Month: November 2013

Indoors and Out, Sort Of

The day began with Polish lessons, with Babcia taking over for this particular round. This has its advantages, to be sure, the main one being her inability to speak English. Since the Girl can’t speak Russian, the only language Babcia and L have in common is Polish, so it forces the language out of L, squeezes it out of every little necessity.

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Once that was out of the way, it was playtime. The Girl’s favorite play location of late has been the livingroom couch, somewhat transformed.

“It’s a fort! An E-proof fort!”

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Something tells me that this will soon be a favorite of E, as well. He certainly stayed in the “fort” for a long time, and he seemed content the whole time, as did everyone else. The OCD version of Tata, though, was going just a little crazy with the mess. Good clean fun doesn’t really exist with a six-year-old and a toddler.

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In the evening, we decided it was time we finally went to Hollywild’s famous Christmas light safari (their term, not mine). We’d tried some years ago, but we’d given up and turned around after wandering about in the middle seemingly of nowhere for long enough to drive me batty.

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It’s a strangely American concept: set up an incredible number of lights — snow men, rocking horses, various Christmas scenes, various winter scenes — and let people drive their cars around in the display.

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“What a waste of gas!” some non-Americans (and likely some Americans as well) might suggest. “Why not get out and walk — you missed a chance for good exercise.”

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And that’s probably true, but this evening was particularly cold, and the Boy would not have fared well in such cold weather: he gets sick just thinking about getting sick. No, he gets sick with anyone around him thinking that he might get sick. It’s suggestive illness.

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And so we played along (as if we had a choice) and drive through the presentation, behaving perfectly cordially with all the other drivers (what a change) and patiently oohing and ahhing at all the right spots.

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“Look at the reflection!” L pointed out, right before Babcia did the same in Polish. Or was it the reverse?

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In the middle of the safari was the Enchanted Deer Forest, which was an odd term for the plot of muddied, treeless ground all the cars wandered about in as if they migrating animals, separated and lost from their herd.

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The enchanted deer part, though, was easy to see. They clumped around cars and ate from people’s hands, walking in front of slowly-moving cars without a care.

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We tried to get a few to come to our car, but the closes we came was a short, semi-attentive stare.

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To get really close to the animals, we had to get out of the car and into Santa’s Village. Who knew Santa had camels and bison and strange cattle?

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The Boy, though was strangely apathetic about the animals. He was much more interested in running, running, running. And falling. And running again,.

“We’ll come back in a couple of years,” K laughed as we headed back to the car, “When the Boy is interested in more than just running.”

Future in the Past

Some of the names are unfamiliar; some are vaguely familiar, but we don’t necessarily know off the top of our heads what the person did. And some are infamous.

nazi_leadership
Nazi leadership in 1930 in Bad Elster. Front row l. to r.; Wilhelm Frick, Adolf Hitler, Fritz von Epp, Hermann Goering. Back row; Heinrich Himmler, Martin Mutschmann, Otto Strasser, Joseph Goebbels, Julius Schaub

Wilhelm Frick was responsible for many of the laws that consolidated the Nazi regime. Shortly after the passage of the Enabling Act, Frick helped create a law taking power from individual state governments in Germany, thus federalizing power under Hitler. This accomplished, Frick played an important role in the racial policy of Nazi Germany, helping to create laws against German Jewish. For all this, he was determined enormously responsible for the existence of concentration camps and was hung.

Fritz von Epp abolished the government of Bavaria on Hitler’s and Frick’s orders and set up a Nazi government. He died of natural causes while in Allied custody.

Martin Mutschmann was the Nazi governor of Saxon and was shot by the Russians in Moscow in 1947.

Julius Schaub was chief aide and adjutant and was responsible for destroying all of Hitler’s personal belongings and papers. He died in Munich in 1967.

Otto Strasser is something of an anomaly in this picture. He considered himself a leftist Nazi, and lacked the virulent anti-Semitism of the rest of the group. Hitler expelled him from the Nazi Party, and he helped form the Black Front, an attempt to split the Nazi Party. He spent the war outside of German, eventually settling in Canada. Goebbels declared that Strasser was the Nazis’ “Public Enemy Number One” and put a price of $500,000 on his head. He returned to Germany in the fifties and died in Munich in 1974, all the while calling for a renewed Nazi party.

Those are the men we don’t know. The other four are arguably among the most evilly influential men of the twentieth century, responsible for the deaths of millions upon millions upon millions. Adolf Hitler, Hermann Goering, Heinrich Himmler, and Joseph Goebbels constituted the very upper echelon of the Nazi party, and as such, are responsible for the Second World War, the Holocaust, and in a very real way, the Cold War. And not a single one of them faced justice of any kind. All four committed suicide, Hitler and Goebbels killing themselves (and their wives, and in Goebbels’s case, children) before the fall of Berlin, and Goering and Himmler committing suicide after their capture.

Yet the past threatens to become our future as well. Gudrun Burwitz, daughter of Himmler, is an unrepentant neo-Nazi and works hard for years to help the remaining war criminals escape justice. It’s people like that who feel that Hitler didn’t go far enough, mourn the fact that Jews still exist, and cheer at the thought of Iran following through with its threat against Israel. “Have we learned nothing?” is the only thing that comes to mind in situations like that.

Thanksgiving 2013

A late lunch, some family games, a walk, a creative Girl, an inquisitive Boy — perfect Thanksgiving.

The Day Before

“I think it’s about time we take over the Thanksgiving dinner.” K and I were talking about what we would be doing this year, what plans we thought the Elders might have/desire.  Christmas Eve had always been our responsibility, and the Elders sort of took Thanksgiving by default. But this year, we decided to charge, make plans, and cook dinner ourselves and invite the Elders as opposed to the opposite. More to the point, K always takes are of Christmas Eve (by and large), so I decided this year I would do the whole Thanksgiving dinner myself.

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The morning’s weather might have seemed like an omen for the less convinced. Snow in late November, in South Carolina?

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Before Thanksgiving? Yet the chill in the air somehow made the work go easier: a mental thing I guess. What else can you do but stay inside? What else can you do while inside but cook?

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And so I started. First, the garnish: cranberry sauce with dried cherries and a few dried blueberries.

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Butternut squash soup, freestyle. I looked at some recipes, but none of them had the I-don’t-know-what I was looking for. So I made my own recipe, which included leftover ricotta cheese and some curry powder.

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By the time I was ready to move on to stuffing, the snow had stopped, the sky had cleared, and the dusting of white on the ground had disappeared, as had L’s excitement.

“If it keeps snowing today, and tomorrow, and maybe Saturday and Sunday, maybe we’ll be out of school Monday!” I thought that we might be lucky if the snow lasts until the afternoon, but I said nothing.

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By then, I was busy with the dressing, using a recipe I’d found online that included the magic, attention-getting word: sausage.

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Two casseroles popped into and out of the oven as well, and by the time we were putting the kids to bed, I’d started the final element for the day, the giblet gravy.

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Tomorrow, the potatoes, the green beans with shallots and almonds, and something else. Seems I’m missing something. Oh well. Hopefully, we can live without whatever it is…

Queen Mab

Students’ drawings of Queen Mab.

O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you.
She is the fairies’ midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
On the fore-finger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomies
Athwart men’s noses as they lie asleep;
Her wagon-spokes made of long spiders’ legs,
The cover of the wings of grasshoppers,
The traces of the smallest spider’s web,
The collars of the moonshine’s watery beams,
Her whip of cricket’s bone, the lash of film,
Her wagoner a small grey-coated gnat,
Not so big as a round little worm
Prick’d from the lazy finger of a maid;
Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut
Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,
Time out o’ mind the fairies’ coachmakers.
And in this state she gallops night by night
Through lovers’ brains, and then they dream of love;
O’er courtiers’ knees, that dream on court’sies straight,
O’er lawyers’ fingers, who straight dream on fees,
O’er ladies ‘ lips, who straight on kisses dream,
Which oft the angry Mab with blisters plagues,
Because their breaths with sweetmeats tainted are:
Sometime she gallops o’er a courtier’s nose,
And then dreams he of smelling out a suit;
And sometime comes she with a tithe-pig’s tail
Tickling a parson’s nose as a’ lies asleep,
Then dreams, he of another benefice:
Sometime she driveth o’er a soldier’s neck,
And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,
Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades,
Of healths five-fathom deep; and then anon
Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes,
And being thus frighted swears a prayer or two
And sleeps again. This is that very Mab
That plats the manes of horses in the night,
And bakes the elflocks in foul sluttish hairs,
Which once untangled, much misfortune bodes:
This is the hag, when maids lie on their backs,
That presses them and learns them first to bear,
Making them women of good carriage:

Apologies

Dear Teresa,

Two observations.

First, not all apologies begin with I’m sorry. In fact, some of the most graceful and moving apologies have ended with those words.

Second, and more significantly for you, not all utterances including “I’m sorry” are in fact apologies. For example, if you were to get in trouble with a teacher yet feel that you had done nothing, saying “I’m sorry you think that I…” only feels like an apology because it includes those sometimes-deceptive words. It is, in fact, an accusation.

Mildly amused and annoyed,
Your Teacher

Polish Sunday

Babcia

has arrived.

Friday Night

Journal reading: sifting through the layers…

How to Plagiarize

Dear Terrence,

I understand you didn’t really like the sonnet assignment. That’s fine: not every assignment has to be to your personal liking or approval. Understand, though, that, because this is not a poetry writing class, I had no intention of grading it with the kind of severity that would result in a bunch of failing grades. It was the struggle of writing in iambic pentameter that I was after, as well as the experience of having to think about each and every word as you wrote. That’s probably not something you’ve ever done before, but you’ll write plenty of things in your life that you should consider word by word.

Cheaters
Cheaters

But, you didn’t like it. Perhaps you even thought you couldn’t do it. As a solution, you decided to bounce around the internet for a while until you found a sonnet that you thought you could pass off as your own, then you typed it up and attempted to do just that.

I wish you had spoken to me about this earlier: I could have given you some pointers to help you not get caught. But you are caught. Still, in the spirit of charity, I’ll share the pointers anyway.

  1. Be aware that I have taught English for a long time. I know how eighth graders sound, even the most gifted, when they’re writing. I know what kind of topics they choose. I know what kind of vocabulary they’re likely to use. So at least choose a sonnet that sounds like a kid wrote it, not a hormonally challenged adult. With that much experience, I have a pretty strong intuition about what is and isn’t from the pen of an eighth grader.
  2. Understand that I know your personal writing voice. It’s not just that I know how eighth graders write; I know how specific eighth graders — including you — write. I know what kind of ideas you’re likely to write about and which ideas might never cross your mind. I’ve given you standardized testing that provides me with ample information about what kinds of words you’re likely to understand and to use in your own writing.
  3. I expect it. I know someone will do this, and I read every paper with the thought that, no matter who the author, there’s a latent (don’t pawn off work with that word in it: I know you don’t know what it means) chance of someone trying to pull one over on me.
  4. I’ve caught them all. Every single one. Remember the Terminator? That’s me. Only without the bulging muscles. Or the Austrian accent.
  5. Make sure you know all the words in your plagiarized work. It’s awfully telling when a teacher uses a word (intentionally, of course) that you’ve used in your work only to receive blank looks from the one person who used the word (a word like, say, “latent”) in “her” work. (I put her in quotes because, well, you understand.)
  6. Choose a sonnet that’s about a topic that the average eighth grader would be interested in. I know you personally, so it’s not just a matter of an abstract idea: I know what type of thing you’re likely to write about. Burning passion is not one of them. No eighth grader would write about that topic, especially you.
  7. Finally, I know I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating: make sure it sounds like an eighth grader. Eighth graders to speak of anyone’s “wanton fiery beauty.” Eighth graders don’t write poems with final lines beginning “pleasure me.”

With these ideas in mind, I’m sure you’ll be more successful in your next efforts to act as a thief and pass off someone else’s work as your own.

Regards,
Your Disappointed but Not Surprised Teacher

Silly Sentences

  1. Chips are yummy!
  2. How is it very hot with the sun?
  3. His chip is on his chin.
  4. That is such a good way to chop.
  5. How is it very hot outside?
  6. That is a very big chip and chin.
  7. With a chip and a chin you can do a lot.
  8. Chop that very big carrot with a talking knife.
  9. I like sentences!!!!!!

the end!

Dac, Redux

When L began speaking Polish, we made a video of her saying her first word.
Now that the Boy is beginning to speak, we thought we’d do the same.
With the same word.

Sunset

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Autumnal Sunday with Friends

Breakfast
Leaves, Dry Run
Leaves with the Boy
Portrait for Four
Three Girls
Sisters, Almost
The Worker

Where’s Waldo?

A pleasant Friday afternoon surprise: two students, classified by some as “average” in every way, working on a web site evaluation activity, noticed something I hadn’t even noticed. First, they notice that two sites mention the same book.

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Next they notice that one site gives the title incorrectly.

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Excitement.

“I guess this means it’s a less reliable web site, right Mr. Scott?”

I’ll say.

The Bar

In winter, the floor was a glistening swirl of grit from black snow tromped in on careless feet. At the door, a slushy mix of grime and granules of ice covered the concrete floor. The dirt migrated gradually from the entrance, and midway into the bar, all that remained were faint prints and smears of boots.

The slick slush provided an added challenge to staggering customers attempting to go home. Exiting the bar, drunk patrons loaded their shoes with fatal moisture that turned the ice pack outside the door into a skating rink, and the impaired reaction time more than once resulted in a soul-sickening thud and crunch. Legs sprawled, skulls cracked, and those inside drank on, their own clumsy slipping and tumbling swirling at the bottom of the pints of beer they used to chase the ghosts of cheap vodka.

Fate

And in a way, everything was destined. Every single moment, each decision she’d made in her life, led her to that moment in the middle of the street, her heels clicking softly on the old asphalt and a finite number of beads of sweat forming along her hairline. Perhaps even the number of beads of sweat was destined, predestined in the chemical soup that made up her brain, her body, her who sentient existence. Indeed, the same could be said not just of this moment crossing the street but of every single instant in her life. Every moment and act led to this particular act, this particular moment, which was leading to a yet-unseen but just as inevitable future, though only inevitable when the future became the present and one could look back and see the line of events leading, seemingly like fate, up to that moment. Ingrained rituals made it feel more inevitable and less like fate, but the difference between “ingrained rituals” and “fate” might be merely semantic.

But was it fate, real fate, that led Pani Basia to cross that street at that moment? Such a simple act, something Pani Basia did countless times in a given week, an automated function that had become almost ritualistic: left, right, left, first step. Could fate be little more than habit and ritual? The more often one repeats an act, the greater the chance that something that smacks of fate will happen.

As a Catholic, Pani Basia couldn’t really entertain seriously the thought of fate. Such a Protestant, such a Calvinistic idea, this fate. “Destined for God’s grace” and other such formulations. Though Pani Basia had only heard of Calvin in passing and would have been unable to provide even a general overview of his theology, she certainly would have found the proposal of predestination patently absurd. “A child’s religion,” she might suggest, preferring what she saw as the grown up acceptance of consequences inherent in Catholicism.

Furthermore, it couldn’t possible be fate. Pani Basia could change her mind at any moment, pivot on her toes, and head back across the street. That would prove that crossing the street wasn’t fate, unless she was fated to prove that crossing the street wasn’t fate, or to attempt it, or to create a child’s paradox to play with.

In the end, if anyone had suggested all these flights of philosophical fancy and theological fantasy, Pani Basia would have likely waved it all off. In and out of the classroom, Pani Basia was the mistress of her will and soul.

NaNoWriMo Cheating

I needed a store description. I recalled a picture I took this summer in Lipnica. And off I went, leaving blanks where words failed.

The only thing about Pani Janowiak’s shop that ever changed was the produce in the bins just to the sides of the cash register. Winter months saw only potatoes, leeks, onions, the occasional beet or cabbage, perhaps an apple or two. Summer months the bins overflowed with cucumbers, plums, radishes, pears, tomatoes, grapes, zucchini, apricots, fresh dill, strawberries, lettuce, cherries, cabbage, raspberries, even the occasional bunches of bananas or small watermelons. Other than produce, though, nothing else changed. The jars of jams and preserves on the top shelf just behind the cash register were forever in the same order, new orders simply filling the empty slots when this or that jam sold out. Below the jams were all assortments of preserved meats and fish, the squat cans of tuna stacked between jars of pickled herring, and long tins of anchovies and ________. the The piquant Polish ketchup jars and ____ stood in attention just behind Pani Janowiak’s left shoulder, four brands in five columns, the most popular brand having two columns to keep up with demand, and by them, the mustard. Just above them were the pickled vegetables and mushrooms, jars of varying sizes and shapes glowing different colors as the ever changing light shifted through the day. Over Pani Janowiak’s right shoulder was one of the pillars of Polish hospitality: myriad teas–some herbal, others black, some medicinal, others merely recreational–and coffees, some in expensive vacuum-sealed packages imported from Germany, others in loose-filled bags. Below all these shelves, on the small counter that ran the length of all the wall-hung shelves, were spices and preparations, mixes to make soups and sauces, powders to add to gravies and the like. The shelves on the left of the store, the shelves through which Pani Basia glanced every day countless time as she looked through the small window the shelves framed to see how long the shadows and grown and judge how much longer she needed to stay open, whether she could close shop early, these shelves held the other pillar of Polish hospitality: cookies and chocolates. This was also where baking goods lived, the various flours, leavening agents, and sugars. Just to the left of these sweets stood a small refrigerator with milk and cream. The right side of the shop held a refrigerated display case with hams and sausages, various meats for sandwiches and snacking. Just behind it was a chest freezer with chicken quarters, ground beef, and a few other rotating frozen products. Beside the freezer was another tall shelf for drinks: juices and sodas (national and imported). Squeezed among the empty spaces on the counter were small displays for chewing gum and a small tree-like structure for suckers. Baked goods were tucked into a small space of empty shelving in a corner of the shop, or stacked wherever room could be found.

The shop was always faultlessly clean but still had a certain tired look to it. The linoleum was curling up where it met the counter, and the shelves were painted a dull brown color that made them look dirty even when they were clean. The scale was a tired gray, the vegetable bins, painted the same brown as the shelves behind Pani Janowiak, were more worn from the constant contact of customers whereas the shelves’ paint retained a relatively new appearance as Pani Janowiak was the only one to handle products on that side of the counter.

On the day that Pani Basia died, as she was waiting in line for her Danish and juice, she glanced around Pani Janowiak’s shop and noticed all these details for the millionth time it seemed. She looked at the ketchup bottles and thought what a nice touch it would be for Pani Janowiak to arrange them in some way that made sense, either according to the size of their containers or perhaps, more subtly, in alphabetical order according to their brands. She looked at the drinks, always a little dismayed that they were arranged so hodge-podge, with little regard to type of juice or origin of soda. Shouldn’t all the Polish brands be together, with Coke and Pepsi, the newly introduced interlopers, segregated? She wondered about the wisdom of having the flour so close to the floor, for it seemed possibly–likely even–to have unsanitary consequences. After all, how easily would it be for a splash of muddy water from the daily mopping to land on the paper packing, blanch through, and contaminate the contents? She wished the cabbages had been better stacked, with all the smaller ones to one side of the bin to make it easier for customers to find precisely what they were looking for. One doesn’t always need the biggest head after all, right?