Christmas Day

Nathan & the log splitter

Grace & Sebastian

Caroline & Charles II

Peter & the Advent wreath

egg nog

I can make my own egg nog!

While it is not the point of Christmas, I get excited about egg nog every December.  (I think people either hate it or they love it.  True?)

Eggs, whipping cream, milk, sugar, vanilla, nutmeg (not to turn this into a food blog...)

Dad didn't like it.  He said it tasted like raw eggs.  Ah well, "All the more for the rest of us."

in the doghouse

Room enough, Pounce?

Meanwhile, canines Bear and Sebastian enjoy the 4-degree weather outside.

I always said if I were an animal, I'd want to be a cat.

for the last time...

Another paper -- did she survive??

(Did her family survive?)

"Come back tomorrow to find out."

Okay, so it's not isthmus...

Error in the last post due to me, not my intelligent brother:

It's bismuth, not isthmus.

Try saying that five times fast.

Each one of my family members kindly took time out of their day to inform me of my error.

There's a reason I majored in English.

Peter says...

My little brother is nine years old.  These are the sorts of things we hear from him:

To me:  "What do you want to be when you grow up?"   (I said, "Well, I think I want to be a teacher.")

To Grace (just returned from first semester of college):  "I decided I do miss you after all because nobody else is hyper like you and nobody else feeds me gluten-free cookies."  (If you know my sister, you know how true this is.)

To me:  "Do countries besides the United States make computers too?"

To me:  "Why is everything above the atomic number of isthmus active?"  (I forwarded the question to Mom.)

Which one is better?

grammar jokes

Beware, lest more than one woman should want her hair cut at once.

Bear with me while I post photos from my afternoon walk:

(Alki Beach in Seattle)

Pleasantly, this place is a three-minute walk from my aunt's house (where I'm staying this week).

I tracked this boat for about twenty minutes (also please notice the mountains):

Eventually it made it to the sun path:

When I boarded the plane for Seattle, I commented amiably to the middle-aged man in the front seat, "I see you have to sit by the door with all the cold air."

He said, "Your hair is fwrffnyl."

I couldn't hear him.  "My hair is funny?"

"Your hair is WONDERFUL," he repeated loudly.

"Oh!  Thank you."  I scruffled it self-consciously.  "It's a mess.  I haven't done anything to it all day."

"It's wonderful."

I did not feel inclined to disagree so I thanked him and bumbled my way down the aisle with greater self-confidence.

Day Seventy

Yesterday was my last day of student teaching.

I went through my folders and sorted through my lesson plans:

I know they look like sticky notes to you, but that's actually two weeks worth of lesson plans.

I won't miss grading grammar exercises, but I sure will miss the kids.

harping around

On Sunday I played in a Christmas concert in Sioux Falls.  This is a special Christmas concert because it is harps -- only harps, all harps.

There were 39 harps and harpists total.

Usually I feel special lugging my harp around because nobody else has one.  This time when I marched in with my harp, I felt...I don't know, like a zebra suddenly surrounded by zebras.  It's come home to its kin, but it doesn't stand out anymore.

Well, maybe my harp cover stood out:  Yes, it's a first-class sleeping bag.  Looks rather like a stocking cap, doesn't it?  Festive.

I was apprehensive in the days leading up to the concert.  When I tried to play in this same concert two years ago, I got a dreadful case of pneumonia.  I have also landed in the ditch twice with my harp.  So, I was particularly glad to end up on a stage this time and not in a bed or a ditch.

Kidding and covers aside, it was a wonderful experience.  The strains of "Silent Night" on thirty-nine harps is lovely, even more so when you get to play it with fellow harpists.  In keeping with the Thanksgiving spirit, it made me want to go home and thank Mom and Dad for getting a beautiful cherry-wood 34-string Regency lever harp for their 15-year-old.  It bumped all the way from Pennsylvania to Nebraska on a Greyhound bus eight years ago, and I have played it happily ever after.

The Cottonwood.

Thanksgiving weekend at home in Nebraska.

$5.00 and Peanut M&M's

November tidbits from high-school student-teaching:

Going to my high-schoolers' volleyball game:
I march up to to the gym door to get my ticket and am told it costs $5.00.  What?  It costs money to go to games??  Why yes, this is my first volleyball game ever.  No, I have no cash with me whatsoever.  Yes, I am a college student.  I dig out my cell phone and call Dad:  "Daddy, can you pleeaase come bring me some money?"  (He did.  Thank you, Dad.)

Helping a student with homework -- with Algebra homework:
At first I say, "Oh -- math?  Don't ask me."  Then, "Wait a minute, I think I can do that."  Yep.  I could.  I couldn't wait to go home and tell Mom.

Naming the students in my class to prove I learned them all:
I like to make the most out of my connections.  To one student I say, "Do you remember taking piano lessons together way back like ten years ago?"  To another:  "I found out your dad's favorite candy is peanut-butter M&M's.  Or was it just plain peanut M&M's?"  (He shrugs, shifts.)  Poor guys.  They just became the coolest kids in class.

Going back to visit fifth grade for my birthday:
I tell the kids, "I really like high school, but there's something about fifth grade..."  Student:  "Fifth grade is GOODER!"  (Mrs. D groans...)

Brothers

Question 1: A, B, or C?

This week I have been grading dozens of senior paragraph-essays on The Iliad.  I was up till an unnamed hour trying to get them done (on a week night - unforgivable).  My dreams were a mumbled blur of AchillesdraggedHector'sdeadbodyfor9daysbutHectorshouldn'thavefoughtforParisinthefirstplacebecausePariswasawimp!andhedidn'tneedHelenanyway.IwouldratherhavemykidsturnoutlikeHectorbutAchillesisstillprettysweet.

When I finished the last one, I blearily cracked open my Bible for 30 seconds before turning out the lamp.  Ecclesiastes 12:12-13:   "Of making many books there is no end, and much study wearies the flesh.  The end of the matter; all has been heard."

Multiple-choice tests begin to radiate new beauty as I become acutely aware of the correlation between them and sleep.

[To clarify:  I was proud of my seniors.  I liked reading what they wrote.]

Oh, and I'm still eating my Brussels-sprouts lunches.  Even though I now eat in the teachers' lounge they still generate questions:  "What are those things, anyway?"

Also, I need to eat bigger breakfasts.  More than once this week I have been making my rounds among the desks when my stomach has growled.  It's all the worse because it happens in dead silence when they're taking a quiz or something.  (Imagine it:  You're listing adjectives when your teacher's stomach growls right in your ear.  Just thinking about it is awkward.)

Anyway:

The end of the matter; all has been heard:  It's Friday.

the road home

And do NOT say STUFF.

The other day Miss G. was handing back essays.  "Sophomores, please define the word stuff."

Silence.  A cricket chirped somewhere.

"Then please eliminate it from your vocabulary.  'Johnny went to learn about life 'n' stuff.'  NO."

Also, one time she was lecturing on a short story.  One of the characters in the story was being moody.  Miss G. stopped and remarked:  "I get along better with males than females.  Uuuuhh -- Females!  You have a mercurial gene in your bodies I think.  Guys don't get so worked up about things."  (This does seem fair in high school.)

So far in high school I have been mostly watching.  I have been trying to learn all the 90-plus names of my students in my six different class periods.  I sit in my back-row desk with my seating chart and stare at the backs of their heads and practice.  Sometimes they glance back and we make eye contact accidentally.  I wonder if they think I'm creepy.  Then when I see them face-to-face in the hall I don't recognize them because I know the backs of their heads better than the fronts.

Mom posted this on my Facebook page this weekend, for my birthday.

Do NOT sneeze.

Gone are the fifth graders, and with them all my blogging material.  High school is much...quieter, in Miss G.'s room anyway.

When my fifth-graders heard I was going to Miss G.'s room, they became very concerned.  Miss G. has a reputation, even down in fifth grade.  "Don't ever sneeze in her room, and don't yawn, or she'll make you cry!"

I laughed at them.  "Miss G. is a very nice lady," I insisted.

I was sitting in the back of her room on one of my first days, observing.  I sniffed, panicked, and got a tissue.  I sneaked a guilty look at Miss G., then laughed at myself.  But then half an hour later...

...I felt a sneeze impending.  I panicked again and held my breath till it passed.

The next afternoon I was standing at the kitchen sink.  Bear (our big white dog) was dozing in the front yard.  He opened his jaws and yawned and I panicked again:  Bear!  Cover your mouth!  Oh wait -- he's a dog.  And besides Miss G. didn't see it.


[To clarify:  Miss G. really is a kind lady, and she has never yet mentioned sneezing or yawning.]

spelling

Little Brother:  What does "fizzy chick" mean?
Me:  Fizzy -- what??
Little Brother:  p-s-y-c-h-i-c

the edge of the world

The Cow in Apple Time

Lots of windfalls this year:

Seeing apples on the ground always makes me think of this poem:

The Cow in Apple Time (by Robert Frost)

Something inspires the only cow of late
To make no more of a wall than an open gate,
And to think no more of wall-builders than fools.
Her face is flecked with pomace and she drools
A cider syrup.  Having tasted fruit,
She scorns a pasture withering to the root.
She runs from tree to tree where lie and sweeten
The windfalls spiked with stubble and worm-eaten.
She leaves them bitten when she has to fly.
She bellows on a knoll against the sky.
Her udder shrivels and her milk goes dry.

first fire in the stove

Perhaps the best thing about autumn -- when we get the wood stove going.

Peter leans over stove-top thermometer:  "It's about 360 degrees."

A minute later:  "This room is about two-thirds the temperature of the stove."

"Huh?"  (HA --  He's wrong this time!)  "But Peter, that would mean this room was 240 degrees."

"No, I mean from absolute zero."

"Hm.  Oh.  Um...[reluctantly] what's absolute zero?"

"About negative 460 degrees.  Absolute zero is when the atoms aren't moving at all."

"Hum."  (I'm silent for about three minutes, doing the mental math.)  Then, grudgingly, "I guess you're right."

Fifth-Graders, Farewell

Yesterday was my last day in fifth grade.  Next week I start high school.  (Quite a jump, Dad says happily: You finally got past fifth grade.)   Nonetheless I will miss my students.  High-schoolers don't say things like this:

#1
Social studies lecture on economics, a PowerPoint slide on credit cards comes up.
Student:  "Are credit cards evil?"

#2
Student at the lunch table, to my face:  "When Miss Eckstrom laughs, her shoulders go up and down.  It's funny."

#3
Student runs up to me:  "Mommy!  -- I mean -- oops!" [claps hand over her mouth]

#4
I'm talking about the English Channel in social studies.  Student:  "Would that be channel 39?"  (I lost it.)

#5
Student:  "Are you wearing those weird leg things that make your skin look darker?
Me:  "You mean nylons?"
Student [bends down and plucks at my ankle]:  "Oh.  My grandma wears those.  At least she used to."
Me [thinking]:  Wow.  I'm behind your grandmother's time.

My students are cooler than your students.

Because mine bring me PIE.

Allison put it on my desk this morning and said, "You get half, and Mrs. D gets half."

This is all that's left.

As soon as the kids left for art we sneaked down to the home ec room and shoveled the halves onto two plates.  Mrs. D said, "I've got forks, just saying."  We trotted back upstairs and each sat down at our desk with a fork.  Mrs. D took the first bite. "It is acceptable to eat half a pie in one sitting, right?"

Five minutes later, Mrs. L stops by from across the hall.  Mrs D says quickly:  "We're not eating whole pies!"

Mrs. L laughs.  "I thought it sounded pretty quiet in here."  She looks closer.  "Wait -- you really do have a whole pie between you!"

Indiana Jones and...rap?

Today was Switcharoo Day for homecoming week.  (Boys dress as girls, girls dress as boys.  In fifth grade this isn't inappropriate yet, just funny.)

This is my best attempt.  Think Indiana Jones.

That's what the kids thought anyway.  They liked the hat but perpetually put it on backwards.

This happened to be the day I fulfilled a promise from several weeks ago.  I had accidentally mentioned one time that it is really fun and helpful to rap to textbooks:  i.e., read your textbook in a rap-like fashion.  (It is amazing how un-bored you become.)

They found this more fascinating than I expected, and I accidentally promised I would rap for them sometime.  This has been making me nervous because rapping really is not my strong point.  Well, today inspiration hit.  I grabbed Tyler's history book and told them about Cabeza de Vaca in a way they'd never heard before.  (No videos for this one, thank goodness.)  "Miz Eckstrom, can you beat box too!?"  "No!"

I wish I could show photos of the boys.  It is distracting to teach tanned farmer boys when they are wearing their sisters' sparkly headbands and pink lipstick.  Their high heels really helped the mincing walk too.  They kept pushing their fake hair back over their shoulders.  "I don't get how girls can stand this stuff!"

The maintenance man was chatting in the doorway when we heard the kids stampeding back from PE.  Mrs. D said gravely, "Sir, you're about to get run over by cross-dressing fifth graders."

The Red Sea

(...in Nebraska, not the Middle East.)  The Memorial Stadium in Lincoln at every Huskers game.

It -- the stadium alone -- becomes the third largest city in Nebraska during the game.  (I think that is impressive?  Aren't we the state with more cows than people?)

(photo credits to Wikipedia for this one)

I witnessed this phenomenon last Saturday.

I had never seen a football game of any sort before (though I had played tackle football in the churchyard back in my glory days).  Some close friends decided this was a woeful deficiency in my education.  Thus they very kindly took it upon themselves to complete my Nebraskan-ness.  (Thank you!)

They said, "The one requirement is that you wear red."  Hmm.  I don't own anything red. I dug a ribbon out of a Christmas box in the basement.  My roommate generously supplied a scarf.  There!

I took a notebook along to the game. They asked why.  I explained, "This is my poetry journal.  I'm going to write about the game when I get bored."  (Everybody does that, right?)

Actually, I didn't write anything the whole game because I was too busy watching.  Or eating Runzas.  (Mrs. D was right -- they really do taste better at the stadium.)  And there really was a machine that spits hotdogs at people.  (I had disbelieved.)

Most of all, it gave me a new source of endless small-talk matter.  You should have seen my students when I told them I was going.  The classroom erupted.  I was barraged with advice.  It's like joining a friendly, boisterous (and very red) un-secret society.

bell bottoms and cockaburs

Personal response question on a test this week:  How is your life different from your parents' and grandparents' childhoods?

Student A:  My mom never watched tv she was always playing with her dollies.  My dad just played outside all the time.  When my parents got a cell phone it was one of those humungous ones.

Student B:  My grandma lived in about the 70s and 80s so they wore bellbottoms.  They also wore peungin [penguin] pants.  Finally, they wore lots of beads in hair.

Student C:  My Gany had no phone or laptop.  She had no dishwasher ether.  last she had no lektreste intell she was in highschool.

Student D:  My dad split his toe open with an axe and got 30 stitches I haven't touched an axe.  Dad had to pick acres and acres of cockaburs by hand and I havent touched cockaburs.


(Who said grading tests is boring?)

a poem called "September"

I memorized this when I was a kid, and I've had it in my head all month:

The goldenrod is yellow,
     The corn is turning brown.
The trees in apple orchards
     With fruit are bending down.

Well, the goldenrod is past yellow, the branches are almost breaking, and here's the corn all dry and crinkly:

Here's the rest of the poem, by Helen Jackson:

    The gentian's bluest fringes
        Are curling in the sun;
    In dusty pods the milkweed
        Its hidden silk has spun.

    The sedges flaunt their harvest,
        In every meadow nook;
    And asters by the brook-side
        Make asters in the brook,

    From dewy lanes at morning
        The grapes' sweet odors rise;
    At noon the roads all flutter
        With yellow butterflies.

    By all these lovely tokens
        September days are here,
    With summer's best of weather,
        And autumn's best of cheer.

    But none of all this beauty
        Which floods the earth and air
    Is unto me the secret
        Which makes September fair.

    'T is a thing which I remember;
        To name it thrills me yet:
    One day of one September
        I never can forget.

Hullo, Autumn

I just spent a very pleasant weekend here:

Also, Autumn has arrived.  Mom and Peter and I just heard the first flock of geese heading south overhead, so it must be so.

Snoopy

Today the students are trickling back into the room from art.  I am staring at my computer screen, singing the Hallelujah Chorus with gusto:

"For the Lord GOD om-NI-potent reeeeign-eth!   Ha-le-LU-jah!  Ha-le-LU-jah!"

Through a haze I see students standing still and looking at me.  Suddenly I realize I am singing audibly.  I stop midway into a particularly hearty "HAH-le-lu-jah," mouth open.

Lasts of summer

Sleepy calves

New bales

Top o' the morning

Literally speaking, that is.

Social studies test question:  Explain the process for amending the United States Constitution.

Student response [and if you know this student, it makes perfect sense]:

1st get ink and a fether.  2nd start writing on it.  Finally submit it to the ligislature.

Literally speaking, that is.  (And this from the student who loves National Treasure.)

And an exchange from vocabulary class:

Mrs D:   What does modesty mean?
Student:  Being full of yourself?
Mrs. D:  Actually, no -- it's the opposite.
Student:  Oh, so -- being empty of yourself?

Incidentally, this is the view from the room all these things happen in.  Pleasant, I think.

used book sales!

findings:

And not just books either:  Some piano music, appropriately autumnal, with nostalgic titles:

1. To a wild rose

2. Will o' the wisp

3. At an old trysting place

4. In autumn

5. From an Indian lodge

6. To a waterlily

7. From Uncle Remus

8. A deserted farm

9. By a meadow brook

10. Told at sunset

And in anticipation:  Irving Berlin's "White Christmas"

This is a jazzy arrangement and my jazz skills are wanting.  When I ran through it on the piano, Mom asked me what piece I was trying to play.  White Christmas, I told her (peevishly).  "Oh.  It didn't sound like it at all."  (Thanks, Mom.)

Brussels sprouts and lunch intrigues

My lunches are an ongoing curiosity to my fifth-graders:  tubs of European-style maple yogurt with bananas and walnuts, homemade apple cake mush, baggies of organic spinach and green peppers.  They cannot figure out why I can't just bring a sandwich in a Ziploc.  ("Mrs. Eckstrom, are you vegetarian?")  Usually the first question of the morning, "What did you bring for lunch today, Mrs. Eckstrom?"

Today at the lunch table I was eating this:

"Mrs. Eckstrom, what is THAT?"

"These are leftover Brussels sprouts from last night with spinach and sunflower seeds and balsamic vinegar and olive oil."

"Oh.  What do they taste like?"

"Well, like green beans, I guess.  But sour -- because of the vinegar.  I don't think you'd like it."

"Ooh!  I like sour things!  Can I try one?"

I wish I had a photo of her face.  She mouthed the Brussels for about twenty seconds while the other students watched with glee.  Then the remains came back out into her napkin.

"EWWWW!  That is grooooss.  That does not taste like green beans."

Needless to say her spectators were delighted.

Blobfish

Recently voted the world's ugliest animal:

(Ever feel like this when you look in the mirror some mornings?)

From the CNN article on the topic (thanks, Mom):

With the grandiloquence befitting such an occasion, Simon Watt, the British biologist, television personality and "president for life" of the Ugly Animal Preservation Society, made the long-anticipated announcement Thursday night.

"The votes have been counted and verified," said Watt. "The mascot for the Ugly Animal Preservation Society is ... the blobfish!

Good to know there is a society to take care of such matters.

Other contestants:

Proboscis Monkey

Elephant Seal:

(For the full article, click here.)

Nine Eleven

This morning one of my students came up and said to me, "It's nine-eleven."

"You're right!  I'd forgotten that."  I asked him, "Do you remember what you were doing when nine-eleven happened?"

He said quickly, "Oh, I wasn't born yet.  But I've heard people talk about it."

(Suddenly I felt old.)



I was ten when nine-eleven happened.  I was sitting at the table in the living room, filling out problems in my orange health workbook.  I can't remember how Mom or Dad heard about it, but all of a sudden they were talking excitedly to each other.  They explained to us what was going on, but I mostly noticed how strangely animated they were.  I could tell by how they were talking to each other that whatever had happened was big.

We tinkered with our TV (which we never watch) and got it set up so we could look at clips of crashing towers replay and replay and replay all afternoon.

I had been planning to fly out to D.C. and visit my aunt and uncle in another two weeks.  I remember my mom talking to my aunt on the phone in the days that followed.  (We canceled the trip.)

Now, a dozen years later, I tell my students and little brother what nine-eleven was like.  To them, it is part of history.

Imperfect it may be, yet I am grateful for this country and its people.

Being Touristy: Part II

Yesterday I taught my students about these:

The Magna Carta

The U.S. Constitution

The U.S. Bill of Rights

I've seen each of these.  When I did, they weren't all that interesting.  I was usually more intrigued by the food in the cafe.

But I know why they were worth seeing - not for my sake, but for my kids'.  Now, when my students ask questions like -- "Is the real thing still around?" or "What kind of paper did they use?" -- I can say, "Yes -- and this is what it looks like..."

This is why it is worth it to "go see the real thing" (i.e., be a tourist - in England, Mongolia, Nebraska, wherever).

In January, I wrote about the same thing (being touristy) after an evensong at Christ Church in Oxford:

During the service I thought about all the people who had sung the same words in the same building for hundreds of years.  I always wondered if "standing in the same place as such-and-such was x years ago" was  really as special as tourists say.  Actually, it was -- but not because it was ancient or traditional.  It was because the words I was singing to God were true, and I believed them, and other people whom I don't even know had also sung them to the same God and believed them.  (Wow.)

That was worth it for my sake.  Now I have another reason:  My kids.  Being touristy (in the right way) holds promise for good, not just for me, but for all my students and students-to-be.

Riddles

A couple days ago I dug up an old poem to show a professor.  (I am doing a poetry study this fall.)  It is more of a riddle than a poem, actually.  I wrote it in imitation of a different riddle, which starts like this:

A Martian Sends a Postcard Home

Caxtons are mechanical birds with many wings
and some are treasured for their markings --

they cause the eyes to melt
or the body to shriek without pain.

I have never seen one fly, but
sometimes they perch in the hand.

[That's books it's talking about, in case you couldn't guess.]

Mine is more down to earth (literally).  Anyway:

Old Dog Explains to New

Dust.  Some they put on

their cheeks, with small brushes, but some

they push into small piles with large brushes

on the floor.  And some they make the big monster,

who always wears the leash,

lick off the tiles.  And still some

they keep in small jars and

dump on their food.

Do not bring it in from outside.  Also do not add

water.  No wet dust down here (Bad Dog),

but the Small Loud One may

put it on squares with still other brushes.

That is the No-No Bad Dog.  Do not

put your face by it, or be spanked.

They put everything small in there, to send

outside for the green man to take away in big bags,

and then bring the things back in small bags and boxes.

This has always happened.

Stay Off.  That is the Floor that Moves.

When they get on it, you will not go Out.

When they get on it, the Out is

wet, or colder, or sometimes hotter.

No no no no.  Bad bad.  Never do That

unless Out.  Cat may in the box of Her dust but you

must not.  Now they will put you Out

for not waiting till you were Out.

cleft shadow

I thought this was funny: