And the roots grow deep...

So my Mum's been on a genealogy kick for a while now, and while I know a lot about the Nash side of the family (Mum's father's side) I know very little about the Meserve side (Mum's mom). Mum found a couple of cemeteries with long-lost relatives in them, which was cool.

This was the first cemetery we went to, where we met Richard and Mary...


... and John and Matilda and Fred and Harry.


But then I admit that my interest was lost, because I was far too busy laughing. Laughing?? In a cemetery??? Well, you would too, if you saw this magnificent example of "perpetual care":


Good grief. It just gets more hysterical the closer I look at it. Talk about jury-rigs!


After that, we went to visit Mum's mom's mom Pearl. Pearl died when Mum was pregnant with me, and the story is that Mum put a rose on her casket "from the baby". Awww.



We'll get to the other Pearl story in a minute, but first, here is where Mie-Mie (Pearl's daughter, my grandmother) will be buried.



...we hope that when she dies and they go to put in her death date, they will fix that spelling error.... because we all know there is nothing as reverent as a misspelled word on a grave... except for maybe duct tape!

Now, when Pearl died, she wasn't supposed to be buried HERE. She was supposed to be buried down the street in the other cemetery, where her mother is. Well, the day that they had the funeral, there was this HUGE mix-up and while people were waiting around trying to figure out where to bury her, someone (Pearl's sister?) threw a hissy fit that they grass was too long, and started clipping it with fingernail clippers. Meanwhile, the hearse backed up into a telephone pole (Dad LOVES to tell this part) the wobbles on the wire went wow-wow (like a suspended slinky) and then, when they came to the end of the line, they wow-wowed right back.

So anyway, here's Pearl's mother and father.




I don't know why Pearl wasn't buried here, and neither does Mum. She did say that they used that pole thing to poke into the ground to see if there was room, and they said that there wasn't any room at all-- which is weird, because there are no other stones anywhere around. I don't know that much about cemeteries, but how do they truly determine if there is room or not? Were there a lot of people buried without markers? If so, then who are they?

At still another cemetery, we met the first Edith Luella Meserve, who was Mie-Mie's namesake.

Memorial Day Weekend

So on Memorial Day Ellen and Kate came down so we could all watch Dad (and the robot) in the parade.

Here's the marching band... boy, do those flags bring back memories!



And here comes what I assume was a T-ball team... the reason why I took their pictures was their shirts made everyone simultaneously laugh and cry!



And finally, here comes the robot... Dad thought we were waiting on the other side of the road so he never saw us. But I chased him down.


Later, at home, I drew one of Ellen's chickens on the pollen that had accumulated on my car.


Dad drew a bird too.

My Birthday Presents

So about two months ago it was my birthday. Ellen and Kate randomly gave me this BIG BIG box to open, and it was pretty much the coolest thing ever:

Random animal sculpture things!

Rooster!

Cow!

Pig!

But today I was looking at them, and I guess I was hungry, because I immediately thought of this song from Mulan, when Chien Po sings out BEEF! PORK! CHICKEN! MMMMMM!!!



And then I thought... wait, should I even be thinking these thoughts? I'm a vegetarian! :)

This is what texting was like before digital was invented...

Yup, it's another note. This particular little girl wasn't feeling very well so she slipped me this tiny note before coming to my room.

"I want to sleep in the Quiet Corner in your classroom," the note says, "I'm laying down."

...but on the back she makes an observation:


"I'm drooling on the table."

If only the silver kitties were musical...

So I must say that I am digging Cheryl Wheeler's new album, Pointing At The Sun. Cheryl Wheeler is the celebrated creator of the Potato song, which is quite possibly the most ridiculous song ever written:




As expected, Cheryl has two polar opposites on the album: on one side, the sweet and profound and lyrical, and on the other, the utterly hysterical. One of my favorites of the former is a re-recording of Summer Fly, a quietly desperate song about relationships. Of the latter, well, I heard about this album from Mum, who said that the last three songs are about cats. Well, turns out they are about one cat, Cheryl's beloved Maine Coon named Penrod. Penrod himself even makes an appearance on the last song, even though he is... um... not entirely corporeal any more.

But before I explain what I mean by that, all throughout the month of April I was excited because Cheryl was going to come to Portland. I got Mum to get tickets for us, and we got to sit fairly close. As we were waiting for the show to start, a frumpy grey-haired lady in a grey t-shirt and sweatpants wandered through the crowd, and what was funny is that those "in the know" just sort of smiled at her and shook our heads. When the show began and she came on stage (her piano accompanist had been the opening act), she was dressed in the same t-shirt and sweatpants. She plugged in her guitar, looked out at the audience, then down at her clothes.

"Oh my god," she said, "What is wrong with me? I forgot to change into my concert pants!"

And then she shrugged and started playing. And that is soooooooooooo typical of her-- she is so amazingly funny-- she makes even tuning a guitar so hysterical you will pee your pants. Seriously. She's a nut-- absolutely brilliant, and absolutely insane. When I grow up I want to be just like her.

So anyway, this last song on the album, is all about Penrod's fifteenth birthday. However, when Cheryl went to record the song, Penrod had passed away at the ripe old age of nineteen.... and she had him cremated... and so when she went to record the song, she handed the drummer a baggie of "catash" (pronounced cah-TASH) and thus Penrod became his own percussion instrument. Behold:



I have to say that I came home from the concert with sore ribs from laughing so hard. If you have a chance to see her, go!

Apparently I need to go shopping...

One of my little girls (the "polege" kid, for anyone who is keeping track) likes to give me little presents-- mostly little notes and drawings and things. She is one of those quiet kids who so very often blow you away with the odd but brilliant things they do...

So today she handed me this folded piece of paper, and apparently she had been working on it for quite some time, taking stock of all the things my classroom was lacking.... (Clickee to embiggeren-- you really have to see it big to enjoy all the subtle nuances of this note.)


Here's a translation:

Miss N.
Shopping List

lemon drops
cough drops
peanut butter
crackers
Band-Aids
gum
water bottles for kids

I keep reading the list and shaking my head. It all makes sense. Yes, I give the kids hard candy and gum (sugar free if I can find it) because many kids have a neurological need to chew and suck on things when they are concentrating (ever notice how certain kids have wet chewed-on t-shirt necks and sweatshirt strings, not to mention pencil erasers and anything else within reach??). The peanut butter and crackers-- well, I'm always going after the kids to eat high-protein and complex carbohydrate foods instead of junk food, so that makes sense. The water bottles I can understand too, as we have a sink in our room but no cups, and the kids are always asking me if they can get up and get a drink of water. And the Band-Aids? Well, most of my kids start spontaneously leaking at inopportune times, but especially after I say the dreaded words, "you need to start doing your work now..."

But the problem is I always seem to say, "yeah, I need to go shopping" or "I forgot to pick that stuff up at the store yesterday", and I never have any of these things in my room! So obviously, I needed a shopping list. Now I have one. I will have to remedy this problem as soon as I can, won't I? :)

Oh, P.S.-- I think the very next thing I will teach her is the proper use of apostrophes, or else she's going to go through life saying thing's like this and making every one of us teacher's out there cringe.

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means...

So a lot of the kids in my classroom are, how should I put this... quite under-educated. They just aren't exposed to much, and so even the simplest concepts need a thorough explanation to help them understand about the world. You can't just say big-concept words like "peace" and "justice" or "equality" because the kids really don't have much prior knowledge to anchor these words to. I just don't think that many adults talk to them about these sorts of things (at their level, anyway) so the kids appear to be "ignorant", which is a harsh word, but their ignorance is built upon under-exposure to explanations about how the world works, rather than any sort of conscious decision by the kids.

I also try to (gently) bring up other points of view, or opinions, just to throw the kids a loop and see what they do. It's amazing seeing them try to wrap their minds around these sorts of things.

In my class, I have a policy that the kids can't draw (or pretend to use) any sort of weapon, especially guns. This can be a hard rule to enforce, especially around hunting season, but I do it to show the kids that not everyone thinks the same way or has the same opinion as them.

Today, a boy "accidentally" drew a gun on his folder, and I told him to erase it. "Oh yeah, I forgot," he said. "You don't like guns."

"No, I don't."

"And you don't like shooting and wars and stuff."

The boy then looked at me, and you could tell the wheels were going around in his head. "But... um, what if two armies agreed that they hated each other? Would you be okay with it if they fought each other?"

That's a good question-- I really didn't know how to answer him. However, before I could, another boy asked, "but what if people who weren't in the army didn't want them to fight? How could people stop them?"

That I could answer, in a way. I herded them over to the computer and looked up this picture:


"This is a picture from the Vietnam War," I told them. "Look at what the man in the middle is doing to the guns. Do you think that's a better use for guns than to shoot people?"

"Is he really putting flowers into the gun?"

"Yes."

"So it's like a plant-holder instead of a weapon?"

"Exactly. The man in the white sweater is a hippie-- an early hippie, but a hippie nonetheless."

"What's a hippie?"

"It's someone who was against the Vietnam War, and thought that peace would be better. They didn't agree with the war and often protested against it, but instead of protesting in a yelling and loud sort of way, they protested by doing gentle things, like putting flowers in guns." (I know this is a pretty sugar-coated and idealized way of describing what a hippie was, but for the sake of this conversation it would suffice. Besides, my kids are only in third and fourth grade and I didn't want to bring up anything that would cause me to get fired if the kids were to repeat it!)

So the kids digested this for a while, and pondered it.

Later in the day, I was going through some of the pictures on my computer (I was trying to look up something else), and the kids were watching me. I happened to come across this picture of my friend Steve-o:



And one of the kids yelled out, "Oh, oh, I know who that is! It's a hillbilly!"

"It's a what?" I asked, a little confused. Steve-o is the least hillbilliest of all the people I know!

"It's a hillbilly! You know! A person who puts flowers in guns!"

....well, at least they are sorta understand... :)