days of naze

onslaught
09:54 PM

Some look down their noses at reality tv, but not I. You will find me glued in particular to Survivor, Hell's Kitchen, and my latest obsession, [yell it in your best Cat Deeley English accent] So You Think You Can Dance?

The only reason that I've tuned in for bits of Rockstar Supernova is that a certain Portland girl, Susan (yes-it's-my real name) Storm Large, is a contestant. But referring to her as a contestant is like calling Muhammed Ali a pretty good boxer.

Just take a look at her performance of Dramarama's Anything and feel her opponents' collective rock cojones shrivel.

Storm is two parts Deborah Harry and three parts Patti Smith. And that is damn entertaining and scary as hell.

July 26, 2006

disarmed
05:28 PM

Over the last 4 years, I've rarely been more than an arm's length away from a digital camera. At home, I scored great shots of Chambo and Henry, our cats, the remodeling and painting we did on our house last summer, and the antics of my brood. At my school, I captured moments of concentration during science experiments, of joyful abandon playing bump ball on the playground, and revealing portraits of new 4th graders in September.

My Nikon Coolpix 3100 died in May and I've been a bit out of sorts ever since. While the camera can be inconvenient on occasion, both in bulk and batteries, those costs are far outweighed by the ability to preserve little slices of history.

I'm really close to buying the Canon PowerShot A530. Quality and size are key for my daily use. I've been shooting long enough to realize that one day I'll be getting a beefier camera.

July 14, 2006

8 years on the web
11:55 PM

Eight years ago, France had won their first World Cup after many years of frustration, I purchased my first home PC (the Gateway G6-266 that is still chuffing away next to its black metal and glass successor), and on this day, Bastille Day, I launched this site after nearly a year of writing.

I don't recall ever encountering another personal site that launched with more than 15,000 words. In the blogcentric present, that act seems even more quixotic than it did back then. The big stories in our lives remain big stories as our lives progress.

As I look back over my creative life, I see a pattern of succession. From high school through my late twenties, classical music ensembles were my chief artistic outlet, lightly sprinkled with role playing games. Music performance was eclipsed by fatherhood as the birth of my second child made ensemble work impractical from a scheduling perspective and impossible in terms of energy.

The web was also very much in its infancy at that time and it was a pretty damn cute baby. My passion for the people telling their stories on the web and its DIY punk philosophy fueled the many late nights prior to launch and those first few years of essays.

Although my time commitment to this site has obviously waned, it is never far from my thoughts. It's rare that a week goes by when I don't think 3 or 4 times , hey, I should blog that.

But obviously, that ain't happenin'.

My creative juices are still there, but over the last 4 years they're running heavily to teaching. And that's cool.

I'm a pretty frank judge of performance. When I first started this site, I had serious game. Who knows? Maybe one day I'll have serious internets game again. Maybe not.

But I can tell you that I've got serious teaching game. My teaching of writing dramatically improved this year after 6 intense weeks last summer in the Portland Writers Project. I do a well designed and written classroom weekly newsletter that keeps families in touch with what we do in the classroom. And I managed an incredibly diverse and challenging, culturally and academically, classroom of 4th graders with some humor and a firm hand.

And that's where things are right now. And it is good.

Thank you to those who have linked to this site over the years. We made and make the internets and we mostly give it away for free. That was cool 8 years ago, it's cool now, and godammit, giving away your stories will always be cool.

July 10, 2006

not dormant in real life
11:51 PM

We all have biases and prejudices about the jobs that we do not do. Before I taught for a living, I imagined that teacher summers were one non-stop party.

In the 17 days of my "vacation" thus far I have: cooked countless meals for my 3 children, taken 8 credit hours consisiting of 3 separate courses toward my continuing certification and pay scale, spent half a day in a dental chair with various contraptions attached to and poking/drilling/scraping my teeth, planned a late-August trip to NYC trip with my wife, hiked more than 42 miles around Portland, tutored my youngest son in math, done mountains of laundry and dishes, and given my 56th pint of blood.

Some day I hope to add: wrote a great entry for my website, but that will have to wait another day. I'm really tired.