bits and English Lit.

If we all were just honest with each other, we would all admit that I am a strange choice for a teacher of English. I certainly don't look the part. When people see me, I am sure they don't think, "yup, there goes an english teacher." I actually see that as one of my strengths as a teacher... I call it... "approachable." I fly under the radar.

I don't wear glasses.
I am not top bald.
I don't have a large goiterish adam's apple.
I don't smoke a pipe.
I can't cross my legs when I sit, leading to a complete malformation of correct english teacher posture.
I am in no way bookish looking.
I am not quiet... just ask my laugh.
I DO have a tweed jacket with elbow pads though!! (score one for me!)
I don't have a great memory for memorizing passages of literature or poetry.
And.... well,

I play video games.

Yup, sure do. I love em. I guess that pretty much seals my fate right there.

I remember when my Dad brought home our first video game... "Zork." A completely word based exploration game, I played it for hours. I remember him bringing home the scripts printed out on reems of dot matrix printer paper. Then more games would come. An Atari. A commodore 64, a 128, I loved them. So did he. Our friends up the road got an Intellivision. We played SNAFU for hours. I grew up with these games. I actually feel so much more a part of that culture than the kids that I teach now. I was there for the birth man! I watched the games grow up into what they are!

I just brought home Soul Calibur 5 tonight. It released today. I was on the top 100 best players in North America list for Soul Calibur 4 for a very short time. I am not a passive player of these things. I don't spend hours on them like I used to as a kid though. I just can't, physically and psychologically. I do have other things to do.

There was, and still is something that draws me to these games. They meant exploration. Reaching out into new space. I always needed to find out what was behind the next door. What was in the mailbox on the North side of the house. (Zork reference for those not able to keep up...) I am certainly more than these video games. I am a damn good English teacher. I am proud of being a good father. I hike all the time and I read Thoreau. And... I play Skyrim and Soul Calibur and eagerly...itchingly, am awaiting the release of Diablo 3. Ah... Tyrael, you coy little arch-angel.

db

bright and shiny

I showed Henry and Nora where to find Orion tonight. The stars are beautiful in the winter, one of the blessings of the cold.

For those who don't know, Orion's belt is the three prominent stars in a slightly diagonal line near the center, top of the picture.

The Brothers

Its funny. I have taken to taking a couple of back up pictures throughout the day, just in case I don't get the one I want later on. Tonight we visited with some of Jenny's friends in New Hampshire. They were great, actually, it was a really enjoyable evening, and for me to say that about being around people I don't really know, its really saying something.

At any rate, I thought that I would take my camera and take some sort of group picture, but I kinda wimped out. So, what you have are my two kitties, Saul and Ramses, taken earlier this morning. They are brothers given to me by a former student... Tory. I love em. They are incredibly friendly. Nora seriously used to drag Ramses around by the head. She would put him in her stroller and push him around the house. They are just loving sweet cats. They only have two drawbacks:

1. For some reason they eat small wires. The kind of thing that connects "remote control" kids cars to the handset... headphone wires etc. Actually, one of them ate right through the wire on a $100 set of bose headphones that I had. Not a good day.

2. They lick. Do other people's cats lick? I have never known cats to lick, but as soon as you start petting either of them, they immediately try to lick you back........and....... I kind of like it..... yeah I said that. They have these dry little tongues. I don't know.

They are sweet guys. I really couldn't ask for better kitties. They now sleep on our bed, right next to each other. We have really lucked out pet-wise. All of our pets have been really well behaved and sweet tempered.

purrrr

db

In the quiet

When one has lived a long time alone,
and the hermit thrush calls and there is an answer,
and the bullfrog, head half out of water utters
the cantellations he sang in his first spring
and the snake lowers himself over the threshold
and creeps away among the stones, one sees,
they all live to mate with their kind, and one knows,
after a long time of solitude, after the many steps taken
away from one's kind toward these other kingdoms,
the hard prayer inside one's own singing,
is to come back, if one can, to one's own,
a world almost lost, in the exile that deepens
when one has lived a long time alone.

Galway Kinnel

They ate Robin's Minstrels...

It was all about the middle ages, choral singing and mutli-course eating of food tonight. Jenny and I went to the Madrigal Dinner. I love this thing so much. I can't quite convey how professional the singing is. I will tell you that there is nothing really like it. It doesn't hurt to personally know about every third kid up there either. It was a beautiful night. Even the chicken was good.

I wish I could have recorded how amazing the singing really was. It is shocking the ability that is brought out in these kids. But, seeing as how even the pictures that I took were against the rules, I guess actually taping the thing would have been a bit too far. At any rate... if any of you performers are reading this, I am completely moved by your ability.
db

Henry David

"Rise, free from care before the dawn and seek adventures." HDT

Have you ever read something and have it shoot like lightning through you. This quote from Henry David Thoreau did it for me. Earlier this year I was on facebook ( how about that for transcendentalism Mr. Thoreau?) and one of my good friends Jenn Eagan had it in her pictures. It was on one of those state funded plasticized signs that you can find dotting state parks... you know the ones.

I have always been a woods person. If you were to ask me right now: Ocean or Mountains? I will almost always choose mountains. There is something special about the hushed woods, deep pines, that smell, the brown needles on the ground. I remember another good Jen friend, Jennifer Goodheart, talking to me while walking around the campus of UMASS about native american remedies for stress. "Just breathe deep and walk through these pines Dave. Feel the needles brush against you and listen to how they rustle in the wind."

I have a direct affinity, I honestly believe a connection, to the woods. I need them. I need to be close to them, to know that they're there. It was one of the things that almost killed me when I moved to DC for a bit. I feel most at home with trees all around.

This quote hits me from many different angles "Rise, free from care before the dawn and seek adventures." I am a morning person. I feel lost if I don't get up consistently early and settle before my day. Like most other people, I assume, I need to shed these worries and breathe. As far as adventure... I think that that is a chapter in my life that I might dare to open this year.

"Rise, free from care before the dawn and seek adventures."

I think he had it right on many levels. I am taking his advice this year.

db

the things we keep

Henry has a small dresser upstairs that has a small top drawer that we affectionately titled Henry's "special" drawer. He puts anything that he holds "sacred" in it. I knew he put a lot of things in there, but this is the first time I have actually taken an actual inventory.
So, here is a privileged look into Henry's mind and heart.

kind of starting top left...

1. a bag containing the shell of a cicada, and the shell of a seapurse
2. 6 various leggo pieces including a bright yellow, highly valued satellite dish
3. a baseball keychain
4. Nora's green squinky ring
5. a blue sparkly see-through mesh bag
6. various pipe cleaners
7. rolls of caps
8. a magic trick finger guillotine
9. A spider man watch
10. a cub scout bear paw bead holder
11. a squishy rubber skate
12. a pink pompom and two small blue pom poms.
13. a pokemon card
14. two cardboard disks, one with a chicken leg on it, and one with a bagel
15. a squishy green dinosaur
16. a green chaotic card
17. a schlech tag
18. a green lantern plastic bracelet
19. a sparkly piece of pipe cleaner
20. a collectable star wars trading card
21. a plastic sponge bob soccer figurine
22. three unknown drawings.
23. a paper with an "n" written on it standing for "knut" that Henry created after my reading Harry Potter to him.
24. a foam airplane
25. a bobcat badge award card
26. a soap box derby liscence
27. a clone wars action figure advertisement
28. a tag from a stuffed animal "malaria" microbe
29. a tag from a stuffed animal "black death" microbe. (he sleeps with these every night)
30. a jose guervo shiny purple plastic piece
31. one ripped off googley eye.
32. safety glasses
33. a squishy orange skeleton
34. a ginger bread man commemorative pocket watch
35. a baby jabba the hut figurine
36. a purple top
37. an orange cricket
38. a "who's book" book plate
39. a green frog ring
40. a black bat ring
41. a fake penny
42. a real penny
43. 3 plastic gold coins
44. a cat's eye marble
45. a plastic superball with a spider inside
46. a piece of play dough made to look like a split watermellon
47. a red dolphin flashlight
48. a blue plastic flashlight
49. a star trek flashlight that lights up red
50. a blue plastic frog
51. onw small magnifying glass
52. one larger magnifying glass
53. two green spider rings
54. three orange spider rings
55. one purple spider ring
56. 9 black spider rings
57. 6 black rubber spiders
58. one green plastic spider
59. one black broken insect leg
60. an amber necklace with a real bee inside it
61. a plastic necklace with a real spider inside of it
62. 3 snake finger puppets
63. three blue and one white dice
64. a black handle head
65. a plastic sticker ruby
66. a crosscut of an amethyst geode
67. a large blue sticky gem.
68. a nerf dart
69. a commemorative star trek blue flashlight
70. an orange plastic cockroach
71. a black plastic beetle
72. 3 bits of neon pink putty
73. a piece of clear glass
74. a clear sticky gem
75. a piece of clear quartz
76. a plastic silver coin
77. a pistachio in its shell
78. a sunflower seed in its shell
79. a wolf kerchief holder
80. a piece of a sea shell
81. a cardboard half circle with a battle axe on it
82. 2 amber sticky gems
83. two clear sticky gems
84. a black and green swirled rock
85. a squishy green alien
86. my old car key
87. a flattened penny
88. a highly annoying beetle clicker toy
89. an orange piece of paper
90. a grey piece of paper with the cryptically written W and 2 partially recognizable
91. a green star wars action figures light saber
92. Cad Bane's hat
93. what is, I believe, a storm trooper action figures laser blaster
94. Han solo's laser blaster
95. an amethyst sticky gem.
96, just realized I missed the three tool looking things that are actually hammers a files for unearthing things buried in sand and rock.

And there we have it. Henry's treasure trove.
I am proud.

db