Once I got to the farm yesterday, I saw these trees fallen across the springhouse. The biggest one was at least 75 feet tall and when it fell, it took at least two others with it. The roof of the building is destroyed, but I couldn’t get close enough to see if the walls were damaged. They didn’t seem to be, but the trees were so big, I couldn’t see much of the building. While this is disappointing, it isn’t too much of a setback for the farm because we weren’t planning to use the springhouse for a couple of years, at least. It’ll take a lot of work to clear those trees, but there’s no huge rush to do it. All things considered, that’s not too much damage considering the severity of the storms.
We’re taking this weekend off from the farm to work around the house and go to my niece’s 10th birthday party. I’ve already gotten most of the mowing done, but there’s still a lot of weed-eating to finish, and I’ve got a mountain of grading to do.
Once I make it through finals, hopefully I can write more, but for now, I’m just trying to get through the next week.
After the storms on Wednesday, I’m grateful that all we lost was one tree. I haven’t been out to the farm to assess the property there, but no major cells went over that area, so I’m not too worried about the building. All in all, we were very fortunate. One of my colleagues at the college lost her husband and she has been in ICU. Her house was completely destroyed by the F-2 tornado that struck Greene County. Her daughter, future son-in-law, and two grandchildren live with her, and thankfully, they are okay. All I can say is that Wednesday night was a terrifying experience, and I hope we don’t have another one like it any time soon.
The college is accepting donations for the family. They need clothes and baby items, especially. Here is the list of sizes the college has forwarded: Susie (large possibly sweat suits or gowns since Susie will probably have to go through extensive rehabilitation for her leg injury), Sheena (Susie’s daughter)- XL 16-18 clothes shoe size 9, Brian (son-in-law) large possibly sweat suits, 3 toddler size boy , and 6-0 month size girl. I’m sure diapers and other bay stuff would be welcome, too.
If you can donate anything, just drop by any WSCC campus and tell them you have items for Susie and her family.
In less somber news, the semester is almost over. All that’s left is Finals Week and a furious round of grading to get grades posted by the deadline on Friday. The last two weeks of any semester are the most difficult, especially for Comp teacher because of the time crunch for reading and grading essays. All in all, however, I’ll take this round of grading over what the alternatives could’ve been Wednesday night. Overall, I have nothing to complain about.
The late Myron Cope, voice of the Steelers for 35 years.
To quote the late Myron Cope, “Oi and double oi.” This has been a long semester. Thank all that’s good and decent that it’s almost over because I’m so burnt out I can barely stand myself. There’s simply not much fuel left in my teaching tank, and if not for the hope of the farm and a new life, I don’t think I could stand the thought of one more year.
I’ve written many times about missing the passion I once had for this profession. I miss looking forward to the work day, looking forward to the day-to-day tasks that I have to perform. Once upon a time, I got to design my own course my own way and deliver the material to the students in a manner that I found to be effective. The underlying pedagogy was that someone who had earned a Master’s degree in their subject should know that subject well enough to design a course around the material. Obviously, not everyone is a good teacher, but typically, those people weed themselves out fairly quickly. In general, the people who gravitate toward teaching are people who have a deeply rooted desire to share their love of their particular discipline, so those people typically take the profession seriously and strive to do a good job.
Then, several years back, the pedagogy began to change, and this new change is really a symptom of the larger issue in this country. For some reason, individual instructors can no longer be trusted to design their own courses. Self-sufficiency is frowned upon. Instructors must conform to standardized course designs that are developed by committees in bureaucratic offices far removed from the front lines. As with most things in our society today, the individual is being stripped of autonomy. This removal of self-sufficiency handcuffs those of us who believe that there are many ways to arrive at the proper destination and that one way is not necessarily better than another. In short, we must conform to an approach that may not necessarily mirror our individual strengths as educators.
Personally, I think that’s become the most prevalent issue of our time. Each and every day, we as individual citizens are stripped of more and more of our autonomy, and that is not confined to one party. It’s as if the underpinning of our democratic republic, that each person should have the right to govern themselves, is no longer relevant and that the liberties we grew up believing were ours no longer pertain to the vast majority of us, especially those of us who work for a living. Forget about Democrat or Republican, conservative or liberal; the real battle in this nation is over whether democracy will survive or if neo-feudalism will supplant it.
Big Owl's Tree 