Hide Tide at Gettysburg

How did I get an 8-foot Christmas tree for $3.84? By making it out of green duck tape! Ha ha--it has many benefits: it doesn't take up any space, it weighs zero pounds, it doesn't drop pine needles on the carpet, it doesn't smell and won't catch on fire, it looks cool, and it will be super easy to take down. The next step is to make the ornaments--more pictures will come.

Today was a weird and funny day. Last night Aly had said to me that it would be nice if Dr. Barnhart cancelled class today like he did the week before Thanksgiving. So when my phone rang this morning at 7:30 a.m., I thought I was dreaming that Dr. Barnhart was calling me to cancel class or at least bump class back a few hours like Mr. Riccio did yesterday. Then I realized that I wasn't having a dream, so I got out of bed and answered the phone. Sure enough--it was Dr. Barnhart. He has brochitis and said that he needed to cancel class today. I was still kind of in zombie land, so I don't remember all that he said, but he was talking to me for about five minutes explaining that he is sorry that we haven't had very many sessions of his class this semester or learned very much in his class. He said something like next week we'll just meet to turn in our research papers, and then we'll call it good for his class for the semester. I went and knocked on Aly's door again and said, "You're not going to believe this, but Dr. Barnhart just called me and cancelled class." She was very excited and rolled over to go back to sleep. I called the other kids, and they thought it was so funny. Dr. Barnhart's class is for sure the most random class any of us have ever had. Out of all 14 weeks of the semester, we've had an actual class only about 6 or 7 times. We're a little concerned because some of the readings that we were supposed to have done for that class seem like they would be pretty essential to our field of work--like "Interpreting Historical Sites," and other such articles--but oh well, we're not complaining.

So I just did work all morning until I needed to go help Dr. Hardeman do some grading this afternoon. His students' papers never cease to amaze me--they don't make any sense at all! There were a number of funny things I read today. My favorite was the 15-page paper entitled "Hide Tide at Gettysburg." Dr. Hardeman had me pick a paper I wanted to read, and I said, "How about 'Hide Tide at Gettysburg'?" He got a good laugh out of that one, since the book that the student was supposed to be basing their paper on (which they didn't) was called High Tide at Gettysburg. Then there was the student who said, "Chivalry and Lynching were two forms of public humility in the South." That sentence has issues on various levels. First of all, the student did not mean to talk about "Chivalry" (meaning gallant or heroic action); they meant to talk about "shivaree" (meaning a crazy public gathering). And, the student didn't mean to talk about shivaree and lynching as a form of public "humility," but public "humiliation." There is certainly nothing humble about a lynching! It was quite funny though, because the whole 15-page paper compared chivalry to lynching and, numerous times, referred to the humility caused by these actions. Last but not least was the student who wrote an analysis of the book Mothers of Invention. Their first two sentences read, "Mothers of Invention. Yes, this is the name of a Rock Band, and they are pretty good. But when one considers this phrase as the title of this book, it has more meaning." Oh dear.

Well, I'm off to this week's crazy meeting, which hopefully won't last for seven hours (but you never know).