Leah Porzel Fan Club

Yesterday, the Falls Church City Public Schools offered teachers a bus ride (with pit stops) to learn about the history of Falls Church. Apparently, our very own Leah Porzel was giving tours at Cherry Hill.

One of my colleagues, Stephanie, visited me today to tell me about her experience. "I met your grandmother yesterday. What an awsome grandmother. She has so much energy and great style!" I concurred, naturally.

When I mentioned that we are celebrating Grandma's 89th birthday this weekend, Stephanie was stunned. "Your grandmother doesn't look that old!"

So, Steph has joined the Leah Porzel Fan Club at GMHS. There are a number of others in the building who have sung her praises to me as well :) Are there any other chapters out there?

State of the Union

So, my students are supposed to watch the SOTU tonight and fill out a watching guide.

Will I watch it? Nope. I'll be at dance class.

Will I tell them that I didn't watch it? Nope. :)

As if they're going to actually watch it either!

I thought I'd post the passage I find most unforgettable from Grandpa's Song of the Promised Land...which I've been thinking about alot lately having enrolled in a law school seminar on Nuclear Non-Proliferation...(the spacing is altered due to constraints in the blog text)...

"The basic pitch in Mike’s wave is many seconds long. (So long a wave, so deep a tone Our ears were not designed to hear.) The shock wave will go round the earth a couple times, But unlike the musket shot at Concord, Many hardly seem to have been heard.

Now one feels the long positive pressure wave, seconds long, Not like the flick of a finger as on the ordinary A-bomb But like a great hand that holds down and presses

The negative pressure phase in its aftermath is even more drawn out. It pulls on our eardrums With a sensation that makes us wonder - Coming home at last to land as at an airport? Or falling into a bottomless pit? The whole atmosphere heaves with the shock wave. A million cubic miles of air shudders slowly in its saturnine wake, As if all of Nature is sighing at what has happened, A long drawn out sobbing,

Like Rachel, weeping for her children - And their Promised Land.

The main experiment having been successfully performed, Now I could worry about scientific housekeeping. I wondered ..... if all the cameras ran.

Still, I have never seen a day seem more like .... Sunday. There was an uncanny solemnity about preparations for that day: Unspoken but unmistakable, an almost liturgical ceremony Like some very special Easter Sunday sunrise service. It could well be, as it seemed that day. Redemption, Resurrection and the Transfiguration of Man Could be in that blinding pulse of light

one dared not look upon with naked eye."

First Blog

Hi All!!!

I thought that this would be a great way for the family to keep in touch,and share pictures as well as thoughts.