“U to vrijeme godišta,” a Croatian carol
Month: December 2015
First Day 2015
First day out of the gate and we get phenomenal amounts of things accomplished. Well, phenomenal by some standards. Cleaning, shopping, cleaning, rooting around in the crawl space, cleaning, playing with the heating system (what’s a winter without it going crazy at least once?), cleaning, playing with the kids, cleaning, and going to the library.
As part of the playing element of the day, we experimented with the walkie-talkies we got before going camping last year. The Boy loves the idea of them, but can’t seem to get the concept of pressing the button to talk and releasing to listen. That meant a lot of frustration, both on his part and the Girl’s.
Fortunately for both of them, something else quickly grabbed their attention and the arguments they have — which, in some ways, are increasing in frequency — were averted.
In the evening, a family movie — the Polish version of Polar Express — and a fire in our newly-fixed fireplace.
“Should we go to nine o’clock Mass tomorrow, or maybe wait until eleven?” K asked before heading up to bed, just about to fall asleep. It’s winter break: the answer was obvious.
Carol: Πόψι Χριστός γεννήθηκε
A Greek Christmas carol, “Popsi Christos gennithik” transliterated
Hark!
Carol: Бог предвічний народився
A Ukrainian carol, “Boh predvičnyj narodilsja” (“God Eternal is Born”)
Nine
A day of double goodness. First, the Girl turned nine. It happened when she was arriving at school — 8:05 to be precise. I wished her an official happy birthday when I got back from work in the afternoon. In the meantime, she had cupcakes at school and got to go see E’s first concert.
Dinner was her favorite: rosół. Clothes for her Caroline made the perfect birthday gift — all in all, a good day for her, I think.
Trying out Presents
We have Candyland and Monopoly, Shoots and Ladders (or is it “Shoots ‘n’ Ladders”?) and checkers, Uno and Jenga, as well as a handful of others, but the one classic kids game we did not have Twister. So when one mother said to us as an aside, “We didn’t know what to buy her so we just got a game,” I was hopeful.
Tonight, we tried it out. And quickly discovered that the Boy isn’t quite big enough to make some of the connections.
Carol: Il est né le Divin Enfant
“Il est né le Divin Enfant,” a French carol
Concert 2015
Sunday Pictures
Ninth Try
What makes a perfect birthday party perfect? It’s not number of guests, for if that’s the case, today’s party would be very far from perfect. It’s not the price of the gifts, for no matter how much one spends on a present, more is always an option. It’s not the cake, though in the case of E and his destruction cake a couple of years back, it certainly made a positive impact.
Having a part in the planning and preparation of your party would be an element of a perfect party, a perfect sign that double digits and more approach. The Girl chose a craft-centered party, spending several weeks researching and thinking about which activities she wanted at her party. In the end, she chose holiday-themed crafts: gingerbread decoration and Christmas tree baubles.
Morning was dedicated to baking gingerbread, then, in various shapes and sizes. There was also significant cleaning as one of the guests is allergic to cats — never before has the Girl’s room and the living room been so thoroughly cleaned. Early afternoon was decorating. And finally, after putting the balloons in place and dressing both Caroline and herself in matching outfits, the Girl was ready for the guests.
Once the girls arrived, the Boy, though, felt suddenly left out. He went into the living room, flopped down on the couch, and said, “Daddy, I’m boring. I’m not doing anything.” The girls headed down to the trampoline and he just watched from the balcony. “Don’t worry — you’ll get to do all the crafts with the girls. You’ll decorate some gingerbread and make a bauble and do whatever else you want to.”
After crafts, pizza and a movie, and a bit of fingernail painting. And finally, we cleaned up the mess, and I asked the Girl, “So, was it a perfect party?”
“Pretty much.”
And that’s the best present she can give to K and me.
Carol: O Menino está Dormindo
A Portugese carol
Numbers
2
Every night just before bedtime, just before we read a story, just before one or the other of us cuddles with him until he drifts to sleep, the Boy has a choice to make: which cars will I take to bed with me? We allow him two because otherwise, there would be no room on the bed for him — he would pack every single wheeled vehicle he owns onto his bed every single night.
He makes his choice carefully, and as is typical of his personality, changes his mind a time or three most nights.
9
This weekend, the Girl will have her birthday party. Her ninth. Her last in single digits. Her interests are maturing with her body. She’s planning on painting her fingernails before her birthday party Saturday, and it’s a choice that, like the Boy’s cars, requires significant thought.
220
The average RIT score on the MAP test for eighth-grade students is 220. My gifted classes have averages well above 230. My struggling classes have sometimes had averages below 200, putting them in the range of a first- or second-grade reader. When such a class, during optional winter testing, actually goes down as a whole class, it leaves a teacher feeling particularly ineffective. What can numbers tell us about reading? Nothing? Everything? Something?
3000
At a post a day, it would take eight years to reach 3000 posts. However, to reach this, the 3000th post, it took 11 years, which makes an average of 0.747 posts per day — posting about 75% of the time. Eleven years to make it to this, the 3000th post.
Immaculate Perception
Tonight, on the way home from Mass for the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, K got a text. “H’s mom just sent me a text,” she said to the backseat. “H is coming to your birthday party and is very excited about it.” An affirming thought: someone other than family likes our kid. Yes, it’s sort of an obvious assumption in a sense: by age nine, most every kid has learned how to make friends with someone.
And yet, there’s the girl that sits in our lunchroom at school every single day alone. One of the sweetest young ladies I’ve ever had the privilege to teach, and yet without a single friend some days. “I just like being alone,” she said once when I plopped down across from her during lunch with my salad and began chatting. And I believed her: I was a bit of a loner myself, and I sometimes thought being alone was just easier than dealing with the uncertainties of other people. So here’s this thirteen-year-old who can’t or doesn’t want to make many friends, and I realize that it’s entirely possible that L might have made it to nine without making any real friends.
What is friendship at that age, though? Just a few weeks ago she was complaining about how some of the very people she’s invited to her birthday party were being none-too-friendly toward her — the usual petty playground stuff. Can she tell when people are really her friends and when they’re just using her, I’ve wondered. How accurate is the perception of a young girl?
Carol: Mennyből az angyal
A Hungarian Christmas carol
Monday Afternoon
Yesterday was such a busy day that I didn’t even take the time to share everything that happened. The Christmas tree got a mention but little else, and the promise of the lights we put up around the house was about there was of the final product. So it would be tempting just to post those pictures and call it day. After all, there is continuity with the pictures and the day’s before.
“That tree is enormous” seemed to be the general consensus — certainly the biggest one we’ve ever brought into our house. “Remember that first tree stand we used?” K mused as she held the tree later that night while I, sprawled on the floor, loosened all the screws holding the tree in place and reinforced it with planks of wood. He might have held a tree half the size of the one we have in our living room now, but it would just laugh at the tree we brought home Sunday.
But to leave today’s story at that would be leaving out the wonder of today. For example, a girl in my most challenging — and as a result, often most rewarding — class left the room without asking permission. It’s not the kind of thing I would have expected her to do. I went out to talk to her and determined that she’d removed herself from a stressful situation so that she wouldn’t say something she regretted. It turned out, she’d already kind of said that anyway, making a comment under her breath that probably shouldn’t have even been said at all. “But she was off task, and being distracting,” S protested. I suggested that she really didn’t need to say what she said, no matter what M was doing, and after some thought, she agreed. We went back into the room and I suggested that to be really mature, to take the situation to the next level, she might want to apologize to the girl in question. And she agreed. And in a few moments, the two of them were in the hall together, working out their problems like forty-year-olds instead of fourteen-year-olds. So to leave that out of the day’s story would be a minor tragedy.
But there was still the Boy and our time exploring before dinner.
As I was putting on my shoes, E pointed out that the giant ladder truck that had been mine at his age and which Nana and Papa had saved was in sad repair. “It’s not new and shiny like it was when you got it,” he observed rather philosophically. “Did you get that from Santa?” he asked after a pause, and I thought, “Well, here it is.” It’s a moment I knew was coming, was surprised that never came with L, and yet while dreading it in a way, paradoxically never really gave it too much thought.
But it reminded me of something I wrote on a blog I used to run, now almost ten years defunct, in which I dissected the statements of leaders of various religious groups that all clung to the same beliefs I grew up with after the church in which I grew up declared its own beliefs heretical and moved to Protestant orthodoxy. When L was born, I struggled to find the time and motivation to keep it up, so in August of 2007, I resigned:
I’ve been struggling—to find topics for this blog, to maintain my interest in all things Armstrong, to find time to care.
Truth be told, to care.
Jared said it best in a recent comment:
[A] moribund XCG is [not] entirely a bad thing either. After all, there’s only so much one can say about Armstrongism before you’ve said it all. (Source)
I don’t feel like I’ve said it all—there are thousands of words that could still be written about the phenomenon of Herbert Armstrong and the sect he formed. Yet, I really no longer have the interest or time to write anymore words about it.
I feel like Chicken Little, for our common XCG sky will continually fall. David Pack will talk about his web site statistics until the day he dies. Rod Meredith will provide critics with still more reasons to call him Spanky until the day he dies. Those in the upper echelons of the dwindling WCG will continue to talk about their amazing transformation until the day they die.
But I will not be commenting on them at that point, and I certainly won’t be commenting on them when I die.
About six months ago, I started preparing a final post, but I kept putting it off. I thought, “Maybe I’ll just write a little here, a little there,” for a while. Several have noticed and commented on this, and I have remained silent as to the cause of this dip in output.
My initial draft of this post might provide clarification:
Certain things in life force us to see things in a different perspective. Births, deaths, marriages, divorces, conversions—these are the kinds of things that make us stop and reflect on where we are, what we are, and most importantly, what we’re doing with the short time we have on Earth.
We have twenty-four hours in a day. We work at least eight of them; we sleep six to eight of them; we wash, shave, cook, eat, clean, drive, exercise and a million other forms of maintenance for another three or four a day. That leaves us with precious few hours a day for ourselves.
What do we do with that time?
Until recently, I spent time looking at, analyzing, and even mocking the beliefs and actions of a group of people I no longer have anything in common with.
Recent developments in my life now make that a less-than-ideal way to spend my free time.
The “certain event” I was referring to was the birth of my first child.
Since then, I’ve been of thinking about what I want my daughter to know about my own religious past. Truth is, I want her to know as little as possible. Because of shame? Embarrassment? Certainly not. I don’t want her to know for the simple reason that it no longer impacts my life. I can’t see much positive coming from me ever going into any detail with her about what I used to believe, about what her grandparents used to believe, about the fact that a true handful of people in the world still believe it. I don’t believe it, and that’s that.
And so, to quote one of my favorite authors:
“The time has come,” the Walrus said,
“To talk of many things:
Of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax—
Of cabbages—and kings—
And why the sea is boiling hot—
And whether pigs have wings.”To talk of many things—but not the XCG. And not here.
I appreciate all the support I’ve received during this little two-and-a-half-year adventure. I thank all the fellow contributors who, throughout these last nearly thirty months, have helped to make the discussion here a little more balanced. I am grateful to all you regulars. You really kept the site going.
Most of all, I’m heartened by some of the comments of the past, folks telling me that I have helped them in some way. I appreciate you sharing those thoughts, for it gave me a certain joy that I will truly never forget.
But the time has come.
Best wishes to all, ill wishes to none, and I leave with the hope that if we ever meet again, we’ll have so much more to talk about than the XCG.
And since then, the Girl never once asked about Santa for me (for we didn’t celebrate such heathen festivals), and I’d really forgotten about it. Of course I still write about the phenomenon, as evidenced by a post earlier this week (and as the thirtieth anniversary of Herbert Armstrong’s death is just a little over a month away, I will likely write about it again in the near future). But I hadn’t thought about what I’d say to the Boy or the Girl about my religious upbringing. It just didn’t seem important at all in a way. Until E asked me if Santa had brought me the ladder truck. I thought about it for a moment, realizing that a philosophical/theological treatise was certainly not required, and simply answered, “No, buddy, Santa didn’t bring it to me.” Maybe some day, he’ll ask about it again. Probably not. We’ll cross that little relatively insignificant bridge when we come to it.
Musevisa
Alf Prøysen performs his Noregian carol, “Musevisa”
Mikołaj’s Arrival
When we go to bed, it’s something of an act of faith. We assume that we’ll wake in the morning, that life will continue as normal.
When you’re a child of Polish heritage and you go to bed on December fifth, you do so with a certain faith that Mikołaj will come and leave a little something if you’ve been good. It’s probably not just Polish kids — it’s probably a Catholicism thing, since St. Nicholas’s day is today.
At our house, Mikołaj tends to bring practical gifts. No toys or games — books and other such every-day items. For instance, we recently had issues with lacking umbrellas when we had a lot of rain for several days on end. No one really had a satisfactory way to keep the rain off them. Somehow, Mikołaj figured that out and brought umbrellas for the kids. The Boy got a Thomas the Train umbrella while the Girl received an umbrella with a print of Van Gogh’s Starry Night.
And as usual, there were Polish books and CDs for everyone.
After lunch, we all headed out to the yard for some decorating.
And some playing.
Once everything was hung and the power cords stretched out and draped here and there, the ladders put up and the empty boxes replaced, we went to the local open air market to get our tree. It’s often such a chore in a way: which one do we choose? We end up going back and forth between two or three, thinking about it, talking about it — at least that’s how it’s always seemed to me. Today, though, it was a simple enough matter. I suggested a tree; K agreed, then reconsidered; K suggested a tree; I agreed; we purchased it.
Soon enough it was strapped down to our car, then propped on our back patio, then standing in our living room. A fairly painless adventure this time. But I really shouldn’t complain: however long it takes to pick a tree is however long it takes to pick the perfect tree. This year, we certainly picked a perfect one — full, thick, and heavy, not to mention tall — so perfect that when we put it up and K and the kids hung all the decorations, it began leaning toward the middle of the room.
But that’s a story for another post. This one needs a perfect ending, like catching Santa just as he hops in his minivan and heads out to spread some Christmas cheer.
Decorating and Exploring
When I was a kid, there was nothing better, nothing more exciting, than the discovery of some invitingly unknown path in a place I thought I already knew. Finding a bit of mystery in the known and the everyday. So today, while we were out for a walk with the kids at Nana’s and Papa’s, we decided stroll over to a very familiar area, the swimming pool, where we discovered a mystery: a fence atop a small ridge.
The morning had started with a mystery: the Boy had lost in the night his blue pickup truck, and rather than simply pull the bed out and retrieve it (for if it wasn’t in the covers or under the pillows, there was only one place it could be), I let the Boy search on his own. Being the Boy, he looked in some original places.
As soon as sister woke up, the urge to build a fort overwhelmed the desire to find the pickup truck, and so the bit of mystery in the middle of the morning disappeared.
It reappeared at Nana’s and Papa’s. First there’s the strange bit of mystery in getting holiday decorations up. To begin with, the mystery of finding everything. Then there’s the mystery of figuring out how it all goes back together. Not to mention the mystery of the season.
Mystery everywhere. Including, it turns out, in places we might never have thought to look. The weather was so gorgeous that we had to head out for a walk.
Of course the pool looks a bit mysterious with its winterizing cover.
But more mysterious, behind the tennis courts that the residents have turned into a dog park is a small ridge, the top of which is crowned with with a fence. Reaching the top of it, we all saw easily that it was not natural but instead part of a detention pond.
K insisted that it couldn’t be a detention pond proper because real detention ponds in such developments are well taken care of.
Perhaps that’s why there’s a fence.
Showing, Not Telling
What do you do when you come into work to find that a tool you’ve used for almost ten years, a tool you’ve created yourself and spent probably thousands of hours over the course of almost a decade, a tool you use now daily as a result of the initiative of your principal and his vision of turning your school into a true tech academy — what do you do when that tool is suddenly, inexplicably, and without any notification made completely unavailable to your students? It was the situation I found myself in this morning, as my first group of students filed in, logged on, and one by one said, “Mr. Scott, the site is blocked.”
My first reaction, of course, was fury. For the briefest of instants, I took it personally, as if my web site was specifically targeted for blocking. That took only a few moments to clear up in my mind: surely it was just a new filtering rule that had been applied, and like dolphins caught up in a net trawling for tuna, my poor site just got dragged into the mix. In the end, I’m really not sure what was going on, and I’ll likely never know the cause. What’s most important is not the cause but the effect: one of the most useful tools in my classroom is unavailable because of the actions of unknown people who work for the same organization as I.
At this point, the astute reader is probably thinking, “Surely that is a mechanism in the school district through which teachers can request that a site be unblocked.” Indeed, there is. I’d made such a request a couple of years ago and another one at the beginning of the school year. According to the district records, those requests are still pending. There are many different ways to explain this, but none of them are particularly complementary of the school system’s mechanism for unblocking web sites. Still, I filled out the online form, and even sent an email, CC’ing my principal, explaining the situation and the fact that “all of my requests [for unblocking] are still pending” and my worry ” that it might be several months before any action is taken on this issue,” requesting that the powers that be “process this request immediately,” and expressing how much I “appreciate [their] prompt help in this matter.”
As a third fail-safe, I called the help line and explained my situation. The lady with whom I spoke explained that she had no power to unblock web sites, which was what I expected. She mentioned that she saw my email, which was what I expected. She explained that she’d forwarded it on to tier three, which I didn’t quite understand as I don’t know how many tiers there are in this particular case, but it was still a little unexpected. It sounded like progress. I asked if I might have some kind of contact information for someone in this tier three, and the help desk attendant explained that she didn’t even really know who they went to, simply that they went to tier three, which I somehow expected.
But how to turn it into a teaching experience? My second class filed in, and by then, I was in a white-hot righteous fury of epic proportions. The more I thought about it, the angrier I got, which sounds about right for me. Yet the students could not discern how angry I was, for I did my absolute best not to manifest it at all. In that particular class, I’m blessed to have a co-teacher, and when she entered, I explained to her what happened, then explained to the class what had happened. I went so far as to say that I was extremely angry about it. But I excused myself, went to the restroom, ranted for a little bit, washed my face to freshen up, and went back to the classroom and carried on as if nothing had happened. Students were finishing up summaries of a reading we’d just finished, and I and my co-teacher went from student to student, advising, helping, praising, encouraging — all the things we try to do on a daily basis to build the self-confidence of the students in this class, all of whom read below grade level. A corollary to this low reading ability for many of them is a low level of self-control. Several of them say what comes to mind when it comes to mind. Many of them, when they come into the classroom angry about some excessively emotional interaction that occurred in the hallway — “drama” they call it — enter the classroom already doomed: they will sit and stew about it the entire class, refusing to work, refusing to calm down, often disrupting the class further.
On Monday, I’ll be able to debrief them about how I dealt with my anger. “Please notice,” I’ll begin, “that I didn’t take it out on you and that I didn’t refuse to work. I dealt with it and moved on. Was I still angry at the end of class? Very much so. But I kept it from controlling me.” Will it help? Perhaps. Teaching by example is always better than teaching by words. Show, don’t tell. Who knows — that might turn out to be the most valuable session we had all year for some students.