Strange Little Collecting Project

Sometimes it seems like different areas of my life line up in this weird coincidental way and everything connects…and it is beautiful. In the educational world, we call this cross-curricular learning (which is so effective and therefore rendered useless and impossible due to testing standards, state mandated curriculum, lack of opportunities for inter-departmental communication, etc). I was listening to a song the other day driving to work. It’s by this band, Mumford and Sons, that has the same effect on me that Justin Beiber has on 95% of the female tweenage population. (The only difference is that their harmonies and lyrics have more layers than Bieberlicious’s bangs…impressive, I know). Usually, when I listen to them, I find myself shaking my head in an old-woman-sitting-in-a-Pentecostal-church-saying –“Amen!” kind of way. These are the lyrics that hit me on my way to work recently. “In these bodies we will live—in these bodies we will die Where you invest your love, you inves...

Today one of the smartest people I know pointed something out that I’ve been thinking about all afternoon. I’m not sure how we got on this topic; I guess we were talking about doing something that completely defeats its own purpose (not hard to do when you work in the education realm) and he started telling me about an experience he’d had at the bookstore a few days ago. He was browsing through the essays section when a giant copy of Walden by Henry David Thoreau caught his eye. He said it was beautiful, hardcover edition, much more impressive than any paperback copy he’d ever seen. When he checked out the price, something else occurred to him about this particular edition of Walden. It was a fairly steep $30. Thoreau tells us in his chapter titled “Economy” that the house he built near Walden Pond in 1845 only cost him $28. And for the first time in my life I am able to say with the confidence (but not the pizzazz) of Ric Flair, “My shoes cost more than your house! Wooooooooooo!” Mayb...

After this weeks' championship games, I’m aware that football season is sadly coming to a close. Football is one of my favorite parts about the fall and winter. It means being huddled on cold bleachers drinking hot chocolate (or beer…depending on the venue) surrounded by crisp air. Or it means sitting in around a television in someone’s living room or at a loud bar, surrounded by friends and family, eating (and drinking) carbohydrates. But best of all, it means having something completely out of your control that you can concentrate and invest all of your hope in for just a few hours at a time. It means being a part of a group that is unified (or polarized, depending on your loyalties) by the same driving force: your team’s success. As far as having a team, I’m an orphan, a nomad, Switzerland. I’ve been accused of being a bandwagon fan, but it’s really difficult to actively follow a team when you don’t have cable and also don’t enjoy the over-stimulating environment of sport...

I just re-watched one of my all-time favorite movies in the universe, Pretty in Pink. If you haven’t seen this movie or if you have seen this movie and you don’t like it, there is a 94% chance that you have not (nor will you ever) menstruate. It is also very likely that you will accidentally confuse this film’s deep and innovative plot line with other John Hughes/Molly Ringwald classics like The Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles (especially Sixteen Candles…actually, the plot line is almost identical to Sixteen Candles now that I think about it…and The Breakfast Club…wow). Pretty in Pink is basically about this girl named Andie who is beautiful but in a unique way and she makes a lot of her own clothes and she’s awesome. She works in this hip record store, listens to the coolest music, and talks like an adult. But she’s from the wrong side of the tracks and her single father can hardly make ends meet. So of course Andie falls in love with Blaine who obviously drives a BMW, dresses like...

These last couple days I’ve been obsessed with the concept of implosion. It’s basically the act of an organism collapsing in on itself. It involves a lot of science that I can’t understand or explain. (Like really, I cannot but one of my three Bio 101 professors could in a heart-beat…third time’s a charm apparently). It can happen when the pressure outside of the organism is too great and it collapses inward under the strain, like a submarine imploding because of water pressure when it goes to great depths. Implosion is also responsible for those “water tornadoes” that happen in the bathtub when you drain it. A vortex is created by the process of implosion (again, I have no idea how). In the construction world, unwanted and dilapidated buildings are imploded so they collapse in on themselves instead of falling and harming the structures around them. Demolition teams strategically place dynamite throughout the building so it blows in instead of up or out. (Apparently there are entire gr...

Disclaimer: This post is about 80% less cheerful than usual and I’m going to be stepping on some toes with this one…so let me clarify. I understand that there is merit to the Upward Sports program. I understand that it is a ministry that many of my friends and my friends’ children and grandchildren are involved in. I understand that it creates a healthy, stable, and safe environment for children to learn valuable social and athletic abilities and protects children from psychotic pee-wee coaches that want to win so bad, it hurts...literally. Yet, I do believe it is a metaphor for the current ideological shift in American society; I am not however saying it is the cause of this shift. (Also, I’d like to apologize in advance to people that know me well or who work with me that might be reading this. You can actually just quit reading, because I’m almost positive that you’ve been harangued about this at least once in the last 48 hours by yours truly. Just skip this and tool around on YouTu...

Today, the ancient lady that was in front of me in line at Harris Teeter kept turning around and saying, “Global warming my fo-ot (said with two syllables).” My response was the same the first two times she said it. “I’m not really a scientist, but I think colder winters are a part of it.” Then I downgraded to “oh,” and “yeah,” and “uh-huh,” and “amen.” She had plenty of time to accost me because the line was as expansive as Poe’s syntax. (Google “The Fall of the House of Usher” and try to read the first sentence in one, natural-sounding breath). Her gem-toned wind-suit/turtle neck combination told me that she probably only left the house when it was truly necessary, and the prescription of her glasses made me pray that her younger, sprightlier husband was waiting for her in the driver seat of their Mercury Sable. She was surely a part of the Senior Citizens' Discount crowd that got their grocery shopping done every Thursday morning at 7am, sharp. What type of an emergency would br...

It has come to my attention that our society has an unhealthy and maniacal obsession with communication. Tonight, in the bathroom of Barnes and Nobles, I was startled to hear the lady in the stall next to mine emphatically and audibly agreeing with her toilet. “Oh yes. Absolutely! That’s exactly right!” It finally occurred to me that this woman was sitting in a public restroom stall, talking on her cell-phone. I was shocked, disgusted, and more than a little amused. And then she said this: “I’m sorry Susan, I’m going to have to ask you to repeat what you just said. I’m in the bathroom here at Barnes and Nobles and I can’t hear you over the stream of the girl peeing beside me.” (In reference to my stream). My amusement turned to rage quicker than you could say “automatic hand-dryer.” Since when is it A.) okay to take your phone into a public restroom stall and then B.) complain about the noise of someone’s stream? When I flushed my toilet, the classiest lady in the world was enrag...