She's ALLLIIIIIIVE!

Well. Is anyone still with me? Considering that I last wrote a blog post approximately TWO YEARS AGO, I'd be surprised. Scott mentioned the other day that he thought I should restart the blog, because it was a good outlet for my writing. That's a quote. I'm wondering if that means, secretly, that I'm making him bananas with snarky comments he wishes I would put somewhere else ... so other people besides him can be afflicted by my odd sense of humor.

As a reeeaaallly fast recap of the last two years for all those who don't share our daily lives, we have been buying property picking house plans considering making artisanal cheese as a side business teaching doing medical administration and having a preschooler third grader and sixth grader. There. That's exactly the speed at which it went by for me, too.

So watch this space. I promise to be more consistent about posting news, pictures, etc. Or: "I will post news and pictures," as opposed to "I shall post news and pictures." When I was in second grade, in a one-room school in Falls City, OR, our regular teacher had a serious car accident and was out of school for a couple months. We had a long-term sub who was a retired teacher in normal life. Looking back, I imagine she was in her early 70s. This was in about 1982, so I imagine she had begun teaching in the 1930s. She was the quintessential old-style teacher. I loved her! My point is, she taught us that "will" implies a promise and "shall" only indicates that you will attempt whatever it is. Why do I remember this detail? I have no idea. I can't specifically remember anything else she taught me. Perhaps it is a sign of my early attempts to think of ways to weasel out of things.

And now, though I am done teaching for the year, I leave you with a gem from this last quarter's final exam. The students read an essay comparing the way the Taliban handles women's rights (or doesn't, as the case may be) and the way the western world does the same thing oppositely -- by demanding rigorous beauty standards, oversexualizing women, etc. The question they had to answer was simple: "What argument are these authors making about women?" One student's approach showed she had a hazy grasp of recent politics and geography:

"If you went to Taliban, you would find there were different customs there."

love, kristin