Barbara+Martin

Common Core Standards. Those can really be depressing, if you work in a district like mine where poverty has to crane its neck really, really far even to look up at them, and the children of poverty often have to climb very, very high to even see the hope of achieving them. But more on this later when I am not so depressed thinking about how they can suck the life out of everyone involved in education, except perhaps those who write them.

Hola...aquí estoy...awaiting cookies the Tower Inn. It was so nice to see everyone and visit another anchor in my life. The snow falling outside the window and shadows walking outside among the moving headlights. Very romantic. Before I write anything related to our Summer Writing Institute, core standards, teacher research, or everything's an argument, let me just say a few things here tonight while my thigh burns in pain. The music tonight brings me to a place long ago and far away, and I hear only nostalgia coming from the ceiling tiles. It's a combination of the Eagles, Journey, Carol King, and other has-beens like them who gently swoon in terrific harmony to my sciatic nerve, reminding me how old I am. It is interesting that I don't know how to respond. There is no sense of depression because here I saw not one but four of my current or former high school students from Ypsilanti. They all make me feel young, beautiful, and joyful to be a part of their lives. On the other hand, if I sit here much longer, I won't be able to do much but hobble to the car. Behind me the waitress assaults a creme brulée with her torch and Karen watches her dessert being welded. I am jealous, because i foolishly ordered chocolate chip cookies and milk, assuming everything was going to be homemade. I like my gastrointestinal sins to be worth their weight in gold, and this one isn't. Hark! Who calls now from the ceiling tiles? It's not Lynard Skynard...and is clearly not Bostonesque. Badfinger, 1971....Wow! A quick internet search on a few of the words filed deeply away in //mi mente//, and I'm there! Does Badfinger below in the really has-been genre? Their song has over 300,000 hits. And now...What a Wonderful World. This will send me into a bit of depression, to be sure. I use it in many of the DVDs I create, and it's often the last song that runs before the credits. It's interesting to see Cassy sitting next to me thoughtfully producing text with some reflection while I drone on and on, scribbling about nothing in particular. I feel better doing something, anything, rather than waiting for my brain to produce something worthy of reading. What I really long for, in addition to being able to put pen to paper and make sense while doing so, is a summer day, in a summer wheat field, in the summer sun, astride a summer pony. I will sign off now, and hope that I didn't misspell creme brule, though I am sure I did.