The DN

1  Whew.

2   Everyone okay?

3   I slept through the earthquake. We had a huge bash at the Coliseum for Josh's birthday and watched the A's game, complete a tight win followed by booming fireworks.

4   We took BART  home, so by the time I was back in SJ I was completely exhausted. I conked out. 

5   I think the quake awakened me. I felt the shaking, but I ALWAYS think there's going to be an earthquake, so I assumed it was my imagination.

6   Whew.

7   I woke up and turned on the news. Pretty sobering. 

8   I hope everybody is all right. Hard even to joke about something THAT insane. 

9   Yeesh.

10  Moving On, Part One: Looks like I can breathe a little easier about the Niners and Levi's Stadium. It seemed to work reasonably well yesterday, AND they looked much better. Worried still about the offense, especially the passing game. I should be.

11  We shall see. 

12  I know from the first few weeks of school what it's like to be a little off your game. It's like two weeks of Mondays. In the midst of school opening I had one class eliminated and another coming to me during a different period the Tuesday morning following our first week. When the rug gets pulled from under you, it gets harder and harder to get back up. You have to stay on your game. I think I got it all back this weekend.

13  I shucked and jived through a bunch of paper grading over the weekend and survived. Overall my classes perform pretty well on paper. It makes life SO much easier. 

14  My one freshman class particularly impressed me. 

15  Even though Friday had me going a bazillion miles an hour, I wound up keeping up with all of it and getting things done right.

16   I still have miles to go before I sleep, and earthquakes to fend off and all the rest. Or non-rest. 

17  Good thing I'm an insomniac. I'm used to awakening in the middle of the night, but I'm not used to earthquakes. They literally rattle you. 

18   Moving On, Part Two: Coley received over a thousand wedding pics over the weekend, so if you're interested in seeing them, hop on her Facebook. 

19   I am pretty self-conscious because I had gained a lot of weight during that time. No excuses. Just not thinking clearly, and going through the most stressful teaching year ever. 

20  I'm back eating lots of healthy foods once more, and getting a LOT more exercise, so while it is a slow roll, my hope is to concentrate a lot harder on health. 

21  I KNOW. I KNOW. 

22  Anyway, everyone else looks pretty cute, so I don't mind. 

23  I had a blast anyway. The whole summer worked for me and I'm much livelier and stronger this year. 

24   Moving On, Part Three: The news is on behind me and makes me feel that we really need to count our blessings and reconsider how ready any of us are. 

25   Chimneys and bricks. Teevees falling on people. So many delightful stories. 

26   Just unbelievable. The earth can rough any of us up any time. 

27   They keep moving the Richter count. Yesterday it had climbed to 6.2, but this morning's Merc kept it at a cool 6.0.

28   Lots of heros. 

29   I really worry about the elderly, as well as children and pets. Tough stories. 

30   You gotta respect nature. 

31   I'm gonna turn of my teevee for now. They're starting to report on what COULD have happened. Uh...a lot of stuff DID happen. Thanks for keeping us informed, but it does begin to get a bit ridiculous when we start going down THAT road. 

32   Moving On, Part Four: Not much more to report. I don't want this stuff to get too serious or nobody will have a look. 

33   Gottago. 

34   Much to do.

35  You have a GREAT Monday, and count your blessings. I'm sure a lot of us are doing that. Keep going, and send thoughts to those whose lives forever changed because of this. Hope you're all safe. My sentiments on yet another Monday. Stay safe. 

36   See you again. 

37   Peace. 

~H~

The DN

1   "Mr. Harrington, can you play I Don't Want to Start the World on Fire by the Ink Spots?"

2   My students were excitedly writing sentences on the whiteboard using pastel dry erase pens. I played Journey's Don't Stop Believin' to start off the weekly musical ritual in my class. It was a beehive in my room. At first I didn't think I heard the kid right. Steve Perry was screaming to loud. 

3   "I'm sorry...did you say you wanted me to play an Ink Spots' song?"

4   "Yes," said the fifteen-year old. "I love I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire."

5   Journey was finishing up; kids were swinging their heads, and I thought, "Well I'll be a blue-nosed gopher!"

6

7   Okay, I didn't really thing that. Just casting myself with type. Old geezers say things like, "Well I'll be a blue-nosed gopher!" 

8   Don't they?

9   <crickets>

10   Moving On, Part One: Yesterday I spelled "raisin" "raison". I look over my stuff each day to make sure I don't do anything stupid. 

11  It rarely happens that I don't find something stupid. 

12  I write in the afternoon and often polish it up in the morning when I can't really think. 

13  I used to be a terrific speller. 

14   I won the sixth-grade spelling bee at Meadows School.

15   Not the same Meadows School as the Meadows School in San Jose. 

16   This is a different Meadows School from Millbrae Meadows, a rather tiny community where I grew up.

17   I always feared revealing that to people because I like to associate myself with the much tougher image of San Bruno. 

18  Millbrae doesn't have sewers blowing up, for example.

19  Bruno does. 

20  Millbrae is getting there. There is some sort of spray paint thing going on right in front of my Dad's house. I'm pretty sure people who put the sewer stuff in San Bruno are likely the same people who put the sewer stuff in Millbrae.

21  Now I'm proud to say I'm from the Meadows. Who was I kidding?

22  The Meadows. I lived across the street from Meadows School. I used to slide down Meadows Mountain on cardboard. 

23  I used to sit on Meadows Mountain like the Fool on the Hill and stare out at the Bay Area.

24  The Fool on the Hill at one point became a favorite song of mine.  

25  I'm pretty sure my favorite song now is I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire by the Ink Spots. It absolutely took my usual vocab ritual to a higher level.

26  Here:

27  Pretty corny.

28  Imagine eight or nine students climbing all over each other writing vocabulary sentences in front of a classroom with THAT playing quietly in the background.

29  Who needs TCM?

30   I laughed the remainder of the afternoon. 

31   Moving On, Part Two: In this morning's Merc News there was an item by Brennan Linsley of the Associated Press about the feud between Floyd Mayweather and 50 Cent. 

32  I'm not quite sure why, but I feel I really need to share it, so here it is, for your viewing pleasure:

50 CENT PUTS MONEY

WHERE HIS MOUTH IS

  Boxer Floyd Mayweather...and rapper 50 Cent...aren't on the best of terms nowadays, but their dispute may be a nice boost for charity. 

  The rapper has said he will donate $750,000 to a charity of Mayweather's choosing if the boxer can read one page of a Harry Potter book without messing up. No word on whether Mayweather has accepted the challenge. 

   Mayweather and 50 Cent used to be friends, but that was before the fighter had fallings out with several rappers, including 50 Cent. Recently, Mayweather accused three rappers -- 50 Cent, T.I. and Nelly -- of riding his coattails for publicity, according to a Deadspin story. 

  That produced an obscenity-laced video from 50 Cent, who then issued the $750,000 challenge. 

  Whatever works, if it raises that kind of money for a good cause.

33   I'm a bit speechless over here. 

34   At first the oatmeal and raisins almost came out my eyes.

35   Then the teacher dude came in and reprimanded me, because in a way it saddened me. 

36  I almost wouldn't blame Mayweather if he went over to 50 Cent's house and punched him in the kisser. 

37  And I'm a pretty peaceful fellow.

38  Anyway, interesting article to say the least.

39  Moving On, Part Three: Can anybody explain the 49ers and Levi Stadium to me?

40  First, the Niners. Evidently Harbaugh and company aren't showing all their cards. They must have a superstar backup quarterback nobody knows about. 

41  Second, they just lifted all the grass. The field is supposedly going to be ready for play on Sunday. 

42  A fan died of a heat stroke that was clearly related to no shade. 

43  And I heard something about the railings not being tall enough, but my info on that is a tad sketchy.

44  SMH.

45   That's "shaking my head" in Facebookese, for the uninitiated. 

46  I guess we'll have to wait and see, but I usually am amped for football season. This year I'm a little worried about my team. 

47   Anyway, I'll know more Monday.

48   We all will. 

49   And so this is Friday.

50   Yippieeeeeee!!!

51   Have an amazing weekend, and stay safe. 

52   See you again.

53   Peace.

~H~

The DN

1  Did I tell you that Don Pardo walked into a bar, or did I tell that to my students?

2  

3   <ahem>

4   Uh...my students would have no idea who Don Pardo was. 

5   If you do, consider this: you old.

6   #cathatatethecanarysmile

7   Moving On, Part One: Consider this: I don't know who Don Pardo is because I don't remember anything anymore. 

8   Anybody lookin'?

9   See item six.

10  Ah, whatevs.

11  Just having fun with you.

12  Hope nobody's offended.

13  Moving On, Part Two: Did Major League Baseball actually make a correct call?

14  I loved hearing that they took that tarp incident and made it right. Heck, even the Cubs wanted them to do that. 

15  Dang! There's still hope for mankind! 

16  I've gotten so used to all this bad news that gets thrown at us by the Man every day that I wondered if things were ever going to get even a little good.

17  That just goes to show.

18  Like I told you.

19  What I said.

20  Steal your face right off your head. 

21  The Man. 

22   Always messin' with our minds, just like the infamous Mind Messer. 

23   

24   A character in a skit from way back when. His power was that if he looked at you, your mind would get messed. 

25   Jason Lane and Rich Colbert out there in DN/FB Land can tell you more, but it was one of the hottest running skits during one of the many heydays of the Performing Arts Department "back in the day". 

26   Brilliant stuff. Pidah Man. 

27  Eternal. 

28   Even folk that wasn't there can probably relate to the comic book creativity of Pidah Man. 

29  The Mind Messer's power was just that: he had the power to mess your mind, causing anyone approaching an ATM to shake violently while lights strobed and blinked, followed by this: "Oh no! My mind is MESSED!!!"

30  Ponch and I used to put folding chairs in the classroom and watch those skits. Easy way to spend Fridays. 

31  Common Core before it had a name. 

32  The students ran Fridays. 

33   Good times, fond memories. 

34  Moving On, Part the Thoid: I don't really have a part the thoid but I was long overdue in getting one out there, so I guess this will do the trick. 

35  That's the nice thing about being a hack.

36  You never get old. 

37   Even though your material does. 

38   Anybody lookin'?

39   Yeesh.

40   I'm still trying to iron out the wrinkles in my lessons this week. 

41   I need to iron out the wrinkles in the knees of my pants. 

42   I wish I could iron out the wrinkles on my mug.

43   

44   Okay, okay enough about me. 

45   I never have much to say anyway, but I still say it. 

46   My goal is to catch anyone reading this and have their hot oatmeal come out of their nose. 

47   I'm a man of high aspirations. 

48   If a raisin goes through it's a Daily Double. 

49   

50   All right, my conscience is telling me I'd better get goin'.

51   Oh, I imagine. 

52   Hope you have a GREAT day. 

53   See you again. 

54   Peace.

~H~

The DN

1   I swung from tree to tree yesterday.

2   I was a monkey man.

3   The second I got to school I had to arrange to say good-bye to my first class of the day. Swung them over to another tree and headed back to my hut. 

4   Thank God for bananas.

5   Things swirled. Before I knew it was lunch. I wrote some letters of recommendation last night during my insomnia, which is back in full force. 

6   Kids flew into my hut, gave thanks, and zipped to another tree.

7   After lunch I had arranged to go to another teacher's hut to take her class away from her. 

8  I never had a chance. Just as I moved to the door to my hut, a stampede of students flew at me. She had sent them over. This is what happens when schedules change four days into a new school year. Massive chaos. 

9   I was clearly in the middle of a Disney cartoon.

10  I didn't even have a hard copy of their names. I tried copying and pasting on my laptop, but it naturally decided to buffer incessantly the second they arrived. 

11  You don't always get good reception out in the middle of nowhere. 

12   I finally had to yank my laptop off my desk, unplug everything plugged into it and then dash to the front of the room. 

13  I panted for a bit, but the new students seemed pretty friendly. 

14  I decided to seat them alpha, instantly. It became five minutes of jungle noise and various toucan calls, but within seconds they sat ready to learn. 

15  "Howdy!" I mused. They said "Howdy!"

16  I tried filling them in on all the stuff we did last week, but that was a week ago. It occurred to me that they were a week behind, no matter how I examined it. 

17  I explained that we did some "get acquainted" activities and then dove into the entire MENSA exercise. 

18  They looked at me like I had ten heads. 

19   I finally blurted this: "Okay...look. I am a man. If Larry's son is my son's father, what relationship am I to Larry?"

20  <crickets>

21  That sort of quiet was right out of The Lion King.

22   Within seconds the jungle came alive.

23   They started shouting all sorts of things at me and coming up with all sorts of theories. I saw bright jungle colors everywhere, all quite Disney. 

24   One student finally became the king, at least for a second. "May I explain, Mr. Harrington?"

25  The guy did a better job of explaining the answer better than I've done over the past fifty years. 

26  

25   Uh...I haven't been teaching for the past fifty years?

26   The student was SO eloquent. The students, still spinning from the abrupt move from their sanctuary, couldn't fathom the answer he gave, and began demanding a better explanation. 

27  I smiled, walked over to a nearby desk, put my feet up and smiled. 

28  He tried re-wording it but couldn't get the others to quiet down long enough to make a case. 

29  He thought outside the box and created Larry's son's grandfather to augment the lesson he had already delivered.

30  To his credit, I can say that he stood right in the middle of all the noise. He asked if he could use stick figures to explain it. 

31  A comic cloud appeared over my head and my thoughts were this: "You should have left the grandpa out of it." Especially since he changed the grandfather's name from "grandfather" to "grandpa" due to crammed white board space. 

32  He was trying to parallel the relationships but fell further and further into the mire. Another student jumped up and helped him out. "Mind if I jump to the board, Mr. Harrington?"

33   <cloud above my head> "Why would I?"

34   The entire class was engaged, laughing, hooting and hollering as these students became the teachers, but the class was so engaged that answers echoed through the hills and laughter drowned out any hope of hearing the correct answer. SO Lion King. 

35  The new guy good-naturedly gave up, so I decided to move to the front and pick up the whiteboard pen. The class laughed and I laughed. We didn't even KNOW each other twenty minutes earlier and suddenly here we were. When it calmed down I explained it as a math challenge.

36  "This is really a math problem, if you think about it. Do you know what a least common denominator is in math?" Some said yes, some looked around like lost toucans, and others pretended not to hear, moved off rocks and into other areas of the hut. 

37  "Look. What is one million over two million?"

38  <crickets and a hoot owl> <more silence>

39   "So I am a man." I paused. At least I broke the silence. "Larry's son is my son's father. Who is my son's father, hopefully?"

40  "You!" they cried out instantly. "Okay. And can we safely put an equal sign in place of the word "is"?

41  They stared. 

42   I wrote "Larry's son = my son's father." 

43   Can we pare down "my son's father" to the word "me"?

44   I did it. It came out like this: "Larry's son = me."

45   Every light in the hut went on, and it became a classroom once again. 

46   Fun stuff, and we all successfully made it through all  the madness. 

47   Fun morning.

48   Last year I wouldn't have been able to deal with all of that. The buffering would have had me shaking my head and getting nervous. 

49  This year I have smiled each time I face tasks that would have seemed insurmountable a year ago. 

50  Felt good. Much of last year's nightmares are now miles away, perhaps even continents away. 

51  The entire day could have gone out of control at any moment. It didn't. At day's end I stared astonished at the empty room. I thought to myself, as I have each day of this interesting year, "What just happened?"

52  And that, my friends, is a bit of jungle mania. 

53  Hope you enjoyed it. I did. It's turning into a pretty interesting school year. 

54  Gottago. Hope you enjoyed this Disney nonsense. See you again.

55  Peace.

~H~

~H~