Midweek shuffle.

In the Garden, Q. Cassetti, 2010, pen and ink.Seems like rain right now. Humid and cool, which I love…but dark. I wrangled the trash and recycling to the curb this morning with Shady sitting placidly admiring my efforts. But, its all there…and now all I have to do is wait with baited breath for the rumbling truck and friendly people come to fetch it. Fingers crossed (as every week) that maybe, just maybe, they will take our organized load.

Yearbook meeting was good yesterday. We will meet next week with a planner and the first half schedule in front of us to be able to do more accurate lesson planning. I told them about Rick Smolen’s “Day in the Life” series…which made me feel quite ancient as it wasn’t exactly yesterday…and how we will use that idea to spring into the conversation and focus on telling stories with pictures. I went on Alibris and bought used copies of these books (a few less than $7.00 a piece). I have other ideas around this…that has some energy around it. It was interesting to hear that other principals in the area were told about our project and there seems to be some interest around doing a Lulu Yearbook too. I think there might be a little money around creating templates for these yearbooks to make it easier for the schools to do this. My guess is the big Yearbook companies have not had the wind let out of their sails re: on demand printing…as they had these small schools in their palm…without the product/or offering changing much…except for the price hitting everyone’s pocket. I like the idea that we can change this a bit..and make this publication available to everyone at a fair price.

Kitty signed up for her Orientation project. Hampshire offers all sorts of cool things to do during orientation as a way of self selecting groups. There are things from paper mache and bookbinding, to white water kayaking and canoeing, to poetry, to “pranking”, to building structures in nature (Kitty picked). Today, we need to launch into looking and picking courses…There is not much time. But, that’s done. Alex has a regents test, breakfast with friends at the Falls, and a round of golf after the test. Sounds pretty dreamy. Another summer of a course membership for Alex (really inexpensive)…so I am delighted he is going to press it into action.

Gloria comes in today (Red eye to NYC, NYC to Syracuse and the new add, the Syracuse airport to airport shuttle to Ithaca). So there is a lot of excitement around that.