Wednesday, Apr. 28, 2004
A Lesson Before Dying, posted at 7:48 p.m.
Epiphany in Baltimore has moved to epiphanyinbaltimore.blogspot.com My kids and I are rolling through A Lesson Before Dying. They seem really into it, which is heartening because it was my idea to put it in the curriculum. Gaines has such a direct delivery, and it's a nice contrast with Harper Lee (who turned 78 today - Happy Birthday, you eccentric woman who only wrote one book, but what a masterpiece it was). Teaching a book for the first time is an exciting and challenging task. It's exciting because you get to see students' reactions to a text for the first time, and, it's cool, because you're noticing new things as much as the kids are, almost. It's so funny to hear kids' thoughts as they read, especially the goofier ones. Like, this one kid said, "Dag, I thought you said this book takes place in the 1940's, Mr. Epiphany! Why are there liquor stores?" Heh. This other kid also felt that liquor stores existed only in modern cities, and couldn't wrap his head around having one out in rural Louisiana. Like many high school students, these kids have a one-sided view of the world, one from Baltimore 2004. I can't fault them for it, as I had a pretty myopic view of the world in high school as well, but it's just funny to note. And it's one more reason to push for them to go away to college.(I wish I had done a better job of impressing that upon my sister.)
In other news, my team's baseball game was rained out yesterday, which dampened our momentum a little bit after our first victory on Friday. It was really great to get all the congratulations on Friday. Apparently, the coach on the other side is a veteran and one other old teacher told me, "You don't beat ___ ____ very often." The old guy didn't impress me much in either of our games, though. He had his team stealing bases with a ten-run lead in our first game, and his pitcher flipped us off on the way past our bench. Then, in our second game, when we visited there, we got there at 2:45 and no one was on the field, so we took the field. When his team finally got out there (they were dawdling), he told me what poor sportsmanship it was to take the field first. I thought this was a pretty audacious thing to say after he was stealing bases with a ten-run lead, and I told him so.
I am busily preparing my case, and am actually getting excited about it. The tiny advice I've got from lawyers all tells me that they have a very weak case and I can win this thing, so I've been working diligently trying to get everything together. It pisses me off that I have to do it, because this lying scumbag shithead who is trying to doop me into paying $10,000 of his $25,000 in backtaxes and fines isn't worth it, and it sucks even more to have to take a day off work, but I gotta do what I gotta do. I'll act plenty indignant when I'm in the court, because I deserve to. Other good news is that my principal, a former lawyer, has agreed to meet with me for an hour on Saturday morning at a coffeeshop. That's great news; we'll see how it goes. My dad is flying down to help me out as well.