That Blowed Up Real Good!

This summer has the potential to be a blockbuster at the box office. Not necessarily because the movies will be so very good, or that we will finally find out what happened to those star-crossed lovers in "Before Sunrise." Instead, the reason for all that traffic at your local superfaplex is due to the promotion of the films inside. TV and magazine ads have been screeching at us for months about this or that tentpole franchise sequel, the one that will come and save us all from our June or July doldrums.
Don't get me wrong. I love me a good slab of butter with my popcorn. I've already lined up to participate in the celebration of "Iron Man 3" and the umpteenth iteration of "The Great Gatsby." I have watched as my family's thirty-ish dollars adds to the opening weekend take. I'm reminded of David Letterman's admonition before "Stupid Pet Tricks": "Ladies and gentlemen, this is only an exhibition. This is not a competition. Please, no wagering." And still I feel compelled to root for this or that movie to succeed or fail, as if I had some stake in the success or failure of any of these bits of celluloid. Or digitally projected 3D entertainments. In IMAX and 7.1 Dolby. 
I could blame Steven Spielberg. "Jaws" made summer blockbusters as important a seasonal sign as the first snow of winter or the first manager fired in Major League Baseball. Way back in 1975, it really helped that, aside from a gigantic budget for its day, it was a great movie. It also sold a lot of tickets after that first weekend because families weren't home waiting for the newest releases on Netflix. Of course, on the opposite side of the ledger, ticket prices have gone up since I spent the summer of 1977 confirming my geek credentials by going to see "Star Wars" every other weekend. 
Or I could once again surrender to the sound and fury that is the summer blockbuster. I can also hope that Shane Black or Baz Luhrman don't end up issuing apologies for their work a decade down the road. Like Michael Bay did for "Armageddon."  That's okay, Michael. Even The Great And Powerful Oz makes mistakes.

Helpless

We had a pretty good weekend. Lots of preparation for my son's birthday. Plenty of attention lavished on Mothers on their day. The weather was pleasant. I asked my wife how she felt in the afterglow. After a polite flurry of adjectives like "happy, relaxed, accomplished," that described her experience, she landed on "helpless." One of these things was definitely not like the others.
"Helpless?"
"This weekend, we went over four hundred parts per million," she sighed.
I didn't need to ask what that meant. I knew she was talking about the concentration of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. The greenhouse effect. Melting ice pack. Homeless polar bears. And I was the clown pushing the power mower around our yard on Saturday. If I had confessed to my part of the problem, I would have had to confess that I had already tried the solution and it wasn't up to the task of getting all those foxtails out of our lawn. I sacrificed pounds of pollutants to be free of the little seeds that find their way into our dog's ears and nose and eventually breed even more. I tried to assuage my guilt by telling myself that I put off the inevitable use of choking gas-propelled machinery as long as I possibly could. But I knew the truth. I could have used the push mower and raked up the debris. I could have pulled them all out by hand. I could have let them grow. What about the dog?
Helpless. Without opposable thumbs, she can only sniff and scratch at the burs that get stuck in those tender spots. I could have set aside some time every day for an inspection. I could have kept her away from the tormenting plants until they were done with their cycle. I could have made a difference.
Instead, I mowed them all down and bagged them up. I mastered my environment and shrugged my shoulders at the thought of all my alternatives. Then I thought about how much our dog looks like a polar bear.
Helpless.

Is This Thing On?

Well, as it turns out, these words do get read by a number of people. Some of whom I have only recently encountered. A computer scientist, working on his Ph.D  came and found me because of his interest in people who write blogs that regularly contain personal stories. That would be me. Eight years of the stuff for which he happened to be looking. Not only that, he brought a film crew. Apparently his fascination with what I do set off another fascination in the documentary department and this little bit of research became a great big film.
Okay. Not a great big film, but one that required lights and sound and adjustments to both. I sat in a chair in my back yard and talked to a computer scientist about what makes me think that all my little anecdotes are so very interesting, and not only that, why do I keep doing this. Day after day. Year after year. I gave them the only answer that makes sense to me: "I tend to keep doing things until I'm told to stop." The other thing that made ironic sense to me was that simply by coming to visit, these strangers had helped me generate at least one more post. What hadn't occurred to me until very recently is that it doesn't take much to get me to write about something, and when a university research team lands in my back yard, suddenly I feel inspired.
"But how do you feel about knowing that strangers are reading your blog?" asked my inquiring visitor.
I told him that I thought Fred Rogers said it best when he said, "Strangers are just friends I haven't met yet." Of course, if I'd had a spotter, I would have said that it was Will Rogers that said that. Which makes sense. Fred Rogers probably wouldn't be suggesting to his audience that they should go out and start seeking out strangers. Will Rogers could probably afford to meet and greet a few shady characters. Or a computer scientist and his film crew.
Which still left me with the whole Heisenberg thing. Now that I know that I'm being watched, will I start writing any differently? Will I stop writing altogether? Did I mention these guys came from Southern California? Will I go Hollywood?
Probably not. As flattering as it was to be told that I was in the top one percent of bloggers who post on a regular basis and have been doing so for a long time, the research and documentary has moved on, leaving me with the obsessive compulsion to cut the grass in the back yard that I noticed had grown to ridiculous heights even as I sat, appearing thoughtful, during my interview. All that attention didn't get my chores done. Or this blog written.
Who knows? Someday I might be asked to fly out to Sundance to check out the premiere of this little production. Then I'll have another adventure to write about. For now, I'll just keep on keeping on, with only the slightest bit of curiosity about who's looking over my shoulder.

Sixteen Candles

It's the thing about being a father that I didn't fully appreciate until the last couple of years: hearing your funny bits come tumbling out of your progeny's mouth. Chief among these is the way he answers the phone. "Yello?" He has absorbed my prior absorption of the affected way in which Herb Tarlek, Sales Manager for WKRP in Cincinnati, would address callers when they reached him at his desk. And now, at age sixteen, we have a number of friends and family who make the mistake of believing that they have reached the elder when they have in fact reached the younger.
Proud? Sure. Why not? It's the part about growing up that I really don't mind: his. My wife might not agree, but I've got a great deal of fondness for the kid as he has grown. The fact that I can talk with him about music, and movies and even politics is a gift. Even those moments when our thought patterns don't completely mesh are a giddy good time. He knows a bunch of things that I don't. Early in his existence, the things that I learned from my son were primarily things I found out about myself as I learned to care for another proto-human. These days he's bringing home plenty of new and varied information that I wouldn't have imagined could come from someone who is just a sliver of my age. Most of these factoids concern motor vehicles, and that's okay. There is a significant gap in my knowledge and understanding of cars and trucks and things that go. With all of this discussion of internal combustion engines and the like, you might guess that part of today's celebration would involve the procurement of that sixteen-year-old's rite of passage, the driver's license. You would have guessed wrong. My son has yet to acquire his learner's permit. The smart money, a year or so ago, would have had him and his parents lined up outside the DMV, waiting for the chance to take that driving test.
That's not how this one worked out. As it turns out, there are myriad opportunities and challenges to fill the days of our boy. When asked, he'll give some sort of vague answer, but the underlying truth is well known to me. He isn't ready yet. He knows it and has purposely put it off for the time being. Which is fine and right. He's doing what I have done myself all my life. When it comes time to jump, you won't need to push me. I'll jump on my own because I'm ready. That's the way my son is, too. I'm proud as I can be, even though he's stealing my best bits. Happy Birthday, kiddo.

Parking Space

Those were the words that rang in my head the day after our last "Bike To Work Day." I didn't have to worry about a "parking space." I knew right where I was going to put my kickstand down: in the back corner of my classroom, just like I have for more than a decade and a half. Bike To Work Day, for me, is a little like Amateur's Night. I have been fortunate for the past sixteen years that I have been able to negotiate the side streets of Oakland each morning and afternoon without too much stress or discomfort. Sure, it rains. Sure it's hot. Sure it's cold. That's weather. I've been uncomfortable inside a climate-controlled motor vehicle. This particular morning was pretty standard East Bay: gray and cool in the morning, warming to the upper sixties in the afternoon. That's another nice thing about my commute. I don't generally have to worry about drifts of snow impeding my progress. And for some magical, ironic reason, the trip to work is downhill, and the way home is up.
Maybe that's why there was no Energizer Station on the path to and from work for me. The miles I pedal each day probably don't require a lot of roadside assistance. There's a drinking fountain at school if I need it, and by the time I get home, I know how many stairs I have to climb before I collapse in a heap just inside the front door. That doesn't come up very often. It's just part of the way things roll, bicycle-wise.
Did I notice packs of other cyclists making their way to and from their busy days as I made my own? No. I may have picked just the wrong route or something. Or maybe all the real bike enthusiasts made the trip much earlier than I did. Or much later. Or maybe not at all. But if they did, they didn't have to worry about those two words, but they might have had some trouble trying to remember the combination to the lock they never use.

Madre

My wife, the mother of my son, will tell you that we officially have a teenager. You know the kind: sullen, uncommunicative, periodically despondent. To be fair, these symptoms don't occur on an every day basis. On the contrary. We've been very lucky on this particular front. That doesn't mean that we still don't have to fight the periodic fight or give lengthy lectures to a person who has already figured out how the interaction will end and the number of words simply add to the frustration level for all involved.
It's a chore, sometimes. That's why my wife, the mother of my son, deserves a day all her own. She manages the schedules of three humans and a dog. She copes with the ever-shifting sands of commitments and interests. She keeps track of our various locations, rarely resorting to GPS. She does it with love in her heart and a smile on her face.
Until it's used up. There are days when all that good Mommy Mojo runs a little thin. It never runs out, but it's a tough job and she's got to do it. I think of the times when I tested my own mother's patience and wonder how she managed to keep it together through all three boys' adolescence. When we were all five, my son included, all we need to know was "potty, jacket, lunchbox." Out the door we went to whatever adventure was in front of us. Then came the report cards and play dates and all the attendant others. The friends and their families and eventually the girlfriends.
Girlfriends? Well, our son is still making inroads in that arena. He's testing the waters and that means another rite of passage. What we never knew about those passage rites when we were going through them was that our parents got to go along for the ride as well. That's tough. But my mom did it with admirable aplomb. And so is my son's mother. It takes a great deal of inner strength and patience to make it look like you know what's going to happen next, even when at times you're making it up as you go along. Thank you Mom(s). Happy Mothers' Day.

Arborists

"Talk about massive potential for growth!" - Bill Mlurray in Stripes.
Yes, in the education business, we talk a lot about the little acorns that we all hope will grow to be giant oaks. That's not always how it works. Sometimes that little acorn turns into something that we barely recognize. Sometimes they remain, always, a little acorn. The reason to keep coming back are those magnificent trees that cover the land.
If the land in which you live happens to be southern West Virginia, however, when school started in the Fall, one out of seven classrooms was without a teacher. Leaders there couldn't recruit enough educators to that sparsely populated rural area.In McDowell County, a place perpetually ranked among the worst in the state by almost every measure, twelve people a month die from drug overdoses here, while more than one hundred people are on a waiting list to talk to rehab counselors via Skype. Three-quarters of all students live in a home where parents can't find work in this one-time coal hub that has slowed. The county leads the state in teenage pregnancies.
Suddenly working in Oakland, California feels like a pretty good deal. Educators are working hard to transform those West Virginia schools, turning them into community centers where families can turn in this time of uncertainty. Arne Duncan, Obama's Secretary of Education is a big fan of this plan. It's an idea he championed when he was in charge of public schools in Chicago. That's the idea that we have struggled with here, as well. We have kids who are dropped off by single moms at seven in the morning and aren't picked up from our after school program until after five in the evening. It is an awesome responsibility. We continue to do everything we can during those ten hours to help those little acorns grow. The realities that have created the world outside our doors don't change quickly, but we keep hoping that we are making it easier for our sprouts to put down solid roots and spread their branches. Sometimes it takes a village. Sometimes it takes a forest.