Watch your gas

Blowing up foul prices

Two gas stations across from one another had prices within pennies of each other. So  I chose the cheaper one which was also the easier one to maneuver back into traffic.

I don't know anyone who takes gas pump receipts and neither do I. But I do jot down the price in my checkbook roster. That's how I square up with the credit card company. I have never had a problem before November. In November, the credit card statement came with a $7 charge above my notation. I had no receipt so I couldn't prove anything. And the last time I walked inside to ask the clerk something, he was very aggressive and nasty. 

Figuring this was a truly illegal rip-off, I wanted no part of them again. Later that month, the darlin' angel tapping on my shoulder said...."go on.....blow the whistle on them." I'm not really a fighter but I am from the Bronx.  I grew up where baseball was the Yankees. And they always won. So in December, I went back, twice, got receipts and let the precious proof float around my house in my usual bookkeeping style. I lost one.

The credit card statement showed that twice again, the daylight thieves took $7 over the receipt. 

I called my credit card company and went directly to dispute with the one receipt I put in my drawer. They asked me if I tried to settle with the company manager. There was no phone number on the receipt and without an armed guard, I wouldn't go back inside. No problem...the credit card company pulled all three purchases.

The following month, three credit card letters stated I'd pay only the receipt gas price. 

Twenty-one dollars evaporated like the petrol spill on the guy's pants.

Ever crude smell but dried refine. 

I found the Beef

Cutting into "Western Beef"

With carnivorous holiday guests, my tofu and bean sprouts didn't snap to it.  In the closed Winn Dixie site, a Western Beef opened.  Inside is a tightly packed market that has a slightly outdoor market quality especially in the fresh vegetable isles.  Wearing my winter vest came in handy when I entered the breezy cold inner sanctuary of The Meat Market. Even for a bean eater like me, I felt attracted to how fresh the meat was. Forgetting it was cow, I hunted for sirloin steaks. I really don't know the difference between sirloin or shell cut but the meat stockers do. Amazingly nice that people who work there actually know their product. Furthermore, the prices were far better than Publix. And sorry Sam....Walmart meat isn't fresh. 
Coming off the refreshing vegetable and meat islands, the market experience waned. Most of the products were geared to the large hispanic population and I saw nothing for diabetics as in cookies.  The space in the market was squeeze-through and only sheer politeness in driving our carts kept from crashing. There was little swing-out space. 
However, the market is clean and has primary school colored vegetables on the walls in simple cartoon form. Hi Mr Sunshine! Hi Mr Celery! 


Yes.....a good place for beef. But for chicken, I'll go back to Perdu.

Raising Arizona

When our social services have diminished and our education unfunded, "unbalanced" rhetoric zooms into insanity. Our beloved country became beloved when we cared for our populace. We mourn the losses in Arizona as we mourn for ourselves.
What... to do?
For me, I teach Whole Child education.....I have to know I am working Sanity into the population. A teacher in my school has her signature line "Teach like the world depends on it"...
Her desperate plea is for us all to change the nature of voices that commit to murder.

The Holder's of Civilization

Did you lose your keys today?

Almost weekly, an email sent on Importance pleas for finding a teacher's set of keys. Without these keys, we cannot open the mandatory locked doors. When I started teaching, we didn't need to lock the door during the school day

On Tuesday, September 11, 2001, while teaching, the Two Towers fell. Our Middle Earth, our civilization was under attack. Looking into the eyes and faces of the young learners, I mourned for their loss. Their lives, their civilization would no longer be the same and would forever diminish until/unless acts of bravery, intelligence, culture and love would be dynamic enough to push back the creeping pervasive fog of destruction. 

In the first Star Wars movie, the Holder of Civilization was the one last Jedi, Obi Wan Kenobi. Casting Sir Alec Guiness was a brilliant placement because he was young in the generation of staunch self-sacrifice and bravery. His generation fought civilization's destruction and succeeded.

My Calligraphy Mentor, Don Kunz, taught us, his students to wield the T-square like a light sabre and follow the great Emperor Charlemagne's challenge to ignorance (The Dark Ages) by learning how to write. Our Western book letter forms come from the Carolingian letter hand which was developed during the reign of Charlemagne....the first king of europe who began schools of writing. The students of Don Kunz learned that education was the Holder of Civilization and those who teach have, in essence, a sacred connection to develop growing humans to expand and use themselves to their full potential whatever their life's jobs would become. 

In response to the chaos of destruction, I began teaching more fully, more wholly. Whole Child Pedagogy became paramount. Learning about Nature is not only to categorize the plant and animal kingdom for knowledge sake but to learn how to abstract understanding from nature in a personal raw awareness. This is the process started by all great thinkers. It is the process of learning to create original thoughts. 

This subject of Why Teach came up in a lunch conversation at school. It was when I realized that the point of my life is not to retire but to pass on the wisdom and the creative process and nature to the next generation to Hold our Civilization intact and to lead it to thrive.

PhaPhoom Splurrrrrrd PhaPhoom

Fourth Graders

Anti-Bullying Rap was the assignment set before to teach in a school whose students didn't know me. Could "Whole Child" approach work? Usually 4th Graders team up and eat visitors for snack. 

Admin already tipped me off that the 4th Graders didn't like writing assignments,so I hit up the music teacher for percussives. 

An armpit bongo drum, silvery shaker, wooden clacker strip and a boinger were my weapons of choice. 

After I introduced myself, I asked the children to introduce themselves. They had to speak their names loudly and clearly enough that my old ears could pick up the sounds.  The "getting to know you" process showed on their face.The division between us disappeared. The one-on-one eye contact alone was worth the few minutes spent. The game was no longer "them against me" but how we all can play.

Then came the word box they created which I wrote on the whiteboard. After the box was filled, I asked "who has rap rhythm?" Two came up...one to hold the armpit bongo and the other to rap spit. 

The Fourth Graders were mine. 
They forgot I was there: I was just another instrument helping them rap and roll.I was the catalyst percussive.

The game was to create a rhyme on resolving bullying that we could rap to.

Once formed, the poem added rappers from the class body to the silver shaker (an elegant sound), the boinger, and the wooden clacker strip.

We rapped against bullying.

The last few minutes the students wrote out the cooperative learning poem on their sheets.


The Truth in this lesson was that the teacher was not the bully, trying to force the lesson down or demand good behavior. 
 
There were no arguments or behavior problems during the entire class. The assignment rubrics were achieved 100%. This was a 35 minute rapped success.

Kids' Opinions

Kids' Opinions

Gathering feedback from the 3rd Graders about how they felt about the recent "Alligator Naming" contest with Daggerwing Nature Center, I confronted surprise responses.

The children were not afraid to be vocal about their reaction to how the contest was conducted. Some children felt that a contest makes them nervous. (I feel that way too, so I don't personally enter many.)  But mostly, they wished they had more say about which essays and which art pieces were selected for the final winner pick.

How wonderful that they expressed these opinions.

When I asked the class what they thought of Whole Child Learning where they were learning through Language Arts, Science and Visual Art, one boy said he didn't like it at all. In his explanation, he said: "It was hard work....it made me think too much." 

A good hearty laugh for his dear honesty and I thanked him for the compliment.

When the students were asked, "How many felt they LEARNED through this project?"....everyone's hand flew up enthusiastically.

Whole Child approach to education includes their opinions. I will take their comments seriously in molding the next contest.

Following An Uncommon Thread of Thought

Workshop Switch

The workshop I registered for was on Flagler's museum to learn about the Beaux Arts Architecture. But with petrol prices as they are today, over $3.20 a gallon, the choice was whether to go and use up the half tank or stay at my home school for their workshops. I'm not usually that price oriented but today, my cabbie ticker was counting the cost vs the value.
Checking back on the county email, another workshop was listed "Grant writing for K-12 Art Teachers"...so I called the district head of K-12 Arts Integration who gave me the ok to crash that workshop. The more the merrier the hosts chimed.

I am preparing to write proposals for various educational projects and this hit the spot..yes...the distance was worth the cost for this workshop.

The type of educators who come to a grant workshop are forward thinking pioneers and know that projects get paid for with money from somewhere.  I met some very savvy ladies.