Nailed It

Today was my first mani-pedi in over three months. Janet from Mancini de Paris texted me two weeks ago to lure me back, but I decided to wait until the initial rush died down to go in.

Molly went with me. The salon was quiet and warm. Mancini had the front doors swung wide open, but no A/C on. I asked Janet if the A/C was broken, or if he was just trying to save money. (He is a known cheapskate in the industry.) She wasn’t sure. I almost passed out from the product fumes. But it’s nice to have one more self care item ticked off of my list.

I had to marvel, though, at Mancini’s ingenuity in preparing for the reopening. He had hung shower rods and curtains from the ceiling so that every pedicure station was encased in plastic. Plexiglass shielded client from manicurist, and he’d given up his primo hair cutting station in order to spread out the manicure desks. Still, the shabby chic vibe prevailed.

Despite the heat, the lack of ventilation, and the claustrophobic shower curtain cubbies, I was glad for a bit of pampering. It was also good to see Janet again, on an un-busy Tuesday, and to know that she’s doing alright.

Puzzle Me This

It took one intensely colorful thousand-piece mandala that consumed me for most of two days to lift me over the hump and get me back into reading again.

All the previous jigsaw puzzles laid out on the card table over the past three months were Brian's doing: the Monet painting (1000 pieces), the National Parks poster art (500 pieces), the Oldtime Baseball cards (300 pieces) and the Quest for Knowledge engraving (500 pieces).

Something about climbing that mandala mountain finally fixed my focus enough that I'm now content to put away puzzles and resume reading again. Reading actual books.

My first book is a recently-published friendship memoir written by my cousin's wife who is also a poet and anthologist of Canadian poetry. It's called The Last Goldfish: a True Tale of Friendship by Anita Lahey. I'm already more than halfway through, and all I want to do is devour. I probably should have finished all of my PD before I started reading, because this is what happens (and possibly why I don't read actual books more often). I can't put it down.

Next on my list is The Hate You Give by Angie Thomas. Molly just read it over the weekend within a twelve-hour time span. She's like me in that she will comb the news, read all kinds of articles and feature stories, or anything that she has to read for school, but rarely pick up an actual book. She claims that all those years of high school English, reading dead white guys, killed her appetite for books, especially fiction.

Now that I've been a dedicated Writer for three months, I'm hoping to spend the summer being an avid Reader. But what was it about that puzzle that helped me shift gears?

       

That’s It?

On Tuesday I returned to school to put my SMART Goal folder back in the file drawer and turn in my keys and badge for the summer. The highlight of this quick trip back into the building was seeing a colleague who is retiring.

On Wednesday we said goodbye to our Dolphin students via a two-hour EOY event on MS Teams that included magic tricks, juggling, a scavenger hunt, and an escape room. We led with student slides and closed with a dance party. The students who attended seemed to have a good time.

Yesterday, I joined several colleagues at the bus loop entrance of the school building for several hours to receive and hand out bagged items. Library books and band uniforms were handed back while gym clothes and locker contents were handed out, all through car windows and back seats. This was a strange way to say goodbye to the small number of students and parents who bothered to do the scheduled drive-by.

All that's left is some professional development and a few meetings this coming week, and the 2019-2020 school year is a wrap.

The Cleaning Brigade

For the first time since March 17th, our house is being professionally cleaned this morning. Hermalinda and her crew of two other young women arrived with masks and gloves at the appointed hour. Like cockroaches, we all cleared out of plain sight. My children withdrew to the basement with their breakfasts, I moved upstairs to Brian’s commuting bunker with my Zoom meeting, and he is off on a morning bike ride. If only I had remembered to grab some coffee first. (Listen to me whine!)

It’s not that we couldn’t or didn’t clean the house in the past three months. But we did things piecemeal and somewhat irregularly, never really getting to the bath tubs or the shower. What I love about a cleaning brigade is how they divide, conquer, and leave the entire place in tip-top shape all at once.

When they leave, we step tentatively out of hiding, eyes blinking at the sparkle and shine, noses basking in the lemony-eucalyptus aroma here and the no-nonsense chlorox scent there, ears listening for any last traces of vacuum, buckets or running water to be sure we are not vacating our hidey-holes prematurely. But no, they are really gone and the house is positively pristine!

The first crumbs are always the hardest ones to abide. But by the end of the day our house will begin to look and feel lived in again, and the cleaning brigade will have conquered several more houses in the neighborhood. Money well spent and well earned. Another familiar routine restored, at least for the time being.

Joanne Woodward

When I was a kid, one of my brothers had a favorite joke insult: Want to lose ten pounds of ugly fat? Cut off your head! Somehow it was always more funny to him than it was to me.

Well, today I'm pretty sure I lost two pounds of dead weight by getting my first haircut in several months. Masks were worn, and there was social distancing between stations, but Beauty Fair is generally a nearly empty hair salon anyway. Even now, as everyone tentatively emerges from quarantine.

This afternoon was just myself and an older lady having the classic shampoo and set, in which they tease the hair to make it seem like it has twice the volume because of how much it has thinned out over the years. My issue is the opposite. My hair is so thick and heavy that I sometimes have to request the thinning scissors to lighten my load.

Frankie was glad to see me. We've known each other for a long time. He's a Moroccan immigrant who lives in my neighborhood. He used to work for Mancini de Paris years ago when Grandma Sue was a regular visitor. He always treated her so well, and he liked to say that she reminded him of Joanne Woodward.

In my mother-in-law's last couple of months, when she came to live with us, Frankie gave her one haircut in the salon and we'd talked about him coming to our home to give her the next one. That never actually happened, but I was grateful to know that he would have come had she lived a bit longer. And not so very long ago I decided to give him my business.

8 Minutes and 46 Seconds

At the end of George Floyd’s memorial service today, Reverend Sharpton asked the attendees to stand silently for the length of time that it took George Floyd to die. He pointed out that it was long enough for the police officer to reconsider what he was doing. Indeed, it was a very long time to be doing anything cruel or deadly to anyone.

It leaves me wondering what on earth goes through a mind that is steadfast in its infliction of pain and discomfort, despite the victim’s repeated pleas of “I can’t breathe!”

In the end, Mr. Floyd was reduced to calling out for his Mama, his late Mama, who could do nothing to help him in this situation, but who one hopes was calling out for him and there to greet him with the kindness and compassion not shown to him in his final moments on this earth.

May George Floyd’s horrible death be the catalyst that finally leads to a real change of heart and mind in this country.

The Iceberg Model

One of my favorite graphic organizers, that fits my visual learning style well, is the Iceberg Model. Today I spent a little time researching the history of this model and it’s various uses over the last century because  it recently resurfaced as a vehicle for explaining overt and covert white supremacy.

Developed by Safehouse Progressive Alliance for Nonviolence (2005) 



and adapted by Ellen Tuzzolo (2016)

As far as I can tell, Freud was the first person to used this model in the early decades of last century. He used it to show the relationship between the conscious and unconscious mind. Edward T. Hall, a cultural anthropologist, developed the Culture Iceberg in the 1970s. Malow’s Hierarchy of Needs pyramid From the 1940s seems to have lent itself nicely to various Behavior Iceberg models that emerged in the decades since, and no double contributed to the philosophy of the Whole Child in education.

Jim Cummins, a Canadian Professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, developed his own Iceberg Models to illustrate his theories of language acquisition and learning. These are the first models I encountered in my education. 

                            

Like any good graphic organizer, or model, the Iceberg is easily adaptable to any number of academic purposes. Who knows, maybe we will even find ways to use it in sixth grade next year. Instead of our character trait hands, maybe icebergs showing the traits most people notice easily and those they may not notice at all. Or perhaps a culture iceberg to introduce Jim Crow laws and their underlying beliefs in our newly expanded history curriculum. (Great Titanic tie in!) Or simply an adapted BICS and CALP model to help my caseload students better understand why they are still considered English Learners after all these years. Hmm...

 

Black Voices

I’m a regular Facebook user. This week I am honoring George Floyd, the African American who was murdered by a Minneapolis policeman on May 25th, by trying to publish only Black Voices on my feed. Here are the posts I’ve shared so far:

Kareem Abdul Jabar:
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-05-30/dont-understand-the-protests-what-youre-seeing-is-people-pushed-to-the-edge

Trevor Noah:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4amCfVbA_c

Ian Desmond:
https://www.thescore.com/mlb/news/1974609

"Painting is healing to me... and theres plenty to heal from now......Painted this tonight, George. Oil on canvas. 12"x16". "

~Ramandip Singh, Washington DC Artist

Seeking Support

In the past two days I've been focused on solving a problem without going to a store or placing an online order. It has to do with Molly's new garden beds that we finally finished building and filling this past weekend. Thanks go to next door neighbors, Tony and Steve, who stepped in after we broke our third drill bit on the thick, dense, aromatic cedar planks. (Shortcake with garden fresh strawberries was delivered to them the very next day.)

Our cucumbers and especially the melons need vertical support. I hemmed and hawed, looked in the basement and in the shed, thought about what we might have up at the school garden that we aren't using, and finally it dawned on me. We've had a "sentry arch" trellis in a box from Gardeners' Supply that's been sitting on our front porch for several months now. It was intended to replace an old, rotting wooden rose arbor that was blown over by high winds last fall. But since ordering the new trellis, our roses have been dug up and given away to clear space for these new raised beds. So we no longer have an immediate need for the trellis.

Ingenuity overtook me, and I came up with the configuration shown below, of which I am quite proud. We still need to secure the cucumber railing somehow, but the melon arch fits tightly against either side of the bed with enough tension to hold it firmly in place. A friend suggested hanging several lengths of twine for the melons to grab and climb. When melons begin to form, we will sling them with old hosiery and attach the ends to the top of the arch. Problem solved!