Happy New Year, everyone!  Of course, I’m about a day late, but I needed the relaxing time yesterday.  I figured that with the new year should come some advice learned from the last year.  I had a “Teachers” daily calendar on my desk full of interesting teaching facts and inspirational quotes.  Of course, most of those quotes and tidbits went into the trash as soon as the day was over, but there were a few that made an impression on me when I read them.  I figured I’d share with you what I felt were the most important statements over the last year.

“The cure for boredom is curiosity.  There is no cure for curiosity.” (Dorothy Parker)

“Dwelling on the negative simply contributes to its power.” (Shirley MacLaine)

“An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered.  An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.” (G.K. Chesterton)

“Finish each day and be done with it.  You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can.  Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

“The ink of the scholar is more sacred than the blood of the martyr.” (Mohammed)

While not all the most inspirational to everyone, more than one of these quick pieces of wisdom crept into my head while battling what I considered one of the most testing events in my life–the first year of teaching.  And, as anyone reading this blog may know, I had some very low spirits after less than a semester in front of my very own class.  From that experience I learned about perseverance and tolerance, as well as patience and hope.  This year, though, has provided a completely opposite insight into the world of education (a good thing since I was on the brink on the last experience!).  It’s difficult to know exactly what your place in life should be, and often it takes a period of trial-and-error to arrive to a place that feels comfortable.  Some are fortunate to quickly find their niche while others may wait years upon years to feel “right” with their lives.  2007 was the opposing poles of life: complete insecurity and the beginning of feeling good about life.  Insecurity creates some good, such as a better understanding of yourself and a clearer image of the world’s philosophy towards you as an individual, but in general you find yourself so lost in emotion and desperation that you simply wish to find a piece of security–no matter how negative that security could be.  But eventually light is found and you make it out with even better knowledge of who you are and what the world might expect of you.

And then something magical happens: you find true passion in the world.  Passion for you, passion for your life, passion for knowledge, and passion for community.  It isn’t always a place in a physical sense, but it can be.  Sometimes those places are only the loose association you make with the emotional state.  Nevertheless, it feels like moving on with your life needs to be a complete process.  And whether or not that played into how I’m feeling about life today, it seems that a different place for work and home has made a difference in how my wife and I see each other and everything around us.  2008, I couldn’t be more pleased to see you.  I look forward to all you may bring me and my loved ones, knowing that even the most testing moments in life can bring about beauty.

A little too gangster for this white boy, I know, but I do want to give props to my four All-State Chorus students for their accomplishment this weekend.  We went to Rapid City to sing with 928 other choir students and almost 200 orchestra students–the best in the state–and my kids were absolutely excellent.  All four of them behaved, obeyed and even volunteered to help with everything.  It’s amazing how great your job can be.

The flipside, of course, is that I have not seen my wife in almost four days.  I miss her dearly and can’t wait to get back home.  I’m also looking forward to our own comfy bed.  Nothing like a good night’s sleep.  Then, back to reality.

But it won’t be so bad.  I’m looking forward to digging away over the next week at our Veteran’s Day pieces, getting everything put together in the few rehearsals we have left before the big performance.  And after that, it’s Christmas time.  Boy, the year zips by quickly.  And in less than a month, I’ll be a quarter-century old!  Yikes!  Well, at least my insurance will go down.  That’s always a nice thought.

I’m hoping to write a little more of just about anything.  That’s kind of my goal–music, stories, love letters, whatever.  Just something.  I need some creativity.  My wife and I have been doing some paintings together for wall art, and I want to do more of that as well.  But it’s all a game of time, so I’ll have to budget some extra relaxation into my schedule in order to do some of that fun stuff.

Thanks for stopping by.  Good night all.

Don’t you love it when you discover something you hated for the longest time is actually incredibly enjoyable?  Maybe it’s that first time you eat broccoli and say, “Hey, that’s good.”  Or maybe it’s the first time you look at Argyle socks and think, “that may just be more stylish than I once believed.”  No matter what that epiphany is, it’s this great feeling to know that you’ve rediscovered something.  For me, it was reading.

In college, I really did not like reading.  I read Chuck Palahniuk novels, and that was about it.  That and schoolwork, which was rarely as interesting as one would hope.  But after college, I started buzzing through classic novels.  The first one I really read seriously was Things Fall Apart (Achebe), a novel about a small African village and its run-in with tradition and colonists.  After that, I just kept spreading my wings.

So here’s an abbreviated list of what I’ve gone through since Fall 2005:

To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
1984 (George Orwell)
Catcher in the Rye (JD Salinger)
Catch 22 (Joseph Heller)
Slaughterhouse Five (Kurt Vonnegut)
Hairstyles of the Damned (Joe Meno)
Stranger than Fiction (Chuck Palahniuk)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Ken Kesey)
Cat’s Cradle (Kurt Vonnegut)
The Boy Detective Fails (Joe Meno)
Fugitives and Refugees (Chuck Palahniuk)
Haunted (Chuck Palahniuk)
The Screwtape Letters (C.S. Lewis)
Farenheit 451 (Ray Bradbury)
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Hunter S. Thompson)
I think I’ve covered them all, but if not, I’ll add to the list in a later post.  The thing is, none of these novels would have appealed to me in past years (with the exception of Joe Meno and Chuck Palahniuk), so I am absolutely shocked that I just started loving them now.  I am also shocked that I wasted so much time before, but perhaps I would not have understood them until now.  At this moment, out of the list above, my favorite novel is probably Catch 22.  If you have an urge to read a good book and don’t know where to start, that’s the one.  Brilliant and funny and sad.  But really, read any of those books and you’ll enjoy yourself.

Currently, I’m reading Joe Meno’s Tender as Hellfire, and I’m going through it like lightning.  Tell me what you’ve been reading, if you’re reading this post.  I’d love to hear from some other literary gluttons.
Maybe I’ll even get a comment on this post…

So, long ago, I made a post about how disappointed I was when I entered the teaching profession–how cynical, sarcastic and downright apathetic students are. I talked about my disappointment with their attitudes and their efforts. And I mentioned how the whole world was essentially going down the drain. But I need to revise these statements.

Needless to say, I was not in the right place all last year. I found out in about March that God had better things for me to do. That’s when I learned why I was struggling so much to get my students to do anything. At that point, I began looking elsewhere, and Wham! I found a job. So here is my revised reflection on the state of the youth in this nation.

While still naive and somewhat selfish, I have discovered that students who really wish to accomplish something simply do so. Teenagers (and younger) are not little monsters with nothing better to do than play video games. I was wrong about that assumption. They are intelligent and willing to try just about anything with the proper coaxing. I now know that if you are seen in the right light, you can help students achieve amazing goals. And you can do it quickly. It doesn’t take centuries for it to happen–not even decades, years or months. A matter of weeks is all you really need.

Essentially, my conclusion is this: the youth of America are not truly dying. They are living the same lives that I lived when I was in high school (except with cell phones and iPods). They are exploring and discovering, they are wisely choosing to do more than just get by. And even the ones who seem reluctant really do want to make themselves better–they just want to look cool when doing it. All you have to do is disarm them enough and then give them confidence to make up for the possible embarrassment. Give them something to really indulge in. And now I know how that works, and I know what can come of it. Future teachers, don’t give up. Don’t be disheartened when you find yourself deep in fear. That first year is hell, and the sooner it’s over, the better every other year will be.

And if everyone hates you, just remember: it’s not always going to be your town.

Ah, weddings.  Those monumentous times when two people are joined forever in what may be the longest civil war known to history.  That magic moment when man and woman decide that no matter what their faults, they’re going to be screwed up together.  It may sound cynical, but often that’s the case.  We’re not perfect, and that’s fine.  Sometimes it’s much better to be imperfect together.

And while we love our spouses dearly, we married folk know very well that we’re not in any way perfect, but that we compliment each other in ways that no one else ever could.  I love my wife because we’re not perfect separately, but much closer to perfection together.  She helps me when I have absolutely no clue (which is quite often), and I help her when she has absolutely no clue (which is much less often).  That’s the beauty of it.

So today, I will be watching my good friend Mary and her fiance get married, and I know that those two will work perfectly together for the rest of their lives.  Amazing!  God blesses us so much, and sometimes we don’t even realize it.  Those two will only grow stronger together–that’s what marriage is about.  It’s like bridges designed to become stronger when weight and pressure is increased.  We’re designed to withstand and grow even closer to God as we go through hard times together.

So, just a little reflection, but I thought it was time I said something on here–and something meaningful.  Godspeed, good readers.

This post is highly religious.  Be warned.

So I’m reading an article on intercessory prayer as a healing technique (scienceblog.com), and a lot of people have commented on the concept of prayer meant for healing (as in, you pray for a relative or friend who’s in the hospital so they may have a fast recovery).  Apparently, the study on this has totally pissed off a lot of people.  And all of those people insist that it’s ridiculous to believe such a thing.  They like to call it the “Placebo Effect” (relating to people feeling better because they think they are getting better because of an outside aid, whether or not it’s actually helping).

What irks me is that the study does point to improvement, but everyone that reads it immediately goes into a “God does not exist” argument in order to dismiss it.  Regardless of its factuality, most “scientific” types instantly discredit it because it refers to a divine force.  Then they spend the remainder of their energy on trying to prove the non-existence of God (or any other divine apparition) in order to make a point about how it can’t actually help because there’s nothing there to support the help.

The thing that fascinates me most, though, is that scientists still don’t get the idea of faith.  I, being a Christian, realize that I cannot prove God exists with empirical evidence.  No matter what I say or do, my entire argument is based on a being that cannot be seen or proven other than through faith or death.  If I were a scientist, though, I believe I would realize that no matter what evidence I dig up, any argument I make can be dismissed just as easily by Christians because my entire system depends upon the idea that God does not and cannot exist–and there is still no way to prove the absence of something that you cannot prove exists either.

So, my basic concern is this:  Why do we spend so much time arguing back and forth?  Scientists spend far too much energy trying to disprove the unseeable, and Christians spend to much energy trying to prove what depends solely on faith.  It doesn’t make sense!  Instead of working towards providing a strong model of Christian love and faith, Christians are sucked into a perilous and paradoxical argument that will have no end until the world implodes upon itself–and even then, it won’t matter which side is truly right (if it’s Christians, the ones who don’t believe will simply realize the mistake, and if it’s atheists, no one will know the better).

In conclusion, here is my plea to Christians around the world (and to faithful peoples of all cultures): ignore science.  Do not get drug into it.  If you are faithful, then do not be tempted by the secular time wasters.  What matters is your faith and your demonstration of faith.

And here is my plea to Scientists and Atheists: move on.  Spend your energy trying to find a cure, not arguing that there is no supreme being.  And while you’re doing that, we’ll make sure and pray for our family members to get better since scientists are too hung up on God theory.

Well, sometimes things don’t work out as you plan. And sometimes they work out better than expected. The latter is the case as of this weekend. Talk about a relief!

Wednesday afternoon my school got out at 1 o’clock, and I thought to myself, “Well, this isn’t good. I’m going to miss one of my practices before my concert, and we really need practice.” Then we were off Thursday. That’s when I got really worried. But when Friday was called as well, I knew that I had the opportunity to reschedule the concert in order to make up for the lost practice times. Another thing as a new teacher I have learned: always be ready for anything. After all, this isn’t always the case. I was fortunate to encounter a three-day blizzard in the early days of March 2007. Ten years between blizzards! But it was an awesome phenomenon. I can hardly remember the last one, mostly because I was crazy sick when it hit my 8th grade year (I had been home for one day, and then school was called off for the next six while I recovered).

But that wasn’t the only thing that was thrilling about the long weekend. I also got to do minimal lesson planning (since the lessons were pushed back quite dramatically), and I had fun with friends. My wife and I got to get all of our chores done immediately, and then we enjoyed ourselves. Except for the long waits in line at the airport. That’s what you get when you live in the airport town and your father-in-law lives in Madison, has tickets to O’Hare, and wants to meet his connecting flight to get on a cruise ship in Miami for a business cruise to the Bahamas, all the while knowing that the interstates have been closed due to blizzard conditions. A total of 4 and a half (plus) hours over two days in the airport terminal is a little irritating, but not so irritating as being in there for two or three days straight because your flight to home (or from home) was canceled halfway to the destination. Poor folks. Some of them are probably still sleeping in the terminals. Wish them luck.

Meanwhile, we had three really excellent breakfasts, some fabulous dinner and fun, and a lot of time to chill out. My wife has been sick (again), and that has been a real bummer. But past that, I’ve been pretty pleased with the excessive time off. It’d be a lot more fun if I didn’t have to worry about how the heck I’m going to get through the rest of the nine weeks (ending on March 14), but hey, life isn’t perfect. But it’s dang close.

Hope your blizzardy weekend was enjoyable. If you weren’t in the blizzard, I hope you at least got some time to revel over the gossip in the mass media about celebrities, their strange lives, and their stranger deaths. Is it just me, or do we need something more important to talk about?

MSN.com has just featured an article on how to be more eco-friendly in today’s less-than-ecological world.  It provides fifty tips (taken from Good Housekeeping magazine) on how to make ecological choices the easy way.  Yes, it is possible!  I felt this was an extremely appropriate message at a time of the year when consumption is over-the-top anyway, and our landfills are being piled high with wrapping paper and packaging.

If you want more ideas, go to adbusters.org.  These guys always have something to suggest in terms of earth-friendly habits.  And try, this year, to be more conscious of your ecological impact.  We have forgotten how important the environment is as of late, and we need to remember before we’ve destroyed it completely.

Have a safe and happy holiday season, and enjoy your time with family.  We’re very fortunate to have the lives we have, even if they seem pretty bad to us.

I ran across a fascinating article today. Here’s the link: Santa asked to leave Disney World.

What got me was not that a man was asked to leave Disney World for looking like Santa (although it was an odd request), but that Disney continued on to claim that Santa was a Disney character, and that he shouldn’t be impersonating a Disney character if he wasn’t paid to do so.

Does Disney have anything better to do with their time anymore?

Oh, and Merry Christmas to all. Especially the jolly fellow who got kicked out on behalf of his Christmas cheer.

Some days you have great expectations for the world around you — knowledgeable people, wise decisions, eager and willing individuals desperate for change and growth.  And some days those expectations are utterly destroyed by the simple fact that few people actually give a hoot.  There are just some really careless individuals out there right now.  When do I get to witness the “Bloodthirsty Youth” that TV on the Radio so eagerly sing about?

Maybe never…you see, it seems the world has slowly lost its need to improve.  There are individuals that push and push and push for change, but so often no one ever feels the push (or they ignore it simply because that would be too much work).  I’m starting to learn that at one point I too was like these foolish individuals.  The Allegory of the Cave comes to mind…

There are people out there who just don’t want to move forward.  Whether it’s family problems, money problems, social problems, or intellectual problems, something has kept them from feeling the passion of the real thing, not just the shadows on the wall.  It seems that on a daily basis I run into these people in my classrooms.  Not that everyone is like this — sadly sedentary — but I now know individuals that would much rather  lose a limb to a sawmill than fashion themselves into more avidly intelligent human beings.  It’s honestly incredible.

And it makes me long for my days in college, where I eagerly ate, ate, ate information up like a Weight Watchers dropout at a Royal Fork.  Now I feed, feed, feed, and some people sit there, mouths closed, vehemently humming, “mm-mm!  Mm-mm” while shaking their heads back and forth, letting the knowledge spill over into the abyss.  Wasteful!

But I must give a thank you to those students and friends who so willingly eat up all the information I can give out.  Often times those same students are the ones that most readily help me learn something new.  They listen as great historical facts are laid out in front of them, and they sort through and collect each tidbit, carefully saving it in their minds.  It’s an incredible site, and I wish I saw it more often.

And I can’t totally dismiss those who don’t live for learning.  I learn something from them as well.  I learn patience, perseverance, compassion, and serendipity.  If I’m random enough, eventually something might hit them.  Hook one, and you may never discard that individual.  But it’s finding that bait that is so difficult anymore.  What are the scared of?  Excited by?  Interested in?  What’s new to them?

So, if you’re in college, thinking to yourself, “This is awful, and I can’t wait to get out into the real world where I can make real and consequential change,” just remember: you’re in a golden age of idealism.  Everything you want to do in college can happen there, because it’s all theory.  In the real world, you lose that flexibility, that lucidity.  In the real world it’s like walking in fog, hoping to find the magic button in the middle of a button pasture seventy acres across.  You might find it, but it’s usually a long and arduous process or just plain dumb luck.

Be idealistic.  Be chaotic.  Be optimistic.  Maybe you’ll find the magic way to cure all the world’s problems.  And maybe not.  But it’s not going to start in the real world — it starts where you’re able to focus on theory alone.

And if you recall, even the most visionary of individuals ended up moving into the woods to transcend reality.