Yesterday morning O bounded down the stairs and asked,
“Daddy, do you want to go fishing?”
How could I refuse? “Yes, you get the boat ready.” I replied.
I finished my work and met her on the dock. I remembered the things she had forgotten – life jackets and a camera. We catch and release, but photo first – when we can.
We pushed off the dock and were on our adventure. Continue reading Beneath the waves
Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it.” ― George Santayana, The Life of Reason: Five Volumes in One
This fall, I’ll be teaching history full time for the first time in my teaching career. I am excited and I am worried. History gets a bad rap, especially with 13-14 years olds. Many folks believe history is remembering all sorts of dates and facts, and while that’s part of it, it’s not the reason we study history. We study history to learn from our mistakes and move forward as a people, as a society.
This past year, I taught one section of history and it opened my eyes, again. American society seems to repeat itself every other generation – the issues my great grandparents faced, my generation faces today. In the 1840s immigrants – the Irish – were blamed for the country’s ills. Three generations later in 1900 – 1920s a different group of immigrants – eastern and southern Europeans were blamed, today it’s yet another group of immigrants longing for freedom.
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
From the “New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus
In the last quarter of the school year, I suggested a daily dose of history and volunteered to manage it. Administration ALWAYS appreciates initiative and follow through. Each school day I’d select an event and create a slide for the morning announcements. My colleagues knew I was behind it and let me know they appreciated the reminder of the importance of each day. Sometimes, I’d tweet it with my school twitter account – @ScullenWatkins.
On #ThisDayInHistory in 1945, American bomber drops atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Read More http://t.co/epo73Pp9uQ via @History
— Clay Watkins (@ScullenWatkins) August 6, 2015
I am number that third guy who walks into a music store searching for a tune he’s heard, sometimes I’ll have the tune, or maybe a bit of the chorus. Sometimes I have it correct, most times though, I am all messed up. Eventually I get it right and find the song.
Blues skies made an appearance yesterday. It was great to see them after Sunday’s storms. Storms rolled across the lake in waves Sunday afternoon. The first wave came around noon and brought wind, thunder, lightning, and rain. The second wave came a couple of hours later. The third wave came around 5 PM.
B and I had decided that gardening would have to wait for another day and she took off with O and friends to let the kids see a movie and to shop – she needed paint for the downstairs powder room among a few other items. I finished my chores and decided to watch a baseball game upstairs when the last wave rolled through.
5:09 PM Sunday August 2nd
I had my back to the lake Continue reading Tuesday’s Tune: “Blue Skies”
Sunday morning at the cottage, Ivy is sleeping, and O is awake upstairs. It’s quiet and peaceful, it’s an inspiration.
Inspiration: a person, place, experience, etc., that makes someone want to do or create something http://t.co/jVmkqEVGFm via @MerriamWebster
— Clay Watkins (@makingdayscount) August 2, 2015
We’ve been Up North over a week and each day we’ve been chipping away at our chore list: getting a chore here and a chore there knocked off the list. We have a summer’s worth of ‘to dos’ to accomplish while we are here, there’s always something to do, even when I’d rather read a book or gaze out over the lake. But, we’ve also had time for a boat ride to watch the sunset. Inspiring.
We were having dinner with friends the other night – they came here for ribs and beans and we were at their place for ham and potatoes last night – we were talking and they shared they had been looking at other cottages around the lake and decided that where we are, they are four houses down the shore, can’t be equaled. I agree. I get up in the morning and look out over the lake, enjoy a cup of coffee and think, dream, or I can sit on the deck and read a book, and the lake lies before me. Continue reading Inspiration
We live in a small world. 70 percent of Earth is water, the rest is land.
It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn’t feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.
— Neil Armstrong Apollo 11 astronaut and first man to walk on the moon.
I grew up in Houston in the late 60s and early 70s. I remember the night Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon, but I was more interested in football, and other sports, than I was in space.
My parents moved to Sugar Land, a small growing suburb of Houston, in 1967. We moved in in early August and my mom still lives there. The same year, the Regners moved in next door. Tom Regner and his wife, Shirley, moved in next door. He was 21 and less than a year out of college with a baby on the way. I was six years old and my world was small, very small, little did I know how truly small the world was.
Mr. Regner played football for the Houston Oilers. He was drafted in the first round, the 23rd overall pick in the 1967 NFL draft. His NFL career lasted until 1972 when he was traded to the Baltimore Colts and he retired. He came out of retirement in 1974 to play for the Houston Texans of the World Football League. After the season, he retired for good and opened Venetian Village, an Italian restaurant.
Mr. Regner always seemed larger than life; Continue reading Six degrees: Friday’s Flashback
It’s Thursday morning and I am the only soul awake. Even Ivy sleeps. She woke when I did, went outside, and came back to the screen door and I let her inside. She is curled up in a ball on the footstool, grandma’s footstool. It’s Ivy’s perch, so to speak. The footstool comes with grandma’s chair, it’s grandma’s morning perch when she is here, too. There’s a marked depression where she lays and it’s now part of the cottage. Last summer, when grandma was up north, Ivy came over to the footstool, put her head on grandma’s leg and looked up, pleading. Grandma held her ground and Ivy retreated to her pad by the door. This morning Ivy jumped up on the stool without asking, though sometimes she does ask but this morning she didn’t. I did not protest, as I often do, or almost always, she warmed my legs while I sipped my coffee and gazed out across the lake as early morning slipped into day and the lake slowly returned to light.
Yesterday was windy and it wasn’t a good day for boating, Tuesday was windy, as well, and taking the kayak out was a struggle, but I did it anyway. Today looks like it will windy and the lake will be choppy for another day. Nevertheless, I have other tasks to do; there is always something to do, to keep busy, some important task that needs to be accomplished. Continue reading Today is the day
Like most people, music has always been an important part of my life. I tried out for chorus in third grade and didn’t make it, I couldn’t carry a tune, I still can’t but it doesn’t stop me from singing. I played trombone in middle school and gave it up, like scouting and sports and so many other activities I quit in that awkward middle adolescent period between 13 to 16. Music was an important part of growing up – listening to the radio and learning the popular rock and roll songs of the 70’s. I worked in a music store in high school. In 1979, a music store sold records and tapes, the kind of music that was on vinyl.
At 17, I knew it all. I knew everything. Continue reading Tuesday’s Tune: MtDC Playlist
We are on the downside of summer break. We’re past the busy part of summer. We’ve been focused on the world up close and when I reflect on what we’ve done
The busy part of summer ended Wednesday afternoon when the train pulled out of the station; actually it ended when I finished loading the cars and pointed the car east, then north early Thursday afternoon. I could feel the muscles in my neck loosen and relax with each mile away from home.
Sure, we have work to do, there is always something to keep us busy, to keep us on our toes – we have two kids, a house, and a dog and that’s more than plenty.
B has plenty of gardening work and I have to begin thinking of the coming school year. Up close, the work is easy, it’s when I look at what I have to do from afar that it seems monumental and overwhelming. One step at a time. Continue reading Close Up
I started blogging five years ago, it had been an awful school year and I had been out of my comfort zone the entire year. The previous summer I had lost my dad, in fact today is the sixth anniversary of his passing. That summer, the summer of ’10, lay ahead as an open wound with questions about my past, present, and future. Towards the end of the school year, I had experienced a few successes and school ended on a high point for me as an educator and human being.
6 years ago today, I watched @TheOpen with my dad for the last time – #thinkingofdad https://t.co/AwXjgIYJdY
— Clay Watkins (@makingdayscount) July 20, 2015
That school year ended on a Friday – May 28, 2010 – and I came home from school to an empty house. B and the kids had left for the weekend to visit her mom and dad in Ohio. I had stayed home because I had a cough and we didn’t want to get my in-laws sick. I had a lot of time on my hands and thoughts running through my head. The combination is never good and the blog happened somewhere between Friday afternoon and Saturday morning. I bought the url – MakingtheDaysCount.com, and dot org, dot net, and dot info. I had wanted MaketheDaysCount.com, but it was taken, already in use. I bought a hosting package and jumped in the blogging water.
The goal initially was to share how I made every day count, in some way and to write about it. Continue reading Why I blog… Blogging 201
There is another half of summer yet come, waiting. Or, summer is more than half-complete, finished; depending on your perspective. According to my summer calendar, 29 days remain. For O she has 31 days, W has 22, and B has 31 days left of summer. It’s cruel how fast summer moves.
The past several days our weather has been interesting. Monday it was warm and muggy. Tuesday the weather changed and it was cool enough to open windows and rely on nature to cool the house, and Wednesday evening was cool and getting out of the pool after my swim was a chilly experience. Thursday was overcast and rainy, and then Friday arrived. Friday arrived with excessive heat warnings and afternoon thunderstorms. O and I tried to make it to the pool, but the lightning and thunder closed the pool. Instead, we watched nature’s light show and decided to try again Saturday. Continue reading Half and half