my "lanyard"

talk about a time machine--this image sent me reeling back to 1979, scooby doo cartoons, and minnesota summers... THE GALAXY EXPLORER

read all about the "secret lego vault" that contains all the sets ever made (with video!) here.

poetry pt. II

after my students struggled with "the lanyard" (see previous post), i saw the title of this poem--also by billy collins--and immediately thought of my students.

The Trouble with Poetry

The trouble with poetry, I realized
as I walked along a beach one night --
cold Florida sand under my bare feet,
a show of stars in the sky --

the trouble with poetry is
that it encourages the writing of more poetry,
more guppies crowding the fish tank,
more baby rabbits
hopping out of their mothers into the dewy grass.

And how will it ever end?
unless the day finally arrives
when we have compared everything in the world
to everything else in the world,

and there is nothing left to do
but quietly close our notebooks
and sit with our hands folded on our desks.

Poetry fills me with joy
and I rise like a feather in the wind.
Poetry fills me with sorrow
and I sink like a chain flung from a bridge.

But mostly poetry fills me
with the urge to write poetry,
to sit in the dark and wait for a little flame
to appear at the tip of my pencil.

And along with that, the longing to steal,
to break into the poems of others
with a flashlight and a ski mask.

And what an unmerry band of thieves we are,
cut-purses, common shoplifters,
I thought to myself
as a cold wave swirled around my feet
and the lighthouse moved its megaphone over the sea,
which is an image I stole directly
from Lawrence Ferlinghetti --
to be perfectly honest for a moment --

the bicycling poet of San Francisco
whose little amusement park of a book
I carried in a side pocket of my uniform
up and down the treacherous halls of high school.

why i weep not for tim russert

i stole this directly from this modern world. written by the always succinct and brilliant jonathan schwarz of a tiny revolution, based on sam husseini's correspondence with him, it gives but one (BIG) reason why i never liked tim russert--his cheerleading for the invasion of iraq.

December 19, 1999: With Al Gore as guest, Tim Russert says on Meet the Press: “One year ago Saddam Hussein threw out all the inspectors who could find his chemical or nuclear capability.” Russert asks Gore what he’s going to do about this.

Soon afterward: Sam Husseini leaves a message on Russert’s answering machine, and speaks to two of his assistants, telling them the inspectors were withdrawn by the UN at the request of the United States.

January 2, 2000: With Madeleine Albright as guest, Tim Russert repeats the error on Meet the Press: “One year ago, the inspectors were told, ‘Get out,’ by Saddam Hussein.” Russert asks Albright what she’s going to do about this.

January 21, 2000: Sam Husseini writes a letter to Russert, again laying out the facts, and requests a correction.

January 22, 2000-March 19, 2003: Russert never corrects his error.

March 19, 2003-present: Hundreds of thousands of people die in Iraq War. Russert dies, not in Iraq War. Official Washington weeps copious tears for Russert and his Extraordinary Journalistic Standards.

More details with Sam Husseini’s letter.

poetry

i was recently introduced to billy collins while watching PBS late one evening. he performed this poem, and i immediately thought i had to share it with my students since they sometimes made lanyards at lunch... unfortunately, the innocence and irony was lost on them... so sad... in a few years they'll understand better... (not to worry, i edited out "milk from her breasts.")

The Lanyard
Billy Collins

The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light

and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.

Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth

that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

Billy Collins, the U.S. poet laureate from 2001 to 2003, is the author of seven collections of poetry and is a distinguished professor of English at Lehman College of the City University of New York. He serves as the poet laureate of New York state.

why i'm voting republican...

from http://www.imvotingrepublican.com/

let the games begin

standardized testing started today. we began with the always-coma-inducing reading language arts section (42 questions). this "80-90 minute" test took two of my students 3 hours--one actually fell asleep! even after we stretched out and ran a few laps this morning. even after we made a big deal about getting enough sleep and eating a good breakfast.

face down in the middle of "the fox and the mole" story...

but the most forehead-slapping-est moment came when one of my best readers, finished her test and took out her writer's notebook. i noticed she had a movie ticket stub that she was ready to affix within, so i stole a peak at it--

KUNG-FU PANDA
sunday, june 8, 9:35 PM

i leaned over and whispered, "you went to the movies that late?!
what time did you get to bed, alisha?"

"midnight."

800 API, HERE WE COME!!!

dane cook is a douche

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they're BAAACK!

at first i thought this was a kid's ball, stuck in my tree--
then i realized...
after three years of not producing any "berries,"
my avocado tree was finally bearing fruit!
i'll be giving them away when they mature--
first come, first served!

MR. C., MA, ED.

WAA HOO!!!
May 29, 2008 at California State University, Long Beach

love to my family for all the support--
thanks for celebrating this achievement with me!