Cinco

1. I cannot begin to explain how fun it is to spend three hours playing baseball with a group of twenty great kids on a field overlooking the city, so it feels like you're in a sanctuary from the traffic and noise and it's just you, the kids, some balls, a bat, and the grass.

2. I'm finding that now that we're into the second week of the practice season, all that doodling I did over the winter about lineups and matchups for the team was a waste of time. Kids are surprising me. It looks like BW will be able to be my shortstop, which is good because he's a great kid and he's a senior who's played about six or seven games total in his four years playing for me (all pitching). I'm having a hard time deciding on who will be my second basemen, and shortstop is deep, so BW will have to continue to play well. I'm now sifting through several different lineup possibilities, trying to decide on one that works for the first game. Then it's back to teh drawing board for the second game.

3. I had almost forgotten how much fun it is to teach Romeo and Juliet to 9th graders.

4. Students are continually shocked whenever I mention the use of a sycamore (punning on "sick love") in Romeo and Juliet is very similar to the use of a sycamore in A Lesson Before Dying and is also very similar to the use of a sycamore tree in Jay-Z's "December 4." They say "What do you know about Jay-Z" as if I shouldn't be listening to him because I'm white; I say, "What?, I'm not allowed to listen to Jay-Z?" and they laugh.

5. Maureen Stapleton died. Only Wilford Brimley remains from Cocoon. Don Ameche was 77 when that movie came out and he died at 85 (prostate cancer). The old guy who played Barney was also 77 when that movie came out, and he died at 82 (stomach cancer). Hume Cronyn was 74 when that movie came out and died at 92 (prostate cancer). Jessica Tandy made the movie at age 76 and died at age 85 of ovarian cancer. Now the first of the younger two have died. Maureen Stapleton was 59 when she made the movie and died at the age of 80. Wilford Brimley was somehow only 51 when that movie came out and he's now 71. Wilford will have to live 21 more years to tie Hume Cronyn as the Cocoon cast member to live the longest. Maybe the oatmeal will help.