I became insane with long intervals of horrible sanity.
The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
Many people would sooner die than think; In fact, they do so
What I have been telling you, from alpha to omega, what is the one great thing the sigil taught me — that everything in life is miraculous. For the sigil taught me that it rests within the power of each of us to awaken at will from a dragging nightmare of life made up of unimportant tasks and tedious useless little habits, to see life as it really is, and to rejoice in its exquisite wonderfulness. If the sigil were proved to be the top of a tomato-can, it would not alter that big fact, nor my fixed faith. No Harrowby, the common names we call things by do not matter — except to show how very dull we are ...
2002-02-21 - 1:26 a.m.
When I left for school today my father was still in the emergency room. That was over 24 hours after he got there. The problem with going to a good hospital like Long Island Jewish is that everyone wants to go there.
One student in my class is really starting to get on my nerves. He asks after every step where that came from. I usually point out that I just used the rule that I said I was using just like on the five problems I had just done before that one. I mean how many times can one person ask "Where did you get the 3 from when you took the derivative of 3x?" That is when he isn't asking, "will this be on the test?" I think I'm ahead of schedule so I'm going to give a review for the test tomorrow. I never do that but a few students need it and I have the time. The calculus shock is hitting lots of the class now. They are realizing that I'm asking more of them than teachers have up till now. For so many problems all they have to do is keep their cool. The problems might be long but they can be broken down into many very simple steps. This is someplace where I have to really work at empathizing with my class. I never could see how someone could understand every single step of doing a problem but not be able to put them all together to actually solve it. If I stop and ask them at each step, "What do you do now?" they are OK but they need that prodding. Of course I'm sure I had teachers who asked "how can he understand all the theory and not be able to copy correctly from one line to the next?" The important thing to remember when teaching is that you have to adjust to the students, and explain things in the way that they can understand it.
After school I had my usual mad dash to the train. I did well today and had an entire 7 minutes to spare when I got to Penn Station. I used to time to call Roy to confirm that we were playing bridge today. He was in a meeting but I left a message with his secretary Marie. Marie and I always liked each other and bonded over surviving cancer last year.
When I got back to my car I went straight to see my father. He was still in the ER. He had a very tough night, he couldn't sleep at all. In the ER people were being paged over the loud speaker all night. He was able to eat his breakfast today but not his lunch. At least the nurse there was very nice which is unusual for ER nurses. Kind of cute too though my father was too weak to notice that. As I've mentioned I'm never too weak to notice that.
I stayed with my father for about an hour then went to meet Roy for dinner; we ate at Charlie Brown's as usual. We had a nice talk and discussed Wise Madness quite a bit. It's how he's been keeping up with my life. I got caught up on his life today and on his kids. It's funny his daughter, who I think of as a kid since I've known her for years, is only half a year older than the birthday girl Joy. By the way true to my donut nature I didn't notice that today was Joy's birthday till it was too late to sign her card.
After dinner it was off to play bridge at the Franklin Bridge Centre, our favorite club. It was a good game tonight, 15 tables, that means 30 pairs were playing. We didn't have a good night and finished just out of the money. We had some interesting mishaps though. On one hand I dropped a card, which happened to be the Ace of diamonds. There are penalties for exposing a card and it cost us on the hand. On another hand Roy made an insufficient bid and then panicked when he was given the choices of what to do. He did the worst thing possible and we got a bottom. As usual we did manage to amuse our opponents and ourselves. On one hand when dummy came down the dummy said, "I have scattered values." Roy said something to the effect "if that is the way you live your life?" Which lead to my saying "He lives a life of scattered values." I loved the sound of that. It reminds me of "I measure my life by coffee spoons." As soon as I said it Roy said, "I'll be seeing that on the internet tonight." He knew it would be my entry title. Now if I were Samuel Pepys I'd make the entry fit the title. I'm not so it won't really relate to anything else. I do get to show off that I know Samuel Pepys though.
When I got home I got online and worked for a bit on recataloguing my CD collection, this really will take a month.
When I went through my mail I found a nice letter from Jill, I haven't talked to her in ages, it was so nice to hear from her. I'm seeing Kat on Friday; I guess this is my week to talk to that family.
I had written to Jill because I wanted to recommend that she see Whirligig, one of my must see bands. A few of the members are based in New York but they aren't doing any shows here. Just my luck.
Here is their schedule, if you can make any of their shows go see them. Carey will you back me up on this? They play Celtic music even though they aren't Celtic themselves. I wrote an entry about them before.
It's funny some days I struggle to fill a page an others the entry writes itself. I don't think I'll add a coda today. I'll keep the one I am thinking about for a day that needs the filler.
I signed the Pro-Truth Pledge:
please hold me accountable.
Memories: Not that Horrid Song - May 29, 2018
Wise Madness is Now In Session - May 28, 2018
The NFL and the First Amendment - May 27, 2018
On The Road Again - May 26, 2018
Oliver the Three-Eyed Crow - May 25, 2018
creative commons
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License.
Horvendile 2002-02-21
| site search by freefind | advanced |
Follow on Feedly
