Today I found myself counting days-till-departure on my hands. Things here are winding to a close, and I've been overwhelmed with the love shown by people I love right back. The sweetest things to me are the distances driven by friends and family to spend time and conversation together, but those aren't all that easy to share. So what follows is a list of some of the best going-away gifts I've received in the last week. Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks — Since the beginning of my career as an English teacher (uh, last year), two ideas have dominated the classroom: 1) We're all going to die, and 2) The Times They Are a-Changin'. This used (yes!) CD completed a sack full of individually-wrapped gifts from the most servant-hearted school counselor I've known. It's been a soundtrack to the last few weeks in the states. a going-away poster — Few, if any students of English 300 were jazzed about reading the Gospel of Mark. But one student in particular railed against most anything that involved God. After several one-on-one conversations debating the fairness of this assignment (and sleep lost over whether to even continue dragging them through it), she trusted me, gritted her teeth, and hung on till we made it to the other side. On Friday, my farewell party included a very large piece of yellow butcher-paper on which students could sign their names. At the center of this poster was an enormous cross, carefully colored in and outlined. I later learned that she had designed it. one three-by-four-foot portrait of yours truly — The "dancing" bear painting above our fireplace has been ceremoniously replaced by a billboard-sized photo of my face (framed, of course). The brainchild and production of my creatively absurd and prolific friends, Mark and Brandon, known for their photoshop wars, it's a gift I manage to forget about every time I leave the house, until walking back through the front door and being confronted afresh with an image recalling chairmen and dictators from systems of old and new. (Last night, before bed, Mark and Zack held a spontaneous veneration ceremony that bordered on blasphemy.) two pounds of fresh-roasted coffee — Unsurprisingly, one of my best friends roasts coffee for a living. Matt works for Golden State Coffee Roasters, and roasted a couple batches destined for the corners of my suitcase. The gifts of time and labor are likely the most precious to me, and anything involving coffee is bonus points. The trade-off is I tell him how it is. I'm already working on flavor profiles...what a pain. a conch shell — Given to me by a fellow English teacher at the high school, it reminds me of the power of symbols to speak more loudly than treatises or essays, and the idea that the sound of the whole ocean can fit in the spirals of a nomadic crab's former cave. Every hero's tale says that we must leave home to find it. |
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While the best mornings begin with Bossa Nova, it's admittedly a decades-old movement. I wondered what Brazil sounds like today, until my one good Brazilian friend, Janssem Cardoso, turned me on to this gold mine. More Brazilian music than even I can handle! And in case "gratuito" is an unfamiliar word, it means "free." Yep. Free.
So much diversity. So much quality. So much just plain awesome. |