While Kenny and I were working on his book report last night, Jeff attended a curriculum meeting at school for Kenny's First Grade class next year. When the principal left the school last month, Jeff was very concerned about bringing our kids back in the fall. He didn't like how "corporate" was handling matters, especially the curriculum questions from the parents.

But, he came away very reassured about the coming school year, at least as far as Kenny is concerned. The two first grade teachers each have years of experience at this school. They do much more reading and writing than in kindergarten. There will be two first grade homerooms, the school promised last night, even if there are four students in each class. One mother has twins and doesn't want them in the same class. So, her issue was addressed to her satisfaction.

In fact, the assistant principal says that she receives new student applications just about every day. I don't think attracting new students is as impressive as retaining students. And this school has a high rate of student turnover, probably about half of which is due to dissatisfaction with the school. I'll tell you, if we had anywhere else to go, we probably would have also. But, there's nowhere else to go. And I'll talk about public school.

The situation is our town's public school is half-day kindergarten. This year, now, Kenny is finishing up his third year of full-day, full-week school. He's reading and writing and taking weekly spelling and reading comp. tests. Imagine him in the public school first grade program with children coming off a half-day kindergarten program. They can't read, they can't write. It would not be a good fit to stick him in there.

A book report was assigned to Kenny last week, due today. My perfectionist's procrastination threatened to hold us eternally on the verge of getting started.

First, a topic. He wanted Titanic, a story he knows. Last year, he toured the exhibit at the Franklin Institute with his father. He bought a toy version of the ship there. The Cameron movie is too intense for him. But we have one book on the subject, level 3 reading. He cannot read that book himself, so we visited the bookstore on Sat. morning after a level 1 version. They didn't have it. We looked at level 2 and he couldn't read it either.

Looking through the level 1 subjects, he picked Rockets and Spaceships. He read it that evening, sort of. I wasn't very impressed with his reading, actually. Jeff says that he reads very well. So does his teacher. But he doesn't read for me. He'd much rather that I read to him. He's got no desire to "show off" to me, I guess.

Anyway, Sunday was busy with a BBQ which I should blog about a little. Then, after swimming last night, we settled down to complete the paperwork side of his book report.

On the first page, he had to supply the book's title, author and illustrator. He had to draw a picture of his favorite part on the first page, in a way, making a new cover for the book.

On the second sheet, he had to tell what happened first in the book. What happened in the middle and what happened at the end. Well, the first part was easy: the rocket blasts off from earth. The middle part involved landing on the moon and doing experiments. The end of the book looked forward to the day when visiting and even living in space becomes more commonplace. His favorite part showed geosynchronous satellites orbiting the earth.

We talked about two things: that the satellites won't collide with each other because they are "parked" in a particular location above the earth and follow that point around as the earth rotates. And we talked about radio waves having different frequencies so the signals don't interfere with each other. He tried to explain the first bit to his teacher this morning but she can't even spell "satellite" (I have the proof!), so I don't think she understood him. When I was explaining to him the part about wave frequencies, I compared them to waves on the ocean and I showed different "frequencies" incorrectly, actually, but altering amplitude instead of the cycles per second. I just thought it was easier for him to see the difference ... and it was easier for me to draw it. Oh, well, his seventh grade teacher will set him straight. "Yeah, but my mom said ..."

Not to mention that he had his regular load of homework on Monday evening, too. A page each of spelling, vocabulary and math problems. But we got it all done. Now, is tonight's homework done? Even started? Nope.

This morning, he showed his teacher his book and she said that she would like to hear him read it. So, he walked around the room as she got her work ready for the day, reading from the book. And, he read much better to her than he does to me.

Field Day -- 2006
Good luck, big brother
I didn't get any pictures of the field events but Kenny sunk the man in the water tank on his first pitch.

The letters stand for "What Would Jesus Do?" We are assured that doing the same thing is the goal of real Christians.

But can we really aspire to do what Jesus did?

Would it be wise ... to call national religious leaders "whitewashed tombs, pleasant enough to outer appearance, but inside full of dead bones and every rottenness" (Mt. 23.27)?

Should [we] imitate Jesus when he says, "Heaven and earth will pass away, but never will my words pass away" (Mk 13.31)?

None of those who want to imitate Jesus should proclaim that "I am the light of the world" (Jn 8.12) or that "I am the path" to the Father (Jn 14.6).

These are just a few samples of the way Jesus acts in the gospel. They were acts meant to show that he is not just like us, that he has higher rights and powers, that he has an authority as arbitrary as God's in the Book of Job.

He is a divine mystery walking among men. The only way we can directly imitate him is to act as if we were gods ourselves -- yet that is the very thing he forbids. He tells us to act as the last, not the first, as the least, not the greatest.

And this accords with the common sense of mankind. Christians cannot really be "Christlike." As Chesterton said, "A great man knows he is not God, and the greater he is the better he knows it." The thing that we have to realize is that Christ, whoever or whatever he was, was certainly not a Christian.

Garry Wills What Jesus Meant, pps. xv - xvii, 2006.

Eternal Father,
reaching from end to end of the universe,
and ordering all things with your mighty arm:
for you, time is the unfolding of truth that already is,
the unveiling of beauty that is yet to be.

Your Son has saved us in history
by rising from the dead,
so that transcending time he might free us from death.
May his presence among us
lead to the vision of unlimited truth
and unfold the beauty of your love.

We ask this in the name of Jesus the Lord.

Alternative Opening Prayer, Seventh Sunday of Easter

This sums it up: Buffalo Curse Lives On

'though I think that Carolina played very well in the final minutes.

Jeff suggested that whoever wins the Eastern Conference would win the Stanley Cup because the team from the Western Conference is weak. So, there was some reason to hope.

But, the games I watch, they lose. It's hard not to be superstitious about it. My father was always that way about the Bills. And Jeff is that way about the Yankees sometimes. And the Bills.

Now, last night, I was flipping through the TiVo cable guide to find the game on TV and Jeff was at the downstairs computer checking the score online.

He shouted out to me, "It's tied, 2-2, in the third!" just as I clicked to the proper channel. They were showing the replay of Brind'Amour's score to break the tie!

Then I finished up making dinner in the kitchen and returned to the couch with my full plate in time to see the final goal with less than a minute to go. Fortunately I didn't lose my appetite. Hard-core Buffalo fan here -- I've seen it all.

Hey, ya know, we're gonna win that Cup. We're gonna win that Stanley Cup. Me and my Buffalo Sabres.

With the administrative and academic shakeup at my sons' school during the past month, about 2/3rds of my five-year-old's kindergarten class is heading elsewhere for first grade this fall.

For about only 1/3 of those students, it was their parents' plan before all of these changes went down. So, another 1/3 have been alienated enough to switch schools this late in the application process, when most acceptance letters and commitments are made by February at the latest. All the recruitment the school has achieved in the past two to three years has been undone in the past month. I'm not sure how the school can face that reality without some genuine concern.

There's talk of a single first grade class. I mean, a single "homeroom", if you will.

At first blush, moving my boys to another private school would be a considerable effort.

Princeton schools are 45 minutes away and practically out of our price range, $15,000 / year and up.

One woman is sending her daughter to Ranney in Tinton Falls, 45 minutes away in the other direction, towards the shore. Tuition there is $22,000 / year. I had to ask her, since the cost is about triple what we are paying, how she could swing that. Since she is divorced (and remarried), her ex-husband puts up half. Her gifted daughter is worth it, she contends.

The price is prohibitive, in my opinion, but the commute is more so. I mean, sure, I don't want to go into debt in order to finance my sons' elementary school education. It's tempting, especially since I think my older boy is "gifted" as well (what mother doesn't?).

But, at some point, I simply must decline to join the rat race and refuse to keep up with the Joneses. I'm troubled by the thought that broken homes are contributing to a family's "ability to pay" more for things, including private education. With two or three or four working parents chipping in, how can families with one working parent compete? Like so many things, we are priced right out.

I take comfort from the realization, as I'm poring over toy catalogues from FAO Schwartz and the like which present outdoor playhouses for little girls or gas-powered toy sports cars for boys, each running several thousand dollars, that even though it may seem as if only millionaires can afford such playthings, millionaires got that way from being prudent purchasers.

Or, perhaps they won the lottery! My husband is a gambling man; he plays for us, all the while investing in Halliburton. Two things I have scruples about.

Well, anyway, the pragmatist in me likes to believe that millionaires result from financial conservatism. You millionaires who read this blog, let me know if I'm right.