Although I don’t live in Monroe County, I make an effort to stay up-to-date on news from the area since I work there, and I try to integrate my students’ immediate environment and news into my classroom teachings as best I can. Most of them hate writing — and after hearing about their high school experiences, I can hardly blame them — so if they have to write, I try to at least steer them towards topics that they care about, to help them with…
When the first trailers of the new Star Trek movie came out, I noted to myself that I wanted to say something about them. I guess that I was kind of nonplussed by the trailers themselves, except for at the end when it began to play the four-note sequence that started the classic Trek theme songs, played over a modern reenvisioning of the logo of the original television series. For a long time, that part of the trailer sent a chill down my spine. Watching…
Perhaps my memory is faulty, but when I was younger it seemed like there were a lot of hurricanes in the Gulf Coast that people worried would be "The Big One," that wound up diverting just in time to spare New Orleans from a direct hit. That’s the reason why, when Hurricane Katrina was headed towards the area three years ago, I really didn’t take it as seriously as I otherwise would have as it was nearing landfall; part of me assumed that it would…
Anyone who knows me will tell you that I am not a morning person. As much as I enjoy going out to the parks and botanical gardens this time of year and marveling at the trees and flowers and the way the sun pokes through all the leaves creating wonderful kaleidoscopes of light, there is only so much sun I can take. Back before I went back to college, it seemed as if I could only work on my creative pursuits in the darkest part…
From my previous experience going to school with the children of the owners of our local cable provider (and the local paper as well), I know that the people in charge of my cable are not exactly the sharpest knives in the drawer. This is a cable system, after all, that thinks that there are enough sports in Toledo for us to have our own 24-hour all-local sports channel. (They actually broadcast some of the gym games from my old private school.) This is a…