It's an October Friday

Everyone is sick, and busy. We all seem to be just a little bit behind on what we need to be ready for. The pressure mounts, and we hit ourselves for letting it get this far.

The autumn sun glows, even through the slim windows of the library now at 3 5oPM. The leaves swell about, casting their rich smell about the campus as the sidewalks dry from the past few days of rain threatening to become snow. Nothing is completed or finished, but our syllables snap today - our words are quick, our thoughts transfer well over in conversation. And, doesn't it seem like, even after this nonsense, we're all holding our heads up and bringing our glasses together? It's the sun.

The reality of traveling to the Philippines flew into our minds and shook our bones after we flew, waited, descended, landed, taxi'd, lined up, collected our bags, met our hosts and - finally - when we stopped through the last of the doors into the warm evening, and Manila rushed at our faces. The city was bustling, as one would imagine it to be, and the smell firmly set our feet on the ground and our hearts into our intentions. We were there, across the ocean, sweating in our worn jeans while, at home, there would be several more months of icy snow and biting wind. Of course there were months of excitement and anticipation beforehand. Even the hours up in the air, waiting to transfer in Hawaii and, before that, the meetings for preparation of what to expect and, as best as we could, how we should go about our teams and sites. In all honesty, those times were squabbling and hand-wringing. The thrill of travel and the unexpected is what was driving us, along with the hope for an effective and artful job of documenting the soul of the those without a voice in modern civilization. It became real - all of our preparation, prayers, frustrations and joys shared with friends, hopes for what we would learn and what we might forget came to a halting, shuddering motion with that first sight of the bustling city past the airport parking lot and that first warm smell of a people we didn't know.

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Three friends stayed up several nights, and that's one of the greatest things about guys and the trust that is found and built: we can and, often easily, do. One night in particular, up until almost six in the morning, sitting around the table talking about what we should be doing and laying out the course of actions that we knew would be best. We knew these things to the point that we wanted them to happen. We wanted ourselves to be bigger, stronger, more honest versions of ourselves and were only held back by how small we actually were. It's difficult to focus on what one person is confessing when it is so glaringly similar to what you have to say, and so you do. Nights in the living room, long car rides through borders and patrols, the passing questions to remind ourselves not to push it away and, instead, to confront it but it all came to that halting, shuddering revelation of This Is Who We Can Be and now we have to deal with it. And others who haven't listened or spoken with us those nights will say that it's all for the better and why did you wait so long? And they will be right - it is for the better. It's good that actions followed words and the only reason to have waited so long was for fear.

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The snow began falling in a blessed city - one that we had the enormous fortune to witness at night, to look about us in the dark of night, and still be able to see from the buildings and lights and realize that we would be here through it, until the next day. The snow began falling, as they had said it would, and as it had done every year of our lives and we still sat in awe at it. Had we really forgotten that it could happen? Did we convince ourselves that we wouldn't see it again, would have to live it through memories and photographs? We were fortunate enough to breathe it in, to smell the affected air, hear the muted sound of the streets and feel cold enough to be chased inside to view it from behind glass, but to view it for hours and hours and sit exhausted but awake. We knew that you would be leaving soon. The songs that we knew would be different once you did - they were already beginning to, I suppose. And the authorities assured us of it, we had written it in to our day-to-day like we were ready for it, had mentioned it casually because it was so for sure and, again, as if we were ready for it. And maybe you were (I hope you are now) but I wasn't, and I won't be for some time even if I know that it is real now. The halting, shuddering knowledge is acceptance - hesitant and rebellious as it can be, and all the necessary steps after this - plane tickets, class finalizing, packing, the passage of time - will be more smacks upside the head. But it's not as if I could use more of those, right?

Paul and Mark came home from work at the Wesselius farm with radishes, carrots, rainbow kale and - as seen - arugula and dandelion greens. I was driving home from a great show, evening and morning in Omaha (Yo La Tengo concert) after a rough week of school, trying to enjoy the reddening landscape. This wasn't difficult, but strange after a morning with three inches of the best packing snow in a long, long time. Sarah with her arms crossed, scowling at the thought of our return through the most jaded sunglasses I've ever seen. (Exaggeration.)

We came home to rooms full of our friends and I put on the apron and got to work with Paul and Christina, who was in town for the weekend - a much needed gift. The community grill was gassed and turned up high to kill anything cooked before and to get the grill as volcanic as possible. The roast was quickly cut into steaks, salted, peppered, balsamic oiled and brown sugared with Bailey telling me about her weekend, and lending a free/clean hand when I needed. The meat sat for a few minutes as I put a makeshift mustard vinaigrette together - one like what I learned from Carol in Colorado Springs this summer, but without some key ingredients (white wine vinegar, lemon juice) but with some of the last chives of the season. Then we made hummus and Paul approved, which is a good thing. The steaks got high heat on both sides, made that lovely, animalistic sizzling that roared through the cold, dark evening. A few minutes on both sides and then held in the oven, still warm from Christina's bruschetta. Half an onion had been sliced and broken apart in butter/olive oil/salt on the stove-top. Not red, but only because we didn't have it. I mention the red onion for visual purposes as well as flavor, and not just because Bailey was cooking with me - some bold purple skin would have been nice.

Anyway, the beef was sweet, then rich and the greens were peppery and crisp. The feta cheese was tangy and creamy. The dressing complemented all these flavors, I think. The onion was there - not really necessary, but I like onion. Bailey's hands.

-Click the image to enlarge it-

Here I go blabbering about again.

I'm with my brother and childhood friend at Barnes, reading up on various methods of literary criticism and getting totally jacked (not joking) and Andrew, childhood friend, looks up from his paperback to ask, "Hey. Remember dioramas?"

I did. Usually putting together a scene from English class (Sign of The Beaver), a historic event from social studies (Underground Railroad), a certain species from science (leafcutter ants in the rainforest) or (my favorite) a moon colony. I remember these projects, stuck in a shoebox, or a cut-away from pieces of posterboard fused together, were as detail-oriented as you wanted and you needed to have done your research before you start putting the visuals together. You also needed to gather your materials, have some sort of a plan, be able to work around problems and miscalculations and convince your parents and older brothers to help you.

"Do you think kids still do that? Or is it more on computers now?"

And that question concerned me so I looked to facebook to find an Ed. major and ask.

Alvin

Hey wake up.

3:45pmEmily

ha ha ha

at least im being productive....ha..ha..the hills

3:45pmAlvin

HEy! SCREW. YOU.

Right up the...

No, I have an ed question though.

3:45pmEmily

heyyyy!!

k shoot

3:46pmAlvin

My buddy and I were just talking about making dioramas for school projects and we're wondering if kids still do that, or if it's more on computers now...

3:48pmEmily

depends on how hands on the teacher is..some teachers(like I will be most likely) tend to do a combo of technology and "old fashioned", but we are taught how to use computers in our lesson plans, and that hands on stuff like dioramas is good for kinesthetic and visual learners

more than you ever needed to know

3:49pmAlvin

That was kind of vague.

"...she said it depends on the teacher."

3:49pmEmily

ha! nooooo..read more

the trend is towards tech stuff though

smart boards with 3D stuff and hand held student boards to interact with the main one

we now have a whole class on it

3:50pmAlvin

SCREW that.

3:50pmEmily

(tech in the classroom that it)

ha!

3:51pmAlvin

I mean, practically, they need to learn how to operate a keyboard and tech... 'cause that will keep exploding... but, in a sense, they'll learn that themselves, but critical thinking and creative problem-solving... is more hands on.

3:52pmEmily

true..which is why i think a mix is good...you cant replace making a plaster of paris volcano or a paper mache solar system

3:56pmAlvin

...paris volcano?

4:01pmEmily

plaster-of-paris

ever use it?

to make a volcano

4:01pmAlvin

...Ohhhhh. OK. I was just thinking that you were an idiot for a sec.

4:02pmEmily

haaaaa

riiiiiight

4:03pmEmily

guess what i found?

farmville

Emily is Emily Huston. This concerns me still... and I guess it will always depend on the teacher and age of students, but I feel that challenging younger students through the frame of a complex computer algorithm/game/interactive quiz is still challenging them through a limited frame. And I remember working through those exercises by finding the loophole, so we wouldn't have to be challenged anymore. Another hands-on, awesome and exciting project was the egg drop - we design a vessel to protect an egg from surviving a two-story drop. A lot of kids used parachute-esque devices, with or without a whole bunch of padding. (I stuffed mine in a teddy bear). But imagine how that project would go if it was computer simulated... and there was a limited, but vast, option of materials and applications to protect your digital egg with? "This game blows. See if you can use 'dick' on your egg.'" 3D boards and smart classrooms are cool, but I think the general idea is that tech classrooms are designed to instruct the teachers on HOW-TO operate these tools for learning, but the danger (I hate the way I'm acting like I know what I'm talking about) is that the tools become substitutes or deceptions of the original intention: innovation. To use a cliche, thinking outside of the box is - from what I hear - what keeps the cubicle drones in their cubicles.

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Grand Rapids is terrific.