published in AFAR! a scene from Brussels...

...just got back from GA; re-acclimatizing to the desert and getting ready to go back to work tomorrow, and I find out that a photo of mine has been published in a travel magazine! Gotta share the thrill:

...on the top of p.22 of the Nov/Dec 2011 issue of AFAR magazine,

look on the right:

voilà l'originale:

A comic-book surprise on a streetcorner in an otherwise gritty part of Brussels, known for its bédé ('comics' in French) culture...Years ago, when I lived in Paris, a friend from the U.S. came to visit; his time was limited, so we hopped on the Eurostar high-speed train just after breakfast one day and spent the day in Belgium. Chocolate, waffles, beer, french fries and 'mussels in Brussels' were inevitable, but on that cold winter day, there was also a lot of art to brighten up the city under the grey...

...and here's the cover so you can find the current issue

of this magazine at your local newsstand or bookstore:

(Incidentally, last year, AFAR won a travel writers' award for 'best travel magazine'...

not bad for a magazine that's been around for only a couple of years...)

fall, 'back east'...not a vacation, but a bit of leaf-peeping nonetheless

S. and I have been spending a couple of weeks 'back east' this fall...

...because my mother ended up having to have back surgery.  Fortunately, both my wife and I were able to take some time off from our jobs in Tucson to fly back to GA...S. arrived about a week and a half ago--helping my mother out with pre-surgery errands, etc., and then I flew out a few days after that, so that we could both be with her right after for her recovery. (S. just got back on a plane this evening, and I will be here until Friday. I can't be thankful enough that my wife and mother get along well; the proverbial mother-in-law/daughter-in-law friction is blessedly absent in our family...)

Last Friday, a week after her surgery, my mother was feeling well enough to walk around and be alone for hours at a time, well enough to encourage me to take my wife up to the mountains to see the fall foliage--"are you SURE?"--"yeah, yeah, go show her!"...And so S. and I woke up very early on Friday, making sure Mom would have all she would need for the morning and early afternoon...then we drove up to the mountains where NC, SC, and GA come together; we spent a couple of hours walking/driving around, had lunch, and then were back at Mom's in the afternoon--in time for me to pick peppers in her garden--an abundant 'crop' that we didn't want to see ruined; there was the threat of frost that night...Mom is gently ambulatory, but we had to keep reminding her NOT to BEND as she 'supervised' the chili-harvest in her garden...

So...below, a few photos from this unexpected opportunity to be color-seeking tourists for a few hours...

S. is from the Pacific Northwest, where the evergreen-clad slopes just do not put on an autumn show like the Appalachians do...and with my work schedule as a teacher, the thought of being 'leaf-peepers' in the mountains back east had never crossed our minds...who knew that a mother's back-surgery and recovery could be timed to coincide with the fall colors?

fellow leaf-peepers along a stream near Highlands, NC

 "Dry Falls", just west of the town of Highlands--'dry' because you can walk down and behind the cascade without getting wet:

...in the town of Highlands:

...and along Highway 64, on the way to the town of Cashiers:

 looking SE toward Whiteside Mountain:

 =================================

...and back in Augusta.
This morning, as the fog lifted, S. and I went for a walk around the headwaters of the Augusta Canal, along the rapids in the Savannah River that divide the Piedmont plateau from the coastal plain...Spanish moss drapes the trees around the 19th-century Lock-keeper's cottage:

   
 ...is this an egret or a heron? I haven't had a chance to look it up, so perhaps someone out there can help clear up our avian ignorance:

...and, from a few days ago, a random scene from a Victorian building downtown:

(...why the blue horse?)

...still downtown, a market scene: the Saturday morning farmer's market around the 19th-century Cotton Exchange:

artisanal French bread for sale on a brick-paved street...

(and I don't use the term 'artisanal French' lightly;

I know the baker--he is from Lyon...

If you're ever passing through GA/SC, check this out.)

...Augusta is almost quaint, eh?

A few more days here...a few more runs along the canal, some time with friends, and most importantly, time to make sure that Mom's recovery continues to come along smoothly before returning to Tucson on Friday...

today's grammatical gem--it sounds GRATE!

A student of mine, earlier today, wrote this:
     "passed tents"

Ahh....grammar and the tricky terrain of homophones...
Verbs, kiddo, we're learning VERBS, as in
        present TENSE, past TENSE, future TENSE!!!

I can't make up this stuff.

I"m feeling a bit tense. Maybe I should go camping?
Oh no, vacation time has passed...

To work.
And boy is there a lot of work to do in the language classroom...

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Here's a poem using homonyms/homophones.
Fun for word-nerds, from
    http://www.cooper.com/alan/homonym.html

An Ode to the Spelling Chequer


Prays the Lord for the spelling chequer
That came with our pea sea!
Mecca mistake and it puts you rite
Its so easy to ewes, you sea.

I never used to no, was it e before eye?
(Four sometimes its eye before e.)
But now I've discovered the quay to success
It's as simple as won, too, free!

Sew watt if you lose a letter or two,
The whirled won't come two an end!
Can't you sea? It's as plane as the knows on yore face
S. Chequer's my very best friend

I've always had trubble with letters that double
"Is it one or to S's?" I'd wine
But now, as I've tolled you this chequer is grate
And its hi thyme you got won, like mine.
                                       —Janet E. Byford

Friday after work in one of "the 19 best"

Tucson was just listed in October's OUTSIDE magazine as one of 'the 19 best towns' in the country...


After you've lived anywhere for a while, the 'honeymoon' wears off and quotidian reality sets in, producing the occasional love/hate-fest of 'home'-town-feelings...The past couple of years in Tucson have had their ups and downs for us...


But yesterday evening, after work, I went for a bike ride in Sabino Canyon--featured in the OUTSIDE article, and rightly so. (I'm not exaggerating when I say that it's one of the most beautiful places in the Southwest.) The recent monsoon rains have filled the creek and pools in this oasis in the Santa Catalina Mountains--a good reminder of one of the 'pluses' that can outweigh the 'minuses' of living here...

So, with scenery like this a ten-minute drive from home (well, plus the hike/bike-ride into the canyon), yes...there are worse places to live...


If you're curious what the 'rest of the best' are, check out these links:

Reader's Choice for Best Town Ever (?): Chattanooga, Tennessee
Portland, Oregon
Issaquah, Washington
Boulder, Colorado
Missoula, Montana
Charleston, South Carolina
Wilmington, North Carolina
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Durango, Colorado
Madison, Wisconsin
Traverse City, Michigan
Tucson, Arizona
Flagstaff, Arizona
Ashland, Oregon
Chico, California
Portland, Maine
Hardwick, Vermont
Burlington, Vermont
Ithaca, New York 


Some more fact-checking could've been done, though...


The blurb about Issaquah states that it's 'only a 20-minute from downtown Seattle and oyster-flats'...
Huh!? MAYBE on a post-apocalyptic traffic-free Sunday morning, you can make it from Issaquah to downtown, and 'oyster flats' of Puget sound are definitely further afield...The article about Portland, ME says that you can ski and then surf on the same day--hmm, so after a several hour drive down from the snowy mountains on the ME/NH border, one is going to don a wetsuit for the frigid North Atlantic in January? Really?! 


Caveat lector.


But the list is a fun way to gauge cities' 'liveableness'--if your definition is skewed toward outdoors-recreation and scenic splendor...At least it gives you an idea where to go for a vacation; for relocation, though, don't rely on a magazine article...

Another Labor Day, another T-shirt...earned! Running among the saguaros...

During these past three weeks of back-to-school madness, I've been looking forward to this three-day weekend: Labor Day! So, this morning, I slept in...until 4:30 a.m. Time to get up and join a thousand other early risers to RUN the Saguaro National Park Labor Day 8-miler! This was my second year doing it; as long as I live in Tucson, I hope to make this an annual tradition.

Last Thursday's Tucson newspaper, (click here for more info; above photo of last year's starting crowd from the article), had a lengthy article about the race, which has taken place here for 42 years. I didn't notice it, but my wife pointed out to me that I'm in the photo! Towards the right, I'm in the blue/white shirt, wearing a red cap.

A friend of mine drove over so we could carpool to the National Park; my wife volunteered to come along and be our logistics coordinator--all of this well before sunrise. And it was a muggy dawn--temperature already in the 80's in the desert! Fortunately, we had a cloudy morning--the thermometer never did rise above about 83 degrees while we ran.

That made climbing the numerous hills less of a chore; check out this topographical map (printed on the front of the race t-shirt from a few years ago) of the route:

About halfway through the loop, you have to climb the equivalent of a 40-story building.

It is a scenic route through the cactus-studded foothills of the Rincon Mountains. Come on and check it out!

This year's t-shirt:

Incidentally, the friend of mine who carpooled with us--he won his age division easily...AND he won the 'Masters,' meaning he was the fastest runner over 40; the only guys faster than him were a decade or two younger!.

As for me, I did make my goal, which was a minute slower (alas) than last year, since I missed about six weeks of consistent training runs this summer, with traveling to and from Asia, jet-lag, etc...I still consider myself a 'newbie'...and in about an hour, I am going to meet up with some friends at an Italian restaurant to celebrate, as I did last year, with a big plate of spaghetti alla carbonara. (Hey, runners deserve their carbs, right?) For health's sake, this too should be a once-a-year tradition only--the last time I tasted that piatto de colesterolo was Labor Day of last year...

Below, a few photos of the scenery in Saguaro National Park...

The Park is divided--one section is west of the city, and the other (about a 15-minute drive from where we live, where the race takes place) is just east of Tucson...With all of its flaws, it is cool to live in a city sandwiched between National Park lands...

I am especially fond of this park because it helped make me a runner. L'appétit vient en mangeant--the saying is smooth in French, awkward in translation: 'the appetite arrives while eating,' or, 'you get hungrier as you eat,'--sometimes you don't know you want/need/enjoy something until you are already in the process of trying it...

As an all-too sedentary adolescent, busy with music and books and GPA, running was totally off my radar...Running this cactus-lined loop last year, I realized that I enjoyed the mind-clearing motion of running longer distances outdoors. After I finished the 8-miler last year, I then set my eyes (or my legs, I guess I should say) on '13.1'...and a few months later, I finished my first half-marathon! So now, as the weather finally begins to cool down, time to train for another one...

Two weeks in...

Two weeks into the school year now...
  
As I'm coming to know my students this year, I've learned that they make up the most diverse group I've ever had in my decade of high-school teaching. Here are their countries of origin, starting with the obvious:

     U.S.A. & Mexico...

     and then, in no particular order:

El Salvador

Sierra Leone

Russia

Colombia

Iraq

China

Bosnia

Croatia

Nepal (with Bhutanese parents)

Cuba

Uzbekistan

Ghana

Guinea

Vietnam

Honduras

Congo, D.R.(Kinshasa)
Nigeria

Congo, (Brazzaville)

Ethiopia

Somalia

Tanzania (parents from Burundi)

Lebanon
Sudan

     and if I'm included,

half Korea and half Canada--does that add up to one more country?

...for a grand total of over two dozen countries of origin!

(if you include parental backgrounds...Plus, a handful of students from the Pacific Northwest, which may as well be a different country from Arizona. One of those kids said, about moving here, "I like all the good Mexican restaurants, but I don't know how to pronounce them." Ha! You'll learn, m'ijo, you'll learn...)

The past couple of years I've had exchange students from Belgium and Germany in my classroom, as well as Navajo and Tohono O'odham students, but never have I had a 'grand total' number as large as this year's.

Nepali, Twi, Kirundi, Arabic in the background of my students' brains as they learn French and Spanish conjugations...Tucson has never been more international...and the world's never had a greater number of displaced people, either.

So it's been busy, but all was going well until Tuesday afternoon, when I suddenly felt like the proverbial hit-by-a-truck victim. (Why do we say that, anyway, 'to feel as if one has been hit by a truck?' Doesn't that usually result in death?) A summer cold. Noooooooooooooo!


It's inevitable in Aug/Sept., with the sudden return of kids to enclosed spaces. No amount of antibacterial hand gel can prevent the back-to-school cold season. But it's particularly unpleasant in August in Tucson; the normally soothing therapy of soup ends up feeling more like torture when the temperature outside is ONE HUNDRED EIGHT DEGREES!!! (Even for Tucson, that was a record earlier this week.)


I can't remember the last time an illness came on so suddenly; I'd had a good run in the morning before school, a good day with classes, felt good about after-school planning, drove home in an energetic mood, and then half-an-hour later, as I finally sat on the couch to watch the news--BAM! This early in the school-year, I just CAN'T miss work, so...thank goodness for pseudoephedrine, which gave me just just enough 'control' to be in front of adolescents for several hours a day the past few days. I will admit, though--yesterday, by the end of day, I just couldn't be 'active' any more...So I popped in a DVD for my advanced class. It was a documentary; I'm not a bad teacher, I'm not I'm not I'm not.


And I did have a bit of germ-inspired juvenile vocabulary-fun with my first-year Spanish students. I'd previously showed them how they already know thousands of Spanish words already without realizing it--the magic of COGNATES! (ex. nation--nación, objective--objetivo, etc...) Now, using my cold as the segue--I demonstrated the danger of false cognates...such as: 'constipado.' No, it does not mean that one needs prune juice. It means (in many parts of the Spanish-speaking world, at least) that one has come down with a cold. Perhaps more commonly heard in parts of Latin America is the adjective 'resfriado'...At any rate, I am emerging from my constipado-ness, just in time for the weekend...

a couple of cartoons for La Rentrée

First of all: definition of "La Rentrée"--French for the post-summer-vacation ritual of returning to school/work. In the U.S., this is Aug./Sept. and mainly is 'back-to-school'; in France it's Sept./Oct. and applies to everyone, not just students...

I like this cartoon, even if might seem a bit twisted:

My wife and I have a parrot--worry not, we take good care of him. (We arrange house/bird-sitting when we go out of town, just so you know.) And, in case you didn't already know, for work, I am a language teacher. (French I, II, & III, & Spanish I this year.) I am not abusive in the classroom. And I don't teach German. (alas) Anyway...

But I like this cartoon. It's been posted on our refrigerator for a year-and-a-half now...

If only it were so simple to encourage students to become fluent speakers...

And now, something from Dilbert:

Ahh, the contemporary surfeit of self-esteem...

A recent issue of The Atlantic magazine had a lengthy article entitled "How to Land Your Kid in Therapy."

The cover of the magazine proclaims this: "How the cult of self-esteem is ruining our kids."

Indeed, the perils and unpleasant side effects of showering too much praise, cultivating self-esteem without substance--what I get to observe, in its myriad adolescent manifestations, during my workweek!

Don't get me wrong, I like my job...I mean, to a reasonable degree...

but I'm not among those overly idealistic teachers who insist, almost religiously, that 'they give their heart and soul to 'their' kids,'...those educators for whom 'financial compensation is not a concern' since 'the opportunity to touch lives' makes up for substandard wages and being the punching bag for society's complaints. 

Teaching in 21st-c. America--it's both better and worse than you think. When I first went back to teaching high-school (wow, a decade ago already) after being in the college/university environment for a few years, concerned friends and acquaintances would, when approaching me to say hello, lower their voices and cock their heads with concern before asking, so sincerely: "So...how ARE you?" At first I was puzzled and I wondered if I must've looked terrible or something...I mean, all these well-meaning people touching my shoulder and expressing concern--really, I was okay! This lasted about a few months, and then they realized that I had not become a target for spitballs nor were my tires being slashed...

But even now, when meeting people for the first time and answering the question 'so what do you do for work'--I still get that 'oh, wow' eyebrow-raise when I mention that I am a high-school teacher. Truth be told, sometimes in the mirror, I give myself that oh-wow-eyebrow-raise...

But I'm okay.

Monday. Back to the classroom...

===============================================

random quote:

"Without data, you are just another person with an opinion."

(quoting Andreas Schleicher...for background and the full article, click here.)