Day 7: Routine

I’m not looking for sympathy here. Really, I'm not. Today's post is more about thinking out loud.

I know full well there are three types of people in the world: (1) Those who work in education and understand how relaxing and restorative it is to have summers off, (2) those who don’t work in education but have enough perspective about it to empathize with teachers and appreciate why having that much time off is valuable for us, and (3) the people who think they know better and are all too quick to criticize teachers and think they went into the profession because it’s such a sweet gig to get the summers off, so all those ungrateful teachers should stop complaining about everything.

Again, I’m not asking for sympathy. But if you’re someone who even has a toe on the line of that third category -- if you really need to constantly bathe in your own self-righteous ignorance, please keep it to yourself. Also you might want to skip the rest of this post because it will probably irritate you.

As the school year is ending, I’m in a pretty good place. In fact, a lot of my school year has been pretty good. It hasn’t been perfect, but one very helpful part has been the schedule I’ve worked with. It’s been nice most days, hitting the ground running as we start the day and maintaining that pace for a few hours, then having the afternoon to catch up, spin down, and even start thinking ahead to the next day.

It has me thinking that it might be a good idea to construct a mostly regular schedule to follow during summer break. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a beautiful thing to have the chance as an adult to spend a day (or days, or weeks) with nothing to do and all day to do it. But too much of that can easily become too much. I know myself well enough to understand how much I need structure.

I can’t have a daily schedule broken down by half-hour or hour increments, because that would stress me out when I slip off of it, which I would. I think it’d be nice to have regular things to do each day, with the built-in flexibility to occasionally skip them when there are other demands. I know I’ll have a list of summer chores I hope to accomplish, and a list of summer adventures I’d like to have as well. I’m probably going to have to do more school work than usual this year, with two new curriculum packages to learn. In past years I’ve covered my refrigerator door with Post-It notes in an effort to make my To Do List more engaging. That’s only worked sometimes though, and usually leaves me feeling guilty about some of the things I never got around to doing.

The question is, what do I build into that structure? How much time do I allot for daily tasks, or household chores? What things do I want to have accomplished by the end of the summer that I could break down into small, daily steps? What experiences do I want to have that would best be pursued with all of this time off? I spent a lot of time sitting around my house reading and watching TV last year, but all of that was with the goal of helping my newly-adopted pal Freddie gradually acclimate to his new home. This year shouldn't have to be the same.

Working this out is a minor problem, if it’s a problem at all. And it’s surely a nice one to have.

Day 5: Summer Movies 2018

I have entire seasons of three different shows saved on my DVR. I have two seasons of The West Wing left before I complete my 2018 re-watch. There are at least 10 different series on Netflix that I’m interested in watching. Hooray for Netflix! I could not be more happy about all of this television back up, because the summer movie crop this year does not look promising.

Usually in my May posts, I include one when I preview the upcoming summer movies and make predictions about the ones I’ll want to see based on the lists published all over the place this time of year. This year I had to stretch to get to nine. (*Note: I’m not including “Avengers: Infinity War” here because it came out in late April. I’ll be surprised if any of the movies on this list live up to it, though.)

Here we go with the tepid:

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom — It’ll probably at least be entertaining in a science-fiction action kind of way. I’d love to have higher hopes for this. Maybe it’ll come through.

Solo: A Star Wars Story — It’s Star Wars so I’ll go, but the previews haven’t really captured my interest. Maybe, hopefully, I’ll be surprised.

Deadpool 2 - Again, I’m sure it will be entertaining, but this really feels like the kind of sequel that gets made because the first movie was such a successful surprise that the studio thinks tries to give the audience what it wants, but only more of it. 

Incredibles 2 - The Incredibles was a great movie. Pixar rarely misfires. I have very high hopes for this.

Action Point - I recently worked my way through a slightly depressive patch of anxiety by watching and re-watching the Jackass movies, of all things. This movie stars Johnny Knoxville and is supposed to be about a theme park with so few safety guidelines it’s like if Jackass had its own theme park. There’s no possible way this can be any good, and I absolutely have to see it.

Tag - I’m looking forward to this. It’s about a group of friends who have been playing the same game of tag from childhood into at least middle age. For someone caught between watching games of tag at recess and spending much of my summer with cousins who look for any chance to start up a competitive game, there are too many ways to relate to this.

Ant-Man and The Wasp - Marvel. Of course it will be good. Plus maybe it will have a few hints about what happens after the Infinity War. 

Mission Impossible: Fallout - Tom Cruise usually makes good movies, and this series has a pretty good track record. 

Skyscraper - I can’t tell if this looks more like The Towering Inferno or Die Hard, but it has Dwayne Johnson on it, so it will probably be at least a way to fill a slow summer afternoon. 

So, in summary, like I said before: Hooray for Netflix.

My Number One Fan

Today I had yet another opportunity to chaperone some kids from school at the Young Authors Conference. It’s one of the best field trips imaginable for someone like me, a teacher who gets to spend the day with a small group of highly motivated students while we listen to authors talk about writing. Every year I’ve gone it’s been a great time, but today might have been my favorite visit there. You know how sometimes you go into an event, like a big day or a big weekend or a vacation or whatever, and you have a checklist of things that you hope will happen? Today I was able to check off my whole list. 

First of all, the mechanics of the day went off with only the smallest of hitches. We had one student show up to school late and miss the field trip bus, but luckily the college where the conference is held isn’t far from our school, so one of her parents was able to drop her off. Later we had another student mix up the order of what time to eat lunch and when to shop at the book fair, but we all eventually found each other and everything was good. As far as field trips go, you really can’t ask for them to go any more smoothly. 

When we arrived we found seats in the great hall and settled in to wait for the keynote speaker. I put a photo on Instagram while waiting, and Abby Cooper, an author I know who was presenting that day, commented on the photo asking if I was coming to her session. I replied I was planning to, and told her how our school had only been allotted one ticket to any of her sessions. Since I had three students who had read her book this year, I asked if we could visit quickly during our shared lunch so they could meet her. She said yes, and the first item on my checklist was marked. As we all dispersed to find our first sessions, I passed by the room where author David LaRochelle would be presenting. Once upon a time, a few years before I was there, David had been a teacher at the same school where I teach now, so we’ve known each other for many years. I had a moment to say a quick hello to him, and checked off a second box.

The students are assigned tickets to attend presentations during the day. Being a chaperone, I got to crash the ones I wanted to. Of course I stood in the back of the room or the doorway to make sure all the kids had places to sit before claiming a chair, but I did get to sit down for the last session, which was the only time my feet really needed a break so that worked out too. Presenter #1 was author Jacqueline West, talking about how to construct characters. I was very much looking forward to seeing her since I had finished her first book, and had started it before I even knew she would be there presenting. It was a singular experience to hear an author talking about and reading passages from a book I had only finished reading myself days earlier. It also gave me some good context for some of the points she was making. After the session I had a chance to speak with her, letting her know how much I enjoyed the book and her writing, and telling her how I was suggesting it to my agent as a possible comp title for the manuscript I’ll be writing this summer. Another box checked off. The book of hers I read was the first one in a series, and as I had suspected they would be, the others in the series were available at the book fair. I scooped up all four and added them to my haul. Still another box checked off. 

Presenter #2 was Abby. She’s a very animated and engaging speaker, and kids really respond to her. I got to talk to her some more, see her present a second year in a row (and take a few more writing notes about working with settings on my phone), and know that the student who had been reading Abby's book throughout May and gave me daily updates each morning also got to see her. Another checkmark right there.

Session #3 was author Kelly Barnhill. Actually it would probably be more appropriate for me to introduce her as 2017 NEWBERY MEDAL WINNER Kelly Barnhill, for crying out loud. If you aren’t familiar, think of the Newbery as being like the “Best Picture” winner at the Oscars, but for children’s literature. It’s not a big deal; it’s a huge deal. Just having some time in the same room with her would have been awesome on its own, but I also got to listen to her talk about writing fantasy — and it could be said that my next manuscript has a fair-sized fantasy element to it. More notes taken, and another check box completed.

After that, there wasn’t anything left to the day but rounding up the kids, finding our bus, and heading back to school. All in all it was a very good day. However, I still haven’t told you about one of my favorite moments. 

It happened during lunch. While I was eating my preservative-rich Subway cold cut combo (a field trip staple for me, because I don’t see how it could possibly go bad in four hours), I was scanning over the other schools at the lunch crowd, looking for one from our district in particular. I walked around looking at name tags with no luck, so I started asking other teachers from buildings in our district if they knew where the kids from that other school were sitting. Eventually I found my way there. I went up to one of their chaperones and asked, “Do you happen to have a student named Emily with your group?” (Emily — not her real name.) The teacher said yes, and pointed her out to me.

Now, let’s step back to much earlier in the school year, during all the dark and cold and stupid of the winter months. A friend of mine who teaches Talent Development at both my school and at Emily’s, sent me an email telling me about one of her students who was such a voracious reader she was literally running out of books to read. She asked if it was possible for this girl to read one of my manuscripts; clearly since they are still as of today unpublished, there’s no way she would know about them. I told her sure, and said I even had a hard copy of “Following Infinity” in my classroom closet. I passed it on the next time I saw her.

It didn’t take long for this girl to finish it, and when she did the review I heard back from her TD teacher was glowing. Soon after she wrote me a letter telling me how much she loved it. For the rest of the school year after this, I passed on some other book recommendations for her, including sharing some actual books to read that were all new enough that it was likely she wasn’t familiar with them, including Abby Cooper’s debut from last year, “Sticks and Stones.”

This past Tuesday I thought to ask Emily’s TD teacher if Emily would be going to the Young Authors Conference. She wasn’t sure, but she thought she probably was. When I arrived at the conference and saw her school and mine had lunch at the same time, I figured it was worth looking around to see if she was there. 

And like I’ve already described, she was. I saw her eating her lunch in a little patch of sunlight and walked over. 


“Hi, Emily,” I said, smiling. 

She smiled back politely. “Hi!” I knelt in the grass beside her. Before I had a chance to say anything else, she looked at my name tag and her eyes opened wide when she recognized my name. I gave her a friendly teacher smile once it was clear she knew who I was. 

“I’d heard you might be here today!” I said. “I’m glad I found you. What was your first session?” 

She was literally flustered into being speechless, just smiling and repeatedly tucking her hair behind her ear. I think for a moment she had actually forgotten what session she had just spent an hour at.

“I loved your book so much!” she finally said. “It was so great!”

I smiled and thanked her, then we took a quick picture to let her TD teacher know we had met up that day. 

Later, while I was waiting in the book fair line, I thought back to that introduction and realized that little girl was probably my Number One fan, in two ways. First, she's probably my biggest fan, which I’ll define by her being someone who knows of me exclusively through my writing, and likes the writing for the writing itself. Friends and family and students can all read my work and enjoy it, but they will always have the context of a previous relationship with me that will, in some way, have a degree of influence on what they think of what I’ve written. She had no perspective like that. All she had was the story and the writing. 

And because of that, I think it’s probably also accurate to call her my very first fan, which felt kind of cool to realize. Most people at that conference saw presentations from or had encounters with three different authors during the day. Emily had four. From her reaction, it might have even been a bigger deal for her than it was for me, and it was a very cool moment for me. A big box on the checklist marked off.

So now I’m home after having a wonderful day, and it’s May 31. A little over a month ago I was on the phone with my agent Carrie (can I stop referring to her like that, and just call her Carrie? I think anyone who reads this blog with even semi-frequency knows who she is by now.) I was telling her about the new book I wanted to start writing this summer. We talked about the idea and where I wanted to go with it. Her advice at the time had been to focus more on just reading during May, and try to come up with some recently published books that would be good comparisons. We then agreed on a word count goal and a deadline for a check-in so she could see my progress. 

May ends tonight. June starts tomorrow. I have a long note on my phone with all kinds of new ideas about building characters, using settings, and developing fantasy after my time at the conference today. 

I’m very excited about getting back to actually drafting the story again tomorrow. It will feel good to get back into a writing habit away from the blog.

However, I have at least one other reason for getting back to work now: There’s a little girl out there in the world who is very anxious to find out what I’m going to write next.

How to Run a Dunk Tank

After several years of being in charge of the dunk tank on Track and Field Day, I feel I’ve developed enough expertise to pass on some advice about the best way to keep this event running successfully and efficiently. Since Track and Field Day is coming up at the end of this week, it seems like a good time to share some tips.

*Safety first is key. Keep the kids away from the tank so they don’t get pegged by an over-enthusiastic thrower, because there are going to be a good number of those. Also accept that there’s no way the kids will stay out of the mud, or try baiting the dunkee into splashing them, especially if it’s a warm day. Just herd them out of the line of fire.

*Have all the softballs. The more softballs you have in the bucket, the faster things will move. Also have a volunteer who is in shape, and preferably has been training for this day with months of shuttle run practice. They’re going to have a lot of back and forth running and reaching down as a part of their day.

*Protect the mechanics of it all. Always double check to make sure the seat is in a locked position before the dunkee climbs back up, and in the case that a kid has earned any right to hit the target with their hand, make sure they understand they only have to lightly push it instead of try to shove it into an alternate universe.

*Use warm water, so the dunkees won’t have to spend more time than necessary shivering and shaking. In fact, they’ll begin to look forward to their next splashdown after cooling off as they’re perched up on the stool.

*Be sure to get before, during, and after photos to share with the dunkees, or to use for future blackmailing opportunities. Just make sure if you post any of these photos online you let those people tag themselves if they want. They were the ones who made the sacrifice, so they deserve the choice of whether or not their entire social network sees them in one of their less-than-finer moments.

*Accept that even if you are fortunate enough to avoid a turn on the dunking stool yourself, you’ll still get plenty wet by the end of the day. Most of this comes from several dozen collateral splashes, but a lot of it will also come from some of the dunkees climbing down after their turn and immediately wrapping you up in a nice damp embrace. When this happens, and it probably will, it’s best to just smile and play along. After all, at least you weren’t submerged.

*Pick a kid wearing something very memorable and distinct, preferably in very bright colors, to have the first turn. That way you’ll be able to track when the line is almost at an end.

*Have a good team of people who realize the importance of keeping the line constantly moving forward. You will be chasing the clock all day long.

*There will inevitably be some obnoxious kid who misses the target but still feels entitled to charge it and send the dunkee underwater, unearned. This kid absolutely deserves to be kicked out of school for the rest of the academic year and probably the next one as well, and maybe never gets to eat cookies and ice cream again. However, the only thing you can do is to pay close attention and try to head them off at the pass so they don’t waste everyone else’s time.

*Dress for the experience. Wear clothing that will air-dry relatively quickly. Have copious amounts of sunblock available, because you’ll be reapplying it throughout the day. Above all, wear old shoes, the kind that you won’t care if you ever wear again after the end of the day. 

*Never neglect to pay attention to what the thrower is doing. I’ve had a few softballs whiz by inches from my head over the years, and I’m hoping to avoid any of them ever connecting. That kid trying to hit the target is so focused on the possibility of a dunk that they could not care less if anyone is walking between them and the target. Constant vigilance!

*Lastly, don’t forget to have as much fun as you can. Because you are going to be dead tired from the moment you get home that night, and it’s probably going to last the entire weekend.

Cheer For the Minnesota Twins Today

I am totally neutral about baseball. I honestly don’t think I could name more than five players on the current Minnesota Twins roster.

It’s not like I have no understanding of why people enjoy it. I followed the Twins back in 1987 and 1991, the two years they were in, and won, the World Series. I was even at Game 6 in 1987 when Kent Hrbek hit his monstrous grand slam. Sometime between now and then though, my interest faded away. Maybe if I knew who the current players are and was halfway familiar with the ups and downs of the season, I’d care.

To celebrate Memorial Day this year, I decided to take part in that very American activity of watching a baseball game. I’ll be doing it from the comfort of my recliner instead of at the stadium, but I’ll watch the whole thing. I’ll even wear my token Twins hat, and take a nap before the game starts to try and keep the recliner from getting the best of me. Maybe today’s game will be so dramatic and exciting it will be the tipping point that reignites my interest. Isn’t that supposed to be the thing about baseball? You never know what’s going to happen….

*The announcers are telling me that yesterday’s game was unusually long, something like 15 innings and over six hours. That sounds like Purgatory to me.

*I suspect I'm going to see more commercials for pick-up trucks than I will for prescription medication this afternoon.

*Hey what do you know, the Twins are in first place! Woo hoo! I suppose I would have known this if I didn't turn off the news after the weather forecast and looked at the sports section of the newspaper ever.

*The game starts. Ervin Santana is pitching? I think I've heard of him. Apparently he's really good. 

*The people in the stands, even behind home plate, all seem really calm. It occurs to me that baseball fans are more like tennis fans than football fans, sitting politely as the game goes on, engaged in their conversations since there is a fair amount of downtime during a game, then paying attention in short bursts of half-excitement and getting really worked up when something that affects the outcome of the game happens.

*Okay. First Twins batter is Brian Dozier. I've heard of him. I also recognize Joe Mauer, Eddie Rosario, and Byron Buxton. It's possible I even spelled all of their names correctly. I think I said I probably knew about five players, so if you count Ervin Santana, there they are. And it took me about as long to write that as it took for the first three batters to get out. Baseball fans: Am I imagining this, or do the first two innings always seem to go faster than the others?

*It seems like the atmosphere crafted here is meant to be low-key entertainment. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the game everyone! Have a snack! All of the commercials are about the simple pleasures of the good life: dreaming about buying a new truck, hanging out at the lake, having a cell phone that doesn't cost a ton of money. Hey kids, who wants some Dairy Queen? The whole tone seems more about the long season then something you need to focus on at every moment. 162 games? A season stretching from Early April to late October? Things happen very gradually. Plus they use organ music to fire up the crowd instead of "Crazy Train" or "Thunderstruck."

*Dick Bremer just announced he’s more interested in professional baseball in general this year because the Twins are doing well. I think this gives me some excuse for not following them over the past 26 years.

*Top of the 4th and the Astros score. A home run, followed by two guys in the outfield getting mixed up and letting a guy make it to third. Then the guy runs it in on a wild pitch. Houston up 2-0. That's enough in baseball for the game to be over. Of course, it could only take two Twins batters to turn things around and even it out. Maybe that's another part of the appeal: You’re lulled into complacency by the strike outs and the pop flys and the walks, and then HOLY COW something happens out of nowhere.

*Joe Mauer gets on first. Is he the first Twin to get on base? He might be.

*I have to say, I like seeing it when the camera shows guys from opposite teams just chatting and joking while they're waiting for the pitch. I mean, I can’t hear what they’re saying or read their lips so these guys could be fearsome competitors who are absolutely cussing each other out through their smiles, but it just doesn't seem like it. Everything else going on here is so chill, why not expect the players to be fairly decent to each other while being professionals at the same time?

*The commentators are talking about the weather now. Isn't that what you fall back on when you have nothing else to say? That's how chill all of this is. How can this be the same game that so many parents get absolutely fire-breathing insane about when their kids are playing it?

*Has any pitcher in the history of baseball ever gotten someone out when they throw to first to keep the runner from leading off too far?

*They just brought up some quick animation to show how accurate Santana's pitches are, and I involuntarily had the song "Strike Zone" by Loverboy pop into my head.

*All right! One of the guys I've never heard of just got an RBI triple. No outs. Maybe this is where things are going to turn around.

*Or not. Next guy grounded out. He took off his helmet on the way back to the dugout to reveal a haircut almost exactly like one of the boys in my class. It makes me wonder: Do kids copy their hair styles from pro athletes, or is it the other way around?

*Wild pitch! The guy on third steals home! 2-2 with a runner on 2nd and two outs. Brian Dozier puts it just past second base and another run comes in! Then Robbie Grossman comes up. I know this guy's name is Robbie Grossman now because his at-bat took about twenty-five minutes, which was long enough to get me wondering, "How many adults who aren't professional baseball players would ever go by 'Robbie?'" He gets to a full count then hits a double, which is enough to get Brian Dozier home. 4-2 Twins....no, wait, Joe Mauer gets a hit and sends Robbie Grossman home. I stand corrected. 5-2 Twins. Then here comes Miguel Sano. Home run. He brings Joe Mauer home and we're at 7-2. 

*Now they're back in the field, and in no time there are two outs. But then they stay at two outs until the bases are loaded, and then...Holy downpour, Batman! This is an indoor recess amount of rain. It lasts literally minutes, and then the sun comes out in full force. Finally the 3rd out. Do the fifth and sixth innings always take this long?

*Seventh inning. After two long innings, I'm not feeling any momentum anymore. I just glanced at the coffee table and saw the book I started reading a couple days ago. It was tempting to pick it up and just leave the game on in the background.

*Now it's the top of the 8th, and finally something happens, bumping the score up to 8-5. Wait, what? 8? Hmm. Guess I rested my eyes for a moment there. I'm seeing rain ponchos come back out, and I swear I just heard thunder in the background. Here comes the tarp, which will be out just long enough to get wet before they'll have to roll it back up. The camera crew is showing the guy from the Astros who was up to bat throwing a tantrum about the rain delay. Dude, seriously. You've got a lot of games left to play this season. You need to grab the reins and get over your superhero self.

*The game is back on. The camera just caught Paul Molitor blowing two bubble gum bubbles at once. If that was intentional, I'd be impressed.

*Another Astros hit. The ball drops down just out of Eddie Rosario's reach, even though he slid on the wet grass to get there. 9-8 Astros. 

*It’s still the top of the 8th. Bert Blyleven just said this feels like the inning that wouldn't end. The score is 13-8 with two outs and almost three and a half hours of my life invested in this.

*I think I've pieced together why I'm not much of a baseball fan. I've been mentally done with this game for awhile now, but I can't bring myself to stop watching out the same feeling of obligation I have that keeps me from just giving up on a book I’m not really enjoying. (The only time I’ve ever done that was for Tom Clancy’s “Clear and Present Danger.”) l feel as if the past four hours would be wasted if I just changed the channel to see what else might be on. The relaxing tone that seemed so appealing earlier in the game is the same thing that makes it easy for me to not really care anymore.

*It’s now 16-8 in the bottom of the ninth, after the Astros brought in FOURTEEN unanswered runs. I’m kind of hoping the next few Twins hitters are all thinking it might be better to just pretend to try and save their energy for the next game in the series tomorrow night. Two outs. The count is 2-1. They just showed how few fans are still in the stands, and the place looks even more empty than it did during the pre-game show. One more strike, and there it is. Whew. 

*I think if there was some way to guarantee that a baseball game was going to be over in two and a half hours at the most, I’d probably find them more interesting. But four hours? That’s a long time to do anything, much less passively watch something you’re only a little invested in.

Perhaps the biggest irony of this game is that I looked on Facebook about an hour ago and saw photos posted from Target Field that showed my sister, my brother-in-law, and my parents all actually there at this game I’ve been watching.

Clearly whenever they made plans to go, they knew better than to ask if I wanted to come along. I know there will be many games played this summer that will be much more fun to watch than this one was, but I can't help feeling I dodged a tiny bullet by watching from my soft and warm recliner instead of from beneath a cheap plastic rain poncho. 

Summer Adventures

Eight days.

That’s what remains of the 2016-2017 school year. Technically it’s nine days because the teachers work one day longer than the students have to be there, but not many teachers I know really count that; a day at school without students around can be a little piece of vacation all on its own. Going by either count you subscribe to, we’re down to single digits now. Summer is so close I can taste it.

However, I find I’m not exactly chomping at the proverbial bit for it to arrive. Yes, I’m certainly plenty ready to put what remains of the school year behind me and move on into non-educational nothingness for a few months. But other than the multiple hours of daily freedom and the nicer weather (at least when there aren’t any life-threatening storms going on), I don’t have a long list of things about summer I’m specifically excited about. For the last few summers, my time off has been broken down into a small number of predictable categories, the short list of which is so mundane and middle-aged I won’t bore you with here. I guess when this happens a certain number of years it becomes routine, and routine can become predictable and too comfortable and, to an extent, mildly dull.

I want my summer to have a narrative. I want more than just a small handful of my days to start with the energy of anticipation, and maybe even have some carry slight harmless anxiety about the unknown and promise of the unexpected. I want some adventures.

Having stated this, let’s take a moment to back up and slap down some definitions on exactly what I mean by “adventures.” I’m not looking to skydive or rock climb or wander into the woods for three days with nothing but the clothes on my back and a makeshift toothbrush in my pocket to challenge my survival aptitude. I’m thinking more about new things to do to break up the routine. For me, my list of low-grade summer adventures could include things such as watching some more of Nephew #2’s baseball games, since this will likely be the last summer he plays. It could mean going to a midnight showing of a new movie and seeing it with an excited crowd instead of going to bed at a reasonable hour and seeing it early Friday afternoon in a mostly-empty theater. It could mean driving to some small town in the middle of the most rural part of the state just because a newspaper article or a television story said they had the best ham and cheese sandwich in the five-state area, and I wanted to experience it for myself. It could mean going to see some band play at a casino even if I’m only mildly interested in seeing them, just because I’ve never seen a concert at a casino before. It could even just mean putting together an epic ten-hour playlist and using that time to clean out my garage like it’s never been cleaned out before, or making up some reason to have people over to my house. 

I wouldn’t say I’m exactly looking for suggestions of what kind of adventures I could find to fill my summer. Given enough time, ideas will always present themselves. I just either need the time or the motivation to follow through on them. Also it’s been my experience that if I were to solicit recommendations, I would end up getting a list of other people’s favorite things to do. That wouldn’t necessarily be bad, but I'm really looking more for some interesting experiences and distractions than the beginnings of a new hobby. I wouldn’t say no to suggestions, nor would I necessarily say no to co-adventurers; being introverted doesn’t mean that you hate being around people, after all. It just means you don’t rely on it the same way most other people do. 

So if I’m hoping for a summer of as-of-yet undefined adventures, but I’m not exactly looking to collect ideas of things to try, where exactly am I going with this post? 

I guess I don’t really know. I don’t really know where I’m going with my summer yet either, though. Right now, with a few weeks to go before it all becomes official, that seems like part of the fun.

Album of the Week: Neon Future 1

One late night not so long ago I was driving through St. Paul with a car filled with women (something that probably doesn't happen as often as you might think). We were listening to the modern alternative radio station here in the Cities, which, it seems, plays party music on Fridays around midnight. Since we were all engaged in meaningful conversation (like the picture of this Icelandic neo-blues singer the women couldn't stop looking at) I suddenly realized there was something coming through my car speakers that I didn't recognize. It was this boring, repetitive beat without any discernible melody. 

"What the hell is that?" I remember saying out loud.

One of the women in the car, the one riding shotgun, said, "Um, that's dance music.”

I reflexively changed the station before I even realized I was doing it. I couldn’t imagine why anyone would listen to dance music in a car so I couldn't see a reason for it to even be on the radio. Of course, it didn’t occur to me that not everyone listens to the radio exclusively in their car as I do, and some people might actually listen to it at home or in some other setting more conducive to dancing than driving north on 35E in the dark. 

Earlier in the month, the same woman trying to school me about dance music challenged me to write about it this May when I posted I was planning to buy a new album based on someone else’s recommendation that would be a little outside of my norm, and write about it. Since I didn’t have any dance music in the library, I figured it couldn’t hurt. 

That turned out to be wrong, though — I actually DID have one album of dance music that I’d forgotten about. I’m referring to the album “Recharged” by Linkin Park, which is a collection of dance remixes of the songs from their “Living Things” album. I’d never listened to it very much, even though I’m a big fan of the band. Using that as my dance music sample felt like cheating though since I already had it and it was more of a rock band temporarily deviating into dance instead of a true dance music act, so instead I did a little research and went with “Neon Future I,” a semi-recent release from Steve Aoki. I’d heard of him from an interview he did on one of my favorite podcasts. He seemed like a reasonably thoughtful and normal guy, so I figured he’d be as good as anyone for a dance music introduction.

I’ve played through it a few times now, and I don’t hate it. He seems to be mostly about heavy percussion sounds and layers of triumphant-sounding keyboards. I couldn’t even tell if any real drums were being used; I suspect they weren’t, but that was okay. Dance music doesn’t seem to be as much about instrumental virtuosity as it is about constructing and programming a piece of music for a very specific purpose, almost as an instrumental narrative, which I’ll admit is a skill set all its own. Most of the album was upbeat and positive with a wide open sound. I could see why fans of this would be able to stand in a venue, close their eyes, and let the sound fill their head to push everything else out of the way. There could be something reaffirming inside of moving along with this programmed sound, just enjoying life for awhile and being in the moment. That’s the same thing that any music fan is looking for when they go to a show. If people seek that out at a club where they can move around in more space than just the two square feet right in front of the seat they paid for, I can appreciate that. I can see this being an album I’d put on if I just want something to fill the quiet that I wouldn’t have to pay a lot of attention to. That isn’t such a bad thing. 

All the same though, as far as becoming a dance music aficionado goes — I don’t plan on making a Costco run for glow sticks anytime soon.

The Ultimate in Top 10 Lists

Today’s post is not a small thing for me. I intentionally scheduled it to be written during the final days of the month so I could put it off as long as possible. With all the music nerdery in my life and here on the blog, it seemed like this May would be as good of a time as any to finally bite the bullet and come up with what I think of as the ultimate in Top 10 lists — my 10 favorite albums. 

I’ve instituted a few rules for this: (1) An album has to be at least five years old to even be eligible for inclusion. That seems like a good amount of time for me to make up my mind about how important it is to me. (2) Boxed sets aren’t eligible. I don’t have many, but I’m taking them out of the running all the same. (3) To save time and avoid redundancy, I’m limiting my descriptions of each album to 140 characters or less — the length of a Tweet. I thought about going with the 10-word description, but that was too limiting.

Here we go. Like I said — this is no small thing. A lot of thought and emotion and history went into the creation of the list you’re about to read. The albums here appear in order, starting with Number 10 and counting down to Number 1, just like Casey Kasem did back in the old days. 

10 - “Not Your Kind of People” by Garbage. The album that got me to love this band’s electronic rock sound. More about great songs than a great album, but some really great songs.

9 - “Secret World Live” by Peter Gabriel. Transcendent performances and arrangements of recognizable hits and lesser-known greats. The version of “In Your Eyes” on here is perfect.

8 - “The Shaming of the True” by Kevin Gilbert. A conceptual narrative reflecting on the glories and pitfalls of creativity and fame. Tragic that most people will never hear it.

7 - “All I Ever Wanted” by The Airborne Toxic Event. How many rock bands could reinvent beautifully written songs to feature string quartets, children’s choirs, and marching bands?

6 - “American Idiot” by Green Day. All energy and emotion, often communicated with pure frustration and rage. A landmark album of the century so far.

5 - “The Incident” by Porcupine Tree. Haunting and piercing in so many different ways at once. It almost demands to be played in its entirety on each listen.

4 - “A Thousand Suns” by Linkin Park. Percussive, aggressive electronic post-millennial rock. A masterpiece of the genre.

3 - “Born to Run” by Bruce Springsteen. No other album has been more formative in my life.

2 - “Scenes From a Memory” by Dream Theater. A defining concept album from probably the most talented collection of contemporary musicians to every collaborate.

And coming in at the top position after a hard-fought battle:

1 - “Snow” by Spock’s Beard. An album that’s torn me apart and put me back together again several times over. It’s a crime that it isn’t more widely known.

*Whew.* That was NOT easy....

Bringing Letters Back

I have a few memory boxes in my house, holding artifacts from life with enough sentimental value for me to keep. One of the boxes is mostly filled with memorable documents, like important papers from school or special holiday cards. Most of what you’d find in this particular box would be old letters.

Maybe you’re old enough to remember a time when people sent each other letters through the mail. Not text messages, not email, but actual sheets of paper folded up, jammed into an envelope, then addressed and stamped. Exchanging letters was maybe the most practical way to stay in touch with people if they lived far away and you didn’t see them very often, especially considering how expensive long distance phone calls were. Having a letter addressed to you showing up in your mailbox was at least a minor thrill. Not only did it give you a chance to hear about what was going on in the lives of the people important to you, but it was a small piece of evidence that you were important enough for them to take the time and effort to write.

The last person I probably exchanged letters with regularly was my grandmother. I had a good run of a year or two when I would try to write her at least a couple of times a month. College was probably my peak letter-writing period. I had regular exchanges going on with my older sister (who lived the furthest away from me and I saw the least frequently), a number of high school friends who were at different colleges, and a lot of my cousins. 

Our cousin letters were epic. We almost always wrote them by hand, and sometimes, just to amuse ourselves and each other, we’d ignore the lines on the paper and wrote at the wrong direction or angle, or built the text up to surround some kind of illustration, or even have parts of the letter continue onto the outer envelope. (My cousins are the type of people who would think it was a great joke to use pi as the point spread in a weekly football pool. The nerdery is both strong and proud in our genes.)

I was looking through one of those memory boxes a few days ago while hunting for my Best Dude wedding program. Seeing what might be hundreds of letters in the box got me thinking that maybe this could be the summer to start bringing letters back. Here’s what I’m proposing: If anyone reading this would like me to write them a letter sometime this summer, just message me the mailing address you’d like me to send it to. I’m not sure if I’ll write it by hand like in the old days; I’m sure you’d get a longer and (hopefully) more satisfyingly rambling letter if it’s typed, just because of the time save. I won’t say anything about when to expect it, because the surprise of seeing it arrive is half the fun. However, if I do write to you, I will hope, but not expect, to receive a reply. I’ll even let you off the hook of replying through the snail mail, since getting email letters would be just as fun for me. 

Who’s in? I’m not even kidding about this. Message me an address, and start keeping an eye on your mailbox!

The Best Dude, For Real

Ten years ago, my friend Dax and his girlfriend Melissa were knee-deep in plans for their October wedding. Since I live in Minnesota and they lived in Florida at the time, we stayed in touch regularly over the internet, mostly through Apple’s good old iChat application, checking in for an hour or so on most nights. Because of this, I learned about a lot of wedding decisions the same day they were being made. One night Dax was telling me how everything about the order for the bridesmaids and groomsmen was finally in place. The best man was a friend of his who had helped introduce the two of them. Melissa’s sister would be the Matron of Honor, and Melissa’s friend Stacey — the bridesmaid I was to be paired with — would be the Maid of Honor.

“She gets two ‘of Honors?’” I asked, throwing my ignorance about wedding ettiequte out there for the whole world to see. “How does that work?”

“What do you mean?” Dax asked. 

“Well, who wins between those two?”

“What do you mean, who wins?”

You see, I’d never heard of that being done before. I knew what the Matron of Honor was, as well as the Maid of Honor. But out of any number of weddings I had attended before, I couldn’t think of an instance when there had been both a Matron and a Maid.

“Usually there’s just one or the other, isn't there?” I asked. “And she’s having one of each? That’s like you having a Best Man and a Best Dude.”

There was a brief pause in the messaging. Then the reply came through: “You are so going to be my Best Dude.”


I laughed, thinking this would be a running joke we’d have throughout the weekend, one that maybe only a few other people would ever even know about. Then in the following days I heard how Dax had talked to Melissa about having a Best Dude, and how much she liked the idea. Soon after that another update came through, and all four of their parents at least didn’t hate it. Now I was going to be listed as the Best Dude in the wedding program. In what felt like a very small amount of time, my smart-ass quip had taken me from being just the generic groomsman that literally five other people at the entire wedding even knew existed, to the groomsman that must have some kind of intriguing backstory to have merited such a head-scratcher of a title.

Smash cut a few months ahead and I’m off the plane in Orlando, shocked to feel such humidity in late October. I’m soon surrounded by the Disneyfied version of Southern culture, which included a stay at a hotel that, I kid you not, featured a three-story sculpture of cowboy boots about four doors down from my room. The evening was spent meeting the bride for the first time, then playing some Guitar Hero (who remembers the Pretenders "Tattooed Love Boys" from Guitar Hero II? Talk about your ear worms), going out to dinner, and bowling with some of the groomsmen. I got to spend time with Dax’s brother-in-law Matt and soon to be brother-in-law Lee, since we were all coming into the wedding party with different varieties of outsider credentials.

The whole weekend was nonstop, from the rehearsal dinner at an incredible Thai place, to the impromptu backstage round of Name that Tune, to me being physically unable to unroll the runner down the main aisle without messing it up, to the canine ring bearer, and one of my favorite stories illustrating what a ridiculously talented musician Dax is that really is deserving of its own separate post someday. It was a great time, which I was thankful for since I had gone into the experience with a tiny bit of trepidation: How many uncomfortable moments were there going to be for Introverted Me to navigate when I was going to be surrounded almost completely by strangers for an entire weekend? Of course I should have known better; Dax and Melissa would not have anyone but caring and quality people sharing such an important time with them. Everyone welcomed me to the fold as one of their own, which, of course, they should have. 

Because...Best Dude and everything. That kind of says it all.

The Reverse Q & A

Each of the years I’ve done daily May blog posts I’ve always had one day when I wrote a Q&A, when people asked questions about anything and I’d give my best, and sometimes even semi-serious, answers. This year a friend suggested I reverse that, and instead provide my own list of answers ahead of time for people to try finding questions that would match. I wasn’t sure which way to go with this at first, but decided to think of questions I suspect some people might have reasons to ask me. Whether these people ever read my blog or not I can’t say, and I’ll admit to being a little hyperbolic with some of my answers to make them less transparent than they feel. But each of these would be a legitimate answer to a question that someone might want to ask, or one that maybe hadn’t occurred to them to ask. I came up with ten. I’m curious to find out what questions people would match with these, if any responses come in. Let’s play!

*I absolutely would. In a heartbeat. And I probably will someday, maybe soon, if I screw up enough nerve. 

*Most of the time, yes. I admit it’s a luxury that most people would love to experience. But only most of the time. Not always.

*I’m not saying I did everything right, but we are the way we are now largely because of the choices you made. We always felt a little one-sided, until we weren’t even that.

*No. I promise. 

*Yes. And I can’t imagine that you’ve never at least suspected it.

*I probably would, at least sometimes, if I was asked. But being who I am, it’s not ever going to be anything I bring up on my own. I have a hard time inserting myself into situations like that without some reassurance.

*It’s an introvert thing that I can’t really explain in a way that would sound like anything but a cop-out. All I can say is that it would be physically and emotionally painful on a scale that most people couldn’t appreciate.

*I’ll admit it gives me some pause. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I understand why. You’ve got a lot going on. But seriously, how hard would it be? And isn't it the way things are supposed to be anyway?

*Because it feels as much like home as any home I’ve ever had, and more than some.

*I honestly don’t know if I ever will.




There they are. Who’s got the questions?

Time Flies/Time Stands Still

Yesterday was my birthday. Number 49. I’m not going to sugar-coat this — Year 48 was a bite in the ass for the most part, and I’m glad to see it disappearing in the rearview mirror. The school year that took up most of it had a number of challenges, and I painted myself into a corner with a manuscript idea that, for all the early excitement and ambition I had in the planning stages, blew up in my face and knocked me out of a writing habit for months. On top of all that, I lost a good friend of mine. It was a year with too many situations that pushed me into doing some hard and cold self-evaluation, and not always coming to conclusions that left me feeling warm and fuzzy and confident.

Turning 49 isn’t any landmark age by itself, other than being one last year to try and get things right before turning 50. I wouldn’t call this line of thinking a midlife crisis; the idea that I could be turning 49 and still be at midlife would likely be too generous by at least a decade. Do I care about turning 50? No and yes. No in the sense that I stopped being concerned about getting older the day my younger sister stopped having birthdays. But in the sense of seeing 50 as a benchmark year, which it undeniably is? It makes me consider what things I still haven’t done with my life that I’d always thought would be checked off and settled by now. Not only that, but what kind of life will I have entering my fifties? How prepared will I be for anything and everything that follows? And what can I still do with my one remaining year of forties to give myself a good start on that?

One thing I noticed this year, more than I think I ever have before, was how much older all of the reliable things and people from my life have become. I caught life doing something I already knew it did, but had never seen such strong examples of before. Time was standing still for me, and at the same time it was flying past. My middle nephew finishes high school in a matter of days and will soon begin a new stage of life that no one can predict or anticipate. Some of my cousins are already grandparents. People I’ve known since they were born are graduating from college. People I’ve had around me throughout my entire career are retiring.

When your job follows a very regimented schedule for each day and each week, it’s easy to lose track of yourself in the routine. You reach a point where you don’t even need to think about what you’re doing, because you know exactly what to expect down to the minute. It’s too easy to let that same routine carry over into the evenings and weekends, and before you know it life is just skipping along down the road without you even noticing. The days and weeks blend together, and they seem to drag on and on and on.

But they really don’t. Time evaporates when you aren’t paying attention to it. Without warning, the time you were hoping for (or counting on) to follow through on your hopes or dreams is a fraction of what it was when those hopes and dreams were only taking shape. I can put together plans of something I hope to do during any week or month, then get distracted by the everyday things and suddenly wonder where the time went, and how I didn’t get anything done. 

Do I really want my lasting legacy to be that I created a useful and complete template for lesson plans? 

Recently I downloaded a new release from a favorite band that I’ve been looking forward to for months. Upon the first listen, I was disappointed with everything about it because it didn’t sound anything like their previous work. I thought about my irritation throughout the day as I refused to play it again. I knew that, for whatever reason, this album was what the band felt they had to say right now, and this was the way they chose to say it. From that point of view, I broke down and listened again. Taking the music for what it was instead of what I had expected it to be made me rethink it. It still wasn’t what I had hoped for, but that didn’t mean it was without value or something I should readily dismiss.

I suppose life could, and probably should, be looked at the same way. Maybe while I’m using the next twelve months to try making myself into someone I can be comfortable with at 50, I’ll consider that perspective. Maybe it should be enough to accept all aspects of life as they are, as the results of my choices, instead of focusing on what was never realized. There seems like a certain calm in assuming that kind of acceptance. Something about it feels right. 

But that doesn’t mean I have to stop hoping I can still reach for something else.

Another Birthday Horoscope

It’s time for the annual “Your birthday today” horoscope review! I have to admit I haven’t been paying much attention to the daily horoscopes as of late. I think it has something to do with the fifteen minutes I’d had to spend one morning working to convince my fourth graders that astrology isn’t an actual science, evidenced by how the horoscopes are relegated to the same page of the newspaper as the Sudoku puzzle.

Here’s what Prognosticator Holiday Mathis told me to expect last year:

"The next three months bring opportunities that seem straight from a sample sale -- odd shapes, colors, and sizes -- a creative challenge with fantastically lucky results. Couples will adventure in June and intertwine business to lucrative effect in September. Singles aiming to fulfill a business agenda accidentally catch feelings. Leo and Aries adore you. Your lucky numbers are: 4, 17, 22, 38, and 45.”

I’m not sure what creative challenge I had to face this past year, other than spending months planning out a manuscript and then proceeding to burn it to the ground, which I wouldn’t describe as a fantastically lucky result. I don’t remember catching a lot of feelings, though I did have a pretty relentless chest cold last winter, which didn’t feel great. And who knows what happened to all of those Leo and Aries folk.

Let’s take a look at what I have in store for the coming 365:

Your success secret: big aims and small plans (very growth mindset of you, Holiday). There’s a sense of forward movement through the entire solar return; (why do I care about the entire solar return? This is supposed to be about me) progress in any area brings you forward in others, even if it’s not immediately apparent (so basically as long as I do anything right, I can do no wrong). July and September will bring financial gains you can reinvest for a bigger payoff in December (sure they will). Libra and Taurus adore you (hey there, Libras and Tauruses: How you doin'?). Your lucky numbers are: 6, 45, 20, 19, and 38 (okay, this is now a second year for 38 being one of my birthday lucky numbers, and a THIRD STRAIGHT YEAR for 45! Seriously — 45?! Consider for a moment how ironic that is).

Okay. Let’s get this year started and see what the future actually has in store.

Album of the Week: Audioslave

Today is the beginning of a new feature on the blog: Album of the Week. I’m intending it to be more about revisiting albums from my past and writing about my relationships with them instead of just being a series of reviews. If you don’t understand what I mean by having a relationship with an album, then these Album of the Week posts probably aren’t going to be for you.

I had intended to start this series by with something else after a friend challenged me to step out of my comfort zone and get some dance music into the library. I did, and I’ll post about that next week. Instead, because of the events of the past week, I'm beginning with what I think would be a better, more appropriate place to start.

Audioslave, self-titled debut album, 2002

Chris Cornell died a few days ago, at the age of 52. I had one of his side projects, “Temple of the Dog,” on cassette back in the 90s, but had never been a fan of his band Soundgarden; for me, their sound had always been too muddy, even in the middle of the grunge period. All the same, I could still recognize he was a top-tier singer. When it was announced he’d formed a supergroup with the musician members of Rage Against the Machine, I figured that was worth checking out. Rage’s guitarist, Tom Morello, had established himself as a guitar hero early in his career, arguably more for his effects work and his divergent playing style than any particular virtuosity. When they said this new band, Audioslave, wasn’t going to sound like either Soundgarden or Rage, I was curious to see what they’d come up with. 

The album had a heavy sound to it, like a post-millennial interpretation of classic rock. It was more about songs and riffs than it was about showy playing and effects, even though Tom Morello’s guitar was as instantly recognizable as Chris Cornell’s voice. While the songs didn’t all exactly sound the same, they were similar enough to make the band easily recognizable. The band were getting a lot of airplay on rock radio at the time, and for awhile it seemed like they had a shot at breaking out of the typical supergroup pattern of flaming out after only an album or two. 

 There were a few great songs on that first album that stood the test of time for me, but most faded out of even semi-rotation after the album cycled down and new music came along to take it’s place. “Shadow on the Sun,” “Exploder,” “Light My Way,” and “The Last Remaining Light” were among the standouts.

The one song from the album that resonated with me the most, and remains a favorite today, was “I Am The Highway.” As it happens, I was talking and planning with my teaching partner in her room after school one night last week. She was streaming a radio station from her hometown in Montana while we worked, and "I Am The Highway" came on. It was the first time I'd heard it in awhile, and it ended up stuck in my head for the rest of the night. The following morning I woke to the news that Chris Cornell had passed away.

In the tradition of so many great rock songs, the lyrics to "I Am The Highway" are just ambiguous enough to allow the listeners to interpret what the song means for themselves. In that spirit, I won’t get into what it means to me. Instead, I’ll let you listen and decide. 

I Am The Highway

Rest in peace, Chris. Yet another of our musical heroes gone much too soon. 

All the Flaws and Failings

I always get reflective toward the end of the school year, thinking about the good and the bad that’s occurred. I like to mentally wrap it all up and take time to consider what successes I can build on in the future, as well as what needs to work better in the coming years. I think it’s probably true that most teachers will minimize their successes over a year and instead think more about the students they feel like they've let down. I’m no different.

I was thinking about one particular student a couple nights ago. She’s one of the sweetest kids I’ve ever worked with. Eternally positive, always happy, hard-working, generous, respectful, gets along with everyone. She takes her time and works hard on her tests. She hands all of her homework in. She is an incredible artist; never, at any point in my life, have I been able to draw anything with the skill on display in the sketches in her drawing notebook (which she will only take out when she knows it’s an appropriate time). When other groups give their science presentations, she always comes up with thoughtful questions for them, the kind that prove how well she was listening. I could assign her to work in a group with either her best friends or people she barely knows, and she would make the best of it either way. She is one of those kids you sometimes wish you could clone twenty-nine times to have a full class of people exactly like her. She’s amazing. 

The problem is she struggles academically. Without getting specific, there are legitimate reasons why some of the things we study are usually more challenging for her than they would be for many other kids. Not that this discourages her in any way; she has said so many things meant to encourage others that it’s clear to see how she truly lives and breathes a growth mindset. 

According to her score on the state math test, her year was not successful. 

She reminds me of a scene from “Mr. Holland’s Opus.” Mr. Holland’s friend, the gym teacher/coach, came to him with a concern about a student athlete. This kid was struggling academically and needed another credit or he wouldn’t be eligible to participate in a sport that might help him earn a scholarship. Mr. Holland agreed to let the kid into band and worked to teach him how to play the bass drum. Now, I was a drummer, from 5th grade until my senior year of high school, so I can tell you with authority that playing a bass drum is no more difficult than tapping your foot along with a song you hear on the radio. But this kid couldn’t figure it out, no matter how hard he tried. After some time, Mr. Holland told his friend he had given it his best shot, but he couldn’t teach him. His friend’s angry response was along the lines of, “If you can’t teach a kid as eager to learn as he is, then you’re a lousy teacher!”

I keep coming back to the idea of this little girl and her drawing. She clearly has the beginnings of a legitimate talent, which means there is some form of intelligence in there, and likely a lot of it. It might be manifesting itself in a different way than straight academic ability, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t been there for me to work with. Anyone who can demonstrate that level of proficiency in something visual should have a good chance at succeeding in math, when so many concepts can be illustrated and modeled visually. This kind of idea is almost Teaching 101. Why did it take me until it was basically too late to realize what I’d had in front of me?

So one of my reflections this year: Where did I fail this girl? How could I have a student so hard-working and eager to learn not show the improvement she reasonably should have?

I thought it over and realized it wasn’t any one thing I did, but several. 

I took for granted too often that her effort would be enough to pull her through.

I trusted her behavior and disposition too much. As long as she was working hard and happy, I let those qualities be enough to minimize any other red flags that I probably should have notice, instead devoting more time and energy to the reluctant and resistant learners in the class. 

When she didn’t come to me with the questions she most likely had, I took that to mean I didn’t need to check in with her as often as I probably should have.

Why did I go after the students that presented the larger, and, for me, more frustrating challenges? Why did I want to win over the kid who sits in class with all the motivation of a bag of potatoes? Why did I work so hard to organize the kid who leaves a trail of belongings following him, like the dotted line paths in a Family Circus comic? Why did I keep coming back to reinforce the student who was just as likely as not to blow up screaming at me on any given day? Why did I plan how to gently encourage the student who had such profound math anxiety that she did all she could to physically retreat into her desk during class? Why did I sink so much effort into trying to build a relationship with the student who mainly sees school as where her social interactions take place, and the only role I had in her life was as a general inconvenience?

How did I miss the chance to take advantage of a clear form of intelligence and redirect it into a different discipline?

I know this girl learned this year. I know she enjoyed her time in my room. I know school was a great experience for her, and I know I helped her. I just don’t know if it was enough. I’m left feeling like I should have done more.

Twenty-five years into the career, and it’s clear I still have things to learn.

Q & A 2017

Let's get right to it:

Would you be amenable to a Toga Taco Party?
It would depend on who was attending. But most likely not.

What is your favorite piece of classical music of all time?
Maybe not the most original answer, but I suspect it’d be Pachelbel’s Canon.

What are the 5 coolest nicknames you’ve ever invented?
Wow. Of all the nicknames over the years, that’s difficult. Two that stick out in my head are Walbert and Joefus. One of my favorites would have been a nickname a kid gave himself: Stinky Gary. The best part? His name was Kyle.

If chipmunks suddenly ruled the world, what would you do?
Invest in heavy books and tennis racquets, then join the resistance.

What’s your favorite soup?
My mother’s chicken and dumpling soup. 

What is your favorite thing to do?
This was tough, but I think my best answer is anything that pushes me into a flow state. I don’t know how many people are familiar with this; I tend to assume things I experience are fairly universal, but I had to change that assumption a year ago when I learned not everyone has their brain automatically begin narrating their thoughts and actions after they’ve been reading for a long time, while mine does. I first heard flow described as a state of being when what you are doing comes so naturally you don’t have to even think about it and somehow things just fall exactly into place. It happens for me sometimes when a lesson goes really well. It happens when I have a writing idea that takes off and I have to struggle to catch up. In my experience, it’s related heavily to creativity, but I’d have to think other people would experience a similar state in different ways. So the answer today: My favorite thing to do is to be in the flow state. That's when I feel like the best version of myself.

If you had to choose a career all over again not knowing the outcome, what would you choose?
This question did not preclude my choosing education again, or pursuing writing. Just in case I’m not supposed to get those choices, I think I would probably go after something to do with sociology. I find almost everything about that fascinating.

What is the best nickname you have given a student?
Best is impossible to choose after I have worked with well over one thousand students and don’t even remember all of them anymore. If I’m being honest, I suspect the best nickname would have been one that I’d never dare say to that student’s face.

If you decided to grow facial hair, what type would it be?
First: I’ve had facial hair for going on ten years, but I see where you’re going with this so I’ll play along.
Follow up: With that new facial hair, what would your nickname be?
Eduardo.

Why do you write?
Because I can’t not. Sooner or later I need the outlet. I need the purge. I need a way around and out of the introspective mind.

What’s your favorite scene from the entire Star Wars saga?
The last moment of The Empire Strikes Back, when Luke and Leia are watching Lando and Chewbacca fly the Millennium Falcon away from the Rebel ship. It was a great teaser of things to come, the pause of recovery and regrouping. Having said that, I was in ninth grade when Return of the Jedi came out, so I can’t deny that Princess Leia’s costume as Jabba the Hutt’s prisoner didn’t make an impression on me.

Why are there people starving when there is enough food produced in the world to sustain us all? 
The stock answer about geopolitical greed would cover it too easily, but this question reminded me of a quote from the book “American Gods” by Neil Gaiman. I remember it because I’ve always thought it perfectly captures why people try to maintain some distance when confronted with the problems of other people: "If we were not islands, we would be lost, drowned in each other's tragedies...we draw our lines around these moments of pain and remain upon our islands, and they cannot hurt us.” I think people are invested in protecting themselves and their immediate loved ones, and the idea of such massive starvation is too abstract of a concept for most to appreciate. Otherwise I’d suspect more would be done.

Why hasn’t 45 been impeached yet?
Because McConnell and Ryan are partisan hacks, and, as of today, he's not hurting their agenda. Yet.

Where do the missing socks go when you lose them in the dryer?
They either never make it into the wash or they end up getting mixed in with a different load. The biggest cover-up about the Missing Sock Theory is how those socks are always eventually found.

What do you think is the greatest humanitarian crisis issue at this time?
I would think any population not having access to clean water would count as a crisis.

What was your first reaction to hearing “Two Broke Girls” has been cancelled?
“Please God, let 'The Big Bang Theory' be next.”

Explain why you don’t start a music/concert review website and put your writing and music passions together.
(1) My favorite music is well outside of the mainstream. (2) Most of the posts I write about music here on Summer Vacation are largely ignored, which doesn’t provide a lot of motivation to take the idea further. (3) However, I’ve been inspired by conversations with one of my colleagues this year to begin an Album of the Week feature on this blog, starting in just a couple days. So there’s that.

What day are you getting your dog?
I’m still not sure I am. If I rolled out the good old Fifth Grade Probability Meter today, I’d put the chances on unlikely right now.

Why do the congressional republicans have their heads up their…….?
Like I said yesterday, I have to steer around certain language usage here in case a student, or one of their wonderful parents, would ever discover the blog. But to answer: Because they’ve been so singularly focused on political gamesmanship for the past eight years, instead of doing their jobs as lawmakers and leaders, they’ve lost whatever perspective they may have had in the first place regarding their responsibilities to their constituencies and the country overall. 

What is your favorite TV series finale and why?
The one that sticks with me the most is probably The Office. It wasn’t overdone and either wrapped up all the character arcs or left space for them to continue beyond the series just right. The idea that even a person as pathetic as Michael Scott could find someone and have a happy ending was beautiful and hopeful.

Are you a “method” writer?
No. I’ll put on music to try and find a tone, but beyond that I just sit down and do the work. 

What is the most interesting place you have ever traveled to, and why?
2608 Oakes Avenue.

Taboo in our culture today?
This could have been a bigger answer, almost a complete post, a year ago. But with the way society has fractured off into such radically different and clearly defined ideological divisions since the presidential election, I’m not sure if there are many universal taboos left. There are too many divergent opinions accepted by too many splinter groups for any real consensus anymore.

Please explain your eternal disdain for the Beatles in 180 characters or less, preferably in haiku or 10-word review format.
No hatred. Just don’t think the universal worship is deserved.

Trends in instruction and parenting styles by the decade you felt was the best time to be a teacher.
I disagree with the idea of data-driven instruction. Whenever the science in anything is overemphasized, the art is negated. Data informed? Absolutely. Data guided? Sure. Data driven? No. Too far. I think the best period of my career to teach would have been that sweet spot of years when teachers were allowed more professional judgement and flexibility and creativity than they usually are now, and had some minimal formative and/or summative testing data to help them understand the needs of their students better. And don’t even get my started on parenting styles. So I guess I'm saying that for me, as far as teaching goes, my best days are probably behind me. There's a happy thought.

I did skip one question: Someone suggested I provide a list of answers, and let anyone reading the blog come up with matching possible questions. This idea intrigued me enough that I’ll be expanding it into its own post sometime soon. I hope people will come back again when you see that one go up. 

I think that covers the whole list. Thanks for playing, everyone!

500 Summer Vacations

I said at the beginning of the month there would be two milestones reached on the blog during May. A couple weeks ago it saw the 20,000th view. Today, right now in fact, we reach the second one as I write this, the 500th post of What I Did on My Summer Vacation.

If you aren’t versed in blog history — as I assume most people reading this are not — I began writing this back in May of 2009 as a way to keep the writing brain exercised. For perspective, this blog has been around longer than the earliest draft of “Following Infinity,” which first came to life as a NaNoWriMo project back in November of 2009. In fact, if you scroll through the archived posts to the side and read through the ones from November and December of that year, you probably would see a few references to when I was working on it.

Writing a blog wasn’t exactly new for me when I started. I’d kept journals in high school and college, much for the same reasons I started writing Summer Vacation — to process my thinking, practice my writing, and remember what was happening in my life with greater clarity. To that end, I feel keeping this blog for the past several years has worked out pretty well. I’m not saying that every post here is a diamond, or even a diamond in the rough, but out of the now five hundred written here, there are a few I’m pretty proud of.

Of course the biggest difference between keeping a journal and keeping a blog is that the blog is technically available for anyone with an internet connection to read, so there has to be selective editing when it comes to deciding what to include, what kind of language to use here in case any students (or their parents) ever discover it, and what topics to steer away from. It makes me wonder how my relationships with some people have changed because of this, especially with people who have been reading it for a long time. I’m not saying I’m a completely open book on here, but I’ve probably revealed more about my introverted self than I’d care to contemplate. Undoubtedly there are people who either feel like they know me better, or actually do know me better, because of what I’ve written or how I’ve written it here. 

I don’t know how long I’ll keep the blog going, but I have a pretty good idea about when I’ll stop. Truth be told, there was a moment a few years ago when I almost did bring it all to an end. I was looking at my fading hit count and wondering if it was worth the time to keep publishing content when only a handful of people would ever read the posts. When I reached a level of thinking of myself as an oh-so-serious Author with a Capital A, I thought it might be time to start my own author website instead, if I was ever going to establish any kind of an online platform. I ran this idea past my agent Carrie in one of our first conversations. She convinced me there would be a better time for that kind of thing later, and for the time being having a blog that I updated regularly would give anyone looking to check up on my writing something to review. So, I guess if you’re a follower, you should probably credit her as a big reason why all of this didn't disappear. With the renewed life and activity it's found in the past few years, I'm very glad it didn't.

Hopefully that author website will become necessary someday. I suspect when that happens, Summer Vacation might finally come to an end, and the blog will take on a different form if it migrates over there. For now though, after eight years and five hundred posts, keeping this still feels like enough of me that I can’t see letting it drift away anytime soon. 

Lastly, a special thanks to any number of people out there who read this regularly. If I didn’t see the likes and comments and hits that show me I’m not just blathering into an electronic void, I don’t know how long I would have kept it going in the first place.