Norseman’s Ramble: A Week in the Leif

It’s been a nutty week, a surfeit of constructive action.

For the first time this academic year, I was asked to substtute teach two days in a row: Thursday at a prominent north side high school and Friday at a prominent west side high school. Both days were among the best days substituting in my “career.”

Of course I could not have been asked at a worse time in my other career as an underemployed freelance writher. With my car out of service for a day and a half and visitor whose enthusiastic support is essential to AeroKnow (who also jumped my battery and got me in motion over to Brahler for a $37 quick fix), I was behind the progress curve all de lib long week. But with the Arcadia book deadline looming over me like Snoopy in Vulture personna over an anxious Linus — Linux if you’re incredibly hip with a stretch — being a contracted writer has made a thrifty sleeper out of me, especially when substitute teaching.

Take my Thursday . . . . . please. It was my first 18 hour work day, but as long as they come only once every 60 years, I don’t mind. From about 5:30 to 7:30 I worked on The Book; decent rogress with no radio distracting me. Then to English class, so to speak, all day over north. They were a healthy mix of testy and exemplary. When the full-time teacher warns the sub, “1st & 6th periods will be a handful. Don’t hesitate to write referrals and detentions,” I know I’m walking into an environs that will require what some may call “excessive resolution” early in those wacky, trying hour-long interfaces. Verbal warnings to classes like this have no effect. I speak “verbal warnings” and they react as though I’m throwing M&Ms at them: they eat them up. At times like these, my approach is not to explain to the offenders the errors of their ways and turn them into exemplary citizens. My approach is not to cure the problem, but to remove it. To the credit of EVERY security person responding to my calls on occasions like these, they back me up totally. I truly hate to dismiss any student from class, but these fine people, often accompanied by a Springfield Police officer, see offending students every day and often. What appears to substitutes as “a table overturned” is merely “a misplaced serving spoon” to them. Bless them, every one! What makes it worthwhile to me is the harmony felt with students who pay attention when I ask and focus on their work even when I don’t remind them. In a typical class, of say 25 sudents, at some high schools, there will be five truly exemplary students; at other high schools: 15. It should be more.

After school I spent from about 3:30 to closing in the Sangamon Valley Collection of Lincoln Library.. I researched information from their files and had several pictures scanned. I had intended to leave about 8:30. I was getting hungry and my vending machine lunch was not sustaining me as hoped. Keith, the Sangamon Valley Coll. person working tehind the desk did me a BIG favor in staying late to finish some scans so I would not have to come back Saturday morning. He even called Randy in security to let him know I would be exiting a little bit late. And I did, with my scans in hand. THANK YOU KEITH!

The new-fallen snow — a surprise to me — crunched under my feet as I departed the place. After I brushed the snow off windows, windshield and the driver’s seat of the Soggy Bottom Express, the drive home was delightful, but I was tired. No prob. I’d catch up with the sleep Friday.

The phone was ringing as I entered the hoose (as they say in O’Canada). The substitute teacher service asked if I could work Friday. Absolutely! I LIVE for the privilege of substitute teaching! They gave me a choice. I could have taught English at north again, but I chose special education at west because it was closer.

BOOM! to mine office. Ate dinner at my desk as I took care of email, all related to The Book..I didn’t even watch Charlie Rose. To bed at midnight.

Special ed at the west side high on Fri was the same kind of class I engaged my first day as a substitute some years ago. Several students came to me saying they are concerned that the new District 186 Supervisor is going to close their school down and build a new one out west. I told them they would graduate before that happened. Of course, they were all seniors. First and third period classes watched a DVD about the American space program. They might as well have been asked to watch a panel discussion about Tax Increment Financing for downtown  Istabul businesses. Two classes played dodge ball in the gym annex. I was assisted by women teacher’s aides who monitored the girls’ locker room and pretty much ran the show. These students have P.E. every day they attend school. I told them I was impressed. I was. I wish I could “coach” myself as the assistants coached the students, even to walk a few miles every day. The day was a breeze but by the time I monitored a study hall in 6th period, my wagon was draggin. Not even a vending machine Squirt helped. It was during that time, as three students drew pictures, I finished some serious aviation history journal proof reading. PROGRESS!

I came home and KNEW I had to rest my mind before tackling the book and the neighborhood association newsletter and proofing the rest of the aviation history journal. To get to sleep I would have to eat something. So I ate a PB&J on Honey Wheat, drank a tall glass of iced tea and happed from about 4:30 to about 8:30. I did not watch Bill Moyers, but I did watch an absolutely PERFECT Charlie Rose.

He intereviewed Hank Kissinger, David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker and a former ambassador to Russia, talking about the election in Russia and the future of US relations with Putin, an engrossing discussion that almost had me on the edge of my seat, and I am not kidding. Charlie also interivewed Lorin Maazel, conductor of the New York Symphony who played in North and South Korea last week. Pioneering, fascinating, positive action that. They event netted Maazel just a brief mention in last week’s The New Yorker, but Charlie’s 15 minutes with him as a rainbow with sun and stars all at the same time. Imagine North Koreans hearing Gershwin’s American in Paris and Dvorak’s New World Symphony in a concert hall and broadcast all over the state’s TV network; Maazel had insisted on that. BRAVO Maestro Maazel!  Best Charlie show in a long time. I will remember is longer than a week.

I watched The McLaughlin Group, but it wasn’t pretty. Half of it was three or four or five intelliegent people with the manners of middle school dropouts, talking at the same time. They’re giving middle school dropouts a bad name. But I watched it anyway. I am strong. I carry a beard.

So I stayed up putting the neighborhood newsletter together after completing the proof reading and sending corrections/rewrites to Santa Ana, Californina until 6:30 this morning, had a terrific 2.5 hoiur nap and I’m back, working on the neighborhood newsletter that likely won’t be done until Monday morning. GREAT. I’ll have time to work on The Book this afternoon.

Yaknow, folks . . . some good people whouldn’t know the meaning of DEADLINE if it hung them from a tree by their ankles. That’s because deadlines don’t do that . . . . . and because they don’t, some good people just leave them alone, not unlike what we do with Ron Paul.

Live long . . . . . . . and proper.

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