The Daily News

1   Last day of the week. I don’t even care that it might rain, or anything like that.          

2   Thanks, Cesar Chavez, for everything, including tomorrow.

3   One of my all-time heroes.

4    Give a thought. This guy was the real deal.

5    Incredible courage, and a union savior in these days of union hating.

5    Don’t hate on unions. The controlled media is on some sort of anti-union crusade, all controlled by media moguls like Rupert Murdock.

6    Unions have helped the working poor, the struggling working class, and the fighting farm-workers. Unions have protected the rights of so many, and aren’t worthy of the disrespect that the controlled media is portraying them.

7   Cesar Chavez was a brave hero, in my eyes, and deserves a day dedicated to his bravery, and to his fighting spirit.

8   Chavez was also a citizen of San Jose, and an inspiration to all of us.

9   Give a thought of this brave and inspirational man.

10  He was always my hero.

11  He should be everybody’s hero.

12  Give a moment.

13   Si se puede.

14   Moving on, Part the First: The dog just barked me into a tired but mellow state. It is into the five a.m. and she almost pulled another 4:20, which is her nickname.

15   Her name is Phoebe, after the Friends character. It is an apt name, because she is a bit nutsy.

16   But clearly a creature of habit.

17   I’ll have to dedicate an entire DN to her at some point, but for now, her consistency at awakening somewhere near 4:20 each morning gives her a charmingly faithful nickname.

18   Unfortunately, I also awaken, because she is animated, and ready to charge at anything in the backyard.

19   The good news is: I’m probably up for the day.

20   But today is our Friday, thanks again to Cesar Chavez.

21   Moving on, Part the Second: Oh, I act happy, but truth be told, I would really prefer another couple hours sleep. Yesterday was a relatively long day because I went home, and then back to the school to work a little tech for our guitar concert.

22   Me young friend and confidante Matt Hall teaches guitar to a hundred-ninety students. He gave up a prep period this year to take on an extra class in order to build his empire.

23   Last night, he brought all hundred-ninety to the stage and did a concert with a theme. Oh, not all at once, mind you, but a hundred-ninety.

24   The theme was Beatlemania.

25   No way I was going to miss that one.

26   The fun thing about being an old teacher at a new school is that I get to see miracles happen.

27   I have been fortunate to be in on a lot of what someday will be school traditions: Clubs that have been formed, orchestras, musicals, guitar classes that are now winning superior status, and all the rest.

28   The irony of all of it is that we are herded into meetings each Wednesday in order to become better teachers, not a bad plan.

29   But we get hired guns to come in and tell us that we aren’t doing a good enough job. Occupational hazard. We can do better, and someone who has been out of the classroom for twenty years is going to tell us how.

30   Performing Arts teachers and athletic teachers tend to roll their eyes at this stuff. They are too busy actually bringing talent out, and inspiring everyone to do better to listen to much of this stuff.

31   My perspective has always been this: the majority of teachers are professionals who work ridiculously long hours to try to make things happen. Most succeed.

32   But the data says that we aren’t succeeding. The data shows that we are in fact failing.

33   Like I wake up every morning hoping to go in and fail.

34   The “data” seems to blame teachers for declining test scores and all the rest.

35    Let me say this loud and clear: schools aren’t failing because of the teachers. If anything, teachers  work ridiculous hours to keep things afloat. So are all supporting staff.

36   Somewhere out there we have other things causing this failure.

37   Socio-economic declines are clearly one area to examine. If a family is struggling, then education can’t possibly be their chief concern; survival is.

38   I won’t go into it here in the five a.m. but teachers don’t go to work in hopes of failing. And classified staff, equally professinal in my eyes, aren’t doing that either.

39   I watch a young guy like Matt Hall come in and deliver the goods with predominantly beginning guitar students, and I wonder why anyone not in the classroom has anything to say about what does go on there.

40   His Guitar 2-4 students blew a standing-room only crowd away last night.

41   They did a version of Across the Universe that danced delicately and deliciously through the cosmos.

42   I’m not sure what data measures the improvement of those students, but I saw students who had delivered the goods looking afterwards like they had seen Jesus.

43   Thanks Matt and the entire ensemble for a classy and cheeky night of Beatles and Bach. Our school rocks, and it gets better each day. I see it, and I sometimes wonder why we continually have to prove it.

44   Anyway, this is all over the place, but it is the last DN of the week, and I thank Cesar Chavez and even Matt Hall for all of it.

45   I’m drained, but I can’t wait to go in and teach these remarkable young people today.

46   I think I’ll bow out.

47   Have a wonderful day everybody.

48   See you again.

49   Thanks Matt, for a truly enjoyable and energizing evening.

50   A Beatle bow.

51   Peace.

~H~

www.xanga.com/bharrington

The Daily News

1   Yesterday was an awesome day.

2   We had a complete run-through of Grease, raunchy script and all. We sort of stumbled through it, but went from beginning to end, memorized, with singing and dancing. Fun cast!

3   My song is deep into the second act, so I was a nervous wreck the entire rehearsal. My voice has been a tad gravelly since we started, and it cracks for no reason other than a mild cough that has followed me and haunted me since we began the show.

4   I found out last week that these blood pressure pills I have been taking have some sort of affect on coughing. I’ve never had a constant cough, so it has been a mystery to me as to why it keeps happening. It might be the pills.

5   My song is also extremely high-pitched or low-pitched, so I had to do lots of head/chest crossovers.

6   Over the weekend I practiced and practiced, both high and low keys, and realized that the low-key works much nicer in terms of nearly everything. I found the moments in the song where it would gravel, and tightened my diaphragm, which corrected a lot of the difficulties.

7   When my turn came up to sing Beauty School Dropout, an entire chorus of girls lined up behind me and did harmonized do-wops. I LOVED it! The last time I did the song, I choked on a couple of parts and felt horrible. The girls couldn’t remember their parts, and Rachel kept them late to work on them. I didn’t have to stay, and was happy to leave, not in a bad way, just in a I-let-everybody-down way.

8   It’s funny  even with a small appearance in a show, how stressful it can be to go out on stage and act. I am amazed at actors, and how they can master that art. I naturally prefer directing, because it is a lot of being a ringleader in a circus. I don’t have to do the highwire stuff; my performers do. I just have to walk from place to place and make sure that the circus will all work.

9   It’s a different kind of pressure, but it is nothing like having to memorize lines, lyrics, songs, dances, and all the rest. Anybody who claims acting is easy has never had the pleasure.

10  Anyway, I was a wreck all afternoon. I just ran the music, and not very well. I cued the wrong song at least four times, which is like about thirty per cent of the show!

11  Eventually I got the hang of it, but man.

12  Slow study.

13  Anyway, I was glad to be able to sing the song in a lower key; it took a little bit off the humor, but added a lot to the tone as well as the complete elimination of all things gravelly.

14   It also relaxed me enough so the lyrics came into my head like little birds in the springtime.

15   Did I really just say that?

16   Anyway, the girls did this awesome do-do-do wop backing vocals, and sounded absolutely beautiful. Kelly Shi, who plays Frenchy, did a dandy job of looking amazed and confused at the same time. It really helped everything along, and gave the whole thing more character.

17   We did all of this with a recorded piano piece and no mics, and it still sounded amazing.

18   The rest of the cast nailed the entire show, with just a few mistakes which happened in large part because one person was not there. Grease doesn’t have a normal script; it is different people speaking at different times the entire time. If one person is missing, it confuses the flow. It isn’t like there are conversations with just two or three people; it has around twelve people constantly talking at different times.

19   If you are memorizing, then you have to really know almost the entire show.

20   Moving on, Part One: If I had a lead, I’d probably go out of my mind. Young people think nothing of it, which makes it all work. We older guys have a built-in drainage of information that we really don’t need to keep. We’re good at throwing things away the older we get.

21   This includes all manner of information, like batting averages, names of actors, authors, trivia, and all the rest. Our brains clean out their own garages and backyards.

22    As we get older, we put that action on automatic pilot. I really don’t need to remember my lines from a show I was in twenty years ago.

23   We have to throw stuff out. Young people have a tendency to keep everything given to them: birthday cards from six years ago, stuffed animals that Aunt Madge gave them when they were six, baseball gloves, fishing poles, video games, etc.

24   I remember when I was about four or five living in South San Francisco. A building on the lot behind our house burned down. When summer came, I took a walk over to the building and found this large, bent bolt. I brought it home, because I thought it was somehow historical.

25   I carried that bolt in a wooden box everywhere I moved, my entire life.

26   As far as I know, I probably still have it somewhere.

27   It’s meaningless, but I could never throw the thing away. It became a part of me.

28   Likewise old birthday cards, pens, baseballs, and other items.

29   Junk can start to take over one’s life. As I got older, I realized that I could give a WHOLE bunch of stuff the heave-ho. Once I discovered that, I organized my life, making everything simpler.

30   That also worked with my brain. I decided I didn’t really need to remember all those quotes by Emerson and Voltaire.

31   Most of the quotes I memorized eventually were off by a preposition or two anyway.

32   We do have Google, and Wiki.

33   But quotes are seldom accurate. Google any quote that you have memorized, and I can almost guarantee that the real quote is inconsistent. You have to go to Bartlett’s or Bartleby’s in order to get the exact quote, and even then, if it pre-dated recorded material, there are likely to be inconsistencies.

34  I’m into the 4 a.m. already, so I really don’t want to go into examples.

35  My point is that as we grow older, a lot of stuff we keep isn’t really that important. Once we learn to let things go, our lives become simpler. Memorizing things seems almost impossible.

36   In some ways it’s sort of sad.

37   In other ways, it gives us leave to cherish true memories.

38    Even they are often inaccurate, but the heart of the memory is always accurate.

39    Yesterday was an awesome day.

40    I showed my classes the 1998 version of Midsummer, the Pyramus and Thisbe scene, when Kevin Lambert’s wig fell off. To me, it was live history. I wanted my students to see that Shakespeare is not a subject in school, but a joy,  a laugh, and a tear.

41   I felt I was the director again, watching in the audience as all those magical moments unfolded. Kevin’s timing was perfect, and always will be. Chris Ramirez’s subtle responses and Matthew Perry expressions were priceless. The curtain call was majestic. The cast came out as one, holding hands, lifted their hands for about four seconds, and then exited boldly. They had conquered. It was closing night, and they had conquered.

42   Fina coming out with the second sword nailed it for me. Perfectly timed. All of it was so wonderful and magical to watch.

43   I didn’t really look at my students’ reactions. Well, I won’t EVEN lie. I did.

44   Many were just as enchanted as the audiences who were there.

45   Others were completely disinterested.

46   I remember vaguely telling my cast on closing night that someday I will try teaching this to others, but that nobody would ever get that experience, ever again.

47   The words rang true yesterday.

48   There were lots of my students who were utterly enchanted by the show, so Midsummer held up, after all these years, and may have even given the gift of Shakespeare to someone. Ancient gift, and a merry.

49   Good memories. Good times.

50   Yesterday was Buster Posey’s birthday.

51   Happy Birthday Buster.

52   And daughters, Caitlin and Nicoley thanks for the phone calls yesterday. I love you guys.

52   And Rene, you’re the best. A ball game dude. Love it.  John, got your email and invite. I’m checking my calendar. Bri Bri, Nancy, and Marcia, thanks, truly.

53   Yesterday was an awesome day.

54    Let’s make it a week. Find it in your heart.

55   Peace.

~H~

www.xanga.com/bharrington

The Daily News

1   Hubris.

2   Does anybody out there know what it is?

3   I gotta love it.

4   None of my students knew what it was, which amazes me.

5   If you’re Greek, you already know.

6   The Greeks invented the word, and I love them for it. They invented everything, if you’ve ever watched My Big, Fat Greek Wedding.

7    And that includes hubris.

8    For the uninitiated, hubris is basically the act of being full of yourself, usually resulting in a well-deserved dressing down.

9    The closest I could come to it in modern slang is “swag.”

10   I asked five classes if they knew what it was yesterday.

11   Only one student knew. He said, “Cockiness?”

12   He is a senior and had me in his freshman year.

13   Swag.

14   The Greeks knew that excessive hubris would eventually lead to a pie-in-the face. Smart people, thems Greeks.

15   I went into Monday filled with hubris.

16   I had good reason to. I had worked, and worked, and worked on lessons all weekend, and I woke up early yesterday proud of how hard I had worked.

17   I knew I had spent hours and hours planning this week. I also knew that my colleagues and students hadn’t; I didn’t care WHO they were. I knew that I had planned to go in on a Monday with guns blazing, and with a well-earned swag.

18  The fun thing was I actually had time to grab a little breakfast yesterday, right after I had showered, shaved, and made myself look purty.

19  I had this awesome baguette of sourdough I had purchased at Raymond’s bakery in South City, one of the greatest hole-in-the walls on the planet. It had been fresh-baked and warm the day prior.

20  Rayond’s bakes their own bread, and has a fireplace inside. The place smells of fresh baked bread and fire. It is one of the best no-names on the planet. I touched the baguette and it was still warm. Couldn’t wait to tear into it’s wonderful flavor.

21   Welp, it made it home, but soon became day-old, which is to say, day-old.

22   But yesterday morning I had a little time and a lot of swag. I was clean, shaven, prepared, and with more time than normal, because I was SO prepared for the week.

23   I was going into Monday like a young gun.

24   Right after tigtening my tie, I walked to the fridge and pulled out a hard-boiled egg. My thought was I could have a reasonably dietetic breakfast by putting a small piece of the sourdough into the micro, and then putting a dollop of mayo and mustard into a bowl with the egg. I figured it might stretch to a hundred calories, and that it was going to be a perfect breakfast for a young gun.

25   I put the bread into the microwave, figuring that around twenty seconds would at least simulate fresh-baked.

26   But Mondays know how to attack swag. They know how to fiddle and fuddle with hubris.

27   I’m not sure as to exactly what caused it. The dog might have barked. I might have forgotten something. Whatever it was, it was around thirty seconds of inattention.

28   I heard the microwave beep. This alarmed me, because it clearly exceeded the max of twenty seconds I needed to soften and freshen the bread.

29   I looked in the window of the microwave and saw that the lower right-hand corner of the bread was black and glowing. The inside of the microwave had filled with smoke.

30  Stupidly, I opened the door.

31  All of the hatred in mankind emerged in the figure of massive smoke. It hit me right in the face, and swiftly haunted the entire house, and neighborhood.

32  Every fire alarm in my neighborhood went off except mine.

33  I quickly pulled out the remaining timber and threw it into the sink, and then doused it with water.

34  So much for breakfast.

35  So much for shaving, showering and looking purty.

36   I opened every door and window in the house. The smoke dissipated pretty quickly, thankfully. I went down the hall and splashed some shampoo and water on my face and tried re-showering fully clothed, coat and all. It sort of worked, at least enough for me to get back my swag.

37  I was now in my usual rush, and grabbed both sets of keys, but hesitated on my school keys because of a newfound hole in the left pocket of my pants. I also grabbed my new thumb drive, which had valuable lessons on it, and threw it into my right pocket, as the left pocket had the hole.

38   Knowing I still had everything under control AND that I was five minutes earlier out the door, I again got my swag on. Some guys never learn.

39   The traffic to school went swiftly, so I re-grouped. It was Monday, after all, and I was prepared. I couldn’t let a little thing like almost burning my house down stop me. I was prepared, and I knew that neither my students nor colleagues were even remotely close to going in on a Monday as tanned, rested, and ready as was I.

40  Hubris.

41  I got to school, pulled right into a parking space, parked perfectly, and hopped out of the T000000NRA with pomp, and with reveling. I saw the pained looks on the faces of nearly everybody else. Monday. I threw my satchel over my shoulder and stood as tall as the mountains and clouds. I had this. No doubt. Slow-motion, old western film music whistling. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Ennio Morricone. Play it slow,Poker Face. Total badass.

42   I reached into my left pocket for my school keys.

43   Gone.

44   The Hole. Or maybe the change of routine with the new thumb drive.

45   No way. I knew instinctively that I probably had removed them to my right pocket. I reached in.

46   Car keys. Check. Thumb drive. Check. School keys.

47   School keys.

48   I went up to my room. Almost no kids, because I was early.

49   I went into my friend Gwen’s room. This was the second time this year I had to ask to borrow her phone so I could call the office to get a janitor to open my door.

50   I’m usually awesome about keys, but the hole in the pocket threw me off my routine.

51   The trouble with something like that is that the news goes to the walkie-talkies of anyone who has a walkie-talkie.

52   This meant that anyone who was pissed at me for anything was reminded of me at the same moment.

53   Long story, but we all piss off someone because we don’t always aknowledge what they feel is important. So I had at least three people email me following this embarrassment to remind me of little requests they had made of me in the past two weeks.

54  And everyone loves when someone else screws up on a Monday. They were all thinking, “That guy messed up a Monday, and I didn’t!”

55  Confirmed.

56  Eventually I got my class settled and the lesson moved foreward, as well as the remainder of the day, but it was pretty much too late.

57   I smelled like a burnt barnyard, had completely turned upside-down, and looked like an unprepared idiot.

58   Hubris.

59   Lesson learned.

60   Fortunately I re-grouped, finished strongly, and stayed until almost six last night working hard to make sure that Tuesday doesn’t follow suit.

61   I got to sleep early, and awakened at around 1 a.m. to report all this.

62   It’s well into the 2 a.m.’s now, but I already have logged in almost five hours of sleep.

62   I’m guessing I could gather around four more, and wake up with a little swag.

63   Or not.

64   Maybe never again.

65   AnywayZ, that’s my lesson on hubris. Happens to all of us.

66   We live and learn and live and learn.

67   Have yourself a wonderful day.

68   Stay out of your own way.

69    Peace.

~H~

www.xanga.com/bharrington

  The Daily News

1  Fun weekend.

2   No internet to speak of.

3   Spent the weekend with Dad. His house has no access to the outside world save for a landline telephone and a loud teevee. Oh, and access to reading paper stuff,  newspapers and books.

4   SO refreshing.

5   We actually got to have conversations rather than texts.

6   I got to conversate and get a lot of work done. I am at the height of my Shakespeare unit, so I have been a complete and total nerd for the past week. It spilled a bit into the weekend because I am bringing Midsummer to a close this week.

7    Two weeks ago, through show of hands, I saw that about eighty per cent of my students couldn’t even function in the world of Shakespeare. One poor cat declared Shakespeare a “nuisance.”

8   No saving the patient.

9   On Friday, I showed the students the wonderful forest mud fight, followed by Puck’s excellent work at wearing the lovers down.

10  My students sat on the floor, laughed, lapped it up, and rocked to the Duke’s discovery of the naked lovers in the forest, followed by his awakening call, “St. Valentine’s has passed.”

11  I used Michael Hoffman’s now definitive version of Midsummer, which I have affectionately dubbed The Bicycle Version. From a teacher’s perspective, it is the easiest. It will also define Midsummer for years to come. I’m fine with it.

12  The exposition of Midsummer is a bit tedious, something I never noticed as a director. But once it gets rolling, Shakespeare takes over in any version.

13  Romeo and Juliet is much easier to teach, because we have mainly two versions that are now signature: Franco Zeffirelli’s lush version that was THE definitive Romeo and Juliet for years, and Baz Luhrmann’s cockeyed piece that is way over the top, but that still brings the story home. Both leave out remarkable scenes, but that’s what we are stuck with as teachers.

14   To be fair, Romeo and Juliet isn’t that great of a story to begin with. But it remains a classic, and perhaps remains the single most-read Shakespearean play, with Julius Caesar perhaps taking a distant second. And most teachers are at the mercy of whatever Hollywood decides to do with them.  

15   The chief trouble with Franco Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet, for example, is the butt-and-boob scenes that flash for about one second. These directors must know that the majority of people who will see their work would be students. How many people subsequently rent Shakespeare after they have seen it once? They will rent Titanic periodically through the years, same basic plot only with a ship, and the same Romeo. It’s making a comeback. But it they made a 3-D version of Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo and Juliet, you can bet almost nobody would go see it.

16  Some people might watch a 3-D version of Zeffirelli’s, because of Olivia Hussey, who inevitably prompts fifteen-year old freshman boys to declare, “She’s not fourteen!” No fellows, especially not in 3-D. Good thing you’re wearing glasses.

17   Fortunately I have my comrade Mr. Censor well at hand. He is a stick figure I penned with a Sharpie one year and stuck on my teevee screen with static from the screen proper. I take on the roll of a bible-thumper protecting the very moral fibre of young America. The kids inevitably laugh, because every now and again Mr. Censor slides down the screen as the static diminishes. I put on a panic scene, often with some wonderfully impromtu moments. It is live theatre at its absolute worst.

18   Michael Hoffman’s Midsummer (The Bicycle Version) is pretty careful about those sorts of moments, putting plants and flowers in front of offensive nudity, making it a bit easier on the teacher. He still gives us enough that I can roughhouse with Mssr. Censor, but in a fun sort of way.

19   I’ve grown to like it, clanky bicycles and all. It has a really fun, fast cast, with Kevin Kline, Stanley Tucci, and Calista Flockhart delivering most of the goods, and a wonderfully seductive Titania brought vividly to life by Michelle Pfeiffer.

20   The Pyramus and Thisbe scene that brings it home does just that. I had students staying in at lunch to watch the end of it. At the end of the day on Friday, I Googled Mendelsshon’s Nocturne, and let the room bathe itself in a sort of afternoon cleansing.

21  With Midsummer doing a conquering song, I switched over to Much Ado About Nothing this weekend at Dad’s. During the waking hours, I was able to watch movies, chat, and work on reading Much Ado while creating a vocabulary list using dictionaries, flash cards, and the notes in the text. No internet. I was able to read it, and in the wee hours of the morning, watch it on my computer using a DVD I purchased a few weeks ago for something like five dollars. I captioned it to give my vocabulary list a test Disney ride. It passed.

22  I realized that I definitely had to add the words “blithe” and “bonny” and remove a few others that were just sort of hanging around. And I’m still on the hunt for the rumours about the “hey nonny nonny.” I’ve heard horror stories!

23   The nice thing was, I was able to chat and visit with Dad. Helene came with me and learned some excellent recipes that would work with his diet, and we had a charmingly wonderful weekend, albeit a tad nerdy on my end.

24   I was able to slip out to Barnes and Noble and purchase a Folger’s copy of Much Ado, which dovetailed beautifully with my lessons and confirmed that left to my own devices, I can finally read and understand Shakespeare sans internet.

25   How deliciously nerdy!

26   The Folger’s series is aimed at students and Shakespeare novices. It translates most of the stuff that your average guy wouldn’t know and makes for a nice resource. I got both Much Ado and Shrew out the door for under eleven dollars.

27   So it’s Monday.

28   Sigh no more, ladies; sigh no more.

29   I can’t wait to go in today. Honestly. The Pyramus and Thisby scene rocks.

30   I’m awake early, but really, up and ready for action. Looking forward to this week, and feeling refreshed after spending time at Dad’s

31  Have a glorious day.

32  See you soon.

33   Peace.

~H~

www.xanga.com/bharrington

The Daily News

1   It’s Frideeeeeee!

2   And trust me; I’m not EVEN gonna lie. This week flew by.

3   I always love when people say, “I’m not EVEN gonna lie.” To me it always says, “I lie a lot, I realize, but this time, I’m not EVEN gonna lie.”

4   I love goofing on stuff like that.

5   I just love goofing on human behavior. Period.

6   Consider Californians and weather, for instance.

7   It stormed a couple of times this week. There was even some snow in the hills.

8   Yet the daytime maintained an average of sixty to seventy degrees.

9    And people came to school dressed like Sherpas. Mittens, heavy coats, ski masks: you get the picture. You would think they were in Russia.

10   Dude.

11   You live in California.

12   It’s late March. 

13   You really don’t need a knit cap and ski boots.

14   And a message to the other extreme: yeah, it really isn’t THAT cold, dude. Slathering on sun tan lotion and wearing shorts and sporting expensive sunglasses and a T-shirt looks absurd. This isn’t the French Riviera at Midsummer. It’s just late March. In California.

15   I personally just sort of wear the same stuff all the way through the year. You never look overly excited for a season that way.

16   I have to guess that East Coasters must laugh ridiculously at our silliness with weather and fashion. Those people get weather extremes, something Californians have no idea about.

17   Californians who live in the milder climates dress according to fashion magz. It could be overcast and eightly degrees and you will still see people lighting fires in their fireplaces just because they see clouds.

18   Amusing stuff.

19   I remember vividly making money off the people who would live in a hot area coming up to Giants’ games dressed in Hawaiian shirts and shorts, only to have the Candlestick weather change on them.

20   Candlestick Park is the only place in California that can be eighty-five degrees at game time and then drop forty degrees by four p.m. And it could be a hundred degrees in Sac, or in Fresno, but a night game would often turn so cold that people would need ski masks and blankets, which we would be happy to sell to them, at a price.

21   Would I feel bad?

22   Nope.

23   First off, it is a simple case of caveat emptor. You are traveling to San Francisco. The place can get cold. Second, you are a fingertip away from a weather report. It’s not a bad idea to check the weather if you are headed somewhere for an extended time.

24   Third, you are out of control with a VISA card. YOUR decision, thank you very much. If you are willing to charge a hundred dollars or two to keep warm and be in fashion, then I am willing to make twenty per cent off you.

25   Californians have always been good for business.

26   I never got rich vending and selling merch, but I did have some violently amazing night games when people would drive up from the valley and say, “It was eight-five degrees in Vacaville!”

27   I would smile and say, “You want the blanket and the ski cap, or just the blanket?”

28   Or a guy would say, “I could get this blanket for twelve dollars at Wal-Mart!”

29   My reply: “You ain’t AT Wal-Mart!” His friends would laugh, punch him in the arm, and I would get the sale. Seriously.

30   Cha-CHING.

31   Hate me. Go ahead. I’m a business man. I always loved the fans, but the bottom line was that I was there to make money. And I was well-trained to help people find the fashion they needed given any season.

32   I usually won, and they walked away happy with their purchases.

33   It’s almost disgusting, except it is what every business person does, everywhere in America. In fact, we worship guys like Steve Jobs and Donald Trump. We elect politicians who are “businessmen.” We bow down to the extremely rich and see them as self-made men or women.

34   We drool at the expensive Lexus, and show our contempt for the selfsame people, because we wish WE could have that sort of lifestyle without having to charge everything.

35   We feel sorry for guys like Alex Smith, who made nine-million dollars more because management went after Peyton Manning. We saw Alex as a jilted lover, rather than as a guy who couldn’t convert third downs if we held a gun to his head, but made nine mil in the process of us feeling sorry for him.

36   I’m not EVEN gonna lie.  

37   Consumer nation. We are a nation of idiots, I swear to you.

38   But it is OUR nation of idiots, so we somehow still love everyone.

39   I do. I’m an old lover of people. I still smile at babies and new moms, and go crazy when my sports’ teams do something stupid.

40   I buy crap that I don’t really need.

41   I’m just as goofy as the next guy, and just as stupid, happy to say.

42   Welp, it’s cloudy out and well into the 3 a.m. I had better start getting dressed for the freeze that is certain to happen this fine morn.

43   I have a coat with about twelve zippers I have to figure out, and only around three hours to have that mastered.

44   So if you’ll excuse me…

45   I gottago.

46   I hope you appreciated all my insults. It wasn’t aimed at you. Don’t take them personally.

47   I was pretty much holding up a mirror to all of us.

48   So I include myself in all of this idiocy. I’m proud to say that I am just as stupid as the next guy.

49   Have a great weekend everybody. I promise more misspellings and idiocy as the school year chugs to its sensationally idiotic end, and it will end idiotically, let me tell you.

50   I’m not EVEN gonna lie.

51   See you agin.

52   Peace.

~H~

www.xanga.com/bharrington

  The Daily News

1   Back to normal, if there is such a thing.

2   I love that I have slowed down my planet this past month. During Christmas I felt almost as though someone had kidnapped me.

3   I had so much stuff hitting me so many different ways that something had to give.

4   It took a school lockdown for me to stare down all the pressures that kept coming at me in the form of really good people who wanted me to do things, to be at meetings, to do special projects, and all the rest.

5   Individually, each person was great.

6   Collectively, they began to become a nightmare of time management.

7   I won’t go into details about the lockdown; I’ll just say that when we went into what traditionally is known as a “Code Red”, I became scared to death. Rumor was that there was a shooter on our campus who was going to “shoot up the school.”

8   I had been left what looked like a death threat two days before. It was quite real and quite frightening.

9   It turned out to be an innocent coincidence. There was no incident that day, and life returned to normal for most of the school.

10  Not for me.

11  I decided that a whole lot of trying to please everybody and his or her brother had taken my life away from me.

12   I have no idea how I turned it all around, but I was able to lessen my workload, find more time for family and friends, and let people at work who were pressuring me from all angles to take a back seat.

13   I started eating better, playing guitar, singing, seeing people I needed to see, spending time with my family, and even joining the spring musical, which has been a bit of a godsend.

14   The other day, the internet crashed at the school. I had just graded a bunch of papers and was unable to enter them into the gradebook. This usually results in insta-emails from parents and students demanding that they know their child’s current grade. It also keeps me from seeing any emails. If I’m in the school’s theater building at night I can’t get the internet anyway. So it is easy to get backed up in both grading and in knowing that people want you to respond to them.

15   Fortunately I got a jump on this grading period, and already have around ten assignments posted for this six weeks, enough to give a rough idea of how the students are doing.

16   But this weekend I’m going to be at Dad’s, and he doesn’t have the internet either. I won’t be able to post grades until Sunday.

17   I love it.

18   Moving on, Part 1: Yesterday we had union elections. Long story, won’t bore you with it, but I had to be at a union meeting from four to six. I was told during my last class of the day that I was to take the ballots to the union meeting. Another teacher had them and was to hunt me down at my department meeting and deliver them. But we changed rooms, so twenty minutes before the meeting I was with no ballot box. Finally the lady who had them called me. She was nearby so we made the exchange.

19   Fair enough. But once there, I was handed some forms about the proper way to count ballots.

20   Mind you, I don’t mind doing this stuff, it was just sort of thrown at me at the last minute, no warning. I’m happy to serve as a rep, but I do like a little notice before this stuff happens.

21   And I know as a “rookie” I have to do some grunt work. I don’t mind that either, but I missed most of what was going on because I had to count about six billion ballots. They were endless, which is a good problem to have. I just wish I had been forewarned. I did check my emails yesterday to see if anything was going to ambush me, but saw nothing. The teacher who had the ballots told me that she had emailed me, but I don’t remember seeing her email.

22   I rolled up my sleeves and took to the task, but it sort of bothered me that I could only marginally listen to what decisions the district and the union had made, because I was trying to learn a sort of brand new mini-job on the fly.

23   I had also just gotten out of an English meeting in which I was given the task of writing a large chunk of the English 2A Shakespeare test. to be given at the end of the semester. We were to each take a play and write up a passage and some corresponding questions for a sort of benchmark test we will launch next year.

24   Fair enough. I am an expert at Taming of the Shrew and Midsummer, told them that, so they gave me Twelfth Night. Huh?

25   I LOVE Twelfth Night, don’t get me wrong, but am clearly much more familiar with Shrew and Midsummer. Why would you give a guy the task of doing something that he has no real working knowledge of?

26   I don’t know if that makes any sense, since Twelfth Night is an awesome play. It’s just that my experience with the show is having watched and enjoyed it by several companies over the years. I read it once, long ago, but really, I have both Taming of the Shrew and Midsummer practically memorized.

27   So in one day, greatness was again thrust upon me. Counting ballots was fine, it was just that I missed most of the meeting because I was blind-sided without warning. I realize that as a newbie, I have to get in there and do the dirty work, but having this stuff handed to me twenty minutes before the meeting was a bit strange. Had I known a week ago, I could probably have figured out a way to multi-task it; I’m not stupid.

28  Counting ballots isn’t difficult, just not knowing the proper protocol was. What happens to people who sign in but not next to their names, for example? Do those votes count? That sort of thing. Can the entire election be canceled if I miscount the ballots? Probably not, because they must have a system of checks and balances. I just didn’t know any of it.

29   So it wasn’t difficult; it was just learning the right way to do things with no proper training was a bit irritating, and distracting. I couldn’t listen to the issues because I was pre-occupied with figuring out the basics of ballot counting.

30   After I send this grousing DN off, I’ll check my emails. I guarnatee that woman’s email is probably sitting there unread. I was pretty much in front of students all day yesterday except for my prep period, but I was hungry and took off to get some food.

31  So that’s pretty much yesterday, and the quickness with which my time can get captured. I have to enter all those grades, write two vocabulary lists, grade a few things this week and have all of that done by Friday.

32  I also overslept this morning.

33  And I STILL expect to have a great day, probably will because we are at mid-range with Midsummer, and a lot of the students are laughing and enjoying it for the first time in  their lives.

34  It was just amazing watching how people swipe time from you without even realizing it. “Yeah, I’ll do Twelfth Night,” I said, even though I must have said, “I’m really familiar with Midsummer and Shrew.”

35   Okay, it’s late in the morning. I gottago. I’m actually in a good mood; I was just trying to see how sudden storms of work appear in my life. I watched it happen yesterday.

36   AnywayZ…

37   Have a good one. We’ll see you soon.

38   Peace.

~H~

www.xanga.com/bharrington

The Daily News

1   Another late night. Another quick one.

2   Happens.

3   A lot going on.

4   Fixed stuff up.

5   Always fun.

6   Won’t bore you with details.

7   Meanwhile, Tebow is available.

8   Huh?

9   Trying to keep up with stuff but internet was down all yesterday at school.

10  Things going well though.

11  Just tight sched.

12   Have to miss rehearsal today because have a union meeting.

13   Papers got graded though.

14   None entered due to internet crash.

15   Hoping it’s fixed today.

16   Gotta make this one a quick one just like yesterday.

17   Midsummer successful. Most students enjoyed it, at least from my perspective.

18   One student declared Shakespeare a “nuisance.”

19   Feel sorry for the guy.

20   Others found it awesome.

21   One class sat on the floor and loved the subtitles and captions, because they were chock full of vocab.

22   Great fun stuff, and today’s lesson plan is to push play and walk away.

23   Always love that sort of planning!

24   Writing this late so that I could get some sleep.

25   Hopefully tomorrow’s DN could return to normal.

26   Locomotive pace these days.

27   So not much to reprort at this juncture. Which is good news, right?

28   Just cleanin’ up Grease and havin’ a ball.

29   AnywayZ…

30   Really gottago.

31   Have a wonderful Wednesday, and truly, fly low. Should be somewhat back to normal tomorrow.

32   Peace.

~H~

www.xanga.com/bharrington

The Daily News

1  World’s fastest DN ever.

2   Why?

3   Slept through the night.

4   DN usually takes from two to three hours.

5    Woke up. Had fifteen minz to write this.

6    No creamer for coffee. No milk for coffee.

7    Had to use powdered milk from the 1800′s, when I was broke.

8   Tasted like it came out of a dying cow’s teat.

9    No sugar. Slenda.

10   In super hurry. Horrid stuff. Hate eating healthy.

11   Lousy rehearsal.

12   Kids have lots of hope. They should.

13   Feel enormous due to Julia Child popcorn.

14   Not worried about Niners not getting Peyton.

15  Who’d name their kid “Peyton” anyway? Probably a drama queen.

16   Not worried about Smith. He’ll stay and get thirty mil.

17   Need more coffee.

18   Yuck.

19   Cardboard dying cow-teat creamer.

20   Slept through the night. Logged almost nine hours.

21   Shorter DN as result.

22   Does it show?

23   Glad, because won’t be tired, but upset because didn’t get DN off.

24   Already wrote fast DN.

25   Didn’t save.

26   Computer crashed briefly.

27   Wanted to jump off George Washington bridge, but nowhere around.

28   Don’t really know where it is anyway.

29   Ten minz behind in editing/throwing pics up in here.

30   Fingers going arthritic.

31   Not sure how to spell “arthritic.” Don’t care.

32   Think I’m pretty much done here.

33    Oh!

34    Cut all my nails.

35    Look hella purty.

36    Hella.

37    Nor Cal.

38    Aight then.

39    Just wanted to reach forty items twice within fifteen minz.

40    Score.

41    Gottago.

42    Late.

43    Live life.

44    Love life.

45    Peace.

~H~

www.xanga.com/bharrington

  The Daily News

1   I absolutely loved the weather this weekend.

2   I missed completely the hail and the pour. Friday night was simply lovely. Caitlin was down for a Sunday night wedding, so everything was instantly topsy-turvy and remarkable.

3   Got over to Independence High School and enjoyed their closing night production of You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, starring Jaedynn and Jozlynn Ponticelli as Woodstock and Birdie 1, along the remarkable Molly McClelland as Birdie 2. I wish I were quicker on the draw, because I didn’t get any pics of them in their stunning Birdie costumes.

4   I’m still a novice at iPhone picture-taking. I was much more proficient with a normal camera, just haven’t been a shutterbug for a while. I got home and wanted to kick myself, because the girls were absolutely adorable, all three.

5   Charlie Brown is an adorable show anyway, even without the Woodstock family. The set  was simple and beautiful: a sky-blue backdrop, a beautifully painted spot-on Snoopy dog house, and various benches and wing-and-drop cartoon trees, drawn with remarkable consistency to the Charles M. Schulz’s comic strip.

6   The show is so wonderful, and the music so simple that I wanted to sing every song in it. It brought back some great memories of when we did it all those years ago, my second show at YB. I think it was my second. And my sixth overall. Well, seventh if you include the disaster I directed when I was eighteen.

7   That’s a story for another time about another time. I like to live in the present, and Charlie Brown on Friday night was a remarkable present.

8    For one thing, I was finally able to get out and see a show. I was finally able to get out and smell the rain. I was finally able to, well, get out.

9   Ironically, what bought me that time was my involvement in our own production of Grease. Last week we had a nice long rehearsal in which we tightened the singing of the songs. I sat in the back grading literally thousands of papers. It worked beautifully. I didn’t miss a song, and knocked down about two-plus reams of papers, most of which I would never have gotten done at home.

10   After the show, I wanted some sort of post-show snack to go with a frosty root beer. I decided to blow dust off the old hot-air popper and pop me up some popcorn. I got carried away, using fresh garlic, freshley grated parmesan, real butter (Julia Child would have been proud!) and a slight sprinkle of herbs. I made an enormous bowl, just in case Caitlin and Josh flew in from a wedding rehearsal dinner. I did a small batch, and it was beyond good.

11   The timing was perfect! They drove up, came in, and we had a popcorn festival!

12   Those flavors crashed and splashed like waves on the beach.

13    Butter, garlic, parmesan, Italian herbs, and an icy beverage. I usually don’t do food brags, but this one was easy, and stunningly tasty.

14    High in fiber too.

15    Yesterday I couldn’t eat anything all day. That stuff stayed right through breakfast and lunch. I couldn’t eat, but I didn’t mind. I felt great, spent the morning working on my song, spent the afternoon reading Midsummer and making word lists of Shakespearean images, and laughed as the plot moved to the translation of Bottom, a wonderful scene in which the Rude Mechanicals discuss their fear of the audience thinking that the lion might be real, and how they couldn’t possibly bring a real wall to the production. Complete morons, and a merry.

16   Livin’ and lovin’ the Dream.

17   Moving On, Part the First: Researched a bit about Puck, and how he translated over to other cultures, including the Irish Pooka. I found a wonderful website called boldoutlaw.com that has a lot to say about the origins of Puck. This is from a wonderful article entitled Puck Through the Ages: The History of a Hobgoblin:

One of the most popular characters in English folklore of the last thousand years has been the faerie, goblin, devil or imp known by the name of Puck or Robin Goodfellow.

The Welsh called him Pwca, which is pronounced the same as his Irish incarnation Phouka, Pooka or Puca. These are far from his only names.

Parallel words exist in many ancient languages - puca in Old English,puki in Old Norse, puke in Swedish, puge in Danish, puks in Low German, pukis in Latvia and Lithuania — mostly with the original meaning of a demon, devil or evil and malignant spirit … Because of this similarity it is uncertain whether the original puca sprang from the imaginative minds of the Scandinavians, the Germans or the Irish.

-Gillian Edwards, Hobgoblin and Sweet Puck p.143

Indeed, Pouk was a typical medieval term for the devil. For example, Langland once called Hell “Pouk’s Pinfold.” And the Phouka was sometimes pictured as a frightening creature with the head of an ass. Truly a devil to behold. The Welsh Pwca also did not match our modern conception of dainty tinkerbell fairies. According to Louise Imogen Guiney, a peasant drew the Pwca as “a queer little figure, long and grotesque, and looked something like a chicken half out of his shell”.

As a shape-shifter, Puck has had many appearances over the years. He’s been in the form of animals, like how the Phouka can become a horse, eagle or ass. He’s been a rough, hairy creature in many versions. One Irish story has him as an old man. He’s been pictured like a brownie or a hobbit. In a 1785 painting by William Blake , he looks like Pan from Greek mythology. In a 1841 painting by Richard Dadd , Puck looks like an innocent child. And a modern cartoon show portrays him as a silver-haired elf.

18  There is lots more to read, if you are interested. Here is the link, for all you Midsummer fans out there:

http://www.boldoutlaw.com/puckrobin/puckages.html

19   In the whirlwind of Shakespearean geekishness, I looked to the stars for yet more inspiration, all of which came to me in a Facebook post from the immortal Rosi Hollinbeck.

20    Rosi dug up a grand little video of John Branyan, who informs us that Shakespeare “had a working vocabulary of 54,000 words. We have a working vocabulary of 3,000 words.” I don’t doubt the accuracy of those figures, although 3,000 seems a bit sparce. But this comes from a guy who had to correct a sophomore girl’s misspelling of “horse” to “hourse.” I could go into all sorts of questions about that one, but let’s just let it be. Let’s get back to Branyan, who is a self-proclaimed Geek Dad.

30   Geek Dad. I gotta love the guy for his rendering of The Three Pigs in a wonderful offshoot of Shakespeare. If you haven’t geeked out enough on the Puck stuff, have a dose of this:

http://biggeekdad.com/2011/11/the-three-little-pigs/#.Tt7qe3p6n5F.facebook

31   Quite fun. I’d show it, but I’m not sure which standard this is covering.

32   Thanks Rosi, for some awesome geekiness.

33   AnywayZ, I think I’m already exhausted from a dashingly incredible weekend, or perhaps I should call Saturday and Sunday my geekend. I wrote forty vocabulary words, and have been relentless in trying to help my students reach the magic 3,000 needed to understand simple stories. Branyan awoke an awakened giant, so hopefully I won’t drop a truckload of still more vocabulary on my students.

34   Those sorts of statistics change all the time, but it’s always in the mini-thousands for this generation.

35   Folks.The girl spelled “horse” “hourse.” I thought I had seen it all. It makes one’s head swirl to think that we have too many teachers and not enough jobs. Somebody has to explain that one to me.

36   So I think I’m going to go to now; I have an exposition of sleep suddenly come upon me.

37   I’m going to pull a comforter over my head and drift into a dream.

38   I have lots more work to do later today, and miles to go before I sleep.

39   I’ll travel the road not taken, and sleep first, and trod later.

40   Havest thou a geeky Monday.

41   Peace and Dreams.

~H~

www.xanga.com/bharrington

     The Daily News

1   It’s Frideeeeeee!

2   Fun week, in so many ways!

3   Welp, my first item is that I’m pretty sure that I am the first person in San Jose to reach one million on the amount of bags I have purchased since the green law took place.

4   I am proud to be an environmentalist.

5   We are such creatures of habit, aren’t we?

6    I tend to stop in a supermarket every other day just to pick up items that I forget to get when I go on major shopping days.

7    The trouble with that is that I usually find two or three other minor things, just enough to warrant purchasing another bag.

8    Yesterday I went into one store or other and wound up with around six or seven small, forgotten items.

9    The girl at the counter talked me into buying one of her store’s bags, because it was only eighty-eight cents.

10   Who wouldn’t do that? I got home and thought of how incredible the guy who thought of eighty-eight cents was.

11   A dollar seems an outrage. I’m your typical moronic male who would throw a conniption over a dollar. “That’s outrageous! It’s a matter of principle! Dollar schmollar! I can carry this stuff out by hand!” And I would look like a circus clown trying to juggle a box of Cheerios, two bottled waters, a jar of mustard, a package of chicken, and a lawn toy for the dog all out to the parking lot.

12   But eighty-eight cents?

13   Piece of cake.

14   Moving on, Part One: I actually had to look up the word “conniption” to be sure that I spelled it correctly. I never really thought of how to spell it, and in all honesty, I don’t think I’ve ever seen it written. Somehow I knew how to spell it anyway, but the more I read poor spellings from students, the more I have to look up words.

15   I looked it up on Dictionary.com, and here is what they had:

conniption (fit) definition

 [kə nĭp’ shən]

n. a burst of anger: a spaz: He had a conniption over the question of my marriage to Fred.