Answering your question from below in the combox . . .

Review of Embryo coming out sometime this weekend. Monday at the latest. Mostly written, but now caught in the vortex of festivities. Have a good weekend!

. . . I suspect a providential plot to force me to finish reading Dark Night of the Soul.  Your last Friday’s post is in progress (and halfway interesting– to me, at least), but no predictions on when I’ll have it up.  Will post an excuse on the other blog as needed.  If all else fails, have a good week.

. . . I was supposed to post today.  Will try to get something up sometime this weekend.

. . . 1 computer.   Home all day together, all weekend.  Except when we’re out having fun.  Glad to have the SuperFather-in-Law in town.  Not placing any bets on when today’s post is going to make it’s appearance.  Have a great weekend.

5th Friday, and I’ve got a few interesting sites to add to the sidebar.  But I’m making you wait until tommorrow.

Mine, that is.  Am going to scale back computer time in order to do so.  Therefore, if you see me at your blog, kindly tell me to get back to work.  Or at least to go play with my kids or something.  Will still be checking e-mail, and posting here and at the castle.

School is back in session now, and no doubt many students across the country are discovering what my 5^th graders learned when I first began teaching religious ed several years ago: their teacher is not all that skilled.

However much it may or may not be successful in practice, there is good reason that professional teachers take all those courses in a classroom management and teaching techniques – teaching to a large group is a real skill, not nearly as forgiving as the one-on-one of tutoring or homeschooling.  A love for the students, knowledge of subject, a passion for teaching, these are necessary.  But even with these essentials, given a dozen or two tired, restless kids, each coming to the subject with an entirely different knowledge base, the devoted but inexperienced teacher can still crash and burn.

I eventually got the hang of the classroom setting, and by the end of the year had at least one student who liked me. (I found this out through the grapevine – my particular students were not the type to hand out compliments too liberally.) Meanwhile, I had instructed my students from the very beginning that for their own sakes they ought to consider praying for me, and an internet friend and experienced teacher recommended I take up a devotion to St. John Bosco. Duly noted.

(My long-distance mentor also gave me some very helpful teaching tips.  Thank you Pam.)

***

There is, however, a much more obscure saint that I think is worth considering as an additional aid for those of us who really need an extra measure of divine assistance in this department.

Back in August I was a bit surprised in my reading (Butler’s Lives again) when I came across the story of St. Cassian of Imola. [Date unknown, but thought to have really existed all the same. If you google him, you’ll find accounts offering a wide variety of possible dates. Traditional Feast day is August 13^th.] I tend to think of saints as being competent in whatever it is they undertake; it appears from the legend that although this St. Cassian was quite good about the business of being martyred, he was not so sucessful in his career as a school teacher:

A violent persecution being raised against the church, he was taken up and interrogated by the governor of the province. As he refused to sacrifice to the gods, the barbarous judge, learning of what profession he was, commanded that his own scholars should stab him to death with their iron pens. He was exposed naked in the midst of two hundred boys, ‘by whom” says the Roman martyrology, “he had made himself disliked by teaching them.”

The narrative continues, of course, with a graphic description of saint’s martyrdom – fodder for your next horror film or halloween costume.

There is reason to beleive the account of St. Cassian’s death is legendary, but not to worry: regardless of the historical facts, we can be can be content to observe that St. Cassian was associated with the story for some good reason, perhaps as a hint to us that his eternity is available for the coming to the aid of beleagured educators.

The book came.  Woohoo!  It looks readable.  Fun.  Appropriate for junior readers like myself.  As Mr. Boy observes, “It is thinner than the other book [Jesus of Nazareth]”.  Exactly the kind of book I really really love.  I’ll try to get the review up for the 3rd Friday of October on this blog, because it is very appropriate reading going into All Saints.

OH look, good news: McCain Suspends Campaign to Help With Bailout

Link provided by an internet friend, who also posted Obama’s response, but that was in a video format that I’m not much on linking.  But you can go find it.

Hurray for senators who do what senators are supposed to do.  And here’s to hoping that what they decide to do is sensible.  For example if the solution were compatible with *either candidate’s* economic platform, it probably would make more sense than the ‘Hey let’s make the taxpayers buy all those bad mortgages’ method.

(Or maybe we need to keep working on this concept.  Could we develop a law where elected officials are required to buy all our bad investments at what price we need to stay solvent?  Wow, this could keep the economy rolling and solve the retirement/social security problem all at once. )

Okay, okay, I know there are logical reasons why people think it is important to bail out the mortgage loan industry.  I am not persuaded of those reasons, but I’ll quit making fun.  I do realize the buyout-rescue impulse is based on genuine concern for the liquidity of the financial markets and all that.  Important stuff.  St. Matthew pray for us.