When we lived in Asheville, I worked for one year at a day treatment facility for kids who'd been expelled from alternative school. It was a tough bunch of mainly fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds. At...
Blog
Various ventures into Mr. Scott’s mind.
PKO Rotunda
I was looking at the photographs of British/Polish photographer Chris Niedenthal when I saw an image of PKO Rotunda in Warsaw. Suddenly, I was back in Poland in 1996, experiencing the country for...
Halina
February. There's ice everywhere from snow packed on the road, snow compressed on the sidewalks, early melts in the fields that have refrozen. I am walking to the post office that's in the serve-all...
North and South to Go South
Borders are strange things -- they can turn our perceptions on our heads. Take Poland and Slovakia, for example. We generally think of Slovakia as south of Poland because, well, it is. But there are...
Why the Beatles Are Most Certainly Not Overrated
One of the things you'll learn about me as the year progresses is that I think the Beatles are probably the best and most influential bands of all time. Many kids today are not terribly familiar...
Meeting You 2021
This evening, I got to meet many of you for the first time. It’s always a thrilling experience: I’ll get to know you over the next several months better, in some limited ways, than your parents and...
A Sweet Birthday Present
All my students agreed to a collaborative version of "Happy Birthday" for my son. He was thrilled. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGe3-aQE4w4
A Day in Zakopane
Now that spring is here, I thought I'd remind everyone what a real winter looks like. This is in Zakopane, sort of like a Polish Gatlitburg. My wife and I went there relatively often because her...
Can Drive
We're making progress with our Beta Club canned food drive...
One of My Madeleines
The older I get, the more madeleines I discover I have.
A Walk with Her Cousin
Several years ago, my family spent just about the entire summer in Poland visiting Babcia (grandma). Dziadek (Grandpa) had died only a few months before, and we wanted to support Babcia as best we...
Bliss
My wife was in the hammock. I decided to join her. Our son grabbed a camera.
Thoughts on “In the Family”
I read “In the Family” four more times this week -- it was the fifth through the eighth time that I read it in two days. I’ve noticed a few more things about it after reading it four more times....
Rainy Day
It was supposed to rain all day today. It was also supposed to be a day off school today, which would have made the rain seem particularly dreary as we would probably have gone out and done...
Bonfire
Today, after all their school work, my kids picked up all the branches that had fallen in our backyard. We have a lot of trees back there -- oaks, poplars, and sadly, a fair number of sweetgum...