Letters on Love

New York
November 10, 1958

Dear Thom:

We had your letter this morning. I will answer it from my point of view and of course Elaine will from hers.

First — if you are in love — that’s a good thing — that’s about the best thing that can happen to anyone. Don’t let anyone make it small or light to you.

Second — There are several kinds of love. One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing which uses love for self-importance. This is the ugly and crippling kind. The other is an outpouring of everything good in you — of kindness and consideration and respect — not only the social respect of manners but the greater respect which is recognition of another person as unique and valuable. The first kind can make you sick and small and weak but the second can release in you strength, and courage and goodness and even wisdom you didn’t know you had.

You say this is not puppy love. If you feel so deeply — of course it isn’t puppy love.

But I don’t think you were asking me what you feel. You know better than anyone. What you wanted me to help you with is what to do about it — and that I can tell you.

Glory in it for one thing and be very glad and grateful for it.

The object of love is the best and most beautiful. Try to live up to it.

If you love someone — there is no possible harm in saying so — only you must remember that some people are very shy and sometimes the saying must take that shyness into consideration.

Girls have a way of knowing or feeling what you feel, but they usually like to hear it also.

It sometimes happens that what you feel is not returned for one reason or another — but that does not make your feeling less valuable and good.

Lastly, I know your feeling because I have it and I’m glad you have it.

We will be glad to meet Susan. She will be very welcome. But Elaine will make all such arrangements because that is her province and she will be very glad to. She knows about love too and maybe she can give you more help than I can.

And don’t worry about losing. If it is right, it happens — The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away.

Love,

Fa

(John Steinbeck)

(http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/01/12/john-steinbeck-on-love-1958/)

Homework

I'm on the fence about homework.  It's necessary for APUSH because students need to read to gain extra information that I do not have the time to discuss in class.  However, for WHII I'm not sure which direction I want to go.  I have been assigning vocab which requires the textbook, so that hopefully students are reading and getting some information, however not many kids complete it.  Vocab should be their second or third introduction to a word, because I try to include all of the words in class somewhere, but still students don't do it.  I'm not sure where I want to go with this.  Give it up, change it, or continue on the path.

Yesterday was fantastic.  I got my classroom keys, I got my parking sticker, I found a clicker for my car (it was tough surviving without a car clicker, remember, my old one is in the sewer system in Marshall VA), and I got to set up my classroom.  Today, not so great.  We had meetings, meetings, meetings, and then another meeting, and by the end of all of it my head was spinning and I was overwhelmed.  I feel like I have soooo much to do before school starts, and not enough time to do it, not to mention, I'm missing a bunch of things necessary for teachers from my classroom, ie. a filing cabinet!  Never mind the extra bookshelf that I need, books can go on the floor, but I would really like a filing system so I know where things are.  The guy in charge of furniture said it might be a month before I get one from the purchase order.   Really?  How about you just order a new one for every teacher that arrives at the school.  You can never have too many filing cabinets (unless you fill the whole room and there's no room for students, but that's another problem you have).  So I get home, and I have bookclub, which I suggested the book for, so I should go.  Well turns out it was only myself and the club leader, which was ok, but not a great discussion being only two people after we had exhausted all the questions we had, and that voice in the back of my head kept nagging that I had a million-billion other things to do.  After that on my way home, I notice that I have an email from College Board, that my syllabus that I have to submit for review in order to have an official AP class, was denied.  Would be understandable if I wrote the entire thing myself, however, I USED THE SAME SYLLABUS AS TWO OTHER TEACHERS WHO GOT IT APPROVED!  (That's totally acceptable for teachers in the same dept to use the same syllabus.)  Really College Board?  On top of everything else I need to do before next Tuesday when munchkins who might be taller than me arrive at my classroom door, I have to take time to re-do my syllabus?  I'm just a little bit frustrated and overwhelmed.

Irene

We had a visit from Hurricane Irene last night, and other than some high winds and lots of rain, nothing happened.  Granted, there are trees down in other areas, but I don't think we even lost power, or at least not for a long time and we were all asleep.  

Recent Happenings

On Friday I got to head out to my new school where I'll be working in the fall and see my classroom, as well as drop off a bunch of books and supplies that I have.  The rooms were being cleaned so the halls were filled with desks, chairs and bookshelves, causing a maze to work your way through down the hall.  My classroom was much more of a rectangle than a square with one large whiteboard in the front and a large TV by the window (a window! yay!) and then on either side of the door I have a second smaller whiteboard and a large bulletin board.  The good thing about the rectangle is that I can run a huge timeline across the wall that we can add things to throughout the year.  My boxes got put in storage because of the cleaning, where they'll stay until late August when I can set up my room.

I drove around Vienna a bit after that to check it out and see what's there before heading to get some errands done.  On Saturday I went to the gym with my roommate and ended up joining for a couple reasons, 1) it's 2 blocks away, 2) they offer yoga and pilates classes, 3) Teacher discount!, and 4) I need to start working out so that I'm not dying half way though dance class and practicing bad techniques.  I have a fitness test tomorrow morning, the results of which I expect to be awful from my lack of working out over the last 4 years.

We had our housewarming party last night, grilling in the back yard with a pong table, cornhole and a very large jenga set, which proved to be a huge hit!  It was made out of foot long 2x4s, simply genius.  A lot of people came, each roomie had invited 10-20 people and it was great to meet friends of roomies.  I'm hoping to meet lots of new people in the next month, as well as hang out with some old friends too!

Learning to use Photostitcher

Photostitcher is a program that comes with Canon cameras on the CD you get and I just learned how to use it to create panoramic photos.  Enjoy!

Upper lake at Gleninchaquin Park, Ireland

Ring Fort remains, Bonane, Ireland

Bantry House, Ireland

View up Gragan Valley, Co. Clare, Ireland

Iron Age, Ring Fort, Inishmore, Ireland

San Gimiano, Italy, 2008

San Gimiano, Italy 2008

San Gimiano main square, Italy, 2008

Circus Maximus, Rome, Italy 2008

Rome, Italy 2008

Colosseum, Rome, Italy 2008

Life after Ireland

When I got back from Ireland, I had a new house that my roommate Chrissie had found.  We still had to find 3 people, but it's in Clarendon 4 blocks from the metro, so the location should make it easy to find people.  I also had 6 interviews set up in Fairfax County for teaching jobs!  What ended up working out was: we found 3 other people and moved in July 1st.  I had an unofficial offer with Madison HS to teach AP and was asked to attend the summer workshop, which in doing so was my unofficial acceptance.  I got the official job offer on Monday July 11th.  I got a TB test (negative) and filled out some forms to get my background clearance on Monday and then attend an orientation about benefits the following week.  I've been reading textbooks everyday, planning to teach World History II and AP USH in the fall.  Things are going well!

Currently watching Michael Collins about the formation of the Irish Republic.

Heading to Gettysburg tomorrow with M, L & P and my parents are meeting us there!

Ireland Week 2: Post 3

Our last day we visited Muckross Abbey and then Ross Castle, the last restored tower house in Ireland.

 We also had a fantastic dinner at Packie's in Kenmare, a place that Gma and Gpa had eaten at on a trip 15 years earlier.  The food was just as good!

Ireland Week 2: Part 2

From Kenmare we saw a ring fort from the bronze age.

 The stone circle in Kenmare.

 The Ladies' View of the Lakes of Killarney, so named by the ladies of Queen Victoria.

 Muckross House

 Torq waterfall near Muckross House.

 Another stone circle on the Beara Peninsula.

 Gleninchaquin Park

 Waterfall at Gleninchaquin Park

 View down the valley on the Beara Peninsula from the top of the mountain we hiked

 Sheep!

 Family picture

 The farm where we stayed.

Ireland Week 2

We headed south to Bantry from Doolin for our next stay.  Bantry is famous for a failed French invasion during the 1700s.  There's a beautiful old estate house that is owned by the grandson of the last Earl of Bantry.  They run a B&B out of the servants quarters and that's where we stayed for one night.

Bantry House

View of the house and the bay

Bay Side of the House

Billiards after dinner

After our day in Bantry, we headed a bit north to Kenmare where we rented a house with kitchen and laundry for the next 5 days.  Kenmare became our base of operations.