Gold Day. Formerly A Day. Day 13.

Today I started down the path that defines all journeys. And, although with that journey comes the guarded fear of probable disappointment, you think "No. This time it will be better. This time I will climb that waterfall and swim with a mountain mermaid. I will watch the sun set over a place more magical than home and I will remember every new moment in my mind's core." However by the end of the day you are happy to just find a gas station bathroom that has a key attached to a giant flyswatter, and on the way out you stop to buy some antiseptic cream to treat the place the goat bit you when it stole your ice cream cone. That was today, for today I gave my first quiz of the year. The journey begins.

AP Government took the 21 question multiple choice quiz. That is all.

U.S. History asked if they could skip class today and just go to lunch. Tempting, yet I felt it was my duty to explain to them the role of history is to stand on the shoulders of those that went before us, and if we live in a state of consistent amnesia, we will flounder about like tardigrades with no sense of beginning or end. We learned why Abraham Lincoln defended the Union, so that others would have faith in democracy. He spoke not just for union, but as a warning to tyrants that would place their trust in fear, brute strength, torture and death and the world would watch them and sigh, because democracy had fallen in the name of economics and the perpetuation of slavery. That took about twenty minutes and after that everyone worked on the vocabulary with a renewed sense of purpose. On the way home I mentioned to my personal security detail, that one of my students asked me to sign his leg. (True) She wanted to know how he had injured it and ended up in a cast. I repeated with clarification. "No. There was no cast. He just wanted me to sign his bare leg." I declined.