No news

So I have nothing much to write about, but here I am and I would rather blog than get ready for the next week. In my defense, it's one heck of a week coming up - Foreign Language Week - including our Foreign Language Film Festival after school (in reality, it's been going on for a week already, but we show the Italian movie Wednesday), decoration and banner making in class this week, the Foreign Language Honor Society inductions and banquet Thursday night, and cooking with my Italian classes Thursday and Friday. So I have spent much of this weekend trying to figure out just what I want to do - which film I want to show (I've settled on The Icicle Thief), what I want to cook (NO IDEA), etc, etc.

I really do need to figure out tonight what I will cook with them so I can put together a grocery list for tomorrow evening. Last year we made crostata. I don't remember what we made in the year before; I think we focused on how to make a good red sauce; and two years before that we made risotti - cheese in most of the classes, and a seafood one in classes with older (and more daring) students. We made chocolate salami before that, and before that gnocchi, and spaghetti alla carbonara, and one year we made fresh pasta, which I would like to do again, but it makes a colossal mess and I know I wouldn't have 6th period cleaned up before the freshman orientation class came in 8th period. Because of that, it might just be chocolate salami time again - it's quick, easy, and fairly low-mess. But I did something sweet last year, so I haven't decided for sure. I'm also considering pasta with tuna sauce, because it's one of my favorites, quick and easy, and something very different from what any of them would consider. I could maybe do one batch tuna and another onion so the fish haters would still have something to nosh on.

Anyway, plenty on the docket for this week, and I have a feeling I'll have plenty to recuperate from when spring break hits.

Back from Houston...

... and my brain is buzzing. There is so much to do. I have barely unpacked and I sat down at the bookcase to yank out any and all books having to do with philosophy, criticism, or thought of whatever kind. I've got to put these next in my reading list. There is so much to learn and to consider, and so little time.

So why all this? Because next year I should be teaching one level of Theories of Knowledge for IB. Which is such a huge mental exercise! But hopefully it will give me some interesting ideas to work out here, so maybe it will be a cause for more blogging.

Anyway, so here is the injunction I found scrawled on a tablet in the bookcase. I don't know the source, all I have written is that it is from Sanskrit 4500 years ago:

"Look well to the one day for it and it alone is life. In the brief course of this one day lie all the verities and realities of your existence. The pride of growth, the glory of action, the splendor of beauty. Yesterday is only a dream and tomorrow is but a vision. Yet each day well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness and each tomorrow a vision of hope. Look well, therefore, to this one day, for it and it alone is life."

Stone carving at Rice University, Houston