Got to school early to be sure we were set to use computers - it says in my contract I have access to 40 computers. This is fiction and I haven't even signed the contract yet, didn't even read it till after I couldn't get more than 10 computers reserved for kids to type. Got to school, it was dark, dingy, dismal, unlit, cold and teeming with excited teenagers, the entry way that doubles as cafeteria. They were trapped. The metal floor to ceiling gates, identical to baby gates except metal and floor to ceiling, blocking them from entry into the halls. No power. No computers. Maybe no school. The power came back on five minutes into first period, but the power had been diverted in the neural pathways of the kids, who did not return to school for the rest of the days, some of them via turning away and wandering off to somebody's house, some of them though physically present, psychically, emotionally, mentally on short break and short fuse. Tonight is the student and community culminating reading. Who will come? I have no idea. The rain is raining all around, and beginning to turn corn snow ish. By tonight it may be snowing. This is not a limiting factor here where the snow sits six feet thick in winter and school trundles merrily along. Merrily is not the way I am doing anything at the moment. I will go home, eat stew I made last night and listen to Seu Jorge sing David Bowie songs so beautifully in Portugese. I do believe, I do believe, I do believe. There are kids who earnestly asked me to help them look over their poems and kids who cut into pens with scissors and acted like I was a piece of dog crap, though I showered this morning and smile at the kid and like him. "Loveable asshole" is the way the teacher describes him.