Knocking At The Gate

One of the mental distractions I use when I'm trying to fall asleep at night is memory skittering: I just randomly seize on moments from conversations in my life and move on to the next random one as fast I possibly can. I find that I can skitter over about two different memories a second when I really get going. (It's bizarre to me that this is relaxing, but there it is.)   One of the memories I tripped over last night involved a friend named Griff I had in grade school. We played on the intergalactic space fort thingy on the Villas Elementary School playground because it was an intergalactic space fort and in those space race days most every kid was seriously into intergalactic space forts.   I remembered a particular morning when we went out to recess unusually early for some reason or another. Everything was still a little damp and the last of the morning fog was still visible. He was cross that the space fort was cold and wet but we decided it was space fort fuel that had...

This morning's oatmeal (J.F. McCullers). Smell is so deeply rooted in memory. It was still overcast when I got up this morning, and I made myself some oatmeal. I adore oatmeal, especially if I accidentally spill a little maple syrup in it. I was reminded of getting ready for school when I was little, when my brother and I got up before dawn in our old house on Corkscrew Road. There was a happy commotion on those mornings with lunchboxes being packed, school clothes being sorted, and animals being tended.  The smell of oatmeal filling the dark corners of the house on cold days, or eggs and bacon most days, and always the sharp flinty smell of coffee on the stove. The clatter of plates, the dry thump of kitchen cabinet doors. Walking through the dewy grass to let the chickens out, with the red hen always coming first, always. My mother laughing at my father's jokes. The rustle of the newspaper. The tippy-taps of the dogs on the floorboards.  Something about the smell of oatmeal ...

Dona and I are midway through Amazon's "Tales From The Loop," and it is really something special. Apparently, it isn't based on a novel or story but instead seems to be based on a book of paintings by Swedish artist Simon Stålenhag .    It has been set in Ohio, in what appears to be an alternative history version of the 1970s. The episodes are nonlinear, and intricately interlocked with minor characters in one episode turning out to be central characters in another episode, with sort of a Winesburg, Ohio effect. The art direction is subdued and gentle, with everything taking on sort of storybook feel or perhaps a nostalgia for a past that never happened. All of this is unified by a gorgeous score by Phillip Glass and Paul Leonard-Morgan, with themes that are often pretty and even sentimental.   This makes sense, because so far the show doesn't really dwell on the spectacle of the astonishing story that is being told. Even though immense things happen, we are not ...

I learned today that one of my former students has been hired to teach at a high school where I once briefly taught as well. I had gladly given her encouragement and a reference, and so she made a point of letting me know how excited she was. She will now be able to help a new class full of young people make their way into adult life, just as she had been helped many years ago in another classroom in another school, just as I had been helped. I sometimes marvel that it takes a teacher to make a teacher. Every teacher learned how to learn and learned how to teach because of their own teachers, and so there is an unbroken chain all the way back to our beginnings, all the way back to the first teachers. She’s not the first of my students to decide to take this on, but it occurs to me that she might turn out to be the last. My heart is so full for her, and for the young people she will meet as soon as this summer is over. She’s smart, and savvy, and eager, and she has the courage and patie...

Commencement tonight for three combined charter schools: Coronado High School, Island Park High School, and North Nicholas High School. I was at the first commencement exercises each of these schools ever had, since I was the School District’s charter school liaison when each of them came into being. Then they were novel, but now they’ve been around long enough to have traditions. I’ll be wearing my academic regalia for the last time: I have a basic doctoral gown that’s pretty worn out and held together mostly with safety pins and good intentions. I’ve got a hood, tam, and tassel that have survived dozens and dozens of ceremonies. I still wear an honor cord from Cypress Lake High School, where decades ago I was both an honors graduate. Later, I was a senior class co-sponsor there with graduation experts like Connie Maher and Jean Campbell. They taught me how to wear all these symbols of the ancient art of teaching. The first time I wore my high school regalia, I was thrilled and excite...

So I’m sitting here in a car dealership service center waiting room. It's a first-class operation here: good coffee, comfy seating, charge ports all over the place.   There are five of us, all men, all here by ourselves, all middle-aged or better.   We are all savoring the peace and quiet in our own way. Most of us are fiddling with our phones, checking email and Facebook and such, enjoying the complimentary WiFi. One of us is reading a newspaper, occasionally making a cheerful flourish out of turning to the next page. One of us is humming quietly, but I can’t make out the melody. One of us — likely the oldest of us, trim and well-manicured, wearing a cap with a Navy ship registry embroidered on it — is typing with gusto on an expensive-looking laptop. He is pounding out what sounds like it might be about 60 wpm and he rarely slows down. He only pauses to take another sip of coffee, just a sip, then he gets right back to full speed. Some piteous soul out there is getting a pie...

On the way home tonight, the shuffle play offered up Pink Floyd's "Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun" from way back in 1968. As required by both state and federal law, I immediately turned it up all the way. This reminded me of one of the most satisfying perquisites of being a high school drama teacher at a school with a bustling stagecraft program: having complete control over a full rock-concert-sized PA system. I had this rig set up one day in the auditorium at Cypress Lake High in preparation for some show or another. Once something like this is set up, it's wrong to just let it sit idle, so I would "test" it by playing music. On this day, I had a few minutes after school had dismissed but before the crew arrived for whatever work we were going to do, and so I put on this song. It was a glorious thing to listen to at that volume in that deliciously dark auditorium. So I'm sitting there in my usual fourth row center seat, enjoying the freaky m...