Last Day of School!

...except there is always summer school.

Graduation for the 8th graders was nice. The local newspaper wrote an article on the school and graduation.... and yeah - I'll finish this post later.

Derby!

Pictures will eventually be posted here. It was a beautiful day. My horses did not win. My cat next year (if my roommates still let me get one!) will be named Barbaro after the winning horse (who was the favorite the day of the race and so of course I didn't bet on him). But it makes for a kind of cool cat name - sort of pirate-ish, you know?

For Mary: Dawn at the Downs

This past Wednesday at quarter to 7 in the morning, Emily and Andi and I went to Churchill Downs to see the Derby horses warming up and training and such. We are all going to the Derby this Saturday, but from what we've come to understand, we'll be in the infield which equals not actually being able to see the horses racing (unless you get a spot by the high fence - topped by barbed wire to keep us crazies in the infield, well, in). SO: it was cool to be able to see the horses and pretend that I was sitting in the box seats at the edge of the track.

Gate 1

The Twin Spires
Brother Derek - the favorite (3 to 1) for this year's Derby

Coming around the bend

Two weeks worth of firsts:

1. First off, two weeks ago, I experienced my first Easter service that involved streamers, confetti, and noisemakers at Jeff St. Baptist Church - it was so much fun that my roommates and I had trouble stopping ourselves from rejoicing.

2. My first time ever having Easter Monday off (three cheers for Catholic schools!).

3. My first extended period of time driving Edgar, the program's stickshift Geo. Andrea and I drove all the way to Grand Rapids, Michigan for the weekend - and got amazing gas mileage. I only stalled maybe once (with a quick recovery!).

4. Last weekend was the first time I had been back on Calvin's campus since I graduated - I attended the Festival of Faith and Writing (which was an excellent event and involves writers small and great talking about their craft - this year's authors included Marilynne Robinson, Salman Rushdie, Thomas Lynch, and the Pinkneys).

5. Last Monday evening I attended my first community action - it was for a affordable housing trust fund for metro Louisville - coordinated by CLOUT (). We all met in a church and cheered and clapped and did a call and response ("Knock. Knock." - "Open the door!") and held our breathes while two city councilmen committed their support (at least, I was on the edge of my seat). It was great.

6. Just this last Thursday evening I found myself standing in a pasture watching a herd of llamas gallop toward me for the first time in my life ... ever. My host family, the Jupins, picked me up unexpectedly after work and treated me such an experience at their friend's llama farm. Really, it was amazing and incredibly strange to watch. I think llamas have made it onto my list of animals to own at some point, along with goats, donkeys, cats, and a boxer dog.

Well, I think that's it. Although this next weekend I have one more big first coming up:

THE KENTUCKY DERBY! Which, from what I've heard, is going to be an experience. I also get Thursday and Friday off from school this week since this is Kentucky's biggest holiday. Yahooo!

Afternoon walks and ER visits: not what you're expecting

So this afternoon I was walking to the library taking my sweet time and slightly out of it. I stopped at the one crosswalk on my route and saw an older lady with a dusty pink coat on across the road from me, also waiting for the traffic to change. We passed each other in the middle of Southern Parkway and I went on to the library where I sat for an hour or so looking through books and magazines. Walking back I was just as slightly foggy in the brain, taking slow steps and thinking my own little thoughts. I get to the intersection again, press the crosswalk button, and look up to see a dusty pink coat standing across the road from me once again. Who knows if I've seen this lady ten times before, walking out in the neighborhood or whatever, but that coincidence was hard to ignore.

It reminds me of about a month ago when I found myself waiting in the ER with one of my housemates (due to an allergic reaction to antibiotics - don't worry - everything turned out well). We were discovering how un-urgent the ER actually seems to be. We joined the other patients in the waiting room who we soon presumed had been there for hours on account of how few (actually none) were called up to see a doctor. Stuck between the sound waves of some celebrity entertainment show and WWF, I picked up the bright blue book on the table next to me - Psalms and the New Testament - provided by the Gideons. I flipped through it enjoying the King James script, reading aloud verses to Andrea. And then I stumbled across a shalt in italics which seemed to break any sort of grammar rule I had ever learned about italics. It seemed the editor just decided to insert italics whenever he/she pleased. It was the strangest thing - I can't even come up with an example. Just think of the least likely word you'd stress in a sentence and italicize it. Added with the King James speech, it was pretty humorous to read aloud as well as totally disorienting.

What are coincidences then? Italicized moments strangely and absurdly inserted into our lives? Or something more - a new way to view the ordinary "hath"s and "the"s that walk through our lives?

late night work and the beauty of books on tape

It is four in the morning and I've just finished a run of non-tiredness - that past tired, non-thinking state where my fingers moved to string pieces of the batik together without needing any instruction. It is four in the morning where posting on my blog seems quite easy - suddenly I have plenty to talk about which all seems important and charged with meaning.

But somewhere in my now slowing brain (seriously, I can almost hear even its directions for mechanical movements chugging to a stop), I know that my sudden blog-inspirations are the leftover effect of listening to a book on tape - on CD - to be precise. For the past four or so hours I've been listening to Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich being read to me by some female voice - whose presence within this sleep ridden apartment became so palpable that I started to visualize what this reader looked like (and also to confuse and merge her with the actual author). And just like those optical illusions where you stare at the Stars and Stripes in black, orange, and green for 60 seconds and then look at a blank wall and see white, blue, and red, her voice is left in my head resounding in a weird version with my own words. Currently I'm trying to flush it out with a little music.

I catch myself doing that a lot after reading for an extended period of time - feeling the thoughts in my head parroting the tone of the author. "I'll go to the bathroom now and then return to my drafty bedroom where the air conditioning is stirring..." and it goes on. Mundane thoughts that are not normally even allowed to be constructed into verbal forms, much less into full sentences, are suddenly canned with the author's voice and laden with italics. Good grief. At least it is slightly entertaining while it lasts. But like all optical illusions, the colors start to fade and my own thought patterns kick out such an intruder.

Nickel and Dimed, meanwhile, is an interesting read (or listen) about Ehrenreich's experimental "old school journalist" exploration into what it is like to try to survive as the U.S.'s working class poor do. While she describes her life as a waitress and then as a Merry Maid trying to make it by (pay rent, eat, not collapse from exhaustion), I become increasingly grateful for what a wonderful job I have. Teaching art for goodness' sake even though I had no previous experience doing this. At a school where all the teachers support each other. The return of my italicized thinking marks how deeply Ehrenreich had me in her grasp. I sat trying to finish up this art project and even started to thank the stars for the 8th grade girls who, although they may seem to plague my time at the school, really are a good group - and much more enjoyable to deal with than having to tackle a kitchen floor on my hands and knees (well, on most days). I've done that before - just once a week for a summer (at a bed and breakfast) - and have no desire to ever trade in the mop and its nice long handle for a rag.

But now that the last resounding Ehrenreich-induced thoughts have petered out of my head (and the fact that it will soon be dawn, not to mention that this blog is getting kind of long), I am going to go seek some sleep.

Spring Break!

One of the beautiful things about teaching is that I still get those breaks. This past week I've had a glorious time getting up late, working on art, eating junk, and in general bumming around. I'm still working on those batiks and finally (finally!) am done dyeing and ironing out all the wax. So today I'm to the very exciting part of assembling it all together like a puzzle with no rules (no edge pieces, no middle pieces, just pieces that can go anywhere). I'll post a picture when I'm done.

Besides art, I did something this week that I've wanted to do since I got here: I went to the Zoo. And I wasn't disappointed. I saw gorillas and rhinos and ringtailed lemurs for the first time in real life. I got to pet some goats and a donkey named Julie. I heard the loud cry of a peacock (holy cow!) and marveled at the wide face of an orangutan (so cool). Anyways, it capped off my spring break.

Oh - and this week has been sandwiched by trips to the basement! Last Sunday Maria was watching her show when it was interrupted forever by the weatherman, tracking a storm moving in. Pretty soon the sirens around us went off and we all went downstairs. I'm not used to all this tornado stuff so it was kind of fun, in a nothing-actually-happened kind of way. And then yesterday I was sitting on a front stoop watching a thunderstorm move in at the end of a hot day and journaling when all of a sudden marble sized hail started dropping from the sky and the sirens started going off again. So Maria and I (since we were the only ones home) went downstairs to the basement again - but soon came back up despite the fact that the sirens were still going for a bit. So now I've had enough experience with storms and tornado warnings for the fun novelty of it all to rub off. But (as I thought last Sunday while in the basement) at least now I have something to write about for my blog!

St. Patty's Bash and Jamboree Supreme: sliced digits and pots upon pots of boiled cabbage

16 people (it was a lot). All around our table eating corned beef and cabbage (plus green jello and salad with "green goddess" dressing). Dyeing your beer green was optional (and proved to also stain teeth). Four burners glowing and two crock pots chugging away (and a batch of rolls in the oven). In the flurry of last minute cooking, I sliced away a part of the tip of my index finger (don't worry, I washed the cabbage off). Our friends, Ian and Kate, helped chop the rest of the onions and cabbage while I was bandaged up by "Dr." Keith (he had to put a lot of gauze on it so my finger looked a little like a cartoon character's bulbous finger).

It was a fine night. Andi colored in placemats, Maria sported her Guinness hat, and Keith looked decidedly dressed for the occassion. We all ate in a long banquet table and talked and stuffed ourselves. Ah. Then we split into various games of darts and Dutch Blitz as well as Try-to-See-How-Many-Leftovers-You-Can-Fit-in-the-Fridge.

I had some more leftovers today for lunch (cabbage is still coming out of our ears).

So, here are some pictures - enjoy!

Full banquet table!

Emily with perhaps a little too much St. Patty spirit?

Green Goddess! (and salad dressing - just kidding - that's Andi)

Risky dartboard maneuvers.
Cartoon finger.

birthday bash: half-frosted cakes and decorated place mats

With a new year of my life starting, I finally decided: no more mass e-mails which I never actually get around to writing! No more feeling guilty about sending people long updates which they might not want! Now the power is in your hands - you may or may not check up on me as often or inoften as you like! So, to get started:

My birthday was great - my roommates kept making little references about it all day long (i.e. I got into a car and it became the "birthday wagon" and giving me cool cards covered with goats or handdrawn birthday cakes). I came home to a gorgeous bunch of Gerber daisies waiting on the table for me - thanks to Mike and Abby. We all ate out at a Thai restaruant which was delicious and I received an awesomely decorated place mat with me and a goat on a Thai houseboat compliments of Andi. And then we went next door to Borders and bummed around (me in the children's picture books section).


To top it all off, we came home to Black Forest Cake which I enjoyed making (and eating) - unfortunately, I was a little short on whipping cream so the cake was only half festooned with extra sugar.




















Times are good! Oh - and I started batiking this weekend - I'm excited to have several projects going for different people!

Well, I can't be too long winded - I'm going to go watch Monsoon Wedding.

Wahhooo!