Two exciting things happened at work a few weeks ago:
1. A lesson on toxins that started with this statement: “we are
all exposed to toxins beginning in utero”, lead down an
all-girls-school-discussion-rabbit-hole into pregnancy, childbirth, IVF,
adoption, cancer and the meaning of life (!).
2. While on a waste water treatment plant tour with my other
class, I came to the startling realization that should (when) the apocalypse
come, I really want to hightail it over to that facility to hang out for a
while. All of the pipes are color coded
and labeled for no guessing (it’s easy to find fresh water—blue pipes!) and the
vast amounts of poop with seeds (biosolids) that get laid out to dry would
yield all manner of fresh veggies.
Some exciting life things lately:
Natan turned 37, and we basically replicated
Theo’s birthday party for him, with the same food, cake, balloons and
company.
I also made some coloring book pages using pictures of Natan on vacation for us to
color.
My mom got him a Game of Thrones (GOT) mug that changes
color (goes from black to white) when a hot beverage is added—as you can see, it is the coolest mug ever.
I made a pinned map for him that has our travels together,
and as individuals.
Going back to school after spring break was the hardest it’s
ever been this year, for a variety of reasons, but I’m starting to transition
into summer break excitement now. We
have an epic vacation planned this year that involves the contribution of many
fossil fuels to the atmosphere, which I feel terrible about.
Our first stop is the Mississippi Delta in mid-June, where I
will study the south, the delta environment, the blues and fried foods for a
week. I’m super excited about this—it’s
another NEH grant, but a shorter and more local one than Vienna. So far, I’ve done two of these things with
music as a unifying concept, which makes me feel really hopeful that at some
point education will truly be holistic and interwoven, rather than fragmented
in the way it is today. In this case,
the blues sprang out of the social forces of the Delta, which were in turn
shaped by its environment/fertile farming land.
Music-society-science-life: Everything
is related!
I’ve already started reading a book about the black
migration to the industrial north. This
is absolutely my favorite thing about teaching—the constant learning, but in a
typical school way, where you acquire lots of information in a formal way. I know that one can also learn just by virtue
of doing a job for five years, but it’s different, you know? I love school-like learning—books, deadlines,
discussions, suggested music playlists.
After I’m finished, we are going to drive the blues highway
(highway 61) up to Chicago, stopping in my ancestral homelands along the way. I haven’t been back to that part of the
country for over 10 years. I have the
most mixed feelings about the Chicago stop.
That place was brutal for me,
intellectually/emotionally/weather-wise/style-wise. It’s only as an adult that I have the
distance to realize that I would have been far happier going to college
elsewhere. Not that I would change
it—I’ve seen Hot Tub Time Machine! I
couldn’t/wouldn’t give up the people and experiences for anything, but I really
want Theo be happy in college, which in my mind means Lewis and Clark College
in Portland. He should be OK giving up
any (double) legacy points his application to the U of C would garner, right?
And onward from Chicago to Costa Rica for a month! We’ll be staying with my parents on the coast
and doing as many touristy things possible (we love doing tours and being excited
foreigners). We’ll visit shrimp farms,
take nighttime jungle walks, go zip lining, eat lots of fish, visit hot
springs, walk to volcanoes, and (hopefully) take regular dips in a pool.
In summary, I’m looking forward to this summer maybe more
than any other. I’m sort of blocking out
the fact that we will have a 16 month old baby with us. He’s never been on a plane before, and he’s
about to embark on 30 hours of plane rides, rental cars, hotels, a foreign
country, humidity and about 10,000 miles of travel. Are we crazy?
