The Median Sib

I visited Alaska this past July and loved it! I might not like it as well in the winter, but in July it was wonderful. Two of my photos turned out great — even if I do say so myself. So here they are:

This picture was taken early one morning as the sun was rising. We were staying at Riversong Lodge which was right on a river (can’t remember the name of the river, but the Iditarod goes right over the water shown in the photo). The shapes in the foreground are the posts of the dock and the motors on the boats tied up at the dock there.

This post will probably make me some enemies, and I don’t mean this to be insulting to Harry Potter fans - different strokes for different folks and all that…but I have to say it. The Harry Potter craze is getting old. After however many years and however many books, I’m tired of the little lightning-impressed pre-teen. Am I the only one who has no interest in the new HP film that’s about to be released? Or maybe it’s already in theaters - I don’t know because, frankly, I don’t care. I started to look it up and include some links, but that would be putting more effort into this post than it’s worth.

I’m an elementary school teacher - a reading specialist, even. I read daily from a wide variety of genres, especially in children’s books. So when the first Harry Potter book came out, I read it and thought it was good. Not phenomenal but good. J.K. Rowling certainly had an original and engaging story. I read the second one soon after it was published, and it was okay. Not as good as the first one but typical of sequels. The third one was tedious. I had to force myself to get through it. I didn’t even bother with the ones after that. Hoping that the movie versions would be better, I saw the first two movies. They were okay, but I didn’t hit pause whenever I had to take a bathroom break. They were forgettable.

For all you Harry Potter fans - more power to you. You see something in either him or the story that I don’t see. Despite all the publicity and the legions of fans pledging undying devotion to HP and J.K. Rowling, I just don’t like Harry Potter. Sorry.

Today I worked with a group of third graders reading an article on the Vikings in the National Geographic Explorer! magazine for children.

I’ve been through college and graduate school, and I’ve taught school for over 25 years, and I learned something new today from a third grade magazine - which is a good thing. When people stop learning, they stop living. And Lord knows I have more to learn than I could possibly learn in a million years. Maybe what I learned today was in one of those long-forgotten classes from my past, and I just don’t remember it. As a matter of fact, upon further thought, that’s a STRONG possibility - even a probability. If that’s the case, then I re-learned it today. Here it is:

The Vikings had many gods. One of Vikings’ gods was Thor, the god of thunder and lightning. Our “Thursday” comes from a Viking word meaning Thor’s day. TA-DA! Okay, not an earth-shattering tidbit of information, but I thought it was pretty cool. Did any of you remember it from your schooling?

A kindergarten teacher (I’ll call her Gwen) in Florida (home of large cockroaches known as palmetto bugs) found out that her husband was not only cheating on her but had an entire separate family of two children with his girlfriend. It had been going on for YEARS and Gwen had had no inkling of it. Gwen and her husband and their two children had just moved into a new home, it was the first of a new school year, and she was exhausted. The news of his long-standing affair was the last straw. She confronted him but he was unrepentant. He told her that he was leaving her because he knew she was stronger than the girlfriend and she would survive. To say that she was devastated would be an understatement. He left. She was furious with no outlet to express it. The next day, Gwen went to school as usual - not knowing how she would make it but determined to keep life as normal as possible. As the morning wore on, one of the children told her that there was a bug in the “home living” part of the classroom. Gwen grabbed a fly swatter and went into the kitchen area where the enormous palmetto bug was crawling across the floor. Thoughts of her cheating husband combined with seeing a repulsive and gross cockroach in her classroom was too much. She snapped. The bug became her husband, and she started slamming the fly swatter against it and yelling at it: “HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME, GEORGE?” “TAKE THIS, GEORGE!” “HOW DARE YOU, GEORGE?” “GEORGE, YOU’RE SCUM!” She kept yelling and hitting the roach over and over and over until her fury had dissipated. Spent, she stopped, took a deep breath and turned around to see the children standing behind her, fixated by the spectacle. As her heartbeat and breathing slowly returned to normal, one little boy timidly asked, “How did you know the cockroach’s name?”

And, friends, THAT is a TRUE story! I swear.