Back Home Again...

No, not in Indiana.

After a long-ass month suffering through educational theory, leavened with useful moments of teaching summer school, I have returned.

Life, of course, has moved on without me, and thus the doctor from Utah wants his damn money.
I also have to buy supplies for a year.
And a plane ticket to Kobuk.
And get a physical.
And otherwise get my shit together.

So, after having a month of mine utterly wasted, I can finally get on with the whole affair.

A Poem About Teachers.

Composed today, by yours truly.
It well never be posted on the wall of any public school, but I'm going to keep it in mind for the year(s) ahead.

A good teacher is like an AK-47.
Simple, effective. Goes everywhere.
Will work in cold wastes or humid jungles.
Strong enough to take it...
Loose enough to roll with the punches.
A marriage of form and function,
Combining flexibility with relentlessly engineered purpose.

Teaching the Unteachable, Day 2

More clusterfucking, albeit more organized.

Have to design a classroom layout which, funny to say, is actually good practice for something that seems to be neglected all too often.

Of course, since I'm a generalist, I get to cover the walls in random crap willy-nilly.

Teaching the Unteachable, Day 1

Well, THAT was a big shiny clusterfuck.

Well, that's unfair. Some of the content we covered was useful.

But mostly it was a clusterfuck.

Also, having revised my lesson plan from January? Yeah, I liked it better before. Thankfully, it's over and done with. Praise... whoever.

Springtime in Alaska

So, as I pack and prepare to go waste an entire month in Anchorage, I figured I'd take one of my peaceful strolls through the woods. Just something I do.

And then I rediscovered the joys of spring in the Interior.

We have several wildfires going in the surrounding area, with the end result that no matter what the prevailing winds turn out to be, the entire area is blanketed in a haze of smoke from several hundred (possibly several thousand) acres of empty wilderness blazing away like a giant campfire.

As a result, anyone stepping outdoors is almost instantly kippered.

But the smoke is NOT enough to deal with the insect life- as your lungs fill with smoke, your skin is attacked on several fronts by great swarms of mosquitoes hellbent on draining your blood, and then the yellowjackets or bald wasps decide to pay a call to snack on the mosquitoes...

Yeah, it can be a bit rough.

But, on the other hand, as I walk through the smokey, bug-infested woods, I do so with a rifle on my shoulder, a pistol and a kukri at my belt, and the freedom to piss wherever I please more or less self-evident.

God I love my home.

As a certain Comrade of mine has recently engaged in this exercise, I'm bored enough to do the same.

Basically, this is the soundtrack of "Peyote Coyote- the Musical," with song titles dredged up from the flotsam and jetsam of my subconscious

They are color coded. RED items are Chorus/Ensemble numbers. Green items are duets, while bold green indicates a duet I'm not part of. Yellow items are chorus/dance numbers with no lyrics. Blue items in italic are, of course, my solos, and the bold version is a solo by someone else.
Act I
Overture (Cold and Dark)
Northern Nowhere.
Placid
The Northernmost Denny's
Outward Bound
So Long, and Don't Wait Up
Act II
What in Hell?
The Hoosier Tango
I've Grown to Hate It Here
You and I Make No Sense
Scumfucks/Brothers in Arms
Friday
We're All Too Drunk To Taste This Chicken
Where the Hell am I Going?

Act III
A Home I Barely Understand
Where Did You Come From?
A Last Year
An Unaccustomed Feeling
Fridays (Reprise)
In Love and Lust We Trust
Graduation
On the Drift
I'll Keep A Light On
A Visiting Pretext
Come Back
Ciao Italia
South

Act IV
On the Drift (reprise)
Welcome Back
The Hoosier Latitudes
A Company of Scumfucks
So Long (It's Been Real)
Fuck.
Brothers in Arms (reprise)
We'll Sort it Out
Damned if I Know
Iron and Fire
The Birth
I'll Be Damned

Act V
The Last Winter
Goodbye For Now
Fuck Utah.
Back in the North


And that's all... for now.

Rainbow in the Dark

So, in the wake of Ronnie James Dio's passing, I find myself moved to talk about my experiences with the man's music.

I discovered Dio late in life, first hearing his driving, awesome "I" while hanging out with a scumfuck buddy of mine in college- specifically, my junior year of college.

I did not immediately become a devotee.

Oh, I liked what I heard- I rapidly became one of those guys who remind people that Ozzie wasn't Sabbath's only vocalist- but I wouldn't say I became a fan.

No, it was during the year above the donut shop that I truly came to love the work of Dio.

Partly, it was exposure- my roomies all liked him to one degree or another, and so the music was on more.

Partly it was my own growing interest...

But mostly, I owe the boys of Tenacious D.

Dio's part in their film The Pick of Destiny is brief, beautiful, and it made a believer out of me.

When I found that he'd nailed his recording for the audio track in almost no time, I was further awed.

So I'm grateful for the tunes, the style, and most definitely the insanity of Ronnie James Dio.

As a dear comrade in arms said the day Dio died, "Now rocking Heaven and Hell."

Rock on, Ronnie.