A Glimmer

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 It's almost the end of July and I'm filled with glimmers.


A glimmer of excitement. I worked in my new classroom one morning this week. (I'd be there more, but I don't have keys yet.) I set up 5 of the 6 tables I'll need for students, along with chairs. (I'm mixin' it up. Alternating tables, some with orange chairs and some with blue.) I laminated some posters of some of my historical figures. (Mae Jemison. Harriet Tubman. Abe Lincoln. Jackie Robinson. President Obama. Anne Frank.) I put out my Author's Chair and a rug that used to be perfect, but after the science fair last year, now has a smear of rubber cement.


A glimmer of joy. I've been hitting the streets, begging for donations from area restaurants for donations. Love a Golden's trivia night is coming up, and it's my responsibility burden to get the majority of the gift certificates. We're just about to reach our goal, so I'm thrilled. I can slow down the prostrate train...


A glimmer of hope. A second publisher has requested a full manuscript. Obviously, such a request might result in them still saying, "No thanks." In fact, both of them might say, "Um, no." However, I'm preferring to keep looking at that glimmer of hope.


As Emily Dickinson so eloquently wrote:

Hope is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.

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I'm back. On the previous post, I said I was disconnecting due to doing some family fun stuff. That wasn't completely true. I was out of town--on another continent--for 10 days, and I didn't want the riff-raff (who, of course, are reading my blog) getting wind that I wasn't home. After all, I got lots of valuable stuff to pilfer through... stuff like a half-full crate of markers I haven't moved to my new classroom yet... stuff like almost every John Prine and Cat Stevens album ever recorded... valuable stuff like 10 or 12 writing journals (each one with only a few pages written in). I was on a cruise that circumnavigated Iceland, and found it to be a country of such differences. Parts of it looked like another world, with weird rocks that seemed to leap out of the surface, creating huge formations. Parts of it were brilliantly green... There were incredible mountains, formed by glaciers and volcanoes... And the most powerful waterfall in Europe? It's in Iceland. My photos cannot capture the beauty of the country. Fortunately, my memories didcapture how gorgeous Iceland is... and I will always remember the starkness, the lushness, the other-worldly amazingness. If I made a movie about my trip, it might have been more effective than mere photos. And today on The Muffin, that's what my post is about--making movies. Check it out. (And how about you? What fun or exciting things have you done this summer?)