[ woke up while it was still dark, again, to the sounds of Tongan voices. a man and a woman, laughing, bantering. sweeping the public parking lot beside the parsonage. mynah birds beginning to call and whistle their way to morning. lay in bed with images of Grant's siege of Vicksburg and Mel Gibson's siege of York (saw Braveheart on video last night) mixing horribly in my mind's eye. then i fell asleep again, dreaming luridly of Tongans playing Dixie on bagpipes. woke up midmorning. now, coffee and writing... ]

that first Internet Classroom

This week I mailed out two recommendation letters to Stanford University--one for Fed, the other for Aaron. Some of you know that both these guys were in the pioneering Internet Classroom of 1996, at ATDP. Each of the TICs in the summer since had its own wonderful character and flair, each its memorable collection of kids, but there's always something a bit more special about the first one. Of anything, I guess. TIC wasn't an exception. Around this time ast year, I wrote a Caltech rec for Tom and a Berkeley one for Monique.. The year before that, it was Angel and Simona graduating from high school, going off into the big world with my fondest blessings. (Angel kept coming back each summer to help me teach TIC, but that is another story, half-told in the interstices of one weblog or another.) All of the colorful characters above were a part of that unforgettable summer of 1996.

Telling how each of these young people made the deepest impact on my life as a fledgling (and accidental, I hasten to add) teacher, and on the meteoric trajectory of TIC would make this weblog longer than Rapunzel's hair. Suffice it to say that without these kids, without their questions, the gemlike sparkle of their focus, their very presence in my life, I would not be who I am now.

(Will write some more in a while. Have some errands to finish this morning...)

2-ish...
errands done, but I don't quite feel like writing again just yet. It's very nice out, hot and humid but with a cool mauka (mountainside) breeze, and so I think I shall go and hike up to the Lahaina L, which is right above Lahainaluna High School, which itself sits on a hill overlooking town. If you drew a line from the Carthaginian where it lies anchored on the wharf, to the parsonage, and straight up the foothills, you'd hit the "L." (Click on the photo to see a more expansive view of the scene, and from a different angle. Took it from the Jyodo temple the other day at dusk. I love the serene expression on the Buddha's face.) The L itself is a giant letter dug into the red volcanic earth (which gives it that reddish color), and is outlined with huge lava rocks painted white. This is tended annually by a pilgrimage of Lahainaluna seniors from the school below, who also go there to pay respects to David Malo, a famous Hawaiian in history, whose grave is at the top of the hill there, just above the L. (The L can be seen all the way down the west Maui coast and from miles away at sea.) Well, enough prattling for now. Will be back later this evening. Ciao! And to everyone whose school session ended today...

{ net.casting }
^