Three Beautiful Things 02/11/15: Scrooge Writing, Thinking About the Deke, 1970 Oakland Raiders

1.  I thought about it long and hard and concluded that I am a Valentine's Day Scrooge and wrote about it this morning, and now Sibling Assignment #156 is complete.  I didn't name names or go into great detail about how my Scroogery came into being, but you can learn the general facts and join me in relishing the fact that it's a day blissfully ignored by both the Deke and me, if you click here.

2.  I enjoyed a sunny walk through the skeletal trees and close to the icy shores of Greenbelt Lake this afternoon, with my head full of thoughts and questions about the difficult challenges the Deke faces day to day in her job.  When she came home today, the news was good: she reported that several of her home room students experienced breakthroughs in the world of fractions and a handful of her students stood before the class and explained how it is that even though 12 is a larger number than 5, in the perplexing world of fractions, 1/12 is smaller than 1/5.  Her students are also deeply interested in the reading they are doing about Rosa Parks and are having trouble wrapping their minds around several facts:  Rosa Parks broke a city law when she didn't leave her seat on a Montgomery bus (it was a law?), the Deke was a little kid when this happened (how old are you?), and the Deke lived in an all white suburb of Chicago and didn't know any black people growing up (this fact is really astonishing to these Prince George's County third graders), among other things.  These children have no idea how much the Deke is learning from them, and, second-hand, me, too.

3.  Via email and the wonders of videos on the World Wide Web, Byrdman opened up for me a really fun trip back to the 1970 NFL season and the heroics of the Oakland Raiders' forty-three year old back-up quarterback and kicker, George Blanda, as well as the pleasure of listening to play by play genius, Bill King.  Not only did the videos take me back to that season, they also triggered a ton of memories of things that happened in my funny personal life as a junior at Kellogg High School.