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Just got back from 12 hour day with 44 students from my college who went on a field trip to the Holocaust Museum, a fitting thing to do after last Saturday's synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh.
I'm glad I went after all. Two students stuck by me all day, not just for me, but--as I found out over a lunch we had alone together--for them, too. They had some other things to talk about with me seeking advice for a DUI one got drunk driving and the trouble the other one has with the law for getting caught dealing drugs.
I know, they sound like bad people, but lots of kids are troubled these days in my little Rust Belt town. I'm glad they wanted to confess to their old teacher and get some advice on how to go forward.
They also were very attentive as we went through the Museum. In particular, an exhibit around this poem caught their eye. It kind of summed up our visit. Babi Yar, by the way, is a real place.
BABI YAR
By Yevgeni Yevtushenko
(edited fragment from
Holocaust Museum wall)
Wild grasses rustle over Babi Yar,
The trees look sternly, as if passing judgement.
Here, silently, all screams, and, hat in hand,
I feel myself turning gray.
And I myself,
am one long soundless scream
Above the thousand thousand buried here,
I’m every old man executed here,
As I am every child murdered here.
No fiber of my body will forget this.
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Welcome to the Perseid meteor showers, the "biggies" usually every year. (The Leonids beat 'em one year IMHO).AND today much of the northern hemisphere will see 5 to 99% solar eclipse. How cool is that? Your best bet is to be in the UK or norhtern Spain, where totality is excellent before sundown. Me, I'll get a super duper tiny itty bitty slice of it, so little that it won't be noticeable. New...
-
... observed a solar eclipse.
Thank you for your work, Muji.
I am amazed at the kids today who expect much, give nothing and believe that if they veg on weed and other stuff in that category they can seize the world. Hopefully they realize that it is not that easy!
Glad you enjoyed the Museum as it is in a good area of town to see other stuff and also china town.
Your students always feel they can reach out to you,and that says a lot about you as a teacher,and as a human being.
Yeah, I'm really glad getting off campus meant those two students could talk to me privately about the one's DUI and the other one's drug dealing charge like that. My next door neighbor in my neighborhood is a very successful foster care giver to teens. She came over when I got home from our Holocaust Museum trip to hear me out about chatting with those students, and was very supportive about how I should follow up. Those two don't need to fall through the cracks.
I know too many people who did stupid things in their youth and turned their lives around. From selling drugs (my ex's older brother), to driving recklessly, to stealing a Tasty Cake truck, driving it around town, and throwing Tasty Cakes out the window (my ex's younger brother...who later joined the Army, and became the prototypical young Republican).
When my ex's girlfriends son got into trouble, I played Jimmy Buffett's Great Filling Station Holdup to my kids to get them off the "bad/horrible kid subject" that they'd overheard the grownups talking about at her house.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0YPlflMv8A
***I hope your feet feel better soon. Getting older is for the birds.***
My parents broke the pattern of my ancestors having arrest records until they up and got into so much trouble in South America they added a new wrinkle to the family history.
Instead of incarceration, it was deportation, getting driven to the airport by the authorities in a foreign country, getting put on a plane back to the States, and being told never, ever to set foot back in that country overseas again.
So I listened to those kids confess their pasts to me bearing that in mind. Since I myself am an old bachelor who's not a parent, I'm glad to hear from you, too, that it sounds like I did the right thing, like it sounded when I talked to my next door neighbor about it.
By the way, that's a great Jimmy Buffet video, not just the song but the images. I'm a Parrothead, having been to a concert of his summer before last to get baptized, as it were, into the whole experience. His songs are kind of the soundtrack to my effort these years toward retiring in Mexico--Margaritaville, you know?
I really appreciate the kind hopes for my prompt foot recovery. Wow, do old joints ever find places for aches and pains or what?!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0fj-UevS0s
He Went To Paris
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGmERAWVdWM
I hope your pain gets better
Big hugs <3
btw now I have Margaritaville stuck in my head :)
We went out for the whole week sailing by day to uninhabited islands along the coast and camping in each one by night. We ate what we fished and we went scuba diving.
On the deck we played Buffett songs on the portable stereo, so I have a direct association with the images from that trip and his music. It's one of the most wonderful memories of my life that's gotten me through hard times.
Lilmiss, thanks for planting the idea that one of those kids could some day become a drug counselor or something like that himself. That's my greatest hope as a community college instructor, being a positive influence on some young person's life so they can dare to make a difference. I don't have kids of my own, so that would be my legacy, and it's not corny to me, no. It's the hope.
My pain's a little better today, thanks. I have a doctor's appointment in a half hour, so we'll see what he says.
btw, here's a song that can get Margaritaville out of your head--Banana Republics by Buffett. I love the marimbas. They have a marimba concert on the plaze every evening at 8pm in San Cristobal where I go in Mexico.