Weather wise we are having a lovely Memorial Day weekend. It finally feels like that god awful winter is behind us, although I still would not rule out a frost. I’m waiting at least another day or two before the garden goes in.
Lise is down in Indiana and got Acadian flycatcher, nighthawk, and wood thrush. None of which I have so far. Since Lise is down there, Molly and I are sharing a car. I’m not sure why I say we are sharing a car. Molly’s social calendar is more active than mine by an order of magnitude. While she was a water polo practice this morning I slipped out to Fenner and got a blackpoll warbler and an olive-sided flycatcher. Both species I missed last year. Lise and I are now both at 184 species for the year.
Last Wednesday was Senior’s Awards Night. I’m kind of shell shocked at the accomplishments of Molly and her peers. This just wasn’t high school as I remember it. Most of my peers were lucky to graduate without police records. Here, numerous kids took and passed five Advanced Placement (AP) classes by their junior year. These are level college classes. A number of them took and passed eight AP classes by their junior year, and were taking more their senior year. Some were already enrolled and taking science and math classes at Michigan State University (MSU) and Lansing Community College (LCC). Molly’s friend Sammy won the Science department award even though she was only at Okemos High School for two years. Turns out she got her parents to move to Okemos from a town south of here just so she could go through the Okemos science program. She aced all the Okemos science classes plus took organic chemistry at LCC as a high school senior. And a lot of these kids are musicians, involved in sports, and active as volunteers in the community too. I walked out of that ceremony with some glimmer of hope for the world.
There was one other thing that really gave me hope and truly separated their experience from what I remember in high school. The administration announced the many college scholarships awarded to this incredibly talented group. One scholarship was from the LGBT community. It was awarded to and accepted by Max, the former Molly. Not our Molly a different one. He also happened to be taking math classes at MSU as a high school student. That’s a scene that never would have played when I was in high school and it was one hell of a long time overdue. There are still a lot of ignorant jackasses out there, but I walked out of that ceremony feeling more optimistic than I have for a long time.
Here’s a few pictures of the hosta leaves in our back yard. Bob planted the hostas for us shortly after we moved in.
Ed's and Lise's Biggish Years 