Disabled

Not me--the Captcha I had installed to screen out spam in the comments to posts on this blog.

One legitimate commenter told me that it took multiple tries to get a comment published because it was too difficult to decipher the Captcha code.  I've also seen multiple comments containing the same content from the same person, who apparently couldn't tell if the previous efforts to comment had been successful.  Since I moderate all the comments anyway (grant or deny permission for them to be published), I decided to dispense with the Captcha inconvenience for people who wish to comment.  I had hoped earlier that the Captcha might replace the necessity for moderation.

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In my classroom at school I have a Main Street Coffee House mug on display whenever I'm not drinking coffee from it.  It's a gift from Rhonda Schrock, who gave it to me after I won it in a drawing she announced to celebrate the launch of her new website.  She is a columnist for an Indiana newspaper, and the mug comes from one of her favorite writing haunts.  Rani, in our typing class, used to live in Indiana, and recognized the business name.

It's amazing how a coffee house mug earns credits with the high school-age crowd, or at least piques their interest.  When I explain where it came from, some of my students are happy to claim Rhonda as a relative, and the rest are amazed that she is a graduate of our very own Pilgrim school.  I reminded them that I had posted on my bulletin board last year the column she wrote about having come "home" for a reunion of her high school class.  Last week when I told the freshmen typing class that, I realized that they hadn't seen it because they weren't in school yet.

"I just threw that column away last week," I told them with regret.  "I found it in my school bag from when I had cleaned off the bulletin board at the end of school."  Then I had an inspiration.  The student who empties the recycling box in my room on Friday had forgotten to do the job.  Maybe it was still in that box.  I dug through the papers and found it and read it to the typing class during break.

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Jesse and Janice got married today.  I loved being part of the celebration.  Besides people from the place in Missouri where Jesse is from, groups of people were here from Leon, IA where Jesse grew up, Estacada, OR where Jesse's first wife Sonya Bechtel was from, Nappanee, IN where Janice's mother grew up, and many friends who had worked with Jesse and Janice at Faith Mission Home, with Janice in Belize, or who were connected or related in some other way.  Janice had taught school here for 12? years, so her former students made up a sizable part of the group of guests.

At the reception we learned from Jonathan G. about "Janice showers" and "Jonathanizing" dishes--terms originating with Jonathan's wife and Janice, respectively, and growing out of their experience in living in the same house in Belize.  John Andrew, one of the people who spoke at the reception, is married to Jesse's sister.  I remembered him as a little third grade boy when I taught school in Ohio.  I hear he's preaching in church tomorrow.

I'll miss Janice on our trips to the ACSI conferences.  I learned to know her best at these times, sharing hotel rooms with her and the other ladies on staff at one of our schools, and on the 3-4-hour trips traveling back and forth to the meetings.

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I dashed out and harvested a dishpan full of sweet peppers and a few flowers this evening, in anticipation of our first freeze of the season.  Hiromi had picked boxes full of green tomatoes yesterday. Today, imagining a freeze tonight was not hard.  The weather was cold and gray and windy.  If the skies clear overnight as predicted, the cold will likely settle down and create havoc, especially in the not-ripe milo fields.  Our average first-frost date is about two weeks away.