A little music for between posts.
Camper Van Beethoven Good Guys 1987 Vusic Video
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You may be wondering where I have been... then again maybe you haven't.
Another school year is done and done. But not really, I still have amath teacher to hire and with our department's admin leaving for another school and the replacement being really lame, it's up to me. So I have one more interveiw tomorrow and if she's really good then she'll get the job but if not I have another candidate in mind.
When we lived in Des Plaines, we often visited my Dad's grave - he was a veteran after all. Then we would officially open the Prospect Avenue Bar.
The move to the new digs has helped tidy-up our lives. We cleared out piles of stuff that we don't use and don't need anymore. During the process, I've run across lots of mementos and many collectibles. One of my favorites is my dad's Algebra book from his old World War II Army days. The book was tucked away for at least 15 years. I don't know why I never looked at it closely.
Obviously, I am the the family math person; my sibs are the real musicians. I never even considered a musical career after high school. I knew that my talent for music was minor. My dad was the musician, the band director, the performer, and the teacher. Connecting him to math is a little weird.
I guess my father had to take Algebra when he was in the Army I can't imagine why he really needed it,especially in hindsight. He was a great music teacher but this old book with his writing connects me to him when he was 18, the dancer's age and the age of many of my graduating students. It's a snap shot in time that I apprecite now more than when I received the book.
I wrote my first blog post two years ago, today. It's not really a big deal except that we count time in years. Since I have had jobs for shorter time periods and school will be out on Friday...
I am not bragging about the actor even though it may sound like I am. A coach doesn't brag about his team when it loses 13 - 0 We are plagued by nagging injuries; sore arms, bruised wrists and twisted ankles. We were bad at the little things and some big things, too.
I am not the popular blogger of Golden Manor but occasionally I get fan mail. Today, I received a note from M. Contact from Sweet Home Chicago. He found me while looking for information about the old Albany Park Neighborhood. Even now, I am traveling back to my childhood home, Tchaikovsky's 5th Symphony is playing on XM (naturally it came from WFMT) and I used listen to that almost everyday back in 1980.
1980 was the baseball year. I went to so many games and the White Sox were terrible. If I had $3.00 or $4.00 dollars I could go to the game and often sit in the first 5 or 6 rows in the outfield of our Comiskey Park. Cheap Tickets. Jorge Orta, Alan Bannister, Lamar Johnson and Bob Molinaro where some of my favorites. And of course Harry Carey and Jimmy Piersal were in their prime telling it like it was; bad fielding and bad base running. It was great.
So M, has set me off on a sentimental rant of sorts because he mentioned the old hot dog joint I wrote about a few months ago. I decided to google the places I stop by when I go home to Chicago: Super Dawg, Susie's, Shelly's Freeze (well I think about this one but I don't stop), Hero's and Charcoal Delights. Charcoal Delights has a special place in my heart because the original store is near the childhood home and the newest store is by the old Des Plaines homestead.
When mother was still alive, we would visit her. She'd call in an order to Charcoal Delights. "I would like a BLT with crisp bacon." Lisa and I dreaded picking up those orders because the cooks really did not know how to make crisp bacon. Eventually, I starting asking before I paid if the bacon was crisp. I couldn't take the tears when the bacon wasn't prepared just right. Now, after 20 years I realize why the bacon had to be crisp and it's because of my busted up crown. My mom couldn't chew bacon unless it was crisp - it was that partial, no back teeth.
Occasionally, in the summer of '91 we would bring our baby, aka the dancer, to mom's house and surely we ate BLT's while we compared baby's. Yes my nephew was born just a month prior to the dancer. In the long run, the dancer won the baby contest - she's won the math award at her high school two years in row and earned a full scholarship (both academic and dance) to Brenau University.
It seems to me that blog posts should be interesting to someone. All ideas that run through my brain are re-runs. Same shit different day. The cycle of the same is painful. At school we're worried about our jobs or someone important to a student, parent or teacher has died. The spawn are getting under our skin and spending all of our money. Our baseball team stinks. The storms and tornadoes warnings are yelled across the county every other day by loud blaring sirens.
It is damn boring here.
The boy fell on the way to school. Smart boy walked to the firestation for treatment. Now, we're at the doctor.
Update: The boy is fine. The doctor sewed up his leg with 4 or 5 stitches and he is almost as good as new. As for work today, forget about it. But we did eat Bananas Foster the other night. Would you rather see a delicious dessert instead the boy's busted up shin? That's what I thought.
It seems like so long ago... back in 2001 when I started my teacher certification program...
There were hours of observations. I went to different schools. I observed high school and middle school math and English classes. I even visited an alternative school. But pre-service seems different here in Georgia. For the last 6 weeks I had a KSU undergrad observe my class on weekly basis. He saw all my teaching moods and even went to lunch duty with me. It must be difficult to be a student in any field these days - I'd be worried if I picked a field where I could actually to find a job.
Now, in this time of crisis I agonize over our class schedule for next year. I have some idea how many teachers we'll have in the department but on the other hand there are lots of ifs. If this and if that... There are also many worries about the current year most of which I really can't write about here. But imagine the standard stuff you hear about on the news; it's question of how do you get all the parties involved in education to do better - teachers, students and parents. Many of these concerns are beyond my control but many are in my sphere of influence.
One of the first observations I did was at Maine East High School (didn't Hillary Clinton and Harrison Ford go to this school?) and that day there was a school -wide assembly about tolerance and they played this song.
