I have a lovely cross-section of an ash tree in class, about an inch thick and almost two feet wide. It makes a great  sound when I rap it with my knuckle, its heft is just right, and it still smells great. Bored students count its rings, so I know it grew for about 100 years, give or take a decade. Every biology class should have one. We are ...

Last week of the sinking sun. The Earth hurtles closer to the sun, but my little piece of paradise edges more and more oblique to the sun, our source of light, of life. We're in the dark season. *** The bell still rings at 7:45 in the morning. It's not a bell anymore, but we still call it that. I blew a conch shell as the bell sounded, an ...

I work hard to make my classroom ''unscientifical.'' I discovered not so long ago that some students learn just enough scientifical vocabulary to throw me off their scent. We are raising a generation of liturgists. I ask specific questions no one truly understands, I get back scientifical nonsense no one understands, and everyone pretends ...

Then the LORD God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living soul. As I was poking around the classroom garden yesterday, getting the plants ready for the weekend, I found a pea pod dangling from a tiny pea vine. The child who nurtured it will get ''extra credit''--I ...

No, nothing metaphorical. The real thing. I cleared out some space from one of our hallway exhibits to make room for our horseshoe crab art exhibit--a wonderful art teacher is integrating art and science, and the results have been lovely. I took out an old microscope, a shark jaw (and the log-dead critter drew blood yet one more time), and a ...

For I took an Earthen vessel, in which I put 200 pounds of Earth that had been dried in a Furnace, which I moystened with Rainwater, and I implanted therein the Trunk or Stem of a Willow Tree, weighing five pounds; and at length, five years being finished, the Tree sprung from thence, did weigh 169 pounds, and about three ounces... I again ...

Theology alert--feel free to jump in.... This was inspired by Father Sean and Brother John and the Reverend Scott. Balance. We need balance in our lives. Overwhelmed? Seek balance. An innocuous philosophy--who could possibly be against balance? A madman in the back wildy waves hand--and (again) I get sent out of the ...