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Here's a vid from Minneapolis. Some friends of mine and their friends playing on a corner in Dinkytown. Some guy from the Daily was walking by and thought it was worth recording. I'm glad he did; it made my day. In the vid:

-Micah Jay Allen Hunter-Small on guitar

-Channing Alto on banjo

-Brian Munson on banjo thumping

-Cecelia (last?) on mandolin

-Kyle Johnson on tamborine

A story from my classroom:

The other day an announcement came on during one of the classes that I help teach. We were told that the school was in "code blue." Immediately, my mentor teacher asked all students to get out of their seats and get against the back wall away from the door. We stood there quietly for several minutes. Students were getting kind of freaked out, especially when someone knocked on our door--a student coming back from the bathroom.

Eventually, my mentor teacher went out in the hallway to see what was up. Evidently, the administration was never clear on what the code word was for an intruder in the building. "Code blue" was NOT the agreed upon code word; it means that there are police officers or firemen in the building (for whatever reason, we had some visiting firemen). Nothing else.

We wasted about 10 minutes on lockdown, and no one could focus afterword. One student was so shook up that she went to duck under a table when a prankster in the class pointed at the door and shouted "¡Aye, coño!"* I was trying really hard not to laugh with the rest of the class. Being a professional is hard when you're 22.

*Coño is a recent acquisition of mine. I heard my kids from the Dominican Republic saying it all the time, so I had to look it up. Evidently, it originated in Spain, with an English equivalent of "cunt"--not such a nice word for everyone; however, in the most of South and Central America, it's much more acceptable, meaning something more like "damn" or "shit."

Another fun fact: in Chile, a Spaniard can be called a "coño."