fun in threes, sometimes fours
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Every year it's the same: I'm going to do a better job encouraging and facilitating independent reading. And every year's initial visit to the library starts out with that intention. And then reality sets in, deadlines for covering content loom, and the independent reading time slowly gets strangled.
Polish cuisine, in my experience, is centered around soups. I'm not a culinary expert or anything of the kind, so this is undoubtedly my personal preference coming to the fore: what has always caught my eye (and my tastebuds) in Polish cooking has been the soups.
Barszcz z uszkami is a treat beyond treats: we only have it once a year because the uszki are so time-consuming. It's one of E's favorites.
Żurek is such an odd-ball dish for Americans: soup made from a base of fermented rye flour? How weird. And how utterly delicious. It's one of L's favorites.
Ogorkowa? Pickle soup? "Get out!" was my first reaction. Who the hell makes soup out of pickles?! It's absolutely perfect.
K likes most Polish soups, but she probably agrees with L and E that a simple rosół is the best. Babcia always makes it for us as our first dish in Poland, and a gentle, easy broth like that is the perfect thing after traveling.
And then there are the other: koperkowa, chłodnik, kapuśniak -- the classics. But there are a couple of soups that stand above them all for me: flaczki (not because I love it so much -- I do, but it's not a favorite -- but because I only get it in Poland: K absolutely is not a fan) and my hands-down favorite, kwaśnica. Not so much a Polish soup as a regional highlander soup.
We usually stick to soups in the winter and give them a break in the summer: having the stove on that long really warms up the house, and we want lighter meals in the summer. Except for rosół and koperkowa (none of us is really a chłodnik fan), the soups disappear.
Until the Girl asks K to fix that one soup -- you know, with the potatoes and bacon bits.
And so we had for dinner a soup I have always thought of as a winter soup.
"We should do kwaśnica," I will say some time in October or November.
"No, it's not cold enough yet," comes the reply.
But all our Girl has to do is ask for kwaśnica, and it can be 90 degrees outside, and K will not hesitate.
The volleyball season hasn't officially started yet: we still haven't had any regional games, but we've been in a few tournaments. Tonight was our first home game. Our girls had a tough time of it the first two sets, losing by quite a margin due to silly errors. They pulled it together for the third set, but ended up losing it 23-25.
What impressed me about the Girl -- other than a couple of monster hits she had -- was how little she's changed regarding volleyball. She's always been the most enthusiastic cheerleader on her team. No matter how the game is going, she's always up, always positive, always cheering and encouraging her teammates.
Everyone notices it; many have commented on it. More than her playing ability, I so admire that positivity.
Over the summer, posts from our 2017 trip to Warsaw appeared, as they do every year, in the timeline feature to the right. I read about looking for baked goods that first morning, and I remembered how very communist-era Świętokrzyska Street looked then, and I wondered if pictures of it were on Google Maps.
I felt like I was walking down the street in a scene from Miś. Those shop windows looked exactly like they did in the early eighties.
Two years later, it was all gone.
Two more years after that, an entirely new and modern building had taken its place.
More of the old Warsaw fades away.
Continuing down Świętokrzyska Street, one reaches ONZ Rondo. In the distance, building after building appears year after year.
Finally, there's Prosta Street ("Straight Street"). Looking off in the distance, one could see only the ubiquitous Easter European apartment blocks.
Just a few years later, a typical Western city has sprung up in the distance.
The Warsaw I knew in the mid-90s is all but gone. Then I remember: that was thirty years ago. Of course it's all disappearing.
What's on my mind lately? The amount of stuff I have to do:
And that really doesn't cover everything -- that's just what I could list off the top of my head.
Is it any wonder so many teachers are burning out?
It was near the end of the school day, and the eighth-grade assistant principal pulled me out of my classroom to tell me something. "You're going to get an email in a little bit that I don't want you to read until you get home, relax, have some dinner, and then have a drink."
I knew what was in that email from what she said. It's something that has been bouncing around for a year or more and now has finally come to full fruition: South Carolina Regulation 43-170.
The email from our principle included a link to the official district explanation:
Effective August 1st, 2024, SC Regulation 43-170 requires teachers to produce a complete list of the Instructional Materials (including classroom library books) that are used in or available to a student in any given class, course, or program that is offered, supported, or sponsored by a school, or that are otherwise made available by any District employee to a student on school premises. That list shall be provided upon reasonable request by any parent/guardian of a student in the District.
What does this mean in practical terms? The principal spelled it out in no uncertain terms:
In short, all the materials we might give to a student in a given year.
Why?
Because there's a concerted effort among teachers to turn as many students gay as possible and promote critical race theory every chance we get. We have so few other demands on us that, out of a sense of woke duty, we purposely spend time trying to turn kids gay and putting down whites. All mathematics word problems are set in San Francisco or must include some anti-white framing. History teachers eschew all periods of history except the Stonewall riots and contemporary history with a bent toward institutional racism. Science classes neglect all disciplines except genetics, and they only discuss the gay gene. Finally, we English teachers simply have students watch episodes of Will and Grace and write summaries of them.
In case anyone can't tell (and those who proposed and promoted this law probably can't tell), this is satire. I feel it necessary to state that upfront. None of this actually happens. That goes without saying, but just in case someone stumbles on this and uses it as proof that teachers are encouraging students to identify as gay, anti-white cats, I must say emphatically once again, this is not happening. When dealing with a blunt viewpoint, one must use blunt instruments.
If either of our kids expressed any interest in going into education, I would try my hardest to discourage them. I've come to wonder whether or not there is a conscious effort to destroy public education by placing such onerous demands on teachers that the majority of them quit so that the state can farm out education to private firms just like so many states have done with correctional institutions.