Always, the Kindness of Strangers

Four classes back to back to back to back and all I wanted was to get home. First though, I needed to gas up the car. I did.

And then the car wouldn't start. The key fob just stopped working.

The temperature was in the teens (with bitter, biting winds), so I fiddled with the key fob, then scooted into the gas station looking for fob batteries (they didn’t have them) and then tried to get warm. I was piteously warming my frozen fingers on the side of the coffee maker when this woman with a gigantic, Kardashian sized ring asked me what was up. I thought she wanted me to move along. And I will forever be ashamed that I thrust my chin out mutinously, thinking mean thoughts about her, and told her I was trying to fix my key fob.

After that, she just took over. She found her reading glasses, pried the fob apart, and found some button cell batteries from old Christmas decorations, replaced the battery, checked it from the gas station window, gave me hug, and sent me on my way.

I got her name so I can take her a card and some pastries tomorrow, but it doesn’t feel like I can ever thank her enough.

_

The Schuyler Sisters

The craziest game du jour that NuNu and the other Hamilton-Nerds at school are playing. It involves the Schuyler sisters taking over the administration and sometimes results in all the characters drawn in skirts and tees. (Aaron Burr’s tee says: “Talk less; smile more.”)

_

Post-it Palimpsests

-->

I should get a better picture and write it up sometime, but my students played along to this activity I made up that I’m calling “Post-it Palimpsest”—layering reading, experience, theory, and intersectional approaches in varying sequences.

_

Darkling

I startle awake near 3 am

when you come home

when you come to bed

It seems ten inches of snow 

arrived early (unlike you)

but (like you) suprises

You're word and work-tired,
cross--a sword or some all-

over weapon--a rock 

I should shine you up David,

Goliath. I'm already reach-
ing, are you ready?

_

The final word...

Big A's first appearance in the NYT (1975).  He is the final, hyphenated word in the obituary:

"Surviving are a daughter by a previous marriage, Louise Laskey, a sculptor; a grandson, and a great‐grandson."

I was looking for references to Louise for Nu since it's one of her middle names and she may have inherited some of that artistic talent when I found this (and was oddly overcome with love for a baby Big A).

_

Mt. Hope

We walked to Mt. Hope for the first time this year. The thaw is here and the smells must be wondrous because Scout and Huck could barely take two steps without nose-exploring. Scout found that the smells on all the utility poles he had tagged in the fall had faded, so he had to pee-graffiti all of them again.

__