Many of you who are Fb friends with me know that I have very strong political opinions and don't mind telling what they are.  I tried very hard to not let them be known in the classroom.  I felt that it would adulterate the issues we studied and possibly discourage some student from being open and honest.

One of my Fb friends, a former student definitely disagreed with me on many things but we were civil in our talks.  He wrote that he never knew what my political leanings were while he was in my class and he said it was a tribute to me.  Occasionally I had an opinion on other things.

In the process of discussing technology, really not my strong point and computers, also not my strong point, and this was in the early days were Bill Gates required sellers to load only Microsoft program on the machines.  I had read, and my son, a Computer systems engineer, told me that there were better products out there and Gates was stifling progress.  This met with a lot of resistance by all the PC users (most of them were) and it became a little heated and I became frustrated and said very loudly, "DAMN."  This caused an immediate and awkward silence and surprised and disappointed looks.  I was presenting the History Student of the Year award that same day at the Senior Ring Ceremony and when I was introduced I got a big applause that went on for some time.  I remarked that after second period class this morning, I'm surprised that some of you didn't walk out when I was introduced.  That got even a bigger applause.  Such forgiving souls.