Elementary, My Dear

Posted on March 6, 2016 by RegenAxe

“But what you don’t understand Mrs. R, is that I really don’t like math… It’s not rocket science… Besides, I’m going to be an astronaut.” It is hard to argue with a second grader, especially after he has made such a convincing case. Still, you have to try. Anne is nearing the end of her eleven-week gig as a long-term sub / math teacher, just two more weeks to go and in case you were wondering, she is counting every single day. She has been really working her butt off on this assignment, with long hours at school and then mountains of work at home. She had last Friday off, because it was a professional development day, but she still went to school to work on report cards, even though she won’t get paid for it. This week’s agenda includes both report cards and fractions and next week features parent-teachers meetings, which hopefully she will get paid for, because I’m sure she’ll earn it.

Lego Andy Warhol

On Saturday, we walked over to the elementary school for a pancake breakfast fundraiser. It was the first time that I have ever been in the new school. Built on the site of our sons’ old Chaney Elementary, the new building hadn’t been completed until they had moved on. The new school is so airy and bright, much nicer than what our kids had. Lending to this perception, this year’s school as a museum is all about pop art, featuring legends such as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein and new artists like the Australian team, Pip & Pop. The new buildings, the creative new programs are also in part due to Anne’s efforts. Her volunteer work campaigning for new school bond issues and tax levies have helped to pay for all of these improvements. She was recognized for these efforts a few years back, when she was named Citizen of the Year by the school district.

Pip & Pop Under Black Light

Saturday afternoon, Anne was out canvassing for a new school tax levy. Prop Y will be voted on in April and is needed to maintain the current level of academic achievement, because in the ten years since our youngest son graduated from high school the district student population has grown by almost 40%. Maplewood has become a destination district. At the breakfast, one of Anne’s substitute friends remarked on how brave she must be to go door-to-door and afterwards I had to ask if she would have a partner, which she did. In past campaigns there has been violence and in the current political climate, what with its penis jokes, civility has pretty much gone out the window. We were right to be concerned, because another female door knocker was greeted by an angry and completely naked man, who yelled that no f-ing way would he support the proposition and then slammed the door in her face, which afterwards she decided was a good thing.

Teetotaler: 4 Beer Guzzler: 2

Posted on June 20, 2015 by RegenAxe

Anne at the Tower Grove Farmers Market

As if there is any question, Anne won. What a day! We began with a bicycle ride through Forest Park and then Tower Grove Park. Tower Grove’s farmers market was going great guns. I wish that Alice and Chris could see it now. When we took them through it before, it was only the beginning of the season and it hadn’t really got going yet then. Today, there were wall-to-wall vendors, food trucks lining the front drive and the fountain was running. Meaning that any child that could, would get themselves soaked. Kids frolicking in this ancient fountain made this morning stop seem quite magical. It was more than hot enough for a swim today.

Après ride, we did a charity event for the school district’s house, Joe’s Place. This event, was one part trivia night, one part scavenger hunt and one part tests of skills. Overall, we didn’t do that well, but we had our moment and we had fun too. Mainly, we scavenged from one venue to the next, mostly bars. Each stop had its trivia questions and its test of skill and each spot was hosted by one of the many shops in Maplewood. The highlight stop was at the tea room, where Anne successfully guessed the name of all four tea samples that we tasted. Nelson was the judge there and he was frankly amazed. No one else had done that yet. I was less successful with the beer flight tastings, but it goes further. There were two throwing games. On the first one, only one teammate could toss and I threw and only scored one point, still tying for second at the time. On the second venue both of us could toss and Anne beat me there too, at better than 2:1. To add insult to injury, I had to do the dog biscuit challenge. The idea of this game was to maneuver a dog cookie from your forehead into your mouth. I failed, but few teams succeeded. We were team #35 and when I participated only three other teams had been successful. Still, it was all a lot of fun.

Kindergarten Kop

Posted on April 24, 2015 by RegenAxe

Australopithecus africanus

Anne spent this week dealing with small primates. She worked the Early Childhood Center. On Tuesday, she was in Kindergarten, where there were more than a few unruly children. She reported their deportment to their regular teacher, who decided to make an example of them and threw the book at them. On Wednesday, the teacher threw an art party, with snacks, for the “good” kids, those that Anne did not write-up. While those that were written up were given worksheets to do and forced to witness, but not allowed to participate in the other children’s merriment. Now there’s an object lesson for you. Yesterday, she was an ECC floater. When she tells me that she was a floater, I always envision her, face down in the water, with arms outstretched, doing the dead man’s float. Her day started out with a case of he said, he said, he said. Three boys had been involved in a shoving match on the bus ride into school. She straightened that incident out, at least to her own satisfaction. Later in the day, she heard a lot of noise coming from the girl’s bathroom and walked in on a case of she said, she said, she said. Two little girls were making bubbles using the soap dispenser. The sink counter was covered with soap and bubbles. A third little girl was trying to clean up the mess with paper towels, which she was throwing into the toilet. Anne cleaned off the sink counter, but decided that she doesn’t get paid enough to clean out the toilet. Later, she went looking for the poor janitor. Anne was walking them back to class, when their teacher showed up looking for them. Today, she didn’t have to work, but as is so often the case after spending time at ECC, she brought some of her work home with her. She has a sore throat now.

Don’t Feed the Plants!

Posted on April 19, 2015 by RegenAxe

Variscite in Google Earth

“Little Shop of Horrors” played at the high school last night. This is the first musical that they have performed in ten years, since Dave was a senior there. That show was “Godspell” and Dave was part of the crew. “Little Shop” was great! The singing was great! The cast was great! Major singing props to the Audrey sisters, Audrey (Jazmen Bell) and Audrey II (Natalee Clemons). A final shout out to Orin (Maxx Diebold) for stealing all his scenes, just don’t act like that in school. Oh wait, too late! Anne is going to the dentist this week, but probably won’t ask the dentist what he thinks of Orin. The play is set in a little flower shop in LA’s Skid Row. Dan lives in the flower district on the edge of Skid Row. Coincidence? I think not. Just, don’t feed the plants Dan.

You’ve got to have art
Lots and lots and lots of art
Oh, it’s fine to be a techie of course
But keep that old horse
Before the cart
First you’ve got to have art
– With apologies to “Damn Yankees”

Today was a rainy day. So, to make the day brighter, we decorated. We had already moved most of the furniture back into place, so today was all about throwing-up art onto our pristine new walls. By the end of the day, we hadn’t made a whole lot of tangible progress, we only hung one piece, the mask from Jay and Carl, but we laid a lot of groundwork. A key part of this was the framing of four new pieces. We still have three more to go though. One thing that I learned was that there may not be much of a difference in the appearance, between cheap frames and more expensive ones, but the more expensive ones are way easier to put together.

Signalize is a word. It is a verb. We saw it on a traffic sign today, which was basically telling us that if you can’t hack the frigging traffic, go to the other parking lot exit, which has been signalized. The traffic sign used signalize as an adjective, “For signalized intersection [go this way]”, which Anne said was a frigging gerund and I said what? Anne thought that a gerund is when you use a verb as an adjective, which was what the sign did, but actually it is when you use a verb as a noun. This led us to a discussion of frigging. Is it ever more than just a euphemism for the F-word? I guess not, because it comes from the Old English word frīgan, which means to love. OBTW, frig is the gerund for frigging. So, if you want to emphasize a point, without being too offensive, you could signalize it with frigging, like in “a frigging gerund”. Clear?

Smarter Than A Sixth Grader?

Posted on November 23, 2014 by RegenAxe

Autumn Colors Redux – More Reflected Tamaracks

Are you smarter than a sixth grader? As it turns out we were. Trivia Night last night was a gala party, with over two-hundred in attendance. This year’s MRH sixth grade field trip to Chicago was the night’s charity cause and in this one event two-thirds of the trip’s funds were raised. In addition to ten rounds of trivia, there were also raffles and auctions, all of which helped to bump up the night’s haul.

The first round of trivia really did ask the question, “Are you smarter than a sixth grader?” Ten video recorded sixth graders asked the questions. I thought that that was a cute touch, but we only did so-so on this round. That is to say, we missed a couple. The second round was all about mixing drinks and here we were flawless, go figure. The third round was a visual one. We had to guess the musical group from a picture of the cover art from one of their albums. The trick was that the cover art was rendered in Lego. We were perfect in this round too. Where we really fell down though was in the category of children’s literary classics, but are embarrassment was exceeded by those who should have known all of the answers, but actually did worse than us. We were better with advertising slogans and TV show themes then we were with literature. Although, we did really well in guessing who painted that famous painting. In the end, we finished in a mass tie for second. Just like in elementary school, there were no losers.

Today was a particularly wet and dreary day. I’m glad that not only did we get in a bicycle ride yesterday, but we also got the leaves raked. Our first round of leaf pickup is this week. The only thing of note that we did today, was to do the grocery shopping for Thanksgiving. Today was so un-photogenic that I’m reaching back several weeks to that beautiful day that we spent at Shaw Nature Reserve. I’ve already published one line of tamarack trees here. Today’s photo shows a neighboring line of tamaracks.

Teetering and Toddling

Posted on November 15, 2013 by RegenAxe

WARNING: Children Teetering and Toddling

As you can see, I have memorized this utterly useless piece of information long enough to pass a test question. I now intend to forget it forever. You’ve taught me nothing except how to cynically manipulate the system. Congratulations. – “Calvin and Hobbes”

I just had to get that “Calvin and Hobbes” crack in, because lately I have been spending way more time at Anne’s school than I normally do. Last weekend there was the pancake breakfast and last night there was a potluck dinner. If you feed me, I’ll show up. The potluck was billed as a taste of the world. This event turned out to be a promotion for the school district’s foreign language department. I felt a little out-of-place, because this event seemed primarily focused on interesting parents in having their children take language classes and we no longer have kids in the district. But that was all on me, because everyone there was welcoming, especially to Anne. Everyone loves Anne.

Being a potluck, we were asked to bring an international dish. Kudos to whoever decided to buck the trend and brought Northern Iowan Jell-O and marshmallow salad. It looked hideous, but isn’t that what you are really going for with this dish? We brought Mouse’s Yassa Poulet, a Senegalese dish that features chicken, mountains of onions and a take no prisoners’ hot sauce. Anne did all the cooking and had the foresight to set aside a little, so that tonight, we can have réchauffé. That is French for leftovers.

After the meal was the program. It started out with about a dozen parents from different nationalities coming forward and talking about themselves, in their native tongue. Next was shown a YouTube video, “What is 21st century education?” Then the four school principals each spoke about what they and their curriculum are doing to foster language, understanding and diversity. I liked the high school principle’s story the best. He started out as a professional basketball player, in Argentina. When he started, he couldn’t speak a word of Spanish. He didn’t even know how much the contract that he had signed paid him. In between his current gig and basketball, he was a Spanish teacher. The evening was closed out with music from an Andean music group, where one of the band members was also a school parent.

On a related topic, I learned this week that the one universal word in human language is “huh”, as in, “Huh?” or “Huh.” Enough said. I’m so glad that we all understand ourselves about this now. One final item, the school district has just rolled out a new substitute scheduling website, with more success than Obamacare. Anne has lots of new jobs now. In fact on one day, she got five requests for her services. Like I said before, everyone loves Anne.