National Poetry Month

April is National Poetry Month. As an English teacher with a bachelors in English and a masters in English Education, and simply of lover of all literature, I would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge and celebrate this event. So, in honor of National Poetry Month, I am going to be posting poems on my blog throughout the month. Some of them are my favorites and some will be new to me, too. Some of them challenge me to think deeper than I am used to doing and some of them are just plain fun. So...indulge yourself a bit, challenge yourself a bit, and don't be too fearful to allow yourself to enjoy a little bit of poetry.

The poem for today is by Billy Collins, a former Poet Laureate. He is a master poet and these are his thoughts about what people do to poetry. I encourage you to follow his advice in the first 5 stanzas as you read any piece of poetry, and try to avoid what most people do, as stated in the last 2 stanzas. Enjoy!

Introduction to Poetry

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

Rain, rain, GO AWAY!!

I was in a crummy mood all week. I think it was the stinkin' weather's fault. (Along with teaching a unit that hasn't been taught at our school before, so I'm pretty much coming up with everything from scratch. I've been having flashbacks from student teaching...AHH!) But I blame it mostly on the weather! We've had so much rain and many cloudy days. Finally, however, the sun is shining and it's supposed to be in the mid-60s today. I'm SO happy that it decided to come for the weekend when I can actually enjoy it! I think I'm going to go take Rudy on a walk! See ya!

Transparency is no match for the J Man!!

It is SO helpful to have friends who are amazingly technologically savvy!! My friend Jared TOTALLY came to my rescue and I no longer have to stray from my oak tree! You can see all of my pics clearly and life is GRAND!
Jared, I know blogs are lame compared to your awesome website, but if you're out there reading this....THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! And...come visit STL soon!!
If you're not Jared, you should check out his website at www.bunkface.com. You might just find something hilarious...but sometimes he makes you look around, so keep your eyes peeled!

Background

I think I might have to change my background. It drives me crazy that all of my pictures are see through. I thought a friend of mine could fix this, but so far it hasn't worked. I'm not sure when the transition will take place, but I'm pretty sure I'll lose all of my pictures that I've posted when I go through with it. It's sad because nothing is going to be as good as the oak tree.

Update from "a friend" - fixed!

My favorite 4 letter word!

Matt and I have both celebrated birthdays in the last month and we've been living it up big. Want in on our secrets? FREE meals from all over town. If you are willing to sign up to a few e-mail lists, you can get lots of FREE food! Here's the list of restaurants: Q'doba, Noodles & Company, Cold Stone Ice Cream, and my favorite of them all...Red Robin! Just find their websites, sign up for their e-mail lists, tell them your birthday, and ENJOY! (The only one with a twist is Q'doba, because it's really a buy-on-get-one deal.) Each of the restaurants will send the coupons for FREE food right to your e-mail inbox, and you have a couple of weeks to use them. It's fabulous! Make sure you sign up at least a week or two in advance of your birthday, or you might miss getting the e-mail. So go out there and take advantage of some of my favorite 4 letter word: FREE!

Hi Ho! Hi Ho!

It's back to work I go.

They got the parking lot cleared of the flood water, so it's back to the daily grind come Monday morning. I have to admit, I'm a little disappointed. I have a lot of grading to get done and Matt and I need to pick out tile for our bathroom. (I'll post more on that later.)
Ah, well. It was a nice spring break and I'll take this as a lesson in the problems of procrastination. I did have an entire week to get it all done, but neglected to do so. I simply chose to to take the word "break" in "Spring Break" very literally. I needed to not think about school for a while, and I enjoyed that. Now I have to face the music.

The Great Flood of 2008 at EHS

I've been getting some phone calls from friends and family asking about Eureka High School, where I work. We've been on spring break for the last week, so I haven't personally been out there to see anything. I've been getting my information from e-mails and the news reports (one of which I heard on an NPR program that was nationally syndicated. They gave an update on the high school, too. Pretty crazy to hear about your work place on national news!) The pictures below were sent to me from a co-worker, and the following information is what I found out today from e-mails and phone calls.

The school grounds have been affected by the flooding, but not the building itself. The river has crested and the water is receding, so they aren't expecting that it will harm the building...thankfully. These pictures explain it pretty well. Our baseball fields are to the left of the building, completely under water. In front of the building (where you can see all of the light posts sticking out of the water) is where our student parking lot is...also completely under water. I've gotten a few e-mail from the principal of EHS and the superintendent of Rockwood, and they are expecting school to resume on Monday. This, of course, will depend on whether or not the water recedes from the student parking lot and the debris is cleared out in time. We are over the amount of allotted "snow days," so any additional days off will have to be made up at the end of the year. However, I have a lot of grading & planning that didn't get done over the break, so I'm kind of hoping for another day. :)
Enjoy the pictures of my school!

(Just click on the pictures to see them more clearly. Sorry about the transparency thing...I still haven't figured out how to fix that.)

I'm sure you can figure it out, but EHS is the building in the upper left-center of the picture. The road in front of the school is Hwy 109. I grew up about 5 miles north of here. (On higher ground.)

Contrary to what I heard at first, the football field is not flooded. The tennis courts are up on a hill, so they were okay too. But the poor, poor baseball field.
This is an aerial shot of the entire area. Hwy 109 is in the middle. To the right of 109 is the Meramec Valley and river...which has expanded its shores. This same river is what caused the major flooding in the Valley Park area. That area has been on the local and national news a lot! To the left of the road is EHS and its parking lot & baseball fields. You can also see that the water got really close to a subdivision in the bottom right corner of the picture. Looks like most of those homes are safe. Hwy 44 is just south of this picture.