New York Again

First period - there's Mr. Johnston in the corner.

The studenten were back. I knew it would be an ok day when I got to push Clifford against a wall on my way in and demand his lunch money. I threw some pennies at Daniel and Shaira and got very excited while I was talking about Samuel Gompers.

Fifth period we looked at some newspaper articles I found from December, 1937 - a brutal month. Nanking alone, but the Nazis beating the hell out of the Jews, the fascists in Spain and the continuing problems of the Depression at home along with the various other et ceteras that are omnipresent, I also got excited talking about all this, and the studenten were not horrible. I'm not saying it was a brilliant class, but when the fifth period can kind of hold its own, be recognizable as a place of potential study, then the day's not wasted. Rare.

AP Government practiced some questions and we went over them, for some reason, when somebody asked a point about Federalism I really got into it and moved the discussion toward Jefferson and the Louisiana Purchase and the fragility of ideology, I wanted to talk about all kinds of things, my mind was all over the place, but it's always a quick class. I want to get on Kelvin a bit, as he's coasting. So is Catherine, come to think of it...

After school, teaching the literature class, there were about forty or forty-four students, and we went over some poems. I felt they did a good job with some of the stuff and they were really discussing each other's writing pretty well. So getting back to school wasn't awful. One of my kids joined the marines, I have to admit, I felt for him, he wasn't into the idea of joining the marines, but what else is he supposed to do he asked? He said when he was signing up there was another guy there who was being promised to have his police record expunged if he joined up. He said it was odd to think about what the government can do for you if it wants to, if it has a reason to, and odd to think of what it can do To you if it wants to, if it has a reason to. We were talking about surprising or sudden thoughts we'd had over spring break.

It makes me sad just thinking about it.

Ashlie and I went to the movies, she'd been at the library on 42nd so we met at Union Square, we talked some more about her job. It really is time for her to move on from that blight. We got to the movie way early, and so we stared north up toward Union Square, and for some reason, it really did look beautiful today, even in the gathering grayness that turned to drizzle by the time I walked home.

I also talked to the Beej today, my godson has some weird little infection, it's nothing horrible, but potentially, apparently, it could be, so they all had to take chlorine baths (cholorine? I don't know...). I was horrified, but he said there's just a little chlorine (sp?) in the baths, but he also has to use anti-bacterial swabs in his nose every once in awhile. Odd that.

I've been reading mostly at books for the classes, but I'm really curious about this book I found at the Strand yesterday - that sounds so New f'n York that I hate it, but whatever - it's a book about New York in 1946 and that just seems filled with all kinds of potential brilliance. It's about this guy who escorts a "dame" home, and then she's killed by his boss and the boss tells him to go and find the guy who saw her home. Properly seedy, it's supposed to be brilliant. Many books are.

I'm just going to throw this out there - we saw Firehouse Dog today - it was the only movie playing there at a decent time and I like dogs a lot, so Ashlie was a total martyr-angel, but you know, as bad as it was, when I was about eight, I would have been all about this movie, except for the sunglasses on the dog - even at eight I think I would have been thinking "kid, you're trying to hard, bring it down a notch" - yet at thirteen I probably was trying that hard myself. Anyway, Jules et Jim or Wild Strawberries it was not, nor was it Because I Said So however.

This is pretty all over the place, but it was also odd, today, before the after-school class (Credit Recovery Program - really), I was reading a bit and kind of thinking about the poetry, things I wanted to ask them, mostly I was looking at this Randall Jarrell poem, I hadn't read him in a few years and I was enjoying looking at a few of his poems there and then I thought of Karl Shapiro's "Auto Wreck" with that great first line about the silver bell beating and then suddenly, there was this brave mouse running around my room, right up to me almost. It had been awhile since I'd seen a mouse, but this guy, I don't know if he was hungry or what, he was all over the place. Floribel, this student who came to visit and wait for her friends to get out of lab, was not amused. The other girl who was in there, Kraehl, she just kept reading, I don't even know if she looked up.

Another one of my girls is pregnant, she said to her friend right before class - "look at me being dumb again," which sounds kind of slight, considering, but her voice was so intense, so filled with absolute belief and self-disgust. Then she read about her surprising thought to the class, which was "how do we know we all see the same shade when we look at a color?" I've thought about that one too.