Day 7 of spring break

yesterday there were storms making their way up the middle of illinois. i guess that's another good reason i didn't go on the ride this week. i thought i'd be able to do it at some point, but the forecast called for rain wednesday: turned out there were tornados and hail and all kinds of fun stuff.

don't worry though, i have lotsa work to keep me busy. at the moment, i'm considering a solo study session at borders in mchenry... that should be fun. it's nice to be on break.

led zeppelin & lord of the rings

the song no quarter by led zeppelin has always somehow brought the story of lord of the rings to my mind.

'they carry news that must get through'

'they build a dream for me and you'

'they ask no quarter' is one of their lines in the song 'no quarter' (Partial etymology). in the Return of the King, there is a battle where tolkien is describing the enemy's forces as strong and resilient, asking no quarter.
Song Lyrics:
Close the door put out the light,
You know they won't be home tonight.
The snow falls hard and don't you know,
The winds of Thor are blowing cold.
They're wearing steel that's bright and true.
They carry news that must get through.
They choose the path where no one goes.
They hold no quarter.
They hold no quarter.
Walking side by side with death,
The devil mocks their every step.
The snow drives back the foot that's slow,
The dogs of doom are howling more.
They carry news that must get through,
To build a dream for me and you.
They choose the path where no one goes.

They hold no quarter.
They ask no quarter.

in battle of evermore, robert plant says "the ringwraiths ride in black" which is either a direct reference to lord of the rings, or ringwraiths in another sci-fi story (although i've never read another story with 'ringwraiths' as a character... i don't read much sci-fi/fantasy)

I guess all i can say is that jimmy page & robert plant must be sci-fi freaks, because these songs evoke the emotions that you feel when you watch LOTR movies or read the books... not just the lyrics, but the sounds of the songs... it all comes together somehow. and i keep picking up more of their lyrics that seem to be 'stolen' from the books.


In the two towers, the evil wizard saruman convinces a village of men that saruman's enemies are causing them strife... he convinces them to go to war to end oppression and fear. when the villagers are conquered they are shown mercy by the enemies of saruman, they realize their fears were unfounded.

as i've been listening to the LOTR stories again, i've been thinking about the representations, and here's what i think so far:

the hobbits are innocence/ignorance
the elves are faith, wisdom, and everything good (immortal)
the wizards are angels or god's & satan's will
aragorn might be jesus/otherwise he's just a very faithful human bound tightly to gandalf (god's will)
gollum is random circumstance. he makes things happen that are not his intentions
the men are humans: some are good, some are bad, depending on their geographic location, lineage, and allegiance
the dwarves, of which only one is in the story, are greed, and they all die for it except the one who forsakes gold for the quest of the nine
the ring is power & wealth (duh)
the orcs are the hand, or the ignorant forces of evil: the antithesis of elves

In the books, some innocence is lost as the hobbits go to battle and to the evil lands. the hobbits don't die, but their innocence is gone.


And so if i were to parallel LOTR with reality today...

the hobbits: the masses
elves: environmentalists, peacekeepers
wizards: politicians (not all good, not all bad)
aragorn: hmmmm
gollum: hard to cast as he is random circumstance
men: the armed forces
dwarves: the oil companies, corporations, the media
ring: oil, money, and often-definitely now-the presidency, public opinion
orcs: the bloodthirsty: anyone who calls for war as a knee-jerk reaction to various problems. they are the men & women educated to hate americans because we are infidels. they are people who feel good about being at war. There is a difference between supporting the troops and always wanting to send the troops. orcs are bloodthirsty.

summary of week

yeah, i didn't go on the trip today, i'll try next week. i'll be leaving soon with jake for easter at home.

speaking of easter, in our classroom this week, we made easter baskets! it was so much fun. we worked with paper mache and used the top of a balloon as a mold. it took three days because of drying time, and the kids did a great job following directions and they had a great time. people were impressed to hear about this, but it was easy because of the class that i have this year. i am sure i'll pay for it next year, as the pendulum of fate swings the other way... i'm trying to enjoy the time i have with this class. i mean, i never had a class where half of them could start on their paper mache project while the other half writes a detailed description of their favorite toy (as a required assignment for the Open Court Reading Series)... and they kept the room clean while we were at it. sigh...

(a lot of people already knew this because i couldn't keep it to myself, but i wanted to write it down for my own future reference!)

mother nature

The weather doesn't look very encouraging for this Friday... I wanna ride, but I don't wanna be miserably cold & wet!

alterations on the riding plan

speaking with a fellow biker, i may have decided to abandon the idea of camping and stay in hotels. in the words of dex, i need to take baby steps. my main objective is to ride home and get there in a couple days. if i carry all that weight, i'll slow my pace. if i stay in hotels, that's at least 20 pounds i can shed. so one goal at a time... perhaps next time i'll camp out.

link to the original plan

chess tournament

no one from my school won a game today... the competition all knew how to checkmate, and that's a pretty important concept, seeing how it's the only way to win the game. my students couldn't grasp the concept that you don't win by killing the opponent's king, but by trapping the opponent's king. even those who had been taught last year and had all this time to practice didn't get it... in the awards ceremony, two of the winners were some truly gifted students from whittier primary, whose father is their coach and one of my favorite teachers from bradley university. other winners came from a family whose last name is 'vijay' and whose parents didn't speak english. i plan to begin chess lessons much earlier next year. and since my first chess students will be in third grade next year, i think we'll have a good foundation. i spent quite a lot of time with these students. chess.

today's peace rally

today marked 2 years since the beginning of the war in iraq. through 'move-on.org', i found out about a rally to protest the war and to remember the 1500+ soldiers who have died in iraq. this local protest was organized by the peoria peace network.

there i read some clever signs in protest of the war:

1. how many lives per gallon?
2. who would jesus bomb?
3. wwjd
4. an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind - ghandi
5. religion kills (this one was held by a self-proclaimed atheist)

it's weird how people all phrase their protests differently, from a different point of view. i could see what the atheist meant, but i knew that people passing who were against the war might be offended by that sign. religion was used to justify that war, as was fear of iraq's "wmd's".

_________________

i saw a few people i'd known before: a former teacher at woodrow wilson, a speech pathologist for the district, volunteer workers at global village, and a former counselor from bradley's wellness center. i had no idea all these people would be there, or that they had such strong beliefs when i had talked to them in the past.

it was a good feeling, to be around people like that. we went to someone's house after an hour, and we had veggie soup and other treats...

equinox

being the first day of spring, i've chosen this day to reset the tripometer on my car and the one on my bike. from this point on, i hope i can keep a respectable ratio of biking miles to driving miles... the long trip home will give me a good start.

just a tease/note to self

theengz tu rait ubowd en tha nere phewchre...

1. peace rally today

2. all the peoples i saw that i already knew at the rally and the new friends...

3. the chess tournament today and people i saw there that i already knew

4. plan alterations for the bike ride

5. equinox

i had a darn busy day today, but still managed a nap...

analyzizization

some dreams are impossibly easy to interpret. last night, cuz i had done lotsa schoolwork, and since i had finished the book i'd been reading the night before, i allowed myself to fall asleep to the television. i found myself dreaming about buying an air purifier over the phone, and explaining to a faceless person why i was buying the air purifier.

"because if i find that it doesn't work for me, i can just send it back. it's guaranteed. and if i do send it back, i get to keep the mini-car air purifier for free. and i get all this for five easy payments."

that's right, you guessed it, i woke up during a 30 minute info-mercial. nothing behind that dream, i think.

now i'm on my way to a chess tournament... hopefully the kids i've been teaching do well (and show up)... they won't be coming on a bus, they come with their parents, so whether i get there and get insulted and leave bears no consequence in school (see previous post "chess club" for context of this reference, or don't, and be left in the dark).

oh the crocodile went to the dentist

in my classroom we use lots of music and stories/poems on tape. today we listened to 'green eggs & ham' in honor of st. patrick's day. the kids loved the rhythm that this particular reader used, and we had fun listening to it. we listen to shel silverstein, who was not only a gifted poet, but also was socially conscientious and musically talented. i think the rhyming and the rhythm draws the kids in, and research has shown that readers use letter chunks that they find in rhymes. if you teach a person a word like "take" and then compare that to "sake, fake, rake, make, bake..." they will pick up how to read the -ake cluster. it's funny how kids don't realize when words rhyme, they just know it sounds funny or cool. and if kids don't learn to read or write from listening to these poems & songs, what have they lost? they've still had fun.

chess club

Wednesday afternoons, after school, I teach chess to 3rd & 4th graders. It's usually pretty fun, although they like to get right into the game rather than listen to tactics and, oh, the rules.

Yesterday was fun, but something must have stressed me, because I had a dream last night that was disturbing. I guess this blog will be a dream journal now. I was meeting my chess students at a public place where we could eat and play chess. I arrived first, but the receptionist insulted me so I left. The next day I went to school and the principal found out I had left, and the "bus" with the kids got there and I wasn't there. They were left unattended in the restaurant and getting back on the bus, something happened to one of the kids (I don't know what that was). So parents wrote notes to the principal and I was getting in trouble. One of the other teachers tried to stick up for me, but the principal wasn't having that. So I got in trouble. That's all I remember, but I had that relieved feeling again this morning as I ate my oatmeal: "It was just a dream." And I laughed.

another war

I have no intention of making this a "dream journal", however, as I recall from psychology class in high school, recording dreams is a great way to enhance your "dream life."

Anyhow, I have had another war dream. This one happened in normal sleep, not "snooze alarm" sleep. And this time, I was trying to get into the army, for whatever reason. They wouldn't let me into the army because I failed some test... I don't even know which test it was. In reality, I believe they would reject me for my age. I was deeply dishonored to be rejected; I guess I must have really believed in the cause of this war. When I woke up, I eventually remembered that I had a dream, and anxiety drained from me.

You have dreams, and a lot of times they are the realization of your worst fears, and the fear in that dream haunts you. I wake up with vague discomfort, like I'm mad or apprehensive but don't know why. Then the dream comes back to me, usually after a shower and during breakfast. I almost always feel relief and get over my feelings of anxiety (for the moment, until I find something in waking moments to stress about). There's always something to feel uneasy about, you just have to look for it.

watching pi

yeah, it's pi day. we used to celebrate that in high school, and today i'm watching the movie "pi"... it's pretty weird... i don't think i like it much...

rem

would it or would it not be funny to find random people that you don't know and say:

"I dreamed about you last night."

?

or would i be crazy?

I don't remember any dreams from last night, but for some reason I wanted to say that to people today. maybe i should just shout at them: "what's the frequency, kenneth?"

darn those teachers

Recently there was press about the financial status of the school district in which I work. Last Friday, the paper ran "District 150 Barely Covers Paychecks."

In the article, it is stated that our district pays about 3 million in salaries every two weeks. Dang, that's a lot of money to be spending every two weeks, isn't it?

If all that money went to pay salaries in the school where I teach, that would be upwards of $85,000 per teacher, per two weeks! Needless to say, our school doesn't get all of that money...

Counting up the schools listed on our district webpage, I found 40 schools. Doing rough math & estimation, that's $75,000 per school, per two weeks. I don't know the average number of teachers per building, but I'm guessing it's about the same as my school, 35 teachers.

$75,000/35=$2412.85 per teacher per two weeks...

Assuming this includes all the extra payroll taxes every business has to pay, and the medical benefits teachers pay for with a group rate, that brings the total down quite a bit to, say around $1,500 per two weeks... I am sort of guessing here, but it sounds about right.

Of course, this is an average, I know I don't make 1500 every two weeks... but I guess what I am getting at is this: Why is teacher payroll front & center of attention? There are lots of other bills the district has to pay... Is our worth as teachers/caregivers in question here? I know some teachers who have taken offense to this, and it made me think...

If caregiving were the only part of my job, or in other words if i were charging babysitting/daycare fees, what would that break down to, if the parents were in fact paying for this daycare?

22 kids x 35 hours a week (I'm being kind and not including planning time)

That's 770 "kid-hours"... multiply that by the going hourly rate of babysitting:

A teenage babysitter may charge $2.00 per kid per hour............$1540 (tax free, of course)

A more experienced daycare runner may charge (I have no idea) $5.00 per kid per hour
($3,850)

Maybe the newspaper is right; I should stop draining the public's funds with my bloated salary and go into the private sector. If I can manage 22 kids in a classroom with all kinds of educational mandates and leaving no child behind, surely I can manage 22 kids without the mandates... I'll still teach, just without the stress of some unrealistic, voted-in-on-buzz-words windbag making me accountable for something students don't find important or practical.

listening pleasure

Samwise Gamgee witnessed a battle in the two towers, in the chapter where he's cooking rabbits that gollum caught.

anyway, I am listening to the two towers on my ipod, this is like the third time i'm listening to it, i like these books and listening to them is relaxing and entertaining...

in my third or whatever time listening, i picked up on a new detail during this battle scene. it kind of gives a glimpse of what j.r.r. tolkien thought of war & soldiers. a man had just died, and...

"it was Sam's first view of a battle of men against men, and he did not like it much. he was glad he could not see the dead man's face. he wondered what the man's name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil of heart, or what lies or threats had led him on the long march from his home..."

hmmmm... apparently unfounded, dishonest & unnecessary wars are not new... this book was first copyrighted in 1954.

two favorite words

I almost forgot that two of my favorite words in the world are

belly
&
turkey

& if I say either of these two words repeatedly, I can't help but laugh. I like to call people a turkey, and I like to refer to the stomach as belly.

movies vs. stationaries

people, when they are describing something in english, add a suffix to the end of a noun or verb or an adjective to create an adjective:

it's kind of chill (y)

that's very spice (-e +y)

I am an America (n)

her writing is Dickens(ian)

he's kind of self (ish)

can I have a cook(ie) (this seems to only apply to baked treats with sugars & eggs & other sweet things, not just anything that is "cooked"... you never see a mom(+ m + y) giving a "cooked" pork chop or a pancake to a kid (+ d + ie) who has requested a cook (ie).

Let's go to a move (-e +ie)

That one is funny... I'd have liked to live at the time when people had to describe the projection of a succession of pictures that together create the image of something "moving" on the screen. Let's go check out one of those new, uh, movies... in the beginning, didn't they call them "moving pictures" or something? And then people started saying "movie" for "a picture that moves" ...

Why not call it a movie? paper can be called "stationary" ... and it doesn't appear to move unless there's a draft... I don't know if that's why they call it stationary, though.

adding the "ee" sound to the end of words seems to make things quaint & cute, or quaintsy & cutesie...

comfy, cozy, toasty, hottie, hot toddy, onesy, twosy, piggies, kitties, puppies, mommy, daddy, baby, ...

it would sound funny to hear a gangster say:
"Hey bossie, you want I should get my gunsie and shoot this guy in the headsie? Or should we fitsy him with a cutesy pair of concrete booties and send him down to swimsy with the fishies?"

or to have a doctor describe a painful or uncomfortable procedure:
"first we'll stick your armsy with a needle to inject the anestheticsies... then we'll use mr. knify to cut..."

Do you like my clock?

Hey, check out my new clock in the sidebar... You can get one too, for your lazy viewers who don't like to glance all the way down to the digital time readout on their own computer screen... just click on it!

It's kind of ironic, though, cuz of all people, I don't feel like I pay much attention to clocks & time... I just wanted to decorate my page some more.

the new seat

just so everyone knows, the new bike seat that I have been using is good in a lot of ways, but I notice a concentrated, bruise-like pain on both sides of my inner-groin... it's very bearable, it hurts a lot in the first five minutes of riding, but then it kind of numbs. It hurts if I sit on a hard chair or bench, with a dull, barely there, almost pleasurable-because-you-know-why-it's-there kind of pain.

The good thing is that because the seat is all leather, it is smooth and doesn't "catch" on the fabric of my pants. I won't say it outright, but I think we all know the effect when the fabric of our clothes is stationary and our bodies are constantly in motion, constantly rubbing against the stationary fabric. So yeah, there's none of that, if anyone was wondering.

hoooway for wisps

that girl in my class who said "I like waccoons cuz they eat gawbage" has now said "If I could be any aminal, I'd be a wottweiluh..."

I don't know what I'm gonna do when she moves into 2nd grade!

kitty fountain

Oscar, my big fluffy orange, black & white cat, has always loved water. She seems to drink constantly. Quite often she sits with her head propped up on the side of the water dish. Recently, my good friend Angie persuaded me to purchase a kitty fountain. It constantly circulates the water up from the dish, into a reservoir, where it is slowly poured back into the water dish. The cats were timid at first, because it runs on electricity and so it hums. But quite soon after installing the new contraption, both kitties are very at home with their "fountain." Oscar is again parked right in front of it for long periods of time!

further planning for riding farther

okay, now that we are in the month of march, and the vernal equinox is just 19 days away, and my bikeride beginning on Good Friday is just 24 days away, the pressure is on for training.

in the mail, i received a new bike seat (Brooks B-17) for better comfort on longer rides... the funny thing is, it's rock hard. supposedly, though, it is very comfortable & stuff. i dunno about that, but i'm gonna give it a chance. they say to break it in, and to do that i'm gonna try riding 500 miles in the next 24 days. that would be an average of 21-22 miles a day. however, i need to do a long ride, like 100 miles, and there are days i won't ride cuz i have work and class on the same day...

that leaves me with no riding on the 7th, 14th & 21st (class days)
extra riding on 5th, 6th, 12th, 13th, 19th, 20th Saturdays & Sundays (no work or class)

However, my grandparents have an anniversary party on the 13th, and I may not ride that day. I hope readers won't mind if I work some math here:

6th, 12th, 20th: 40 mile rides

5th, 19th: 100 mile rides

That gives me 320 miles. Wow. so 180 miles are split over the remaining 16 days, which gives me about 11-12 miles to ride on those days. That's also nice, cuz that's about an hour, and it's hard to spare more than an hour on school days!