Friday Photos

A look back at the week, Monday thru Friday, though photos and screenshots-

Had a pretty good week overall. I subbed four days which seemed like a lot. I know that many people work five days a week so I shouldn’t complain about four. I try to average subbing about three days a week. Since last week I only subbed two days, working four days this week averaged the two weeks out to three days a week. 

Something really quite bad happened at school one day this week.  I asked one student if he had an older brother named such and such. The last name of both boys was pretty unique so I figured they were related. The student replied that he did. I told the student to tell his brother that Mrs. Rineer said, “Hi.”

After class, two girls came up to me. I know these girls well as they were in my long term sub job class from two years ago. They are great girls. Anyway, they told me that there was something I should know. The older brother about whom I’d asked had recently died. I was shocked.... and sad... and horrified that I’d asked a student about a family member who was dead. Obviously I did not know that prior to asking him. Our school is a big one with over 500 students per grade yet our town is a fairly small one with around 20,000 people in it- too big to know everyone yet small enough that word often gets around about tragedies. I suppose if I were on Facebook, I would have heard about the death. I’ve heard there’s a FB page for all things Springboro- parents gripe about teachers, kids driving too fast, etc. My nosiness curiosity would probably render me a “friend” of such a page were I on FB.

I feel so saddened about the loss of the young man, a teenage student at the high school. He had an ebullient personality, an infectious smile and was a friend to many (at least when he attended middle which is the last time that I saw him). And of course I feel terrible for asking his brother about him, assuming that he was alive. I had a similar experience. My dad died over Christmas break when I was in 7th grade. Shortly after the break ended, one of the teachers at school asked how my dad was doing (my dad had a terminal illness so many knew he was sick). Now this school/ community was small (less than one hundred students per grade, everyone in the district lived in a true small town (of less than five hundred people) or out in the country) and it was surprising to me that this teacher hadn’t heard that my dad had died (albeit this was in the pre-email, social media epoch). 

On to a lighter school note, I wore this outfit for one of the spirit days at school. Got some compliments on it!!

On my day off: sweets, a drink, wrapping paper, Christmas music playing- much better than dressing up for spirit day!!

My sister bought me the book Heaven by Randy Alcorn. It’s a large book, non fiction and we’re reading it together. From the book, this epitaph is on a tombstone. It reads:

Pause, stranger, when you pass me by:

As you are now, so once was I

As I am now, so you will be.

So prepare for death and follow me.

I like the haunting, macabre poem for its simplicity and brevity.

Apparently, someone added in, by scratching, the following:

To follow you I’m not content

Until I know which way you went.

I am really enjoying the book so far. It is insightful and thought provoking.

I saw this while scrolling through IG. This times 1000! I’m actually thinking about writing a blog post on book banning. It’s something about which I have many thoughts. One of the most prevailing thoughts that I have on it is summed up nicely in the IG post. Book banning a la what Nazi Germany did in the 1930’s is not tantamount to believing that school children should not have access to R and X rated books in school libraries. It just isn’t! It’s disingenuous to equate the two. 

I picked up Abby for winter break on Thursday. For the next school year, the plan is for her to have the car that Alyssa currently drives. It will be strange to not drive to Oxford to pick Abby up! As it is, we are making the drive less because Abby’s boyfriend has been bringing her to and from school. It will be nice in many ways to not have to make the drive when Abby has her own car on campus but it will be a little bittersweet. I love driving her to our home from campus and hearing about how things are going at school. 

When one of Abby’s friends put this sign up outside her dorm room last year, an RA told her to remove it because it could offend someone. “Let heaven and nature sing” seems innocuous to me- it doesn’t specifically endorse any religion (I mean, it implies there is a heaven but many religions believe that heaven exists), any deviance, or crime or whatnot.

Now if those (ME!) who don’t want X rated books in their schools’ libraries could get the books removed by saying the books were offensive to them, we could forget about the “book banning” rigmarole, right? The books would be removable due to their offensive nature solely, not under the auspices of book banning.

“Offensive” is a one way street, unfortunately, that leaves one side of the political ideology divide permanently going the wrong way. 

Speaking of colleges, Alyssa has heard some really good news regarding where she’s applied. So far, she’s gotten in to all of the schools that she’s applied to. How much money the schools are offering her is what we are weighing. Proud of Alyssa for studying hard to get good grades which are resulting in some really good scholarship offers. 

Lastly, this week I read that a journalist in Canada, a young man named Ian Vandaelle died. I had never heard of this man before but apparently, he was in the punish-the-unvaccinated camp regarding the Covid-19 vaccine. Now, I am not going to so much as dip my toes- much less wade- in the political waters of the Covid-19 vaccine. It was interesting (that’s a politically neutral word, right?), though, to note the extremes with regard to the Covid-19 vaccine. Some people were so for it that they wanted to force others to take it. Some were so against it that they were willing to lose their jobs rather than take it. The vaccine didn’t save Mr. Vandaelle from death altogether (I have not been able to find out anything about his cause of death so I have no idea what his cause of death was) and those who faced termination from their jobs due to not taking the vaccine won’t die a vaccination related death but they will die from something. Something is going to get all of us. Morbid, I know. Sorry. I think it’s a combination of reading the book about heaven that I am reading and hearing about the teenager’s death in Springboro that has death on my mind more than usual this week.

Goodness, I can’t end on a morbid note. Instead, I’ll end on this note- could the dining room table in the Christmas room get any more festive? Add two gingerbread making kits and the answer is yes (is there much room for food at the dining room table? The answer appears to be no, lol!). Obviously the gingerbread houses aren’t decorated yet; I thought the boxes themselves were cute and will stay on the table until the girls decorate the houses.