Right off the bat, I'm going to tell you for the sake of transparency that this is going to be an imperfect list. For one, I redid my Google Analytics in April. The Better Living Through Criticism series ran in March. Maybe I'm the only one who really liked that? Now, there's no way to tell.

Secondly, by far the most popular posts on this blog are the Book Top-5s. There's no contest, like, at all.

Those book posts will be up in the next week. Due to popular demand (okay, one person asked), I put links to the back issues of the Book Lists on a new page. Yay! So, replace 7-10 on this list with the forthcoming book lists, and we're getting close to an accurate picture of what people like to read here.

In any case, it's been a good year. I love writing, and I'm keeping this blog again next year. So, that's a #win.

10: Harshing My Vibe

I have no idea why people clicked on this. It's a story about my wallet getting stolen two and-a-half years ago. ?!

9: Summer Status Report

8: In 6 Weeks, We'll Be Swimming in Outdoor Pools 

7: Eighty-Eight MPH

6: Concert Review: The Dixie Chicks

5: Back 2 School: Social Graces

4: Self-Examination: And How Are YOU Crazy?

3: Annals of Parenting: The Birthday Deal

2: You Can't Know

1: Annals of Medicine

Tell Me:

Good news: It's Winter Break in these parts. I made it through the week. The students did their work, mostly. I did my work as best I could.

We ended the week - I'm talking Friday afternoon with an hour to go - with a rowdy cross-grade level game of Pictionary/Charades. There was screaming. It was hard to take.

Then, we went to the gym for the last 15 minutes and did the paper plate dance with recycled paper instead of plates. Here's how the dance goes: a leader, in this case Lynne, our Assistant Director, stands in front. The teachers stand behind. The music starts. Everyone is holding a piece of recycled paper in each hand.

Then, you follow the arm-centric dance movements of the leader, shaking and rattling the paper in your hands, doing swirls and twists and cheerleader-type movements. There were some jumps and kicks, too, with paper thrusting and rattling. Everyone's more or less in sync because we're following the leader.

Can you picture it? Someone took a video, but I can't find it online yet.

In any case, I really gave the dance my all, as I always do because I'm a dance captain at our middle school. Shef, who was seated in the front row, said I tried hard. My heart pounded with the effort.

And, then I grabbed my own personal children, and we left the school. I've got a lot of to-dos, but for the morning, I'm going to chill. I think we got nine inches of snow last night. The current air temperature is 7 degrees and falling. Maybe I'll catch up on my reading. Revise a chapter of my novel. You know. Indoor activities.



Fashion woes: The red sweatshirt

My first stint as Dance Captain at my Middle School

I don't really know how to review musical theater, but as I learned in the Better Living Through Criticism blogging challenge, I enjoy reviewing things even if I have no context or qualifications for doing so. Here we go!

Fun Home is based on a brilliant graphic memoir by Alison Bechdel. Here's what both the book and the musical are about: Alison grows up in a small Pennsylvania town. Her dad is unpredictable and exacting. Sometimes, he's warm and brilliant and talking about books and intellectual life. Sometimes, he's angry and yelling and the kind of person that makes you feel like no matter what, you can't do anything right.

Have you lived with this type of person? If you have, you'll recognize Bruce (Robert Petkoff), viscerally. The portrayal made me feel a little sick, especially during the part when Helen (Susan Moniz), the mom, makes the kids furiously clean the house while Bruce takes a shower. Then, everyone stands straight for inspection, and Helen sings a line about never knowing what will happen when Bruce comes down the stairs.

In the musical - I saw the national touring company of Fun Home - a 43 year-old Alison (Kate Shindle) remains on stage the whole time. She's trying to write a book about growing up with her dad. She conjures memories and tries to caption them, as in cartoons.  There's a small Alison (Alessandra Baldacchino), a kid, who wants desperately to be accepted in Bruce's world, but who also finds his demands troubling. There's a medium Alison (Abby Corrigan), a wonderfully awkward first-year college student. Her posture and especially her jeans are awkward. She discovers through reading, and then via Joan (Karen Eilbacher) that she's gay. When she tells her parents this news, she finds out that her dad is also gay.

Memory is paramount in this show. You watch the oldest Alison try to remember things. "It's just memory," I think is what she says. "I'm remembering something." The appropriate sets slide on and off the stage as backdrop for these moments. In fact, the whole show mirrors the writing of Bechdel's memoir. In the beginning, there's no fanfare - Shindle just walks across the stage to her desk and starts working and talking, and you realize it's begun. The orchestra sits upstage on a platform. You see bricks and would-be props around. Then, scenes get built. Drawings get made. Childhood blurs with adolescence blurs with a adulthood. Alison tries to process a terrible tragedy, and the walls appear all around her.

You know something bad is coming, and you want happiness for Alison and her family. It seems like, just like in real life, some things turn out okay, and other things really don't. The songs reflect these dual outcomes. They don't rhyme, and they have repeating refrains about specific images that echo the nature of memory. For instance, what stands out to Small Alison about a handsome butch woman is the woman's huge ring of keys. That's the chorus of the song about that memory - the keys.

Can you tell I loved this? I have seen three great plays of late, two which I reviewed right here. December may become known as the Month of Theater. I hope not. December is busy enough already.



Young love in the back of my English classroom.

When I tried to coach Shef into winning a research study. What is wrong with me?

One week left until Winter Break. For better or for worse, the emotional ups and downs of a teaching calendar are pretty predictable. I'm not trying to be dramatic, but we're now staring down the barrel of one of the trickiest weeks of the year.

Something happened to me the other week.

I mean, to be fair, probably I should say, "I did something the other week."

But I didn't do the thing on purpose. It was just one of those things.

What happened was this: I was in a professional context. To be specific, I was in a Q & A with a candidate for our Middle School Director position. So, I was interviewing a guy that could be my new boss. I was trying to be impressive-like.

I had a question about the role of parents in our community. "Could you comment on the role of parents in our community?" I asked the candidate. Now that I'm thinking about it, I probably should have asked something more specific, but oh well. It's what happens next that I'm trying to tell you about:

Somehow while asking this question, I inadvertently depressed the home button on my iPhone. I pressed it for too long - long enough to summon Siri.

I don't talk to Siri that much. Mac programmed her to call me "Mac Likes to Eat Cheese." If I ask Siri what my name is, she says, "You're Kathleen, but you asked me to call you Mac Likes to Eat Cheese."

Anyway.

I had summoned Siri, but I had no question for her. I had a question for the candidate, which he began answering. Siri must have thought I was still talking to her, and she said really loudly - loud enough for the whole room to hear - "I didn't quite get that." And then she started to say something else while I fumbled frantically to silence her.

Of course, the whole room heard this. All of my colleagues heard it, and the candidate did too. The poor guy was just getting into his answer about parents as partners. People laughed and laughed, like guffawing. My co-workers really thought my Siri mishap was hilarious. I caught some wiping tears from their eyes.

Of course, I apologized profusely, and the poor contender continued his answer.

God.

After the meeting, lots of people made fun of me for inviting Siri to the Q & A. My friend Adriana patted my arm in a conciliatory kind of way. "I feel like this is just the kind of thing that happens to you," she said.

It totally is, I'm sorry to say. Why am I so embarrassing?

Gratitude Buddies

Sometimes Getting Out of Sweatpants

The true story of the evening is that I didn't even really want to go. I'd been running around all day - driving to hockey and doing school work and lots of other stuff.  I felt harried and stressed.

But, I was meeting a friend and I'd purchased the tickets.

And lucky for me, The Jungle Theater is a beautiful building with a small, intimate theater. My row had lots of leg room, and I didn't even have to stand when people wanted to get by. As soon as I sat, I was happy I rallied.

The play begins, and the main character is a woman who could have been me. A white mother in a large city, she sits on the stage, meditating. Her nose itches. She's wiggling. She opens her eyes, sees the audience, and turns the whole operation around. With her back to us, she tries again. There are little bursts from the baby monitor. The mother stands and sighs; she determines the waking to be a false alarm. She flops on the couch, picks up a book, and pulls a secret stash of potato chips from behind a cushion.

We laugh. The doorbell rings. It's monks. "Maybe you're looking for my husband?" the woman asks. Her husband is Tibetan. He's in exile. The family is Buddhist. The monks are looking for the husband, but then again they aren't - they're really looking for the couple's three year-old son, the oldest boy. Tenzin, the monks believe, is a reincarnated lama - a high teacher. The boy should be educated in a monastery in India. He won't live anymore with his mother and father. The mother balks. The father says, "You can't just be Buddhist when it's convenient."

That's basically just the first 30 minutes. The rest of the story prompts you to think about this: to what extent do our children belong to us? To what extent are they people of the world, apart from us?

And the play is also about love and trust, teachers and teaching.

At the end, as I wiped away tears, I thought to myself that The Oldest Boy is the best play I've ever seen. I actually think it is.

To be fair, It might not be the best play you've ever seen, but it was perfect for me at the exact time I saw it.

And here's something extraordinary that I almost forgot to mention: the boy in the play is a puppet. The role is played by the puppet and an adult actor. It totally works, and it's not distracting at all. The puppet has a luminous face, and the interplay between it and its actor is lovely and moving.

If you live in Minneapolis, I think you should go see this show before it closes next week. And then, you should tell me if you liked it.

Sense and Sensibility Review

After the Apple Review

I saw a movie last night called The Diplomat. It's a documentary about a real-life person named Richard Holbrooke. You might know Richard Holbrooke as the guy who brokered the Dayton Accords which ended the war in Bosnia in 1995. You might also know him as the Special Envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan under Secretary Clinton. Holbrooke tried to sell President Obama on his Afghanistan policy until the day he died. On that very day, he had an appointment with David Axelrod at the White House, but Axelrod wouldn't give him time in the Oval. Holbrooke and Obama didn't get along, as it turned out. That dynamic, as portrayed in the film, fascinated me.

Anyway, I saw this documentary at  a special screening. After I finished watching it, the director, David Holbrooke, answered questions about its making and talked about his subject, who was also his father. You can imagine that Richard Holbrooke might have been something of an absentee dad, what with all the State Department positions he held in the administrations of three different presidents.

Luckily, it seemed like David had mostly forgiven his dad for being gone a lot. At least, he totally understands that his dad was doing really important stuff while not at home. I was pleased to note that David seemed pretty well-adjusted.

Here's how The Diplomat impacted me:

• I felt like I should know more about foreign affairs. I found some podcasts from the Council on Foreign Relations, so that ought to help.
• It reaffirmed my commitment to education. Kids need to understand that big, complex problems can get solved, and that they can be part of those solutions.
• It made me want to be a risk-taker. Yes, there are big decisions and tough choices, and not everyone is going to like you. But, being liked isn't the whole thing. Sometimes it's more about looking around, learning, rolling up your sleeves, and trying some things.