On Blogging

I'm not a writer. This month I will have been a blogger for half a year. Before that writing was a diversion (for me) and a distraction (for my cousin Tracy and my brother Barry, who had to read my stuff). So I don't claim to know a lot about writing, and I have no business telling others how to write. But I know what I like.

When I read anything, I ask myself 3 questions:

- What is he/she saying?
- How did he/she say it?
- Do I believe him/her?

That's what I look for; content, craft and candor. (Forgive me for the three C's thing.)

Sometimes I read blogs that are simply a delight to the eyes. And I'm not one to read for recreation. The thing is, sometimes I enjoy reading something, but then I think about it a bit and realize that the author put a lot of words together cleverly without actually saying anything, or if he/she did have something to say, it was worthless.

Of course, value is in the eye of the beholder, and the eyes of the writer are the ones that count. I do it myself. The things I write about my kids probably aren't very valuable to anyone outside my family, but if it tells them how I feel about them (and helps me remember it), that's enough for me – and if readers outside that small circle don't like it or don't get it – well, I don't care. So, I guess the value of a blog's content depends on who it was aimed at and how important it is to the target audience.

Craft, how something is written, is very subjective, but for me the key is communication. How well did I convey to someone else not only what I think, but how I feel about it? Did I clarify myself – and if s/he didn't understand what I'm saying, did s/he at least understand Me?

I am of the minimalist persuasion. Some writers will carpet bomb their readers with words. I think their concept is that while the overwhelming majority of what they write is irrelevant, something will hit someone randomly by right of the law of averages. The problem with redundancy when writing is familiar in the military; if you try to hit everything, you end up hitting nothing. One has to remember that the guys on the receiving end aren't stupid, and once they see incoming, everyone takes cover. In blogging, it's clicking over to something else.

Then there are artsy-smartsy bloggers. They puff and fluff it up with lots of needless or poor metaphors, tack on needless and obscure adjectives and throw in pointless anecdotes that have no connection whatsoever to what they are saying. They're trying to be clever, but actually they are defeating themselves. Any intelligent reader knows when something is being stretched out like saltwater taffy (there – see – I did it now myself.)

In The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy shoots metaphors in bursts, but pulls it off because they are so good and so on the money that it works to her favor. In most cases, however, I don't appreciate being on the business end of meaningless metaphor. A lot of writers do this and they are (to use Roy's metaphor), "polishing firewood".

And honesty. Does the written square with the writer? Do they actually believe what they are saying, or are they saying things they don't mean because they think it will tickle the ear of the reader? Without knowing the blogger personally, it's hard to tell, but sometimes you have the opinionated trying to appear open-minded, the shallow digging holes way over their heads. It's probably something all of us do to some degree, coming off as something we're not. So it's a rare gift when a blogger has the guts to be brutally honest with himself and the reader.


I've chosen 3 bloggers that I enjoy; each is stronger in one of my three C's.

Xiu/Megan

I have featured her in My People a few times. She's an 18 year old Singaporean (Singaporese?). It's obvious from her blog "January Winds" that she's well read, well educated and, in my opinion, she's brilliant. Some of the best things she's written are the shortest ones. I suspect that she has imported techniques from Chinese poetry to the English language – a feat that only one fluent in both languages can pull of as well as she does.

This is a comment she wrote here once:

"I used to hang upside down on a monkeybar,

just so that those tears would not flow down,

in case my eyes get swollen.

those times when I was little.

i would just hang upside down for ages;

and as simple as a child i was,

i forget about everything unhappy after a while,

and I walk away."
(comment on "It's Okay to Cry")

Most remarkable is her honesty. She's simply out there, something not many are able to do.

Even her naval piercing.

This is something I found in her blog from a couple of years ago when she first started blogging:

"Comments are not the measure of blog success.
Don't bother whoring for comments. It's simply not worth it."
Stella Sez, January Winds (blogspot)

She's pretty much lived up to that.

(January Winds moved to Wordpress about a month ago.)

Liz Strauss

Liz at "Letting Me Be" is about the best example of good writing in a blog I've seen. For the most part, her stuff has substance as well, but even when it doesn't, you hardly notice it because she writes so well.

"Something happens when I write on the Internet. Perhaps it's the fact that (I) know other people are writing on other screens words that I'll read. It simply be that I'm looking up as if another person is sitting across from me. I am more aware that I'm talking with my keys -- that my words are a doorway to relationships."

From "Please Don't Stop"


For a sample of Liz's style, I recommend this; "Knowing Everything" and more

Olivia M. Brigham

Lastly, Olivia at Inspired by Grace. Olivia deals with a variety of issues, both personal and not. She's not very old, but she has amazing perception and depth. The interesting thing is that prose isn't her strongest genre; it's what she's able to express with photographs that's unique - the text is commentary. (This should come as no surprise as she is a professional photographer).

Olivia captured the experience of pilgimage, walking where Jesus walked, on film in a way most aren't able with words. See her blog under the Israel label, or my post about her - "Hands Revisited"

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My blog is the product of stuff rattling around in my head. I ask myself three things when I blog something:

- Do I have something to say? (What is it?)

- Do I know how I want to express it? (Will anyone get it? Who?)

- Do I want to spill my guts. (And how much?)

I'm not a writer. I don't know how well I have kept my own standards of good blogging, but I try and I'm learning. And to you, dear readers, my thanks for your patience.

Peppermint Americans

This last year I took a lot of pictures of our 9th graders. Hundreds of them. Every chance I had – in the hall, on breaks, on hikes and overnight trips – I captured them. They don’t get it yet, but when they graduate, they'll want these memories.

One kid asked me why I do it and I told him. "You're optimistic", He said, "who says we'll be alive in 4 years?"

He's referring to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinijad's promise to wipe the Jews off the map of the Middle East just as soon as he gets nuclear weapons. This year, or the next, Iran will start producing an atomic bomb. This generation's mad dictator, cross-eyed and dressed in cheap suits, is spelling out the next Holocaust every bit as plainly as the funny little man with the little mustache did in Mein Kampf. How much time is left? Will our 9th graders finish school before they graduate?

I don't know how most Americans respond to what's happening on my side of the world. It must be a little overwhelming.

Israel, Palestine, Iraq, Iran, Darfur, Tibet, Myanmar, Congo.

Terror, Poverty, Ethnic Cleansing, Starvation, Torture, Hatred, Rape, Death.

I can imagine that it can be too much in Safe, Sensitive, Sensible, United, States, of America.

Some Americans - not all, not even most, but a few - live in a Hollywood happy-end musical. Good wins over evil, and everyone is happy and perky. They are Julie-Andrews-Marias on a stunningly beautiful, but isolated, mountaintop and the hills are alive with the sound of music. And if things are nasty down there at the bottom of the hill, well, they just remember their favorite things and then they don't feel so bad.

......"Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens,
......Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens,"

Like, if they concentrate on the good, if they take in the beauty around them and listen, yes, listen to the music, they can heal the world. Sure, there is pain, but there is beauty; listen, just listen to the sound of music.

How did Arundhati Roy (The God of Small Things) describe cheery Rodgers and Hammerstein Westerners?

Clean, white children, "like a packet of peppermints".

"The house they lived in had a lake and gardens, a wide staircase, white doors and windows, and curtains with flowers."

"…… Baron von Trapp's seven peppermint children had had their peppermint baths, and were standing in a peppermint line with their hair slicked down, singing in obedient peppermint voices ……."

What about the children on my side of the world? What about children that have dark skin and brown eyes? What if they're frightened and hungry and have grubby fingers? Peppermint Americans sound out of tune and their peppermint songs are off key on my side of the world. They are smug, snug and complacent. They can't heal anything, certainly not my least favorite things.

......Hunger and hatred and ethnic cleansing,
......Rape and starvation and nuclear testing,

This side of the world is a tough neighborhood, and bullies get away with murder around here. I don't know what will be this year, or the next; I don't know if our 9th graders will graduate from high school. I don't know what Americans are supposed to do about it, but somebody better do something and they better do it fast.

And I know this: peppermint Americans and their peppermint songs won't make evil go away. Don't tell us how much you care about the misery over here, and then in the next breath about listening to your pretty peppermint music and how then you don't feel so bad.

When the mad dictator's henchmen were one step behind the peppermint von Trapp kids, even Maria knew that it wasn't the time to sing about her favorite things.

On Beauty

As much as there is beauty in perfection
there is beauty in imperfection

(It is how something so perfect, can be so daunting, so constructed, so overwhelming; that in contrast, an imperfect being seems more of a comfort, an identifiable object- beauty)

Maybe that is why we love each other despite the imperfections
because love is funny
it views things differently from the naked eye

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From "January Winds"

Ehud Goldwasser Returns Home

Once…

He could say,
What she wanted to hear.
She could hear,
What he wanted to say.

Then…

She couldn't hear,
What he wanted to say,
He couldn't say,
What she wanted to hear.

Now…

He can't say,
And she can't hear.
They're deaf and dumb,
Isn't that absurd?

sgnihT llamS fo doG ehT

At first glance Arundhati Roy, author of The God of Small Things, doesn't seem to have much in common with the Mark Twain. Besides the obvious, a whole century and half a planet between 19th century American Twain and the India's Roy, she is much younger than Twain was when he whipped out his masterpiece Huckleberry Finn (and a lot better looking).

But on second look the two are similar. Twain and Roy both grew up in the stagnant backwaters of nations torn by ethnic tension and emerging from an industrial revolution, and their hometowns are the skeletons of stories that they flesh out with friends and neighbors from their childhood. Pre bellum Missouri was and post colonial India is the frontier country of the English language, and the natives aren't above innovating with language when it serves their purpose. As Twain corrupted proper spelling to revive Mississippi Basin dialects, so Roy uses capital letters and punctuation freely to lend nuance, emphasis and irony to her story.

Like Twain, Roy employs children to tell her story. Told from Estha and Rahel's point of view (but not like Huck's matter-of-fact, first person narrative), it was a little disconcerting for me until I caught on. Embellished by the imagination of Rahel, the story gains authenticity, and the terror-to-come intensity, when seen through waist high eyes. Children are unencumbered by social restraints and inhibitions, and their darts at social injustice, the targets of Huckleberry Finn and The God of Small Things, fly true and sure.

Roy's Hannibal Missouri (Twain's St. Petersburg) is Aymanam and her Mississippi is the river Meenachal, and like Twain, her river is a silent but essential player in the plot that carries her characters to their fate. Huck and Tom's Indian counterparts are Rahel (girl) and Estha (boy), fraternal twins that are no less mischievous or precocious than their American cousins, and are employed similarly to poke fun at their betters and deflate their elders puffed up egos.

"Miss Mitten complained to Baby Kochamma about Estha's rudeness, and about their

reading backwards. She told Baby Kochamma that she had seen Satan in their eyes. nataS ni rieht seye.

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They were made to write - In future we will not read backwards. In future we will not read backwards. A hundred times. Forwards.

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A few monthes later Miss mitten was killed by a milk van in Hobart, across the road from a cricket oval. To the twins there was hidden justice in the fact that the milk van had been reversing. "

I couldn't help wondering if the funeral scene in chapter one wasn't borrowed from Twain's Tom Sawyer, except that instead of a beetle biting a stray dog during the service, it's a baby bat flying up an old auntie's dress. Roy's twins run away from home and cross the river to set up house far from menacing grownups, like Tom and Huck's pirate hideout on a river island. In fact, Roy's story of a family destroyed when forbidden love crosses social barriers is a chapter out of Huckleberry Finn (chapters 17 and 18, the Shepherdson/Grangerford feud)

The God of Small Things isn't one story but two; the misunderstandings and hatred that spell tragedy, and the devastation of all involved in the aftermath. The stories flow concurrently on Roy's river and converge in one day.

"Perhaps it's true that things can change in a day. That a few dozen hours can
affect the outcome of whole lifetimes. And that when they do, those few dozen
hours, like the salvaged remains of a burned house – the charred clock, the
singed photograph, the scorched furniture – must be resurrected from the ruins
and examined. Preserved. Accounted for."

Roy is no more bound by time than she is by language. Her river doesn't flow in chronological order, but on currents of her choosing and the reader floats along with the story like her characters drifting in the stream towards tragedy. Only unlike them, you know the impending doom, for Roy spells it out in the first chapter and continues to remind you to the point of nagging throughout. This kind of foreshadowing isn't unknown, but while Shakespeare is subtle, Roy drills it in with a jack hammer. But by throwing aside time and order she hasn't diminished the tension or deflated the climax; if anything it she has tightened the noose. If you've seen the movie "21 Grams", then you get the idea of the terrifying effect that jumping between flashes past, present and future can be.

Twain and Roy share a few devices and they're exorcising the same demon, but they are sailing different rivers. Twain never once questions or criticizes slavery or racial prejudice. He pricks the absurd mentality of racism with humor and tickles the conscience. His river is flowing towards freedom and enlightenment, and he trusted the reader to come to the right conclusions and find the same landing that Huck tied up to in the end.

Roy bludgeons the reader with caste prejudice at its ugliest. Her river is polluted and poisoned by hatred and ignorance, a rancid swamp sucking humanity under like poor Sophie Mol. There's no harbor on the banks of this river, and Roy isn't navigating to the safety of fresh water. She thinks that the current is too strong and the poison is too deep. There's no hope in Roy's river.

We are being sucked under, drowning. All we can hope for is to break the surface for a fleeting moment before sinking forever.

"The Big things ever lurked inside. They knew that there is nowhere for them to
go. They had nothing. No future. So they stuck to the small things."

Arundhati Roy is an excellent writer, but her river isn't flowing like the Mississippi. Her river flows in reverse. She's like Rahel and Estha; it's like she's reading Huckleberry Finn backwards.

The God of Small Things isn't very uplifting.

למחוק

TGFM

(Thank God For McDonalds)

If I can see something that's not there,
Is there something that I can't see?

A Night in the Wadi

I don't recall exactly when I started taking Netanel with me out into the bush. We tried to figure it out last night, and he says we've been doing this for as long as he can remember himself. Sometimes Odelia joins us, and Maayan or a cousin has come along, but Netanel and I are the charter members, president, secretary, and sergeant at arms.

It's not a venture not for the faint of heart. Wolves, jackals, wild boar and beduins roam the hill country; over the years we have encountered them all. Far from civilization it's wise to be armed; caution is essential. Food never enters our tent. Nothing rustles in the darkness unattended. Uninvited guests to our fire (like the viper that came calling last time) are dispatched. Meetings in abandoned places are wary. Boundaries are respected.

Our favorite spot is in a wadi bed, with a window to the west over the Sea of Galilee and if you look carefully you can see Mount Tabor. We set up camp and make a fire at sundown when the smoke won't give us away and in a knoll where it won't be seen in the dark. The smell is enough to ward off intruders on four.

Making dinner isn't hurried and talk wanders between those subjects that concern all men; guns and girls. What's the difference between snipers and marksmen? Alot, actually. I mean, the methods are similar, but weapons, tactics and mission are two different things. I wish I was in the army already. No, you don't. I bet you're glad I won't be a real teacher next year. Were you a real one this year? Sorta. When I think about it, the only girls I'm interested in are the ones that notice me. Yeah, that's how it was with me too. It's guy ego. But they want it to be the guy's idea. Girl ego.

When he was young I would sleep with one eye open 'cause I was afraid he would step out of the tent and down a cliff or on a snake, but I he's on the ball enough now for me to let my guard down. I'm always up at the crack of dawn and rustle up some food and Netanel sleeps until the sun hits the nylon tent and wakes sweating in hothouse heat.

Hypothetically, after breaking camp it's a good time for target practice. Hypothetically, because everyone knows that if firing your gun is prohibited if unsupervised by arms instructors at 200 shekel a pop, then letting a boy use a gun is doubly taboo. So hitting a bamboo reed at ten paces is a pretty good shot, hypothetically speaking.

Netanel is at home in the wild. He isn't afraid of the dark. Our roles are changing and one day soon Netanel won't need me in the wadi. But I hope we keep on going there anyway.

למחוק

Elizabeth

The feature films "Elizabeth" and its sequel, "Elizabeth - The Golden Age", are the Indian born Shekhar Kapur's portrayal of Queen Elizabeth I of England.

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Elizabeth may be called fortunate. As a young woman she narrowly escapes execution at the hand her Catholic sister Queen Mary, and towards the end of her life she and her throne are spared by the destruction of the Spanish Armada, and throughout her life she survives various plots to assainate and/or overthrow her.

The young Elizabeth is determined that the house of Tudor will rule sovereign, but faces three impediments; religious strife at home, powerful enemies abroad and a bankrupt treasury. A young woman playing in an old men's courts, she deftly shatters the obstacles in her path with one blow. Or actually two. With the Act of Supremacy she places herself, and all English monarchs to this day, at the head of the church her father created in order to divorce his first wife Catharine and marry Elizabeth's mother Anne Boleyn; and with the Act of Uniformity she tries to dance at two weddings. She reckons that this new improved Church of England retains enough sacraments to be Catholic, but shorn of fealty to Rome it will satisfy her Protestant subjects.

Hoping that she has united the nation behind her and with new income from property confiscated from the Catholic clergy and nobility that opposed her, she presumes that she is safe. Not so.

The real Catholics aren't fooled and when she executes her cousin Mary Queen of Scots, she's crossed one red line too many. Her enemies set out to punish her, and in the end it is only the bravery of her sailors and the caprice of a storm that sweep the Armada out to sea, that saves Elizabeth and England.

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Despite not being English, or perhaps because of it, Kapur breathes life into Elizabeth. His is not only the tale of a great queen, but the story of a bright and beautiful girl that sacrifices her femininity and eventually her humanity for the sake of the greater good and her family's name. Elizabeth is said to have been the best educated and most intelligent woman of her day, yet in her determination she pushed aside all that stood in her way. She couldn't tolerate those who didn't applaud her and turned a deaf ear to others' opinions.

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In the end, all that was in the grail was vanity. Elizabeth ended her days a lonely, bitter old lady mourning her womanhood.

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Perhaps the greatest irony of all is that in spite of all her efforts, Elizabeth was nevertheless the last of the Tudors. She spent her last days in the company of polital cronies that knew how to manipulate her with flattery, and when she died, James I, the son of her arch rival Mary Stuart (Queen of Scots), succeeded her to the throne.

למחוק

The Ninth of Av

The Ninth of Av

Hands Revisited

After I completed my project on hands (see "hands project" on the labels column to the right), I started paying more attention to hands. They are everywhere!

I guess I'm not the only one. Olivia at "Inspired by Grace" and her husband Bryan visited Israel around Pesach. She is a professional photographer and captured on film things I see every day, but through her eyes it's like being a tourist in my own country. You can join their journey to Israel by clicking on "April 2008" in her blog's archives and then on the "Israel" label at the bottom of the first entry. (Or just click on the link here.)

Olivia has an eye for hands and with her permission I'm posting them here.

Olivia also has an eye for feet.

Thanks to Olivia and Bryan for lending a hand (hands) and for taking the time to visit Israel.

Inside Joke

Maayan: Hi Imma.
Yael: What's up?
Maayan: Okay.
Yael: And what about him?
Maayan: Oh, he's so nice. I was having a bad day and he took me down to the Dead Sea and made a fire. He brought some food and a guitar and we had a picnic and sang some songs. It was very romantic and I felt
better after that.
Yael: Oh, I see. Poor guy.
Maayan: What?
Yael: I mean, he's finished, right?
Maayan: Imma!!!!
Yael: Never mind….

Yael: So when will you break it to him.
Maayan: After Shabbat.

funny israeli commercial VW Polo

Buck Naked

According to Jewish tradition, someone in mourning is "Onen", under duress, and he isn't required to pray or responsible for his actions. (So I guess if you're an observant Jew and always wondered what pork bacon tastes like, that would be a good time to find out.)

After tossing and turning all night, I wrote "Kaddish" early this morning. I think technically I'm not "Onen", but I hope God gives people some slack when confronted with some of the hard things in life. I went to bed last night angry and got up angry. I suppose I could have been angry at the kid that committed suicide, but kids notoriously do impulsive things. And I could have been angry with his father, who might have prevented a tragedy by paying attention to his son and certainly by locking up his gun, but who could have known?

So I took it out on God. Because He was handy. Because He's supposed to be in charge and it seems like someone dropped the ball this time. So it was easy to be angry with God.

And now I've had a day to run it through my mind, and the anger has burned down to embers and I have had a chance to rest a bit.

And I'm sorry for the things I wrote. Because I don't want anyone to think that I don't love God or worse, not love God anymore and use what I wrote as just one more excuse. Because I do love and certainly believe in Him, because you don't get mad at someone you don't believe in.

So I thought about deleting "Kaddish".

One of the blogs I love the most is "January Winds" by Xiu. (Who has moved to Wordpress for those who have been looking for her.)

Once she wrote this:

"I wonder if bloggers feel naked. I feel naked, like everyone knows me inside out just by reading this space. And even more so, because I am not perfect and I am flawed."
(Xiu, 'Friday Noon')

I have come to admire Xiu, not only because she's talented, but mostly for her honesty and openness; with God, with her readers.

So I am going to take a little courage from Xiu and not delete "Kaddish". Maybe it will be a witness to others about my God who is big enough to let us come back to Him after we blow up at Him, a witness that you don't have to be perfect to believe in God.

So I decided to leave all my flaws and nakedness on "My People" for all to see.

(And the reason I chose the title for this entry is that it will catch alot of people surfin' on Google.)

Kaddish

24 or so hours ago, a 13 year old boy tidied his room, laid out his photo albums on the kitchen table, sent messages to his closest friends' E-mail and parents' SMS; and then went out into the darkness of the wee hours of the morning and shot himself in the head with his father's pistol before the rising sun.

He went to Odelia's school, a year ahead of her. She went to his funeral, and I went because she had never been to one and I knew she wasn't prepared for what she would see.

They brought the boy to the graveyard and the father, prompted word for word by our Rabbi, said:

"The Lord gives. The Lord takes. Blessed be the Lord."

Nothing can describe a broken father asking forgiveness from his son deaf and dumb, or a mother's scream when they start to throw stones and soil on his body.

30 years ago a girl and I decked out like grown-ups and went to Leonard Bernstein's "Kaddish" at Portland's Civic Auditorium. The music was heaven. But somewhere after intermission a soloist began to read angry and defiantly to God; and I heard enough blasphemy, grabbed my girl and made for the aisle in righteous indignation.

I've heard the prayer for the dead, Kaddish, before. Many times. I'm a Jew now.

"Let His mighty name be blessed forever and ever more."

Amen

"And blessed and praised and glorified and exalted and extolled and honored and adored and lauded be His name."

Amen

I stood there in the cemetery listening to the father. I don't know him. I don't know if he was numb with pain or valium, or if he is a man of great faith.

I listened to a father forced to praise his Maker in the hour of his agony, and I was incensed no less than I had been 30 years ago.

Once…

He could say,
What she wanted to hear.
She could hear,
What he wanted to say.

Then…

She couldn't hear,
What he wanted to say,
He couldn't say,
What she wanted to hear.

Now…

She won't say,
And he isn't heard.
They're deaf and dumb,
Isn't that absurd?

My Teaching Gig

I prepared a "rainy day" presentation (an activity for two or more classes which can used on short notice in case one or more English teachers call in sick and no substitute can be found.)

The idea is this: first show them an excerpt from the Vin Diesel action comedy "The Pacifier" (Walt Disney, 2005) and then another clip from "The Sound of Music" (20th Century Fox, 1965), and finally discuss the connection between them.

Huh? Connection?


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The Pacifier is a US Navy SEAL officer sent to care for and protect the children of widow Julie Plummer (Get it? Julie Andrews + Christopher Plummer). This is a twist of the Sound of Music, where the nun Maria is sent to be the governess for the children of Captain (Navy, get it?) von Trapp. The tough commando and the kids don't hit it off, but he ends up falling for them and they pick up combat tactics (As opposed to Maria teaching the von Trapp kids to sing.)


Now you have to understand; I got this teaching gig totally by accident.

Six summers ago I was a farmer and gardener between jobs, and our high school needed an English speaker to fill in for a real teacher on Sabbatical. I didn't have a clue what I was going to do with my students when I walked into a classroom that first day of school; and when the year was over and they had actually made progress, I hadn't the foggiest how I had done it.

I wasn't a very good teacher. The kids gave me hell and I don't think I've ever given a proper lesson. I hated grades, which for me are meaningless numbers, and discipline because I'm not a disciplined person. I was so bad at teaching that I up and quit in the middle of my second year.

But something had happened. The kids had gotten under my skin. So I came back as a volunteer. At first I was with the English staff, tutoring and helping out. Then I caught up with "my kids", who were in 11th grade by now, and joined their homeroom staff. I went with them on their field trips and sleepovers and chaperoned their parties.

Then last year a very special girl, Neta, was all mine. She was just a hair away from expulsion when I asked to take her under my wing. I don't know how it came to me, but I decided that Shakespeare is just the thing for a student that is failing almost everything and is weak in English. And she made it, if just barely.

This year, last year's 12th grade homeroom staff started a 4 year journey with the freshmen, the 9th graders I blog about. I asked to again teach, with a real class with real grades, for just one year. I wanted to get to know the kids and the kids to get to know me. And by now I knew what would happen. I fell in love with them.

For the next 3 years I will travel with them until they graduate and go to the army and out into life. Yesterday they got their report cards and started their summer vacation. I can't wait to see them again next September.











I think what stays with everyone that has seen The Pacifier and The Sound of Music is how Maria teaches the von Trapp's music and how Lt. Wolfe (Vin Diesel) trains the Plummer kids in hand to hand combat, and how the kids change and blossom. But how many remember that no less remarkable is how the children changed Maria and the tough Navy SEAL? But I noticed. Because that's what happened to me.

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I'm not a very good teacher. I'm not even a real teacher. I don't know what my student learned from me, or if they learned anything, and if they did, how I did it. I don't know how many of "my kids" will remember me. Well, I suppose Neta will.

But I know this; I will remember them all.