I know I have devoted a lot of time to discussing the trials and struggles I have faced teaching in a low-income school. While so many of the moments I deal with at school each day are heart-breaking, I am also realizing that there are MANY moments that are heart-warming. My students face so many challenges on a day to day basis, and yet they spread so much joy to so many people. Despite their awful behavior, sometimes horrible choices and tough skins, they are just as sweet and kind as any of the other students I have taught.  I think we have a love-hate relationship. I hate their crazy behavior, but I love the people that they are and the potential they hold.

The cold weather in Spokane has been an adjustment for me personally, but also another new experience in teaching at a Title 1 School. I was shocked to see children walking to school in 8 degree weather with SHORTS on and a hoodie. No gloves, no hats, broken zippers, over sized sweatshirts. It just about ripped my heart out. One boy, in particular, nearly brought me to tears. He speaks almost no English, and he was waiting in line for the bus with no coat, snow boots with no socks, and shorts on. He looked up at me with his eyes watering from the cold and bright red cheeks and gave me a huge smile. I had just spent the past few minutes complaining about how cold I was to another teacher while wearing my winter coat, gloves and scarf, and he was smiling despite the bitter cold. Yet again, I found myself confronted with a cold, harsh dose of perspective, and I will never forget it.  He gave me another huge smile and wave as he got on the bus that warmed my whole heart.

This weekend I will be stocking my classroom with spare gloves, hats, and mittens to distribute to the children that come completely under-dressed for the weather. It’s not much, but it’s something. For tonight, I plan to stay cooped up in my warm house, which now means so much more to me than it ever did before. I  hope that you and all of my students are somewhere warm, too.

Love you all,
K

Yeah wyoming hotshots are here! The fire behind the house is mostly out, slurry bombers in air and smoke is clearing around me. Now if anyone wants to hear about my 3 hour hike to get home…

That’s our Uncle Doug’s post from Facebook. We’ve since learned that the house was directly targeted by at least one slurry bomber as Doug was fighting back the fires coming down the hill. For the time being, it looks as if the home that Anna’s grandfather built from scratch has made it through the worst of it…

A fairly large forest fire is burning in the foothills of Boulder. We saw the beginning of it at around 10:30am while out walking Thatcher and watched it quickly grow into the major conflagration it is now. Unseasonably high temperatures combined with a drier-than-normal August brought about what amounts to a tinderbox in Colorado at the moment.

EDITED to include this time-lapse video of what we were basically watching from Erie last night, shot from Flagstaff last night:

Since we saw the first plumes, we’ve seen or learned the following about what is now being called the Four Mile Fire:

• Flashes of fire visible by the naked eye almost 20mi away. Turns out those may have been exploding propane tanks, common for heating in the mountains.
• A friend’s husband, who’s middle name just happens to be Everett, has been working nonstop since the fire was first reported. He’s fine, but not expected home for several days.
• Anna’s grandparents, aunt, and uncle have been evacuated safely along with their pets. But leaving their home on Sugarloaf at about 5pm last night, Anna’s aunt saw the fire roughly 100yds from the house. We haven’t heard any updates on whether or not their home is still standing.
• A fried of the family who works with CDOT has been sent to help clear dead wildlife from roads in the area.
• Slurry bombers are coming in repeatedly over where I work in Broomfield trying to slow the fire – which has yet to be contained along any of it’s boundaries.

For some more perspective on high huge this fire is, check out some satellite imagery here. The smoke plume is reaching well into Kansas and Nebraska. In Erie, it was unsettlingly apocalyptic.

We hope to learn more soon, particularly about Anna’s grandparent’s place. Thoughts are with all those affected, and with those fighting…

In a little bit of tech support serendipity, the front desk at Bowhaus had recently posted a plea for help – $100 credit for whomever can help get their web cams back online. Seems that, with an ISP change and resulting IP address changes, the good folk at Bowhaus have been beset with anxious owners unable to pull up the web cams. So guess how I spent a bit of my Saturday, and guess who gets a free ride at Bowhaus next week?

As soon as I got home, I simply dumped the collection into my Picasa albums folder and let the software crank through it. But only a few days ago did I stumble upon the facial recognition features of Picasa – and it opened up an totally unexpected world of family history for me. You see, in sorting through all of the faces and tagging them with names either from my already-imported contacts list or by adding new ones on the fly, I’ve begun to gain a deeper understanding of my family history. I’ve always known the basics, such as my grandparents and some aunts and uncles here and there. But putting names to the faces of people like my father’s aunt, sitting down to dinner dressed to the nines in the 1930′s with her dapper husband Jack, has just brought a whole new level of appreciation to where I’ve come from and how deep my roots – and my own growing family’s roots – are and will continue to be for generations to come. And yes, that’s my father leaning out of the back of that 1960′s Beetle, not me. Something about the apple falling somewhere in close proximity to the tree…