For Thursday, May 13, 1999 Drummer Column, Gibbs, 685 words

Well schooled

Only 19 days of school left. Woo hoo! We've got ants in our pants, butterflies in our stomachs, and bees in our bonnets.

   Kids and teachers alike are looking forward to calling it a year. Every year we wait anxiously for the final school bell, but this year the anxiousness is especially heightened. With all the violence in Colorado, and the bomb scares we've had on campus, people are eager to bring the spring semester to a close.
Students across America lost a level of comfort and security this year. The prevailing sentiment is that if upscale, middle-class, highly educated Littleton, Colorado, is not immune to campus violence, then neither is anyone else.

   Some may say that this new heightened sense of awareness is beneficial; our renewed concern for safety will help schools become safer and result in more troubled teens finding help. To this I say poppycock.
We should be able to develop safer schools and rescue troubled kids without a mass murder for a catalyst. It's true that most red lights are installed at the sites of traffic fatalities, that tragedy and death trigger modifications to civil law, that historical blunders like neglecting Hitler lead to modern policy improvements like the decision to bomb Kosovo, but we must reach a point in our evolution where we can see trouble brewing and quell it before it bursts forth as yet another bad example. We must learn that the stove is hot without touching it. Dream on, Steve.
   This year we say good-bye to at least three long-time employees (probably more that I don't know about). Farewell to Annette O'Connor, Archie Kinney, and Gloria Maher. I've had the distinct pleasure to work closely with each one of you and found the experience to be pleasant and rewarding. I'll bet you guys are even more anxious than the rest of us to end this year, eh?
   This year I did not take a Backpacking Club trip during the Spring Break. That makes two years in a row missed, following 12 consecutive years of spring wilderness hiking. Last year I went to a resort in Cabo, Mexico, and this year the weather and low senior sign-ups conspired against us. Only new freshmen signed up to hike this spring, and I didn't want to take all new people on a 30-40 mile hike their first time out.
   Good news, however: the club is taking a shorter hike over the Memorial Day Weekend into the Ventanna Wilderness. We will hike five miles in and stay four days. This is the perfect beginner adventure. And I must say right now, loudly and clearly, I CAN'T WAIT!! I have ants in my ears, butterflies in my socks, and bees on my knees. I am so eager to get out into the wilderness, away from everything -- bells, bombs, stocks, crowds, computers, keys, locks, and all that folderol -- that I can hardly sit still.

Ode to Woods
I need blisters and splinters and soot on my bread.
I need coffee in tin cups, hard ground for my bed.
I need dew on my pillow and dirt in my drink,
Smoke in my sweater and free time to think.
Give me some leg cramps and poison oak welts
Garbage-bag raincoats and bailing-wire belts.
Off to the wilderness I go with a grin
You might need a posse to haul me back in.
  Hmm. I didn't realize I was writing a poem until I got to "dirt in my drink."    Oh, well, all things will pass. I do have one promising preoccupation to look forward to this remaining school year to keep me distracted until the hike and the end of school arrives -- chaos.
All my classes are backed up because of the recent disruptions. We still have two newspapers to publish in journalism; three stories, an essay and the final exam to cover in English classes; and a mountain of old computers to disassemble and reassemble in my computer repair class.

   Thank goodness for small diversions. If we had nothing left to do, May and June would last an eternity.