The girls start school tomorrow — where did the summer go?!
They aren’t babies to be dressed in frilly skirts and patent leathers, their own choices reflect the image they want to share with the world. And yes, I will probably still take their picture in the am, trying to get a shot between the eye rolls. 🙂
I remember back to school shopping with my mom — oh, I wanted it to be as easy as it was for my brothers — go to Belks, buy some jeans, some polos, some button downs and underwear & socks. But no, we would spend hours in Laurie’s….. looking back, what was I thinking? How could I have been so clueless? Laurie’s was incredible — one of the neatest stores I’ve ever experienced. My mom would find these skirts, totally prepped out, but so well-made I would end up wearing them later in college. And the sales ladies, older and friends of my mother, would mix and match and pamper my sulky, teenaged self. I would start smiling, as we finished, and I got the promised visit to Will’s Book Store a few doors down the street. Perhaps via the laws of unintended consequences, I can now watch my daughters try on five versions of the same jeans, without trauma or a Borders fix. And luckily for them, I tend to be fairly hands-off about their choices.
Christopher Bursk writes of unanticipated lessons in today’s poem. Born in 1943, he’s referred to as an abstract poet — and he’s garnered much praise and a little controversy for his use of politics in his poetry
Why Latin Should Still Be Taught in High School by Christopher Bursk
Because one day I grew so bored
with Lucretius, I fell in love
with the one object that seemed to be stationary,
the sleeping kid two rows up,
the appealing squalor of his drooping socks.
While the author of De Rerum Natura was making fun
of those who fear the steep way and lose the truth,
I was studying the unruly hairs on Peter Diamond’s right leg.
Titus Lucretius Caro labored, dactyl by dactyl
to convince our Latin IV class of the atomic
composition of smoke and dew,
and I tried to make sense of a boy’s ankles,
the calves’ intriguing
resiliency, the integrity to the shank,
the solid geometry of my classmate’s body.
Light falling through blinds,
a bee flinging itself into a flower,
a seemingly infinite set of texts
to translate and now this particular configuration of atoms
who was given a name at birth,
Peter Diamond, and sat two rows in front of me,
his long arms, his legs that like Lucretius’s hexameters
seemed to go on forever, all this hurly-burly
of matter that had the goodness to settle
long enough to make a body
so fascinating it got me
through fifty-five minutes
of the nature of things.
school dayz: Something Better Beginning (the Kinks); To Love the Language (Harry Connick — this song is just infectious); September Grass (James Taylor — makes me think of Friday Night football); Where Do I Begin (Idina Menzel); Wonderful World (Sam Cooke — don’t know much…); Morning Train (Sheena Easton); I’ve got a Crush on You (Steve Tyrell); Morning Glory (Chrissie Hynde); Hello Good Morning (Sick of Sarah); School of Hard Knocks (Radney Foster); Just Like Starting Over (John Lennon); Wake Me up When September Ends (Green Day); Me & Julio Down by the Schoolyard (Paul Simon — what a hook); ABC (Jackson Five); Late for School (Steve Martin); Please, Please, Please Let me Get What I Want (the Smiths); American Slang (the Gaslight Anthem); She Walks this Earth (Sting); Hello, Goodbye (the Beatles); and Oh, How I Hope to Get up in the Morning (Irving Berlin — I sometimes sing this to the girlies on school days)
True creativity often starts where language ends. –> Arthur Koestler
Take care,
Aly
History Thru the Looking Glass 