When I first started teaching, I received the gift of a plant for my classroom. It joined me from school to school, from Washington State to New York State to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Then, when my dad went into an old folks home, I moved it to his room, where, after a few months, […]
Author Archives: Pete
Shows Effort
… [Jean-François] Champollion had been fascinated with the ancient Near East; he had a gift for learning languages and went on to study, among others, Hebrew, Arabic, Persian, Aramaic, Syriac (a form of Aramaic), and even Chinese. But his passion soon became Coptic, the language still spoken by a religious minority in Egypt. During his […]
Question Time
When I was doing teacher training in New York, one evening we had to attend a lecture by a panel of administrators. I remember two things. First was discovering the multiple galaxies of responsibility that principals have. (It’s bananas. I wouldn’t last a week.) Second was an Assistant Principal who ranted that if a student […]
Bright Ideas
1. Dress Blues This teacher intends to write “The Ballad of Draper James.” 2. Apart From That, Mr. Easterly Part of my youth was misspent studying economics. I remember this one class in development economics where I barely passed the final. The professor wrote in the blue book that it was a shame I […]
John Prine
I saw him play in Boston a few years back. I’d recently had eye surgery, and kept having to put drops in, so it was like seeing him through tears. I left the show early because I wanted to get home to check on the puppy – it was the longest Roosevelt had ever […]
African MiGs
I developed an interest years ago after seeing one take off in Guinea. The first volume, alas, I left at my quarantined school, but here are three interesting sentences from the second: Canada, keen to gain a foothold in Tanzania since 1963, took the place of West Germany and in 1965 launched a project worth […]
Condition
Haha. An american friend of mine thought I was singing I’m a baby sea tuna instead of “I’m on BBC2 now.” https://t.co/cP3kAMtwgK — Αλεξ Καπράνος (@alkapranos) March 24, 2020 If you’re around at 6pm Eastern, or whatever time elsewhere, do attend these listening parties. I listened to the Franz Ferdinand one last night. The Blur […]
Saucy Kip
I watched the film Hired Gun, about session musicians. As this review accurately puts it, “two sorts of audience member are especially well-served here: metal heads and devotees of Billy Joel.” It kept my interest nonetheless. Certainly, in the topsy-turvy world of heavy rock, I was not shocked to learn that one can go directly […]