Manamana

Yes, the Dead Hensons, the Muppet cover band will be playing in San Francisco on Saturday night. Yes! It's an 8-piece funk band that plays only songs from Sesame Street. Nothing is happier than songs from childhood with beer and a bunch of other adults singing and dancing along. I am so finding my way there.

R&D, you are so jealous right now.

If you're going to San Francisco, be sure to wear to wear flowers in your hair

Finally made it up to SF yesterday. I only spent the day, so I certainly haven't done it up "right", but it was good to find my way there. The first time is always the hardest. Now I know how to get to downtown at least, even if I never knew where I was again after that.

I met up with an old friend from Chapel Hill. Reconnected on Facebook and he happened to be in town visiting friends, so we took a day. We had brunch at Luna Park on something and 18th (the old crack hood all gentrified) then drove around looking for his hotel then went down to the Ferry Building. We had an app at a wine bar and then ferried over to Sausolito. My, was that nice. It was late -- later than I had hoped seeing as I had to teach today -- but it was worth it. The sun was setting behind the Golden Gate Bridge as we chugged across the Bay. And the weather is unseasonably warm (to say the least) with clear blue skies. Just gorgeous. Had some clam chowder (still too much starch, not fully cooked potatoes, but not too salty and good clam heft to it) and a Crab Louis salad. Not too bad. Then back home.

It's a 2 hour drive, which is kinda annoying, but not impossible. I do need to go back and spend more time. But I need to plan it when I *have* the more time to spend. Maybe a long weekend or if Shells really comes to visit for spring break.

I'd make this a better-written post, but I'm too tired and cranky (meetings!) to do much more than a mind-dump. I've shared; I'm alive; I'm not just sitting on the couch every evening.

Done.

I Thought of a Good Title

But then I forgot. Maybe, if it comes back to me, I'll fix it.

Today I decided I needed to get out of Dodge. So I packed up my thick-ass stack of papers to grade, citysearched a place to eat, and drove to Santa Cruz. Of course, I forgot to bring the sticky note that had the addresses on it (it's still sitting right here at my elbow), but I sorta remembered the cross street of the breakfast place I was looking for. So, being in a winging it frame of mind, I took off in what I though was the right direction and lo and behold -- I found it!

Well, for a place that is supposed to have long lines, there weren't any at 9:30 on Veterans's Day. Fine with me. I ordered a cup of decaf (have to) and Mike's Mess. Mike's Mess is a scramble of eggs, bacon, mushrooms, and homefries topped with cheese, sour cream, tomatoes, and scallions. Sounded delicious.

The coffee arrived -- bleugh. They have an old-skool coffee pot system, and this decaf had definitely been sitting on the burner too long. Invest in some air pots people!

But then breakfast came. Glorious breakfast. It's been awhile since I've had a good breakfast, and this qualified. The plate was covered with a pile of food and two good scoops of sour cream. The only complaint I have about the Mess is that the taters were overseasoned (aka: too much salt) and also contained tumeric. Don't get me wrong, tumeric belongs in many, many things, just not in breakfast potatoes. It's a trend I've noticed out here: a curried potatoes for breakfast habit; I don't buy it. (Well, obviously I do since I paid for my breakfast, but you get my drift.)

Now, on the side of the plate was a piece of bread sliced in half. White sourdough, to be exact. It was lovingly toasted and sandwiched between the halves was a scoop of butter (yes, butter). I spread the butter over the toast (with plenty left over in case I really wanted to destroy my arteries), and took a bite -- and landed in heaven. The bread was dense and tender at the same time. The bread wasn't too sour, which is more to my liking than the inverse (converse? contrapositive? who remembers their geometry?). I could eat that bread forever. I do love white bread. Yes, I do.

The menu also boasted some sourdough pancakes that looked delish, as well as the usual eggs and bacon fare. I will definitely need to go back.

And to add to my pleasure was the crowd of eaters. There was an undergrad couple next to me (it was early on in their dating life) and an older professor (or math teacher) across the way. I watched in fascination as he ate a decidedly snotty egg. It was so slippery he could barely get it on his fork and stay there. He was not a break-the-yolk kind of man. I was impressed and slightly grossed out when he finally got it in his mouth. I think that egg whites should be cooked all the way through, although the yolk is allowed to remain runny. All in all, good people watching.

Then I went and say on the pier and graded a few papers. It was good.

Some Blocks are Good Blocks

I've been doing some lame teaching with my juniors. The "teaching" part is slim; we're reading The Crucible out loud. I do this not just because, but because I know that my students will not read it if we don't. It's in the textbook, and they will not take it home and read it and come back to school prepared to discuss it. It written well about their reading level AND with antiquated language, so even if they did read it on their own, they wouldn't understand it. The affective filter is too high. It is beyond their zone of proximal development (without my scaffolding).

(Yes, I understand that I'm making sweeping generalizations about my students. Some of them would read it. Some of them would understand it. But by and large, my population demonstrates low motivation and poor English skillz -- it's a cultural thing, dear. Hey, I'm not sure I'd be signing up to be a part of white culture if I weren't here already. And, well, they are far more bilingual than I -- tell me whose language skillz are more valuable in today's global economy.)

Back to this morning. In a stunning feat of actual teaching, I had planned to lead them in a book-making excercise where we could look at irony, mood, and tone and find some examples and then do a little evaluation. It would involve paper and crayons and all sorts of good things (don't let high school students fool you -- they love crayons as much as elementary students do). But they rebelled.

They insisted that we read the play.

I'm serious, a good half of the class begged me to let them read. Nobody disagreed. (We assign parts and read it out-loud -- a little Reader's Theater for the Dramatically Challenged.) They want to know what happens. They want to get to the end. They don't want to forget what's going on. I (well -- I'm taking credit, but I don't think I really had much to do with it) have them hooked on the story. They've seen beyond the language to the meaty part -- the plot. And it is a gripping story: teen girl has affair with older man and schemes to kill his wife; the rest of the town is gripped with jealousy and rivalry and takes advantage of the situation to get retribution; murder, mayhem, frenzy, religious fervor, mistaken assumptions, a know-it-all judge, and a thoughtful minister. I think I'm going to have them script a Jerry Springer reunion when it's over.

So, I scrapped my lesson. We can get to it later. And we read. It was pretty sweet.

In Memorium

For KJG and CJC.

Suicide is Painless, Johnny Mandel and Mike Altman
Just Like Suicide (acoustic), Soundgarden
Suicide, T. Pain
The Only Difference Between Martyrdom And Suicide Is Press Coverage, Panic at the Disco
Beautiful Girls, Sean Kingston
Country Death Song, Violent Femmes
We Both Go Down Together, The Decembrists
John Allyn Smith Sails, Okkervil River
Into the Ocean, Blue October
Swandive, Ani DiFranco
Who's Afraid (Of the Art of Noise), The Art of Noise
Love is Suicide, Smashing Pumpkins
Suicide, Kamelancien
Suicides Underground, Air
Goodbye Baby Baby Goodbye, Van Morrison
The Will to Live, Ben Harper

Climbing

Went out to Pinnacles National Monument today. I went with a woman I met at my new teacher days earlier in the summer. She's not as strong a hiker as I am (which isn't saying much). Still, she's been dragging me out, so it's good.

Pinnacles is beautiful. And it was community day, so there were "tables", including a rock climbing group (they take school groups out). So I got some free rock climbing in. They only had a couple of pitches up, and I'm out of shape, but it was fun. I certainly could have used my rock shoes. But all my training came back. And the guides were both from Oregon, so I could wow them with my alpine experience.

I miss being on the rock.

I'm Getting Too Good at This

I have sent too many condolence letters in my still rather short life -- and far too many for people who passed away before they finished living a long, productive life. And it hasn't even been my association with mountain climbing that has precipitated my close association with death.

I found out that my mentor's wife died unexpectedly yesterday. I have no more information than that, but it makes me heartsick. I did not know her well at all, but I do know her husband rather well -- I spent a year in his classroom.

You might have heard me talk about him as The Three-Time Winner of the CT of the Year Award (all three awards were from the same year), the God of Social Studies, the God of all Things Teaching, or simply My Idol. When I subbed in his classroom last year and the students said I was just like him, I got all twitterpated. Ditto when my own students (at the same school, but different class) told me I was "too much" like him. In my book, there is no "too much" when it comes to this man. He is an excellent teacher, both to his high school students and his student teachers. He is patient, kind, thoughtful, and intelligent. He also plays a mean game of shuffleboard.

I know little of his personal life -- mostly just things that I've gleaned from being around his classroom. They had Frisbees printed up for their wedding favors (there is one hanging in his room). The top hat in his room is also from his wedding: he and his groomsmen found them at a store across the street and wore them to the reception (I overheard him tell the story to a student once). They would ride their bikes to Beaverton to see family. They have a daughter who is an adorable, vibrant -- her picture is always his desktop at work. And from those clues, I know that they had a wonderful, fun life together. I can tell how right they were for each other. It breaks my heart to think about him dealing with such a stupendous loss.

And I can't help but also think of the other people I know who have lost their spouses. Everybody dies. I know that. But that fact does little to ease the pain that comes from the separation of people who love each other.