This is Halloween, this is Halloween...

I tried watching The Nightmare Before Christmas the other night and my VCR tapped out about halfway through, which was sort of depressing. It would play the sound but not the picture... I am going to let it rest and see if it will play the remainder of the movie later. Due to not really thinking, I own a DVD player, but when I went to buy a VCR I discovered that these antiquated appliances are no longer sold as entities in and of themselves! So rather than buy a DVD/VCR combo, we rescued an old player from the church. Actually it's probably a "VCP" because it does not have a "record" option...

Anyway, Halloween at school was a good time. I dressed in an awesome witch costume (stay tuned for pictures...I just realized that I didn't have them yet...), made a pumpkin throw up green foam, read the Dr. Seuss book "Bartholomew and the Oobleck" to my 8th graders and then made Oobleck (cornstarch and water with green food coloring) with them since we are studying phases of matter. Speaking of Halloween, I also had a pretty sweet toga/Spartan goddess costume going on for the school dance...I'll have to find a picture of that too.

A notable occurrence from last week happened on the day before Halloween. A local church brought in dinner for us, complete with a pretty amazing 3-D Halloween-themed cake. Let's list some appropriate things to put on a festive fall cake, keeping in mind the population served by the school (urban, low-income youth):
haunted house--yes
pumpkins--yes
ghosts--yes
witches--yes
fall leaves--yes
trees--yes
noose on a tree branch--NO!!!

The director of programs came looking for someone to tell and found me at my computer. She had been watching the decorating process and thought thought there was just piece of string entangled in the branches...but no...it was a noose. (as Jonathan said..."nothing says happy Halloween like a lynching!") We quickly snagged every staff member who walked by and sent them into the cafeteria to admire the cake the woman was still decorating, telling them to focus specifically on the trees...all of them came out shocked and half-laughing in disbelief. We all stood in the hallway debating on how to handle the situation unfolding before us since the kids would be filtering into the cafeteria soon. We decided that two things had to happen: a) we had to take a picture; and b) we had to remove it. In that order.

Finally the guy who is in charge of the afternoon activities was vocal enough to let the woman know it had to be removed. I was privileged enough to be there for the conversation:
Mike (seeing the cake for the first time and knowing what he was looking for): oh no! ....is that a noose?
Woman (still decorating cheerfully): It sure is!
Mike: Well, um, we might have a problem with that, I mean, some of the kids are a little sensitive...
Woman (apparently distracted by decorating): They're going to love it!
Mike: I mean, with the whole Jena 6 thing...

At that point I left because it was a little awkward, but I felt bad because the woman really had no idea what she was intimating by keeping the noose on the tree until he spelled it out for her. If you are lucky I may be able to dig up a picture of that as well...