So You Think You Know...Christmas?

Wrapping paper or gift bags? Newspaper, painted with watercolors. Or recycled wrapping paper. Or recycled gift bags. Or that red plaid paper I BOUGHT (gasp!) new a couple of years ago because I liked it.

Real tree or artificial? Real. Period.

When do you put up the tree? As late as I can get away with it.

When do you take the tree down? Before CheerChick's birthday on December 28th.

Do you like eggnog? Only Devon's recipe. God I miss Devon right about now! (And many other times, too, but especially around Christmas.)

Favorite gift received as a child? An axe. Really.

Hardest person to buy for? Rach, of course.

Easiest person to buy for? Either of the kids, who have nice long lists.

Do you have a nativity scene? Yes. I wish Willie Nelson were in it, though, bringing his special gift to the Baby Jesus.

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

A Colbert Christmas: Willie Nelson Sings

Colbert at Christmas
Colbert Christmas DVD

Green Screen
Bill O'Reilly Interview

Mail or e-mail Christmas cards? Mail. I'll get the ones to my friends out sometime over vacation, I hope.

Worst Christmas gift you ever received? No such thing...as long as it was given from the heart.

When do you start shopping for Christmas? Whenever I see something that I need to buy someone.

Have you ever recycled a Christmas present? Who hasn't?

Favorite thing to eat at Christmas? Whatever beast is roasted...lamb, beef, ham, 'possum...it's all good.

Lights on the tree? Too many. I'd like them to be LED, but I'm not sure that's going to happen.

Favorite Christmas song? "Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home)", performed by either U2 or Darlene Love.

Travel at Christmas or stay home? I'd prefer to stay home on Christmas proper, but I don't mind a short jaunt to Weld for dinner with my parents.

Can you name all of Santa's reindeer? And Olive...the OTHER reindeer...

Angel on top of the tree, or a star? Beer can. (Not really.)

Presents on Christmas Eve or morning? Morning, but the sock is my favorite part.

Most annoying thing about this time of year? Crass commercialism and lack of commitment to peace on Earth.

Favorite ornament theme or color? Theme? I like all our homemade ornaments featuring the kids' pictures from over the years.

Favorite for Christmas dinner? Standing rib roast with garlic mashed potatoes, and green bean casserole. The beef was Woody's favorite, too.

What do you want for Christmas this year? Not much. Everyone to forget about why they think their religion is best, and lay down their weapons and prejudices.

Who is most likely to respond to this? Either SJ or Rach.

Who is least likely to respond to this? Whoever has the least time on his or her hands.

D-Day

When I watched National Lampoon's Animal House for the first time (I was 10...but a very mature 10...) my favorite character was not "Bluto" Blutarski, nor was it Flounder or Hoover. My favorite was the total badass, "D-Day" ("Ramming speed!")

And my favorite part of the movie was the end, where all of the heroes and ne'er-do-wells' personal histories (fictional, of course) are revealed to the viewer.

Recently came news from the New York Times that Daniel "D-Day" Laikin, National Lampoon Chief Executive, has been charged in conspiracy and security fraud to artificially inflate the stock of the company.

It is a career footnote worthy of the movie's closing credits.

Photo Friday: Weathered

While SJ has taken to posting sky pictures on a semi-regular weekly basis, I am somewhat less regular in my posting to Photo Friday. However, here's my entry for "Weathered". I'm hoping some of the prompts will get me taking more new pictures, but I wanted to share this one. It's an old yellow birch standing on the bank of the stream by our house.

I took this picture during one of the field studies for my master's course last winter (just finished my latest class last night...woohoo!) It's an ancient warrior, which--though it is no longer removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and giving us nice, clean oxygen--is still providing food and shelter for birds and small mammals. It's a great tree.

At 89

I was looking around on the Late Show With David Letterman website, because there was an interesting singer called Sia on. She painted her hands bright red and signed along with her singing. I was slightly intrigued, and wanted to find out more.

Then I got sidetracked by a link to Pete Seeger...PETE FREAKIN' SEEGER...who performed ON LETTERMAN. And I missed it. Unfortunately, the CBS website won't let me post the video here, but that's what YouTube is for. Yes, I'll link it a little later on, but you'll have to endure my reminiscences until then. Unless you just skip ahead, or skip it all together. Honestly, I'll never know the difference.

Anyway, Pete Seeger is one of my heroes. I may not always be in the mood to listen to him, but his ideals, his morality, his passion, his sheer love for life and what he does, are an inspiration to us all. Some of my earliest musical memories involve my parents' record collection on Saturday and Sunday mornings. Quite often the playlist involved "The Bullfrog", "Abiyoyo", and other childrens' songs. Other times, there were more socially conscious, politically motivated songs, including some of the things Pete did with Arlo Guthrie. The "Precious Friends" album sticks out. And then there were the Weavers, who showed up now and then.

I'll leave it to you to check on Pete's troubles with the House Un-American Activities Committee (he was blacklisted from network television for a good long time) and his pedigree as a great American. The thing that stands out to me most is that about nine years ago, three of us had the pleasure of seeing Pete perform at Rockland High School. At the time he was 78 or 79 years old, and he was sickly. There were many worries that this would be among his last performances.

Flash forward nine years. Pete has just put out an album (because it would just be silly to call it a "disc" or a "CD" when you're talking about Pete) called "At 89". Dude's 89 years old, and he's still actively performing, writing, and putting out new music. He leaves much more of the singing to his guests and audiences today, but that's the amazing thing: everyone ends up singing along with Pete. I've never seen David Letterman's audience sing along, but they did on this song. His banjo is marked with the words "This machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender." Pete, keep on rockin'.

The "Blue" Planet

Today we spent quite a bit of time in class discussing carbon, carbon dioxide, and the effects of greenhouse gases. We played a nice little online game, where the students played the role of a carbon molecule making its way through the carbon cycle, and learning all along the way. One student asked if I had seen this video, and I hadn't. I love these guys. It's amazing how humor in the face of something so potentially grim as global climate change can be such a powerful educational tool.

A Thought That Made Me Giggle...The Link Between Coldplay and the Wiggles!

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Where is the Love?

We were sitting around at our staff meeting today, looking at the MEA scores for our school and wondering how we could help improve our students' performance in math. The discussion turned to how students don't just "do" math nowadays.

First of all, if I had a dime for every time I'd heard "students today just don't _____", I'd be a rich man. That only beats "families today just don't______" by a very slim margin. Fact is, we're teachers, and we play the cards we're dealt. Meet the kids where they are, and help them get farther on. But I digress.

I tried to think of a time in my life, especially my adolescence, when I just "did" math. I can remember getting up an hour before I normally would have (5:30?), to try to get my long division problems done. Mom was up with me, enduring the tears and the woe, and we somehow worked through it. Thanks mom, you unwittingly helped make the case for "families today" arguments. At any rate, that was somewhere around 4th grade. I wasn't into baseball in a sick, obsessed sort of way...yet.

Flash forward about two years. I'm a sixth grader, who lives and dies by the Red Sox. And magically, I had developed the ability to manipulate fractions and percentages to the extent that, by the end of his at bat, I could calculate what Dwight Evans' batting average would be at the end of the at bat, whether he got a hit or didn't.

Then, in eighth grade, I was into calculating shooting percentages and free throw percentages on our school basketball team. My FT% was easy, because when you don't make any free throws, 0% is really easy to calculate.

So somewhere along the line, someone confused my statistical sickness with the ability (or desire, or readiness) to do higher order math in eighth grade. Eighth grade algebra was a dismal failure. The teacher was good, he was entertaining, and he really tried to help me. I just wasn't ready, and I didn't care. Taking the class again in my freshman year wasn't much more successful, but I did manage to pass.

I don't really know what the point of all this is. Regular, everyday calculations have been easy since I used them on an everyday basis for things I enjoyed, so maybe we're onto something there. But the more abstract concepts have never come easy, even to this day. Physics took a serious toll on my self-esteem when I took it last summer, and statistics was the bane of my existence in my earlier grad school stint. But geometry and trig were fine during high school.

I think I've figured out what the point of all this is: the point is, "meet the kids where they are, and help them get farther on." Sometimes digression can lead you to an clarity.