Blowing & Drifting

Genevieve is not happy standing still. Even “waiting” for the kindergarten bus to arrive entails chalking on the sidewalk, singing and dancing, and racing up and down on her scooter. She even invented a new game for us. She would start at the bottom of the driveway and try to scooter all the way up [...]

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The first day of school was a non-event for Julia, who was excited about second grade but accustomed to school, and a huge honking deal for Genevieve, who was reluctant to get too excited about KINDERGARTEN! Right up until Monday night, she kept telling us that she didn’t want to go to kindergarten. I expected [...]

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The other day, I showed off the cover of the book that Julia made for me for Father’s Day. It is awesome. Here are the four pages inside. Click through to Flickr to read each one, if the images aren’t big enough here. It’s worth it.

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Julia’s first-grade class had a little picnic today to celebrate the end of the school year. At the end, her teacher lined up all the kids for a class photo, and then invited all the first-graders’ siblings to join in, too. Julia decided Vivi needed a little touching up before the big group shot.

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Julia’s first-grade class has been working on poetry this spring. Here are two she brought home today (all spelled and capitalized here as she did in the originals): Amur leopords thirty left dissaperring save them stop taking them spots brownish orange My penny I found it in my yard brown scuffed Aberham Liclon My sister [...]

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I was busy today. How busy? So busy I didn’t have a chance to update my social-media status until after I got home. A day without a couple updates is like a day without coffee – hardly worth the trouble. In an effort to partly rectify this horrible situation, here are six status updates I [...]

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An excerpt of Julia’s study of various animals during her first grade class’s run-up to their zoo field trip. Somehow this wolf’s grin is even scarier than a real wolf’s growl.

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Driving back yesterday from seeing friends in Rochester, I realized that it has been a damn good week – probably one of the best “usual” weeks ever. Last Sunday was a pretty uneventful day around the house, but I got to spend some great time with the girls and enjoyed a nice 90-minute ride in [...]

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As we traipsed around the halls of Julia’s elementary school on Thursday, enjoying all the craziness of the “Beyond Words” literacy festival, I was more and more impressed by the quality of the materials that the students had prepared for the festival – from Julia’s poem poster and other written work to woodblock prints and [...]

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Here’s Julia reading her “lovey poem” at Sibley Elementary’s “Beyond Words” literacy festival: Julia’s Poem from Christopher Tassava on Vimeo.

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An assignment Julia completed to prepare for her first-grade class trip to the Minnesota zoo. (Click on each image to go to Flickr, where the text is slightly more legible.) Sea Turtles Stingrays

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The other night, Vivi asked me to write down some math “pwobwems” for her to do while Julia did her own math homework. She said she wanted to do both “one gigit” and “two gigit” problems, so I wrote out a few, which Julia knowingly said were “just equations” (“just equations“?!). Vivi struggled a bit [...]

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Following on yesterday’s post about my experience in Steve Kelly’s jazz history course, here are the best ten songs that I heard for the first time in the course. 10. Coleman Hawkins, “Body and Soul” (1939) 9. Nina Simone, “Love Me Or Leave Me” (ca. 1965) 8. Count Basie Orchestra, “One O’ Clock Jump” (1937) [...]

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Yesterday I sat for the final exam for the “Jazz History” course I’ve been taking this term, a course taught by Steve Kelly, who is about to retire after a long, distinguished career at Carleton. I took the course because I wanted to learn more about the history of jazz, a musical style that I [...]

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Looking out my office window throughout the day, I often feel a pang of sadness for my bike, which sits out there all day in the cold, halfway up the snowbank that covers most of the bike rack. (I’ve anthropomorphized my belongings like this as long as I can remember: I recall introducing my G.I. [...]

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