2 Don't know why.
3 I taught it last month before the 50th anniversary of his murder.
4 It's fun looking at it after doing research on all sorts of new info I never knew before.
5 It's fun because I got a new sound bar at Christmas, so the film sounds like it's in a theater.
6 Great job.
7 I watch. I still want people arrested.
8 My good friend and confidant Al Russell from YB was always into the JFK assassination too.
9 We had some great talks over the years.
10 I don't remember the exact convo, but if memory serves he told me he had always thought of writing a play about a guy who is well-advanced in age, being an old codger screaming at anybody and everybody that it was clearly a government/CIA/anti-Castro/Texas Oil Billionaire hit.
11 We'd laugh.
12 The thought of some guy in his 90's screaming at random people amused me.
13 Still does.
14 The feeling I got from Al was, "I don't wanna be that guy."
15 Amen, pal.
16 Great guy, great teacher. He and I did the Blues Brothers for a couple of events at the school, and it was always a blast.
17 The last time we did it I'm pretty sure I had already been hired at EV. Rocha asked if we could do it for a talent show. I LOVED the idea.
18 We practiced a few crossovers to I Can't Turn You Loose, grabbed two rocking chairs from offstage, posed on the last note of the song, and then said, "We're ready to rock!"
19 Fun stuff. I think we did Soul Man and Oh, Pretty Woman. Comin' to ya, on a dusty road. Fun night.
20 I wish my memory worked better; I'd be a lot more accurate in my recollections.
21 That's one of the bad things and one of the great things about getting older.
22 You have those moments.
23 It begins young.
24 For example, have you ever walked into a room in your house and not remember why?
25 It doesn't get any better.
26 That happened to me beginning at around age twenty-five.
27 In so many ways it's a bad thing because you can't remember things the way you used to.
28 It's also a great thing because can't remember things the way you used to.
29 Two-way Street.
30 Anybody lookin'?
31 Moving On, Part One: Yesterday we had our first fire drill of the year. I think every school and business should do this.
32 Even though it was a tad disruptive, it worked. They had the entire school evacuated within seven minutes.
33 Pretty impressive.
34 Except the following period a voice came over the P.A. " Attention all teachers and students. Please evacuate all buildings immediately."
35 NOBODY expected this. I stayed calm and evacuated my students. I always have them meet at the baseball field right across from our building. We are to meet at home plate, entering through the first base side so we don't block the delivery road where fire engines would enter.
36 I've done this before.
37 My students were awesome. Fire alarms rang out from buildings. My students thought it was staged, but I didn't. I took it seriously, even though it seemed a remarkable coincidence.
38 When it continued, I instructed my students to stay right where we were so that I knew where everyone was at all times.
39 I knew it would go into lunch and told them that they had to stay with me.
40 The were amazing. When the lunch bell went off, my students stayed put. The were AMAZING. A lot of students headed immediately for lunch.
41 We didn't. We had NO idea why alarms were going off. For all we knew it could have been a bomb scare. To move my students back toward possible danger made no sense.
42 I made them stay until we got an "All Clear" from the safety team.
43 I had them return to the classroom because I assumed we would be able to hear further instructions over the classroom PA.
44 Again I was right. They asked everyone to wait until they heard a bell, and then go to lunch, and that lunch would be extended ten minutes.
45 Done.
46 From what I could see, most of the teachers did the same thing. I was pretty proud of our staff and students yesterday.
47 My last class of the day is right after lunch, and THAT class behaved wonderfully. The don't always, because they are right after lunch, always a tough time of day to quiet a class down.
48 They were really cooperative. I gave them a lesson in where we are to go as a class in the event of a future fire alarm, gave my lesson, and then went online to see if there was any further information about what had taken place.
49 At the end of class I still had nothing to report. Just before the bell I reported this to my class. "We still don't know exactly what took place, but I want to thank you for being really good through all of this. Have a good day."
50 As the bell rang and the students gathered their belongings, one kid shouted over the din, "I think someone dropped a bomb in the boys' bathroom!" The class erupted in laughter, all ears and braces. There's only one thing a bomb being dropped in the boys' bathroom means to a bunch of freshmen.
51 He then smiled all ears and braces. I couldn't help laughing. I knew I shouldn't have, but for just a second I thought like a ninth-grader.
52 I laughed more than once.
53 Good times. For the record, we were informed by email that there was a fire set in the upstairs boys' bathroom of the "B" building. Someone had lit the paper towel machine afire. That could have been a lot worse.
54 Good day. Nobody was hurt. Good day. I'm proud of our school. I'm proud of the administration, staff, students, and paras. Everyone was a hero and nobody was hurt. That's how it should go down. I feel better today. And proud.
55 You have a good weekend.
56 See you again.
57 Peace.
~H~
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