Thursday, February 4, 2010

Are You Sleeping, Uncle Tom?

Yesterday Uncle Tom was rushed to Sparrow Hospital after cracking his skull falling on the ice. He insists on walking every day despite weather conditions and fell at the corner but would not go to the doctor and insisted he was all right. Later in the day he was found unconscious in the basement and had to have emergency surgery because of bleeding in his head. I am at Windemere View school doing Art today. I have 3 classes to teach and now have a 3 hour break until the last 2 classes. The Art teacher was here to set things up and ended up staying during the 1st class and the tutoring in the morning wasn't needed as the 2nd grade class is outside for recess now. On Monday I was at Waverly East for Spanish and had 4 classes to show the movie Over The Hedge to in Spanish with subtitles.   While I was in Mr. Guiterrez's office I found an old baby book in disrepair and started reading it.  It was for a boy named Henry Jones Jr and had pictures and writing about his development to about the age of 4 which I found when I reached the last page and read the newspaper article about his being killed at the Orchard Lake railroad crossing on August 1, 1924.  Strange how this was in storage at the school and where his story was discovered by me to be preserved as Junior from Pontiac who had visited his Aunt Pearl in Lansing on a "choo choo" ride.   It has been a pretty good week after having lots of half days since break. Jane was sick last week with a bad cold and missed 3 days of work. On Saturday we went to Betty Mccastle's retirement party at the Liederkranz Club, and we sat with the Fabianos'. The only other time I was there was for Bob Leik"s wedding reception. It was also very cold last week with wind chills near zero keeping kids in for recess but we haven't had too much snow. They are considering closing this school and Elmwood next year, I can see due to the budget the need for closing 1 but not 2 schools. This is the oldest school in Waverly now and its floor plan, on 2 levels would make it the most vulnerable to close. Just like at GM, I followed 1 plant closing to the next, unfortunately it's repeating itself in the school districts. It's funny how time slips away as we drift into the future of days that soon will be the past.