Sunrise, Sunset!

No, not the Fiddler song!

I just learned these interesting facts!

In PA for winter 2016/2017:

• The sun will rise the latest (7:24 am) on January 4 and January 5, 2017. 

• The will set the earliest (4:36 pm) on November 1st through November 14th.

The Winter Solstice falls on December 21, 2016. 

I always thought the latest sunrise and earliest sunset fell close to the solstice, but that's a lie! 

However, we receive the least amount of daylight from December 19 through December 23 (near the Solstice). Go figure! 

So, although we will continue to receive less daylight until the time around the solstice, we're already past the earliest sunsets of the season, which is all I really care about. I don't care if it's dark in the morning; I'm at work and in a zombie state anyway! 

So, the moral of the story is we already survived the hardest part (daylight-wise) of the year!! :) 

Hunka hunka!

Oh shit, why the hell am I attracted to Thomas Paine??

Well, what if there is no tomorrow? There wasn't one today.

I am boycotting my usual morning radio show. I know this will impact the station greatly. Serves them right.

Today is Groundhog Day! I was beside myself waiting to hear what 106.1 radio host Chio had in store for this momentous of days! I really love Groundhog Day – it might have something to do with the Harold Ramis/Bill Murray movie, or that time I made a construction-paper gopher on a Popsicle stick in elementary school. Either way, I’m a fan!

I started the day off with a little musical Groundhog celebration. You see, prior to Chio actually talking on the air during his show that I start listening to at 5:30 a.m., the station merely plays very crappy music. Like, the same crappy songs ad nauseam mixed with pre-recorded announcements meant to trick us into thinking Chio is actually there at the mic and awake. I usually don’t mind this nonsense as I’m half-asleep, but today being the day of all days, such ear bullshit wouldn’t do. So, I made my own Groundhog Day playlist on Spotify consisting of “I Got You Babe.” On repeat. It was glorious.

But, at exactly 6:07 a.m., when Chio deigns to actually show up to his own radio show, I clicked off the computer speakers blaring my “playlist” in the bedroom and ran to the bathroom to click on the shower radio, half expecting to be serenaded once more by “I Got You Babe.” What will Chio do for this Groundhog Day?!?!

With bated breath, I waited for the shower radio to “warm up,” and instead of Sonny and Cher, some crappy 2016 pop song blared instead. But it was okay, I thought! Once Chio comes on, he will greet us loyal listeners with a big fat resounding “Happy Groundhog Day!” Or, if we’re lucky, even a “And don’t forget your booties ‘cause it’s cooooold out there today!” I mean, dude’s a DJ; isn’t that the only reason to get into the profession? Solely for the opportunity to reenact the tomfoolery of the radio DJs in the Groundhog Day movie every February 2nd?

Anyway, the song fades and Chio finally arrives on the mic….and welcomes me with a plain ole “Good morning! It’s February 2nd.” Huh? Well, maybe Producer Matt was delayed in queuing up The Pennsylvania Polka or something. So I waited, but – nadda. It was all just business as usual. I felt myself deflating.  

It took Nicole to break in and exclaim “Happy Groundhog Day!”, which proceeded to unleash Chio’s apparent ire toward this wonderful day.

“I don’t get it,” Chio lamely lamented. “Why is this the big story? Everyone in the office is talking about it - all the news stations have stories. What is Groundhog Day? Is it a gimmick?”

No, you curdled pustule, it’s an actual procedure for predicting the weather in the coming weeks.

I felt flames lapping the side of my temples; Did Chio have no sense of whimsy? No imagination? I hoped sorority-girl-voiced Nicole would set ole Chio straight being that she was the one to actually wish listeners a “Happy Groundhog’s Day” after Chio squandered the opportunity and then shat on everything.

But, to my dismay, Nicole dropped the ball too. On the plus side, she did try to encourage baldo Chio to stop being such a lame, unimaginative, square wet noodle and embrace tradition, but her explanation of the day was all wrong. Firstly she said it was a “Pennsylvania thing.” (It’s not.)

Secondly, she failed to mention that Groundhog Day is a mid-winter celebration that celebrates the returning of the light. Fool didn’t even mention that it came about by way of Imbolc, Candlemas and St. Brigid’s Day. Get your shit together, Nicole!

So, I’m done with 106.1. Can you now see why I have no choice other than to boycott them? You know what, Chiiiio? With my absence, I’ve got a winter prediction for you: “It's gonna be cold, it's gonna be grey, and it's gonna last you for the rest of your life.”

A few other Groundhog notes:

1) Back in the day, getting up to see the groundhog extraction on TV (and then going to bed) was an incredibly early and sickening endeavor for me. Like, getting up “so early” at 7:00-ish  made me sick to my stomach. Haha! Fast-forward to new job, and here I am now, dressed and having been at work for an hour, waiting on damned Phil to make his entrance! Craziness!

2) I always thought groundhogs didn’t really emerge from hibernation this time of year and that we just used ‘em for our mid-winter celebration because they’re abundant and cuter and safer than waking the prognosticating badger or bear of early European mid-winter festival fame. Groundhogs end hibernation in March. Turns out, however, that in this region, groundhogs do come out of hibernation for a short time this time of year. The dudes get up and check out the playing field for a lady during this time so that when hibernation is really over around March, they can get busy right away to produce offspring that will be fat enough to survive the upcoming winter. Isn’t that sweet? Lookin’ for love ‘round Valentine’s Day, aww!

3) Apparently, Imbolc and Candlemas festivities both featured weather-forecasting aspects. Imbolc celebrants would observe the aforementioned badger and bear’s activities to predict how the rest of winter would play out, while Candlemas celebrants relied on a poem that suggested if the weather was fair on Candlemas day, then winter would come back even harder to bite you in the ass in the upcoming weeks. See how we mixed both of these traditions into our Groundhog Day festivities?

3) Not Groundhog related, but I had to share: Mike brought home the best surprise - Scrabble Cheez-Its!! I tore open the box and grabbed a “B”, a “Z” and two “Os.” At first I thought they were sucky, stupid letters, but then I saw Booz! I guess that’s good – an “alternate spelling” to Booze. And, oh! Zobo! I guess that’s okay too – kinda like what Dani loved to talk about in Hocus Pocus. So, I busied myself being mildly pleased with my Scrabble-ing skills, and then Mike takes my crackers and – bam! Bozo. How the fudge did I miss that one?

On teaching, authority and overhead projectors.

I’ve been thinking a lot about my formative memories, school, and teachers lately. I’m on a journey to become a teacher myself, and I can’t help but think back to what set me on this annoying, impossible, frustrating, but right path.

This past Halloween, I was reminded of Mrs. Stoddart, a middle-school teacher who inadvertently played out one of my greatest fears.

But aside from memories of that nightmare, I’ve also been thinking of Mrs. Stoddart herself.

Mrs. Stoddart was a tiny old math teacher, but she surely packed an acerbic punch. Mrs. Stoddart was the type of teacher you simply didn’t mess with, despite her little old lady stature. She could silence a classroom with a mere look – a piercing gaze magnified by thick, outdated glasses and severe, angry eyebrows.

Mrs. Stoddart ruled over her 8^th grade pre-algebra class with an iron, yet arthritic, fist. A tightly coiled bun of grey hair atop her head served as her crown, her wooden teacher’s pointer with the rubber tip as her scepter. One might have mistaken Mrs. Stoddart for an evangelist at her pulpit as she proselytized about algebra perched atop the towering stool that eternally stood next to the overhead projector on its raised cart.

I can’t remember Mrs. Stoddart not sitting on that stool, effecting the fancy that the overhead projector had grown out the side of her torso. Man, Mrs. Stoddart loved that damned projector! But, the thing only served to add to the severity of her appearance. For starters, because of her reliance on it, Mrs. Stoddart’s hands were perpetually discolored by smears of wet-erase marker. She would inadvertently rub the side of her palm over the blues, greens and reds she used to ink out hieroglyphic math. Those colored inks would all melt together to form a seemingly permanent veneer of ugly brown, giving her hand the appearance of a deformed, leathery claw.

The projector also had an altering effect on Mrs. Stoddart’s countenance. Mrs. Stoddart was forever hunched over the flat glass of the projector on which she would scribble her tutelage. Through this pane, a bright light from within projected upward, through magnifying glass and mirror and onto a screen. This rising beam of light radiated onto her unfashionable glasses, with the upper frames of these glasses obstructing the beam’s progress. This resulted in a dark shadow permanently cast onto Mrs. Stoddart’s face on top of her eyebrows. A large “V” of shadow appeared, starting at the bridge of her nose, angling upward toward her temples and resembling cartoonishly dark, furious, owl-like eyebrows.   

All of these projector-related enhancements were simply too much for me to handle. I was in such a constant state of heightened fear of The Stoddart during those classes that I was unable to process or retain any knowledge regarding algebra. Perhaps this explains why I am useless at math to this day.  

And yet, I find myself wondering today if I could hold such sway if I were ever granted my own (English) classroom.

Do I have the wits about me and presence to silence a room with one glance? Would the students know that Mrs. M.’s room was an empire in which you simply couldn’t act up? Would they be fearful or respectful of me, or would they rule the place?

Would students come to my class to learn, or merely to check off some minutes in the day? How much and what would the students learn? And can you actually teach English Language Arts? Aside from syntax, spelling and vocab, do I have what it takes to teach 30 or so kids at a time to become more critical thinkers? Effective communicators? Appreciative readers? Can my enthusiasm help instill a sense of life-long learning in students, or would I just come off as an excited nut? Can I lift some of the dread that accompanies the task of writing for many students? Could I make just one student actually enjoy writing?

I am full of doubts and fears. I have a plan though: In this age of whiteboards, “Smart”Boards and “Smart”Panels, the overhead projector remains a revenant of the past. But kids aren't intimidated by a stupid giant tablet, are they? A tablet that, by the way, won't even produce fearsome eyebrows for me or elevate me to royalty!  

I believe that old-school overhead projectors could still hold some sort of power or sway over today's students; an Ark of the Covenant needed for a well-behaved and engaged classroom. If you look at it too deeply, your face will melt, a la that Indiana Jones movie.  

So, I shall procure a wooden pointer, a tall metal stool and a coveted overhead projector*. I won’t climb down from that stool for anything. I shall “lord mightily over my little empire” and create, as best I can, interested and intelligent citizens!

"Give me your tired, your poor, your screen-addled minds!

Your huddled masses yearning to learn and blossom!

The wretched refuse of a technological youth.

Send these eye-rolling disinterested to me,

I lift my wet-erase marker beside the golden projector!"

Yes, in the age of ephemeral trinkets, authority shall be transferred to me through a teacher’s tools of old.  

* I was obsessed with overhead projectors back in school, and remain obsessed to this day. I even tried to make my own back projector when I was about 13 or so. 

Advice

Advice columns crack me up! And I’m addicted to them! Three thoughts:

1) I hate the term “happily married.” It comes off as smarmy, cutesy or fake, and I hate that we have to differentiate between married (trapped to someone I hate) or “happily married.” On the other hand, when people use this term I always suspect that they’re overcompensating for something, and perhaps they’re not that “happily” married at all. A big “ugh” to marriage in general and the fact that a lot of ‘em aren’t “happy.”  

2) I love when letter writers say they had an argument with a partner and “said something I/We shouldn’t have.” Perhaps you shouldn’t have said it, but you were certainly thinking it. Probably for a long time, which is why it escaped in the heat of the moment. I believe that if a thought or complaint is so deep seated, you should express it - in a diplomatic way, of course. Not saying it doesn’t make it not true, and if you think your partner is a waste of flesh or lazy or horrible, maybe that’s not such a great relationship you’re in and it’s time to make some changes or cut bait. Hmmmm – I bet the type of person to “say something he/she shouldn’t have” is also the type to insist that they’re “happily married.”

3) But. "But" is a small word, but it’s one of the most powerful when it comes to advice columns.  “I married the man of my dreams…. But, I just found out he’s a serial killer.” “I am married to the sweetest, smartest, most beautiful woman on earth….but, I find her cruel, stupid, lazy, ugly – and she abuses animals.” You see the power that “But” holds? It serves to negate the first thought. So, watch your “buts,” unless you truly don’t think your serial-killer husband is “the man of your dreams” after all.

Instead of linking to thoughts with “but,” I strive to separately state my thoughts. “I appreciate you trying to be more helpful around the house. Let’s think of a system to help delegate the chores and remind us both to chip in.” If I had said “I appreciate you being more helpful, but let’s think of a better way,” it implies that I don’t appreciate your trying or that you haven’t tried at all. 

Oh advice columns, I can't get enough of you!