Six Word Saturday

Image via Michael Holst

This week's Six Word Saturday (after a one-week Michael Weller hiatus), hosted by Cate at Show My Face:

Spring break equals return of neurons.

That blessed week of sleep and reflection, spring break, has finally come to us long-suffering teachers of Suburban Working-Class City School District (SWCCSD). Don't get me wrong, I love working for SWCCSD--it's sensibly small, easy to navigate, and very people-friendly. I've had face-to-face conversations with Assistant Superintendents, which I can barely imagine happening in the Los Angeles Unified Supersized District (LAUSD). I'm also fortunate enough to work with site administrators who listen and care and try earnestly to get better at their jobs--also a rare thing. I just think the SWCCSD should have made spring break the week before Easter, not after.

In this way the World Wide Web 2.0 gave me too much info, because while my colleagues in other states and other parts of California (whom I follow through blogs and Twitter) were living it up on vacation, I was slogging through my last pre-break week at Southeast Working-Class High School (SWHS). Again, don't get me wrong--I got to take my journalism students to the Los Angeles Times building on Wednesday, and I got paid for this. Not a bad gig--in fact, a great gig--but one that I need a lil' break from. For one week.

Worthy Cause Wednesday, returning on a Thursday

(One of these days I'll get this Worthy Cause Wednesday thing out on an actual Wednesday...see below for this week's excuse, er, explanation!)

When I was an undergrad at UCLA, I got involved with a group called Project Literacy. This was a student-run organization of volunteers who tutored children in underprivileged neighborhoods (my group went to Watts) once a week in reading. We rode in a van to a branch library and met the children there, and worked with them for about an hour.

So simple, and so satisfying!

Okay, so you may not be a student at UCLA, and I don't think Project Literacy takes donations. However, there is an umbrella organization called ProLiteracy that provides information on a number of national and international literacy-volunteer organizations. Their search page allows you to find organizations in your area. If you can, consider donating time--once a week, once a month--to help someone learn to read. If you can't fit it into your schedule right now (full disclosure--I can't fit it in right now myself), a donation might also go a long way toward helping with this worthy cause of helping adults and children learn how to read.

Now the explanation, as promised above...

This week was our last before spring break, which (as some in my audience will know) is a week of quiet, determined survival for a teacher. The brain doesn't function so well during these times. To top it off, last night was Open House, which meant a thirteen-and-a-half-hour day.

And so, Worthy Cause Wednesday on a Thursday!

Worthy Cause Wednesday, debuting on a Tuesday

I've won my first award--thanks to Mrs. S over at The Scholastic Scribe for recognizing me as a Superior Scribbler!  Happy blogoversary, Mrs. S!

I'd like to use my moment at the podium to launch Worthy Cause Wednesday (Worthy Cause Tuesday just doesn't have the same ring, and I didn't want to wait a whole day to thank Mrs. S for the award!) and mention two organizations that are doing wonderful work.  

The first is an international organization, Nothing But Nets, which provides African families with mosquito-repellent bed nets.  A $10 donation buys a net wh

ich can save a family from a mosquito bite that would likely give them malaria.  (In Africa, malaria is a leading cause of death.)  

Here in Southern California, two women are doing their best to help our four-legged friends in need.  The Mutt Movement rescues dogs from shelters and places them in foster homes until they can adopted.  They bring their dogs out to the sidewalk next to the Larchmont Farmers' Market every Sunday to give them a better chance at finding a home.  Marlene and I are going to take them some dog food and other supplies next month.  If you're local (or even if you're not!) and can help, they can use volunteers and donations.  They're not a non-profit, so you wouldn't get a tax-deduction, but you would be helping the dogs!   

Speaking of whom, here's a few of their very worthy candidates for adoption:

Even if you can't donate money or goods (and with so many folks losing jobs and having pay and hours cut, it's understandable), a mention on your blog or your Twitter account (or wherever else you share) would be most helpful, too!

Thanks again for the bling, Mrs. S!

Six Word Saturday

This week's Six Word Saturday, hosted by Cate at Show My Face:

Saturday morning restorative: repotting Grampa's roses.

My grampa was a gardener for the city of San Diego at beautiful Balboa Park. He worked all over the park, including the famous rose garden. He also had a lovely collection of roses at his house in San Diego's Clairemont neighborhood. When he died in 2005, I took over the care of the garden, and before we sold his house in 2007, I transplanted as many roses as I could and moved them up here to LA County. I now have eight roses in pots, and they're in need of repotting (most of them haven't been repotted since the transplant almost two years ago). My hope is to keep them going in pots till Marlene and I buy our own house sometime in the not-too-distant future--then Grampa's roses will be the VIPs (very important plants?) in our rose garden.

Above is a picture of one of the yellow roses from last spring's bloom, taken by my friend Bob when he was "rose-sitting" for me.

Six Word Saturday

Six Word Saturday is brought to you by Cate of Show My Face.

Dinner date. Two years later, engaged.

This week's SWS is in honor of the just-passed St. Pat's Day, which marked the two-year anniversary of my first date with a beautiful woman who later became my lovely fiancee.

To our chagrin, the restaurant where we met that night has since closed, but the little courtyard off Colorado Blvd. in Pasadena is still there. Here's Marlene, about to write a wish for the "wish tree" in the courtyard last year.

Garden Update

Last weekend I began the exciting but nerve-wracking task of repotting my grandpa's roses.

History of my grandpa's roses and me, in brief: grandpa was a gardener at Balboa Park in San Diego and had a beautiful collection of roses at his San Diego home; when he fell ill, I took care of them; when we sold his house about a year and a half after he passed away, I transplanted them; they've mostly been in the same pots since the transplanting in Sept 2007. My friend Bob took care of most of the roses at his home in Woodland Hills while we lived in the apartment in South Pas; I just got them back from him this month.

So I did a little reading on repotting, in particular this excellent article from Our Garden Gang and then another excellent article by Stuart Robinson. I decided, at length, to start with the brandy rose. This rose was in a pot that was big enough; the problem was that I had only filled it--I have no idea why--about one-fourth full of potting soil.


So, even though it has grown remarkably well in such a tight space, I needed to get it out and put more soil (and nutrients) in the pot. While I did prepared the pot, I let the brandy rose rest in an empty pot.


I also used the sharp end of my pruning shears and then my fingers to tease out the roots from their root-bound tangles so that they were, as Stuart Robinson recommends in his article, dangling freely. Finally, I got the rose back into the pot and into the shade


with some pine-needle mulch (from last year's Christmas tree).


In non-rose news, the sunflowers and pumpkins I planted earlier this month are starting to sprout!

Oh, I almost forgot--while I worked on the rose repotting, Lucy supervised.

Six-Word Saturday

After a two-week due-to-moving hiatus, my humble contribution to Six Word Saturday (courtesy of Cate at Show My Face):

March spring-forward: insidious neocon plot.

I'm convinced that Mr. Bush had nefarious intentions when he moved the annual time change--no offense to Cate or my friend Alma, both of whom are probably wiser than I since they focus on the positive, ie extended daylight, rather than the negative, as it relates to the time change. :)