Loved this paragraph from Transatlantic:

The elaborate search for a work, like the turning of a chain handle on a well. Dropping the bucket down the mineshaft of the mind. Taking up the empty bucket after empty bucket until, finally, at an unsuspected moment, it caught hard an had a sudden weight, then delved down into the emptiness once more.

p.193

Colum McCann’s new novel, Transatlantic.

p.8 “Brown had flown reconnaissance. He had a knack for the mathematics of flight. He could turn any sky into a series of numbers. Even on the ground he went on calculating, figuring out ways to guide his planes home.”

(Love this as it reminds me of what we want for our students — to see real world problems everywhere they go and to feel the ability to apply their own expertise and passion to solving those problems)

p. 54 “The essence of intelligence was to know when, or if, to expose even the heart’s deep need for instruction.”

McCann is writing as Frederick Douglass and speaking of the balance he felt in Ireland — needing to know many things but unable to take the chance of appearing ignorant. The preceding lines:

“…his life these days was much about having to inquire without exhibiting a lack of knowledge. He could not seem ignorant, yet he did not want to be strident either. A fine line. He was not sure when he could show weakness.”

Yeah, everything is about teaching to me, but this is such a great description of what most teens feel in school. They want to know but don’t want to appear that they don’t. And they’re usually equally as worried about how their inquiry will appear to the teacher and particularly to their peers then they are about actually finding an answer.

Good, thought provoking book.

Ate some salad greens from the back yard. Had a bad moment when I saw a squirrel brazenly removing a dwarf eggplant. This is after he dug up a summer squash that had already flowered.

Kara and I deployed a trap today. I will remove squirrels to Clark Park for the rest of the summer. Would prefer to give them the Ned Stark treatment.

Starts in the basement look great. Cucucmbers are so large I may have to transplant now (why not; it’s warm as can be outside).

Would have eaten more but got a friend’s summer share from Red Earth Farm. A ton of greens to be consumed — tomorrow is summer squash and garlic. I will say that the chard they included ain’t got nothing on mine.

Sometimes it’s hard not to feel this way…

Giant pesto dinner + oak leaf + first cucumber of the year.

Have two jalapenos that are just about ripe.

Thought: Five-Seven kinds of lettuce in rows would let us eat from each once a week. The idea of sowing lettuce every two weeks is appealing but the heat would make that tough.

Everything in the basement has germinated. Worried that the 80 degree temps (basement is probably 75 and the flourescents kick it up a few degrees in the shelter will make it tough for the spinach to grow. Have to see.

Went out to eat with LC last night — Bobby’s Burger — so had to come home and eat some salad greens. Black-Seeded Simpson and Oak Leaf.

Chopped down a bunch of the front collards and used Mark Bittman’s recipe for flash cooking them. Harvested a bunch of Swiss Chard, which we will eat tomorrow.

Problem with this picture is that it fails to show just how enormous this pile of collards was…

I also started a bunch of seeds, so that I can have some lettuce starts as the weather cools and so that I have some stuff to put in the hydroponics. Arugula — Winter Density — Spinach — Marvel of Four Seasons — and a Burpee Basil packet. Did the same run in rock wool and in an organic seed starting mix.

A new goal for the gardening that is becoming all consuming:

I want my family to eat one green thing that I’ve grown each day. Between extending the season as much as possible and the various hydroponics kits I’ve cooked up, it should be in range.

Today: Kale from the front garden cut into a strawberry/banana/greek yogurt smoothie.

My boy knew immediately that something was up.

Just finished this novel this morning, having read it over the past few weeks while sitting in hospital rooms and waiting for Lisa to heal. It’s a war novel, yes, one that describes the conflict in Vietnam in now recognizable ways — apathy, poor leadership, anguish over loss — but has a few wrinkles I liked:

One, he deals head on with issues of race. The conflict between a foxhole friend and the reality of race in American life serves as a constant throughout the novel; this conflict produces a terrible moment near the end of the book, but in a way I didn’t anticipate. How do you empower a people? How do you fight back against racism in every day interactions and against the racism embedded in the structures that produce that racism? I don’t know if Marlantes is white or black and I wondered if black veterans would recognize the stories he was telling.

Two, it’s a story of functioning within an institution. Maybe it’s the end of the school year, maybe it’s that we’re trying to build a new school, but all of these players were instantly recognizable:

the young, ambitious person serving in a position they see as temporary
the lifer trying to survive and possibly prosper in an institution that is chewing up everyone around them
the accidental mid-level leader whose decisions have life or death impact, whose only real problem is their inability to see past the end of their nose
the glory focused leader who has lost total contact with the day-to-day life of the individuals they’re charged with leading

Karl Marlantes, Matterhorn: a Novel of the Vietnam War (New York; [Berkeley, Calif.]: Grove Press?; Distributed by Publishers Group West, 2011).