Sunday, November 14, 2010

Friday, November 12, 2010

Martin High School Lip Dub

First of all, this is not my school, but it is a school in my school district. I thought the project was pretty amazing and definitely did it's job of promoting school unity.

Martin High School Lip Dub 2010 from Tricia Regalado on Vimeo.


More than 3,600 students and staff at Martin High School recently participated in Lip Dub 2010, a music video filmed in one take without any breaks or cuts. The project was an effort to increase school unity and school pride. Martin was the first high school in Texas to film a schoolwide lip dub and had the largest on record. Read more about the project in The Warrior Post or watch the video.

Thursday, November 4, 2010

Crossroads

A girl finds herself at the place where three roads meet, and she knows that she must travel down one of them. One leads to academia - the school to be determined according to what can be studied and/or written in three months. This road makes the Dream more possible, but it also deters it for a while. One leads across the ocean to new beginnings and cultural experiences. This road leads to immediate almost-Dream fulfillment, mistake or not. That is, it isn't the Dream exactly, but it might lead to exact-Dream fulfillment. The last road is under construction. A stop sign posted at the end of the third road prevents the girl from truly going anywhere. This one is the road of stagnation built from the status quo, from complacency. It is definitely "the responsible choice" in a capitalistic terrain.

The girl hates the idea of stagnation, but is leery of the other two choices. She wishes someone or something would push her in one direction or another, but she knows that in order to really feel comfortable, she has to carefully consider them all.

Help.

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Overheard: Polite dinner conversation at home

"Did you hear about the 18 month old baby that fell out of a window seven stories high in Paris?"

"Oh my God NO!"

"Oh no.. Sorry. I mean the baby's fine. She fell seven stories, bounced off of the awning over a door, and a man who happened to be walking by at that moment caught her. "

"What? Really?"

"I know. It's like something out of a damn cartoon."

Seriously. Look:

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2010/11/02/baby-survives-7-story-fall/?hpt=Sbin

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Scratch

Holy shit. I feel the itch.

I'm pretty sure it means I'm crazy. "Well, we already knew that, " I hear you mock in that nasally, sing-song tone. Yes. Let's go ahead and confirm it. This is me - crazy as a flippin' wing-nut bat, entertaining the challenge to participate, once again, in NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month).

So, here's the hilarious bit: I've already lost the contest. The time honored rules of NaBloPoMo state that participants should write everyday during the month of November. Correction. Participants should POST everyday during the month of November. Today is November 2nd, so technically, I've already lost. Phew. That takes the pressure off.

"So why the hell try?" you inquire (again with the nasally bit.. Geez!). Here's why, genius: I have successfully stripped away every part of my life that is mine alone. I've stopped writing. I've stopped reading for pleasure (mostly). I've shortened my time on Facebook by turning on all of the privacy controls, including ones that allow other people to see my posts, thus dissuading me from wasting time on posting. I work, then I come home and work. Following that, I play with my son until he goes to bed, and then I lay out my clothes for the next day, make my coffee and lunch, and then collapse so that I can find some semblance of energy for the next day when I start it all again.

"Why have you done this to yourself?" you ask. (sigh) That's complicated, friend. I'm certain it has something to do with feelings of inadequacy and placed and/or misplaced priorities. Whatever. What I'm saying is that I'm making a pledge to allow for my well being (writing and reading in particular) to be a more important aspect of my life. I want to write. I love writing. I want to practice writing because I love to do it. Yes, that means that I will get griped at for choosing time for myself over time for my job/husband/kid. I'm fully aware of how that may appear to some people who would rather I prioritize my life differently. But hey, those people are going to tell me I suck anyway, so I may as well suck hardcore.

I vow to try to post as much as possible this month. I've already lost the contest, so that means my obligation is to myself only.

I like that idea, bat shit crazy or not..

Monday, November 1, 2010

Sunday, October 17, 2010

Regarding London

Regarding London:
There is so much hopping around in my brain right now that blogging seems ridiculous. But then maybe that's the point - the idea that I can be relatable, appreciated, and, I admit, loved in a virtual world. Not that I'm not sincere - most of the time - but that the chaos of life (who I am in this life) can be ordered somehow in an 8x4 computer window is outright silly.


And now for the old college try... whatever that means:

1. Shaun of the Dead is real.
Rich and I were in London during several work days, and it looked just exactly like the movie when people were commuting to work in the morning - zombies and regular folk alike - and one would be hard pressed to tell the difference between the dead tired and the truly dead. The tube was full of silent carriages, the only movement an occasional yawn, and even that kept to a minimum because a yawn would be proof of a living being. I tried not to look around ( a dead giveaway that I was a tourist), but I couldn't help but laugh.. thankfully, silently, when I then remembered the slipping on the brains part of the film. To make matters worse, this advert decorated nearly every tube station:



For the record, the zombies in the picture are WAY more enthusiastic than the ones commuting to work. These must be the after 10 zombies.

2. My mother was right.
Cars are weapons and we only get one chance. That was the line she fed me when I was a teenager. At the time, I knew that probably she was right, that I didn't really want to find out, and that hopefully God was on my side, especially since I had gone on practically every youth group mission offered. It turns out, that all she had to do to teach me the validity of this lesson was put me in a car in England with my husband. (sigh)

I'm not saying (ahem) that Rich is a bad driver.. He's just a bad driver in England. In his defense, I practically badgered him into it, reminding him that it was my birthday and that it could be romantic to visit the countryside and picnic near the sheep. It might even be fun, I intimated, to get stung by the nettles and have to look for the leafy cure which, as we all learned years ago in England when I got stung on my backside during an ill-timed bathroom emergency at Hadrian's Wall, is always nearby. We compromised. We took a train out of London and into Oxford where we rented a car and drove through the Cotswolds. It was a gorgeous drive, minus the honking and the curb brushing, and we learned how to utilize round-abouts (kind of), we learned about how to fill a tank with gas (not so different), and we also learned that driving in England is a stress to our marriage and that probably we should stick to train riding. The kind folks in Stow-on-the Wold would agree.

3. I am possibly the most lazy blogger in the world.
Actually, the photo pasting is kind of a nightmare here and my patience is waning. So here's what I'll do: Speed blogging followed by a photo montage, hopefully in slide show format:


* We saw some excellent political/modern art at two fantastic galleries - The Saatchi Gallery in a posh part of London and at the ICA where we viewed a political Russian opera film called Dissent while reclining in beds.


*We took a day trip to Canterbury - made the Pilgrimage, Chaucer style, yo! (minus the donkey/horse riding, the lack of bathing, and the story-telling)- and had a moment of silence for Thomas Becket on the alter where he was murdered. We also witnessed a bell ceremony there in remembrance of all soldiers. I couldn't help but marvel at how American it seemed.. or possibly how British we still are.


* My friends, Mark and Ilham, took me out to lunch at a fantastic open-aired cafe for my birthday and then the next evening took me, a Texan, to a Mexican restaurant called La Mexicana, co-owned by a native Mexican and a Turk, who employed a blond haired, fantastically sarcastic Canadian. All three - the Turk, the Mexican, and the Canadian - wore sombreros and sang Happy Birthday to me in front of a mural depicting a cowboy screaming "Yee Ow!" See, this is why I love Mark and Ilham. They thought to take me to that awesomely surreal place, and it wasn't that weird to them.


*We watched ping pong matches in St. James Park. Had I known ping pong was a free-for-all sport there, I totally would've played. Next time..


* We visited various pubs, including the good-ole standby - the Black Friar- and ate all kinds of horrifically bad for you pub foods, including fried fish sandwiches and a plowman's lunch. Of course there was shepherd's pie (duh), but sadly no bangers and mash.We declined the invitation to "go out back" to the bar-be-cue at the local pub near our hotel where it was perfectly acceptable behavior to roll around in the floor with puppies. I can't begin to explain that - the puppy part - except to say that it happened, and we tried not to stare at the coin slots. Seriously. At the time I was worried about looking all touristy.. but in retrospect, it just grossed me out.

And now for the montage:


4. London is my favorite place on the planet.
We spent a huge amount of time walking around the city and then taking the tube back to our hotel. We ran across several fantastic sites, including the Victoria Rail Station and a car boot sale (where I bought a purse). Mark even took me on a tour of his school - yet another reminder of how same we all are.

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Overheard - In my Brain

So I'm going to London next week where they've raised the terror alert level to severe (a step below 'Bah!' but definitely above 'Meh..').

The two - me being in the UK and the terror level - are probably not related. Still, I feel a bit offended.

Thursday, September 16, 2010

What's the Opposite of Huzzah?

I admit it. Sometimes my great ideas are not so great. Sometimes they're downright stupid. I'm not sure if this is the case in this instance, but it certainly will be logged as one of the most interesting moments in my life.. as interesting as an I Love Lucy sketch can be, anyway.

Christine had an ARD* meeting. That's the excuse I used for not making the usual coffee house stop for grading this afternoon, and for choosing instead to go to Houlihans for artichoke goat cheese poppers and a blueberry martini. OK, so it was more about the artichoke goat cheese poppers than anything else, but I rationalized that on a Thursday afternoon there would be a cozy corner in the bar for me to spread out and grade, plus a martini might take the edge off of what usually is a highly stressful process - marking first draft essays. And hey, wouldn't all of that - goat cheese poppers and a blueberry martini - actually benefit the students' grades?

So I went.

I was finished with my martini and was casually snacking on the poppers when the manager of the restaurant - a small, spunky blond woman - interrupted my careful analysis and asked if I'd "like another cocktail." I would be lying if I said I didn't think about it. The martini was especially lovely, and, after all, I was, as I've mentioned, grading first draft essays. Responsibly, though, I said, "No thank you," and added that I was about to leave. She smiled at me and returned to her duty of being chipper and accommodating. I returned to my task, too, decidedly less chipper and accommodating. A minute later she returned to my table and said, "Actually, you'll be getting another cocktail, after all. Someone bought you a drink. "

"Um. What?" I asked, conveying confusion via the apparent question mark tattooed on my expression.

"You don't have to drink it" she said, obviously amused.

"No. I mean, this has never happened to me before. A stranger has never bought me a drink before."

I could have hugged the manager as she, in her most sincere (but forced) imitation tried, "Really? Never?"

"Nope. Never.. Um. Okay. Thank you. I think."

The manager said something about the fact that this was sort of secret or that she couldn't point out who had bought the drink or something of that nature, but I was too focused on what the appropriate protocol was for receiving a drink from a random stranger in a bar.

The waitress placed the drink on my table and my brain went haywire. I immediately recalled all of the scenarios in movies where this sort of thing happens. The montage went like this:

*Girl receives drink.
*Girl looks around the room to see who sent it.
*Very attractive man - probably an Italian - acknowledges, via either a short nod or by raising his own glass, that he is the "guilty" party.
*Girl takes a bashful sip of the new drink and nods appreciatively in his direction.
*And then, depending on the film, the man approaches the girl and they A. Have a bashful flirtation, the beginning of a new romance B. Leave together for hot, eccentric stranger sex C. Have a confrontation ending in embarrassment on all sides, the man being told to back the hell off, the girl stomping out in stilettos and justification, both leaving their beer goggles on the bar.

That's all I had to work with. I knew my ending would, as my husband would like for me to acknowledge, be minus the last bullet. But in all seriousness I had to do something. So, I went for it. I arranged my face into a less panicked, more pleasant (I hope) expression and began scanning the room slowly from right to left. I was pretty sure it wasn't the couple across the room, but I couldn't rule out the two Chinese business men who, though not conversing, weren't looking in my direction. There were three closely shaved contractors sitting to the left of the business men who were grossly engaged in conversations beginning with "Here's what we're gonna do", and then another couple, and then two, as I had previously determined by their familiarity with the bartender, regulars - one man who was apparently enthralled with whatever sport was on the big screen and a black woman who had just ordered nachos "to go".

My eyes crawled across the room and as I neared the end of the sweep, I was both elated and distraught to find that no one nodded back. There was absolutely NO acknowledgement as to who had sent a drink my way.
"OK," I thought, "look again." Once again, no one even pretended to look my way. I scanned the bill for an extra martini, just in case there was a miscommunication between me, the waitress, and the manager. Nothing.

"Shit! What now?" I thought. And then I did the most obvious thing in the world: I called my husband.

I won't bore you with the details here. Suffice it to say that I explained my situation to him - my husband and soul mate; the man I married when we were both still children; the one who has been ever faithful and supportive of me in all of my decisions and experiences; the one I chose to have a family with and common dreams; the one who nonchalantly commented, "Probably someone saw you hunched over, grading papers and thought, ' Hey, I should buy that school marm a drink. She is friendless more-than-likely and destitute. Plus, who else would take care of such a troglodyte? Sad, isn't it? It's my duty as a compassionate member of the universe to attend to sad cases such as these.' And then that person sighed for you -the pathetic being in the corner - and shook his head, feeling a small twinge of pride for being such an angel to such a lost cause. "

"OR" I countered emphatically, "someone might actually think I'm attractive."

And I hung up and dialed Christine.

Christine suggested that I make a grandiose gesture - possibly I could raise one hand into the air and announce, "Thank you!" in a theatrical tone to no one in particular but also to every one. I asked if I should stand on a soap box of some kind as a make-shift stage, or if i should just project my voice from the diaphragm. She then acknowledged that she too was unclear about what to do in my circumstance. Because she's a great friend, she did acknowledge that my husband is a colossal doofus, and then, randomly, she asked what the opposite of "Huzzah" is. I didn't know the answer to that question, so we hung up.^

I was stuck, and it was coming close to the time I needed to leave. In the end I decided, as Ms. Manners would positively suggest, that I should leave a grammatically correct note on the table, a very polite and sincere one that would cover all possible scenarios - troglodyte sympathy to Italian flirtation. It went something like this:

Hi. Thank you to whoever sent the martini over. It certainly helped with essay marking. Plus, it was a nice thing to do. :) Thanks again, -G

And then I edged my way around the bar, my back glued to the wall in an attempt to be invisible, to the exit and, as it appeared to me, to sweet freedom!

*Admission, Review and Dismissal meeting for parents, teachers and administrators, regarding kids who may or may not need or who continue to need special academic or behavioral accommodations in the classroom.
^ Fie is the probable answer Christine later revealed.

Sunday, September 12, 2010

Thanks for the heads up, Tushar!

Friday, August 27, 2010

Half Truth+Half Untruth=Happy "Liars"

When my love swears that she is made of truth
I do believe her, though I know she lies,
That she might think me some untutor'd youth,
Unlearned in the world's false subtleties.
Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
Although she knows my days are past the best,
Simply I credit her false speaking tongue:
On both sides thus is simple truth suppress'd.
But wherefore says she not she is unjust?
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
O, love's best habit is in seeming trust,
And age in love loves not to have years told:
Therefore I lie with her and she with me,
And in our faults by lies we flatter'd be.

William Shakespeare, Sonnet 138

Saturday, August 21, 2010

My job is bipolar

Last year was incredibly wonderful and difficult at the same time. I think that's how it is with being a school teacher. For example I LOVED my students. My LitMag staff was the best I've ever had. My IB kids were incredible. My English IV students.. I really liked some of them. (and this is where in sitcoms you hear the needle getting pulled off of the record)

As much as my LitMaggers and IBers made me excited to do my job, the other classes were so difficult. Some of this difficulty was a result of the usual teaching obstacles: Too many students in one classroom; too much paperwork; too many responsibilities that extended beyond the actual job of, oh let me think - teaching; very little discipline; tons of micromanaging; irrational parents; etc.. But some of it was that I had a tough group of kids.

As often as folks get upset about inconsiderate drivers or rude customers, teachers are likely, if not certain, to deal with the worst of the worst every day. You're thinking that in your job this is true, too. However, teachers are expected to be more forgiving. It's like knowing every single day the same punk kid driver in his car that costs twice as much as yours will inevitably cut you off in traffic, flip you off, and then laugh at you while texting his cleverness to his friends. As a teacher you know this is will happen again, and it shocks you each time, yet you still hope that something you do or say might make the rude driver a little bit more compassionate someday. "Maybe tomorrow when he cuts me off and flips me the bird, he won't laugh as loudly," you think. "Maybe if I call his parents (who taught him to drive), I can get ahead of him or show him that what he's doing is abusive and humiliating."

Every year you are guaranteed to have one mean driver in your class. But some years you have twenty of them. Last year I had forty. (40 out of 120 is too big of a percentage) Contrary to public opinion, there is nothing to do about a student's lack of respect toward a teacher. Unless a kid actually becomes violent against a teacher, all she can do is file paperwork and hope for an understanding counselor or principal. Plus, changing a kid's schedule to get him our of a particular class means that you have burdened another on of your colleagues with another issue that they do not need or deserve.

My personality is not commanding or controlling which some might say is part of the problem. The few times I've tried to "rule by force", it comes back to get me and makes me feel horrible. Combatting the rude drivers by being an even ruder one is sort of ridiculous and leads to accidents. I'm more of a mutual respect kind of teacher. In other words, I hope that if I model integrity, patience, responsibility, good will, and generosity, the kids will mirror it. They do for the most part. We have open dialogue in my class. I am a firm believer in inquiry based learning. Sometimes, though, the students don't mirror me. That's when things get tricky.

Monday is the start of a new school year. I will meet my new classes and get a sense of what kind of drivers they are. I'm trying to be optimistic, but there is a whole car-load of anxiety that comes with the start of the year.

Friday, August 20, 2010

Keith Olbermann Special Comment: There Is No 'Ground Zero Mosque' - 08/1...

Tears

I wonder if, along with pivotal, history changing folks like Harriett Beecher Stowe and Fredrick Douglas, my state will also delete the lessons learned from significant people and/or events such as The Trail of Tears in its public school curriculum:
In 1838 and 1839, as part of Andrew Jackson's Indian removal policy, the Cherokee nation was forced to give up its lands east of the Mississippi River and to migrate to an area in present-day Oklahoma. The Cherokee people called this journey the "Trail of Tears," because of its devastating effects. The migrants faced hunger, disease, and exhaustion on the forced march. Over 4,000 out of 15,000 of the Cherokees died. This picture, The Trail of Tears, was painted by Robert Lindneux in 1942. It commemorates the suffering of the Cherokee people under forced removal. If any depictions of the "Trail of Tears" were created at the time of the march, they have not survived. Image Credit: The Granger Collection, New York
Sarcasm aside, the conservative right movement in my state is INEXCUSABLE..
I have to move before we excuse slavery by using Biblical references ... again.

Sunday, August 15, 2010

Helen of Troy Does Countertop Dancing

by Margaret Atwood

The world is full of women
who'd tell me I should be ashamed of myself
if they had the chance. Quit dancing.
Get some self-respect
and a day job.
Right. And minimum wage,
and varicose veins, just standing
in one place for eight hours
behind a glass counter
bundled up to the neck, instead of
naked as a meat sandwich.
Selling gloves, or something.
Instead of what I do sell.
You have to have talent
to peddle a thing so nebulous
and without material form.
Exploited, they'd say. Yes, any way
you cut it, but I've a choice
of how, and I'll take the money.

I do give value.
Like preachers, I sell vision,
like perfume ads, desire
or its facsimile. Like jokes
or war, it's all in the timing.
I sell men back their worse suspicions:
that everything's for sale,
and piecemeal. They gaze at me and see
a chain-saw murder just before it happens,
when thigh, ass, inkblot, crevice, tit, and nipple
are still connected.
Such hatred leaps in them,
my beery worshippers! That, or a bleary
hopeless love. Seeing the rows of heads
and upturned eyes, imploring
but ready to snap at my ankles,
I understand floods and earthquakes, and the urge
to step on ants. I keep the beat,
and dance for them because
they can't. The music smells like foxes,
crisp as heated metal
searing the nostrils
or humid as August, hazy and languorous
as a looted city the day after,
when all the rape's been done
already, and the killing,
and the survivors wander around
looking for garbage
to eat, and there's only a bleak exhaustion.
Speaking of which, it's the smiling
tires me out the most. This, and the pretence
that I can't hear them.
And I can't, because I'm after all
a foreigner to them.
The speech here is all warty gutturals,
obvious as a slab of ham,
but I come from the province of the gods
where meanings are lilting and oblique.
I don't let on to everyone,
but lean close, and I'll whisper:
My mother was raped by a holy swan.
You believe that? You can take me out to dinner.
That's what we tell all the husbands.
There sure are a lot of dangerous birds around.

Not that anyone here
but you would understand.
The rest of them would like to watch me
and feel nothing. Reduce me to components
as in a clock factory or abattoir.
Crush out the mystery.
Wall me up alive
in my own body.
They'd like to see through me,
but nothing is more opaque
than absolute transparency.
Look--my feet don't hit the marble!
Like breath or a balloon, I'm rising,
I hover six inches in the air
in my blazing swan-egg of light.
You think I'm not a goddess?
Try me.
This is a torch song.
Touch me and you'll burn.

Friday, August 13, 2010

Media

It's Friday already and time for an LBC post. Unfortunately we've had a difficult week here and were hit with some unexpected curveballs. Until I this morning, I had forgotten about posting entirely and what's worse is today we write about a topic that I suggested! (sigh)

The topic is media. I propsed this topic for a number of reasons. First of all, my friend Mark B. along with several other folks in England has started an entire project regarding the topic. Amazing! is an interactive (a debate follows the performance) theater project associated with the Agon group that was written for and performed by grade school children. In it, the kids ask some very important questions:

1. What is beauty?
2. Should the media weild it's power responsibly, and if so, how?

The Agon project directs attention to the idea that we truly do buy into media's ploys (both figuatively and literally), the outcome of which can be very harmful.

I don't think this is a new concept. Since its infancy, advertising, a small yet defining segment of the media, has been purposefully manipulative. Selling products isn't about people, after all; it is about business. I think most of us understand that this is true about advertising, and still we are swayed. Why?

News channels, internet, connectivity in all forms seems to have adopted the same philosophy as advertising - to manipulate consumers into buying their "products". So much information is thrown at us on a daily basis that sifting through all of it to find truth is almost impossible. Still, I urge my students to ask themselves "How do you know what you know?", along with all of the other questions imbedded in that one: Who is writing/speaking? What is his/her intent? How can you tell? Did you consider all sides?

I don't know how to hold people accountable for what they make public, especially when it comes to opinions that stray from fact. To some extent it seems that I am treading very close to arguing in favor of censorship. Actually, I am arguing for integrity. As a teacher standing in front of shaping minds, I have the responsibility to think and talk in a way that allows my students to draw conclusions using reason and compassion. Isn't that also the media's job?

I apologize for the rant. On a normal, less stressful week I might actually edit/revise/temper my writing.

Sunday, August 8, 2010

Larry Allums: America the bold but not so beautiful | News for Dallas, Texas | Dallas Morning News | Opinion: Points

My friend and mentor, Dr. Larry Allums, published an op ed in today's paper. Please enjoy:

Larry Allums: America the bold but not so beautiful News for Dallas, Texas Dallas Morning News Opinion: Points

For those who, like me, are pro-American and looking for insights into an uncertain future, Joel Kotkin's optimism in The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050 is close to infectious. Amid pronouncements of America's decline or prophecies of its imminent doom, his forecast of our continuing vitality is a welcome respite.

Perhaps the most convincing aspect of Kotkin's claim for our success in the 21st century is that he avoids the sort of triumphalism that has the sound of excess – the hollow vanity Aristotle lists as one of the extremes either side of the golden mean of "greatness of soul." Nor does Kotkin go to the opposite extreme and suggest that America must now discover humility and share its past greatness with other nations. Rather, he really does claim not only a material greatness but a kind of greatness of soul for America, by which he seems to mean a quality not measurable as much by the data he uses so expertly as by a kind of interior, collective character sown into the soil of our founding that continues to nourish new growth, regardless of the massive change our democracy habitually thrives upon.

Describing America's "fundamental strengths," Kotkin ironically but perhaps appropriately employs a non-Anglo word: "These traits provide the United States with what Japanese scholar Fuji Kamiya has described as sokojikara: a reserve power that allows it to overcome both the inadequacies of its leaders and the foibles of its citizens."

This rather mythic designation – mythic in the sense that it attempts to get at the essential character of a people – carries strong overtones of an American destiny, but clearly post-colonial and post-imperial. Kotkin believes that simply in following our internal compass and allowing our character to guide crucial choices, our ascendancy during this century will be, if not assured, certainly much more likely and, if we work at it, virtually guaranteed.

Working at it means striking a balance, Kotkin says, between piety toward our "ancient ideals" and openness to future change –in which case "the United States can emerge as a land of unprecedented opportunity: a youthful, evolving nation amid an advanced industrial world beset by old age, bitter ethnic conflicts and erratically functioning economic institutions."

This hopeful prospect hinges upon a momentous "if," because the two factors needing to be balanced are by nature in tension, if not opposition. Having in a sense begun in impiety – revolt against Mother Country – Americans are habitually ready to embrace change at piety's expense.

Notoriously, we find it easy to turn on a dime away from our past, perhaps because it almost never carries immediate consequences. Whether we can achieve the balance Kotkin so easily calls for will depend on our ability to manage another balancing act: between measurable and non-measurable dimensions of education, or between things that matter in terms of material worth and those that matter in terms of moral and spiritual value.

Our natural openness to change is, according to Kotkin, a primary nutrient in the soil of the American character, and for him being open includes embracing not just new technology but the kind of change we are currently experiencing as social and political crisis: what immigrants bring to the full flowering of the American Dream. Kotkin's assertions are, after all, grounded in a demographic forecast, that our population will grow by 100 million during the first half of the century – "demographics as destiny," as he dramatically puts it. Of Scotch-Irish descent and therefore part of a diminishing subset of Americans, I nevertheless found myself easily agreeing with most every point of his pro-immigrant stance.

Whereas "anti-natalists," slow-growth advocates and racial purists would regard continuing immigration as disastrous, Kotkin sees it as our source of ascendancy over the countries most often cited as our potential vanquishers – mainly India, China and the European Union: "Only successful immigration can provide the markets, the manpower and, perhaps most important, the youthful energy to keep western societies vital and growing," he writes. For me this sorts well, if not eloquently, with the Rev. Martin Luther King's image in his "I Have a Dream" speech of the Founders' "promissory note" to which "every
American was to fall heir."

The questions are, where will the next 100 million Americans live, and what will they do in this future epoch that will at once be an extension of the old and an emergence of the new?

Kotkin's answers are consistently provocative and sometimes troubling – especially to those who envision a future of urban renewal and a commensurate shrinking of America's dogged preference since World War II for suburban life. Not so, says Kotkin: "Rather than be forced to cluster in cities, Americans are likely to increasingly opt for communities that blend the single-family housing patterns of suburbia with basic urban amenities."

As a transplanted city dweller from the Deep South, I devoutly prefer urban life and believe in the city-center concept, but Kotkin's scenario doesn't put me off, because it avoids an either-or conclusion. The next 100 million, he says, will be enough for the vitality of both city and suburb. If he's right, and it appears he is, that "we're moving beyond the industrial model, with economic activity diffusing from great population centers," then perhaps we're entering a period when people of varying circumstances can choose not to live in urban areas and still aspire upward as Americans always have.

Until recently, civilizational advances have typically resulted in forced movements toward urban cores. We seem now to have reached a true turning point – when the movement will go back the other way, to the suburbs and beyond, even to the great American Heartland for which Kotkin foresees a dramatic resurgence.

Kotkin's bright estimate of America's potential has great appeal, but there's something beguiling, almost Pied-Piper like, about the neutrality of his predictions. It seems to me traceable to his use of the word sokojikara to define that deeply imbedded, almost mythic quality of the American character. My reservations have to do with two issues he minimizes or leaves out of his equation: education and beauty.

The first, education, is prominent among our national concerns, yet it is almost always discussed or debated only in terms of work-force skills and measurable knowledge. True, these are vitally connected to our national destiny on a material level. But tunnel-visioned as we are with high-stakes testing, we rarely contemplate the importance of a whole curriculum in ensuring our vital future in a changing, threatening world.

Like Kotkin, we seem to assume that matters of character and ideals – the very things that define sokojikara – will take care of themselves, that they are self-renewing and that as long as we remain politically correct, both our native-born and immigrant youth will somehow acquire the values, the moral habituation, that will keep us strong in heart and soul. At best, this is placing a lot of faith in the permanence of American Identity; at worst, it is risking the continued existence of America itself.

The other issue conspicuous by its absence from Kotkin's account is beauty, which has everything to do with education. Beauty is a forbidden subject today, especially in academe, yet the core of our education ought to focus precisely on beautiful things, which certainly include cities and suburbs.

Beauty matters in innumerable and often unmeasurable ways. According to the ancient Greeks, true education involves learning about what is good – the good thought, the good judgment, the good action – and what is good is necessarily beautiful. The Greeks in fact had one word – kaloskagathos – that coalesced the two into an inseparable meaning. Kotkin implies that there are no real distinctions to be made in terms of beauty – no beautiful cities or suburbs; only those that succeed, that is, those we prefer.

Kotkin's omissions don't invalidate his vision of America in 2050. In fact, there is room in his copious forecast for educating future Americans in what is both good and beautiful. Moreover, I would say that such an education is necessary if we are to be, as he predicts, "a beacon and a model," a new version of the City on the Hill of old – "exceptional in everything from culture and science to agriculture and politics."

Dr. Larry Allums is director of the Dallas Institute for Humanities and Culture. His e-mail address is
lallums@dallasinstitute.org.

Friday, August 6, 2010

Books

I'm a book snob.
There. I said it.
And it's kind of about time.

I've always loved reading. In fact, when I was twelve I decided that I was literary. I picked up Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls and Faulkner's As I Lay Dying and read them cover to cover. I had no idea what they are about. I still don't know. I don't really like either of those authors as a grown-up (except for Hemingway's short stories - they're divine! Oh, and Faulker's.. Nope. I have no love for his writing. I understand why he was so thirsty, those novels stuck in his throat.) The point is I read them. I made definitive decisions about them - "I disliked those particular classics", I said to myself, nose in the air- and I would continue to devour books and judge them as AMAZING pieces of literature or not so amazing ones. All of them continue to be stored on my bookshelves, regardless of my opinions, as sort of trophies. I never had any other kind that I cared about as much.

Caring is the other part. I tend to form relationships with my books. I hug them (in public, even. I'm not ashamed). I lovingly dog-ear them. I underline my favorite parts. I annotate them, personalize them, write in the margins, add poems and pictures to them, and even cry when I finish them because I miss them. I write about them.

When people find out I'm a literature teacher (as opposed to an English teacher, which is my formal, personally renounced title), they often ask me which book is my favorite. That question makes me incredibly uncomfortable because I feel like I'm betraying my good friends by answering it. I can't even narrow it down to a particular genre. All I can do is list some particular books that resonate with me right now.

I'll share a few with you:
The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy
The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera
The Portable Dorothy Parker
Dress Your Family in Corduroy - David Sedaris
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo - Stieg Larson
Middlesex - Jeffery Eugenides
The Red Tent - Anita Diamant
Cunt - Inga Musico
Slughterhouse V - Kurt Vonnegut
Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
Morning in the Burned House - Margaret Atwood
American Primitive - Mary Oliver
The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
The Awakening - Kate Chopin
The Miracle of Mindfulness - Thich Nhat Han

This post was inspired by the Loose Bloggers Consortium, a small and feisty(!) global community. We write weekly on a common topic (Books, this week) and post responses - all of us together, simultaneously, from all over the world. (Lovely!) Please visit Anu, Ashok, Conrad, gaelikaa, Grannymar, Judy, Magpie 11, Maria and Ramana for other wonderful posts.

Friday, July 30, 2010

Beans and Potatoes

I don't really have anything to say about potatoes except for YUMMMMMM. Pretty much any way they come I love 'em.

As for beans, here's my favorite recipe (like the Cowboys like 'em)

Mom's Pinto Beans

Ingredients:

Bag of pintos (rinsed and soaked overnight)
1 onion (chopped)
6-8 strips of bacon (cut into 3rds)
1 jalapeno pepper (end cut off)
salt and pepper to taste

Instructions:
Put soaked beans into a crock pot, throw in bacon, onion, jalapeno, and cover with water. Let cook on medium all day long (6 hours), until beans are brown and soft.

Hints:
Sometimes when I feel particularly zany, I add a little bit of garlic salt.
If you bake some cornbread (for soppin' up the gravy), and slice some sharp cheddar, you've got a hearty, tasty, Cowboy pleasin' meal!!!


P.S. Why, dearest British friends, are beans served with break-y in your country? I've always found that to be one of the most unusual cultural differences between us.

This post was inspired by the Loose Bloggers Consortium, a small and feisty(!) global community. We write weekly on a common topic ( Beans and Potatoes, this week) and post responses - all of us together, simultaneously, from all over the world. (Lovely!) Please visit Anu, Ashok, Conrad, gaelikaa, Grannymar, Judy, Magpie 11, Maria and Ramana for other wonderful posts.

Sunday, July 25, 2010

Siren Song

Margaret Atwood

This is the one song everyone
would like to learn: the song
that is irresistible:

the song that forces men
to leap overboard in squadrons
even though they see beached skulls

the song nobody knows
because anyone who had heard it
is dead, and the others can’t remember.

Shall I tell you the secret
and if I do, will you get me
out of this bird suit?

I don’t enjoy it here
squatting on this island
looking picturesque and mythical

with these two feathery maniacs,
I don’t enjoy singing
this trio, fatal and valuable.

I will tell the secret to you,
to you, only to you.
Come closer. This song

is a cry for help: Help me!
Only you, only you can,
you are unique

at last. Alas
it is a boring song
but it works every time.

Now you know. Don't listen.

Friday, July 23, 2010

Criminal - A Smooth One

The crazy kids in the LBC (see below) tasked us with the job of writing something brilliant for the topic "Criminal." It turns out that much like I can't hear the word "chaotic" and not think of Brittany Spears, I can't hear the word "criminal" and not think of Michael Jackson, followed by a brief synapse blast to the Alien Ant Farm file in my brain, and then back to the king of pop. It always goes in that order: Jackson, Ant Farm, Jackson. And then if I allow myself more than a second of associations, my mind goes here:

My cousin, Krisiti, was a cheerleader in high school. (Sorry, rough segue I know, but it will all become clear soon). Actually, she was a cheerleader and homecoming queen and competed in various team sports and creative problem solving competitions, and I'm 97% certain she actually hung the moon. Next to her, I was some Virginia Wolf character, all plain and mousy, who was made fun of for committing unpopular crimes such as playing with dolls until I was 13 and caring about Olympic figure skating. I say that in jest, with only a tweak of resentment, knowing now that my personality was simply shy in comparison to hers. The point is, I adored Krisiti in the same way that Robin adored Batman. Kristi was my hero. I wanted to be like her. So when we went to visit her in Small Town, Texas I spent much of my waking moments with her, and she was sweet enough to include me, her younger, reclusive cousin.

In small town, Texas, one spends her free time in one of three ways:
1.Makin' the drag - (driving from one end of town to the other and back (usually a distance of about two miles), stopping for a "town coke" (a soda with ice and a straw) and conversation at the drive-in)
2. Drinkin' (alcohol in copious amounts)*
3. Knockin' boots (also in copious amounts)**

Because, as I've said, I was of a more meek stock than many of my teenage counterparts, Kristi and I spent a lot of time makin' the drag. We'd buy vanilla cokes and ride around town sipping them and talking about Kristi's fabulous life. I seem to remember doing this while listening to "Smooth Criminal", Michael Jackson's version. It was sort of a sound track to that time in my life. I remember those times fondly in sepia tones.

I wish I could flesh out some more detail regarding these memories, but the truth is I'm not sure there is a whole lot more to them. They weren't earth shattering, nor are they particularly mention-worthy.

So that's it.

That's what my brain does when someone says the word, "criminal".

*addendum - shooting guns is also popular, tied in popularity with drinking alcohol
**clarification - for those of you are not familiar with US idioms, this means having sex and is usually followed by someone winking, and saying "Aw yeah."

This post was inspired by the Loose Bloggers Consortium, a small and feisty(!) global community. We write weekly on a common topic (Crime or Criminal, this week) and post responses - all of us together, simultaneously, from all over the world. (Lovely!) Please visit Anu, Ashok, Conrad, gaelikaa, Grannymar, Judy, Magpie 11, Maria and Ramana for other wonderful posts.

Friday, July 16, 2010

Judgement

In lieu of posting my personal, "poor me" Consortium piece that I composed for the topic, "judgement," I've decided to share this apt op ed instead:
My Take: Christian politicians should start acting Christian
Editor's Note: Richard T. Hughes is Distinguished Professor of Religion at Messiah College and author of Christian America and the Kingdom of God.
By Richard T. Hughes, Special to CNN

Let me be frank from the outset: A great cultural divide is ripping the heart from this nation and Christians are partly responsible.

I say that because 83% of the American people claim to be Christians. If those Christians lived as they are taught to live by the teacher they claim to follow, the American public square would be a very different kind of place.

If one reads the New Testament—the charter for the Christian religion—one can discover rather quickly what that tradition is all about.

Jesus tells his followers to tell the truth.

Jesus tells his followers to make peace.

Jesus tells his followers to turn the other cheek.

Jesus tells his followers to bless those who persecute them and pray for those who misuse them.

Jesus tells his followers to extend justice, especially to the poor and the dispossessed.

Jesus tells his followers to serve as bridge-builders and agents of reconciliation.

And Jesus tells his followers to love one another, even their enemies.

But based on their words and behavior, we may safely conclude that many of the Christians who dominate America’s public square routinely reject the teachings of Jesus, in spite of their claims to the contrary.

Sharron Angle, for example, wants to be the next U. S. Senator from Nevada. She founded a Christian school but casually announces that “the nation is arming” since “if we don’t win at the ballot box, what will be the next step?” For Angle, that next step is clear: those who oppose the current administration may “have to fight for their liberty in more Second Amendment kinds of ways.” In other words, if the ballot fails, the bullet is the next best hope.

Sarah Palin is open about her allegiance to the Christian faith, but routinely trades in sarcasm, deceptions and lies about her political opposition. During the health care debate, she repeated over and again the falsehood that “the sick, the elderly, and the disabled . . . will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide . . . whether they are worthy of health care.”

Newt Gingrich trumpets his allegiance to the Christian religion and writes about the role of the Christian faith in American history. He also knows that Barack Obama is a Christian. Yet he shamelessly denounces Obama as “secular”—a term Gingrich defines as an “outlook [that] does not acknowledge God.”
No wonder that some Tea Partiers claim—as one woman put it—that “we are losing our country; we think the Muslims are moving in and taking over; we do not believe our president is a Christian.”

Glenn Beck warned a national television audience to “look for the words ‘social justice’ or ‘economic justice’ on your church Web site. If you find it, run as fast as you can,” adding that those terms are code words for communism and nazism. Surely Beck knows that there is no theme more central to biblical faith than social and economic justice for the poor, but still he is willing to distort the Christian religion for cheap political gain.

Ann Coulter promotes herself as a representative of the Christian religion. Yet, Coulter claimed after September 11, 2001 that the United States “should invade their countries [Muslim nations], kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.”

When public figures like these so completely diminish the Christian faith, it is hardly surprising that grassroots believers often engage in similar distortions of the Christian religion.

Some Christians at anti-Obama rallies have displayed signs that proclaim, “Since 1630: Bible hugging! Gun toting! Red Blooded American Against Tyranny.” Or another: “I will keep my freedom, my Bible, my gun, and my money.”

When Christians so widely and publicly embrace such blatant distortions of the Christian religion, they abandon one of the roles they might have played in America’s public square: fostering civility and dialogue and building lasting bridges of reconciliation.

But civility and respect have been all but lost in contemporary American politics. Alan Keyes, for example, has proclaimed that “Obama is a radical communist.” And one of the signs that routinely appears at anti-Obama rallies shows the President wearing a Nazi uniform and doing a Hitler salute. Another sign reads, “Barack Hussein Obama: the New Face of Hitler.” Those kinds of accusations are nothing short of slander.

The issue I am raising has nothing to do with whether one is a Republican, a Democrat, a Tea Partier, or an independent. Neither political conservatives nor political liberals have a monopoly on this kind of behavior, though in recent months conservatives opposed to Barack Obama have been especially guilty.

Yet the issue I am raising ultimately has nothing to do with whether one likes or dislikes Barack Obama. The issue has to do with Christians behaving like Christians and thereby telling the truth, doing justice, and promoting basic respect for other human beings.

After all, since 83% of the American population identifies with the Christian religion, that 83% could make an enormous difference in the tone of American politics if those Christians actually practiced what they profess to believe. They could also make a positive difference in American politics if they held other Christians accountable when they engage in deception and slander in order to score political points.

America’s churches and their pastors therefore have a grave responsibility: to urge their members to serve the public square as peacemakers, as truth-tellers, as people devoted to justice, and as men and women who are actually willing to practice what Jesus taught. If America’s churches refuse to take up this task—which, after all, is a task that is central to the Christian calling—the consequences for our country could be dire, indeed.
(Thanks to my friend (and minister-to-be), Evie for bringing this to my attention.)

Friday, July 9, 2010

Random Thoughts

1. So, I'm extremely proud that I have several former students protesting Westboro Baptist Church today, tomorrow, and onward. For those of you who haven't heard, WBC is known for interrupting funerals of soldiers to promote their hateful messages that:
a.)"God hates fags"
b.) God is punishing us for allowing gays to exist in our country.
c.) People who have gay children who fight for our country do not deserve the right to mourn the deaths of their children.
What's worse is they use kids in their campaigns - at FUNERALS of dead soldiers - to make these horrific, unjustified, ignorant statements.

I can't begin to express to you how much anger I feel towards people who.. who.. are so SO stupid - who think that it's ok to hate. Period. I don't care who the target is. Compassion in me is hard to find for them. But then, there's Desmond Tutu:

"For this God, our God, everybody is somebody. All life belongs to Him. Because of Him, all life is religious. There are no false dichotomies so greatly loved by those especially who are comfortable in this life. Consequently, if you say you love God, whom you have not seen, and hate your brother, whom you have, the Bible does not use delicate language; it does not say you are guilty of a terminological inexactitude. It says bluntly you are a liar." - Desmund Tutu from God Has a Dream.

So my darlings who are protesting tomorrow - even if only in spirit - I love you for doing the right thing. You make me proud!!
And for the record, I am a staunch supporter of human rights - gay, straight, whatever.

2. I love Lisbeth Salander. Yes. She's a fictional character from Stieg Larson's Girl With the Dragon Tattoo trilogy. I know. Still, what I like is that she's so freaking smart. She's bad ass, too, but vulnerable. She's not a superhero, but she'll fight with everything she has when she needs to, even if she doesn't always win. She's counter culture and stone cold, but she's endearing and lovely.. And kudos to Swedish actress, Noomi Rapace, for doing such a brilliant job with this character.



3. This song:


Anniversaries

My mother-in law, Donna, is really good at them.

Evidence:
Donna keeps a calendar in her kitchen that lists every one's birthday, anniversary, doctor's appointment, and other events/occasions. This is not a small feat. Donna has four grown children, three of whom are married, and five grandchildren from those unions. On top of that since we are a "blended family", she also considers her husband's children and his grandchildren as part of her brood. So that's additionally two grown children, both married, and three more grand kids. If I'm doing my math right - and believe me, I need help - that makes 19 birthdays to remember (20 including my father-in-law's), six wedding anniversaries (including her own) to celebrate, and other events/occasions - the extended family's birthdays and anniversaries for example.

The crazy thing is, she never misses anything. For every occasion we can count on receiving a card and a phone call. That means that she plans/schedules "sending" dates to make sure everyone is honored on the appropriate days! That takes organization and coordination - both talents that I lack. She's a star!

In contrast, I am horrible at them.

Evidence:
I still have not delivered/completed all of my Christmas presents from December. I can barely remember my own wedding anniversary much less someone else's. I have never in my life sent anyone else an anniversary card. If you get a birthday card from me, it is usually late. This year (and I'm ashamed to admit it), I gave my husband an "interactive" Father's Day card. That means I bought it at the last minute and wrote in it as we were on a date. He had gone to get drinks and returned before I had finished composing the message.. Thus, we both wrote in the card. Interactive. In hindsight it was kind of a cool idea but totally and shamefully impromptu.

The good news is Rich (my husband) is as forgetful about important dates as I am. In fact, this year on our wedding anniversary he jokes that "we'll celebrate by being in two different towns." He has to be away for work. It hadn't occurred to me that on our anniversary he'll be away. I hadn't even remembered that our anniversary is in the summer. (sigh)

But it's ok. Specific dates elude us, but everyday feels important to us. Essentially, everyday we celebrate each other. How could an anniversary of any kind or a birthday or holiday be more important than all of the other days we get to be together?

That's what I'm telling myself, at least, until I remember to buy a damn kitchen calendar.

This post was inspired by the Loose Bloggers Consortium, a small and feisty(!) global community. We write weekly on a common topic (Anniversaries, this week) and post responses - all of us together, simultaneously, from all over the world. (Lovely!) Please visit Anu, Ashok, Conrad, gaelikaa, Grannymar, Judy, Magpie 11, Maria and Ramana for other wonderful posts.

Friday, July 2, 2010

Letters

I recently saw the film Letters to Juliet (as in Capulet) which was every bit as girly and sappy and swoony as I expected it to be. Of course there was a happy ending - birds chirped and deer ate out of my hand Disney style. But that's not what I thought was interesting.

I'm not sure if it exists or not. I haven't done any formal research. And though I've been to Italy, I've never been to Verona to actually see if Juliet's balcony and the wall leading to the balcony actually exists. Until now, I had never considered that Shakespeare wrote his his play based on anything except pure fantasy. I do know that Romeo and Juliet is not among the group of plays deemed by academics "The Historical Plays" like Macbeth or Richard III. Honestly, I never really cared at all about whether or not there truly were Capulets or Montagues. The story, though interesting, just isn't that good, especially compared with the genius of Lear.

The interesting thing about Letters to Juliet is that the entire story depends on the idea that there is such a thing as Juliet's balcony and that women from all over the world write letters about their love lives or lack thereof and ask for Juliet's advice by placing their letters between the bricks and mortar in the wall that Romeo would've climbed to get to the balcony.

Of course we understand that Juliet can't answer - she very literally guts herself with Romeo's dagger when she awakens from her death-like slumber in the tomb and sees that Romeo is really dead thanks to one of the worst miscommunications in Western history. It's her spirit that is supposed to answer. That and four women who have taken it upon themselves to collect the letters daily and write responses to those who are heartbroken, indecisive, confused, and/or afraid.

That's the part I like.

The Juliet club answers letters in an effort to support these women in the spirit of Juliet, the one who abandoned her entire being to love and who both learned and taught a valuable lesson about the consequences of decisions we make. It's Ann Landers meets romance, but in a much more passionate venue. Ah Italy... (swoon)

It's a terribly romantic idea, I think.

This post was inspired by the Loose Bloggers Consortium, a small and feisty(!) global community. We write weekly on a common topic (Letters, this week) and post responses - all of us together, simultaneously, from all over the world. (Lovely!) Please visit Anu, Ashok, Conrad, gaelikaa, Grannymar, Judy, Magpie 11, Maria and Ramana for other wonderful posts.

Monday, June 28, 2010

A Ginger Day

So, today was a Ginger day, meaning that I took Jack to daycare so that I could have some one-on-one time with myself. I spend a lot of time avoiding me as is evidenced by the fact that when I truly have time for meditation and reflection, I have no idea what to do with myself so I work. I spent the morning doing that. I began building my new class website, I updated my interactive summer assignment, sent messages to all the students participating in said assignment, answered the questions that were submitted in response to updating and messaging about the summer assignment, and then noticed that I was tense - that I hadn't done anything that wasn't work related and I was squandering away my free time.

That's when I decided to go see a movie - a good chick flick. There was a 12:55 showing of Sex and the City 2 at the Studio Movie Grill and I thought, "Lunch and a movie! Perfect!" So I went.

Before you poo poo the idea of A.) Seeing a movie by yourself or B.) Seeing this particular movie, you should note that actually it was a very enlightening, pleasant experience. I'm probably outing my hardcore, tattooed exterior by admitting that I am a Sex in the City fan (wink), but I also have to remind everyone that the series and the movies are about more than shopping and sex. Actually, this one in particular was more about the definition of marriage and, more importantly, what it means to be a woman and have a voice. There is no better place to highlight the conflict between being a woman (and all that comes with that, including motherhood or choosing not to be a mom) and having a voice in a male dominated society. It turns out that Abu Dhabi, the place where most of the film is set, is not so different than the US in that the female voice is suppressed. Also, though, it reminded us that no matter what society declares, women of all cultures and ages, are sisters. We hear each other.

It may sound odd to say that I felt empowered by Sex and the City, but I am. I cried actual tears when Miranda and Charlotte talked about being moms and the constraints of that full-time, thankless, wonderful job.

Charlotte: "How do the moms who have no help do it?"

Miranda: "I have no fucking idea."

Charlotte: "My first thought when I heard Samantha say Harry might cheat on me with Erin was, "Oh my god, I can't lose the nanny!"

Substitute "the nanny" for "daycare" and I hear you, sister. I lift my glass to that, and I did because I ordered a glass of wine with my lunch. What boldness! Screw you, patriarchy! I'm having wine with lunch AND I'm picking up the baby later.. by myself! I am woman!

After I left the theater it was raining outside - my favorite!

I came home to a quiet house on a rainy afternoon, and I'm loving my Ginger day!

Saturday, June 26, 2010

World Cup: Ghana v. US

DSC01189a
Four years ago Rich and I went on one of the best - if not THE best - tours of our lives. Before there was a Baby Jack, there was travel. Lots of it. We had been in Italy for two weeks with our students and sent them home with a chaperon while we continued our sojourn through Austria and Germany. DSC01197a
The trip happened to coincide with the World Cup in Germany, and our best friends, Christine and Jamie, happened to be in Germany for the World Cup. We met up with them. I could go on about how amazing the time was - how much fun Rich and I had in Nuremberg at the viewing party (That's where you go when you don't have tickets to the game..), how we met new friends, drank too much beer, and cheered on our team. But that's not what this post is about. It's about this:

Four years ago we played Ghana in the World Cup. Four years ago, they beat us, knocking us out of the tournament. It was a sad loss, yet I was elated for the Ghanans. Today we play them again and there is a lot at stake for both of our teams. For one of us this will be our last game in the tournament, so it is sure to be played with lots of heart, the emotional factor being at its highest.
DSC01198a

Go USA!

Friday, June 25, 2010

The In(essential) Items that I've Collected

Dolls, rocks, plush character house shoes, stickers, coins.
Letters, poems, pictures, passport stamps.
Bumper stickers, concert t- shirts, "flair".
Pens, warm fuzzies, bad poetry.
Love notes.
Mismatched drinking glasses and coffee mugs, hand-me-down furniture.
Clothes that used to fit.
Cats.
Beer steins, mascara, stilettos, classics.
Confidence.
Tattoos.
Fridge Magnets.
Blogs.

This post was inspired by the Loose Bloggers Consortium, a small and feisty(!) global community. We write weekly on a common topic (The Inessential Items We Collect, this week) and post responses - all of us together, simultaneously, from all over the world. (Lovely!) Please visit Anu, Ashok, Conrad, gaelikaa, Grannymar, Judy, Magpie 11, Maria and Ramana for other wonderful posts.

Saturday, June 19, 2010

Talk is Cheap

A year or so ago, I was inspired. I had just come home from the new release of In the Margins and had an incredibly cool art piece that had been showcased at the magazine's release party sitting on my hearth for the week end until I could cart it back to school.

The art was odd, the subject questionable. The medium was collage - a ginormous canvas modge podged with square magazine cut-outs, the abstract face of Woody Allen outlined over the collage in black paint. For some reason, I fell in love with it, probably because it was so freaking weird. Even though I have no real connection to Woody Allen, his movies, nor his choice in spouses/children, I had to admit that it was a perfect conversation piece. I mean, who in her right mind would have a blown up, stylized portrait of Woody Allen in her living room?

"Me! Me!! Please? Let it be meeeeeee!"

The following Monday I reluctantly returned the art to school (damned integrity) and inquired about purchasing the piece. I was told that it was already sold. My heart sank. I shuffled away crestfallen.

That's when I had the idea: Surely I could create my own masterpiece! Surely I could make up for my utterly devastating lack of artistic talent with modern technology - tools such as a school-issued, 1980's manufactured overhead projector and some duct tape! I went to the hobby store, bought a ginormous canvas, some Modge Podge and spray-on glue. I spent the next three hours cutting out interesting squares from Conde-Nast, The New Yorker, and House Beautiful. I began spray-gluing them to the canvas. I would, after having made the collage, go to school, project the face of whomever I chose (not Woody Allen, for that had been done already) and paint.

After about 5 hours of intense (ahem) artistry, I collapsed in the living room floor, distraught. My masterpiece was a ridiculous sham. It looked like an ill-behaved puppy had dug through the trash, the contents of which had landed on my canvass. There would be no conversational mantel piece for me- no unusual weirdness for my living room. That, accompanied by the re-realization that I was not talented at all artistically, stung something fierce.

I quit. Thus the canvass sat in the guest bedroom for over a year. Until yesterday.

Yes, friends. I dug it out. I removed all of the "collage" and vowed to begin anew. Damn-it.

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

paraNormal

I used to fervently pray that God wouldn't send me an angel. That's why She must have chuckled to herself on the day She actually sent one and I didn't mind so much. In fact, I was grateful. God has a sense of humor like that.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The study session had gone as well as can be expected. My history final was the next day and for the first time in all of my college history classes, I liked the professor and the class. The class was small - only 30 people or so - as opposed to the huge auditorium classes that seated 250 students, the ones where teaching assistants are assigned to and responsible for students numbers 28385 - 28523 and are supposed to take roll and grade exams while the fat professor stands at his podium and drolls on about American baseball, Roosevelt being the best president, and what a disaster it was when women got the right to vote.

My small class was fun. The professor lectured, yes, but he also welcomed discussion. I was hooked. Oh, and there was a cute boy in the class who sat by me and happened to be my study buddy. In fact the night before the exam, we had been studying together in my dorm room. I noticed my friend was not feeling well. Even though he smiled and flirted, trying his best to come across as "fine", it was clear that he needed to wrap up the study session and go home. We did. I went over my notes one last time, and fell asleep confident that the test would be, at the very least, manageable.
_______________________________________________________

I don't remember much of the next day. I remember sitting in the test room, the walls spinning. My friend was absent. I knew if he felt half of what I was feeling - nauseous, hot, delirious, like my head was a boulder balancing precariously on a flimsy twig - there was no way he should be there. Half-way through the exam I was struck with an overwhelming sense of hopelessness. This was my last exam of the semester. I couldn't make my pen move. I had put my head down on the desk and couldn't seem to pick it up. I may have been crying. I remember closing my eyes and opening them, not knowing how much time had passed.

Somehow, I stood up and handed in my test, most of it blank paper, mostly unfinished. I remember standing in front of the professor,seeing only his glasses and eyes, hearing him mumble a question, something about me being ok. I don't recall if I answered. The next thing I remember was standing outside of the lecture hall. I couldn't remember where I lived. I didn't know in what direction I should walk. It was getting dark outside.

That's when I met an angel.
_________________________________________________________
There are so many interpretations of what angels are. Some believe that angels are glorious beings - warriors and messengers - light shining around them, the boldness of the Spirit coursing through them. They are immaculate, bearers of fanfare and majesty. Some believe that angels are beings that kneel prostrate to Man. They might have been first drafts of humankind, but were not given free will and are, therefore, more like servants. In any case, they can come in any form - cherubim, seraphim, burning bushes, lightning, dreams.

Mine came in the form of a young female voice.
__________________________________________________________
As I stood outside of the lecture hall helpless, a girl my age addressed me. She said, "Hey, I think we live in the same dorm. Coleman Hall, right?" I assume I nodded. She said, "I'll walk with you."

I remember feeling a little less distraught in that moment. I do not recall speaking to her, nor do I remember the path we took to get home. I don't remember her form, other than I recognized that it was similar to mine. I had obviously never met her, but I trusted her. She did not glow or carry armour. I'm not sure she was truly physically there.
___________________________________________________________
My fever was 105 - dangerous. There was talk of going to the hospital. For three days I was confined to my bed. A nasty virus was going around we learned later.

I ended up making a B in the history class; the professor obviously had mercy on me. I have no idea who the girl was that led me home. Whether truly a messenger of God or no, I can say with some certainty that she was heaven sent.

This post was inspired by the Loose Bloggers Consortium, a small and feisty(!) global community. We write weekly on a common topic (Paranormal, this week) and post responses - all of us together, simultaneously, from all over the world. (Lovely!) Please visit Anu, Ashok, Conrad, gaelikaa, Grannymar, Judy, Magpie 11, Maria and Ramana for other wonderful posts.

You asked for it..

Before:


After:

Gorgeous work, Lobsta. Seriously. I love it.

Friday, June 11, 2010

Solitude.

Solitude is and has always been a bit elusive for me. When I think about the times of solitude in my life they come in the form of journal and pen, the practice of reflection and writing being my form of meditation since I was a little kid. Rarely, however, have I intentionally spent time in solitude.

A few years ago I began reading books by Thich Nhat Hanh, and I would retreat to my back porch with book, journal, and pen to meditate and reflect. These were lovely times, and I applauded my dedication. I felt really good, and these reflective times helped my to change my outlook on my mental state, my physical state, my relationships, and my connection to the world around me.

The second I got pregnant the first time the meditation waned. My attention was elsewhere - mommy books, mommy worries, expectations, redefinitions, finances, etc. There was no time for Ginger because Ginger no longer existed as she had before. My body was different, too. In hosting life to another being, I was transformed, and nothing was about me any more. Thich Nhat Hanh would've been disappointed that his student didn't heed his words of wisdom - that the practice of meditation doesn't have to be in silence or in stillness, it is not contingent upon immutability, and it doesn't have to be devoid of anxieties. Actually, he wouldn't be disappointed. He is patient..

After I miscarried, I stopped my meditations all together.

What I found was that solitude was dangerous, predatory, an invitation to self loathing, and I couldn't possibly subject myself to it. Self preservation.

A month after I lost the baby, I traveled to London by myself. The trip had been planned long before I was pregnant. The plan had been altered slightly because I was pregnant, and then it became a personal mile stone - a mountain to climb to prove that I could do it - a month before I left. The trip became my life's exodus. In London, I was forced into solitude. I had tons of reflection time - on the plane, on the train, on the Underground, at meal times, in the park, everywhere, all the time. Instead of taking time to heal, I distracted myself - happily - making new friends, roaming around the city, visiting new places, pubs, punting.. I wrote about these things. I blogged about them. I had an incredible time being someone else - no more personal stuff - no more Ginger.

I got back home and turned around and went to Alaska a few days later. Same story, different place. I came home and promptly flew to New York for work. I had an incredible time! I was being very successful at distracting myself. I was happy!

And then work started, I got pregnant again and had the baby - Jack . He turns two today!

I haven't stopped running.

This post was inspired by the Loose Bloggers Consortium, a small and feisty(!) global community. We write weekly on a common topic (Solitude, this week) and post responses - all of us together, simultaneously, from all over the world. (Lovely!) Please visit Anu, Ashok, Conrad, gaelikaa, Grannymar, Judy, Magpie 11, Maria and Ramana for other wonderful posts.

Friday, November 12, 2010

Martin High School Lip Dub

First of all, this is not my school, but it is a school in my school district. I thought the project was pretty amazing and definitely did it's job of promoting school unity.

Martin High School Lip Dub 2010 from Tricia Regalado on Vimeo.


More than 3,600 students and staff at Martin High School recently participated in Lip Dub 2010, a music video filmed in one take without any breaks or cuts. The project was an effort to increase school unity and school pride. Martin was the first high school in Texas to film a schoolwide lip dub and had the largest on record. Read more about the project in The Warrior Post or watch the video.

Thursday, November 4, 2010

Crossroads

A girl finds herself at the place where three roads meet, and she knows that she must travel down one of them. One leads to academia - the school to be determined according to what can be studied and/or written in three months. This road makes the Dream more possible, but it also deters it for a while. One leads across the ocean to new beginnings and cultural experiences. This road leads to immediate almost-Dream fulfillment, mistake or not. That is, it isn't the Dream exactly, but it might lead to exact-Dream fulfillment. The last road is under construction. A stop sign posted at the end of the third road prevents the girl from truly going anywhere. This one is the road of stagnation built from the status quo, from complacency. It is definitely "the responsible choice" in a capitalistic terrain.

The girl hates the idea of stagnation, but is leery of the other two choices. She wishes someone or something would push her in one direction or another, but she knows that in order to really feel comfortable, she has to carefully consider them all.

Help.

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Overheard: Polite dinner conversation at home

"Did you hear about the 18 month old baby that fell out of a window seven stories high in Paris?"

"Oh my God NO!"

"Oh no.. Sorry. I mean the baby's fine. She fell seven stories, bounced off of the awning over a door, and a man who happened to be walking by at that moment caught her. "

"What? Really?"

"I know. It's like something out of a damn cartoon."

Seriously. Look:

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2010/11/02/baby-survives-7-story-fall/?hpt=Sbin

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Scratch

Holy shit. I feel the itch.

I'm pretty sure it means I'm crazy. "Well, we already knew that, " I hear you mock in that nasally, sing-song tone. Yes. Let's go ahead and confirm it. This is me - crazy as a flippin' wing-nut bat, entertaining the challenge to participate, once again, in NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month).

So, here's the hilarious bit: I've already lost the contest. The time honored rules of NaBloPoMo state that participants should write everyday during the month of November. Correction. Participants should POST everyday during the month of November. Today is November 2nd, so technically, I've already lost. Phew. That takes the pressure off.

"So why the hell try?" you inquire (again with the nasally bit.. Geez!). Here's why, genius: I have successfully stripped away every part of my life that is mine alone. I've stopped writing. I've stopped reading for pleasure (mostly). I've shortened my time on Facebook by turning on all of the privacy controls, including ones that allow other people to see my posts, thus dissuading me from wasting time on posting. I work, then I come home and work. Following that, I play with my son until he goes to bed, and then I lay out my clothes for the next day, make my coffee and lunch, and then collapse so that I can find some semblance of energy for the next day when I start it all again.

"Why have you done this to yourself?" you ask. (sigh) That's complicated, friend. I'm certain it has something to do with feelings of inadequacy and placed and/or misplaced priorities. Whatever. What I'm saying is that I'm making a pledge to allow for my well being (writing and reading in particular) to be a more important aspect of my life. I want to write. I love writing. I want to practice writing because I love to do it. Yes, that means that I will get griped at for choosing time for myself over time for my job/husband/kid. I'm fully aware of how that may appear to some people who would rather I prioritize my life differently. But hey, those people are going to tell me I suck anyway, so I may as well suck hardcore.

I vow to try to post as much as possible this month. I've already lost the contest, so that means my obligation is to myself only.

I like that idea, bat shit crazy or not..

Sunday, October 17, 2010

Regarding London

Regarding London:
There is so much hopping around in my brain right now that blogging seems ridiculous. But then maybe that's the point - the idea that I can be relatable, appreciated, and, I admit, loved in a virtual world. Not that I'm not sincere - most of the time - but that the chaos of life (who I am in this life) can be ordered somehow in an 8x4 computer window is outright silly.


And now for the old college try... whatever that means:

1. Shaun of the Dead is real.
Rich and I were in London during several work days, and it looked just exactly like the movie when people were commuting to work in the morning - zombies and regular folk alike - and one would be hard pressed to tell the difference between the dead tired and the truly dead. The tube was full of silent carriages, the only movement an occasional yawn, and even that kept to a minimum because a yawn would be proof of a living being. I tried not to look around ( a dead giveaway that I was a tourist), but I couldn't help but laugh.. thankfully, silently, when I then remembered the slipping on the brains part of the film. To make matters worse, this advert decorated nearly every tube station:



For the record, the zombies in the picture are WAY more enthusiastic than the ones commuting to work. These must be the after 10 zombies.

2. My mother was right.
Cars are weapons and we only get one chance. That was the line she fed me when I was a teenager. At the time, I knew that probably she was right, that I didn't really want to find out, and that hopefully God was on my side, especially since I had gone on practically every youth group mission offered. It turns out, that all she had to do to teach me the validity of this lesson was put me in a car in England with my husband. (sigh)

I'm not saying (ahem) that Rich is a bad driver.. He's just a bad driver in England. In his defense, I practically badgered him into it, reminding him that it was my birthday and that it could be romantic to visit the countryside and picnic near the sheep. It might even be fun, I intimated, to get stung by the nettles and have to look for the leafy cure which, as we all learned years ago in England when I got stung on my backside during an ill-timed bathroom emergency at Hadrian's Wall, is always nearby. We compromised. We took a train out of London and into Oxford where we rented a car and drove through the Cotswolds. It was a gorgeous drive, minus the honking and the curb brushing, and we learned how to utilize round-abouts (kind of), we learned about how to fill a tank with gas (not so different), and we also learned that driving in England is a stress to our marriage and that probably we should stick to train riding. The kind folks in Stow-on-the Wold would agree.

3. I am possibly the most lazy blogger in the world.
Actually, the photo pasting is kind of a nightmare here and my patience is waning. So here's what I'll do: Speed blogging followed by a photo montage, hopefully in slide show format:


* We saw some excellent political/modern art at two fantastic galleries - The Saatchi Gallery in a posh part of London and at the ICA where we viewed a political Russian opera film called Dissent while reclining in beds.


*We took a day trip to Canterbury - made the Pilgrimage, Chaucer style, yo! (minus the donkey/horse riding, the lack of bathing, and the story-telling)- and had a moment of silence for Thomas Becket on the alter where he was murdered. We also witnessed a bell ceremony there in remembrance of all soldiers. I couldn't help but marvel at how American it seemed.. or possibly how British we still are.


* My friends, Mark and Ilham, took me out to lunch at a fantastic open-aired cafe for my birthday and then the next evening took me, a Texan, to a Mexican restaurant called La Mexicana, co-owned by a native Mexican and a Turk, who employed a blond haired, fantastically sarcastic Canadian. All three - the Turk, the Mexican, and the Canadian - wore sombreros and sang Happy Birthday to me in front of a mural depicting a cowboy screaming "Yee Ow!" See, this is why I love Mark and Ilham. They thought to take me to that awesomely surreal place, and it wasn't that weird to them.


*We watched ping pong matches in St. James Park. Had I known ping pong was a free-for-all sport there, I totally would've played. Next time..


* We visited various pubs, including the good-ole standby - the Black Friar- and ate all kinds of horrifically bad for you pub foods, including fried fish sandwiches and a plowman's lunch. Of course there was shepherd's pie (duh), but sadly no bangers and mash.We declined the invitation to "go out back" to the bar-be-cue at the local pub near our hotel where it was perfectly acceptable behavior to roll around in the floor with puppies. I can't begin to explain that - the puppy part - except to say that it happened, and we tried not to stare at the coin slots. Seriously. At the time I was worried about looking all touristy.. but in retrospect, it just grossed me out.

And now for the montage:


4. London is my favorite place on the planet.
We spent a huge amount of time walking around the city and then taking the tube back to our hotel. We ran across several fantastic sites, including the Victoria Rail Station and a car boot sale (where I bought a purse). Mark even took me on a tour of his school - yet another reminder of how same we all are.

Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Overheard - In my Brain

So I'm going to London next week where they've raised the terror alert level to severe (a step below 'Bah!' but definitely above 'Meh..').

The two - me being in the UK and the terror level - are probably not related. Still, I feel a bit offended.

Thursday, September 16, 2010

What's the Opposite of Huzzah?

I admit it. Sometimes my great ideas are not so great. Sometimes they're downright stupid. I'm not sure if this is the case in this instance, but it certainly will be logged as one of the most interesting moments in my life.. as interesting as an I Love Lucy sketch can be, anyway.

Christine had an ARD* meeting. That's the excuse I used for not making the usual coffee house stop for grading this afternoon, and for choosing instead to go to Houlihans for artichoke goat cheese poppers and a blueberry martini. OK, so it was more about the artichoke goat cheese poppers than anything else, but I rationalized that on a Thursday afternoon there would be a cozy corner in the bar for me to spread out and grade, plus a martini might take the edge off of what usually is a highly stressful process - marking first draft essays. And hey, wouldn't all of that - goat cheese poppers and a blueberry martini - actually benefit the students' grades?

So I went.

I was finished with my martini and was casually snacking on the poppers when the manager of the restaurant - a small, spunky blond woman - interrupted my careful analysis and asked if I'd "like another cocktail." I would be lying if I said I didn't think about it. The martini was especially lovely, and, after all, I was, as I've mentioned, grading first draft essays. Responsibly, though, I said, "No thank you," and added that I was about to leave. She smiled at me and returned to her duty of being chipper and accommodating. I returned to my task, too, decidedly less chipper and accommodating. A minute later she returned to my table and said, "Actually, you'll be getting another cocktail, after all. Someone bought you a drink. "

"Um. What?" I asked, conveying confusion via the apparent question mark tattooed on my expression.

"You don't have to drink it" she said, obviously amused.

"No. I mean, this has never happened to me before. A stranger has never bought me a drink before."

I could have hugged the manager as she, in her most sincere (but forced) imitation tried, "Really? Never?"

"Nope. Never.. Um. Okay. Thank you. I think."

The manager said something about the fact that this was sort of secret or that she couldn't point out who had bought the drink or something of that nature, but I was too focused on what the appropriate protocol was for receiving a drink from a random stranger in a bar.

The waitress placed the drink on my table and my brain went haywire. I immediately recalled all of the scenarios in movies where this sort of thing happens. The montage went like this:

*Girl receives drink.
*Girl looks around the room to see who sent it.
*Very attractive man - probably an Italian - acknowledges, via either a short nod or by raising his own glass, that he is the "guilty" party.
*Girl takes a bashful sip of the new drink and nods appreciatively in his direction.
*And then, depending on the film, the man approaches the girl and they A. Have a bashful flirtation, the beginning of a new romance B. Leave together for hot, eccentric stranger sex C. Have a confrontation ending in embarrassment on all sides, the man being told to back the hell off, the girl stomping out in stilettos and justification, both leaving their beer goggles on the bar.

That's all I had to work with. I knew my ending would, as my husband would like for me to acknowledge, be minus the last bullet. But in all seriousness I had to do something. So, I went for it. I arranged my face into a less panicked, more pleasant (I hope) expression and began scanning the room slowly from right to left. I was pretty sure it wasn't the couple across the room, but I couldn't rule out the two Chinese business men who, though not conversing, weren't looking in my direction. There were three closely shaved contractors sitting to the left of the business men who were grossly engaged in conversations beginning with "Here's what we're gonna do", and then another couple, and then two, as I had previously determined by their familiarity with the bartender, regulars - one man who was apparently enthralled with whatever sport was on the big screen and a black woman who had just ordered nachos "to go".

My eyes crawled across the room and as I neared the end of the sweep, I was both elated and distraught to find that no one nodded back. There was absolutely NO acknowledgement as to who had sent a drink my way.
"OK," I thought, "look again." Once again, no one even pretended to look my way. I scanned the bill for an extra martini, just in case there was a miscommunication between me, the waitress, and the manager. Nothing.

"Shit! What now?" I thought. And then I did the most obvious thing in the world: I called my husband.

I won't bore you with the details here. Suffice it to say that I explained my situation to him - my husband and soul mate; the man I married when we were both still children; the one who has been ever faithful and supportive of me in all of my decisions and experiences; the one I chose to have a family with and common dreams; the one who nonchalantly commented, "Probably someone saw you hunched over, grading papers and thought, ' Hey, I should buy that school marm a drink. She is friendless more-than-likely and destitute. Plus, who else would take care of such a troglodyte? Sad, isn't it? It's my duty as a compassionate member of the universe to attend to sad cases such as these.' And then that person sighed for you -the pathetic being in the corner - and shook his head, feeling a small twinge of pride for being such an angel to such a lost cause. "

"OR" I countered emphatically, "someone might actually think I'm attractive."

And I hung up and dialed Christine.

Christine suggested that I make a grandiose gesture - possibly I could raise one hand into the air and announce, "Thank you!" in a theatrical tone to no one in particular but also to every one. I asked if I should stand on a soap box of some kind as a make-shift stage, or if i should just project my voice from the diaphragm. She then acknowledged that she too was unclear about what to do in my circumstance. Because she's a great friend, she did acknowledge that my husband is a colossal doofus, and then, randomly, she asked what the opposite of "Huzzah" is. I didn't know the answer to that question, so we hung up.^

I was stuck, and it was coming close to the time I needed to leave. In the end I decided, as Ms. Manners would positively suggest, that I should leave a grammatically correct note on the table, a very polite and sincere one that would cover all possible scenarios - troglodyte sympathy to Italian flirtation. It went something like this:

Hi. Thank you to whoever sent the martini over. It certainly helped with essay marking. Plus, it was a nice thing to do. :) Thanks again, -G

And then I edged my way around the bar, my back glued to the wall in an attempt to be invisible, to the exit and, as it appeared to me, to sweet freedom!

*Admission, Review and Dismissal meeting for parents, teachers and administrators, regarding kids who may or may not need or who continue to need special academic or behavioral accommodations in the classroom.
^ Fie is the probable answer Christine later revealed.

Sunday, September 12, 2010

Friday, August 27, 2010

Half Truth+Half Untruth=Happy "Liars"

When my love swears that she is made of truth
I do believe her, though I know she lies,
That she might think me some untutor'd youth,
Unlearned in the world's false subtleties.
Thus vainly thinking that she thinks me young,
Although she knows my days are past the best,
Simply I credit her false speaking tongue:
On both sides thus is simple truth suppress'd.
But wherefore says she not she is unjust?
And wherefore say not I that I am old?
O, love's best habit is in seeming trust,
And age in love loves not to have years told:
Therefore I lie with her and she with me,
And in our faults by lies we flatter'd be.

William Shakespeare, Sonnet 138

Saturday, August 21, 2010

My job is bipolar

Last year was incredibly wonderful and difficult at the same time. I think that's how it is with being a school teacher. For example I LOVED my students. My LitMag staff was the best I've ever had. My IB kids were incredible. My English IV students.. I really liked some of them. (and this is where in sitcoms you hear the needle getting pulled off of the record)

As much as my LitMaggers and IBers made me excited to do my job, the other classes were so difficult. Some of this difficulty was a result of the usual teaching obstacles: Too many students in one classroom; too much paperwork; too many responsibilities that extended beyond the actual job of, oh let me think - teaching; very little discipline; tons of micromanaging; irrational parents; etc.. But some of it was that I had a tough group of kids.

As often as folks get upset about inconsiderate drivers or rude customers, teachers are likely, if not certain, to deal with the worst of the worst every day. You're thinking that in your job this is true, too. However, teachers are expected to be more forgiving. It's like knowing every single day the same punk kid driver in his car that costs twice as much as yours will inevitably cut you off in traffic, flip you off, and then laugh at you while texting his cleverness to his friends. As a teacher you know this is will happen again, and it shocks you each time, yet you still hope that something you do or say might make the rude driver a little bit more compassionate someday. "Maybe tomorrow when he cuts me off and flips me the bird, he won't laugh as loudly," you think. "Maybe if I call his parents (who taught him to drive), I can get ahead of him or show him that what he's doing is abusive and humiliating."

Every year you are guaranteed to have one mean driver in your class. But some years you have twenty of them. Last year I had forty. (40 out of 120 is too big of a percentage) Contrary to public opinion, there is nothing to do about a student's lack of respect toward a teacher. Unless a kid actually becomes violent against a teacher, all she can do is file paperwork and hope for an understanding counselor or principal. Plus, changing a kid's schedule to get him our of a particular class means that you have burdened another on of your colleagues with another issue that they do not need or deserve.

My personality is not commanding or controlling which some might say is part of the problem. The few times I've tried to "rule by force", it comes back to get me and makes me feel horrible. Combatting the rude drivers by being an even ruder one is sort of ridiculous and leads to accidents. I'm more of a mutual respect kind of teacher. In other words, I hope that if I model integrity, patience, responsibility, good will, and generosity, the kids will mirror it. They do for the most part. We have open dialogue in my class. I am a firm believer in inquiry based learning. Sometimes, though, the students don't mirror me. That's when things get tricky.

Monday is the start of a new school year. I will meet my new classes and get a sense of what kind of drivers they are. I'm trying to be optimistic, but there is a whole car-load of anxiety that comes with the start of the year.

Friday, August 20, 2010

Keith Olbermann Special Comment: There Is No 'Ground Zero Mosque' - 08/1...

Tears

I wonder if, along with pivotal, history changing folks like Harriett Beecher Stowe and Fredrick Douglas, my state will also delete the lessons learned from significant people and/or events such as The Trail of Tears in its public school curriculum:
In 1838 and 1839, as part of Andrew Jackson's Indian removal policy, the Cherokee nation was forced to give up its lands east of the Mississippi River and to migrate to an area in present-day Oklahoma. The Cherokee people called this journey the "Trail of Tears," because of its devastating effects. The migrants faced hunger, disease, and exhaustion on the forced march. Over 4,000 out of 15,000 of the Cherokees died. This picture, The Trail of Tears, was painted by Robert Lindneux in 1942. It commemorates the suffering of the Cherokee people under forced removal. If any depictions of the "Trail of Tears" were created at the time of the march, they have not survived. Image Credit: The Granger Collection, New York
Sarcasm aside, the conservative right movement in my state is INEXCUSABLE..
I have to move before we excuse slavery by using Biblical references ... again.

Sunday, August 15, 2010

Helen of Troy Does Countertop Dancing

by Margaret Atwood

The world is full of women
who'd tell me I should be ashamed of myself
if they had the chance. Quit dancing.
Get some self-respect
and a day job.
Right. And minimum wage,
and varicose veins, just standing
in one place for eight hours
behind a glass counter
bundled up to the neck, instead of
naked as a meat sandwich.
Selling gloves, or something.
Instead of what I do sell.
You have to have talent
to peddle a thing so nebulous
and without material form.
Exploited, they'd say. Yes, any way
you cut it, but I've a choice
of how, and I'll take the money.

I do give value.
Like preachers, I sell vision,
like perfume ads, desire
or its facsimile. Like jokes
or war, it's all in the timing.
I sell men back their worse suspicions:
that everything's for sale,
and piecemeal. They gaze at me and see
a chain-saw murder just before it happens,
when thigh, ass, inkblot, crevice, tit, and nipple
are still connected.
Such hatred leaps in them,
my beery worshippers! That, or a bleary
hopeless love. Seeing the rows of heads
and upturned eyes, imploring
but ready to snap at my ankles,
I understand floods and earthquakes, and the urge
to step on ants. I keep the beat,
and dance for them because
they can't. The music smells like foxes,
crisp as heated metal
searing the nostrils
or humid as August, hazy and languorous
as a looted city the day after,
when all the rape's been done
already, and the killing,
and the survivors wander around
looking for garbage
to eat, and there's only a bleak exhaustion.
Speaking of which, it's the smiling
tires me out the most. This, and the pretence
that I can't hear them.
And I can't, because I'm after all
a foreigner to them.
The speech here is all warty gutturals,
obvious as a slab of ham,
but I come from the province of the gods
where meanings are lilting and oblique.
I don't let on to everyone,
but lean close, and I'll whisper:
My mother was raped by a holy swan.
You believe that? You can take me out to dinner.
That's what we tell all the husbands.
There sure are a lot of dangerous birds around.

Not that anyone here
but you would understand.
The rest of them would like to watch me
and feel nothing. Reduce me to components
as in a clock factory or abattoir.
Crush out the mystery.
Wall me up alive
in my own body.
They'd like to see through me,
but nothing is more opaque
than absolute transparency.
Look--my feet don't hit the marble!
Like breath or a balloon, I'm rising,
I hover six inches in the air
in my blazing swan-egg of light.
You think I'm not a goddess?
Try me.
This is a torch song.
Touch me and you'll burn.

Friday, August 13, 2010

Media

It's Friday already and time for an LBC post. Unfortunately we've had a difficult week here and were hit with some unexpected curveballs. Until I this morning, I had forgotten about posting entirely and what's worse is today we write about a topic that I suggested! (sigh)

The topic is media. I propsed this topic for a number of reasons. First of all, my friend Mark B. along with several other folks in England has started an entire project regarding the topic. Amazing! is an interactive (a debate follows the performance) theater project associated with the Agon group that was written for and performed by grade school children. In it, the kids ask some very important questions:

1. What is beauty?
2. Should the media weild it's power responsibly, and if so, how?

The Agon project directs attention to the idea that we truly do buy into media's ploys (both figuatively and literally), the outcome of which can be very harmful.

I don't think this is a new concept. Since its infancy, advertising, a small yet defining segment of the media, has been purposefully manipulative. Selling products isn't about people, after all; it is about business. I think most of us understand that this is true about advertising, and still we are swayed. Why?

News channels, internet, connectivity in all forms seems to have adopted the same philosophy as advertising - to manipulate consumers into buying their "products". So much information is thrown at us on a daily basis that sifting through all of it to find truth is almost impossible. Still, I urge my students to ask themselves "How do you know what you know?", along with all of the other questions imbedded in that one: Who is writing/speaking? What is his/her intent? How can you tell? Did you consider all sides?

I don't know how to hold people accountable for what they make public, especially when it comes to opinions that stray from fact. To some extent it seems that I am treading very close to arguing in favor of censorship. Actually, I am arguing for integrity. As a teacher standing in front of shaping minds, I have the responsibility to think and talk in a way that allows my students to draw conclusions using reason and compassion. Isn't that also the media's job?

I apologize for the rant. On a normal, less stressful week I might actually edit/revise/temper my writing.

Sunday, August 8, 2010

Larry Allums: America the bold but not so beautiful | News for Dallas, Texas | Dallas Morning News | Opinion: Points

My friend and mentor, Dr. Larry Allums, published an op ed in today's paper. Please enjoy:

Larry Allums: America the bold but not so beautiful News for Dallas, Texas Dallas Morning News Opinion: Points

For those who, like me, are pro-American and looking for insights into an uncertain future, Joel Kotkin's optimism in The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050 is close to infectious. Amid pronouncements of America's decline or prophecies of its imminent doom, his forecast of our continuing vitality is a welcome respite.

Perhaps the most convincing aspect of Kotkin's claim for our success in the 21st century is that he avoids the sort of triumphalism that has the sound of excess – the hollow vanity Aristotle lists as one of the extremes either side of the golden mean of "greatness of soul." Nor does Kotkin go to the opposite extreme and suggest that America must now discover humility and share its past greatness with other nations. Rather, he really does claim not only a material greatness but a kind of greatness of soul for America, by which he seems to mean a quality not measurable as much by the data he uses so expertly as by a kind of interior, collective character sown into the soil of our founding that continues to nourish new growth, regardless of the massive change our democracy habitually thrives upon.

Describing America's "fundamental strengths," Kotkin ironically but perhaps appropriately employs a non-Anglo word: "These traits provide the United States with what Japanese scholar Fuji Kamiya has described as sokojikara: a reserve power that allows it to overcome both the inadequacies of its leaders and the foibles of its citizens."

This rather mythic designation – mythic in the sense that it attempts to get at the essential character of a people – carries strong overtones of an American destiny, but clearly post-colonial and post-imperial. Kotkin believes that simply in following our internal compass and allowing our character to guide crucial choices, our ascendancy during this century will be, if not assured, certainly much more likely and, if we work at it, virtually guaranteed.

Working at it means striking a balance, Kotkin says, between piety toward our "ancient ideals" and openness to future change –in which case "the United States can emerge as a land of unprecedented opportunity: a youthful, evolving nation amid an advanced industrial world beset by old age, bitter ethnic conflicts and erratically functioning economic institutions."

This hopeful prospect hinges upon a momentous "if," because the two factors needing to be balanced are by nature in tension, if not opposition. Having in a sense begun in impiety – revolt against Mother Country – Americans are habitually ready to embrace change at piety's expense.

Notoriously, we find it easy to turn on a dime away from our past, perhaps because it almost never carries immediate consequences. Whether we can achieve the balance Kotkin so easily calls for will depend on our ability to manage another balancing act: between measurable and non-measurable dimensions of education, or between things that matter in terms of material worth and those that matter in terms of moral and spiritual value.

Our natural openness to change is, according to Kotkin, a primary nutrient in the soil of the American character, and for him being open includes embracing not just new technology but the kind of change we are currently experiencing as social and political crisis: what immigrants bring to the full flowering of the American Dream. Kotkin's assertions are, after all, grounded in a demographic forecast, that our population will grow by 100 million during the first half of the century – "demographics as destiny," as he dramatically puts it. Of Scotch-Irish descent and therefore part of a diminishing subset of Americans, I nevertheless found myself easily agreeing with most every point of his pro-immigrant stance.

Whereas "anti-natalists," slow-growth advocates and racial purists would regard continuing immigration as disastrous, Kotkin sees it as our source of ascendancy over the countries most often cited as our potential vanquishers – mainly India, China and the European Union: "Only successful immigration can provide the markets, the manpower and, perhaps most important, the youthful energy to keep western societies vital and growing," he writes. For me this sorts well, if not eloquently, with the Rev. Martin Luther King's image in his "I Have a Dream" speech of the Founders' "promissory note" to which "every
American was to fall heir."

The questions are, where will the next 100 million Americans live, and what will they do in this future epoch that will at once be an extension of the old and an emergence of the new?

Kotkin's answers are consistently provocative and sometimes troubling – especially to those who envision a future of urban renewal and a commensurate shrinking of America's dogged preference since World War II for suburban life. Not so, says Kotkin: "Rather than be forced to cluster in cities, Americans are likely to increasingly opt for communities that blend the single-family housing patterns of suburbia with basic urban amenities."

As a transplanted city dweller from the Deep South, I devoutly prefer urban life and believe in the city-center concept, but Kotkin's scenario doesn't put me off, because it avoids an either-or conclusion. The next 100 million, he says, will be enough for the vitality of both city and suburb. If he's right, and it appears he is, that "we're moving beyond the industrial model, with economic activity diffusing from great population centers," then perhaps we're entering a period when people of varying circumstances can choose not to live in urban areas and still aspire upward as Americans always have.

Until recently, civilizational advances have typically resulted in forced movements toward urban cores. We seem now to have reached a true turning point – when the movement will go back the other way, to the suburbs and beyond, even to the great American Heartland for which Kotkin foresees a dramatic resurgence.

Kotkin's bright estimate of America's potential has great appeal, but there's something beguiling, almost Pied-Piper like, about the neutrality of his predictions. It seems to me traceable to his use of the word sokojikara to define that deeply imbedded, almost mythic quality of the American character. My reservations have to do with two issues he minimizes or leaves out of his equation: education and beauty.

The first, education, is prominent among our national concerns, yet it is almost always discussed or debated only in terms of work-force skills and measurable knowledge. True, these are vitally connected to our national destiny on a material level. But tunnel-visioned as we are with high-stakes testing, we rarely contemplate the importance of a whole curriculum in ensuring our vital future in a changing, threatening world.

Like Kotkin, we seem to assume that matters of character and ideals – the very things that define sokojikara – will take care of themselves, that they are self-renewing and that as long as we remain politically correct, both our native-born and immigrant youth will somehow acquire the values, the moral habituation, that will keep us strong in heart and soul. At best, this is placing a lot of faith in the permanence of American Identity; at worst, it is risking the continued existence of America itself.

The other issue conspicuous by its absence from Kotkin's account is beauty, which has everything to do with education. Beauty is a forbidden subject today, especially in academe, yet the core of our education ought to focus precisely on beautiful things, which certainly include cities and suburbs.

Beauty matters in innumerable and often unmeasurable ways. According to the ancient Greeks, true education involves learning about what is good – the good thought, the good judgment, the good action – and what is good is necessarily beautiful. The Greeks in fact had one word – kaloskagathos – that coalesced the two into an inseparable meaning. Kotkin implies that there are no real distinctions to be made in terms of beauty – no beautiful cities or suburbs; only those that succeed, that is, those we prefer.

Kotkin's omissions don't invalidate his vision of America in 2050. In fact, there is room in his copious forecast for educating future Americans in what is both good and beautiful. Moreover, I would say that such an education is necessary if we are to be, as he predicts, "a beacon and a model," a new version of the City on the Hill of old – "exceptional in everything from culture and science to agriculture and politics."

Dr. Larry Allums is director of the Dallas Institute for Humanities and Culture. His e-mail address is
lallums@dallasinstitute.org.

Friday, August 6, 2010

Books

I'm a book snob.
There. I said it.
And it's kind of about time.

I've always loved reading. In fact, when I was twelve I decided that I was literary. I picked up Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls and Faulkner's As I Lay Dying and read them cover to cover. I had no idea what they are about. I still don't know. I don't really like either of those authors as a grown-up (except for Hemingway's short stories - they're divine! Oh, and Faulker's.. Nope. I have no love for his writing. I understand why he was so thirsty, those novels stuck in his throat.) The point is I read them. I made definitive decisions about them - "I disliked those particular classics", I said to myself, nose in the air- and I would continue to devour books and judge them as AMAZING pieces of literature or not so amazing ones. All of them continue to be stored on my bookshelves, regardless of my opinions, as sort of trophies. I never had any other kind that I cared about as much.

Caring is the other part. I tend to form relationships with my books. I hug them (in public, even. I'm not ashamed). I lovingly dog-ear them. I underline my favorite parts. I annotate them, personalize them, write in the margins, add poems and pictures to them, and even cry when I finish them because I miss them. I write about them.

When people find out I'm a literature teacher (as opposed to an English teacher, which is my formal, personally renounced title), they often ask me which book is my favorite. That question makes me incredibly uncomfortable because I feel like I'm betraying my good friends by answering it. I can't even narrow it down to a particular genre. All I can do is list some particular books that resonate with me right now.

I'll share a few with you:
The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy
The Unbearable Lightness of Being - Milan Kundera
The Portable Dorothy Parker
Dress Your Family in Corduroy - David Sedaris
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo - Stieg Larson
Middlesex - Jeffery Eugenides
The Red Tent - Anita Diamant
Cunt - Inga Musico
Slughterhouse V - Kurt Vonnegut
Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
Morning in the Burned House - Margaret Atwood
American Primitive - Mary Oliver
The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
The Awakening - Kate Chopin
The Miracle of Mindfulness - Thich Nhat Han

This post was inspired by the Loose Bloggers Consortium, a small and feisty(!) global community. We write weekly on a common topic (Books, this week) and post responses - all of us together, simultaneously, from all over the world. (Lovely!) Please visit Anu, Ashok, Conrad, gaelikaa, Grannymar, Judy, Magpie 11, Maria and Ramana for other wonderful posts.

Friday, July 30, 2010

Beans and Potatoes

I don't really have anything to say about potatoes except for YUMMMMMM. Pretty much any way they come I love 'em.

As for beans, here's my favorite recipe (like the Cowboys like 'em)

Mom's Pinto Beans

Ingredients:

Bag of pintos (rinsed and soaked overnight)
1 onion (chopped)
6-8 strips of bacon (cut into 3rds)
1 jalapeno pepper (end cut off)
salt and pepper to taste

Instructions:
Put soaked beans into a crock pot, throw in bacon, onion, jalapeno, and cover with water. Let cook on medium all day long (6 hours), until beans are brown and soft.

Hints:
Sometimes when I feel particularly zany, I add a little bit of garlic salt.
If you bake some cornbread (for soppin' up the gravy), and slice some sharp cheddar, you've got a hearty, tasty, Cowboy pleasin' meal!!!


P.S. Why, dearest British friends, are beans served with break-y in your country? I've always found that to be one of the most unusual cultural differences between us.

This post was inspired by the Loose Bloggers Consortium, a small and feisty(!) global community. We write weekly on a common topic ( Beans and Potatoes, this week) and post responses - all of us together, simultaneously, from all over the world. (Lovely!) Please visit Anu, Ashok, Conrad, gaelikaa, Grannymar, Judy, Magpie 11, Maria and Ramana for other wonderful posts.

Sunday, July 25, 2010

Siren Song

Margaret Atwood

This is the one song everyone
would like to learn: the song
that is irresistible:

the song that forces men
to leap overboard in squadrons
even though they see beached skulls

the song nobody knows
because anyone who had heard it
is dead, and the others can’t remember.

Shall I tell you the secret
and if I do, will you get me
out of this bird suit?

I don’t enjoy it here
squatting on this island
looking picturesque and mythical

with these two feathery maniacs,
I don’t enjoy singing
this trio, fatal and valuable.

I will tell the secret to you,
to you, only to you.
Come closer. This song

is a cry for help: Help me!
Only you, only you can,
you are unique

at last. Alas
it is a boring song
but it works every time.

Now you know. Don't listen.

Friday, July 23, 2010

Criminal - A Smooth One

The crazy kids in the LBC (see below) tasked us with the job of writing something brilliant for the topic "Criminal." It turns out that much like I can't hear the word "chaotic" and not think of Brittany Spears, I can't hear the word "criminal" and not think of Michael Jackson, followed by a brief synapse blast to the Alien Ant Farm file in my brain, and then back to the king of pop. It always goes in that order: Jackson, Ant Farm, Jackson. And then if I allow myself more than a second of associations, my mind goes here:

My cousin, Krisiti, was a cheerleader in high school. (Sorry, rough segue I know, but it will all become clear soon). Actually, she was a cheerleader and homecoming queen and competed in various team sports and creative problem solving competitions, and I'm 97% certain she actually hung the moon. Next to her, I was some Virginia Wolf character, all plain and mousy, who was made fun of for committing unpopular crimes such as playing with dolls until I was 13 and caring about Olympic figure skating. I say that in jest, with only a tweak of resentment, knowing now that my personality was simply shy in comparison to hers. The point is, I adored Krisiti in the same way that Robin adored Batman. Kristi was my hero. I wanted to be like her. So when we went to visit her in Small Town, Texas I spent much of my waking moments with her, and she was sweet enough to include me, her younger, reclusive cousin.

In small town, Texas, one spends her free time in one of three ways:
1.Makin' the drag - (driving from one end of town to the other and back (usually a distance of about two miles), stopping for a "town coke" (a soda with ice and a straw) and conversation at the drive-in)
2. Drinkin' (alcohol in copious amounts)*
3. Knockin' boots (also in copious amounts)**

Because, as I've said, I was of a more meek stock than many of my teenage counterparts, Kristi and I spent a lot of time makin' the drag. We'd buy vanilla cokes and ride around town sipping them and talking about Kristi's fabulous life. I seem to remember doing this while listening to "Smooth Criminal", Michael Jackson's version. It was sort of a sound track to that time in my life. I remember those times fondly in sepia tones.

I wish I could flesh out some more detail regarding these memories, but the truth is I'm not sure there is a whole lot more to them. They weren't earth shattering, nor are they particularly mention-worthy.

So that's it.

That's what my brain does when someone says the word, "criminal".

*addendum - shooting guns is also popular, tied in popularity with drinking alcohol
**clarification - for those of you are not familiar with US idioms, this means having sex and is usually followed by someone winking, and saying "Aw yeah."

This post was inspired by the Loose Bloggers Consortium, a small and feisty(!) global community. We write weekly on a common topic (Crime or Criminal, this week) and post responses - all of us together, simultaneously, from all over the world. (Lovely!) Please visit Anu, Ashok, Conrad, gaelikaa, Grannymar, Judy, Magpie 11, Maria and Ramana for other wonderful posts.

Friday, July 16, 2010

Judgement

In lieu of posting my personal, "poor me" Consortium piece that I composed for the topic, "judgement," I've decided to share this apt op ed instead:
My Take: Christian politicians should start acting Christian
Editor's Note: Richard T. Hughes is Distinguished Professor of Religion at Messiah College and author of Christian America and the Kingdom of God.
By Richard T. Hughes, Special to CNN

Let me be frank from the outset: A great cultural divide is ripping the heart from this nation and Christians are partly responsible.

I say that because 83% of the American people claim to be Christians. If those Christians lived as they are taught to live by the teacher they claim to follow, the American public square would be a very different kind of place.

If one reads the New Testament—the charter for the Christian religion—one can discover rather quickly what that tradition is all about.

Jesus tells his followers to tell the truth.

Jesus tells his followers to make peace.

Jesus tells his followers to turn the other cheek.

Jesus tells his followers to bless those who persecute them and pray for those who misuse them.

Jesus tells his followers to extend justice, especially to the poor and the dispossessed.

Jesus tells his followers to serve as bridge-builders and agents of reconciliation.

And Jesus tells his followers to love one another, even their enemies.

But based on their words and behavior, we may safely conclude that many of the Christians who dominate America’s public square routinely reject the teachings of Jesus, in spite of their claims to the contrary.

Sharron Angle, for example, wants to be the next U. S. Senator from Nevada. She founded a Christian school but casually announces that “the nation is arming” since “if we don’t win at the ballot box, what will be the next step?” For Angle, that next step is clear: those who oppose the current administration may “have to fight for their liberty in more Second Amendment kinds of ways.” In other words, if the ballot fails, the bullet is the next best hope.

Sarah Palin is open about her allegiance to the Christian faith, but routinely trades in sarcasm, deceptions and lies about her political opposition. During the health care debate, she repeated over and again the falsehood that “the sick, the elderly, and the disabled . . . will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide . . . whether they are worthy of health care.”

Newt Gingrich trumpets his allegiance to the Christian religion and writes about the role of the Christian faith in American history. He also knows that Barack Obama is a Christian. Yet he shamelessly denounces Obama as “secular”—a term Gingrich defines as an “outlook [that] does not acknowledge God.”
No wonder that some Tea Partiers claim—as one woman put it—that “we are losing our country; we think the Muslims are moving in and taking over; we do not believe our president is a Christian.”

Glenn Beck warned a national television audience to “look for the words ‘social justice’ or ‘economic justice’ on your church Web site. If you find it, run as fast as you can,” adding that those terms are code words for communism and nazism. Surely Beck knows that there is no theme more central to biblical faith than social and economic justice for the poor, but still he is willing to distort the Christian religion for cheap political gain.

Ann Coulter promotes herself as a representative of the Christian religion. Yet, Coulter claimed after September 11, 2001 that the United States “should invade their countries [Muslim nations], kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.”

When public figures like these so completely diminish the Christian faith, it is hardly surprising that grassroots believers often engage in similar distortions of the Christian religion.

Some Christians at anti-Obama rallies have displayed signs that proclaim, “Since 1630: Bible hugging! Gun toting! Red Blooded American Against Tyranny.” Or another: “I will keep my freedom, my Bible, my gun, and my money.”

When Christians so widely and publicly embrace such blatant distortions of the Christian religion, they abandon one of the roles they might have played in America’s public square: fostering civility and dialogue and building lasting bridges of reconciliation.

But civility and respect have been all but lost in contemporary American politics. Alan Keyes, for example, has proclaimed that “Obama is a radical communist.” And one of the signs that routinely appears at anti-Obama rallies shows the President wearing a Nazi uniform and doing a Hitler salute. Another sign reads, “Barack Hussein Obama: the New Face of Hitler.” Those kinds of accusations are nothing short of slander.

The issue I am raising has nothing to do with whether one is a Republican, a Democrat, a Tea Partier, or an independent. Neither political conservatives nor political liberals have a monopoly on this kind of behavior, though in recent months conservatives opposed to Barack Obama have been especially guilty.

Yet the issue I am raising ultimately has nothing to do with whether one likes or dislikes Barack Obama. The issue has to do with Christians behaving like Christians and thereby telling the truth, doing justice, and promoting basic respect for other human beings.

After all, since 83% of the American population identifies with the Christian religion, that 83% could make an enormous difference in the tone of American politics if those Christians actually practiced what they profess to believe. They could also make a positive difference in American politics if they held other Christians accountable when they engage in deception and slander in order to score political points.

America’s churches and their pastors therefore have a grave responsibility: to urge their members to serve the public square as peacemakers, as truth-tellers, as people devoted to justice, and as men and women who are actually willing to practice what Jesus taught. If America’s churches refuse to take up this task—which, after all, is a task that is central to the Christian calling—the consequences for our country could be dire, indeed.
(Thanks to my friend (and minister-to-be), Evie for bringing this to my attention.)

Friday, July 9, 2010

Random Thoughts

1. So, I'm extremely proud that I have several former students protesting Westboro Baptist Church today, tomorrow, and onward. For those of you who haven't heard, WBC is known for interrupting funerals of soldiers to promote their hateful messages that:
a.)"God hates fags"
b.) God is punishing us for allowing gays to exist in our country.
c.) People who have gay children who fight for our country do not deserve the right to mourn the deaths of their children.
What's worse is they use kids in their campaigns - at FUNERALS of dead soldiers - to make these horrific, unjustified, ignorant statements.

I can't begin to express to you how much anger I feel towards people who.. who.. are so SO stupid - who think that it's ok to hate. Period. I don't care who the target is. Compassion in me is hard to find for them. But then, there's Desmond Tutu:

"For this God, our God, everybody is somebody. All life belongs to Him. Because of Him, all life is religious. There are no false dichotomies so greatly loved by those especially who are comfortable in this life. Consequently, if you say you love God, whom you have not seen, and hate your brother, whom you have, the Bible does not use delicate language; it does not say you are guilty of a terminological inexactitude. It says bluntly you are a liar." - Desmund Tutu from God Has a Dream.

So my darlings who are protesting tomorrow - even if only in spirit - I love you for doing the right thing. You make me proud!!
And for the record, I am a staunch supporter of human rights - gay, straight, whatever.

2. I love Lisbeth Salander. Yes. She's a fictional character from Stieg Larson's Girl With the Dragon Tattoo trilogy. I know. Still, what I like is that she's so freaking smart. She's bad ass, too, but vulnerable. She's not a superhero, but she'll fight with everything she has when she needs to, even if she doesn't always win. She's counter culture and stone cold, but she's endearing and lovely.. And kudos to Swedish actress, Noomi Rapace, for doing such a brilliant job with this character.



3. This song:


Anniversaries

My mother-in law, Donna, is really good at them.

Evidence:
Donna keeps a calendar in her kitchen that lists every one's birthday, anniversary, doctor's appointment, and other events/occasions. This is not a small feat. Donna has four grown children, three of whom are married, and five grandchildren from those unions. On top of that since we are a "blended family", she also considers her husband's children and his grandchildren as part of her brood. So that's additionally two grown children, both married, and three more grand kids. If I'm doing my math right - and believe me, I need help - that makes 19 birthdays to remember (20 including my father-in-law's), six wedding anniversaries (including her own) to celebrate, and other events/occasions - the extended family's birthdays and anniversaries for example.

The crazy thing is, she never misses anything. For every occasion we can count on receiving a card and a phone call. That means that she plans/schedules "sending" dates to make sure everyone is honored on the appropriate days! That takes organization and coordination - both talents that I lack. She's a star!

In contrast, I am horrible at them.

Evidence:
I still have not delivered/completed all of my Christmas presents from December. I can barely remember my own wedding anniversary much less someone else's. I have never in my life sent anyone else an anniversary card. If you get a birthday card from me, it is usually late. This year (and I'm ashamed to admit it), I gave my husband an "interactive" Father's Day card. That means I bought it at the last minute and wrote in it as we were on a date. He had gone to get drinks and returned before I had finished composing the message.. Thus, we both wrote in the card. Interactive. In hindsight it was kind of a cool idea but totally and shamefully impromptu.

The good news is Rich (my husband) is as forgetful about important dates as I am. In fact, this year on our wedding anniversary he jokes that "we'll celebrate by being in two different towns." He has to be away for work. It hadn't occurred to me that on our anniversary he'll be away. I hadn't even remembered that our anniversary is in the summer. (sigh)

But it's ok. Specific dates elude us, but everyday feels important to us. Essentially, everyday we celebrate each other. How could an anniversary of any kind or a birthday or holiday be more important than all of the other days we get to be together?

That's what I'm telling myself, at least, until I remember to buy a damn kitchen calendar.

This post was inspired by the Loose Bloggers Consortium, a small and feisty(!) global community. We write weekly on a common topic (Anniversaries, this week) and post responses - all of us together, simultaneously, from all over the world. (Lovely!) Please visit Anu, Ashok, Conrad, gaelikaa, Grannymar, Judy, Magpie 11, Maria and Ramana for other wonderful posts.

Friday, July 2, 2010

Letters

I recently saw the film Letters to Juliet (as in Capulet) which was every bit as girly and sappy and swoony as I expected it to be. Of course there was a happy ending - birds chirped and deer ate out of my hand Disney style. But that's not what I thought was interesting.

I'm not sure if it exists or not. I haven't done any formal research. And though I've been to Italy, I've never been to Verona to actually see if Juliet's balcony and the wall leading to the balcony actually exists. Until now, I had never considered that Shakespeare wrote his his play based on anything except pure fantasy. I do know that Romeo and Juliet is not among the group of plays deemed by academics "The Historical Plays" like Macbeth or Richard III. Honestly, I never really cared at all about whether or not there truly were Capulets or Montagues. The story, though interesting, just isn't that good, especially compared with the genius of Lear.

The interesting thing about Letters to Juliet is that the entire story depends on the idea that there is such a thing as Juliet's balcony and that women from all over the world write letters about their love lives or lack thereof and ask for Juliet's advice by placing their letters between the bricks and mortar in the wall that Romeo would've climbed to get to the balcony.

Of course we understand that Juliet can't answer - she very literally guts herself with Romeo's dagger when she awakens from her death-like slumber in the tomb and sees that Romeo is really dead thanks to one of the worst miscommunications in Western history. It's her spirit that is supposed to answer. That and four women who have taken it upon themselves to collect the letters daily and write responses to those who are heartbroken, indecisive, confused, and/or afraid.

That's the part I like.

The Juliet club answers letters in an effort to support these women in the spirit of Juliet, the one who abandoned her entire being to love and who both learned and taught a valuable lesson about the consequences of decisions we make. It's Ann Landers meets romance, but in a much more passionate venue. Ah Italy... (swoon)

It's a terribly romantic idea, I think.

This post was inspired by the Loose Bloggers Consortium, a small and feisty(!) global community. We write weekly on a common topic (Letters, this week) and post responses - all of us together, simultaneously, from all over the world. (Lovely!) Please visit Anu, Ashok, Conrad, gaelikaa, Grannymar, Judy, Magpie 11, Maria and Ramana for other wonderful posts.

Monday, June 28, 2010

A Ginger Day

So, today was a Ginger day, meaning that I took Jack to daycare so that I could have some one-on-one time with myself. I spend a lot of time avoiding me as is evidenced by the fact that when I truly have time for meditation and reflection, I have no idea what to do with myself so I work. I spent the morning doing that. I began building my new class website, I updated my interactive summer assignment, sent messages to all the students participating in said assignment, answered the questions that were submitted in response to updating and messaging about the summer assignment, and then noticed that I was tense - that I hadn't done anything that wasn't work related and I was squandering away my free time.

That's when I decided to go see a movie - a good chick flick. There was a 12:55 showing of Sex and the City 2 at the Studio Movie Grill and I thought, "Lunch and a movie! Perfect!" So I went.

Before you poo poo the idea of A.) Seeing a movie by yourself or B.) Seeing this particular movie, you should note that actually it was a very enlightening, pleasant experience. I'm probably outing my hardcore, tattooed exterior by admitting that I am a Sex in the City fan (wink), but I also have to remind everyone that the series and the movies are about more than shopping and sex. Actually, this one in particular was more about the definition of marriage and, more importantly, what it means to be a woman and have a voice. There is no better place to highlight the conflict between being a woman (and all that comes with that, including motherhood or choosing not to be a mom) and having a voice in a male dominated society. It turns out that Abu Dhabi, the place where most of the film is set, is not so different than the US in that the female voice is suppressed. Also, though, it reminded us that no matter what society declares, women of all cultures and ages, are sisters. We hear each other.

It may sound odd to say that I felt empowered by Sex and the City, but I am. I cried actual tears when Miranda and Charlotte talked about being moms and the constraints of that full-time, thankless, wonderful job.

Charlotte: "How do the moms who have no help do it?"

Miranda: "I have no fucking idea."

Charlotte: "My first thought when I heard Samantha say Harry might cheat on me with Erin was, "Oh my god, I can't lose the nanny!"

Substitute "the nanny" for "daycare" and I hear you, sister. I lift my glass to that, and I did because I ordered a glass of wine with my lunch. What boldness! Screw you, patriarchy! I'm having wine with lunch AND I'm picking up the baby later.. by myself! I am woman!

After I left the theater it was raining outside - my favorite!

I came home to a quiet house on a rainy afternoon, and I'm loving my Ginger day!

Saturday, June 26, 2010

World Cup: Ghana v. US

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Four years ago Rich and I went on one of the best - if not THE best - tours of our lives. Before there was a Baby Jack, there was travel. Lots of it. We had been in Italy for two weeks with our students and sent them home with a chaperon while we continued our sojourn through Austria and Germany. DSC01197a
The trip happened to coincide with the World Cup in Germany, and our best friends, Christine and Jamie, happened to be in Germany for the World Cup. We met up with them. I could go on about how amazing the time was - how much fun Rich and I had in Nuremberg at the viewing party (That's where you go when you don't have tickets to the game..), how we met new friends, drank too much beer, and cheered on our team. But that's not what this post is about. It's about this:

Four years ago we played Ghana in the World Cup. Four years ago, they beat us, knocking us out of the tournament. It was a sad loss, yet I was elated for the Ghanans. Today we play them again and there is a lot at stake for both of our teams. For one of us this will be our last game in the tournament, so it is sure to be played with lots of heart, the emotional factor being at its highest.
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Go USA!

Friday, June 25, 2010

The In(essential) Items that I've Collected

Dolls, rocks, plush character house shoes, stickers, coins.
Letters, poems, pictures, passport stamps.
Bumper stickers, concert t- shirts, "flair".
Pens, warm fuzzies, bad poetry.
Love notes.
Mismatched drinking glasses and coffee mugs, hand-me-down furniture.
Clothes that used to fit.
Cats.
Beer steins, mascara, stilettos, classics.
Confidence.
Tattoos.
Fridge Magnets.
Blogs.

This post was inspired by the Loose Bloggers Consortium, a small and feisty(!) global community. We write weekly on a common topic (The Inessential Items We Collect, this week) and post responses - all of us together, simultaneously, from all over the world. (Lovely!) Please visit Anu, Ashok, Conrad, gaelikaa, Grannymar, Judy, Magpie 11, Maria and Ramana for other wonderful posts.

Saturday, June 19, 2010

Talk is Cheap

A year or so ago, I was inspired. I had just come home from the new release of In the Margins and had an incredibly cool art piece that had been showcased at the magazine's release party sitting on my hearth for the week end until I could cart it back to school.

The art was odd, the subject questionable. The medium was collage - a ginormous canvas modge podged with square magazine cut-outs, the abstract face of Woody Allen outlined over the collage in black paint. For some reason, I fell in love with it, probably because it was so freaking weird. Even though I have no real connection to Woody Allen, his movies, nor his choice in spouses/children, I had to admit that it was a perfect conversation piece. I mean, who in her right mind would have a blown up, stylized portrait of Woody Allen in her living room?

"Me! Me!! Please? Let it be meeeeeee!"

The following Monday I reluctantly returned the art to school (damned integrity) and inquired about purchasing the piece. I was told that it was already sold. My heart sank. I shuffled away crestfallen.

That's when I had the idea: Surely I could create my own masterpiece! Surely I could make up for my utterly devastating lack of artistic talent with modern technology - tools such as a school-issued, 1980's manufactured overhead projector and some duct tape! I went to the hobby store, bought a ginormous canvas, some Modge Podge and spray-on glue. I spent the next three hours cutting out interesting squares from Conde-Nast, The New Yorker, and House Beautiful. I began spray-gluing them to the canvas. I would, after having made the collage, go to school, project the face of whomever I chose (not Woody Allen, for that had been done already) and paint.

After about 5 hours of intense (ahem) artistry, I collapsed in the living room floor, distraught. My masterpiece was a ridiculous sham. It looked like an ill-behaved puppy had dug through the trash, the contents of which had landed on my canvass. There would be no conversational mantel piece for me- no unusual weirdness for my living room. That, accompanied by the re-realization that I was not talented at all artistically, stung something fierce.

I quit. Thus the canvass sat in the guest bedroom for over a year. Until yesterday.

Yes, friends. I dug it out. I removed all of the "collage" and vowed to begin anew. Damn-it.

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

paraNormal

I used to fervently pray that God wouldn't send me an angel. That's why She must have chuckled to herself on the day She actually sent one and I didn't mind so much. In fact, I was grateful. God has a sense of humor like that.
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The study session had gone as well as can be expected. My history final was the next day and for the first time in all of my college history classes, I liked the professor and the class. The class was small - only 30 people or so - as opposed to the huge auditorium classes that seated 250 students, the ones where teaching assistants are assigned to and responsible for students numbers 28385 - 28523 and are supposed to take roll and grade exams while the fat professor stands at his podium and drolls on about American baseball, Roosevelt being the best president, and what a disaster it was when women got the right to vote.

My small class was fun. The professor lectured, yes, but he also welcomed discussion. I was hooked. Oh, and there was a cute boy in the class who sat by me and happened to be my study buddy. In fact the night before the exam, we had been studying together in my dorm room. I noticed my friend was not feeling well. Even though he smiled and flirted, trying his best to come across as "fine", it was clear that he needed to wrap up the study session and go home. We did. I went over my notes one last time, and fell asleep confident that the test would be, at the very least, manageable.
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I don't remember much of the next day. I remember sitting in the test room, the walls spinning. My friend was absent. I knew if he felt half of what I was feeling - nauseous, hot, delirious, like my head was a boulder balancing precariously on a flimsy twig - there was no way he should be there. Half-way through the exam I was struck with an overwhelming sense of hopelessness. This was my last exam of the semester. I couldn't make my pen move. I had put my head down on the desk and couldn't seem to pick it up. I may have been crying. I remember closing my eyes and opening them, not knowing how much time had passed.

Somehow, I stood up and handed in my test, most of it blank paper, mostly unfinished. I remember standing in front of the professor,seeing only his glasses and eyes, hearing him mumble a question, something about me being ok. I don't recall if I answered. The next thing I remember was standing outside of the lecture hall. I couldn't remember where I lived. I didn't know in what direction I should walk. It was getting dark outside.

That's when I met an angel.
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There are so many interpretations of what angels are. Some believe that angels are glorious beings - warriors and messengers - light shining around them, the boldness of the Spirit coursing through them. They are immaculate, bearers of fanfare and majesty. Some believe that angels are beings that kneel prostrate to Man. They might have been first drafts of humankind, but were not given free will and are, therefore, more like servants. In any case, they can come in any form - cherubim, seraphim, burning bushes, lightning, dreams.

Mine came in the form of a young female voice.
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As I stood outside of the lecture hall helpless, a girl my age addressed me. She said, "Hey, I think we live in the same dorm. Coleman Hall, right?" I assume I nodded. She said, "I'll walk with you."

I remember feeling a little less distraught in that moment. I do not recall speaking to her, nor do I remember the path we took to get home. I don't remember her form, other than I recognized that it was similar to mine. I had obviously never met her, but I trusted her. She did not glow or carry armour. I'm not sure she was truly physically there.
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My fever was 105 - dangerous. There was talk of going to the hospital. For three days I was confined to my bed. A nasty virus was going around we learned later.

I ended up making a B in the history class; the professor obviously had mercy on me. I have no idea who the girl was that led me home. Whether truly a messenger of God or no, I can say with some certainty that she was heaven sent.

This post was inspired by the Loose Bloggers Consortium, a small and feisty(!) global community. We write weekly on a common topic (Paranormal, this week) and post responses - all of us together, simultaneously, from all over the world. (Lovely!) Please visit Anu, Ashok, Conrad, gaelikaa, Grannymar, Judy, Magpie 11, Maria and Ramana for other wonderful posts.

You asked for it..

Before:


After:

Gorgeous work, Lobsta. Seriously. I love it.

Friday, June 11, 2010

Solitude.

Solitude is and has always been a bit elusive for me. When I think about the times of solitude in my life they come in the form of journal and pen, the practice of reflection and writing being my form of meditation since I was a little kid. Rarely, however, have I intentionally spent time in solitude.

A few years ago I began reading books by Thich Nhat Hanh, and I would retreat to my back porch with book, journal, and pen to meditate and reflect. These were lovely times, and I applauded my dedication. I felt really good, and these reflective times helped my to change my outlook on my mental state, my physical state, my relationships, and my connection to the world around me.

The second I got pregnant the first time the meditation waned. My attention was elsewhere - mommy books, mommy worries, expectations, redefinitions, finances, etc. There was no time for Ginger because Ginger no longer existed as she had before. My body was different, too. In hosting life to another being, I was transformed, and nothing was about me any more. Thich Nhat Hanh would've been disappointed that his student didn't heed his words of wisdom - that the practice of meditation doesn't have to be in silence or in stillness, it is not contingent upon immutability, and it doesn't have to be devoid of anxieties. Actually, he wouldn't be disappointed. He is patient..

After I miscarried, I stopped my meditations all together.

What I found was that solitude was dangerous, predatory, an invitation to self loathing, and I couldn't possibly subject myself to it. Self preservation.

A month after I lost the baby, I traveled to London by myself. The trip had been planned long before I was pregnant. The plan had been altered slightly because I was pregnant, and then it became a personal mile stone - a mountain to climb to prove that I could do it - a month before I left. The trip became my life's exodus. In London, I was forced into solitude. I had tons of reflection time - on the plane, on the train, on the Underground, at meal times, in the park, everywhere, all the time. Instead of taking time to heal, I distracted myself - happily - making new friends, roaming around the city, visiting new places, pubs, punting.. I wrote about these things. I blogged about them. I had an incredible time being someone else - no more personal stuff - no more Ginger.

I got back home and turned around and went to Alaska a few days later. Same story, different place. I came home and promptly flew to New York for work. I had an incredible time! I was being very successful at distracting myself. I was happy!

And then work started, I got pregnant again and had the baby - Jack . He turns two today!

I haven't stopped running.

This post was inspired by the Loose Bloggers Consortium, a small and feisty(!) global community. We write weekly on a common topic (Solitude, this week) and post responses - all of us together, simultaneously, from all over the world. (Lovely!) Please visit Anu, Ashok, Conrad, gaelikaa, Grannymar, Judy, Magpie 11, Maria and Ramana for other wonderful posts.