Epiphany in Baltimore

Thursday, Apr. 15, 2004

Epiphany in Baltimore has moved to epiphanyinbaltimore.blogspot.com

My house concert is tomorrow night. I'm now at that anxious stage where I'm worried that no one will show up, or only a few will show up (I think there are 9 confirmations so far, which is low), or that I won't have the house clean in time. I've already scrapped plans to have flowers planted outfront and a card table bought by the time of the show. I guess that means that food gets placed on the short black Ikea tables that the dog can reach.

I like this feeling, though. The rush in event planning of wondering how many people will show is something I've missed, and it will be good to get back on track. And I know when I'm sitting back on my floor, beer in hand, listening to Sam sing "El Dorado," it will be all worth it.

***

The weather took a turn for the better today. It was warm and windy, which helped dry out the field a great deal so we were able to practice outside. We had a decent practice, and I definitely had a good time getting out there again and hitting ball after ball at my players. Intensity seemed a bit down, but we'll get it back up. One of my better players is acting like a primadonna; he's already gotten himself out of the starting lineup for the next game for missing a practice without telling me, and he's approaching practice with a severe case of senioritis. He will get a serious talking-to soon. It sucks, because he's a nice kid for the most part.

...

Erin e-mailed me today bragging about the Michigan weather, but it was already nice here. Erin and Gale spent the week of my spring break in Spain. They didn't tell me until their plane was pretty much in the air. At first, I was upset about this; I thought telling me was just an afterthought and they had forgotten to tell me about this huge trip they were taking. Later, I heard they were being intentionally duplicitious about the information, trying to spare my feelings because I've been having such a rough time of it lately and they felt like bragging about their trip would make me feel bad. This information made me happy. I'm glad they were trying to spare my feelings. It's sort of funny, in fact.

I also got a piece of information about the girl who had me tied up in knots at this time last year, the one who used my heart as an ashtray. Let's just say that I dodged a bullet, big time. It appears she's nothing like the person she once was. She sure was cool when I knew her, though. Maybe we'll meet in the next life when we're both cats and discuss this and have a good laugh. (The old "she" would "get" that line. Now, I'm not so sure.) We used to laugh about the time we first met, how that was the only time we really ever had a conflict. Not any more. It has been nearly a year and not even any e-mails.

***

I showed some scenes from The Laramie Project today in conjunction with To Kill a Mockingbird. It seemed to work well; kids' minds were working and turning around in the topic. They'll be writing a compare/contrast essay about the said topic, and I hope it goes well. I'll admit I was a little nervous about showing parts of the film to 9th graders, but it worked out. Of course, this also had to be the day when new teaching candidates came to the school to observe classes. I'm sure I caused a couple of raised eyebrows from the woman who came in. She looked like she was in a state of shock even before she walked in the door.

Had an interesting discussion with colleagues about curriculum. I really find curriculum building very interesting. I created our 9th grade curriculum for the most part, and am pretty proud of it. Hopefully it will remain a fluid document, changing with what is working and what is not working. Anyhow, we seem to be in a breadth vs. depth argument right now in the department. Some think that we should add more texts to the curriculum, to overwhelm the kids and get them to read more. Others want to just read more in depth the texts we have. I'm in the latter category. I feel like the kids so much out of our in-depth study of To Kill a Mockingbird, and I'd rather do that than whip us through to the next book.

***

By the way, Baltimore, please don't hesitate to e-mail me about coming to my house concert tomorrow! You won't be sorry...