jumpingfish

I’m not waiting any longer. There’s an hour to go before the Central Time ball drops. But my laptop is down to 20%, the fair and industrious Trudy has long given up the ghost, Miss Izzy is catatonic under my AHIHA hockey jersey, the Zyrtec is having its side-effect, and so let’s do this. One last fish for 2023.

The Red Oaks know their time. Their burgundy leaves turn brown and fall to the ground.

In the brisk wind last week, I raked leaves into ever-metamorphosing piles, gathered them up, took them into the back yard, mulched them with the mower, and dumped them onto this year’s new compost pile. A day later, the center of the pile was hot in spite of it being baby-it’s-cold outside (in a Central Texas kind of way).

Today is far from cold. The sun is shining, and the sky is blue. It’s too warm for a sweater. A good day for a swim.

In the sun, wasps and bees and manifold flittering insectoids are happy with the wildflower blossoms that persist even with the fallen leaves all around. The wildflowers don’t seem to particularly care about time, hanging on as long as the pollinators hang around.

Happy New Year.

1. The Need

Was it ten years ago? Maybe fifteen. According to the fair and industrious Trudy, Ben was still in high school, so … 14 years ago. That’s how long ago this was.

There I was standing in our driveway rasumfrassing to myself amidst a bunch of scattered branches. I was tired of cutting fallen tree limbs precariously perched on the garbage can. I needed a sawbuck. 

I once saw a sawbuck made by a cousin of mine. He had slapped it together from scrap in a couple minutes just to make … well, to simplify the cutting of fallen tree limbs. Just what I needed. And I recalled my cousin whipping this thing together as naturally and second-nature to him as  … deriving the Lagrange planetary equations might once have been to me. Ok so perhaps as second-nature as … deriving the quadratic formula would be for me now. QED. That’s how quickly I remembered him assembling that thing.

I had had enough. I needed a sawbuck.

2. Sawbuck v1.0

Remember now, this is 10 or 15 or 14 years ago.

There I was in the driveway with the branches about me. In my rasumfrassage, I determined to make me a sawbuck.

Of course, there were some long-ago scrounged 2x4s in the garage and some oft-used and oft-straightened über-nails. These would have been sufficient, but I had something more in mind. Earlier that day, I had spied a pile of lumber by the curb down the street. Someone was throwing away perfectly good stuff.

I walked down to inspect. And I proudly returned with six long, pristine tongue-and-groove boards under my arms. I set the boards down. Got the 2x4s. Got the nails. And got some screws that many years before I had scrounged from my father’s basement when he sold his house (which would have been like 30 years ago?).

And I proceeded to make me a sawbuck.

3. Sawbuck v2.0

In the years since, the sawbuck has served its purpose well. But that was 10 or 15 or 14 years ago. You remember that, right? (See the opening sentence above.)

Time has passed. The weather has taken its toll, as it will on a sawbuck left out in the elements. Those tongue-and-groove boards have utterly decomposed. So this afternoon I decided that my sawbuck had become a hazard.

The scrounged 2x4s and über-nails from which the business-end of the sawbuck was composed are fine. My father’s basement-stashed screws were still in pristine shape. And there were four tongue-and-groove boards from that years-ago pile down the street remaining in the garage, stacked neatly where I put them them 10 or 15 or 14 years ago. (Ok not right where I put them then, but near enough by.)

Shining sun. Blue sky. Frische Luft. Fast-forward a bit (as you might wish me to do about now), and … I’ve got me a brand-ish new sawbuck. It’s a double doozie. This time I treated the tongue-and-groove boards with Australian Timber Oil, so the boards shouldn’t decompose so quickly, right? They should last … what … 20 years? 

When that time does come, the two remaining tongue-and-groove boards from the pile down the street will be waiting in the garage for Sawbuck v3.0. 

1. A Question

A video plays on the monitor at the front of the classroom. In it, Nikki Haley is on stage at a town hall meeting. An audience member asks, “What was the cause of the United States Civil War?”

We watch the video for a few minutes. Then I turn to the class.

“Painful isn’t it?”

No one speaks.

“So what just happened?”

And from that question, we begin to incrementally work into the deeper issues, beginning with what a Town Hall is, and why a candidate might want to field questions from audience members. The students talk about what they noticed. And they begin to discuss what they wonder.

The discussion is civil, but before long time is almost up.

2. An Assignment

I hand out a sheet of paper.

“Here is an assignment. You are going to gather some historical facts. You will collect details on what happened when. Then you will focus on South Carolina and the US Constitution. It’s all related to part of what that man in the audience asked.

“Here are the details.” I point to the monitor.

• Which state was the first to secede from the Union? When did that happen? Which states quickly seceded to form the Confederate States of America? Which states came later?
• On 03 January 1861, Delaware rejected secession and remained in the Union. Slavery was legal in Delaware. Research these facts and briefly explain what was going on. 
• On 09 February 1861, a Tennessee referendum to convene a convention to secede from the Union failed, presumably rejecting secession. But by 06 May, public opinion had evidently changed, and Tennessee seceded. Research the importance of Middle Tennessee in this change, and briefly explain what was going on. Make sure to discuss the role slavery played.
• There have been reports (in the press? online?) that the first sentence of the South Carolina ordinance seceding from the Union refers to slavery. Here is that document. Does the first sentence refer to slavery? Does the document explain the rationale for secession? 
• Here is another document which perhaps is what the reports were referring to. What is the purpose of this document? Its first sentence does indeed refer to slavery. What is the gist of that reference? 
• The above document refers to Article 4 of the US Constitution. Briefly explain what part of Article 4 is relevant and South Carolina’s complaint with regard to that clause. Make sure to discuss how slavery is related to this complaint.
• Assemble a timeline of the following events, including a title for each event, a brief description, and the date of the event: (a) the passage of South Carolina’s ordinance of secession, (b) Lincoln’s election, (c) the passage of the Provisional Constitution of the Confederate States, (d) the beginning of the US Civil War, and (e) passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the US Constitution.
• Finally, briefly explain whether or not you think that the Thirteenth Amendment closed the question on slavery in the United States. This is a big question. I am just looking for a brief outline of your thinking, backed up by some facts.

3. Wait

Oh wait. This is Algebra 2. What was I thinking? Your next assignment is this worksheet on polynomial division. 

As they were reviewing for the final, a student walked up and quietly asked a question.

“Well,” I began to answer. “Do you remember when we talked about matrix multiplication?” 

“Kinda,” she said, drawing it out in the way they do when they in fact don’t remember.

“There was a problem about four women runners and how many points they earned.”

“And you made sound effects.”

“I did,” I said.

I reached to the whiteboard and acted as if I were removing a row from a matrix (making a creaking “errrrhhhkkk”), turning it (making a hooting “wooop”), and lining it up against an imagined vector (making a tongue-popping percussive sound).

“That was it,” she said.

The rest of the answer to her question was relatively easy.

“Are you going to decorate your door, Mr. Hasan?” a student asks.

“Well, I’ve kinda started.”

“That’s it? That red paper? I thought someone was helping you.”

“They’re not finished.”

“Judging is Friday, Mr. Hasan. You want us to help?”

Easy question to answer.

And so they take the snowflakes cut out from handed-in worksheets. And they take the elf with my face superimposed. And they ask for tape and scissors and pens and more butcher paper (because the red paper on the door was ragged at the bottom and needed to be neatened up).

They’re in the hall as I write. I see movement under the door. And periodically I hear the sound of packing tape being pulled from the roll. 

“We’re going to redo the tape at the top,” they say. 

“Yeah, the top of the door is dusty, so the tape didn’t stick. If you want, you could…”

“Mr. Hasan,” Sonya says peering around the door with a smile to reassure me. “We got this,”

And so they did.