So… what’s a Pep Band?

“So, Ms. R is forming a Pep Band, so if you’re interested come to the meeting after school…” I look across the circle of desks at my students, who listen to our Vice Principal’s voice over the PA system with frowns on their faces, as if this were news to them.  It’s seventh period, and this…

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A Monday Tuesday

“It’s like this giant Monday.” I’m walking to school with my roommate, Anna, on this clear Tuesday morning, the first day of second semester.  “I mean, I’m always a little lost on Mondays, like I’ve forgotten how to teach.  And this… this is way worse.” This is a different “first day back” than any I’ve…

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Things that Made Life Better This Year: 2010 Edition

The sun is sparkling through the windows of my childhood home in Seattle.  It has been a week of rest and reconnection, so much so that I woke up today, surprised to find that it’s the last day of the year.  And of the decade, for that matter. I’m neither old enough nor wise enough…

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Delays

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.” Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away….

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Capturing the Castle

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living…

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Little Town

(Because for some of us poetry is clearer, and because I was inspired by the student portfolios I spent the weekend grading.) It’s a little town. Three hours is an epic journey so no one leaves because quests aren’t for everyone. Sister and niece moved three villages over So he’ll never see them now. Why…

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Ingredients

It has been snowing all day by the time I make it home this Wednesday afternoon.  I had romantic notions of going running in the snow, all the way up the hill to “see the view,” but gave them up on the walk home from school when I noticed that: I couldn’t walk more than…

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A Map, A Headlamp, A Castle, The Fog

I consider bringing the headlamp. It’s in the same basket as the map, which I fished out carefully before leaving on this hiking venture.  My large topographical map is indispensable; I bought it a few days after moving to Kandern, and it has been a fixture on every excursion since. I love this map.  Emily has an…

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NaNoWriMo

Short Story Ideas: Chick Flick Action Story Damsel in Distress/Platonic Ideal: Super smart and hot Creator made a weapon and then lost it. Quest: Find it and destroy it. Wants to make something better. Trickster/damsel befriends creator, tricks him into finding the Magic Weapon. Once they find it, she steals it and threatens the platonic…

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Remembering

We are the Dead.  Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved, and now we lie In Flanders fields. Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high. from “In Flanders Fields,” John McRae, MD This…

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