A Negative Review

I'm ready to put some of the slightly tense and sad thoughts of the past few weeks behind me.  No.  No one is out to get me.  Neither have I suffered injustice or torment at the hands of others.  What I've been doing a lot of is reading the news.  In preparation for the first current events study of the school year, I immersed myself in pinning down the particulars of what is happening in Syria, Iraq, Gaza, Ukraine, Iran, the US-Mexico border, and inside ISIS.  It took looking underneath the surface, in some cases, to understand our country's role in the events transpiring in those places.  I had to understand things well enough to write a one-paragraph summary of each situation, and then, as questions surfaced, to elaborate on every one, repeatedly, as students sought to understand and then write and speak on specific aspects of them.

I feel saddened by the suffering in each place, and the complexity of doing anything at all to help make things better, except pray.  Even now that our president has offered a plan for "helping," I know, as we all do, that the answers offered are not really answers at all, but, at best, a way of delaying what is, in a sense, inevitable--the darkening of a world increasingly ripe for a final harvest.

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It's the week of 9-11, and more significantly for us here, it's the week of 9-10, the day when our Anja was instantly killed a year ago.  Marian's death followed only a little more than a month later.  Sheldon died about a month after that.

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I'm reading the book IndoctriNation:  Public Schools and the Decline of Christianity.  I have a great deal of respect for others in my profession, but much of this is really depressing stuff.  While conditions in public education do not directly affect my family or me, I grieve for what it means for many around us.

I'm revisiting insights I've held close for a long time, and see that, rather than being able to moderate my reservations about "status quo" education, I may need to reshape some assumptions in a more cautious direction.  I don't like  having to do this.

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Within a few weeks, work will begin in earnest on readying the old Elreka building for school next year.  Before then, and going forward, a pile of decisions will be made, and past decisions will be implemented.  I don't see the way forward as being any tidier than the process has been until now.

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My car needs a new fuel pump.  It will set us back about $500.00.

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I feel like I've done a lot of restraining in typing class, much as I try to state things in "We need to do this" terms rather than "Don't do that" terms.

"Look at the screen [rather than the keyboard].
Shhhh.
When I'm talking, no one else talks.
Keep your hands to yourself.
Train your brain and let your brain train your fingers.
That negative score is a bug in the program; you'll have to start over as a new user and test in again."

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Hiromi found three snakes today while he was moving dirt from several plastic canvases on the ground--with a shovel moving the dirt back into the hole it originally came from.  The snakes got moved to the dense growth on the north side of the big old chicken house.  I really hope they stay there.

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Mice are finding their way into the house of late, and we're doing our best to welcome them with freshly baited, carefully positioned traps.  They don't all have the grace to die without making a mess.  One particularly dramatic one left its red body fluids spread over a large area near the trap, and then disappeared entirely, leaving the trap empty.

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Hiromi is having a lot of trouble viewing and participating in an online class he's taking on Saturday mornings.  The teacher is from Tel Aviv, Israel.  It seems that an upgrade in bandwidth might fix the problem.  The plan with our internet provider allows the upgrade to happen free of charge.

I wasn't very keen on Hiromi taking the class, and I've had the temerity to wonder aloud if the problems are a sign from heaven.  Meanwhile, the teacher is picking Hiromi's brain to see what new classes he should be offering.  I think I see the makings of another wrap of the mesh in that questioning process.

In trying to solve the computer problem earlier, Hiromi talked to the tech support person provided by the course provider.  He was Muslim, apparently, and seized the opportunity to instruct Hiromi on what he should be learning about instead of this Jewish and Christian stuff.  He didn't choose a very likely target for his efforts.

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I'm not sure how writing all about such negative things has the power to improve my mood, but it does.  I had to stop myself many a time while writing, or I would have gotten off-topic and begun to tell about another good thing that is happening.  I'll have to do that at another time.