MontClairVoyant: Reopening Schools and Pools, and Leaf-Clearing Tools

DEAR MONTCLAIRVOYANT,
Yikes! My son left the house at 7:15 this morning! Where did he go? Where would any middle-schooler go at that hour? It’s a complete mystery. When will he return? WILL he return?

Sincerely,
Peter Pan(icked)

After 14 months of online-only learning, your son went to school for his first in-person hybrid day. Instead of bombarding me with questions, you could annoy him with enough texts to make eye-rolling an Olympic sport.

DEAR MONTCLAIRVOYANT,
Did you say something? I couldn’t hear you over the gas-powered leaf blowers blaring outside.

Sincerely,
Non-Tennis Racket

Um…this column has no audio component. But don’t worry, a new Montclair ordinance bans those noisy, polluting devices from May 16 through October 14. I’ll celebrate that with a poem better than Keats could write, because, frankly, he’s been dead for 200 years.

DEAR MONTCLAIRVOYANT,
A poem for reciting May 17? Let’s hear it.

Sincerely,
Verse Ratched

“My muscles are sore/but it’s such a good ache/when there’s no more roar/in The Time of the Rake.”

DEAR MONTCLAIRVOYANT,
This Wednesday, May 19, ninth-graders are also scheduled to return in hybrid mode. Any classroom guarantees?

Sincerely,
Georgia Inness

Just one: they’ll read MUCH better poetry than mine.

DEAR MONTCLAIRVOYANT,
When will sophomores, juniors, and seniors also be back at Montclair High?

Sincerely,
Return to Splendor

The Class of 3021 will be back a millennium from now — when a much older Gray Street will be renamed Very Gray Street.

DEAR MONTCLAIRVOYANT,
Then, on May 21, AAPI Montclair’s first Lantern Festival for Justice and Remembrance is scheduled to take place in Edgemont Park. Thoughts?

Sincerely,
Green, Lantern

Great that there’ll be an event focusing on people who’ve faced onerous racial bias and violence, including Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. That’s what the AAPI initials stand for, not Astor’s Aforementioned Poetry: Inferior.

DEAR MONTCLAIRVOYANT,
Meanwhile, badges are now available to soon allow residents to enter municipal pools that’ll operate at 50-percent capacity. Comment?

Sincerely,
Knishuane and Fountainside

That explains why local swimmers are frantically trying to lose half their weight.

DEAR MONTCLAIRVOYANT,
You misunderstand, deliberately I suspect. And then there are two-hour shifts in the water. At least that’s clear, right?

Sincerely,
’60 Minutes’ and ’60 Minutes’

The water will indeed be clear. Unless the body dye on middle-school students in the blue, green, and orange rotation groups changes that.

 

 

Dave Astor, author, is the MontClairVoyant. His opinions about politics and local events are strictly his own and do not represent or reflect the views of Baristanet.