Between Opportunities
We’ve had so many graduations the last week I’ve fallen behind. None
made me more proud than my #2, who was a star on the football field and maintained a 3.9 GPA.
Andrew could have played college football at a dozen different schools, but chose to focus on academics and, well, finding a good Catholic girl to marry and have babies with. He’ll study Construction Management at UT Chattanooga this fall.
This was the graduation speech by Dr. Peper, a theologian:
I can’t believe I forgot to share this! #2 won several awards at the end of the season, and has since had a dozen (or more!), colleges after him to play football. (I’ll let him make his formal announcement). It’s not every kid who gets called, “A coach’s dream”. Plus, he’s maintained a 3.9 GPA despite all the worries certain academics had about his homeschool background. I’m proud of you Andrew!
One of the unexpected benefits of my Fed-funded sabbatical was learning to sing. I discovered that one of the other guys taking a break from real life was a classically trained baritone singer. I thought that singing occasionally might be a great way to escape, so to speak, from the routines of the day and asked him if he’d be willing to spend some time working on it with me. He was thrilled, and with some ideas from “Singing for Dummies”, we began a journey that would last about 18 months and change my life.
I had always sung in church, or at least, did what I thought was singing, but Scott helped me to overcome that disability. Twice a week we met in the music room and worked on posture, breathing, expanding the chest, utilizing head voice…all the other things every novice studies on the path to singing (better). I learned that singing was not just speaking more loudly and slurring words together, but an entirely different function of the body. Eventually I was able to lead with some confidence our fledgling Catholic group in singing a few well-known hymns and chants at our weekly meetings.
But the real payoff came when I got home, and it wasn’t my conscription into the choir; one night I heard one of my boys singing Tantum Ergo or some other chant he’d heard at Church and stopped in my tracks while he effortlessly sung the notes an octave or two above how … Read the rest
#2, age 17, is universally liked. He’s simply got one of those pleasing personalities and even temperament (unless he’s gotten less
than 8 hours of sleep). Even on the football field opponents who’ve been run over or knocked out of the game will return with a smile and thank him for the experience. I heard a story related about him recently that I simply had to share.
Several years ago during my time at ClubFed our kids were forced into public school. Sheriff’s deputies arrived at the house where The Wife and the kids were staying temporarily and told her she’d go to jail and the kids would go into foster homes if she didn’t put them in school within 24 hours. So our children, who had known nothing of public school life, found themselves in the jungle that is public school culture.
For #1 and #2, that meant high school, and the boys suddenly found themselves in a demographic, social and ethnic mix unlike anything they’d ever experienced (and these were boys who’d navigated the subway in Mexico City and the back alleys in rural Guatemala without a problem).
Anyway, the story goes that #2 was in class waiting for the teacher to begin when another student, a young black man, arrived to class and, seeing a friend, said loudly, “What up, my nigger?” There’s nothing particularly unusual about that greeting in my experience, except the teacher thought to take issue with it.
“Why is it acceptable for you … Read the rest
My children’s teachers send notes home with the textbooks asking for my estimation of their books in several categories. The Wife was visibly relieved when I quickly volunteered to review, comment and sign on the 53 different forms brought home by the seven enrolled there. Now I suspect she intercepts the children before they bring the books to me. Here’s why:
I know that what the teachers want is my assessment of the physical condition of the book so that when my kid drops it in the kitty litter, runs over it with his bike, spills Ramen on it, leaves it at soccer practice when it starts raining, uses a corndog as a bookmark, or allows #11 to use it to write the one word he knows in 37 different crayon colors and then seal his work with his unique “day old chocolate milk” mark, that I’ll be on the hook for it’s degradation from “fair with binding that appears to have propped open the garage door in three different families” to “are you kidding me?”.
However, I use the forms to send my feedback on the curriculum itself. I comment on science books that teach modernist theories contrary to the Catholic faith, math books that fail to explain the theory of “zero” or “infinity”, or history books that regurgitate Yankee propaganda about the War of Northern Aggression. My expectations are not unreasonable; it’s not like I expect them to explain to 8th graders the travesty of the 17th Amendment, … Read the rest