Rocks

Walking into our school science office never ceases to bring a smile to my heart. Not only do we have the traditional office accoutrements such as a copy machine, paper cutter (circa 1956), pens, pencils and coffee maker, we have lab supplies filling all the nooks and crannies of our given space. It is not unusual to see a beaker of water burbling away on a hot plate while teachers nearby bang on Ziploc bags filled with butterscotch chips for an earth science lesson. Trays are at the ready with scales, coffee filters and gummy bears for a measurement lab. Carts are loaded with calculators and physical science equipment. The refrigerator is host to petri dishes filled with radish seeds awaiting observation of the effects of temperature on living things. Dry ice casts eerie vapors from a cooler on the counter.

And we have rocks. Lots and lots of rocks. Brightly colored margarine tubs feature the rock collections of all shapes and kinds. Glossy smooth obsidian shows off its volcanic past with intense ebon hues. Pretty pink and white quartzite belie their strength as major players in the construction world. Limestone chunks intrigue with a chalky residue. Gneiss shows off sporty bands of feldspar and mica. And, no rock collection is complete without a tub marked miscellaneous. Some rocks just defy typecasting.

Perhaps more interesting than the rocks themselves is the reaction of teachers, science or otherwise, as they walk past the rock containers. An irresistible urge compels most to stop and touch the rocks. Many jettison back to their youth for a moment and recount fond memories of collecting rocks. I, too, remember little buckets filled with rocks collected on our vacation trips. My mother finally had to limit our quota. Our Dodge sedan could only hold so many kids and buckets of bulky rocks. Prioritizing became an early skill as I selected my favorite pieces of mica, rose quartz and a chunk of pyrite I was sure held flecks of true gold. A girl has to dream.

It has been said that kids are losing touch with nature. Flashy video games, YouTube shares, Snapchat drama and Smartphone apps sing a sweet song of entertainment. The things of nature struggle to compete. It is easier to focus on passive screens than to train the eye to watch the flight of a bird. Or squat down to observe a busy beetle. Or classify a tree with a field guide.

Maybe rocks are the answer. They are readily available. They are very tangible. They come in all shapes and sizes. They don't rot (unlike the mushroom collection of my youth. Sorry, mom.). They can be sorted, classified, painted, hidden, named and loved. Ramp it up a few notches with a junior rock polisher. Create jewelry or play hopscotch. All sorts of fun with the humble rock.

So, the next time you are out and about, look down, past the Smartphone and find a rock. If it fancies your curiosity, find out what kind it is or just enjoy it for what it is. Even the miscellaneous of this world never cease to amaze.

My husband's childhood rock kit. He also had a rock polisher. Spoiled baby.

Spared

"Good coffee and old stories are two of life's glories"--GK

A few weeks ago, I schlepped a big black trash bag of sundry contents to the trash bin in my garage. My husband happened to be in the garage and glanced at me with a bit of curiosity. I looked at him and said, "Look away. Just look away. I am in a purging mood and this bag of stuff needs to be gone." When his eyebrows raised, I added, "There is nothing in here that belongs to you. I promise."

It is true. I am a purger. It is also true that I do not purge his stuff. Mostly. Few moments give me more satisfaction than ousting goods that I deem obsolete or annoying. Acquiring and keeping new possessions must always pass the Big 3 for me: Do you fill a need (not want!)? Are you worth cleaning? Are you worthy of the space you inhabit? If the answer is no to any of the questions, the item will not be a permanent resident in my house.

That being said, I do have belongings that are safe from my grim reaper's bag, so far. Here are a few.

1) Garrison Keillor mugs.--We are a family of coffee drinkers so it doesn't take long for a collection of travel mugs, cups and souvenirs to accumulate. We have a valid need for mugs but our real estate space can only support so many receptacles. I have tossed out many cups along the way, but my Keillor mugs have never been on the chopping block. They bring me too much joy. I love to start my day with a steaming cup of coffee in a mug adorned with a few words of wisdom from Lake Wobegon such as "growing up in a place that has winter, you learn to avoid self-pity."

2)  Oil dispenser.--My daughter gave me a funky looking cooking oil dispenser as a gift. It is the kind of thing I would never have purchased on my own. Why go through the work of pouring oil into another container when the original one works just fine? What I didn't expect is how convenient a pour spout can be. Rather than spending time undoing a lid, glugging a sheen of oil in a pan and replacing said lid, I now just grab and pour, meting out the right amount of oil. And, the dispenser looks much more attractive on my counter than a Mazola bottle.

3) Sugar pig.--I come from a family of hog producers so my connection to the little oinkers is only once removed. I certainly do not collect little piggie things but many years ago I was given the gift of a blue ceramic pig. It is used to hold and dispense sugar. As with the oil dispenser, it is not something I would willfully purchase. But, to my surprise, the cute little porker has earned its keep. Its chubby shape is just the right size for grabbing when a little sugar is needed. And its innocent demeanor reminds me that everything is better with a bit of sweetness.

I am still in a pitchy mood but I also know it is wise to take breaks from my fits of dumping. I can get a little overzealous and make my world too spartan at times. And, my husband needs a break from bulging black trash bags being suspiciously mashed into the trash bin.

To Be Known For

Growing up in a town with a population less than the number of students in my middle school building means that everyone knew everyone, for better or for worse. Most folks were just average Joes and Josies, slogging along, doing what needed to be done each day. Almost everyone could be called upon in a time of need, day or night, and help would be rendered with no thought given to personal discomfort or inconvenience. And some folks gained a reputation for a skill or deed of noteworthiness. I am not talking about grandiose, heroic acts such as saving someone from a burning car or rescuing a fisherman who fell through the ice while winter fishing. My memories are of those who excelled at something that would never make it to the nightly news.

Here are a few who come to mind. (Names changed as per my policy.)

Martha. She was a widow who struggled with health issues that made it increasingly difficult for her to get out and about. But, somehow she acquired a laminating machine, a novelty most households certainly did not have at their disposal. Her specialty was laminating homemade bookmarks with inspirational poems written upon them. My mother-in-law gave me one of Martha's bookmarks as a gift many years ago. It is the least flashy bookmark I own but it is one I will not be parting with any time soon. It has a beautiful poem on it entitled, Sparrows. I use it as a place keeper in my Bible and cherish the love Martha put into this lowly piece of paper.

Jim. My brother-in-law was a man of very, very few words. I don't think I heard him speak until many months after my husband and I started dating. I came from a family who barely took a breath while constantly babbling so I found Jim's taciturn ways a bit puzzling. Jim was obviously not known for his gift of gab but he was known far and wide for his hunting and fishing skills. If anyone in the region wanted to know the best way to bag a deer or catch a prize walleye, Jim was the guy to see. He was able to stalk, kill and dress an elk in rugged terrain and successfully drag it out by himself. (I fuss if my grocery bags are too heavy.) After he passed away from cancer, far too soon, sportsmen came from far and wide for the auction of his hunting and fishing equipment. His passion spoke loud and clear to others.

Bernard. He was the man in the know. He and his wife did not have children so his time could be spent in other pursuits. Bernard had a scanner radio and never missed a crackly squawk, day or night. In a time before internet and reliable TVs, Bernard's ability to share the latest happenings gleaned from his radio or from keeping his finger on the pulse of a small town was often a valuable resource. What many folks did not know about him was his unsung, heroic military service during WWII. He shared that information with a select few in his inner circle. Bernard also had a gift for letter writing. He faithfully wrote letters to my uncle after my uncle moved into a veteran's retirement facility many miles away from our hometown. Bernard made sure his friends always stayed connected to their hometown, whether near or far.

Functioning communities are comprised of members allowing their jigsaw puzzle pieces to be used in the big picture. I am grateful for being able to experience many such communities, from work to neighborhoods to small towns. I am afraid my puzzle piece has something to do with incessant chattering. Just snap me next to the piece with a good listener and all should be well.

New Crop

Let's pretend I looked like this as I ran copies on a ditto machine my first year of teaching.

A new crop of 7th-graders arrived at my classroom doorstep a couple of weeks ago. This is my 19th year of greeting 7th-graders and my 29th year of teaching. Some things have changed over the years and other things have stayed the same.

Here are a few changes over the years.

Technology. No surprise on this one. Twenty-nine years ago, I was entering student grades by hand in a big red grade book. Report card time meant dragging out the calculator and entering each grade by hand and finding the average, student by student. I apologize, retroactively, to any student who did not receive the grade they may have deserved. My accounting skills are weak at best. Now, a computer program not only calculates all the grades but it enters them on the report card which is run automatically for all students. I am in calculation heaven.

Copy machines. My first years of teaching involved a ditto machine. A mysterious, albeit fun to sniff, fluid was poured into a machine that looked like a rolling drum. An inky master copy was clipped to the drum and a hand crank was used to spin the drum until the desired copies were made. Master copies were milked to the last drop, often involving a little squinting by the wee ones as the master finally faded away. Today, our copy machines are personal secretaries. They staple, three-hole punch, collate, enlarge, shrink and sing a little tune. I am not really exaggerating much on the last one. Our latest copier can be programmed to make all sorts of sounds, from xylophones to new age, while copying. I will not reveal how much perverse pleasure my department gets from selecting annoying sounds.

Chalkboards. Teachers of days gone by know what it was like to have chalk dust all over our clothes and hands. I had little helpers bang the erasers on the sidewalk occasionally in an attempt to reduce the chalk buildup. Despite our best efforts, chalk continued to float in the air. Now we use dustless markers on whiteboards and stylus pens on our SmartBoards. I can save a computer file with all my lesson information, notes and graphics for as many years as I need them. A fabulous time saver, not to mention my students don't have to decipher my sad handwriting.

As amazing as the changes have been over the years, there are also some things that never change.

Kids. Sure, they now have a fifth appendage called a Smartphone and their communication styles have morphed over the years, but when it is all said and done, kids are kids. They just want to belong and feel valued. Middle schoolers, particularly, don't want to be too different from others. Style is everything and an internal drive is pushing them toward autonomy. Parents, new to the teen scene, shake their heads and wonder what happened to their babies.

Teachers. My mother was a teacher in a one-room schoolhouse over sixty years ago. She often shares stories from those days. No surprise that she faced some of the same struggles as we do today. Unruly students, curriculum challenges, budget constraints and long hours dogged her as well. What hasn't changed is the passion for a career that is more than punching a clock. We love what we do. We love watching kids learn. And we love hanging out with other folks who also believe in the power of education.

Here's to a new crop of kids. May the harvest be bountiful.

Cinema

A few weeks ago I experienced a nasty drug reaction (not a bad meth baggie, just a reaction to a prescribed medication). I will spare you the gory details but suffice it to say, the bathroom floor is an uncomfortable place to sleep. The post reaction time was spent lying on the couch like a flaccid noodle. As a distraction to my woes I watched television. Here are a few things I learned about the world of TV entertainment.

1) Less is more--The first few hours of television time is entertaining. I can hold my own with the kid edition of Jeopardy, thank you very much, Alex. I know how to boil pasta, Rachel Ray. I know that the average house buyer would buy a rat shack as long as it has granite counter tops and stainless steel appliances, House Hunters. I am aware of my complete lack of fashion sense, Stacy and Clinton, I appreciate your tips, even when they are a few years old in the rerun season. That being said, I was at a loss as to what next on the channel selections. Plenty of mind numbing material was gazed upon with a few sparks of interest. Just like drugs, small doses, please.

2) Some things never change-- I watched several old movies on the Turner Classic Movie channel. What struck me was how much hanky panky was going on in many of them. Lots of affairs, love gone bad, murders of passion and wardrobe malfunctions. No wonder so many of them were thin with all that prowling around going on.

3) Commercials are king--The frothy morning shows with women in sheath dresses and suited up men bantering back and forth about what is trending, the latest weather and a smidgen of news are quite popular TV fare. I enjoy some of the segments but become exhausted with the number of commercials. The average two hour show was dotted with at least forty or more minutes of commercials. Often the same ones, ad nauseum. I guess that is why God created DVRs and Netflix.

4) Wolves can be found in sheep's clothing--Frequently, commercials are advertising wonder drugs. Happy people living fabulously fun lives are attracting mates, walking along beaches, playing with grandchildren, eating out with friends and relaxing with cups of steaming coffee after taking the magic pills. All this is followed by the punch line. In hyper speed as the fun people fade out, a list of possible drug reactions is shared.  As someone who has been up close and personal with such side effects, be aware of the wolf at your door.

5) Subtitles can be handy--I am not usually a big fan of reading subtitles during a movie, but at 3:00 in the morning when one's mind simply must be distracted, watching a subtitled movie can help. The subtitles make it easier to turn the sound off and they force the brain to work a little. I watched a few black and white French flicks. Boy howdy, do those people know how to sneak around and commit their crimes of passion. Geniuses, really. No surprise why these movies are running after the kiddies have gone to bed.

Television is a good entertainment option and I will continue to enjoy my share. But like a stick of butter, a pat or two is divine, the whole stick is a bit much.

Enjoy a couple of pats this week.

Bonus

A few weeks ago, my husband came home from his job site with a bonus gift. Mind you, neither of us work in fields where monetary bonuses come our way. My bonuses often come in the form of chocolate bars and coffee shop gift cards from my students. Much appreciated, indeed! My husband's bonuses tend to come in the form of homeowner surpluses. Jars of fresh honey, bags of sweet corn and loaves of banana bread have been enjoyed by us throughout the years. Our recent gift came in the form of farm fresh eggs, two and a half dozen to be precise. I love eggs but also know that there are only so many egg bakes one can make before interest wanes.

Suddenly, I had a flashback from my youth. We grew up with eggs, lots and lots of them. The upper level of our barn was designated to the laying hens. Woe be it to the child who had to face that bunch of cackling, pecking and irritable chickens for removal of the eggs. Fortunately, I escaped the egg gathering assignment for the most part but rarely missed the chore of casing all the eggs for pick up by the creamery guy. We learned to pick up several eggs at a time and gingerly deposit them in the slots of large cases. Dropping an egg was a disaster, not so much for the loss of monetary value, but the nasty clean up process. Broken eggs are slippery little devils.

In the summer we added another level of egg collection to our duties. The baby chicks were now old enough to be called pullets and the females were laying small eggs all around the farm. My mother paid us for the eggs we brought to her. She rarely paid us for farm duties so it must have been worth it to her to get the eggs cleaned up and removed from the property. We would sneak around looking for egg jackpots. If we found a nest, we went to great lengths to hide the location from our siblings. I am sure we weren't paid more than a dime or two per dozen, but that was big bucks to us.

Needless, to say we had a lot of eggs in the summertime. A favorite way to use the eggs was to make cake. We had a recipe for Butter Sponge Cake that used one dozen egg yolks and a recipe for Angel Food Cake needed one dozen egg whites. And there was no problem getting rid of two cakes in a family of nine.

So, when my husband presented me with the egg surplus, I decided to take a step back in time and make the two cakes of my youth. Fortunately, I had saved both recipes (the cards were in good shape, imagine that). The Butter Sponge Cake turned out just as I remembered and the taste immediately brought me back to the farm. The Angel Food Cake did not rise to all its fluffy glory (in defense of myself, I used a loaf pan rather than a tube pan), but the taste was still there. We are not a family of nine, but somehow we had no problem finishing off the cakes, with a little help from a few friends.

The moral of this post is: If life gives you eggs, make cake.

Monsters

I suspect many of us have monsters under our beds. I am not referring to the ginormous dust bunnies residing under my bed or the stack of unread magazines awaiting a proper burial. The monsters I am referring to take the form of long-held fears, rational or otherwise. Recently, my 21-year-old niece shared her monster story with me. Mind you, she is a courageous young lady who has lived and worked in third world countries so her monster surprised me a bit. She has always been afraid of a bee's sting. She was sure she was going to have an allergic reaction and it would go down badly. A few weeks ago, her monster crawled out from under her bed and she was stung by a bee. To her great relief, she reacted with just the usual swelling and stinging sensation. She has now released the bee monster.

Truth be told, my monsters could probably populate an entire bed and mattress store. I am a bit of a nervous Nelly and struggle with keeping the ogres at bay. One monster reared its ugly head recently when the doctor told me I needed a brain MRI, with and without the dye injection. There are so many levels of anxiety with that simple statement. Small missile-like tube, lying still for an hour, dye injections, loud popping noises, PANIC! Yes, one can choose sedation, but my last round of sedation ended with a great deal of unpleasantness so I decided to face this truck head on, literally.

After a sleepless night, I dutifully crawled onto the missile slab, jammed a couple of earplugs into my ears and watched the technicians lower the football like helmet over my head. Their parting words were "Try to lie still and squeeze the ball if you need help." The smell of metal filled the air as the slab rolled its way into the mole passageway. The pops, bangs, snaps and vibrations began in earnest as I clutched my panic ball and willed myself not to have an anxiety attack. Lying still usually means an itchy nose, a tickle in the throat or a muscle spasm. Fortunately, I was spared any such movement-inducing events. I started singing every Sunday School song in my head that I could remember. A reminder that "Jesus loves the children of the world" and it is not good to "hide your light under a bushel, NO!"

After an eternity, the technician came into the room and started the dye injection. Another monster reminded me that I would surely have a reaction. I did not. But, I was disappointed when I was told that I was only half way through the testing process. One more time in the mole hole and a few more stanzas of "Jesus Loves Me, This I Know" and "He Owns the Cattle on a Thousand Hills." It also helped to remind myself that lying still isn't the worst job in the world. I imagined a nasty cleaning job and felt a new sense of relaxation in my muscles.

Finally, I heard the sweetest words ever. "You're done." Just in a nick of time as I felt my the cramp in my neck scream for relief. I carefully sat up in my fashionable tie-in-the-back gown and white harem pants. I wobbled my way past the next victim in the queue and congratulated myself for facing a couple of really big monsters.

And the really good news is:

1) I have a brain.
2) I do not have a tumor.
3) I have some empty real estate available under my bed.

Cheers to our monsters!