Halloween

October 31, 2008. Halloween.
I am not big on Halloween. When I say that I mean I am not big on the whole decorate your house and stuff. Little kids dressing up and going door to door, I guess it's cute. Mine did it until they were about ten or so, and they did stay in the neighborhood. I went trick or treating as a kid, again, just in the neighborhood. Sitting here thinking about it, I'd say there were fewer than 20 homes that we went to when we were children. The only costume I remember was when I dressed up as Robin, Batman's sidekick. That show was big back them with Burt Ward and Adam West. Now when I watch the reruns, it seems pretty tacky, but the idea of a utility belt and a batmobile intrigued me as a kid. The bat cave, that was cool. I think the appeal of superheroes is the dual personality/secret identity thing. Although I could never figure out how Superman could simply hide his identity by donning glasses. I can recognize people without their glasses.
Who was the Incredible Hulk when he wasn't the Incredible Hulk?
Who was Spiderman when he wasn't Spiderman?
Who was Batman when he wasn't Batman and who was Robin when he wasn't Robin?

The Phillies Win, The Phillies Win

OK. I know I couldn't blog without mentioning the Phillies win. So, did I mention the Phillies won. World Champions. The Phillies. The greatest team in baseball for 2008. Cole Hammels, MVP.

Didn't blog yesterday. Not much time to blog today. End of the marking period and students, those purveyors of procrastination, are pummeling me with precious pieces of past due work for me to peruse.

I will be thrilled when the election is over. The negativity of the commericals is depressing.

http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/blog/big_league_stew/post/Tim-McGraw-spreads-his-father-s-ashes-on-World-S?urn=mlb,117404

This is a neat story. Happened on Saturday night.

The Phils win. I'm having a difficult time focusing today. Perhaps I'm becoming tired. I think the change of seasons makes me tired. I hate getting up and coming to school in the dark, but next weekend is daylight savings time so we get back the hour we lost last spring. I was hoping to go golfing before we lose that hour in the afternoon but if I want to it will have to be this week.

I really do have deeper thoughts than these, but I figure I have to be pretty innocuous. That's a great SAT word. Innocuous. It's from the same root as innoculate. The doctor wanted to give me a flu shot a couple weeks ago but I said not. No way I want a strain of the flu injected in me.

The end of the marking period is this Wednesday. Where did that time go?

I am hoping the Phils can finish off the Rays tonight. Yesterday in church I was talking to a guy who had been at the game Saturday night. He only got home at 4:00AM. I guess it suddenly hit me that this may be the only chance I had to see the Phils in a world series live and I missed it. It's been 28 years since their last world series victory. I need to take more opporunities for these once in a life time experiences. If someone else had asked be whether or not he or she should go, I wouldn't have hesitated. I would have told him or her to go for it, regardless of the cost. But here I sit, frozen in my indecisiveness.....

Tower of Terror. I think it's the best ride at WDW.




Sunday night. I'm watching the Phils. Wow. Penn State won, the Phils won yesterday and the Eagles won today. Sorry Steelers fans. Not a good day for you. I do like the retro jersey's though.





I was going to put a Phillies emblem on here but I wasn't able to and I don't have the patience to do it now.





End of the first marking period Wednesday. Where did the time go?

What are we owed? Does life, or the government, or school, or teachers, or students, or our parents owe us anything? Are we entitled to anything that we shouldn't have to work for?

I know, the Phillies lost. They left so many runners on base last night. Sad.

Responsibility. That is a good concept essay.

I am feeling a bit philosophical....

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend.

I'm blogging in front of the whole class. I was reading my Emerson quotes to the class. Tanya is putting her computer away. I guess she's done. I think I'm having a kidney stone. Kendra just came in late, as usual. Sorry, she was finishing a test.....blah, blah, blah.

The Phillies won. That makes Josh really happy. That is sarcasm. He's rooting for the Rays (Devil) just because he hates the Phils. Hate is such a strong emotion. Some say you can't hate without first loving and you can't love without hating. Hmmmmm. That's deep.

BG's is soon going to take over WalMart. That could well be the quote of the day.

I came in to more boxes this morning. Gotta have style.

I went to college with April Showers. She married Chip Freyberger. Her name is now April Freyberger. If cows eat only grass and we eat cows, how come it raises our cholesterol?

It's time to do the on line test. It's 9:45.

Some Emerson Quote for the day...

To be great is to be misunderstood.

The only way to have a friend is to be one.

A great man is always willing to be little.

A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.

A man in debt is so far a slave.

A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise shall give him no peace.

Before we acquire great power we must acquire wisdom to use it well.

Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.

Character is higher than intellect. A great soul will be strong to live as well as think.

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

The Happy Couple

I posted a picture of the family at the anniversary celebration on Saturday night. The Millers are on the left. The Campbells are on the right and grandma and grandpa are seated. Enjoy!

50th Wedding Anniversary

Yesterday was my in-laws 50th wedding anniversary. This weekend we traveled to North Carolina to celebrate. On Saturday night, we had a nice quiet family get together with a dinner and slide show that my wife and her sister had put together. My father in law shared how they met. She came to their school in third grade in Newmanstown, and she sat right in front of him. He asked her to the Christmas dance in their junior year and then they began dating his senior year. So really, they were childhood sweethearts. He had been in the marines, and he was making $87.50 a month and could never afford a proper engagement ring. So on Saturday as he was telling us all the story of their time together, he pulled out an engagement ring, a diamond, and put in on her finger. Pretty cool, the old romantic. I'll post some pictures later of the occasion. Anyway, 1000 miles from Friday after school to Sunday evening make for a tired teacher. Now it's off to correcting 11th grade research papers and getting back into the swing of things.

The Phillies will be playing the Rays in the world series beginning Wednesday.

Panera bread makes great bagels.

School is cool.

The weather is turning colder and there was frost on the pumpkin this morning, and my windshield.

Katie Hess is homecoming queen. Congratulations Katie.

We beat Donegal.

There is a lot of noise going on in the hall.

Winter sports callouts are tomorrow.

I am so pleased with my am class. They are reading quietly. I wonder if I could fall asleep.

I don't know when I got my first computer in the classroom. I know I was still teaching in the middle school, which would have made it around 1994. The computer was a macintosh and I don't recall exactly what I used it for other than grades. I know I bought my own grading program. Some teachers had set up a program on excel to do theirs, but I didn't have that ability. I think the name of the program was something like easy grade pro and as I recall, it wasn't cheap, forty or fifty bucks. I used it for a year and then the school provided a similar program for us. I do know there was no internet connections at the time. Later, I got a powermac. That was my next school computer and that seemed so much more powerful. I don't know when exactly we got the internet but I know it was on that computer. My first computer at home was also a Mac. I bought it from Montgomery Wards, I financed it with zero percent financing for a year, and I believe it cost 1800. I had dial up internet with that one forever and first used AOL. They didn't have a local access number, but they did have an 800 number which cost 10 cents a minute to use. The trouble was it was so slow, it took forever to load graphics. It wasn't uncommon for it to take two or three minutes to load a page, so my bill for the month for internet was something like 16 dollars a month but the extra 10-15 for the AOL was unpredictable. I think it was a lot later before I got high speed internet at home. I still hate paying that bill at the end of the month. Until last year, in January, I had a big old desk top computer and when we got the laptops for the cff grant, those were replaced with these laptops. That's what we have at home, too- a dell laptop. Both the kids got laptops as freshmen at Grove City. When they came home, it became obvious that dial up was really slow, and they couldn't use their computers at home because of it. They complained a lot about it. My son nowhas a dell desktop and my daughter has returned to the world of macs. I really like hers; it seems so much more user friendly but they cost more and don't always run the same software that pc's do, though there is much more compatibilty than there was previously. I think the one thing I like about hers is that there aren't a ton of viruses out there that will infect a mac. I don't know what apple's market share is, but I suspect it's less than 10%. Who would have dreamed we'd be doing journals on line? Who would have dreamed that I could sit here at my desk at school and with my webcam, talk to Mr. Wallace across the hall, or a teacher at Cedar Crest or my daughter in Florida or a school in California. I do think it's important, however, to remember that computers don't make us smarter; they simply allow us to work more efficiently.

THE PHILLIES ARE IN THE WORLD SERIES!

Isn't that the greatest thing!

A five to one victory last night over the Dodgers. Cole Hamells was great on the mound. I almost stayed awake throught the whole thing, but not quite.

Homecoming this week.

William Cullen Bryant.

To a Waterfowl.

Gotta go.

AR/Salem Witch Trials today!

It's period 11 and the usual discussion is going on. We just had a fire drill. I think it was a fire drill. I don't think it was a fire. I know we are back in the room.

School attendance is important. It's important to those who will give you recommendations for jobs in the future. There aren't a lot of jobs that you can stay home and make a lot of money. I enjoy replugging in all of the computers at the end of the day. Today is Tuesday but feels like Monday. Many students gave me planners to sign that actually had Monday's date. Tomorrow is Wednesday already. Wow. Half way through the week.

No school today. What did you do? I took Mrs. Miller for breakfast at the Giddyapp Cafe in Palmyra. I had a pancake. Yes, just one. She had French toast. Then we went to the orchard for some apples. I mowed and trimmed. A pretty productive day.

My kids....

What a beautiful day today. Sadly, we had to take our daughter back to the airport for her flight back to Florida. The wedding was quite nice, really nice. My son acted as the dj for the reception.

Dancing at the Lantern Lodge....

This http://www.maniacworld.com/twin-baby-moose-in-sprinkler.html is funny. We probably can't access it at school.

Phils won.

My daughter is home.

Time for doughnuts.

This is a blow hole in Hawaii. We should all go there. It's a beautiful state.

The Phillies won last night 3-2. That's good. My daughter is coming home tonight for my niece's wedding. I must run to Baltimore after school. I don't look forward to that. But I do look forward to seeing her. It's been a couple months. I am anxious for her to finish school and come home to live. I don't have a whole lot else to write and I just realized I didn't blog yesterday.

I am starting a new project with the eleventh grade classes today. It involves the play, The Crucible. Arthur Miller is the author and he is one of my favorites, not simply because he has the same name as me, but because he was a great writer, he was married to Marilyn Monroe, and he was 6'4". One of my professors at Millersville had done his doctoral dissertation on Arthur Miller. I would think that doing a doctoral dissertation on a living person would be fascinating because they would actually be able to get feedback from that person.

I have continued to read The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis. I am fascinated by the way he frames his stories. The way he weaves his story is truly remarkable and at times difficult to understand, but I am 'getting the point' of what he is saying and I'm moved to think deeply about the subject. He is an author I wish I had met. His death went virtually unnoticed because it occurred the same day as the Kennedy assasination.

Tomorrow we begin the new year for graduation projects. I find these interesting. In many cases, we meet with students for four years, and then at the end of the senior year, they scurry around to complete the assignment which they have four years to do. Usually it's done just to get it over with. I also wonder how community service, which by definition is voluntary, can be required. Wouldn't that be an oxymoron? Required volunteerism? Just some thoughts. The concept of a concept

essay....education....school....freedom....socialism....capitalism...cleanliness.....wants and needs.....

I'm getting low on gum.

This is a picture from Costa Rica which shows some of our kids playing soccer with Guillermo who was our guide and the coolest human being in the entire of Costa Rica and Freddy was the second coolest person in the country but certainly the coolest bus driver in the entire world. Just thinking about Costa Rica makes me hungry for beans and rice and fresh fruit.

Monday morning. Extended homeroom. A so so weekend for local teams. NL football won big. Penn State won. The Phillies lost Saturday but finished off the series yesterday with some hot hitting. The Eagles.....well. They're an enigma right now. Next Monday, we'll be sleeping in as it is. But that's next Monday. We've got a week to get there.

The Phils won yesterday so they are up 2-0 in the series. Victorino had his first career grand slam home run, but only after Bret Myers had a huge at bat which resulted in a walk. He increased the pitch count of the starter.
Kids are working on their rough copies. I am collecting whatever they have today. Hopefully this will move this project on more that we have been.
I don't have much else to say. My daughter's car is acting up but it's 1000 miles from here, so that makes me feel helpless for her.

Period 11

Period 11 class hard at work!!!!!!!!!! Look closely.

The Phils won yesterday afternoon. Go Phils. Hamel was amazing and Lidge hung on, but he made it interesting.
I began reading The Great Divorce last evening by CS Lewis. I read something this summer that referred to it and I had been wanting to read it, but recently some students and I were discussing it. I was told, and I haven't confirmed this, that it has been removed from numerous libraries, and I'm curious why. I have read the first two chapters. I'm pretty familiar with Lewis, so right away I'm thinking it's probably an extended metaphor, which seems to be the case. I can't believe it's October already. Wow. Where did the time go?

I wasn't here yesterday. Feeling better. Ms. Header was here for me.
Phils play tonight. They need to win this series. Then they can move on to the NLCS. We have a senior class meeting this morning. We are going to take the class to Six Flags again. It is usually a good time.
I wonder how long your fingernails grow in a year's time.
I wonder who ate the first clam.
I wonder why people eat gross stuff.
I don't like food that comes in a shell, clams, scallops.
I do like shrimp, though they are pretty ugly.
Lobster used to be slave food.
Rip Van Winkle was a fictional character.
So was Ichabod Crane.
Both are the creations of Washington Irving.