Dear A,

things are going pretty well. Leah and I are still together. We’re going good, and why bust up a good thing? School’s in full swing, but I have the weekend off-duty, and the freedom to go do my own stuff. The kids are all in an uproar over ghosts, ghouls, goblins and such, and I find myself answering a lot more questions about that sort of thing this year, more than I usually do. More than I feel comfortable answering, even.

Of late I’m wrestling with issues re: drugs. There’s some circumstantial evidence that my (middle school) students are getting into alcohol, pot, E, coke, and perhaps other drugs. One of my former students was back this week, and through the grapevine he related stories about kids — former students of mine — strung out on heroin, cocaine, another kid boxed up in a mental ward, another busted and doing time for dealing pot… the list goes on.

And I wonder why it happens. In some cases, it happens because there’s a failure of love. I mean, you don’t send your kids away to school in seventh grade if everything is hunky-dory at home. But there’s got to be more to it than that. It has to be available to them — but of course, I have large numbers of bored rich kids in my school, and a fair number of bored middle-class kids in my school, and it’s quite natural that a market in goods to alleviate boredom should develop, yeah? It’s dismaying, and I don’t know what to do about it to fix it. I don’t want my students in prison, or the grave, or psycho wards. How do I help them avoid all that?

I bought a new car… one of these boxy Scion xB’s. It gets 30/35 miles to the gallon, but I don’t fit behind the weel of a Prius or the… what’s the other hybrid vehicle? I forget. Right now gas is $2.15/gl, so I’m glad I didn’t get a replacement Ford with only 25 mpg, but I still wish I owned something getting 45-60 mpg. Sigh. We all takes our chances, don’t we?

I’m missing the fire tribe lots these days. Part of me feels like the Fire stuff in the summer is just performance –that those people aren’t my friends and don’t really represent my life 90% of the year; that while they like me, they don’t go out of their way to communicate with me — and then just when I’m feeling down about it, and about to drop wholly into my own little cocoon of a world, you write to me! Thanks!

I keep a livejournal @ http://www.livejournal.com/users/anselm23/ if you’re interested in keeping up more regularly with what I do. I’m also going to be participating in http://www.nanowrimo.org/ (National Novel Writing Month) this year, and I recommend both keeping a journal and working on a creative project that you expect to take a month. They’re worthwhile tasks.

Speaking of which, it’s time for me to go off to school. There’s a whole crowd of Canada geese swinging by over my apartment, honking and encouraging each other. And I guess that’s what I’m doing now, Ash… we’re honking and encouraging each other.

Come out east and visit sometime if you have the chance.

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