Monday was Back-To-School Night and I was thinking how those nights really mean three different things to the three concerned groups: parents, teachers, and administrators.

When my sons were in high school, we went to Back-To-School Night primarily to get a feel for their teachers, determining if they were competent and had reasonable expectations for my sons. We looked for teachers who would educate our sons well while pushing them sufficiently but treating them fairly and even-handedly.

When I go to Back-To-School Night as a teacher, I look forward to explaining my expectations to my students’ parents, but also how they can help their students in ways I cannot possibly do in only 44 minutes per day. I want parents to be active participants in their children’s education, not merely passive bystanders expecting the teachers to pick up the slack for all the things they are unwilling or unable to do.

Administrators look at Back-To-School Night as a public relations event, for teachers to say the “right things” to parents that will reflect well on the school’s learning process. I have no problem with that goal, but I believe that it is also an opportunity to get parents involved in their children's education more than most of them already are.

In any case, I always enjoy Back-To-School Night probably more than most teachers or parents do, in spite of the fact that I got home so late I am still tired three days later.

Changing the topic: If you’re a baseball fan, and I definitely am, this weekend should appeal to all of you no matter whether you are a Yankees fan or a Yankees hater. Normally we get the Yankees vs the Red Sox during the playoffs, but here is a real treat as they play the last series of the regular season with the expectation that the loser could very well find themselves out of the playoffs totally. Whether the Yankees win or lose–although I am certainly rooting for them to win–it is much more exciting to be in this position than the poor Mets fans who have not been this close to the playoffs in 5 years.

I enjoy cooking. I also like reading cookbooks and watching cooking shows on Food TV. While I do not watch them a lot, my favorite shows fall into two types: Italian cooking, particularly Mario Batali’s Molto Mario and Giada De Laurentiis’s Everyday Italian; and travel shows where the hosts combine visiting restaurants with a bit of travelogue, especially Al Roker’s Roker on the Road and Rachael Ray’s $40 A Day.

However, I rarely make fancy meals, but relatively simple stuff since I do not have hours to spend in the kitchen. Yesterday I barbecued chicken and made rice and mushrooms which was halfway between regular rice and risotto. Since my family is from Southern Italy, we do not make real risotto which is too creamy for our taste. Today I am making chili in the crockpot, since we will be out much of the day and I might not have time to make dinner when we get home.

I have frequent daydreams in which I imagine how I will be spending my life when I retire eventually (although school has been so pleasant so far this year–I know, I know, it’s only been 2 weeks!–that retirement is not something I am anticipating right now), and those daydreams include returning to college (if only in such programs as Elderhostel where retirees can take classes without the stress of grades and/or degree programs), learning a new language (probably Chinese since I started doing so on a pre-school level already), travel and see the world, write another dozen books or so (of course!), reading all the unread books in my collection (as well as rereading all the others) and really learning how to cook Italian food. I do not anticipate ever being bored so long as I am fit physically and mentally.

I will try not to apologize whenever my workload keeps me from updating my blog, so take this as a blanket apology for the entire school year. Last weekend I spent Saturday at Heath Village Family Day–which was inundated with 21 crazy Sabellas!–and this week I have been giving the tests to my classes and grading them. I have had no time for such non-school items as updating my blog or working on either VoP or the Tibet book. But so far I am enjoying being at school, and I hope it stays that way all year.

I do try to go to the YMCA once a week, and also to use the Nordik Track another day. Today Jean and I took a walk after I got home from school as well. It is even more important that we keep in shape now than it was when we got married 25 years ago, and I think we have actually gotten more faithful over the years. Jean is the most faithful, going to the YMCA 3 times every week, but her attitude encourages me as well. I also do my nightly abdomen/back exercises and pushups at least 5 nights per week, so I am glad about that.

After the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf Coast recently, it is hard to believe that another Category Five hurricane Rita is headed for the coast of Texas this Friday. It seems unreal that suddenly the past few years we have had a major increase in the number and level of hurricanes in the Atlantic. Apparently this is the result of two hundred years of post-Industrial Revolution waste products causing global warming, and remember when our federal government announced a few years ago that global warming fears were overrated and not really a problem? If Rita is as deadly as Katrina was, both the suffering and the cost will be huge and may have a serious ripple effect to our country’s economy which is already over-stressed due to the war in Iraq and Bush’s tax cuts for his rich cronies which have created a huge federal deficit.

The vast majority of my reading is science fiction, maybe 75-80%. The rest of my reading is history-related, whether historical fiction or straight history of some sort. Some books of these types I have read recently include:

• Conclave, a history of papal elections since the origins of the Catholic Church 2000 years ago. This book is as much about the history of Italy and Europe as it is about the popes
• A Sundial in a Grave: 1610, a historical novel set in England and France during the Renaissance era
• Pompeii, a novel set before and during the famous eruption of Mount Vesuvius

For the past decade, I have been very interested in Asian history, and have read numerous books about Chinese history, including three famous Chinese epic novels, Journey to the West, Outlaws of the Marsh, and Story of the Stone. Last winter I started expanding my readings about Asia with Nehru’s The Discovery of India. That was a fascinating book, and it whet my appetite to learn more about the history and culture of the second most-populous country in Asia, as well as the world. I mentioned in this blog that I hope someday to read English translations of two great Indian epics, Ramayana and Mahabharata.

One thing I have learned the past twenty years is that I have some really wonderful students, and when Preeti learned about my interest in those books, she warned me not to buy them yet. This past summer she went with her family to India, and she returned with gorgeous hard-cover copies of both books, which she gave me today. I am so impressed with her thoughtfulness, although not the least bit surprised since that is the type of person she is. Thanks, Preeti, I can’t wait until summer to start reading one of them!

Sorry for not having posted all week, but this was the craziest opening week of school I’ve ever had. One of our new teachers decided to quit Wednesday morning, the day before classes even started. Nancy and I were caught in a 2-hour traffic jam that morning, and by the time I arrived at school the entire administration was looking for me to deal with the bad news. Meanwhile, the district math supervisor was away that day because her husband was having an operation.

I spent most of Wednesday running around trying to rectify the situation, since we needed a teacher by the next morning. By the end of the day a woman who is scheduled to replace Megan during her maternity leave starting in a few weeks agreed to come in two weeks early and teach an entirely different set of classes in the interim. Thank heavens for Deanna! At least temporarily she has saved the math department. Now it is Pam’s job to find a permanent teacher before Megan starts her maternity leave.

Yesterday morning was my father’s inurnment at Good Shepard Cemetery. It is a gorgeous 18-acre site which has very few graves since it has only been open for a single year. My father’s ashes are in an above-ground structure which is very nice. Fr. Mark held a short ceremony, and in the evening most of my family attended a memorial mass for my father at Our Lady of the Mountain.

Friday night I was browsing at Borders where, as usual, I saw lots of good things I wanted to buy, but I restrained myself to buying the book The Skull Mantra, by Eliot Pattison. It is a mystery steeped in Tibetan culture and history, recommended highly by Frank Denton, plus I found several rave reviews of it. Hopefully I'll have time to read it sometime this fall.

This is it, the last day of summer vacation! Actually, I am looking forward to returning to school and seeing many of my friends and students. It should be a tough year though since I have 5 new math teachers who need mentoring and training, plus I am teaching AP Statistics again, and have a new textbook and curriculum for Honors Algebra 2. My main focus this year must be not getting as stressed as I did last year so that my back does not go out again. That was definitely not a pleasant experience.

I did not accomplish nearly as much as I had hoped to do this summer, mostly because I lost nearly the entire month of August. I still have another half-dozen chapters to edit in the Tibet book, plus write the proposal and outline and finish selecting potential publishers to submit to. However, I usually have very little available writing time during school, and this year should be busier than usual. It was a good thing that I cut back the frequency of Visions of Paradise to twice per year, since I doubt I will have the time for four issues anyway. I will also still have all the extracurricular activities I had last year, including Target Teach Parsippany, Morris Area Math Alliance, PTHEA vice-president, Asian Club Advisor, Newspaper co-advisor, as well as returning as Math Team Advisor, all of which will take a lot of time as well. Two years ago I was determined to cut back on some activities, and I did give up Math Team for a year, but with Eric gone to PHHS, and Megan on maternity leave, I will have it at least for one more year. Hopefully my brother David will be my co-advisor, so next year he and Megan can do it together.

All you students and teachers reading this, have a great year!

Today was the annual Principal’s Cabinet Meeting prior to the start of school next week. It was a shock waking up early and driving to school in traffic, and I was not mentally prepared for a morning of meetings followed by several hours cleaning up the chaos in the Math Lab. Damaris helped me do it, since she shares the office with me, so at least the lab is tolerable now. And I have a four-day weekend before school starts in earnest next Tuesday. ☺

The destruction in New Orleans due to Hurricane Katrina is horrendous, and the latest reminder that no matter how much humans believe that we own the world, we are only its tenants and largely powerless against the forces of nature. It is gratifying to see many people rallying to help the victims, but frustrating at those people who merely see it as an opportunity. The latter group includes the oil companies who have been price-gouging for the past few months (and probably price-fixing as well, illegal though that might be) while reaping record profits. Now they have raised prices practically before Katrina even made landfall and, according to several reports I have read, prior to any real need to do so. Historically, the gas industry has always been a bunch of greedy bastards–why else did the government break up the industry a century ago, only to allow it to reform in recent years to the detriment of the public welfare?

Currently listening: This week was the great Van Morrison’s 60th birthday, so I have been listening to some of his finest albums, including Wavelength and Tupelo Honey.

Currently reading: Mary Gentle is an ironically-misnamed writer since her historical fiction (which delves somewhat into alternate history as well) is at times graphically violent, but still gripping reading in spite of that. A Sundial in a Grave: 1610 is slow reading, but worthwhile.