I See Said the Blind Man

When I decided to start this blog there, the thought never entered my mind that I would be blogging about my health and personal issues. That was not the plan. It was to document my last year in the classroom. Well, when reality hits, you roll with the punches. Besides, this was a short week at school (just Monday and Tuesday. The rest was off for Thanksgiving.) So here's my title related story.

My wife and I camped at Oscar Scherer State Park in Osprey starting Sunday evening. I commuted to school the two days that we had and spent the nights at the camp site. On Thanksgiving Day we took a short bike ride. When we returned, I notice something in my right eye. I liken it to the after effects of looking at a bright light or glimpsing the sun. There is a glow in your eye that gradually fades away. Only this time it did not fade away.  As I looked around I saw some obstructions in my field of view, again right eye only. Overall it felt like a veil had fallen over the eye. When I closed my left eye, it looked like lots (thousands) of little dark dots arrayed in my field of view. The effect was that it was a little darker than the left eye. In addition there was sizable glob that reminded me of a spider with its legs attached to it. I could tell it was inside my eye because every time I move my eye to look right and then quickly shifted left, the glob moved with it.

It did not hurt. I felt no pain but. I waited a couple hours to see if it would improve or go away. It did not. (My wife was not pleased with this delay.) I mentioned it to my wife and she suggested I call an ophthalmologist friend of ours. I did and, after describing as I wrote above, he said to meet him at his office in a half hour. I did and the exam was thorough, mostly to rule out various possibilities. He dilated my eyes and used the brightest light I have ever seen aimed into my wide open pupil to see as much of the retina and the eyeball interior as he could. After completing his examination he said that the problem was the best case scenario. A blood vessel near, but not on, my optic nerve had burst and sprayed blood into the vitreous of my eye. He could see a little blood near a vessel by my optic nerve and the floaters in the vitreous. He said there was nothing he needed to or could do. The body would gradually absorb the blood and my vision would clear up. In most ways, my eye appeared in good health, for a man my age.

That was a relief. A big relief. No detached retina or other big issue to worry about. Now I am waiting for the blood to leave my eye. The spider and legs are still there as I write and they dance around as I look from side to side. I have found myself reacting to slight motions in my peripheral vision that are just chunks of blood moving as I glance sideways. It is a little irritating, but that I can handle, considering what might have happened.

Thanks for reading this.

Am I Really Thankful?

Thankful - feeling or showing gratitude.
Gratitude - a strong feeling of appreciation to someone for what that person has done for you.
Appreciation - the act of recognizing someone's worth as a person.

Last Friday my school administration showed a little gratitude toward the faculty and staff at my school. They hired a food truck called the Java Dawg to come to our campus for the morning just for us. As the name implies the heart of their business is specialty beverages. We each received a card good for the specialty drink of our choice. I got a mocha coffee. It was very good. A hot cocoa with caffeine is a reasonable description. At 8:00 AM it was a great choice. I had already had a cup of regular coffee, so this sweet one hit the spot. I would like to say thank you to the administrators for this expression of appreciation. While They did not have to do it, I am glad they did.

It did make me think a bit. When was the last time I deliberately showed gratitude to someone for what they had done or even for who they are? I decided to explore a little, so I looked up antonyms of thankful. I found the expected words like: hatred, distain, and dislike but was a little surprised to see apathy and indifference. After pondering this, briefly, I think I see the point. I would like to be able to say that I don't hate anybody. That I don't even dislike anyone that I know. Not that I am best buddies with all my colleagues, but I respect them as people and educators. And I am not best buddies with my students, but I like to think I respect them for the people they are and for the work they do in my class. The problem comes with that word apathy. We get so busy with our jobs and lives that we just don't take the time or make the effort to let people know that we appreciate them. It is not easy to do and can come across as self serving or insincere.

If there is any week in the calendar when we should be willing to express gratitude, this is it. And it doesn't even have to be for any thing in particular. Blanket thank yous are usually ineffective simply because they are not individualized. Thanks is best expressed one on one. That being said, since I have had several thousand students over the years, a blanket expression must suffice. To all those students who took a class from me, thank you. Without you I would not have had a job, a career, or an opportunity to impact others. Thank you to the parents who entrusted their children to me. And thank you to the administrators who took a chance and hired me.

Thank you for reading this post. I wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving

Cleaning House

A rule of life for almost everyone is the longer you stay in one location, the more 'stuff' you accumulate. While it is not universal, in our culture it holds true often enough that we have adopted such notions as spring cleaning to help combat this collecting of material goods, what some people refer to as 'clutter.' This is also true for teachers. In the past 10 years I have taught Honors Physics, AP Physics B, AP Computer Science, Introduction to Programming, Robotics and Astronomy. In early years at my current school, I also taught sections of Computer Explorations to 5th and 6th grades. I have accumulated a fair amount of educational materials along the way. "You never know when that might come in handy" is a common refrain to give ones self the permission to collect (hoard?) stuff. "If I had to buy this stuff, it would cost an arm and a leg" is another line of rationale to hang on to something.

I certainly still have stuff, but I must say that the collection has been significantly reduced. This is because I moved to a different classroom last summer. It is clear that changing rooms is definitely on my least favorite things to do list, but it did force me to confront the file cabinets and boxes of stuff that I had and decide if I would likely need it in my final year in the classroom meaning it would have to be moved and I would have to find a place for it in my new digs. At the end of last school year I spent hours sifting through the detritus of my years as a teacher and ended up pitching a lot of stuff or passing it on to other teachers who said they could use it.

This week I did a little bit more, cleaning out some old files and paper work. I am surprised at how empty my file cabinets now are. I still have all my astronomy stuff, since that is most of what I teach. Telescopes, tripods, globes, charts, books, accessories, and all my Starlab equipment (our portable planetarium) take up a significant amount of storage in my class. But I feel very good knowing I have gotten a good chunk of the process out of the way.

The one category of items that I still have is educational toys. They are going to be the subject of several future posts. For now I will only say that at some point in my teaching career, I became aware that there is a good amount of physics in certain toys.

One final word. I have tried to not think too much about this. However, on Friday, I calculated the number of schools left until R-day as 117. The school year is more than one-third over. To paraphrase the Latin I learned, Tempus fidgets.

Mis-adventures with a Mouse

For this blog I am not inclined to talk about my life outside of school, but this post will be an exception.

On Monday, I was preparing for bed. My wife was still in the living room. As I sat on the edge of the bed about to crawl in, a loud voice reverberated down the hallway, "CHAP! COME HERE! CHAP! COME HERE!" As I responded to the insistent cry, I asked what was wrong. My wife said she saw something, an animal of some kind, run across the wide opening that leads to a room that she can see from the couch she was sitting on. She was seriously alarmed, since she couldn't rule out a mouse. For the next half hour, armed with yard sticks and brooms, we banged, poked, and prodded furniture. The unknown creature finally revealed himself to me in an attempt to escape our incessant poking. A large mouse dashed from location to location, each effort resulting in my wife convulsing and creatively dancing to avoid any chance of contact with said mouse. We tried to direct the mouse to allow us to corner, capture or force it to run out the opened exterior door. He refused our efforts and ended up running under the refrigerator, refusing to come out. Drat!

Not wanting to be left alone in the house with a mouse, my wife went to a 24 hour store and got several mouse traps. We baited (with peanut butter), armed and arrayed them in the kitchen and, with misgivings, went to bed. About 3:30 AM we awoke to a loud snap. Cautiously, I entered the kitchen and saw one trap closed but empty. No mouse. I went back to bed and we heard no more noises that night. A little depressing, the thought that this mouse was able to escape with the bait.

The next day, Tuesday, while weighing options, I thought that the traps were insufficient for the size of the mouse sought. My son-in-law, in the pest control business, had a couple of rat traps that I borrowed, baited and set. However, that night was quiet. No sound. No Mouse. But he was still around, leaving little calling cards. Wednesday, while I was at school, my wife bought two more rat traps. We baited and set them, one in a hallway, the other in the living room. A little after midnight a loud snap interrupted our sleep. The trap in the hallway was sprung. BUT NO MOUSE! This was becoming very disturbing. What kind of mouse is clever/quick enough to avoid a trap twice! We reached a new level of discouragement. Were we destined to live with this new, un-welcomed house guest for weeks, months, even years? Our sleep pattern was being interrupted and I am not a pleasant person when I lack sufficient sleep.

Thursday night we put fresh bait in the 4 traps and relocated them. My son-in-law suggested that we put a shoe box over a trap, either propped up or with a hole cut in it. Mice are curious and can easily smell the bait. It is something different. We went to bed and this time put a rug in the door sill, to reduce the chance that the mouse could enter our inner sanctum bedroom. We slept through the night and heard no sharp sounds. Waking at 6:00 to prepare for school, I checked the traps. The first three were empty. I forgot about the fourth until nearly ready to leave for work. I saw a dust bunny near a bookcase and realized that the mouse had probably dragged it out from under it. The fourth trap was straight ahead and in it I saw a most reassuring sight; a still mouse in a sprung trap. What release, what pleasure, not that the mouse was dead, but that he would not be terrorizing my wife any more. After waking my wife and sharing the good tidings, I took the trap outside and disposed of its contents. Off to school I went in a welcomed wonderful frame of mind.

Trust me when I say that Friday night was the best night's sleep of the week. This was the first time in 45 years of marriage that we have had a mouse in the house. Lizards? Sure. Ants? Oh yeah. Mice? Never. I guess we were due. Here's to another 45 years before the next one.

On the Mend

Last post I noted a less than stellar week, health-wise. Well, I was not recovering quickly enough, so I went to see my doctor Monday afternoon. He said I had 2 issues: a virus in my mouth creating little openings in the skin for the normal bacteria ever present there to enter the blood stream and produce a temperature. I am now on an antibiotic and much improved.

Fall has arrived with the overnight low in the 50s. Tonight it may dip into the 40s. Since this is Florida, that is significant. I enjoy wearing long sleeve shirts without sweating up a storm.

So let's see, this week was Halloween. At my school the primary way we recognize that day is the second and third grades get costumed up according to a theme and they parade around campus first thing in the morning. The second grade dressed up by decades (the 20s, 30s, 40s, etc.) and the third grade dressed up as weird words/homophones/homonyms. Hey, this is a school for the gifted. It fits. Many of the students and teachers in the other grades also wear costumes. And since Halloween was Friday this year, an additional festive feeling was in the air. In addition, the Speech and Debate team was gone to a competition so several of my students were gone.

Now about Astronomy. In my class the students learn the constellations 2 or 3 per week until they know all 66 that you can see from our latitude. In recent weeks they have learned Piscis Austrinus, Capricorn, Cygnus, Vulpecula, Cepheus and Ursa Minor. If you took Astronomy from me, maybe they ring a bell. It is especially nice to see the students respond when we have a stargaze and they actually get to see these in the real sky. That is the one thing that makes my Astronomy class different from 99% of the other classes in America.

We also participated in the Great World Wide Star Count, an activity in which students estimate the limiting magnitude of the sky at their home location. We did it as a class at a star gaze at school and found that straight up we could see 5th magnitude stars. Closer to the horizon, light pollution from Sarasota and Venice reduced the number of stars we could see, which is the point of the exercise, to bring awareness to people of the effect of light pollution on our view of the heavens. I have been in locations where there were no lights within 38 miles and the skies were truly full of stars. The majority of people never get to see that and so have little or no appreciation of how beautiful the night sky is. If you ever get a chance to see a clear dark sky (say at a national park) please do so.

I'll step down from my soap box now.

Did I say that it is November already? To paraphrase a famous Latin dictum; tempus fidgets.
Thanks for reading this.