Yearly Archives: 2016
Farmer’s Market
1. First Arrival I pulled into the parking lot of the Sunset Valley Farmer’s Market. It was 7:30 on Saturday morning. There was a bit of a chill in the air, and the grey sky was spitting a few raindrops, but I was determined to get eggs before they sold out. Except… there were only […]
What’s up with the “gh”?
1. Strange Noises There we were sitting on comfy pillows in the “pod” at the end of the fourth grade hall. I was on a huge one with another comfortably pushing against my back. I had a mic around my throat to compensate for my weak voice and a bottle of water to ease the […]
Noble Gases
The kids had chosen their team name, Tiger Roar! We had just done a team cheer to get started, and now I was giving them some instructions — about weighing out the ingredients of their experiment, about putting food coloring into the water (just a few drops), about each of them taking turns letting one of […]
A Good Night’s Sleep
Lately I’ve had a bit of trouble sleeping. In spite of being mortally exhausted every night, at 2:00am I wake up and can’t get back to sleep for a while. But you know, it just lasts an hour or two and eventually I fall fast asleep. That can’t be true today for Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson, prime […]
Observations from a Spring Afternoon
After dinner, I sat in the zen-zone in the late afternoon. The slanting light lit our front yard project in a golden glow: the Purple Trailing Lantana struggling to come back from the wet year we had last year, the Mealy Blue Sage with new purple spikes just emerging, the Bluebonnets along the curb, the wild […]
Science Stations
1. Noticing Visitors Ben was there, because he spends the day with the fourth graders on Thursdays and Fridays. I was there, because Mr. Roth asked for some help with the science stations. The kids didn’t see us at first when they came in. There were busy putting notebooks away and shuffling backpacks and (some […]
What More Could I Ask?
Yesterday was my birthday. At 5:30 in the morning, the fair and industrious Trudy rolled over and asked if I was ready. I was not. You see, I have been mortally exhausted night after night for weeks, and that early in the morning, all I could muster was a pathetic mumble (without even opening my […]