Surprisingly, the year yielded no fodder for the funny folder.
Oh well, there’s always next year.
After grading a seemingly endless pile of papers, I needed a break.
I braved the unseasonable heat and took a few pictures at my in-laws’ house:
I also worked on my flame technique by lighting matches in the bathroom:
The last day of school was a grab bag of sorts.
I took pictures of the school “mascot” sculpture and the last pot of coffee
Coincidentally, it was the last of the office coffee, too.
I enjoyed coffee and donuts:
It was also a day for several student gifts, like this gift card to Staples, with which I purchased a pencil sharpener for my black pencils – the ones with which I’m writing The Book. I also received a $15 Dunkin’ Donuts gift card, but I neglected to take a picture before writing this post.
Then, it was time for Graduation:
The weekend began a month-long line of graduation parties.
In the South, that means barbecue and cheerwine.
It also meant I didn’t have to wear dress slacks and shirts.
The week started with one of the earliest tropical storms on record: Tropical Storm Ana.
For reference, the ditch in the second picture is approximately 5 foot deep.
The photograph was taken approximately 6:00 AM on Monday morning.
Things did not improve until early Tuesday.
Personally, I like how the downspout turned out.
On Tuesday, we held a surprise Spring Recital for F_____’s wife. Normally she puts this on herself; with everything that’s happened, she cancelled it this year. My cousin, one of her students, organized and put on the recital for her. One of my jobs was to make this chocolate piano keyboard.
I didn’t get the right dark bars – I got the “mini” kind instead of the “fun size” ones – but still think it turned out okay. Actually, there were two of them, and only one white bar remained at the end of the evening.
Things were both normal and hectic on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday; you know, typical end-of-term stuff. My principal surprised me with not one but two kinds of sushi: eel (my favorite!) and yellowfin (which I hadn’t tried before but found to have just the right amount of spice and kick to it).
Saturday I cleaned the house (laundry and dishes) and cut the grass. Go me! Now I can treat those annoying anthills . .
Now, I’m not a copyright lawyer, but I imagine that at some point contracts were signed.
One cannot simply get out of a contract because they find the recipient distasteful. Were that the case, the real estate, automotive, and student loan companies would immediately collapse.
In this case, Cordula Schacht – the copyright holder – is of no relation to Mr. Goebbels; in fact, her own father was acquitted at Nuremberg. Therefore, one cannot make the claim that royalties would benefit a convicted war criminal.
Peter Longerich, the biographer involved in the matter, has argued that a private person should not be given control of important historical documents. To which I ask: who gets to decide what is important?
Were I the judge in this case, I’d rule against Herr Longerich. Others disagree with me; some selections from Twitter:
All royalties should be paid to the Holocaust Museum / Memorials! He shouldn’t even be allowed an estate!
Any money paid by the publishers to any estate connected to the Nazis would be blood money.
No one should profit from this unless it’s as a donation to those affected by the Holocaust or a memorial/museum. Disgusting!
The Spawn of Satan should have no royalty rights under the law.
They ought to be ashamed that he is a family member. But people are greedy and will take $ from whatever source.
And now, a word from our sponsor:
It might not be the original (because let’s face it, Gene Wilder is beyond compare), but John Barrowman redeems the production. Pun intended.
Second, yet another former Nazi is on trial seventy years after the war ended, this time the so-called “Bookkeeper of Auschwitz“. Now, before you get offended or hot and bothered about my tone of type, please hear me out. I am not an apologist for Nazism by any stretch of the imagination, neither do I think war crimes have a statute of limitations. However, I find the overall treatment of former Nazis incongruous.
Case in point: Japanese pilots who bombed Pearl Harbor were welcomed back sixty years after the fact. In fact, it seems they were forgiven some time ago, as evidenced by this article from the New York Times. I wonder why the world holds such special hatred for the Nazis when other dictators and regimes have been responsible for death on a much larger scale (like the Soviets and – by some estimates – the Chinese).
I suppose what I’m trying to say is that I’ve nothing against prosecuting Nazis guilty of crimes for which they’ve never been punished, but I don’t understand why we’ve forgiven some and not others.
Another part of me wonders what will happen in ten years’ time (give or take) when the final Nazi is dead. Who will then become the bogeymen of the world?
I suppose it’s also fitting that I’m watching/listening to a Twilight Zone marathon while I work on this. Rod Serling dished out devious damnations to nefarious Nazis in “Judgment Night”, “Deaths-Head Revisited”, and “He’s Alive”. There may be more, but those are the three that come immediately to mind.
In fact, Serling’s closing narration to “Deaths-Head Revisited” has become a staple in my classroom when discussing World War II and how we come to terms with what happened:
All the Dachaus must remain standing. The Dachaus, the Belsens,
the Buchenwalds, the Auschwitzes – all of them. They must remain
standing because they are a monument to a moment in time when some
men decided to turn the Earth into a graveyard. Into it they
shoveled all of their reason, their logic, their knowledge, but
worst of all their conscience. And the moment we forget this, the
moment we cease to be haunted by its remembrance, then we become
the gravediggers. Something to dwell on and to remember, not only
in the Twilight Zone but wherever men walk God's Earth.
As I sit here in the school office on this early Monday morning sipping my first cup pot of coffee and inhaling that unique aroma of hot paper and toner, I wonder:
How much have my students actually remembered?
World History, American History, Civics, Geography, and Physics fall off the rollers, a corner staple holding each packet in place: terms and maths and maps; things they’ve seen all semester but won’t pay any attention to until at least Monday next. Exams start Tuesday.
Every teacher knows that tests cannot *really* test the human student, only how well they retain information. Yet, every teacher wants some vindication that the class they’ve taught all year can perform well come end of term. And – if I’m perfectly honest – I know not every class is ready. Ultimately, though, I have done the best I can. I have led them to the well of knowledge, but I cannot make them drink.
Despite the flood of papers threatening to overwhelm my desk in these last weeks of school, I did manage to take a few photographs this week.
This week was Teacher Appreciation Week. This is what I received:
Then, my sister-in-law bought yet another car in her seemingly never ending quest to find the perfect used car. The newest candidate is this 1996 soft-top Mustang convertible:
This week was also the school’s Junior/Senior Banquet – one event I honestly don’t mind chaperoning. Not only did I find a snazzy new silver bow tie (on sale!), but I also found some angry jewelry while my wife looked for something to match her dress:
We were invited by several of the students to come take pictures with them down by the river, which coincided with the heraldric winds of Tropical Storm Ana:
This weekend I was finally able to finish typing my exams and exam reviews. Smokey lent moral support.
Don’t forget to follow me on:
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Twitter – where you can see my thoughts in 140 characters or less. Also, funny retweets.
I’m not one to give trigger warnings. That said, I’m giving one now.
Things have a tendency to not go as planned. Several weeks ago, a dear friend’s health declined rapidly – unexpectedly, even – and he passed away. Even after days of relative sleeplessness, I found it hard to rest. My thoughts kept turning and churning and refusing to let me be until I wrote them down. This is an exercise in catharsis.
Some of my readers knew F_____. One of my regular readers is his wife.
[edit] For the record, I have permission and outright encouragement from the family to share this. [/edit]
The last day of school was a grab bag of sorts.
Running In My Head 