KatharineGrate’s blog

Took a photo of books I've read recently and realized two good ones are already back at the library.

PB290005

Today's the last day of my annual fall lay-off.  My district closed schools for the entire week -- nice for this week, but probably won't be enjoying it too much in June when I work two days longer than the neighboring district.  Oh well....

Have had a lovely week:

*Attended the West Coast Ragtime Festival and had a great time.  Three days of wonderful music and great people.  I already made my reservations for next year!   Here's a shot of the CDs I bought, and the festival handbook:

souveniers

*Thanksgiving itself was nice.  Lots of food, drink, love, playing cards, friends, all that.   I'm boiling turkey bones right now to make some soup.   Wonderful smells are wafting out of the kitchen.  again
And Jacob made pie.  Turtle pumpkin pie. Yummy.

oooey gooey

Today my best friend put her mom under hospice care.

Three years ago, this time of year, my mom was dying;  she died and then 4 relatives and a friend, all women, died.   In just over a year.  

I put on twenty pounds and watched my personality change in weird and unattractive ways.  I'm getting better now -- lots of self therapy & that extra weight is coming off.  I'm entirely different, but kind of back to the regular, strong, caring me.

It's hard to truly remember the stress and turmoil of life while watching mom die.  I'm trying to think of help I could have used then so that I can do something to help my friend.

I built up my power and went over to Wal-mart to spend my $100 they gave me.   At least I tried.
I strolled the aisles and filled my cart -- I wanted to spend the whole thing in one trip so I'd never have to go back again.
She rang up $117. and I handed her the gift card & had a twenty ready. 
The gift card wouldn't go through.
The cashier called a manager over.  We all stood around and looked at it.  They talked to someone on the Wal-mart phone.
There was no money on the gift card.
I left.

Life is strange.

Facebook - Redefining family and friendship

I wasn't able to blog for the past couple of weeks, but while I was recovering from shoulder surgery it was comforting to watch Pedro Martinez pitch as well as he did in the World Series.

Pedro Martinez

I figured if Martinez could pull off a quality World Series start - the ultimate comeback from a rotator cuff tear - then getting back to a keyboard would only be a matter of time for me.

Funny though, I didn't miss writing nearly as much as I missed connecting with people online. I still marvel at how fast and deeply we have become immersed in social media in a relatively short time, especially my generation.

For baby boomers in the vortex of this phenomenon, it comes as no surprise that we comprise the fastest-growing segment among Facebook's 300 million users. It can happen quickly. As Chronicle columnist Jon Carroll put it so succinctly the other day: "One day I wasn't, and the next day I was."

For me that day came two years ago. Until then I had been lurking on the sidelines of social media. I resisted signing up, probably out of the same security and identify theft fears that stop many users.

Then, on October 11, 2007, I got this note from my former Giants colleague, Pat Gallagher:

"DJ, I thought Facebook was just for kids. I was wrong."

Pat Gallagher

It caught me by surprise. I've known Pat for thirty years, but two years ago he was one of the last people I would have expected to "friend" me.

Even though we go back a long way, our connection isn't like those cornerstone friendships born in childhood or college. We worked side-by-side marketing and publicizing the Giants for a dozen years, celebrating championships and grieving losses together. That was years ago and I moved on. But to his credit, Pat was better at keeping in touch.

So I thought OK, if he's on there, I'm in. Since connecting with Pat on Facebook, I have been able to share virtually in his retirement hoopla and subsequent world travels, his children's activities, family reunions, new and old photos and more.

Had I missed any of that, would it matter in the long run? Perhaps not, but the older we get, the more inclined we are to reach out and connect with others, especially those long separated by years and geography. We seek to savor memories of people, places and events, to put our lives in context. Social media makes it all easier.

Facebook has since opened a new world of connections for me. My friends list now includes not only family, friends and coworkers, but past colleagues, professional contacts, media and classmates. Several I sought out and many found me, including people I hadn't heard from in ages. In Carroll's words, "Who doesn't want another friend?"

On a more personal level, Facebook figured significantly in the response to the death of my older brother, Dorn, on the East Coast earlier this year. Several of his Lowell High School classmates and others from around the country found me and shared their condolences and memories.

One particularly poignant note came from a woman who had been his first girlfriend in junior high fifty years ago, regretting they had not kept in touch. "I broke down in tears," she wrote, "shocked & disappointed that somehow I had lost someone who had been significant in my long ago youth."

Others sent anecdotes about him I never knew before, and one even mailed me a copy of a column Dorn had written for the Lowell school newspaper in 1962, circling a particular paragraph to point out how "sensitive" my brother was to others.

Facebook requires us to jettison our old notion of what "friend" means and accept a wider definition, aside from the noun itself morphing into a verb. Facebook friends include the true friends and family you keep in touch with regularly, but they can also be simply contacts or the people you would have in your address book.

You don't have to communicate one-to-one with all of them, or any of them, and there are privacy protections that let you send direct notes if you want. But once you get in the flow of the conversation, it's hard not to jump in.

You never know who might pop up at any given moment, literally. Oddly enough, in the middle of writing this blog but feeling the need to rest my aching left shoulder, my Facebook chat window popped up with a greeting.

"Hey, Duffy, what's up?" it said. It was Dave Dravecky, sitting at his computer in Denver. I had not talked to him since the reunion of the 1989 Giants team at AT&T Park last summer.

Dave Dravecky on Facebook

Awkwardly aware of the irony, I gave him an update on my operation, but quickly added that I wasn't about to complain to him, of all people.

Always a man of consummate class, he replied: "I wish you a great recovery."

Here's a former Major League pitcher who lost his arm to cancer, reaching out spontaneously with a kind word to someone 1200 miles and twenty years away. It's unlikely he would have picked up a telephone to call me out of the blue, but a quick chat message on Facebook made it so easy for him to say hello - and make my day. So thanks, Dave.

And a special thank you to you, Gallagher. You were right about being wrong.

Posted By: Duffy Jennings (Email) | November 17 2009 at 11:00 AM

    Would you believe I was awarded one hundred dollars from Wal*Mart because I am the most excellent teacher and they wanted to award me?!?

    Well, would you believe that my little elementary school was chosen by the local Wal*Mart as a most excellent school and they gave m $100.00 because I'm the single best teacher there?!?

    Well, would you believe that my little elementary school was chosen to be recognized with a thousand dollars in Wally gift cards and that my name was one of 10 pulled out of a hat?!?

    Yeah, that one.

    And Wal*Mart sent over 500 cupcakes -- one for each child.  It was a great assembly for the kids.   But, gee, I do hate Wal*Mart.  Guess it won't take long to spend the money on classroom supplies -- I won't have to go there too often.

PeopleofWalmart_logo

.... and .... yesterday was the first day of fall and it was 102 degrees.  Hotter today. 
I hate being hot -- I don't know why I live here!
I'm putting the thermostat down as far as it goes tonight & getting myself a blanket!

Where IS that ice hotel?????   I need to go there!!!

Ice_hotel_room

Feeling somewhat amazed ... today one of my students (Kindergarten, 5 years old) invited me to be his friend on MySpace.  Told me all about how to find him and what kinds of music and photos he has posted.
Not me .... I don't even have a MySpace account ... I'll have to tell him about FaceBook, I guess, MySpace is soooo last year.

    Spent time reading a Holy Bible Cookbook to kindergartners today.  Geared towards little kids, with brightly colored  pictures, it wasn't religiously obnoxious and I'll pretty much read any book a child brings in to share.
(I successfully kept my very clever and witty sarcastic comments to myself.) 
    The book showed it's own clever wit with recipes such as: "the coat of many colors parfait" "angel cupcakes w/wings and strawberry heads", biscuits shaped like a cross (which we called lower case "t", being that we're academics) lion and zebra cookies -- two by two, "Daniel and the lion" lion cookies -- all fun etc but kids were adamant that they would never be able to crunch into a "Baby Moses" cookie even if it were in a chocolate basket.  (not cannibalistic, my little guys)

    Just finished the fourth week of teaching this year & things are running quite smoothly.  I had 27 kids until the end of the 2nd week when the school added another Kindergarten teacher so now we have four.  So now I have 20 kids which is our legal maximum under California's "Class Size Reduction" program.  We used to have 32 and grades 4 and up have 32 or 34 or more.
    Anyway, it's nice to know that these are mine and we're doing pretty well now.

    Just a couple stories -- the other day I'm teaching them to play a board game (rolling a die, moving the piece around the path, saying letter names) When Liana has her turn to roll, she cups the die in her little hand, blows on it and says, "Come on, papa needs a new pair of shoes!"
I love a family that plays board games at home!

    Little Jimmie tells me every few days about the fight his mom and dad had the day before.  He tells about lying in his bed hearing them yell.  He tells about the mornings when his daddy tells his mom he will never be mean to her again.  Jimmie's behavior in the classroom is absolutely awful -- he rarely stops poking, touching, taking things or making strange noises.

    Nicholas' parents brought his lizard, Spike, to show the kids.  And a paper bag full of live crickets.  When the daddy put those crickets into the cage so Spike could start eating them, Danny jumped up ("aaaiiieeee") and danced backwards, arms held high, to the other end of the classroom.

    At least 3 times a day Pablo pipes up, "Am I doing great, Teacher?" or  "I'm doing great, huh?"