Thundering herds of cicadas came out this week.  Millions.  Well yeah, right, they don't thunder, but they do make a sound like a flying saucer landing on the White House lawn.  Or maybe on the Rose Garden.  Klaatu barada nikto anybody?  I tried this line on a few of them but they didn't listen.

I watched them all week.  It's amazing how many don't make it through the molting.  Some fall prey to predator wasps who lay their eggs in the body of this bug-eyed bug.  (Well, of course, what else?)  The wasp eggs hatch and the pupae (larvae?) eat the cicada from the inside out.  Terrible way to go.  Some cicadas emerge malformed, with stunted wings or too few legs.  Others fly with reckless abandon and crash into things; trees, buildings, the mouths of hungry hawks, my head.  Seventeen years or so underground and you understand why they're a little goofy.  I watched one crawl over the ground and forlornly poke his head into each hole he encountered, holes like the one from whence he had emerged only hours before.  Kind of like some people, this thing.  I say 'he' because he had noise-makers on his side, and with this species it's the males who make the noise.  Many more made it though, to drink water and mate, to lay eggs on the trunks of trees, to repeat the rhythm.  They aren't dumb, as bugs go.  After all, they selected (kind of) life cycles based on prime numbers.  Every species of cicada begins its reproductive journey a prime number of years after its last cycle.  The predators never have figured this out and only stumble upon the juicy cicada opportunistically. 

I don't normally eat bugs, at least knowingly, but a woodsy friend swears that stir-fried cicada are a great treat.  I've decided to take him up on his cookery offer.  I wonder what side dishes he'll prepare.  Oh, and what wine is the correct accompaniment to cicada?

I've been very very busy lately.  I miss all you Gais.  Back to 'normal' in a few more weeks I hope. 

Adrconicg to eprxet oniiopn lses tahn fftiy pcernet of the patlpuooin wlil be albe to raed tihs, and olny twtney pcernet wtih any seped.  Leartite aseltcenods wlil bset altuds.  I'm gsnieusg taht the pcernetgaes wlil be hgheir hreh on Giaa.  We wlil see.

I am trierlby bsuy, but usntnadred taht I am lninareg so mcuh mroe aoubt jsut how azinamg the biarn ralely is so the bdreun is bbarleae.  All rghit, I wnat to aovid finyrg my own biarn so I wlil stiwch to 'naorml' lteter seuqcene.  Bdeseis, my selpl ckceehr is ninareg mowdletn. 

I'm in this training, you see.  Orton-Gillingham.  And it's a challenge intellectually, physically, and emotionally.  I'm thinking of language and learning differences 24 by 7 and am in class for eight hours a day and have about that much reading and homework to do each night.  I'm working with my first 'demonstration' student,' a big old Iowa farm boy who speaks with clarity and ease on complex agricultural and business topics, but who cannot read or write above the second grade level.  His eyes light up when I tell him that our goal is to get his reading and writing up to the same level as his speaking.  I remind him of this at the start of every class.  The first time I told him he said that that's what he's always wanted and started to cry.  It turns out that his public school classmates made fun of him for years and called him Dim Tim.  With a WISC full-scale of 145+ he's not dim by any measure. 

The fact that the 'teaching the teachers' class I'm in is being taught by an ex-partner of mine, an ex of the wifely persuasion and the mother of my daughters, is exceedingly strange.  For whatever difficulties this person may have with close relationships, she is a gifted teacher of the first rank.  I understand why her students, child and adult, think so highly of her.  I always thought her writing was overly dense, even pretentious, but her knowledge of the language, and her ability to analyze and synthesize complex issues in this domain and come up with perfect examples on the spot, is astounding.

Three of my old group graduated the school's 'regular' program Friday, regular in the sense of wilderness, academic, and therapeutic elements combined.  It was a surprisingly emotional experience.  I'm beginning to understand how teachers feel when they send their charges off into the world and wonder how they'll do, wonder if they learned all they need.  I'm going to miss them, and I know they'll miss me.  <sigh>

On top of all that, the school asked me to do the engineering and installation of a new fiber-optic computer network on campus.  I'll have help but most of the work will fall to me. 

So between now and July 21, when I'm officially on the academic side of the school, all I have to do is complete the OG training, work with my demonstration student, see another of my guys graduate, and engineer and install a fiber optic data network.

Piece of cake. 

I'd write more but I'm gonna go do a nap-in-advance now.