. While “Magic” is a very driven rock album, it’s also a pointed criticism of the actions and consequences of the Bush administration. It’s arguably Bruce’s most political album to date.
Sadly, the idea of criticizing George W. Bush as misguided and incompetent seems almost quaint now. To be fair, most of the album doesn’t really go after the man himself, but tells the stories of characters, some of them returning veterans, experiencing the confusion and disillusionment of defending a country and a set of ideals that don’t seem to follow through as expected. The title track is the only song addressing this theme directly, or as directly as you can through metaphor, bringing forth a thinly-veiled attack on the politics of distraction that are at least as present now as they were ten years ago: “Trust none of what you hear, less of what you see / This is what we’ll be.”
Even with all of that, I still think of it as a summertime album, in the most positive of ways. In fact, the first time I got behind the wheel of my car to drive anywhere after my final work day of the school year, “Magic” was the album I played. It seems to creep back into the rotation for awhile at the beginning of each summer.
The songs, regardless of the stories they tell, boil down to relationships. Much of the music follows a recognizable template used in many of Bruce’s songs, in which he will contrast the joyful bounce of a rock-and-roll party anthem with depressing, and even nihilistic, lyrics. I’ve always been able to take in this album on two levels: thinking about the political statement, and enjoying the musical tone: the storm warning siren saxophone solo by the late, great Clarence Clemons in the middle of “Radio Nowhere;” the organ part from “Living in the Future” that echoes right out of half the songs on “The River” album from 1981; the self-assured strut of “You’ll Be Coming Down;” the mid tempo warm-weather carnival romance of “Girls in Their Summer Clothes.”
Like most of Bruce’s albums — and, let’s face the facts, like most albums period — there are a few songs here that don’t carry their weight. That’s okay, though. When you take an album as a continuous piece of music instead of just a collection of songs, even the weaker moments play their roles in contributing to the overall narrative. There are three or four songs here that I don’t think I’ve ever included on any derivation of a “Best Of Bruce” playlist, but when I listen to the whole album all the way through, they’re just as essential as any of my favorites.
Like I said eariler, “Magic” came out in the fall of 2007, which, if memory serves, was within a month of when I sold my town home and bought my house, which serendipitously happened about three weeks before the housing market went underwater. Bruce and the E Street Band toured behind the album, and came to St. Paul sometime later that spring — I’m thinking March, but don’t quote me on that. My cousin John came up to the Cities and stayed with me so we could see the show. We’d bought four tickets, and the other two went to my sister Jenny and the guy she was dating, David. I don’t have the timeline locked down on this, but I think I’d already met David for the first time by then, a few months earlier at Thanksgiving. Either way I hadn’t spent much time with him before the concert, so it turned out to be another chance to get to know him better.
A few years down the road and he became my brother-in-law. Since he showed himself early on to be the kind of guy who would bring my sister to a Springsteen concert, he scored some good points with me.
It was not the last Springsteen concert we both attended.
Sadly, the idea of criticizing George W. Bush as misguided and incompetent seems almost quaint now. To be fair, most of the album doesn’t really go after the man himself, but tells the stories of characters, some of them returning veterans, experiencing the confusion and disillusionment of defending a country and a set of ideals that don’t seem to follow through as expected. The title track is the only song addressing this theme directly, or as directly as you can through metaphor, bringing forth a thinly-veiled attack on the politics of distraction that are at least as present now as they were ten years ago: “Trust none of what you hear, less of what you see / This is what we’ll be.”
Even with all of that, I still think of it as a summertime album, in the most positive of ways. In fact, the first time I got behind the wheel of my car to drive anywhere after my final work day of the school year, “Magic” was the album I played. It seems to creep back into the rotation for awhile at the beginning of each summer.
The songs, regardless of the stories they tell, boil down to relationships. Much of the music follows a recognizable template used in many of Bruce’s songs, in which he will contrast the joyful bounce of a rock-and-roll party anthem with depressing, and even nihilistic, lyrics. I’ve always been able to take in this album on two levels: thinking about the political statement, and enjoying the musical tone: the storm warning siren saxophone solo by the late, great Clarence Clemons in the middle of “Radio Nowhere;” the organ part from “Living in the Future” that echoes right out of half the songs on “The River” album from 1981; the self-assured strut of “You’ll Be Coming Down;” the mid tempo warm-weather carnival romance of “Girls in Their Summer Clothes.”
Like most of Bruce’s albums — and, let’s face the facts, like most albums period — there are a few songs here that don’t carry their weight. That’s okay, though. When you take an album as a continuous piece of music instead of just a collection of songs, even the weaker moments play their roles in contributing to the overall narrative. There are three or four songs here that I don’t think I’ve ever included on any derivation of a “Best Of Bruce” playlist, but when I listen to the whole album all the way through, they’re just as essential as any of my favorites.
Like I said eariler, “Magic” came out in the fall of 2007, which, if memory serves, was within a month of when I sold my town home and bought my house, which serendipitously happened about three weeks before the housing market went underwater. Bruce and the E Street Band toured behind the album, and came to St. Paul sometime later that spring — I’m thinking March, but don’t quote me on that. My cousin John came up to the Cities and stayed with me so we could see the show. We’d bought four tickets, and the other two went to my sister Jenny and the guy she was dating, David. I don’t have the timeline locked down on this, but I think I’d already met David for the first time by then, a few months earlier at Thanksgiving. Either way I hadn’t spent much time with him before the concert, so it turned out to be another chance to get to know him better.
A few years down the road and he became my brother-in-law. Since he showed himself early on to be the kind of guy who would bring my sister to a Springsteen concert, he scored some good points with me.
It was not the last Springsteen concert we both attended.
Wednesday, June 7, 2017
The 2017 Round-Up of 4th and 5th Grade Zen
Either the kids weren't as funny this year, or I was going through some stuff, or perhaps both. Whatever the reason, there weren't as many Zen moments this school year. But that doesn't mean the ones we had still weren't gems:
This exchange....
"Do cowboys ride camels too?"
"No. Because then they'd be called camelboys."
"Camels have genders?"
"Um, yeah. There are boy camels and girl camels. Where do you think baby camels come from?"
"Wait: Does that mean cowboys ride cows?”
"Friday is for ALL the dances.”
A girl tries to flip her pencil in the air. She misses and it ends up on the floor.
A boy on the other side of the room notices and says, "You'd better practice some more if you want to be ready for that talent show.”
This exchange, between two students:
"Last year I went to a French immersion school."
"You went to a French Martian school?!”
In science I held up a graduated cylinder with a plastic base attached. I asked the kids why it was called a graduated cylinder. One boy raises his hand and says, with complete sincerity, "Because if you flip the cylinder part over, that black thing looks like one of those graduation hats.”
The room fills with screams when someone spots a spider walking across a desk. After one girl brings it out to the hallway, a boy comes up and tells me, "I had a spider stuck in my ear when I was three, Mr. Mulroy. So I'm used to them.”
We were taking surveys in class today for data collection. One girl walked around asking people this question: "Which is your favorite kind of cake: Twinkies, Cupcakes, Sno-balls, or Hobos?”
"I have a headache from writing so many numbers. Either that or it's a sinus infection.”
"Mr. Mulroy, if what we learned about the water cycle is true, then one of the snowflakes that landed on my face this morning could have been used a long time ago to wash Abraham Lincoln's shirt.”
Boy, pointing to a problem in his math journal: "These are mixed numbers."
Me: "I know."
Boy: "But they're already in simplest form."
Me: "I know. The directions say to write them as fractions."
Boy: "Oh! So we're supposed to do what it says?”
I see a kid walking back from lunch, busily licking a finger.
"What are you doing?" I ask.
"Licking the cheese dust left from my chips off my finger. This one has a lot on it."
The kid pulls the finger out and looks at it.
"Oh," she says, mildly surprised. "I guess that's a Band-Aid.”
The sound system in my classroom comes with a hand held microphone. Sometimes I'll use it to be heard over the noise level. Sometimes I'll hold it for a student so they can be heard more clearly. Sometimes I'll randomly hold it in front of a student just to see how they'll respond. Most of the time they'll just have a mildly stunned look and say "Hello."
Today I caught one girl off guard with the microphone. She smiled and said "Hello." I immediately shifted it to the boy sitting next to her -- one of the three funniest students I've ever had -- and without missing a beat, this boy leaned into the microphone and sang, "It's me.”
A girl walks in the room early in the morning and says, "I just saw a fifteen-legged spider crawling on my bedroom wall!"
One boy's response: "That wasn't a spider. Spiders only have eight legs. That was probably a monster.”
Student #1: "I'm gonna die! I'm gonna die of dehydration!"
Student #2: "So drink water."
Student #1: "That's too much work.”
The kids were working on rate problems in math. They started with the 365 days in a year.
"How many weeks are in a year?" one girl asked.
"Fifty-two," I answered. She started doing some quick division to check that, so I quickly added, "If you're being exact about it, it's fifty-two weeks and one day."
She finished her work and looked up at me. "There's an extra day?" she asked. "What day is that?"
Without missing a beat, the boy sitting next to her looked up and answered, "Wednesday."
And finally, this photo, taken during the final week of the school year. I think it sums up what goes on in that week almost too perfectly:
Tuesday, June 6, 2017
The Pros and Cons of Goal Setting
Two years ago a friend posted a photo online at the beginning of summer break that caught my eye. She and her family had made a giant poster filled with the fun things they wanted to do that summer. I borrowed the idea and gave it a little tweak, instead making my list out of Post-It Notes and turning my refrigerator door into one big colorful Summertime To-Do List.
It turned out pretty well. I didn’t complete every note, but I got to most of them. The whole thing added some welcomed structure to my summer, not to mention it really felt satisfying to peel off those notes when I was finished with them. I liked the idea well enough that I did it again last year, to about the same degree of success.
Summer break for 2017 starts in just a few more days, and I’m not sure whether or not I want to cover the fridge in Post-Its again. I'm definitely a list guy, and this can be a great way to push myself into doing things I normally might not do if there weren’t goals attached. Making a list can motivate you to try new things, explore interesting places, and give yourself some experiences and adventures that you otherwise might not have. It’s also a great way to keep track of books to read, movies to see, or shows to binge. A list like this can help make sure time doesn’t slip by without having some fun, and can help provide the summer with a narrative.
My one mistake was making a list had actual To-Do list tasks mixed in with the summertime fun goals. A lot of these tasks are things I mean to get done during the summer because I’ve nearly procrastinated them into oblivion during the rest of the year. The problem is I’ll continue to procrastinate since I know I have the whole summer to get them done. Giving yourself things to do seems easy at the beginning of the summer when there’s all the time in the world ahead of you. The notes with those unpleasant chores and boring appointments have always been some of the last ones I've accomplished, if they even get addressed at all. By late August they end up staring at me from a mostly empty refrigerator door, almost taking on an attitude because they’ve gone ignored for so long.
Goal setting can be a good way to get things done, but it can also be defeating if it isn’t managed carefully. When you set goals, you need to consider how much motivation you’ll bring to your attempt. How badly do you really want to accomplish these things? Are those goals making it onto the list because you know you should really get them done, or because you genuinely want to achieve them? How many things on the list are Want-To instead of Have-To?
I know I’ll have to get some of those stupid chores taken care of this summer. I also know there will be some I continue to ignore, as long as they aren’t demanding me to deal with them. That leaves me with wondering whether or not to include them, if I make a list.
Which begs the question: Should I even make a list? Should I take advantage of this newly-discovered and hard fought wave of optimism I’m riding after such a long and personally dark winter and wait for the discoveries and adventures present themselves? Or would it be better to give myself the challenges of taking steps outside of my comfort zone?
What’s better — to intentionally aim for the things I might not otherwise consider, or to use this my time off to let things spontaneously evolve as they will?
I have exactly three days to make up my mind.
Saturday, June 3, 2017
Album of the Week: Celebration Rock
I haven’t known a life without summer vacation since 1973. After having been a regular part of life for so long, my summers have a feel: Freedom, openness. An absence of structure, an abundance of possibility.
Summer starts incrementally for me: Memorial Day weekend is the unofficial beginning, since it has the first day off I’ve had in about two months. June first is when the weather nerds on TV banter about Meteorological Summer to remind everyone they’ve received an education and can do more than dress up and smile. For my corner of the world, the first Friday in June ushers in another level summer when we have Track and Field Day at school, signaling to everyone that the academic year is almost over. Next Thursday will be the last day of school for the kids, then Friday is the last for the teachers. After that summer has basically arrived. Because seriously, other than the people in charge of setting text in the calendar factory, who considers June 20 to be part of spring?
With all the time and opportunity and warm weather, summer quickly becomes a season filled with celebrations, planned and spontaneous, genuine and accidental. One of the albums that has become a standard summertime soundtrack for me is the appropriately named “Celebration Rock” by the Canadian duo Japandroids. The band released a new album this past winter, “Near to the Wild Heart of Life.” It’s more mature and subdued, and probably my favorite album of 2017 so far. I’ve had more time to spend with “Celebration Rock” though, so it would probably get my nod as the favored of the two.
The album consists of fast, loud, pounding anthems ideal for the summer, and perfect for summer driving. Every song sounds almost exactly the same, which is usually a negative, but in this case makes the songs seem more like separate movements in one thematic piece of music. They're all centered around barely contained chaos, noise, and energy. Lyrics like “We yell like hell to the heavens” are less about being statements of rebellion as they are of ferocious joy. Some of the song titles make strong enough declarations of this on their own: “Fire’s Highway;” “Adrenaline Nightshift;” “Continuous Thunder. The guitars and the drums throughout the album seem to be in competition to be louder and faster than each other without losing control, while the backing vocal harmonies sound like a garage full of friends trying to annoy the neighbors late at night on a summer weekend.
The first and the last sounds you hear on the album are the popping explosions of distant fireworks. My house is circled by four different Minneapolis suburbs, none of which is more than three miles away from me. Because of this, I hear fireworks going off almost weekly from some summertime festival or celebration. More often than not I can follow the sound if I step outside at night, and even see quick flashes of color erupting just above the distant horizon. With my last benchmark of summer only days away, I’m looking forward to getting back to those nights and those celebrations, and having this album playing in the car for some of those long summer drives.
Summer starts incrementally for me: Memorial Day weekend is the unofficial beginning, since it has the first day off I’ve had in about two months. June first is when the weather nerds on TV banter about Meteorological Summer to remind everyone they’ve received an education and can do more than dress up and smile. For my corner of the world, the first Friday in June ushers in another level summer when we have Track and Field Day at school, signaling to everyone that the academic year is almost over. Next Thursday will be the last day of school for the kids, then Friday is the last for the teachers. After that summer has basically arrived. Because seriously, other than the people in charge of setting text in the calendar factory, who considers June 20 to be part of spring?
With all the time and opportunity and warm weather, summer quickly becomes a season filled with celebrations, planned and spontaneous, genuine and accidental. One of the albums that has become a standard summertime soundtrack for me is the appropriately named “Celebration Rock” by the Canadian duo Japandroids. The band released a new album this past winter, “Near to the Wild Heart of Life.” It’s more mature and subdued, and probably my favorite album of 2017 so far. I’ve had more time to spend with “Celebration Rock” though, so it would probably get my nod as the favored of the two.
The album consists of fast, loud, pounding anthems ideal for the summer, and perfect for summer driving. Every song sounds almost exactly the same, which is usually a negative, but in this case makes the songs seem more like separate movements in one thematic piece of music. They're all centered around barely contained chaos, noise, and energy. Lyrics like “We yell like hell to the heavens” are less about being statements of rebellion as they are of ferocious joy. Some of the song titles make strong enough declarations of this on their own: “Fire’s Highway;” “Adrenaline Nightshift;” “Continuous Thunder. The guitars and the drums throughout the album seem to be in competition to be louder and faster than each other without losing control, while the backing vocal harmonies sound like a garage full of friends trying to annoy the neighbors late at night on a summer weekend.
The first and the last sounds you hear on the album are the popping explosions of distant fireworks. My house is circled by four different Minneapolis suburbs, none of which is more than three miles away from me. Because of this, I hear fireworks going off almost weekly from some summertime festival or celebration. More often than not I can follow the sound if I step outside at night, and even see quick flashes of color erupting just above the distant horizon. With my last benchmark of summer only days away, I’m looking forward to getting back to those nights and those celebrations, and having this album playing in the car for some of those long summer drives.
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