Whatcom Middle School burned down. Squirrel could see the flames all the way from work.
It's a hundred year old building approximately. It had terrible heating with pipes that would bang, drowning me out when I was teaching. It needed remodeling, though not as much as Shuksan, which got torn down this year, but the idea of it being gone is devastating. The schools are already over crowded, especially with the Shuksan rebuild. I'm guessing they'll have to stick more portables over at Fairhaven and Kulshan.
I have shelf read every book in that library multiple times. Those books are likely ash.
I have taught social studies and English in that building.
In the basement was housed our district's Middle School BD unit. Those kids don't handle change well.
I am thinking of all the lost textbooks and kid projects. Of the personal effects the teachers and staff left in their rooms and the things kids had left in their lockers. I am thinking of the grades locked in melted computer systems and burned papers. It was an ancient and awkward building, but it had served children for over a hundred years, generation after generation pounding up and down those stairs, sitting in the desks, playing in the gym and the yard. I am thinking of all the history that went up in flames tonight. It had a divided gym from back before phys ed was coed, with freakishly high ceilings and a lovely Edwardian facade. It was the heart of it's neighborhood.
Whatcom middle School has burned.
 NecHocNecIllud · Sun Nov 08, 2009 @ 04:12am · 0 Comments |
