The Daily News

1  Thenkyew, Thenkyew, Thenkyew for all the cards and letters re: yesterday’s DN about Pho. Clearly food is a major thing, and GOOD food is a MAJOR thing!

2  I never did get Pho yesterday. Phoils!

3  Ah, vell. I’ll probably get some in the next few days, because food is the deal, folks. You know it and I know it.

4  Here’s an easy one: If you were in seventh grade, and John McCain were running against Barack Obama, who would be the cooler candidate?

5  So essentially you should vote for McCain, because he’s been trying to get that back ever since.

6  M’bad.

7  Honestly.

8  Dood.

9   If John McCain and Barack Obama were your social studies teachers in high school, who would clearly be the better teacher?

10  I mentioned that to Helene last night and she said that McCain would be Chickenfoot.

11  Okay YB historians, chew on THAT one for a while.

12  “Chickenfoot” was a teacher who years ago had been a bit of a wimpy guy who suddenly began hanging out with administrators. He was just some regular teaching schlep like me, only within seconds of his having been hired, he began wearing suits, and making most people who met him wish to hang with others.

13  To be more precise, and to line him up with McCain, JUST personality-wise, absolutely no right-thinking person would feel comfortable with the guy.

14  For one thing, he blinked and twitched incessantly. That always seems to me to signal either an insecure person, or a terrible actor, at least in the mind of Michael Caine.

15  Drama Lesson # 1: John. When the camera is on you, avoid blinking. It makes you look like a guy who went through adolescence having been the victim of incessant ridicule.

16  So don’t blink.

17  Anyway, “Chickenfoot” became the guy in the grey suit who fast became the darling of the Administrators. They would welcome him like Lumiere, feather-dust his very being, and bring him into private lunches which included grapes, and something veggie in a cold tortilla.

18  The guy was cleary a butternosed apple polisher, so in the ESUHSD his rise was meteoric.

19  But he always had this REALLY quirky side, the stuff that the Burrito Gang recognized instantly, that sort of guy who was all about rules and enforcement, and haughty suits.

20  The sort of guy who went through life running from wedgies.

21  Anyway, “Chickenfoot” lasted a coupla years when suddenly he disappeared with nobody saying a word about what had happened.

22  I heard he got busted for giving Cub Scouts wedgies, but who knows?

23  Anyway, I thought it was pretty astute of Helene to conclude that about one of our candidates.

24  To give a little support McCain’s way, Sarah Palin looks to me like a kick-in-the pants.

25  She doesn’t have that weird-ass quirkiness, the eye-blinking countenance, nor any other sort of social concerns. She’s ridiculous, but she’s a helluva good ol’ gal. Even I get drawn in by her boushit, at least until she opens her mouth.

26  But you’d ELECT her, just because where she might be different from you on the core “economic” issues,

17  But really, in terms of this election, who is cooler?

18  Never mind anything political, Most voters aren’t interested in that.

19  Bottom line: who’s cooler?

20  Who got game?

21  Because the ones who have game, and I’ll include Sarah in that one, in fact, she’s got big game, but really, who got game?

22  I see a landslide on the horizon.

23  And not a small one.

24  Anyway, I gotta slow down for the morning.

25  I need rest. I honestly was trying to remain apolitical, and wanted simply to watch these guys and base their game solely on cool.

26  Not because I think it’s even worth one scond.

27  But because I truly think more people will vote on hairstyles or no cool than they would on anything resembling substance.

28  If people would stop worrying about the issues and focus on this as a popularity contest, the way they were TRAINED since birth, the right guy would get elected.

29  …in a Landslide.

30  Aight then, just some observations from a guy who is watching election coverage from the eyes of the “libral” media.

31  Oh yeah. One more thing: when people are broke, nobody wants to hear a guy saying, “Neener neener neener, you hung out with people with cooties!”

32  Yeesh.

33  A fidgety, nervous weird guy would never win in seventh grade.

34  My guess is that he won’t win this time either.

35  Gottago. Just some really intellectual stuff from a guy who sees firsthand how Joe Sixpack and Joe the Plumber vote.

36  Gonna be fun.

37  Peace.

~H~

 

 

The Daily News

                                          

1  Yeehaw, it’s Tuesdeeeeeeee!!!

2   Ya don’t hear that one very often now, do ya?

3   Ah, I’ve been a bit too hard on Tuesday over the years.

4   I just thought I’d give a little rootin’ tootin’ for the day, just once, you know?

5   Must be tough being the least important day of the week.

6   Every other day has something attached to it.

7   Monday night even has fame for sporting Monday Night Football, as though it works one tenth as hard as Sunday in the catergory.

8  Tuesday. Nuthin’.

9  Wednesday. Hump Day, and fast becoming my favorite day of the week ‘cuz I get off at 11:55, by and large.

10 Thursday. California. The weekend has officially begun. Plus if you’re like me, at the end of Thursday you’re burnt. So yeah, go in and stretch that one into the beginning of the weekend. I mean on every Thursday, tomorrow’s Friday.

11  Friday has it’s own letters; THAT’S how incredible Friday is.

12  Saturday is just Saturday. Lawns bein’ mowed. Dogs barkin’. Yard work. Barbecues. Saturday Night. It’s a glam day.

13  Sunday. The day of rest. Even God rested on Sunday. Sunday Brunch. Football. Barbecues.

14  Monday, ah nobody likes it but you KNOW that going in. But Tuesday is SNEAKY. You spend all that time dreading Monday, and it goes by in a flash, but Tuesday is always waiting around the corner with a garbage can lid, or a pie.

15  Either way, you’re gonna run smack into one or the other.

16  But just for today, I’m gonna give Tuesday a break, even though if you eliminated Tuesdays altogether, you’d have Monday and then you’d be going right over the hump.

17  If they let Californians run stuff, nothing would ever get done.

18  I’m tellin’ ya.

19  Well, I have corn to plow. I’ll keep it short today.

20  Y’all have a genteel Tuesday.

21  Look at the clouds and think about stuff. Let a warm breeze slap you around a little.

22  Take the garbage can lid in stride.

23  Or the pie.

24  It’s only a pie.

25  Live life, love life.

26  Peace.

~H~

 

 

 

The Daily News

1  At the risk of sounding as though I’m boasting, I need to share a couple of more features to The Cathedral, a name I decided to bestow upon my new classroom. I’ve already talked of the high ceilings and large, cathedral window.

2  Even at YB, Peace 61 was the name of my portable, which had the more military handle P-6I. I always loved the funkiness of Peace 61. I loved that when you walked across the rather planky floor, that books might fall off shelves each time the floor would shift, which was usually with every other step.

3  I loved the fact that I could control the temperature pretty easily as opposed to anywhere in the Theatre building.

4  I loved that it was on a corner, and that it was the only room with a view on the entire campus. It looked out on the little park setting, with a green lawn, trees, and if there was ever a decent rain, a small, glistening lake.

5  But heaven forbid if a student would walk in after having stepped on wet grass on a rainy day. Or what years of mud and dirt being tramped into the room had done to the carpet. I never got the feeling that the custodians cleaned the carpets deep enough, and heaven forbid they should ever use carpet shampoo for summer purification.

6  I recall a few times in the last years when Trami would walk in early in the morning and say, “Hey H! Your room smells!”

7  This would naturally become a mortifying piece of news, because I had no idea if maybe my pants might have sat in the washer all night and acquired that sour smell, or if perhaps I had accidentally hit the wet grass, or exactly WHAT that meant, but you don’t want to have a smelly room. Ever.

8  I would sheepishly ask, “What does it smell like?”

9  “I’m not sure. It smells like poop.”

10

                                            

 

11  Now I don’t know about you, but that’s probably the very LAST thing you want to know about your room. No matter what. You just don’t.

12  Trami would usually give me an out: “I think it’s coming through the ventillation system. But it smells.”

13  The irony about that is that I love being clean. I love having my nails short, and even when we would get on our hands and knees and scrub the Theatre, I would always have a not-so-hidden bottle of Pert shampoo in one of the sliding drawers in the boys’ dressing room. I would constantly wash my hands throughout the day.

14  I’m not germ-conscious, mind you. I just like being clean, that’s all. Playing guitar right after a shower is the best time to play guitar. If I ever play guitar, I like to wash my hands first, if possible. It was always an easy dash from Peace 61 to the boys’ dressing room.

15  But I digress.

16  Each time Trami would report the poop smell, I would open the window all the way, another perk of Peace 61. I had all sort of screwballs marching into that  room back in those days: stoners, leadership kids, goofballs, Love-Clubbers, jocks, drama dudes, and the list goes on, a virtual cross-section of everyone in the school. Who knows how that funk got in there except that it was a pretty high-traffic place?

17  We practiced dances out on the lawn at night, so I was always perplexed about what that smell was.

18  It usually calmed down, and I was usually pretty happy with the ventillation story, but man, you REALLY don’t want that happening, especially when it is ongoing.

19  Opening both windows at each end of the room usually resulted in a fresh breeze sweeping through the place, and the foul and filthy air would whisk out the window, across the basketball courts, and hopefully to Coalinga, where nobody would know the difference.

19  And Peace 61 would once again be ready to entertain the stoners, leadership kids, goofballs, etc.

20  So the change from Peace 61 to The Cathedral is like moving from a shanty town to the Waldorf.  You miss the earthiness of the park right outside the window, and the very fact that you have a window that opens, but everything else pales in comparison.

21  The desks are brand new, the carpet clean, the walls freshly painted, the central air absolutely perfect, and it has push-botton room shades that descend like the large screen in the Theatre. It has a small “smart cart” complete with a DVD-VHS, stereo speakers, and LCD projector, and a huge screen that pulls up like a window shade.

22  It also has sliding whiteboards, which I SHOULD have had when I moved to Peace 61. I was originally two doors down from Rocha, got moved to Peace 61 when the 300 building was being built, and was permanently removed from that building in a somewhat insulting fashion by Moser.

23  And it looks over the baseball and football fields, as well as the East Hills and mountains in the distance. I’m on the second floor.

24  On Friday I sat grading papers right after lunch, listening to some jazz, window shades up revealing the cumulous clouds and blue skies outside. I mused about how much I love the set-up, even remembering that on THREE different occasions this year, students walked in and said, “It smells nice in here!”

25  Revenge, they say, can be lusciously sweet.

26  But alas!

27  As Jerry Garcia would sing, when life looks like Easy Street there is danger at your door.

28  The bell rang for my final period of the day, a class with some awesomely mischievous but enjoyably goofy freshmen.

29  Freshmen don’t walk into classrooms. They “bound” in, like fairies with enormous feet and smelly shoes. They dress like the seven dwarfs, with floppy clothes and big ears. Their smiles of braces and crooked teeth make them endearing to an Old Brown Shoe who has witnessed the scene many, many times.

30  Friday afternoon, the bounded in then, and amid the noise, poking, and idiocy came a voice that must have been sent from Heaven: “It smells nice in here!”

31  I looked over the top of my glasses and smiled. I knew the lesson was to be intimidating because I knew they hadn’t done their reading. I was going to give them a quick warm-up assignment: answering a Comprehension Check at the end of the story.

32  That sobered them up pretty swiftly, and they KNEW they had a test later as well.

33  Weapons of Massive Instruction.

34  As the somber mood descended over the room, the students settled down, and I got up and silently swooped over them. It remained pretty quiet, and I had them, and they knew it.

35  Finally I walked past this one kid who always had a sly look on his face, and who was always thinking. I moved past him, helped a few kids with their fidgeting, and walked back to the front of the room.

36  The kid, whose name is Jonathan, called me over:

37  “Hey Mr. Harrington. Come here!”

38  I didn’t say a word.I put on my best Paul Newman old-guy face. I glanced over my glasses. “Yes?”

39  “You smell like updaug.”

 

40  This was horrid. Had he heard? He clipped me in the knees. I began to crumble. My entire universe began falling in . The Cathedral walls crumbled all around me. I hesitatingly looked with certain fear into his Neumanesque face.

41  “What’s updaug?”

42                                                                

43  “Not much. Wassup wid u, dawg?” He broke into a huge smile, and I burst out laughing.

44  Sometimes, boy, I gottttta tellya. He had NO idea.

45  Or the beautiful part is, he probably did.

46  Humility comes to us in shades and masques.

47  Welcome to October.

48  Peace.

~H~

www.xanga.com/bharrington

 

 

 

 

 

The Daily News

 

1   Ah, America!

2   It was named after an Italian for goodness sakes. I love that.

3  The amazing thing about this year is that I’m discovering America.

4   And like the immortal Billy Pilgrim from Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, I’ve come unstuck in time.

5  For example, I decided that it was important that include the “assimilation” of Native Americans into my American Lit class.

6  I showed a video of how the Columbus expeditions introduced the annhilation of an entire nation of people on the planet, save the few who still claim to be descendants of the Taino or the Arawak nations that once roamed freely over the land that has become America.

7  And at the same time, I’m descended from the Genovese, placing me in the same blood range as Columbus, an Italian navigator originally from Genoa, Italy. My ancestors are from Genoa, so all my life, Columbus Day has come to mean a celebration of my Italian heritage.

8  I’m now convinced that the guy who burst into San Jose City Hall on March 8, 2001, and who proceeded to take a baseball bat to a statue of Columbus might have had a good point, even though that bat might as well have banged into my own left temple, rattling my skull into the proverbial smitereens.

9  I’m now thoroughly convinced that Columbus was a not-so-nice fellow who pillaged, raped, and murdered the Taino nation, at times turning them into dog food at best, and starting them on fire at worst. He also saw to it that people could make money by selling  many of them into slavery and selling the wimminz for profits so exorbitant that they succeeded in knocking gold directly out of first place.

10  I KNOW, I KNOW. A week ago I didn’t know, but research has pretty much shown this is exactly what went down, beginning on C-boy’s second voyage.

11  So I thought I’d interrupt the Italian party hats and flowing bottles of dry Chianti and bring the story to my students, who had only their piss-poor literature books to bring the Euro-centric news to the others.

12  And so, on this important voyage of discovery, I shall throw Columbus Day over my shoulder, lest I become a pillar of salt.

13  Native Americans I’ll keep. I feel they are sacred. Not altogether nice, but certainly sacred on these shores, which are rightfully theirs.

14  And I won’t throw away my Italian party hats, nor the flowing bottles of dry Chianti either.

15 Those things I also consider sacred.

16  But some other time.

17  But I’ve also reached a precipice.

18  If we come unstuck in time, where might we wind up tomorrow?

19  Truth be told, that’s the beauty of discovering America.

20  I’m thinking of putting a Wheel of Fortune in my classroom and every Friday having a student spin it.

21  It will have a bunch of categories, much like Jeopardy.

22  Wherever it stops will be the piece of America we will discover next. Might be the 40′s, for example, and it would have a picture of Bogart as Ric. Might be Poe. Might be Sports. Might be Folk/Rock. Might be Poets.  Might be Immigration, which would steer the spinner to a dart board with the names Irish, Italian, Mexican, African, Chinese, Vietnamese, White, etc.

23  The sole purpose might be to discover America before the end of the year, as we know it.

24  Just spinning my wheels here on a blustery Friday afternoon.

25  Our next stop is going to be legends, ghosts, and Edgar Allan Poe. It will culminate in the very fabulous Heidi stories on Halloween, probably in the school’s theatre.

26  Poe is as American as Pepperidge Farm.

27  It could be a fun discovery. Discovery through collage rather than chronology.

28  And on Fridays, I might introduce my classes to things that I think are America: Mom, baseball, apple pie, and watching ridiculously stupid things on teevee.

29  Meanwhile, it remains our place, our country, our town.

30  Despite it all, I love the place. Always will.

31  You have a wonderful weekend. Say hi to your Mom, watch a baseball game, eat some apple pie, and lie back, there’s no shortage of stupid things on teevee.

32  Peace.

~H~

www.xanga.com/bharrington

Weekend bonus:

America at its Best: Simon and Garfunkel from The Concert in Central Park

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7k7KcRKZiA&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dau2_Lt8pbM&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCbOEZ8c8dM

 

 

 

 

 

The Daily News

1  Let’s face it.

2  We’re in a <depression>.

3  <whisper, whisper>

4  I have to think back to my post-college days when I lived a pretty poor existence, and I have to remind myself how I got by then: I kept working hard and grew my own gardens, grew my own carrots, grew my own pot, and grew my own integrity.

5  I’m absolutely astonished at the economy.

6  I won’t get the slightest bit political, because everyone is suddenly confused, worried, and looking for hope.

7  I didn’t really notice it until I hit my sanctuary, Save Mart, on the way home yesterday.

8  It isn’t always Save Mart, by the way. It’s usually the place I decide to stop and pick out a few late-afternoon groceries on the way home.

9  The first thing I noticed was that most other shopping carts had WAY fewer items in them than they normally do.

10  For the most part, I don’t peer into other peoples’ lives. I still don’t know half my neighbors’ names, for example. If I know people it’s a little different because life’s a village, but with people I don’t know, I prefer not knowing much about them.

11  But I DO look into other peoples’ shopping carts to see how they’re eating. It never ceases to amaze me how many unhealthy choices people make. I can’t help it. When I’m standing in line to pay for groceries, I always give sideways glances into other people’s shopping carts, and by association, into their lives.

12  I always avoid buying too many unhealthy things because I’m always afraid I might run into someone who would spread the word that I bought a basket of Froot Loops and gravy. I once ran into a former student at Longs Drugs. I had a bottle of vodka and some soda crackers in my cart. The guy asked me how I was doing. I just smiled, looked into my cart, and looked back up. He got it.

13  Anyway, I saw everyone shopping yesterday and noticed one thing: at the checkout line, people were smiling at babies, laughing, and acting reasonably normal. I thought it was a pretty nice testament to the human spirit.

14  I had just returned from an afternoon meeting in which teachers had heard about possibly not being paid in the coming months. These were many of the same people who remained grading papers last night until 7 p.m. Worry lines and hesitant comments were the order of the day at the meeting.

15  They talked not of teaching strategies, but of how many students were having trouble concentrating on their work because they were worried about things. Fancy that. Teachers putting students before their own concerns. Who knew?

16  Parents had been having conversations about foreclosures, so the students worried that they might be moving in the next few months. The teachers said that the students weren’t concerned about lessons so much as if they were going to be moving sometime soon due to hard times.

17  In Save Mart, I saw people keeping tremendously strong and happy. I saw mom’s with three kids and workers looking at babies and smiling.

18  But for the first time in my entire life, it felt as though there was an underlying worry out there that was completely unspoken. And yet, I saw an interesting spirit and strength I hadn’t seen since I had gone through a period of struggle when I had first gotten out of college.

20  We struggled back then because jobs were scarce and money almost non-existent.

21  I worked ten hours a day six days a week, grew my own food, and bicycled whenever I could.

22  I shopped at a cannery and stocked up on soy, beans, rice, powdered milk and simple products, much of it dairy in nature. If I HAD enough money, I could afford milk. I knew that if I had milk, cheese, bread, butter and eggs that I could live pretty well.

23  It takes a worried, worried man to sing a worried, worried song. I’m worried now, but I won’t be worried long.

24  We also grew huge gardens and shared cucumbers, tomatoes, lettuce, onions, etc. Sometimes we’d live half the summer on tomato and onion sandwiches, which cost all of a loaf of bread. We’d also have people come over for a potluck, and sit on logs out back, have a fire, play guitar, enjoy some cheap wine, and sing under the stars.

25  In a funny sort of way, when everyone was broke, life was richer in many ways. Yes, it was a struggle, but it was also lives filled with laughter, song, and sincere friendships. Food was shared, and there was a spirit of helping one another, and laughing and growing along the way.

26  It was paycheck to paycheck, but everyone worked wherever and whenever they could, and we simply cut out extravagances.

27  We didn’t know if there was a recession or anything. We struggled and worked hard to make ends meet.

28  Ironically, last month I received the largest paycheck of my life.

29  Did I invest it, save it, or tuck it away for a rainy day?

30  Of course not. I spent it like the proverbial drunken sailor.

31  And when my most recent check came in, there was a significant drop in pay. A raise that was supposed to have come in never made it. I also had lost ten working days’ pay when I stopped doing activities. AND I had them squirrel extra money away for me for two months in the summer. Add that all up and it was quite a drop.

32  Nothing I couldn’t handle, but at the meeting sat a few doom-and-gloomers, and the whisper around the water cooler was that we might not be paid, that other school districts had invested in some of the banks that have failed, and that there was literally zero monies in education right now.

33  That’s just teachers and students during these worried times. And the amazing thing is that I left school last night at around 7 p.m. Others remained late, because they were grading papers and working on lesson plans for students who might not even be there tomorrow.

34  Between that and the people in the supermarket, and everywhere on the news, I stared at a really uncertain future for the first time in my life. Personally I know that if things get worse, I am willing to take a second job, but I’ve now gone beyond pontificating about WHO is to blame for this very real crisis.

35  It’s easy to say that all are punished, but another side of me is outraged that people who should have been watching over this failed on a scale that is beyond all comprehension.

36  I guess the reason I bring up the people in Save Mart is that I also saw a human spirit that seemed to go back many years. I saw little children and old people, working people and people who are struggling, yet they all had smiles and looks that showed that somehow, we could all work through it.

37  We have to. Right now I don’t see things getting too much better, but I also know that people are fighters, and I’m getting ready to prepare for one of the most challenging times ever.

38  I do place the blame squarely on the shoulders of politicians and our trusted bankers and economists, of the people in whom we placed our trust. But at this point, placing blame seems a waste of the human spirit. Crying and pointing fingers is fruitless and a waste of time.

39  Bracing for a hard winter, but one that will hopefully fill our lives with things more meaningful than material things might become the order of the day in the coming years.

40  Time to dig in, for our children’s sake. Time to have pot lucks, songs, long days and laughter with family and friends once more. Family and friends cost nothing, and laughter is pure.

41  Let’s drink to the hard working people. Raise a glass to the common foot soldier. Raise a glass to his wife and his children.

42  Let’s drink to the salt of the earth.

43  Keep fighting.

44  Live life, love life.

45  Eat a pickle. Ride a motorsickle.

46  Peace.

~H~

www.xanga.com/bharrington

 

 

The Daily News

http://www.artsopolis.com/

1  Yours for the taking.

2   Ah, the THEATUH.

3   Luv you, dahlings!

 

4  Muuuuuuuwahhhhhh!

5  It’s showtime folks.

6  First off, I’d like to thank Evelyn of Evelyn fame for sending us all a link to 100 free shows, beginning last week, but really, beginning tonight! Thanks in large part to this fun link, you can get out and enjoy some THEATUH for the next few weeks, and if you’re pretty slick, for free!

7  Here’s the link:

http://www.theatrebayarea.org/tix/fnot_home.jsp

 

8  Ya gotta LOVE it.

9  Each Wednesday you could get tix, so naturally I’m all over this like white on wool. Thanks Evelyn; with tough times happening everywhere, it’s an awesome deal.

10  While we’re on the subject of theatre, be sure to get out to see our own Angie Higgins in Henry James’ classic The Turn of the Screw this weekend at the Broadway West Theatre Company in Fremont. This is closing weekend, so get there early.  Broadway West is located at 4000 B-Bay St. in Fremont, call 510.683.9218 for ticket info. Shows are tomorrow night at 8 p.m. $15, and Friday and Saturday nights, also at 8 p.m., $22. They have a Sunday matinee at 1 p.m. as well. The reviews have been glittering, but with Angie in there, what do you expect?

11  And here’s the AWESOME review I read recently in the Fremont Tri-City Voice:

http://www.tricityvoice.com/articlefiledisplay.php?issue=2008-09-17&file=The%20Turn%20of%20the%20Screw.txt

12  For a little more information, you could also go to the Broadway West website, listed here:

http://www.broadwaywest.org/

13  And the Merc News has furbished directions for the totally inept:

http://events.mercurynews.com/fremont-ca/venues/show/335140-broadway-west-theatre

14  Ya gotta love it. And if you want further accolades for the show proper, check this review out by the venerable W. Fred Crow of the Milpitas Post:

http://www.themilpitaspost.com/arts/ci_10489661

15  It’s an eary start for theatre season, but there’s a lot more. Check out tomorrow’s Merc News while it’s still paper; they have some GREAT shows in the Eye.

16  Good to see.

17  I’d like to send a big shout out to both Evelyn and Angie for sending this stuff along and making our enjoyment of the arts in good ol’ San Jose something tangible. I sometimes feel a bit lost sitting up on the Hill looking out over the valley. I get so engaged in my own personal daily activities that I almost forget there’s a vibrant art world out there, everywhere.

18  Like most of you, I keep my head on the grindstone and after a fashion, completely forget to look up, get away, and enjoy what’s real.

19  Anyway, if you don’t have time, make time and go support the arts. Every time I’ve had my fill of baby carriages with grown men screaming and whining, or of those annoying caveman commercials, or pretty much ANYTHING on the teevee these days, I like to take a walk through the arts, maybe even swim through museums and paint, or swim right throuh an art and wine faire.

20  Try the arts this weekend.

21  I’m guessing it’ll liberate the soul.

22  See you tomorrow.

23  Hope this worked for you.

24  Peace.

~H~

www.xanga.com/bharrington

 

 

 

        The Daily News

1  If there’s anything at all good about the economy, it’s that if you didn’t have much to begin with, you probably didn’t lose much.

2  Yeesh. 

3  Gas is lower.

4   What a buzz.

5   I’ve been eating lots of crock pot meals.

6   How did it ever come to this?

7   Well I sure hope everybody’s okay out there. It probably is a tad political.

8   Just a wild guess.

9   I saw an interview recently on You Tube. It featured the late, great Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. a before he became unstuck in time.

10  One of the last things he said was that with all the Secretaries we have in the government, why don’t we have a Secretary of the Future?

11  You really need to wonder.

12  Well, all a friend could say is ain’t it a shame.

13  Moving on:  I’m experimenting with the DN these days.

14  Time-management concerns. Yesterday’s was written on Sunday morning at 4 a.m. when the world was just a breezy fan and old movies.

15  Today’s was written yesterday during my afternoon constitutional. 

16  I have a prep period right after lunch, arguably the best time to have a break the entire day.

17  It’s almost an hour and a half long, and then I go back out on stage for a one-hour group, and call it a day. It’s just not a good time to grade papers. It’s NEVER a good time to grade papers, but really, you need a nice restful stretch of time for that.

18  So I wrote most of this yesterday just before 2 p.m., a total departure from the 4 a.m. syndrome.

19  I went to the haberdashery yesterday and bought meself a finely crafted hat, all on me lunch break.

 20 I got back, entered The Cathedral, turned up the A/C and chilled. Pure quiet for a good half hour.

21  Before I dashed out, a student from last year’s English class visited.

22  Bright light. Just wanted to pop in and say hello. 

23  No other reason. Just to catch up, and to exchange a coupla stories of the characters that were in the class.

24  It really was nice. I didn’t think I made any sort of impact last year, after the dust settled. So one of my best students came in and spent lunch time chatting about everything and nothing, which is what I love talking about. 

25  I don’t have thousands of students in my room anymore, and to be honest, I love the quiet. Sometimes I could actually grade a few papers, or listen to KNBR. and be left alone.

26  But yesterday this kid came in and we chatted for around a half hour. Just chatted, about everything and nothing. 

27  Sometimes that could be so refreshingly breezy.

28   I felt like a teacher again.

29   I think I’ve been trying so hard to do a good job this year that I forgot that I was one. I don’t know if that makes any sense at all, but I’ve got a sofa of papers I sit on while I grade hundreds of others. The actual teaching seems to fly by pretty quickly each day in between the bouts of planning.

30  So yeah, it sorta stopped me that someone actually LISTENED to all my horseshit.

31  Anyway, it’s amazing to me that one student could walk in and make my day. It was reassuring and just a small moment, but in many ways, an important moment.

32  A shrill horn just sounded. It’s the same exact “bell” they used to have at YB for as far back as I can remember. 

33  And it’s just as obnoxious as ever. 

34  It shrieks for around six seconds, then falls off the face of the Earth, but not until it has launched an electrical charge of noise straight through your cabesa.

35  The current group of Frosh are filing in, reasonably quiet so far, but I’m thinking it won’t last. 

37  So I’m going to call it a day here and start teaching, even though it will be Tuesday morning by the time this publishes.

38  So enjoy your Tuesday. 

39  I still insist it’s the most useless day of the week. 

40  Imagine no more Tuesdays.

41  It’s easy if you try.

42  Peace.

www.xanga.com/bharrington

 

 

 

31  Peace.

 

~H~

www.xanga.com/bharrington

 

 The Daily News

“This one time? At Band Camp?”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s NU-KLEE-UR Sarah.

 

 

NU-KLEE-UR.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

~H~

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SPECIAL WEEKEND BONUS: Some Songs of Hope

Led Zeppelin

Peace.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayzhJKy8H_A&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svR3iXKTJvc&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9i2fqxSjTI&feature=related