waiting for fall

Ahoy,

Fall has always meant the beginning of school for me. Many things I've come to associate with this season also comes with memories of school. I remember deliberately stepping on the crunchiest leaves on my way to class. I remember the smell of morning on the first day of school. I remember the first day it would be so cold I would dread sitting on the toilet when I got up. I remember the resetting my clocks so that it would still be dark as night when I got up for school. I remember the change of breath the city blows as my outer layers grow thicker, skin less exposed.

Everywhere else in the country it seems the season's changing. I'm getting frost advisory notices for Chicago. The leaves are turning, days are shortening. Meanwhile, I've got a new layer of tan on my shoulders. I'm waiting for fall like it has happened for me for every year of my life, and it's still a dry 90 degrees outside my windows. I don't think it's coming for me this year. This strange place is like an eternal summer.

everlastingly triassic,
jt

CPS on strike

Ahoy,

The public education system is something that has grown to be very near and dear to my heart. Even though I'm no longer in school, and don't plan on having any more school, my teachers from all my years of education are still my teachers today. I still remember every single one of my teachers from grade school and high school. I have fond memories of my childhood and youth, despite the absence of air conditioning as the CPS calendar rolled into summer. I have had the fortune of attending both a public and private university, which only confirmed my faith in the public school system. I am proud to be the product of public schools, and proud of what public schools have provided for me and those around me.

Although it may be true that this strike does not affect me directly, it is not true that I do not feel for those that are affected by it. I'm grateful that I had uninterrupted school years, and hope that this new contract will arrive speedily and can provide for kids a future full of potential that I received.

graciously schooled,
jt

basketball upstairs

Ahoy,

Clearly I'm in a foreign land judging as how the ground below me moved last night. Welcome to California.

My first earthquake was during my first week at Cal - some 5 years ago. We thought it was the boys upstairs playing basketball because they had been when we went to investigate earlier in the week and throughout our stay there. But this time was the real deal. And then about another week later I'm told there was another one, but I was in the shower and didn't feel anything. I've come to associate earthquakes with boys playing basketball upstairs because I don't know any better and haven't felt anything big enough to actually knock my things over.

So strange, this place is. Growing up in the most earthquake safe part of the world, the ability of the ground beneath my feet to move is difficult to wrap my brain around. So it moves, you say? So you can't build with bricks, you say? So things can topple over and fall into the ocean, you say? Images of Lois Lane falling into the abyss of the San Andreas Fault Line come to mind. Haven't you ever wondered where Superman is when you're feeling the earth shake and open up beneath you? Not anywhere near you, probably. I'm sure there are lots more important people to save from being swallowed up into the earth. Then why on earth would you choose to live here? There is plenty of seismologically stable land all across America, plenty of it ripe for development, you know? Clearly all that sun has fried your sense of reason, logic, and instinct for survival.

tyranically parched,
jt