25 June 2011

Notes - break, kiddo / AZ forest fires

        Six months from Christmas! After noon, and we are over at Pine Hill park which is packed with people. On the walk we stopped and watched a cricket match taking place, a group of mostly Indians – fourteen total players. Everyone was having a good time. It was fun to watch. I haven’t seen a cricket game live since we lived in Sao Paulo and on our semi-weekly sojourns to the British Club [Athletic Club of Sao Paulo – SPAC] we would see a match now and then. Carol is finishing her walk so it is time to go.

         Early mid-afternoon and you sitting in the small park along the Little Miami finishing up a Subway picnic – a wonderful spring afternoon in the first week of summer for sitting under a canopy of tree limbs and leaves listening to ‘Watercolors/Jazz’ on XM. Not the time for writing of the Dead, orndorff, relax and enjoy what they cannot. – Amorella.

         You are home, helped with the flower garden, now inside with the cat as Carol continues weeding. Curious, you downloaded Google Earth and searched the Athletic Club of Sao Paulo and found it, what’s more, there are street level photos of the city which did not exist a couple of years ago. You find this, “most cool”.

         I had forgotten that it was the Athletic Club, founded in the late 1880’s by the British. We always called it the British Club, one location is downtown and the other, which was much closer to us, is in Santo Amoro. These things mean nothing to anyone but ourselves, no doubt boring as it has no relevance to those who have never experienced the place.

         This may be true, orndorff, but you have never experienced Elysium yet still find it quite interesting. – Amorella.

         It is a part of who I am, Amorella. I self-identify with the blog and the books. Very self-centered, I realize this. The cricket match in Pine Hill park brought back many memories. I should have stopped right there, but didn’t. Again, like my old lectures, I would get off base and obviously I still do.

         It would be dishonest to apologize, boy; that is the reason you are not doing so. You did apologize to students many times, but mostly they did not mind.

         Of course not. They did not have to take notes on my ramblings from the central focus. They could listen or not. No testing, no essay over ramblings. I would not do well on state teacher evaluations. Thank goodness I am retired.

         You don’t care that you would not do well on modern state teacher evaluations. Like your old friend and Mason colleague, Gary Popplewell, would say, “Orndorff is that arrogant.”

         That’s funny. Yes, he would say that. I have heard him say that or its equivalent several times in my career. I know that tone and inflection. I laughed most of the times he said it, though once or twice I was so pissed about the situation, I did not laugh. Forcing me to take the initial “Ohio Writing Project” – I was so angry. Even when I arrived the professor, who I already knew, said, “Why are you here?” So, I told him. It was humiliating to me. I had been writing most of my life. I had taught expository writing as a course for years. Anyway, after the first summer, once I could take the Advanced Ohio Writing Project, it was fun. Administrators knew my position on being forced to take that summer class at Miami. I think there are only a couple of other times in my entire career I had been so angry. I am angry just thinking about it.

         Post, and take a break, kiddo. – Amorella.

         Kiddo?

         Take the break, boy. – Amorella.


          Late, night. You spent part of the evening planning your September trip to Maine and Massachusetts. Looking for a cheaper hotel near Harvard Yard is not so easy. But, plans are coming along after talking to Alta earlier tonight. She and Craig have been working with the Red Cross in relationship to the logistics of fighting the forest fires in southern Arizona near Fort Huachuca where you and the Brelsfords visited on your way to Tombstone a couple of years ago. Craig is still in near the area where the fires burn. Post. – Amorella. 

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