Art Hill Red Maples in Full Glory
Weebles wobble, but they don’t fall down.
Against my better judgement, Anne went to school on Monday. She had a few wobbles, but she didn’t fall down. She has an appointment with the hand specialist, later today.
Pilobolus Program Cover
After Anne’s bicycle accident, I became the designated patron of the arts and accompanied Joanie to the Dance Saint Louis concert at the Touhill (still the best achievement of Missouri state government, in the thirty years that I have lived here) on Saturday night. The dance troupe Pilobolus, one of the season’s highlights, was in town from NYC. Named after a fungi, Pilobolus succeeds in showing some fun, with its nearly all guy cast.
The most fun piece was “All Is Not Lost”, which was originally created with the band OK Go. The stage is set as a split-screen. On the left-hand side is a large screen video projection of the dance that occurs on stage right. The camera is on the floor, pointed up and looking through a glass table top. This dance piece is like a Busby Berkeley-esque music video. Here is the OK Go music video, it shows only the camera’s POV, but adds more production values than were available on stage.
Sunday has been a quiet day. Anne is getting around better than she was yesterday, the drugs seem to be helping. The swelling in her pinky has gone down some, conversely her soon to be many bruises are starting to come in. While the drugs help with her pain and stiffness, they also make it difficult for her to concentrate on her school work. Speaking of school, whether or not she feels up for school tomorrow, is the big question ahead of us now.
I went for a bike on Sunday afternoon, all alone this time. The weather had already begun to shift from Saturday’s record high to Monday’s expected freeze. It was very windy today, something about the gales of November coming early. I kept getting leaves blown into my spokes, which would then proceed to clickety-clack away, a steady metronome for company, on a grey November afternoon.
Front Yard California Poppies
“Damn, I’m good!” That’s what Anne said, when I told her that she had in fact spelled correctly, the names of these two dinosaurs, struthiomimus and pachycephalosaurus. Later she added in all humility, that years ago our then six-year-old nephew Rey had to correct her pronunciation of these names. I had asked her to write them on a Post-It note for me, because as all long time readers of this little blog know, I can’t spell worth a damn.
It has been a tough week for Anne. It was report card week at school. This meant she had to additionally work two evenings, for parents and teachers conferences. Thursday night, she was so conked out on the couch that I could not wake the dead. Friday was an easier day; it was a professional development day. This meant that the students were excused from class and the teachers met to improve their educational skills. The subject of dinosaurs came up during these meetings.
The topic under discussion was complex text in reading. The teachers were covering the importance of complex text, when Anne spoke up, “Prior knowledge and subject matter interest often facilitates the use of complex text.” At this point the speaker said, “That’s a good point, save it for later.” Anne thought he had said, “That’s a good point, say it louder.” So she repeated herself, “PRIOR KNOWLEDGE AND SUBJECT MATTER INTEREST …” In Anne’s defense, all the teachers at her table had also thought that the speaker had said, say it louder too. Eventually though, Anne was able to complete her point, “Many children are so interested in dinosaurs that they learn complex words like struthiomimus and pachycephalosaurus.” The crowd laughed at the introduction of this vocabulary and the speaker asked if she knew how to spell those words, but he thought better of this implied dare and moved the discussion onward, smart man.
Raggedy Anne at Point Iroquois Lighthouse
I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me. – Stuart Smalley
I took this picture with the afore thought of using it to write about Anne. I uploaded it when she began her current long-term substitute position, anticipating a major meltdown. I post it now, because I am married to a super heroine, albeit one with unusual super powers. “Stupid”, was her word, but I think that different is more accurate. She has not failed, but rather is thriving.
Anne is settling in well with her fourth grade long-term substitute assignment. She successfully navigated last week’s field trip to the Arch. No child left behind and a whole lot of great education came to pass. This post centers about an incident that occurred in a subsequent teacher’s meeting, between Anne and the other three fourth grade teachers.
Long term friends and certainly relatives should be familiar with Anne’s proclivity with prime numbers. Apparently this talent also extends to her ability to recite from memory obscure, eleven character alpha-numeric passwords. Anne and the other three teachers were meeting and needed to access a password protected file. Much to the amazement of her co-workers, Anne was able to recite said password from memory.
Anne gave her kids a quiz on the explorers section that they have been working on in social studies. One of the questions asked the students, “Which continent was Marco Polo born on?” The correct answer was Europe, but a distressingly large number of the pupils answered Italy. She later decided that either they misunderstood the question, or they didn’t read it very carefully. I say it is better to be in country than to be in continent.
Field Trip to the Arch
Anne took her fourth grade class to the Arch on Tuesday. They rode downtown by school bus to the old courthouse. There they got a dose of history, thanks to the National Park Service. They walked from the courthouse down to the Arch. You have to walk over I-70 to do this. The kids took the opportunity to with raised arms imitate the pulling of a cord to get the desired response from the passing semis. They were quite successful at this. At the Arch, the class went downstairs to the museum. After a seemingly endless bathroom break, involving Dyson hand-dryers, Anne got her students on to their main lesson.
This field trip was part of the social studies subject. The class is studying Native Americans, mapping and explorers, cue Lewis and Clark. Where better to study these subjects than at the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, the gateway to the west. Afterwards, the kids got to run around the base of the Arch a bit, before the buses picked them up on old Wharf Street, down by the river. Unlike in her dream, Anne did not lose a single child. She came home throughly exhausted though. As a school district taxpayer, I feel that I have totally gotten my money’s worth out of this field trip.
One of Anne’s Many Beach Sunset
The picture with this post is another one of Anne’s cabin sunsets. She took a million of them. This is fast becoming, with some luck and maybe some inadvertent repetition, a weekly series. This promise is similar to my bi-weekly political diatribe promise. Except the promise of a cabin sunset a week is a minimum, while the political rants are a maximum. I’m good on sunsets for the week, but I’m only at half of quota on political rants. Hey, isn’t there another debate tonight? I think so, the battle of the understudies, Biden versus Ryan. Stay tuned tomorrow.
I raved about my work this morning so much that I didn’t get to tell you about Anne’s day. Wednesday, the fourth grade ran their first ever farmer’s market. The school has a gardener that manages the garden, teaches nutrition and generally tries to connect these urban students to where their food really comes from. This being harvest season, it was time to pick some crops, bring them to market and sell them. Anne brought home tomatoes and rosemary.
Anne got to meet some of the parents of the children in her class. She’ll meet them more formally later this month, at parents-teachers night. One of the mothers offered Anne a sort of complement, saying that her child had told her that Mrs R. was kind of hard. At this point in our dinnertime conversation, I had to interrupt. Anne is hard? No way, Pooh is plush. This brought a smile to my wife.