Graduation Ceremony 1

Heading off to school around 9 am on april 30. You see the bus about 75 yards away bending around the traffic circle, which has a fountain in the middle. Right in front of the bus stop is a poster for a circus that will be performing in town this weekend.

A narrow road just a block north of the school, on the way from the bus stop at Kossuth Ter, the plaza across from the main church, where the post office and various shops are located. The area is being renovated, several buildings are being gutted, having new roofs put on, are being expanded, and in general cleaned up quite a bit.

We are now inside the grounds of the Gimnazium, just outside the main door. The large tree on the right is a chestnut, with blossoms only partly formed.

The main door. I don't know who these girls are, presumably students who take German instead of English. They were posing , and I just took the opportunity to take a foto of the fotoshoot.

Graduating students getting ready for the big "promenade." Each is carrying an embroidered bag with souvenirs of the day. Traditionally the bags contain an image of the school, a bit of salt, a coin, and a hardtack biscuit.

Classroom decorations. Here is the doorway to Classroom 13A, and you can see some of the students in the last minutes before the Promenade begins.

Decorations for 13B and 12E. A and B and F classes spend an extra year at the Gimnazium, a kind of pre-Gymnazium in their first year (9). The AB students do intensive English or German, depending on what they have chosen, then they enter the regular curriculum. The F students come from relatively disadvantaged backgrounds, so they are given an extra year of review to make sure they will be up to speed when they continue.

Around 10 AM, just before the Promenade begins. As yet no outside guests. The Promenade is strictly within the confines of the Gimnazium. It is an internal thing, only for students and teachers. Guests will start to arrive around 11:30 and the field will soon be full of visitors.

This is the teachers' meeting room. Teachers who don't have homeroom responsibilities gather here for the Promenade. The graduates walk through and visit each homeroom, as well as the teachers' room. The whiteboard had a quotation from Pushkin (translated into Hungarian) and was decorayed with greenery and flowers.

Together with their homeroom teacher the members of each class walk slowly, right hand on the right shoulder of the classmate ahead of them. They sing as they go-apparently three or four songs that they repeat throughout the day. The Hungarian songs sounded vaguely like 19th century American folk ballads (like a slow gypsy flavord version of From This Valley They Say You Are Going); one class actually sang Gaudeamus Igitur. In the picture below we see the entrance of 13A into the teachers' room, they then walk around the big center table and exi into the hallway through he other door (visible in the picture just above).

fed up at times

it's the refusal to engage that irritates me most. i don't care whether people agree with me or not, as long as they take the trouble to actually say something. but there is one class that seems hell bent on following its do-nothing leaders. they give a shit, so no one else tries to. out of 16, only about 5 are willing to make any kind of effort.

i just walked out of the class after exhausting my patience. later one of the students came up to me in the hallway to apologize for the rest of the class, well, not to apologize, but to say she too was very frustrated, that she appreciated my efforts to stimulate conversation and that she wished there would be more energy and participation from the rest of the group.

and this is the class that is supposed to be the best english students in the 12th year. not sure how i want to handle them going forward. maybe just come right out and say, ok, those of you who want to get into a real discussion, come over here. the rest of you can just eff off as much as you want, i give a good goddam. do whatever you like, just dont bother those of us who want to work.

the deer

Forgot to include the deer in my posting from Sunday, when I took out the bike to the nature center north of town. I would say something past a yearling (just finished rereading Rawlings' novel last week), but not yet a full adult. Saw him bound to my left for about a hundred yards, stop, then bound right back into the thicket where he first came from.

dreaming in math

So in between blasts of thunder and the smatting of raindrops onto the aluminum clad windowsills I dreamt fitfully of explaining to someone, perhaps a 12 yr old, perhaps Thomas, how the cartesian grid works, with negative numbers to the left and bottom, positive ones to the right and left. I say Thomas because whoever it was had been introduced to similar concepts in elementary school, only was using different vocabulary, and I was trying to explain the difference to him in terms of an asteroid making its way toward earth from one direction and a rocket blasting off to the moon in another direction. Was still thinking of this as making tea: the concept of a countdown 10..9..8....

hitting zero and the continuing on as 1 2 3 4.. the first set being negative numbers, the following being positive.

What a difference a bike makes

So there is this group of keys, two standard issue door keys, one not quite the other, plus a skeleton key, all three on a reinforced black rubber band, like some kind of ponytail band, and I had nonchalantly presumed these were the keys to the basement door and to the storage room, since I already had a set of keys for the building/apartment. Besides it has been cold and or snowy and or icy and or rainy, so there really has not been any impetus for me to explore the basement and discover whether there might be a bicycle in the storeroom, as rumored. But last Wednesday it did warm up and brighten up in the afternoon, almost enough to give one hope that spring might actually be here to stay (turns out to be a vain hope, but still it was ALMOST enough), so I fetched the ponytail band keys and went down to the basement door and... no luck. No way, not ever.

Hmmmm.

And there was another problem, only very tangentally related, which was that my kitchen light had burned out. Fine, you might say, just go buy another bulb. I did. And a nice compact florescent one too, thank you, and I got out the stepladder and climbed up two steps and said... nope, this is not going to work. Tall ceilings, only way I am going to reach the fixture is to stand on the very top level, which I am not.

Then a good deed, rewarded. Gabriella, downstairs, divorced mother of one, living with her parents (or they with her, unclear) was back from her operation (throat, couple of tumors removed, not sure of prognosis), so on the way back from school I stopped to buy a bouquet of about 7-8 nice flowers, then dropped by their flat to say Gute Besserung or whatever one says in magyarul, i have no idea, something like egeszegedre, but that is a toast with wine, at least though people would understand the intention. Of course I am invited in to have a cup of very strong instant coffee in a very small cup (no I did NOT complain, thank you, I was very polite, but I grant you i did not ask for seconds) and some cookies (they were tasty, it's hard to ruin chocolate), and in the course of fumble-with-online-dictionary conversation I managed to ask if they had a ladder I could borrow and oh, by the way, how DOES that basement door work? So I get to do two things: replace my light (it is much better now, only 20 watt consumption, with 100 watt equivalent output, compared to the 60/60 conventional that preceded it) and get a look see at the basement, including a close examination of the basement key, which definitely was not what I had on my ponytail band.

Fastforward to yesterday, a lazy day, napping and such, but also some poking around in corners, looking in drawers, searching in bookcases, that sort of thing. I keep thinking there must be another set of keys. Nothing. Nowhere.

This morning, more of the same. I start to fold up winter coats and stash them in the storage closet in the entrance hallway, and then on some kind of inspired impulse I decide to hunt through the other stuff in there. The box with cleaning supplies. The box with shoe polish. The mini xmas tree, a couple of leftover cat toys, a locking bike cable, key set into the cable lock. Makes sense, store the key with the lock.

Wait a minute, the key inserted into the cable lock is on a key ring. And lookie there---the key ring has two extra keys on it, and damned if one of them doesn't look just like the basement key that Gabriella's mom was using. So I tried it, and it worked. Voila. Shazam. Abracadabra. Apparatur! Sezam, oeffne dich! Open Sezme!

And we get past the door and to the inner chamber and use key number two to open the door of the actual storage room and behold there are not one, not two, but THREE bicycles. One of which is a kid's bike, ok , fine, but two adult sized women's bikes (who cares , besides it's easier when you come to a stop and want to put both feet on the ground), one of them a newish mountain bike, which I promptly pumped using the bike pump I found in the storage bins upstairs along with the bike cable, and in about 10 minutes I had put on my trouser clamps, my helmet (both very prudently purchased last month, just in case), and I was

off, off forth on a swing,

as a skate's heel sweeps smooth

on a bow bend, the hurl and gliding

rebuffed the big wind, my heart in hiding....

----ooops, sorry, i got hopkinsed away---

ANYWAY

I was off , of forth on the bike, heading north into a residential area I hadn't travelled before,

exploring here, there, crossed over the little river, headed further north, vaguely along the river, then there was a sign, campground to the left, so I go to explore

and it is sort of like Times Beach, as if everything has been unoccupied for about 20 years or so, camping pads and electric hookups, but all cracked and weedy, and a broken down building with MOTEL on the side, with what appears to have been nothing but 100% vacancy.

But then there is this open air swimmingpool, and there are people there, swimming, not many, about 10-15, and this is what, 18 April??? Water must be freezing. And I ride around some more and then suddenly I am passing by a small lake, like something out of the Tennessee swamps where the Mississippi used to run, a two acre version of Reelfoot Lake, with lilypads and ducks and birds calling and tree stumps. I ride around some more and I see an information sign, go over to it, and in HungarianEnglishGerman there is info about these natural springs, which used to be the most productive in Europe, but which dried up because of extensive mining in the 50s and 60s and finally stopped flowing in the 70s, but which started to re-emerge in the early 90s as mining was curtailed, and now are flowing stronger and stronger, and this is a nature preserve now, and all these plant species which were totally gone are starting to make a tentative comeback.

So I ride around and look around, and it is quiet and peaceful, and the loudest sound is the bird calls and the crush of dry leaves under my bike wheels. So I dismount to make less noise.

Waterlilies are just starting to bloom. Oh yes, the info signs say that the springs feed the swimmingpool with water at a constant 68-70 degrees Farenheit, hence the swimmers in April. I wonder if anyone is there in winter as well?

When i got back (was gone about 2 hrs) I checked my mailbox. Gabrielle left a note--they went and made a copy of their key for me. So sweet. All is well. For now.

rain

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stupid me, one ray of sunshine does not fair weather make

Detailed Local Forecast

How to Read This

• Today: Cloudy with periods of rain. High 54F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 90%.
• Tonight: Cloudy with periods of light rain. Low around 45F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 70%.
• Tomorrow: Considerable cloudiness with occasional rain showers. High 58F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 60%.
• Tomorrow night: Partly cloudy skies. Low 44F. Winds light and variable.
• Friday: Showers. Highs in the upper 50s and lows in the low 40s.
• Saturday: Sunshine. Highs in the upper 50s and lows in the upper 30s.

finally some sun

rained for about 14 hours, from around 2 am to around 4, then it lightened up and the walk home was almost pleasant. lots of drowned worms stretched out on the sidewalks. it struck me this morning as I ran across a couple of them, that they are called Regenwurm in German--Rainworms. And then I recalled that simply Wurm means Dragon... Which probably emphasizes its long snakelike form for the Germans rather than the more compact form we see in celtic or chinese art.

anyway there is rumor that we will see temperatures of close to 70 by the weekend.

and today wasnt so horrible after all, despite the awful beginning.

rain drops keep falling on my windowsill

which might be poetic in another context

only

my windowsills are sheathed in aluminum

so the rain goes bang bang rather than a soothing drip drip.

from 2 am on it has been like sleeping next to a clothes dryer

spinning around with coins mixed in with the clothes.

i already know today at school it will be bad...

hard getting to sleep (not till well after 11)

hard sleeping (see above)

and it is now only 4:35.

ok. might as well do the coffee thing.

rain rain rain

50 for high 40 for low last several days...

no change in sight.

several teachers gone on trips to london/amsterdam so we are having to double up classes,

substitute teach, etc.

no spare moments during the day

and when i come home i just crash.

bob is a dull boy these days

new fotos

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2037451&id=1251511141&l=bbc7c5e715

2010.04.05 Slow Day, today.

Tata Railway Station, Easter Morning 2010

Rained all day yesterday. Nicer today, met Bertalon for coffee/mineral water at the hotel, we sat down at 10:05 and didn't get up till 12:30.

Conversation number two

The downstairs folks, Imry and Erzebet and Gabriella invited me for Tee und Kuchen... I was on my way to school in the middle of last week and the two parents (I&E) were outside digging holes to plant some small shrubs, so i pitched in for about 5 minutes, doing the heavy digging work, but had to bail out after a bit to go to school. Anyway they left a very nice note in my box inviting me for a drink some afternoon, and i saw them on Saturday and said I was going to Gyor on Sunday, how about Monday, so it was fine.

We did the usual point and fumble with english/hungarian german/hungarian dictionaries, pretty much got the picture down, Gabriella is divorced, 2 yrs ago, had been working as a nurse, now has been diagnosed with some tumors in her throat, will have an operation next week, wont be able to talk for about 2 months, the older folks are retired, he used to work for the national railways, they moved from Tatabanya to Tata at the same time she divorced, she has a son and a granddaughter, he is 26 , she is 3.7 or so, anyway we did all this over some homemade cake and pastry, it was really very sweet.

rainy and gloomy all day. i am doing laundry and wash and otherwise not much.

Easter, well i tried, and it sorta worked

G Y O" R SCULLS AND BOATHOUSE

SOUTH AISLE OF GYOR CATHEDRAL

FACADES IN THE OLD SECTION OF GYOR

Where to start? Well in the middle, why not? in media res. The middle would be the beginning of the 10 AM service at the cathedral in Gyo"r, it is o with two dots over it, which my computer cant or wont do or rather which i cant be bothered to do, so for this blog its just Gyor--ANYWAY

So here comes the smoke pouring out of the thurible and the altar party starts up the aisles, bishop in mitre (no crozier now that i think of it) [hah i just realized that Google spellcheck has no vocab matches for mitre, thurible, and crozier, so the words appear with red underlines, stupid secular program, go get a life!] and an altar floozy [oops, male, can a male be a floozy?] walking behind him carrying his red beanie. Organ roars, and a hymn shouts out, very renaissance, minor key, four lines per stanza, second line always AL LE LU IA, would work well in a grand space like this one if everyone sang, but they dont, first of all i think there is law against singing in a hungarian church if you are not in the choir (maybe that's wrong, but it seems plausible), or maybe they dont print hymnals or mass leaflets or whatever, but anyway the choir sang everyone up to the high altar, whence more clouds of smoke welled up as the bishop swung his way around and about.

I was at the very rear of the church, SRO, but this was service #2 for me, as i will explain in a bit. So after an opening exclamation and a prayer of confession (even a crypto calvinist like me knows what it means to strike your breast three times,) through my fault, through my fault, through my greivous fault, but here it was GREAT fault, I heard the hungarian NAGYON = big, and knew exactly where they were in the prayer and then everyone sits down and up starts the orchestra (yes, organ and baroque orchestra, strings, winds and french horns, and they launch into the KYRIE followed immediately by the GLORIA, and i couldnt tell who it was by, sounded like it might have been haydn or mozart, anyhow very 18th century. I left after the Gloria, had been there done that at the 9 am service, so was not going to double dip. Not that i could have dipped, there being no wine to dip in, but still....

All this after the 9 oclock mass that i attended, which was semi=full but not overflowing, and i noticed that as that mass was drawing to a close people were coming in to stake out seats for the next mass, so i figured the next one at 10 had to be the big one, and so it was, bishop and all and orchestra, plus the smells (earlier one had bells, which was no big deal).

Mass as spectator pastime, homily seemed canned (but what do i know i didnt understand a word of it), and as i mentioned with the big mass that followed no one actually sung, just the cantor (early mass) and the choir (later mass). This was also a come forward and stick out your tongue communion, which I did not follow, I went forward and held up my palms crossed, and the priest was taken aback but did not refuse, so I was fine.

Of course as a liturgy junkie i quibble. But I did not carp overmuch. I was subdued somewhat i think by my earlier visit to a side chapel, where rests the mortality of a man who struggled to save the Jews of Gyor from the execution camps and who himself was killed by Russian soldiers on Easter of 1945 as he tried to keep the schoolgirls of the cathedral school safe from their Soviet "liberators. " Of course that is the church's version of things, and we know how the Church (any Church, whether it be religious or secular) will sanitize its heroes for public consumption.

Other than the people in church, downtown Gyor was pretty empty today, cool and windy, i walked around the old section of town for about 3-4 hours in all, taking a few photos (3 above , rest on facebook, look here:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2037170&id=1251511141&l=b40087040c

Things to reflect upon. Tata railway station, very run down, broken benches, passenger shelters have huge holes so no shelter from wind, dracks, peeling paint, what appear to be nearly bare wires running up light poles. Could be incredibly charming, would take some elbow grease, but a cleanup, a sweep of all the goddam cigarette butts, and a few containers of geraniums would work wonders.

Landscape on way north and west to Gyor, mostly flat, farms, some orchards, a couple of abandoned factories not unlike the Watlow electric setup in Wellston that you see when you take the metrolink to Lambert. overall reminded me of Illinois on the way to Springfield.

Train makes local stops. No way to know where you are, there is no sign anywhere. I guess it all works by telepathy.

Downtown Gyor reminded me of how Dresden is laid out: Bahnhof, then Stalin-era 5-

6 story buildings, then the old city.

Remembered while i was sitting at open air cafe in the thin sunlight and thick wind that I had dreamed of Hundertwasser last night, in particular about Regentag auf Liebe Welle, and I had definitely dreamed it in color, those strong reds against the blacks.

The old area of Gyor has been blocked to most auto traffic, and it seems to work. Of course I need to be there on a weekday to see if it really works, but stores seem to be viable. Not that many for sale/for rent signs.

There was another church I stepped into, not just the cathedral. This one was a little jewel, a model of late baroque, early rococo, round central nave with 5 windows in the dome, the 6th being take up by the apse, light and airy. Too much statuary and too much dark blue, but still.....

And then the highlight of the day, or lowlight, depends.... I had not paid attention to return times for the train, just noted that they ran every hour, so got to the train station at about 12:40 just missing the 12:35 train, an hour to kill, not really interested in retracing steps, so just lolled around a bit, got a cup of coffee, was strolling in the almost totally empty main corridor of the station, and i see someone waving and calling HOO HOO to me, it is a woman i would say late 40s with a cigarette, waving it at me, and i shake my head, then she gets up to me and asks me something in hungarian, and i know she is asking for a light, and could have probably said nincs dohanyi or something similar, which would be sorta like saying me nothing smokee but instead i said (in passible hungarian), Sorry, I dont understand Hungarian, whereupon she started speaking in German, Nicht Rauchen? and then made a suggestive move, whereupon I said Nein, ich bin schwul (no, not interested, i'm gay) whereupon she made a comment like CANT BELIEVE IT, NICHT ZU GLAUBEN, SO EIN SCHOENER MAN, GOOD LOOKING GUY LIKE YOU, NO WAY and was grabbing at my crotch, which really made me think she was really just trying to lift my wallet, so I backed out fast and went outside to escape.

Rhetorical question: should i be flattered? Trying hard to think of the last time I was propositioned. Maybe in grad school when i was still in Houston. Fresh out of the Army, still in decent shape.

I am back "home" and I am tired and sleepy. time to put the blog away till another day.

a good night spoiled

well, let's start with the good parts

first was the best ever attempt with freeciv, getting mz spaceship to land on alpha centauri by the year 1648.

then there was the trip to tesco, a kind of watered down wallmart. did some decent shopping, bought credible food, a not quite so credible cap (but only $3.50, so who cares), and some vinegar (necessary for doing the wash to counteract the heavy lime in the local water).

then there was the decent cup of coffee at tesco while i was waiting for the bus back to town.

then there was the nice guy who struck up a conversation while we were waiting and who merged his 100 word english vocabulary with my 200 word hungarian, so we got along well enough... i told him where i lived in the us and that i had a daughter in school in LA, and he has some relative or other also in LA and has three (14 down to 6) daughters and was at tesco to buy some drywall patch, ostensibly to fix a wall in his place, and i joked that tomorrow being easter was going to be a workday for him. my first joke in hungarian.

btw, his name is Lajos, = Louis/Lewis in hungarian.

so i get home and unpack and it is now about 6 pm and full daylight still, so i say to myself, ok, easter service wont start till dark, so i get cleaned up and shirt and tie and coat and off to the church about 1/2 mile away and there are folks outside so i think great they are just now lighting the fire,[but no it was the stupid end of the stupid service, the bozos started at 6 pm for godsake, in full goddam daylight, what total unimaginable heresy, how the hell can you strike light in the darkness you know the whole lux lucet in tenebris schtick while the sun is still in the dimdam sky you magyarpoops, but hey, it's not my church, i'm only an observer, so i should shut up} and clustering at the entrance to the church, which is full so there is a crowd around the entrance door, and then there is a hymn, and people outside chime in, and then a short pause, and i see the priest sort of waving something golden around (it could have been a monstrance, cant swear, if so it is the first time in 40 years i have had one waved at me, last time was in Germany when I was in the Army), and then there was the start up of the organ again and i said to myself, i know this one, and sure enough, it was the national anthem (Isten meg all az Magyart= God grant the Magyar people.... all sorts of stuff, mostly peace and quiet, lord knows they have suffered endlessly at the hands of the younameits the turks the huns the austrians and by god they are just ground down to the earth so pleeeeeeeeeeye god, etc etc), which of course everyone sang, the men outside standing just a little bit taller and a little bit straighter as it began, and then the crowd started to give a little and here came the processional cross heading down the aisle outside toward us and i thought (because i still did not yet realize that the service had started a full 90+ minutes earlier) that this was all the prelude to the lighting of the pascal fire, but no here came the altar party and two little altargirls dressed in traditional Magyar costume, complete with the little red tiaras and the dirndlesque outfits (how can i create such a word, dirndlesque, the worst of both german and french, i should hide my keyboard in shame) and poof they disappeared into a side door and then i could tell it was over because everyone was coming outside and all the honchos were gone, vamoosed so to speak, so i said to my self:
the road to hell
and i am on it

next up.. i just walked around a bit, headed south for about 1/4 mile, then turned west toward the lake, and then at the edge of the lake i could see all lit up
A the gimnazium on the hill, glowing and serene,
B the Esterhazy palace,
C the fortress, and off in the northwest sky still a lingering of light, here, even at 8 pm, and it is only the very first of april. the first stars were just coming out, there was no moon, but he lights from the illuminated buildings reflected on the water and i remembered all the time i spent on the boat in the mediterranean, the lights on the water at night.

walking back to the apt i said to myself, well, if La casa restaurant is still open i will go have dinner there, my very first restaurant meal on my own in hungary, and it was so i went in.

Very nice inside, two medium=sized parties there, i was the only solo diner, the waiter addressed me in English (was it the coat, the haircut, the shoes, the glasses, my initial hesitancy), but ok, and i sat down and soon found myself enjoying a very decent cabernet, then an excellent spanish lamb dish, and to top it off a very good cup of coffee and a wonderful dessert==almost a lowfat cheesecake, not at all sweet or rich but very satisfyhing.

so here is the hard part. i think i was overcharged. Damn. the lamb was 1900, the coffee 300, the dessert 300, that makes 2700. I dont know what the wine was, but it couldnt have been much more than 800 for a glass, which is 3500-3600. but the final tab (including tip) was 6000. I did not argue, but I am wondering what i should do now. The food was quite good, and I would like to go back, but not if I was stiffed.

I honestly think I will go back sometime next week and ask them point blank if they overcharged me. If not, then fine, and I will return. If so, then I will tell then why I wont be back and why i will be telling my colleagues at the Gimnazium how i was treated.

dreaming in subtitles

At some point many years ago I started to dream in German. At first it was just an awareness that there was some German dialogue, but nowadays there will be extended swaths of conversation that are in German, usually because my dream setting is somewhere in Europe. Last night was the first time Hungarian crept into things. But as subtitles or printed labels, not as something aurally coherent. I think it is the combination of watching BBC reruns of Weakest Link and Antiques Road Show, which have hungarian subtitles along with spoken english dialogue, and my being surrounded by hungarian signage. ever so slowly i am able to pick out individual words. the other day i had an aha experience.... background: one of the german teachers here is named cilla (=stella), and we see each other at the lunch table about once a week and have a good 5=10 min chat auf deutsch. other background: just to the south of the gimnazium there is a small observatory complete with dome and retracting door for telescope. the building has a sign on it, cannot recall it but it goes something like this

LAZATONY KAROLY CILLAKOSPONT

and then it hit me: it is a STAR somethingorother (starwatchcenter, stargazeplace, starmeasureroom, etc etc) named after Karl Whoozitz.

So in my dreams, there were letters or words hovering around the people who were speaking, not quite a threshhold of understanding, but at least the door was open a crack.

the old lake

If I walk back from school, I choose to walk along the lake, heading toward the fortress. The weather has generally been chilly, but as things warm up I start to see more and more people out along the lake, just lolling or strolling. A week ago it got pretty warm, and I noticed several people who seemed to be out of towners... a few on spiffy touring bikes, wearing sleek outfits, helmets, dark glasses. Others dressed rather formally, as if they were attending some kind of business conference, or taking a break from a funeral.

The couple schmoozing on the bench is de rigueur for just about everywhere. PDA's are the norm. At school it goes on on the benches outside, in the hallways, in the classrooms. In many respects, this is a Southern European country. Domestic architecture reflects this as well... there is no front yard, instead everything is arranged like a roman villa... the heart of the house is the courtyard, which is closed to the outside world.

Death and... Whatever Good Friday 2010

I put my blog on ice for a while. Main reason, I had foolishly used the blog id to post some homework assignments, and then students started reading my blog and asking questions, and I realized that perhaps some of my negative comments about the school and some of them might be viewed as hurtful and mean. Maybe they were, but not intentionally. If the kids are just plain pains in the ass, then they are. If they are more interested in their fashion mags and their cell phones, then they are. Not much I can do about that.

So, I have renamed the blog, and buried the old one and hope to bring this one to a new and better life.