Gail's Blog

I just took my car apart. Not the engine, heaven forbid! Like an archaeologist on a dig, I excavated my trunk and back seat. The top layers related to the teaching I'm doing now. This included the children's books, teaching texts, dress-ups and favorite markers I've used lately.  The second layer (sub-stratum?) consisted of the stories and materials I used last Spring at a completely different school. On the bottom laid (still) an old boombox, six "big books", and workout clothes I neglected to bring in after the gym (euw). There was a hand mixer somewhere in there, and greeting cards from last Christmas' students. Did I mention a cold-cup I forgot I had? The list goes on. When I quit my my part-time teaching job two years ago to take full-time work I brought everything I'd stored in my large classroom home. When I started teaching full-time I found out that most teachers use their cars as storage lockers. "Don't bring it in! There's no room

Thanksgiving is a bore, isn't it? We don't get much time off. We have no presents to get or give. There's no chocolate involved. Why, there aren't even any special drinks, like eggnog or champagne associated with the holiday! How can this be an American holiday? It's passe. It was invented in a much less cool era, the time of homemakers, gingham, wind-up clocks, and telephone operators. It was officially fixed in our calendar in 1941, after all. I don't think Thanksgiving is cool enough for our time. We need an alternative Thanksgiving Day. Maybe we should call a truce, where Tea Party people and Occupied people (not those who are occupied, the yearning masses longing to breath free, but the folks who occupy, when they aren't at work) have drinks and talk sports instead of the usual agita. What would we call a day like that? No, not the day hell freezes over. I don't think so. So pessimistic. Could we call it Improbably Optimistic Day? Impossibly Sensi

Yesterday I went to Loehmann's Plaza for a special series of tests on my eyes. My eye doctor wanted me to have these tests because I have a kinky (as in kinked) optical nerve and a family history of Glaucoma--mother, and both of her parents. The testing process consisted of patching one eye and then the other, and staring at a red light while using a clicker to indicate when you see a light flash. The light could be small, large, dim or bright and it moves all over your peripheral vision. It was challenging to keep my eye on the red light and not look at the flashes. The doctor, who turned out to be Greek like me, told me that there are new predictors of Glaucoma besides tension checks and it can be controlled far earlier than years ago. This wasn't something I wanted to hear. I've solidly refused to believe I could get Glaucoma. I don't want it, so I won't get it. The tests she did indicated that I have a more than average chance to get glaucoma in ten years, and t

This is my Dad when he was very young. I always thought he was incredibly handsome. A Greek-American boy in the projects. He met my mother, and his best friends for life there. Federal housing projects don't seem like a place where elderly people hold their fondest memories, but my Dad, Mom, Aunts, and their friends did and do. At my Dad's viewing one of his projects friends reminisced about the old days. He was the Armenian, Dad the Greek, and their friend Bill the Irishman. They all went to different high schools for different specialities, something I thought was only invented recently. Dad went to East Tech, where he specialized in aeronautics. Bill went to a secretarial school, which prepared him for his Post Office career. Al went to to the Liberal Arts school, which he said prepared him for "absolutely nothing". It sort of sounds like the old war movies (the Irishman, the Italian and the Jew in combat) but that's how it was. My mother, who died recently

I went to visit my favorite three year old today. She says "ouch" a lot and likes to pretend she is hurt and then laughs. She ( or rather her Mom) won a play date with me at the school Gala Auction. They bid the highest (or were the only bidder, I don't know which). They'd made blueberry muffins and we had them with strawberries and latte (I had latte; she had milk). I brought two books and Melvin, my puppet, who she would remember from school. She hid her eyes from the books and from Melvin. Instead she wanted to show me her dress-ups, with her "glass" slippers that light up when she walks. She wanted to play ball, which we did. She has a super-keen eye for catching a ball--terrific for a three and a half year old. We played Zengo, and she played it as if she were a dealer in Las Vegas, all serious and purposeful, with breaks for capering around the room in her flashing shoes. Before I left I took some pictures of her with my phone. I said they were for he

It is the night before Christmas Eve. Ridge is making hard sauce now, because the girls and I will be taking the kitchen over tomorrow for our cookie making. As he points out, we have an eclectic variety of cookies to make. Every year we make the Williamsburg Cookbook's Bourbon Balls. That is sacrosanct! (Holy Bourbon Balls--can you use them for communion?!) Then I usually want to make Koulourakia, the little twisted, sesame-coated butter cookies my Greek family liked. Put a little ouzo in and...oops! Another candidate for communion! Alcohol and flour...close enough to bread and wine, isn't it? I bought the cookie ingredients today, after talking on the phone with my Mom. She's in St. Thomas' Hospital in Akron, again, for depression. She says, "I want to be with you!". She says it to everyone who calls. How hard it must be for her. The nurse says that she won't stay in one place for more than a few minutes. She complains of pain in her back and knees, but

The Brahms requieum has spoken to my heart since I sang, "How lovely is they dwelling place" in Concert Choir when I was in the tenth grade. Of all the choruses in the Requiem, "How Lovely" is the most performed. Partly because it is a set chorus with no solos, and because it is mostly harmonic, with only a small part that is polyphonic, it suits high school, college and church choirs well. It is also most beautiful. I came across this picture of Bethlehem, the long view, tonight and "How Lovely" sprang into my mind. How lovely is thy dwelling place, dear God! You came among us and dwelt here, on this earth, living the life of the everyday human being in the sin and degradation he/she regularly inhabits. Yet you stayed with us, died among us, and rose for us. This is an everpresent puzzle to me. You didn't have to do this! No one made you! And if I were you I certainly would have changed my mind and decided to go back "home" where things