Board of Dreams:

Nine students today, and my co-worker. We are a team. We are commanders of armies on a field of 64 squares, from the oldest to our second grader, who moved the toughest, roughest middle school boy to laughter today.

We groan when it is time to go. We are learning to play strong chess, to castle early, to think before we move, to keep the hands back from the board, to control the center.

I set the boards up, and the students come, and our team starts asking to meet two days a week. And roughest, toughest asks about going to tournaments, and I am already planning who I will take to the first one.

I walk my team to the door, knowing from their talk that they are thinking about chess outside of club. Double T makes me promise that no matter what I will play him next week. And our second grader promises to take down my co-worker. We are chess players all.

Still here

There were eight students at Chess club this week, and more are on the way.

Five middle school boys.

Two fourth grade girls.

One co-worker, one grandmother of a middle schooler.

And one round and eager gentleman from the second grade.

They groaned when it was time to go home. And for a second we felt like a team, united in a purpose - to play a game of war on a board of 64 checkered squares, manipulating armies across of the field of play.

There's a lot of noise in a school, particularly in an urban school. A lot of frustration and grief. It's hard to hold on to a center of quiet, but you dig down and you find something to get you through.

It's raining here in Baltimore. I was on my way to bed and I got caught up in the lightning. Watching it crack against the sky over Baltimore, where the air has been full for days of storms waiting to burst.
Some jazz crackling through the stereo, and storms rolling in. And maybe things will:
cool off.
slow down.
mellow out.

Maybe I'll
worry less.
rest more.

My days at school are mostly good. Hectic, yes. But mostly good. It can be a wearing place to be, but that's not the kids fault. I understand why teachers go back every year. There's such great need.

Chess club met for the first time today. Three kids came. That is a start. It went well - two had never played before, and one had just learned how. we introduced the pieces - it is a game of kings and nobility I told them and we will conduct ourselves as such. We talked about the lowly pawn, brave footsoldier he, the bishop sneaky and mean, the knight, gallant and quick, the rook, solid and protective, the queen all powerful and the stately, treasured king.

The school needs security cameras for two blind spots on our grounds - I'm in the process of looking for grants and funding for this- if any of you have any suggestions, I welcome them.

The community rec center attached to our school is finally getting up and running. I hope our chess club will be meeting there soon. There is a non-profit organization running it, and I think good, good things will come of it. I've already shown my face round there, and said I'm available to teach music lessons to kids - apparently there's a lot of interest in that.

And so hope starts to grow. The kids have a place to hang out after school, a place that will only get better, things seem to be going well at school. This is how communities turn around - hope begins to grow.

Go well, stay well.

No matter how hard I try to remind myself that I will not have to teach forever, or how much I try to remember all I have to be thankful for, somedays just feel like Tennyson's "The Charge of the Light Brigade."

Half a league, half a league
Half a league onward
All in the Valley of Death
Rode the six hundred...

'Forward the Light Brigade!
Was there a man dismayed?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Someone had blunder'd:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why
Theirs but to do and die.

Then there are other days when I take a line from Bob Dylan and say to Baltimore:
If I'd known had bad you'd treat me
Honey, I never would have come.

Some days are all King Henry V and once more into the breach, and we few, we happy few, we band of brothers we and these things shall the good man teach his son.

Other days still, are just standing on Boo Radley's front porch and walking around in his shoes for a while and trying to understand.

And so it's another Monday here in the East - the same East that James Gatsby and Quentin Compson did so well in. Monday here in Baltimore where the fog hangs low with heat and heaviness in the second week of October, in the second year of my being here.

Half a league, half a league, half a league onward.

Washington Morning

Saturday morning, October sun falling on the rough pavement twinkling, blinking up at passersby.
Old songs on the stereo, nearly empty coffee cup, the remains of an apple pie on the kitchen table and a comfortable trio of friends reading the paper making lazy plans in lazy ways.
Existing where one's feet are, sheltering in Sabbath rest, laughing and jiving and singing and playing.
Coming round a table, walking on the street, shoes off on the National Mall tossing a white frisbee in the shadow of Smithsonian structures.
Metro rumbling, sidewalk shuffling, Saturday morning in an old pair of shoes, with an old pair of friends in an October sun.

It may surprise you, gentle reader, but I was a precocious child of eccentric tastes. Raffi’s Baby Beluga was fine, but for my money I dug the Broadway Cast Recording of Evita starring Patti LuPone in the title role. I am not making this up. By the time I was 5, I had the entire piece memorized.

When my niece was about 3 she had a real thing for the Beatles and Eleanor Rigby was her favorite song. I always found it disconcerting to hear those lyrics coming out of her 3 year old mouth (all the lonely people, where do they all come from?). I can only imagine that the lyrics of Don’t Cry for me Argentina (So I chose freedom, running around trying everything new, but nothing impressed me at all) emanating from me were equally disturbing to my family.

We owned this recording because my Dad saw the play, with Ms. LuPone, in New York. In a theatre so small he could smell the smoke from Mandy Patinkin’s cigar. He has always said that the show “was great.”

She won a Tony for that show, she originated the role of Fantine in the London production of Les Miserables. Most recently she was in the outstanding 2005 revival of Sweeney Todd, in New York. When she is on a stage she commands it, her voice able to navigate deep gravity of emotion as well as delicate comic turns.

I heard the orchestra director at Mizzou say that as musicians, we must absolutely walk the very edge of disaster, must be willing to walk to the very edge and then that tiny bit more – if we don’t walk that line then we are serving neither our art or our audience. It stirs no great response to give a perfectly safe performance. And this is the kind of performer LuPone is – you can hear it in every recording she has ever made.

In her turn as Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd, LuPone at once inspires revulsion and sympathy for a character who by all rights is disgusting. The audience, despite Mrs. Lovett’s obvious flaws, does want her on some level to get a house by the sea with Mr. T.

Tomorrow night I will hear LuPone in person. She will sing and I will bask in the presence of one of the all time great performers. And it will be a wonderful evening.

Woolgathering:
When the little girl, who often struggles with classwork, saw her paper on the board with a sticker and a one hundred on the board - that was a good moment.

When my student stood in the line to go to lunch with a book in his hand I asked him what he was doing with the book. "I want to read at lunch," he said. That was a really good moment, and read he did - I saw him.

Other thoughts:
Good weekend - books and card games and songs and lots of food and sweet company. I heard Ken Burns speak at the National Book Festival and it was really eloquent and inspiring.

Further thoughts:
Patti LuPone on Friday - get excited!