Epiphany in Baltimore

Thursday, Dec. 30, 2004

Epiphany in Baltimore has moved to epiphanyinbaltimore.blogspot.com

I'm back in Baltimore. The trip was long, but not awful. I finished Frankenstein on tape. I basically liked it, but I kept wanting to say, "Alright, Mary, we get the point. He's miserable. Let's move on." The story was originally a short story expanded, and it feels like it. But, I basically liked it quite a bit. I have finally written my unit for it after flying blind for the first two weeks of the novel.

I also listened to a lot of NPR along the whole trip. I've been so out of it in southwest Michigan, and had only heard faint reports about the tsunami disaster. I listened to hours about it. What a nightmare. I have a cousin in Thailand who my relatives have not heard from yet, so there's even a sense of it hitting close to home for me. I didn't even know it had hit Thailand, but I just heard that 4,000 are missing there; I called up Grandma and no one has heard from Andy yet.

When real world and online worlds collide... I returned to see I'd caused a whole heap of trouble at another blog. I think I've discussed this before, but I discovered an incredible Baltimore blog by a young single mom with a great sense of humor a few months ago. I read it most days, and this woman often writes about her teenage daughter, who is a student in the public school system in this city. Finally, enough clues came together to let me know that the woman's daughter is not only a student at the school I teach at, but also a favorite former student of mine from a couple of years ago. After a few more weeks of knowing and still reading, then after asking advice from another blogger I trust, I decided to e-mail her. After all, if someone I know was reading my journal, I'd want to know about it. I sent a friendly e-mail, explaining that I felt funny about reading it and she not knowing I was, and invited her to this one over here so we were "even." Well, this said blogger was embarrassed by the e-mail, and wrote about it in a hilarious entry that inspired 49 comments in her blog. All happened while I was in Michigan, so I missed it, and now it seems the storm has passed, but it's all pretty amusingly disconcerting. I don't know what to do about it all, so I'll probably do nothing else except tell you all about it, but not link directly because I think most of you know her blog anyway. I'm also obsessed because I think I might be #3 on her recent post. Aaargh.

I also received this e-mail from a student in my inbox when I returned. It made me excited to get back. Yes, already. How could this not cheer me up? :

(Another student) and I had no time yesterday to stop in your room to give you our project after school. (Mr. ______) told us to leave the building and assured (other student) and I you had already left the building yourself.He informed the two of us that you check your e-mail frequently and it would be fine if we e-mailed it to you.The printed copy we didn't leave in your room but it is the same document.We are well aware of how serious you were about the project, but please accept this as our project and give us full credit as you would for other students .We worked very hard on this project and hope to get graded fairly even though we were unable to give it you.

That just makes me so pleased that they were able to deal with their issue so resposibly. I also loved the sentence "We are well aware...".