The Archives
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06.18.09the days are just packedCalvin: Do you know what day it is? Hobbes: Nope. Why? Calvin:Oh, no reason. I was just curious. . . . I sure like summer vacation. Bill Watterson, Calvin and Hobbes In the spring, the great beneficiary of my employment situation was the dog. She was guaranteed a long walk every morning, in addition to an evening stroll, and had someone with thumbs available to open the back door whenever she found herself on the wrong side of the barrier. Now it's the boys who benefit from having me at home. Not that they're at home much; since school ended, they've been ...
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06.05.09The Dowling School ArchivesI've started a project to help with the boys' school's archives. The school archivist has wrestled a storage room full of papers, wheel chairs, and photographs into a manageable set of shelves and cabinets, and now I'm lending a hand to digitize the films, slides, VHS tapes, and photographs that chronicle over 75 years of educational history. From what little I've seen so far, it's a treasure trove of documents and images; when it's done, we should have a collection that students, teachers, and parents can use, with many of the original materials maintained at the Minnesota Historical ...
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04.30.09HatsWhen I was eight, I kept a picture on my wall of my father, another man, and a sea of smiling children. Behind them was a helicopter (black in my picture, green in Asia) and in front of them (though not in my picture) were little homes of straw and mud. In my picture, he was not much older than I am now. Not much older, as I walk along Caille Duarte, stepping over goat shit and mango pits, greeted by four little boys yelling, "Hola, Miguel! Miguel!" I lose my straw hat to them, I juggle stones and mangoes for them, I chase them over cracked pavement and past rusted barbed wire covered with wet clothes. They chatter at me, as ...
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03.31.09Unemployment Diary: A Mob of Solid BlissThey storm the earth and stun the air, A mob of solid bliss. Alas! that frowns could lie in wait For such a foe as this! Saturday Afternoon by Emily Dickinson March 27, 2009 Today was a good day. There were no "leads" from recruiters, no "updates" on "opportunities" that had suddenly dried up in the harsh sun of fear and trepidation, no new job postings on the Internet. Instead, I spent the afternoon with a bunch of second graders. In the boys' classes, each student has a week of being the "star," which culminates in a visit from a family member. Usually, Kelly ...
