Elser Family Blog

Rockwell in the VI

Here is a little celebration video Rockwells teacher sent me from the VI. To be honest, I have not quite figured out what they are saying…. OK, so Kathi cleared that up.. they are saying
“Momma bake me a Johnny cake, Christmas coming, ooh ah, Christmas coming, ooh ah, New Years coming, ooh ah, Christmas coming, ooh ah, New Years coming, ooh ah……”

Happenings in the VI

The kids have been visiting/helping with some rescue horses on the weekends. Here is a good picture of Rockwell getting to ride bareback for the first time. Looks like he is having a good time! No pictures of Melinda this time.

Country Day Weekly News

Both Rockwell and Melinda are in this Edition.
Rockwell placed 3rd in his age group in a track competition, and Melinda had a part in the 5-6th grade play “Bunnicula”. Kath said the play went off really well.
Melinda and Rockwell received their report cards recently.. Melinda received her first b she ever got.. in Spanish. It’s sort of unfortunate, because all the kids in the school have been taking Spanish since they where in kindergarten, and this is the first year she has ever taken it. I’m impressed she received a B in this situation… Way to go Melinda! Rockwell received all “satisfactory” I guess they don’t give letter grades in his grade. He did really well, he loves math. All of his teachers love him. Actually, we received another “I wish all my students where like Melinda” note from a teacher. That always makes us feel good.
Anyway, Here is the newsletter.

Beta Club

“Beta Club? Why you no make it into Alpha club?”

Well, it was funny to me at least.

Hannah was asked to join the Beta Club as school. I’m not exactly sure what the qualifications are, but I am pretty sure the teachers have to recommend you. It’s good to be recognized, isnt it?? Congratulations H! Keep up the good work. I know you have been giving school work some effort, and it really shows. I have told her before so she knows; often the effort is worth more than the raw intellectual power… Put both together and watch out!

YALL fest in Charleston this weekend.

Hannah and I drove out to Charleston this weekend for a neat event: The Charleston Young Adult Book Festival.

There were 40 authors there to sign their books! It was fun. The events were spread out on King street. You had to walk between the book store and the theater and the Charleston music hall. It was a bigger event than you would give a book fair credit for.

Hannah Took some books from her library to get signed. Here she is getting her “Hack the SAT” book signed by Eliot Schrefer

And here she is talking to “Pseudonymous Bosch” Author of “The name of this book is secret”. Hannah had this book since elementary school. Hannah requested that he wrote her name in morse code. He looked up at her, thought for a second and realized she was serious.. Smiled and knew he was bested, and said, “OK, how about if I write your name backward”.. It was a good interaction.

Here she is getting one of her books signed by Gitty Daneshavari. Gitty asked what Hannah was afraid of, and Hannah replied “snakes.. What? wait! I’m not afraid of snakes!, I WANT a snake! I’m afraid of fear!” And Gitty replied ” Ah yes! Phobophobia! Very nice. This was a good interaction too. Actually, they all were.

Here she is talking to Trenton Lee Stuart We had attended a forum with him and Pseudonymous earlier in he day.

Over all it was a good day! We stopped at Grandpa Bob’s house and had Dinner with Bob and Anne. Christine was there with the youngest cousin Ethan. Ethan was giving Hannah fits! Chasing her around and bugging her. We all thought it was hilarious, certainly because of the karma/payback factor.

Passing comment: The Vote.

So on the way to school, Hannah said “Some people have to wait until they are 21 to vote”. I was in the process of thinking of what she might be referring to, and about to say “the voting age is 18” when she said “Ill be able to vote in the next Presidential election”.

Ahhh. Yes, people that turn 18 today wont be able to vote till they are 21!

I’m just glad she is even thinking about it.

Halloween horror writing contest

Like I mentioned before, Hannah had to write a scary story for English class.  If selected, it will be submitted to the county library for their local writing contest. Here it is for your review. She said she would have gotten more descriptive of the monsters if only she had a larger word budget. On a related note, She was selected by her Teacher to enter a state writing contest, “letters about literature” Where she has to write a letter to the author of book of her choice.. Sounds interesting! Ill let you know more about that as it progresses.

Anyway, here is her scary story . IMO, She seems to let the “strange behavior of mom” thing hang a bit. But chances are when I ask her about it, she will say.. “They didn’t let me have enough words!! I was 100+ words over as it was!! Ill get dinged for that alone!” The last paragraph is a statement isn’t it? Seems a little “human condition” ish to me.

Observed

So; Hannah and I went to dinner the other night with a friend / business associate of mine. This Gentleman is a genuinely good guy. A knowledgeable Engineer. He also happens to be a creationist. Somehow genetics got brought up, and he was talking about how it fits in with creationist theories. Now this guys is no pushover here… He actually helped create the creationist museum in Kentucky. I tried my best to be polite. He had some good points, even though some of the reasoning he was using had holes in it you could drive a truck though.

But all that is beside the point. What I observed was; Hannah held her tongue the whole conversation. While she was participating in the general conversation, she never said a word on this subject. And Oh, I KNOW she wanted to.

When we where in the car on the way home, I commented on her self control and her knowledge/intuition to know she should probably stay out of the conversation. “that was hard, I’ll tell you”. I bet it was. And it was NOT prompted by me. I never said a word to her. She just knew it probably was not the best time, even though I ventured in a little bit!

That was notable. I was impressed. But what prompted me to comment here was something she said on the way to school this morning. I had asked her about how she was doing on her German program. She has Rosetta Stone German. She has been working with it regularly, but I had not seen her on it in the last two days. She said “It’s addictive! I’ve tried to train myself to walk away from addictive things on the computer”. Are you kidding me? she is 14. And my 14y.o. knows to try and use some self control?

She is a better person than I.

Interim reports are in.

And I went to see/meet Hannah’s teachers.
They all lover her. Only two teachers had a single negative thing to say, and that is that she reads too much in class. This is an ongoing problem since elementary school.

She is getting high A’s in all her classes.

Except gym.
She promised to fix that.

Things I noticed; She sits in the front of the class for most of her classes. She associates with many kid in the hallways.

I am a very lucky Dad.

I will let you know how Rockwell and Melinda’s interim reports went, they were tonight also.

A peek at Hannah’s Homework.

So, I had to email Hannah’s homework to her teacher (we did not have a thumbdrive to use). Naturally, I wanted to read the story. I have to say, pretty darn creative. And I’m starting to think that creative is going to be a useful attribute in our world of the future. What do you think? (The formatting got removed.. there are paragraphs)

The Car We Had to Push from a Different Perspective Rubric
The World Was Coming to an End
By: Hannah Elser

The world was coming to an end. What didn’t people get about that? It was pretty clear to him, especially the way people were acting these days. Ridiculous, they are. So he was trying to warn his community that they should get ready, that the world was coming to an end. So he took the direct approach, he rode around in his big red Devil yelling out the window that the world was going to end. He didn’t have to. It’s not like he was going to be alive when the world ended, he was too old for that. It was just something he did. A hobby, almost.
The bright gray eyes stared at the poster in front of him . ‘Opening of King Lear’, it announced, ‘November 3-6’. He might go to that. He had gone to a concert before, hopping up on the stage halfway through the symphony, waving his hands wildly about, and ranting about how the world was going to end. It was all in the name of humor, of course. Honestly, the violin solo wasn’t bad, it was just kind of… well, boring.
So he stood there running a hand through his hair, smiled and decided that, yes, this would be a nice opportunity to spread the word that the world was ending, and to make them laugh. He had decided, quite awhile ago, that if people weren’t going to believe him, the least he could do was make them laugh. And he knew they didn’t believe him. He wasn’t stupid enough to think that there weren’t people whispering that he was insane behind his back, or in front of him for that matter. So he would make them laugh. The world deserved the little humor he gave to it before it died. If not the people on it, the world. ‘Because people are stupid creatures’, he thought,’ We create warfare and then go around saying that it’s for peace. We wear neckties. What kind of stupid race wears ropes in a knot around their neck? Neckties, honestly. The world is full of stupid people who abuse their children, shoot old ladies for no particular reason, get drunk when they’re sad, and so on. The world is full of stupid people.’ He wasn’t going to remedy that, he was just finding a temporary solution until the world ended.
The mans eyes crinkled as he smiled at his thoughts. He was driving to the theater. It was the fourth and he had gotten ticket from a friend who worked at the theater. The friend, Thomas, said that he didn’t even want to know what his friend was planning but he smiled and shook his head knowingly while he said it. He approved.
He handed the ticket to the young man behind the counter. Bill, if name tags were anything to go by, had a strange look of what appeared to be disgust on his face. Apparently he knew who he was, which wasn’t surprising. There weren’t many people in this town who didn’t know who he was. His reputation was not a good one.
He had chosen a seat on the balcony. There were more places to hide and it was darker, and it would take longer for them to get up here, drag him down the stairs, and kick him out. He had a slim body type made for running, and hide-and-seek had always been his favorite game as a child. He sat there for about fifteen minutes before the curtains rose and Kent, Gloucester, and Edmund entered the stage.
It was halfway through the play when he remembered why he was there in the first place. He was about to begin his bout of screaming, then hesitated. It wasn’t a bad play, in fact it was quite good. Don’t get him wrong, he had no qualms about interrupting it, he just wanted to see the end. Oh well, he could always ask Thomas later for another ticket, or, if he gets banned from the theater, ask for for the script. Everything was solved in that department so he began. He started shouting- shouting for all the people in the theater, for all the people of this world that it was going to end. The lightning sizzled and the thunder boomed, but the play was just background noise now. He had forgotten how much fun it was, being on the stage and making people laugh. It was exhilarating. But being a comedian had its ups and downs. Why he did had been wonderful, he had loved his job, but the pay… well, he didn’t love that.
They caught up to him pretty quick. He made a mental note to last longer next time. That was a new game he could play. Try-to-beat-the-record-for-not-getting-kicked-out-of-the-theater he would call it. He laughed at his own thoughts as they dragged him out. They already thought he was insane, what would a little laughing at nothing do to that? So he kept laughing as they dragged him to the exit. They threw him to the ground. Bill, if name tags were ever correct, looked down upon him, scoffed, and said,”Crazy old geezer. You’re insane!” He just leaned against the wall and laughed a little harder. The boy needed more laughter in his life. Huh, maybe he was insane. Oh well, it seemed insanity was fun. It sounded better then that human stupidity anyway. Let’s stay.