June 2006 Archives

Pre-order Literary Cash : Writings Inspired by the Legendary Johnny Cash before its January 2007 release by BenBella Books and enjoy PC's "The Snow Chaser" (based on Cash's "Field of Diamonds") and other Cash-inspired stories by Gretchen Moran Laskas (The Midwife's Tale), Gayle Brandeis (The Book of Dead Birds), Deborah Grabien (The Weaver and the Factory Maid), Russell Rowland (In Open Spaces), and Lauren Baratz-Logsted (The Thin Pink Line), among others.

Commuting. WHY does anyone do it?!

This sincere crie de coeur comes as a result of several recent trips to the DC and Baltimore areas, most of which turned out to be stress biscuits of the most enormous size and appalling consistency.

The first was a couple of weeks back, my colleague John needed a driver to take him to Dulles; he's spending the summer in Montenegro and didn't want to leave his car in long-term parking, so I volunteered to drive him up. (Hey, the WFS faculty looks after its own; besides, I figured I could use the karma points.) We stopped in Centreville so John could buy me a good Korean lunch, and we even ducked into the Trader Joe's next door to buy ridiculously upscale chocolate almonds and granola, but I had no trouble getting him to the terminal on time. I shook his hand, waved goodbye, and pulled out--into what I suddenly realized was rush-hour DC-area traffic.

Highway 28 is never less than six lanes from Dulles to I-66. In most places it's eight or ten. But if you're on it anywhere from mid-afternoon to early evening, you'll be lucky to spend less than half an hour crawling the ten miles to the interstate. I explored the limits of first gear in a Jetta, fiddled with John's radio, tossed back a few (dozen) chocolate almonds, and finally took the exit onto I-66, where traffic was backed up all the way to the far side of Manassas, which is (not coincidentally) where the road narrows from ten lanes to four. I limped home, logy and twitchy from too much chocolate and talk radio, and collapsed into bed.

My next trip north was made for a much more enjoyable reason: the return of collegial karma points. My veteran colleague Bill is spending the summer in Pennsylvania, but he called me out of the blue asking if I'd be interested in the Orioles-Nationals game in Baltimore. I said sure. Bill said he had four tickets, if the whole family would like to go. I said sure again. He said there was a parking pass, too. I said way sure. He dropped the whole shmear in the mail, and on Saturday afternoon we piled into the car and headed to Baltimore. Traffic was a bit tight on the Beltway--shocked, shocked you are to find gambling going on in this establishment--but once we got into the 95 corridor, we got into Bawlamer with minimal trouble.

I was a bit puzzled by the tickets, though. I knew we were in Section 46, which I could tell from the Orioles' website was a great place to watch the game: on the third-base side, almost looking down the right-field line toward the B&O warehouse. What I couldn't find was row AAA, which I presumed to be behind row ZZ--but there wasn't a row ZZ. Puzzled, I approached an usher and asked for help; he obligingly led us down the aisle to the front row of the section. The only thing between us and the Nats' on-deck circle were two railings and a pit for photographers; when Jose Vidro was standing in front of me, he blocked my view of Alfonso Soriano at the plate. (I couldn't blame him; what was I going to do, yell "Down in front, Jose!"?) The only thing between us and the Nats' dugout on our left was a single railing. Davy Lopes was there, big as life (if a bit greyer), tossing foul balls to kids all around us. (Our kids are now too old for this, apparently.)

This was my fourth major league game; I'd been to Fulton County Stadium in 1975 (where I saw Hank Aaron & Johnny Bench in a Braves-Reds game!), PNC Park in 2002 (where I genuflected before the bronze statue of Roberto Clemente), and Fenway Park in 2004 (where I saw the soon-to-be World Series Champs emerge victorious over the Mariners thanks to a David Ortiz grand slam). It was the first time Kelly or the kids had been to anything above Triple A ball, though, so I tried to take some reaonably close notes of the game. We saw O's catcher Ramon Hernandez smack a homer in the bottom of one inning and throw out two baserunners in the top of another. We saw Nats center fielder Marlon Byrd swipe two hits from Oriole third baseman Melvin Mora, one a fly to left center that he snagged at the top of a leap against the fence. (Greg, my neighbor, who watched the game on TV, agrees with me that Byrd robbed Mora of a homer, but the official stats just call it a fly-out.) And we saw the forearm muscles of Nats left fielder Alfonso Soriano from a great distance--the man is cut.

We also saw that we could buy crab cake sandwiches for ten bucks a pop. Realizing that free tickets and free parking left us with a bit more concession money than usual, Kelly and I splurged, and man, it was good splurging. I also ate the required ballpark hot dog, which cost five bucks, but was probably the best ballpark frank I've ever eaten.

But after six innings, the heavens opened up, and after twenty-odd minutes of cowering in the rain, we decided it was time to leave. The rain delay was ending by the time we got out, but the kids were ready to boogie, and I still had doubts about the weather, doubts which were reinforced by the pounding rain that started hitting us intermittently as we made our way back to DC. The Beltway passage was once again slow, but now it was also rainy, and before before long it was also dark, leading to my least-favorite driving conditions. Well, next-to-least favorite, because we were at least moving. But that qualifier disappeared as we got around the I-270 interchange and found all four lanes of the Outer Loop stalled. We had the satisfaction of knowing that the game had been stopped again, with the teams tied 2-2 in the middle of the 9th, but all it meant now was that we couldn't listen to the game while we sat in traffic.

Eventually we approached the I-66 exit, where we learned at least one reason for the delay: there was a state trooper blocking the exit. His cruiser's blue lights weren't flashing, but he was sideways to the traffic and turning a few cars back into the flow. Denied its chance to cut down on the flow of cars, I-66 remained a clogged artery all the way to the next exit--VA 50, which runs right through downtown Fairfax. We took the exit and discovered what happens when you combine NoVa's usual Saturday night traffic with the westbound I-66 traffic: total gridlock.

Two hours after we left Baltimore, we reached the parking lot of Trader Joe's in Centreville. It had closed at 9:00. I got out from behind the wheel and let Kelly take the rest of the drive. I think I unclenched somewhere near Culpeper.

But yesterday we once again piled back into the car, this time with a mission combining stress, panic, adventure, and opportunity: we took Thing Two to Dulles. He's traveling the British Isles with the People to People exchange group. He's been looking forward to this trip for nearly nine months now, but the reality that he was going to be on a separate continent from his family for several weeks was really only now setting in--for both him and his mom. He's never been away for more than a couple of days at a time, so the separation anxiety was pretty strong from a couple of directions, but as he put it, "I guess if I get homesick, oh well." I've been pretty positive about the whole program--well, maybe not about paying for it--but I'm biased, since I did my own exchange trip to England. (Sure, I was twenty, not twelve, but I did it for a whole year, so that should count for something.) Still, it was hard to stand around the Dulles terminal for over an hour, waiting for the twenty-odd kids to get their bags checked, then hug him goodbye and send him off to get patted down by security and cavity-searched and then left in the terminal by an uncaring chaperone and fed bad fish by a contagious flight attendant and traumatized by having the plane landed by a neurotic passenger with a drinking problem...

But we managed. We saw him off, walked back through the rain to the car, turned the key in the ignition, and looked at the clock: 4:50 p.m. And somewhere on 28, the hordes of rain-dampened commuters were opening their arms to welcome us, like the crazed carnival performers at the end of Freaks: "One of us! One of us! One of us!..."

Short version: we made it back home before Thing Two landed at Heathrow. But just barely.

6:46 PM

Yes, Literary Cash : Writings Inspired by the Legendary Johnny Cash can still be ordered before its January 2007 release by BenBella Books)! PC's "The Snow Chaser" (based on Cash's "Field of Diamonds") appears alongside Cash-inspired stories by Deborah Grabien (The Weaver and the Factory Maid), Russell Rowland (In Open Spaces), Gayle Brandeis (The Book of Dead Birds), Lauren Baratz-Logsted (The Thin Pink Line), and Gretchen Moran Laskas (The Midwife's Tale), among others.

There's a certain sense of accomplishment in finishing something you meant to finish a looooong time ago, just as there's a certain sense of embarrassment in admitting that you didn't actually finish it earlier.

In this case, I feel sort of like a kid who grew up immersed in the fantasy genre--watching fantasy movies, playing D&D, and reading novels by Robert Jordan and Terry Brooks, say--but who just hadn't gotten around to finishing the Big Kahuna of genre fantasy: Tolkien's actual Lord of the Rings trilogy. In the same way, I have been a devoted fan of books about natural history and evolution for a good twenty years, devouring practically everything ever committed to paper by Stephen Jay Gould, Lewis Thomas, and David Quammen, among others, but somehow, y'know, uh, I'd never actually, well, finished reading, uh, y'see...

The Origin of Species.

As I mentioned earlier, I'd started Darwin's opus a couple of times, but despite his admirably clear style--something not always found in the writings of working naturalists--I kept putting it aside. Then I'd plow through the next collection of Gould essays like a teenager through a bag of Doritos, and in the cheesy, MSG-filled aftermath, I'd lie back and think to myself, "Y'know, I really ought to pick up Darwin again."

But every time I did, I'd get distracted by something else--often school, sometimes the newer, shinier, flashier writing of Darwin's followers--and soon I'd discover it had been weeks since I'd picked up Origin.

Luckily, this time I had the time, the inclination, and the proper edition: an attractive salmon-colored B&N Classics trade paperback, edited by George Levine, which featured the text of the first edition (which was, I learned, the only edition published with the title ON the Origin of Species--Darwin dropped the "on" for the 2nd and all later editions) and a number of helpful notes, appendices, and other material. It was, I'm happy to report, an entirely pleasant reading experience. Being familiar with many of the issues made some sections easier to understand, though I was occasionally put off by a comment that had been contradicted or clarified through later discoveries. Still, can you blame the guy for being slightly off-target in 1859, before the work of Mendel, Mayr, Crick & Watson, and even Freud and Einstein was published?

In fact, what is most impressive about Darwin is how well his observations fit into what we now know about heredity, genetics, and related matters. For a guy who never heard the word "gene," let alone saw the double helix of a DNA molecule, he had an astonishing ability to predict what future scientists would eventually confirm: that the taxonomic order established by Linnaeus was actually a family tree.

Perhaps my greatest delight with this edition, however, is the inclusion of several comments by Darwin's contemporaries and biographers. Many were obviously unable to get their heads around what were at the time radical departures from traditional thinking, but a number suggested areas where further research was needed, and others offered helpful support for Darwin's ideas. That T.H. Huxley was one of the latter should come as no surprise--this was the guy nicknamed "Darwin's Bulldog" in later years--but Levine includes this wonderful argument from an early (and not entirely favorable) Huxley piece in the Westminster Review (1860):

[I]t is said that there is no real analogy between the selection which takes place under domestication, by human influence, and any operation which can be effected by Nature... Even putting aside the question whether Nature, acting as she does according to definite and invariable laws, can be rightly called an unintelligent agent, such a position as this is wholly untenable. Mix salt and sand, and it shall puzzle the wisest of men, with his mere natural appliances, to separate all the grains of sand from the grains of salt; but a shower of rain will effect the same object in ten minutes.

Or, as Kelly put it, "Hey, let's see YOU build a stalactite!"

That's an argument I'll be keeping in mind next time I have to debate with a creationist--which happens surprisingly often. In any case, I'm now basking in that sated, happy feeling that comes when one has finally digested a classic and found it tasty.

Next up: Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver--the first volume of his enormo-series The Baroque Cycle.

On to the ice cream!

10:17 PM

Don't panic! There's still time to pre-order Literary Cash : Writings Inspired by the Legendary Johnny Cash before its January 2007 release by BenBella Books)! Enjoy PC's own "The Snow Chaser" (based on Cash's "Field of Diamonds") plus Cash-inspired stories by Deborah Grabien (The Weaver and the Factory Maid), Russell Rowland (In Open Spaces), Gayle Brandeis (The Book of Dead Birds), Lauren Baratz-Logsted (The Thin Pink Line), and Gretchen Moran Laskas (The Midwife's Tale), among others.

LBJs

*It's a challenge, and sometimes a chore, to be the dungeon master, but on any evening where you get to role-play a hostile killer whale, an aggressive cave bear, AND a giant ram, all in random encounters, you've got to feel as though the night's work hasn't been wasted.

*Kel and I have put in two straight days in the fitness center, which for me consists largely of cardio work on the elliptical machine, but I did take some time to do a little upper-body work yesterday, and all I can say is that my lats still hurt. I wasn't even sure I had lats.

*We got another disc of Battlestar Galactica from NetFlix today, and the boys and I have already plowed through three of its four episodes. I must say they're keeping it interesting. I've still got some big questions about the similarities between the Galactican civilization and our own, but the characterization and the plotting are top-notch, and they're still finding ways to make me say "Oh--I didn't see that coming." Definitely one of the best SF shows TV has yet offered.

*In general, I think space sagas, whether on TV or in the movies, are limited by one big thing: gravity. It's fairly easy to create the illusion of space flight in every other way--through sound editing, creative lighting, a few good matte paintings of planets, etc. But gravity, to quote the Tick, "is a harsh mistress." You can put some people on wires, but it's rarely convincing, and until we make ALL the characters into collections of digitized polygons, there's only one way to consistently create a zero-G environment: put your set into free fall. It's doable, but you'll spend a bundle of money renting a C-130 in which to build your set, as the makers of Apollo 13 did, and then sending it into a power dive whenever you need free-fall effects. I'm still waiting for a show that manages even to create a convincing high-G or low-G planet. Ah, well. I guess I'll be waiting for a long time before somebody options Hal Clement's Mission of Gravity.

*I decided it was time to go for it all and finally finish reading the book that has launched so much of my reading: Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species. I've started it a number of times, but despite its clear and readable style, it would sometimes drift out of my personal orbit, and it's not an easy book to pick up in the middle. This time I decided to stack the deck, though: instead of checking out a thick, unwieldy library copy, I bought myself an attractive salmon-colored trade paperback B&N Classics edition. It was only eight bucks for a book I'm sure to refer to in the future, but it's a whole lot more readable when it's mine all mine. (I'm trying the same trick with a new Vintage trade edition of Pale Fire; the school library has a big ol' plastic-covered clunker, and I couldn't make the experience pleasant even with Nabokov's gorgeous prose.) In general, I believe you can't judge a book by its cover, but there's no question that I find it considerably easier to read paperbacks, and that I like trades better than mass-market editions. So maybe I can judge the book by the kind of cover, even if I don't take much stock in what's actually printed on the cover.

*My Varied Buntings are languishing in sixth place in the current Injustice League standings. Since only the top four teams make the playoffs, it's important that they make their move ASAP. Coco Crisp seems to be coming out of his slump now that he's batting eighth; let's hope something can give Mark Teixeira a similar boost. What I'm counting on, however, is my starting pitchers, all of whom have shown SOME signs of life, but never at the same time: Mike Mussina, Josh Beckett, Randy Johnson, Mark Buehrle, Barry Zito... it's time to step up, gents.

*The Heat has just brought to an end a cherished streak: for the past 15 years, each NBA champion has been defined by the presence of a player from the state of North Carolina on the roster. Since Michael Jordan's first ring in 1991, every NBA champ has received significant contributions from at least one player who went to college in the Old North State. The Mavs have Stack, Wake Forest's Josh Howard, and NC State's Josh Powell. The Heat? Nobody. Well, assistant coach Bob McAdoo spent a year in Carolina blue; apparently that was enough. But still, if I were Mark Cuban, I'd be checking to see where those referees were from.

*If you need to know the details:
1991: Jordan, Scott Williams
92: ", "
93: ", "
94: Kenny Smith
95: Smith, Pete Chilcutt
96: Jordan
97: "
98: "
99: Tim Duncan
00: Rick Fox
01: "
02: "
03: Duncan, Danny Ferry
04: Rasheed Wallace
05: Duncan
And yes, Ferry is only the second Duke player to win an NBA title. (Jeff Mullins got one with the Warriors in '75.) Thirteen different UNC players have won a total of 27 NBA rings. (In fact, only four Duke players have ever made it INTO the NBA Finals.)

*Twice in the past few weeks, I've discovered a big-ass snapping turtle crawling from one water hazard to another. If this thing's shell is less than 15 inches long, I'd be shocked. I think it's decided that #2's pond is more to its liking, but I don't think I'd go swimming there or in #8, just in case.

*The good news is that our home computer is once again working. The bad news is that it no longer seems to recognize either the CD burner in drive E or the USB port that allows me to hook up my digital camera. I've transferred my pics to my school laptop, but I've got to figure out a way to get the desktop working properly.

*This business of not teaching during the summer? I could get used to it...

4:31 AM

OK, I know this says something about my strength of character, but I've currently got a piece of spam in my mailbox that I'm unable to delete.

Not because of some technical issue. I just can't bear to get rid of it. Why not?

Its subject line is "Always check for ferrets before sitting"

How can anyone argue with that?

And how could I possibly live without it?

8:21 PM

Pre-order Literary Cash : Writings Inspired by the Legendary Johnny Cash (to be released in January 2007 by BenBella Books), featuring PC's own "The Snow Chaser" (based on Cash's "Field of Diamonds") plus Cash-inspired stories such as Deborah Grabien (The Weaver and the Factory Maid), Russell Rowland (In Open Spaces), Gayle Brandeis (The Book of Dead Birds), Lauren Baratz-Logsted (The Thin Pink Line), and Gretchen Moran Laskas (The Midwife's Tale).

There is absolutely no way the movie can be as good.

That's a sentence I've often uttered, and one you've probably said at least once in your life. You hear about a movie that's coming out, and since it's based on one of your favorite books (or perhaps favorite TV shows, or nowadays even favorite video games), your skepticism immediately asserts itself. No, given how few books (or TV shows, or video games) become decent movies, the odds are that this movie will come up short, too. Sure, you can think about those movie adaptations which have at least been good ones (To Kill a Mockingbird, The Lord of the Rings, Fight Club, The Hours, Housekeeping, V for Vendetta, High Fidelity, Sense and Sensibility), or those precious few that have been BETTER than the source material (Jaws, The Wizard of Oz, reputedly The Godfather). But it's much easier to run down the list of written sources whose movie adaptations have been failures: Catch-22, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Possession, A Boy and His Dog, Hulk, Millennium, Daredevil, Cold Mountain, The Great Gatsby, From Hell, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Earthsea, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, Stuart Little, The Name of the Rose, The Perfect Storm, Dune, Watership Down, A Sound of Thunder, Fantastic Four, and lord knows The Scarlet Letter.

So I'm well aware that there's just no way--none, zip, zilch, nada--that the movie can be nearly as good as the source in this case. Because the source is... well, it's just sublime. A singular combination of words, pregnant with meaning, suggestive of a whole range of ineffable possibilities. A perfect plum blossom of language, existing in its tiny space yet opening onto vast landscapes of human experience. Are there four English words more perfectly composed and arranged than these?

Snakes on a Plane

I know, I know. The dull reality of the film cannot possibly hold a candle to the blazing supernova that phrase sets alight in the imagination. But lord, what a phrase! The producers once toyed with the idea of changing the film's title, but the hostile buzz across the internet persuaded them to leave it alone. If it were just a movie about snakes on a plane, it would just be--stupid. But with this title, its entire raison d'etre pulsates with life, right there, right in front of you! The act of naming and the act of being are one! Fiat Snakes!

Plus it stars Samuel L. Jackson, so you know these won't be merely snakes, but will be motherfuckin' snakes.

But more than all this, it opens up possibilities for everything else. Snakes on a Plane: The Novelization! Snakes on a Plane Happy Meals! The 30-Second Bunnies Theatre Troupe perform Snakes on a Plane in thirty seconds! Snakes on a Plane: The Musical! And of course the soundtrack album, featuring the haunting "Love Theme from Snakes on a Plane" performed by Peabo Bryson and Ashlee Simpson!

I know it's just going to be some cheesy movie, but in its way, this could be the pinnacle of civilization as we know it.

Well, it should be.

7:19 PM

Yes, Literary Cash : Writings Inspired by the Legendary Johnny Cash can still be pre-ordered from Amazon, with a January 2007 release scheduled from BenBella Books. Enjoy Cash-inspired stories such as PC's own "Field of Diamonds," plus stories by Russell Rowland (In Open Spaces), Gayle Brandeis (The Book of Dead Birds), and Gretchen Moran Laskas (The Midwife's Tale).

Lo, I am vacated!

Our faculty meeting ended at about 12:30 Monday, leaving me little to do except write my advisee comments. Oh, and drive a colleague to Dulles yesterday. And buy groceries. And get the poor dog some Frontline for the sudden outbreak of fleas. And get some writing done. And run shuttle duty for the boys, who finish their school years today. And clean out my dresser drawer. And do some dishes. Oh, and get our fershlugginer home computer repaired. (Everything seems in order, except that the CD-burning drive is out of whack somehow; Windows Media Player doesn't seem to recognize its existence.

The rest of the time I've spent either surfing the web or watching DVDs (thanx, karabair!) of Homicide: Life on the Street, which I never got to see when it was on the air. Very good stuff. A strong cast is just one of the treats; I'd seen Ned Beatty, Yaphet Kotto, and Richard Belzer elsewhere, but Andre Braugher, Kyle Secor, and Melissa Leo were revelations. The writing was daring, too--some things I saw in later series apparently got their genesis here--and the use of Baltimore-area locations was a refreshing change from the usual LA/NY tyranny.

But I'm still not really on vacation quite yet. I'll need a pool for that, and until the Woodberry outdoor pool is complete, I'll feel somewhat linked to the school year. What's frustrating is that the pool was condemned just before the summer of 2004--and it STILL hasn't been replaced. This is a not-inconsiderably perk for the faculty, granted, but the pool is also something our students use (at least in September and May), and they haven't had the chance for the last two school years. It's apparently scheduled to be ready sometime in July, but the site still looks a long way from completion to my layman's eyes. Ah, well. Maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised.

I've also got to get into summer reading mode, which will be a lot easier once I've spent this $50 gift card from Barnes & Noble. I'm not entirely sure what I'll buy, though. I'm pretty sure I'm going to try to find a Vintage paperback of Nabokov's Pale Fire; I've tried reading our library's hardback several times, but there's something about the combination of the physical book--thick, plastic-covered, boring cover--and the peculiar makeup of the novel (it's written as an introduction, a poem, and then a lengthy set of endnotes on the poem) that have left me unable to make headway for more than a few dozen pages at a time. I'll get tired and put it down, but then I'll have gotten out of the mood, or forgotten too many details to get back into it. I think it'll require my full attention for a while. And I'm willing to give it that attention--I thought Lolita was absolutely brilliant, and I've enjoyed some other Nabokov-like books (John Lanchester's The Debt to Pleasure and Glen Duncan's I, Lucifer, for example) immensely.

But before any of that gets going, I'm going to head to school to pick up Ian, then sit down with my next-door neighbor and enjoy the delight that is World Cup soccer! Yes, it's Germany v. Costa Rica, in less than an hour, and I for one plan to soak up all the futbol goodness I can manage before the summer's date hits double digits.

3:44 PM

Only six months remain to order Literary Cash : Writings Inspired by the Legendary Johnny Cash! In January 2007, when BenBella Books releases it, EVERYONE will want one! Cash-inspired stories by Russell Rowland (In Open Spaces), Gayle Brandeis (The Book of Dead Birds), and Gretchen Moran Laskas (The Midwife's Tale), plus PC's own "Field of Diamonds," are sure to delight Cash fans and literati alike.

Well, there's some good news on the bird front: I finally logged a Flicker in 2006. It was a female over in our old stomping ground, Grelen Farm, flying along a fence line and behaving a good deal more like a Grasshopper Sparrow than a woodpecker. I've heard others mention the decline in the local Flicker population, too--did anyone see this coming? Have any of the various counts or Feederwatch reports anticipated it? Hmm...

Otherwise, things are rushing to their ending here at the Forest. Graduation was this past Saturday, exams started Monday, and I'm going to try to have all my grades and comments done by Saturday morning. (I'm 56% of the way there as of this writing.)

Naturally, this kind of deadline pressure results in my having lots and lots of ideas about other things I could be writing. I could get back to A Raven for Doves for another edit, or break out Mother Wit and try to complete my half, or I could put it all aside and work on this idea I've been kicking around for a comic book series. It started as an idea for a Defenders series for Marvel, but now I'm wondering if it wouldn't work better with original characters; naturally, this all presumes that I have a choice in the matter, and that Marvel would be remotely interested in the work of a crazed non-fiction writer. Then again, I know that God's Own Letterer, Todd Klein, is a birder, so maybe he'll hook me up with an editor sometime...

It's also a busy time for the kidfolks. Dixon's had state-mandated Standards of Learning tests in practically every subject over the past few weeks, plus the Fireman's Fair parade tonight. he's also buckling down for his trip to England, Ireland, and Wales this summer--an exciting (and increasingly real) prospect. Meanwhile, Ian's close to finishing up his year-end project for Blue Ridge Virtual Governor's School, and we're going to see his final presentation tomorrow. He's also spent the last two weeks taking SOL tests (really, what Virginian genius came up with that set of initials? Standards of Learning my ass...) and finishing up coursework. Oh, and he had his final band concert of the year last night... and is in the parade tonight.

Anyway, to help him through this busy time, I spent yesterday evening in one of my personal levels of hell, a mass meeting of parents of students taking honors courses, all of whom needed to get the summer reading assignments from the honors teachers. The teachers were in various classrooms, the locations of which were printed on bright green sheets of paper--piles of which were being clutched to the bosoms of every guidance counselor at OCHS. Why these weren't being handed out at the door I can only guess; I had to corner one guy and pointedly ask for one. Those less forward than I could only look at them longingly. Worse, none of us knew for sure which teachers we needed to see because we didn't have copies of our childrens' schedules. Rumor had it that the counselors had printouts of these, too, but as far as we knew they were clutched deep within the camouflaging stacks of green paper--damn, but they were clever! Without information as to which teachers to meet or where to find them, we milled. Oh, we milled.

Recognizing the confusion, some self-unidentified administrator picked up a microphone and demonstrated what sadly seems to be a near-universal problem: the people who need to talk to large groups never have any idea how to use a mic. This guy muttered something like "barleywattlebacchanaltudoradamant" and waved toward one end of the room, said "hamiltonianbarracksankleboard" and waved toward another area, then finished with "ocularbondorangutanduplicity" and waved both hands toward still another area. Mystified, hundreds of us wandered aimlessly around the cafeteria, hoping someone else spoke fluent gibberish.

Eventually, having crossed the room to each of the areas indicated by the Gibberer, I found myself in a crowd surrounding a table where one counselor had set down her piles of paper. There seemed to be vague indications of a line, and I didn't want to break in front, but I couldn't see what the line might be for. Instead, the counselor was engaged in a spirited discussion with a parent. I waited for her to finish the discussion and address the assembled group, but to no avail--the conversation seemed to have taken on a life of its own. Parents around me looked around, puzzled, fearful, like zebras in the press beside the water hole, wondering where the lions were, and when they'd hit us. I glanced down at the table and noted that the stacks of paper were in fact stacks of schedules. I looked left, then back at the piles--yes, one of them was identified as "10"--Ian's grade for next year. I looked right, then down at the cover sheet, which listed the sophomores in alphabetical order--and yes, Ian's name was on it. I looked left again, right again, then bent down behind the counselor, flipped swiftly through the stack of schedules, found one marked CASHWELL, IAN, and yanked it neatly away. Stealing a furtive look at my precious green sheet, I slipped into the hallway and left the groaning herd behind.

There are times to be a good little zebra, but sometimes a man has to lick his canine teeth and go down to the waterhole ready to bite. Especially when the entire gathering seems to have been organized by exactly the sickly, unfit wildebeests that are mostly likely to get dragged down by a croc.

8:51 PM