School✏️📚Daze, Holiday Haze
(+ some perennial silliness...)
Greetings, with wishes for a rest-from-labors start to a beautiful September.
In that spirit, this mostly light picture-postcard edition comes again with help from Grand Miz E. Her Monday departure for the first day of second grade is pictured at bottom left. The ideal photo-op-backdrop is result of her parents’ labor since spring to make a floral focal-point of that stone-framed evergreen corner.
From a news standpoint, it turned out newShrink wasn’t the only press covering the week’s milestone event.
Miz E’s school, teacher and class (pictured at top left and throughout the story below) were the school-start feature story in their local newspaper.
Labors-of-love
Blue dresses, pink bows, 1st day back-to-school jitters (from The Asheville Citizen-Times.)
For her Tishie this was of course a big smile. But for newShrink and the old journalist in me it’s more a happy surprise in this era of beleaguered daily newspapers. This one put energetic resources to capturing the annual community school-opening ritual with lively visuals, interviews and quotes.
There’s a comprehensive, 20-photo gallery of shots along with those embedded in the story. I also liked the therapeutic cautions of apparent boundaries and regard for privacy and safety. Reporting and photography use students’ first-names only and less-identifying content, for example.
… Students arrived as early as 7:15 a.m., where there was only excitement and warm welcomes at the West Asheville elementary school on Aug. 28, the very first day of school for some students, while others were pros at finding their classrooms.
As staff greeted students one little girl yelled out "Thanks, but it's not my first day!" Other students blushed and giggled as they got their photo taken with the signs "I belong here," and "Happy first day of school," written across them.
It was the first day back for Asheville City Schools, welcoming students across its nine schools for the 2023-24 year, including Hall Fletcher. Buncombe County Schools also opened its doors to its 45 schools on Aug. 28.
Susan Engstrom's [and Miz E’s] second-grade classroom was rather quiet as the students were coloring and getting settled into their seats ― full of first-day nerves and jitters.
One classroom photo has a very blurry Miz E coloring or writing in the background. Low in the story she’s quoted describing her “favorite thing to do:” Running around in PE class?! Given that this is brand-new breaking news to her entire family, I wondered if she might be channeling me, or practicing talking points to use when Tishie is next in full drill-sergeant form.
Or another possibility: This reminded me of very-young childhood Sunday School class, where there was always a teacher who loved closing class by requiring each wee classmate to come up with the dreaded sentence-prayer… and say it out loud. You’d worry through the whole class, coming up with plans b, c, d, lest you wind up having to go last with no unused options.
I figure maybe “running around in PE class” was all that was left Monday by the time the reporter got to Miz E…
But if I’m wrong, I’ll be so happy to sign her up to join me in this year’s Turkey Trot race.
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Here are some reminder facts and historic perspective about the Monday holiday:
“Soul at work”
(from the 9.3.21 Labor Day edition of newShrink)
Pictured at top right is a pivotal protest-movements event that became the first Labor Day Parade in New York City in 1882, when 10,000-unpaid-workers marched to City Hall. Then in 1886 both workers and police officers were killed in the Chicago Haymarket Riot.
Labor Day pays tribute to the contributions and achievements of American workers and is traditionally observed on the first Monday in September, also marking the end of summer for many Americans. It was created by the labor movement in the late 19th Century and became a federal holiday in 1894. The annual celebration of workers’ achievements, it originated during one of American labor history’s most dismal chapters during the Industrial Revolution.
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Now…
There’s no way even the briefest of light holiday postcard-editions could omit some breaking news. As with well-loved lyrics in the classic 1974 ballad here, it’s occurred over Labor Day Weekend:
“Come Monday”… RIP Jimmy Buffett
Despite mildly sniffing-dismissal tone of the headline, this thorough New York Times piece has a trove of probably unknown and maybe surprising facts about the phenomenally successful entertainer, prolific author and well-branded entrepreneur.
(Reports more updated than this NYT one explained that Buffett died of a recurrence of cancer that had required his hospitalization and concert-cancellations this spring. He had originally been treated and recovered from a severe form of skin cancer a few years ago. )
Jimmy Buffett, Roguish Bard of Island Escapism, Is Dead at 76 (The New York Times)
Here are a few factual items I found that belie or shed light beyond both the brand-hype and the wide, vocal disapproval it seems to evoke among the non-Parrot inclined. However one likes or dislikes his music, Buffett:
was one of only six authors, along with Hemingway and William Styron, ever to top both NYT fiction and nonfiction bestseller lists;
a billionaire businessman, he amassed his fortune from expanding his music career and fan-following into lucrative franchises with strict financial discipline;
a passionate and dedicated environmental conservationist, he moved much of the center and focus of his enterprise and efforts outside his beloved Key West and Florida in part because of inaction on fragility there;
his 1989 abandonment of the party-drinking-drugging life was widely publicized in the first of his many best-selling books;
Buffett and his widow Jane, mother of his three children, have been married since 1977. (Before that he had been married three years from 1969-1972.)
On a personal note, I doubt anyone would call me a Parrot-head. But I discovered early in corporate speechwriting days that dropping a few of the speaker’s favorite Buffett party-music lyrics into their text could be a game-changing antidote to deadly dull banker-speak. It turned out a lot of bankers in leadership roles fancied themselves, if not Buffett Coral Reefers then astride roaring Harleys with musical strains from Steppenwolf.
And for the water- and sunlight-lover in me Buffett’s ballads are a different genre entirely, something closer to poetry with a strong light-and-setting component. The best of magical water-days and times have playlists that somewhere include: (my very favorite) Remittance Man… Jimmy Dreams… Son of a Son of a Sailor… Barometer Soup… A Pirate Looks at Forty… and, of course, Come Monday.
And in lovely paradox: Nothing breaks the midwinter darkness of a near-teetotaler’s driest January quite as well as Jimmy’s… Boat Drinks.
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Along with a trip to Charleston focused on the new international slavery museum and shifts in historic accuracy and focus there, coming editions will also be spotlighting the remarkable life, legacy and far-reaching body of work of Steve Crump. The veteran Charlotte TV journalist and nationally renowned civil rights-history documentarian died this week from complications of long-battled colon cancer.
Steve Crump, beloved WBTV reporter for nearly 40 years, dies following cancer battle (from WBTV News)
Steve Crump, revered WBTV reporter and documentarian, dies of colon cancer (The Charlotte Observer).
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Now the week’s encore-echo of some newShrink themes from the spring,
“Seeing purple”
Above photo is from a golden-hour pre-sunset run on my usual route this week.
The mature crape myrtle tree in bloom grows at an older home along one of the “original lake-dweller neighborhood” roads. (A few of those remain, from before my time here back in the early 60’s, when creeks and river branches were dammed to form this large inland lake. Families of deer, and humans like me, are glad they do.)
This is the first crape myrtle tree I have seen, or noticed, in this deep-purple color — here, or anywhere.
I have dog-walked and run past this tree for now-28 Augusts. In that time I have planted, tended and overseen culling and pruning 30 of the tall Natchez-white variety of the tree and 5 watermelon-red ones.
By now when it comes to crape myrtles you’d think I’d know… and notice.
My face is (watermelon) red. I hope not fully purple.
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Now, I’ll leave you with my favorite (maybe-only?) seasonal holiday cartoon and its companions…
The silliness
And, that is all I have! Talk to you next week.
🦋💙 tish
… it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe —
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.
— William Stafford, “A Ritual to Read to Each Other”