That's a mixed metaphor, I realize. Maybe it's the result of reading too much Shakespeare as I study him and Romeo and Juliet with my students. I needed to get on and vent as I navigate through so many ups and downs in the rollercoaster that is currently my life.
First, the ups. It looks like Barbara has approved me for move-in in her BEAUTIFUL, HOMEY, and HISTORIC apartments this May. Perfect timing for some more debt repayment-- in fact, I just paid off the second of my five original credit cards yesterday, which is another bright spot.
Teaching is also still going gloriously. I had some movement in my only trouble spot of seventh period, with most of my major problems getting moved out, but my most major one getting reshifted back soon after I was getting too comfortable. With the relocation of some came some new replacement problems, too, but we're trudging along. In fact, on Friday, I had a major breakthrough in front of my BTSA coordinator who was there to observe.
I decided to risk looking a little unprofessional by asking them to start the day off discussing the famous balcony scene by writing down as many pick-up lines, bad or good, in their journals. Then we shared and giggled over them before I pointed out that if they're looking for help in the love department, Shakespeare is a great place to look. I showed them a film clip of the pick-up line Romeo had given Juliet the night before in their reading and then made them look more carefully at the language, at which point many of them actually genuinely yelled out, "Dang! He's GOOD!" I nodded enthusiastically and begged for more, saying, "So, what's the verdict, ladies? Is he smooth?" at which point many of them shyly cocked their heads and crooned, "Yes." At which point all of the boys sat up to listen to our analysis of the metaphors that made his wooing so successful.
Best moment of all came with my challenge student early on and again at the end of the period. I had had my biggest meltdown of the year the day before with him and had warned my BTSA mentor that things might very well go very bad with him that day. When they were writing, he got really quiet and as I was walking around, he asked me if I wanted to read what he had written. Instead of something cheesy like the "Are you Jamaican? Cuz you Jaimaican me crazy" model I had given them, he had written a very sweet poem. When the students started sharing, I encouraged him to share his and told the students he had something REALLY good, so he acted embarrassed, but didn't protest when Ruben asked him if he could read it. And the kids were amazed and oohed and ahhed, my BTSA coordinator raised her eyebrow, and I wanted to cry, but I called him a regular Romeo instead so that when the girls said the Romeo in the film was cute, he said, "Thanks!" accepting my nickname.
And when he left, he looked me in the eye and said, "Thanks, Ms. G. Have a nice weekend." Magic.
And this is why when Sal told me I needed to apply to teach with him in Fullerton, I sobbed. Santa Ana is riffing 650 teachers and I'm losing sleep and too many tears over the situation. Apparently, a long history of irresponsibility in the district office is trainwrecking with Swarzenegger's educational budget cuts and our current economic mess in the entire country. Worst of all, as a teacher in a school that is looked on by all as the second-best in the district even though it's only in its first year of running, the likelihood of my displacement as a first-year teacher is all the more likely. I think I'll have a job, but in a place that may be very different from the home I have grown to love so dearly here. I woke up on Sunday and my first words to Katherine as I stumbled in for some coffee were, "I am so mad at George W. Bush." When she pressed me about it later, I vented about how upset I am that there seems to be absolutely no accountability for how fucked I am due to forces entirely beyond my control.
I'm hoping things will work out for the best. Mr. Rankin was clearly talking directly to me when he said he understood that people were approaching some of us to warn us to find a position elsewhere as soon as possible and tried to reassure us that they knew as little as he did before telling us so genuinely that he would do everything he could to make sure the faculty he loves working with here is able to remain intact next year. I do hope so... I don't know if my heart can take the end of this dream...
Monday, March 03, 2008
Saturday, February 09, 2008
Sunday, January 20, 2008
A New Place on Stueckle Avenue
Well, after years of angst living with parents and Auntie K, it's finally almost time to be an adult, on my own again (glory be!). I've found the PERFECT place. Jennifer knows a woman who restores Craftsman-style buildings in a historic neighborhood in Anaheim for rental. Here's the long list of benefits, with only a few hang-ups:
--Biggest selling point: the charm of being in a building with HISTORY-- Barbara strips all the paint off the wood fixtures so the original beauty of the dark wood shows through, there are delightful built-ins throughout for storage, and charming Craftsman-style windows in a sunny front room. Beautiful wood floors, too!
--Affordable-- Have to make it an issue in my current financial state of debt: cheaper than anything I've found in my months of searching, even the studios, yet it's a one-bedroom. As my pay raises (which is a fact I can't count on this year, if district rumors are correct), I'll have some breathing room to start saving to possibly buy my own place after a few years. In fact, her rental costs as little as the rentals I was dreaming of in Portland and Seattle when I thought they seemed so much more affordable than D.C. and California...
--Space-- The front rooms in these units feel GIGANTIC: They're essentially split into two large rooms, so you can use the front room for a TV and couch and the back room for a study/music room; I think I'm even going to convince my mom to let me move my piano in so I can start using music therapy to get me through the harder teaching days and brush up on my old skills that have been neglected... Barbara also gives us a large two-car garage out back so I can store my car safely and use half the space to store things I'm not using everyday.
--Building-- The building is painted a wonderful olive green with ORANGE window accents and it is big enough to be a community, but not so big you feel like a number-- eight units.
--Location--It's around the corner from Obama headquarters in Orange County, so I'll be walking to do my volunteer time every Saturday... and throughout the week once he wins this Primary and I'm free for the summer (it WILL happen, Nevada and New Hampshire be damned...). I could also walk to see Jennifer, too. Still further from work than I'd like to be, but closer to the freeway than K's and one exit closer on that freeway.
So...drumroll please? Here are the shots Barbara sent me this morning. Projected move-in date: A month and some change while restoration efforts are finished up. I told her I'd be willing to wait until the summer or fall for a spot, because she's working on a few places, but I think there's a good chance she's going to give me a shot when her next place is completed.
--Biggest selling point: the charm of being in a building with HISTORY-- Barbara strips all the paint off the wood fixtures so the original beauty of the dark wood shows through, there are delightful built-ins throughout for storage, and charming Craftsman-style windows in a sunny front room. Beautiful wood floors, too!
--Affordable-- Have to make it an issue in my current financial state of debt: cheaper than anything I've found in my months of searching, even the studios, yet it's a one-bedroom. As my pay raises (which is a fact I can't count on this year, if district rumors are correct), I'll have some breathing room to start saving to possibly buy my own place after a few years. In fact, her rental costs as little as the rentals I was dreaming of in Portland and Seattle when I thought they seemed so much more affordable than D.C. and California...
--Space-- The front rooms in these units feel GIGANTIC: They're essentially split into two large rooms, so you can use the front room for a TV and couch and the back room for a study/music room; I think I'm even going to convince my mom to let me move my piano in so I can start using music therapy to get me through the harder teaching days and brush up on my old skills that have been neglected... Barbara also gives us a large two-car garage out back so I can store my car safely and use half the space to store things I'm not using everyday.
--Building-- The building is painted a wonderful olive green with ORANGE window accents and it is big enough to be a community, but not so big you feel like a number-- eight units.
--Location--It's around the corner from Obama headquarters in Orange County, so I'll be walking to do my volunteer time every Saturday... and throughout the week once he wins this Primary and I'm free for the summer (it WILL happen, Nevada and New Hampshire be damned...). I could also walk to see Jennifer, too. Still further from work than I'd like to be, but closer to the freeway than K's and one exit closer on that freeway.
So...drumroll please? Here are the shots Barbara sent me this morning. Projected move-in date: A month and some change while restoration efforts are finished up. I told her I'd be willing to wait until the summer or fall for a spot, because she's working on a few places, but I think there's a good chance she's going to give me a shot when her next place is completed.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Writers' Strike
Me [noticing a look of thoughtful struggle on Mike's face as students worked on campaign commercials for or against Odysseus as president]: Can I help you brainstorm some ideas, Mike?
Mike: Nah... I'm just respecting the writers' strike.
That's what I get for starting class by showing a short clip from Jon Stewart's Daily Show as a reminder of yesterday's discussion of persuasive techniques. I think I've created current event/media comedy monsters...
Mike: Nah... I'm just respecting the writers' strike.
That's what I get for starting class by showing a short clip from Jon Stewart's Daily Show as a reminder of yesterday's discussion of persuasive techniques. I think I've created current event/media comedy monsters...
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Mysterious Subscriptions
Dear Secret Magazine Purchaser,
Unfortunately I didn't realize that I had a subscription to Newsweek until it was expired and they were begging me to re-enlist, but a subscription to a MUSIC magazine I used to buy of my own freewill, Paste, has me wondering if this is a very thoughtful and perfect Christmas gift, like the workers at Carl's Jr. down the street who know me so well now that they wink and nod me away from the cash register to pursue my heart's desire when I come to pay $1.28 for my addictive Diet Coke refill. After scouring the magazine for any clue, all I can gather is that it doesn't expire until next January, so it looks like I'll be able to enjoy the mysterious gift before it expires this time...
But who are you, dear secret magazine purchaser? Step up and take credit so I can thank you for monthly articles about my favorite artists and a choice sampler CD... Katherine smiled and suggested an old ex, but somehow I don't see the shortlist of those men thinking of something like this...
Gratefully yours,
Ever the Music (only thing I love more than) Diet Coke fanatic
Unfortunately I didn't realize that I had a subscription to Newsweek until it was expired and they were begging me to re-enlist, but a subscription to a MUSIC magazine I used to buy of my own freewill, Paste, has me wondering if this is a very thoughtful and perfect Christmas gift, like the workers at Carl's Jr. down the street who know me so well now that they wink and nod me away from the cash register to pursue my heart's desire when I come to pay $1.28 for my addictive Diet Coke refill. After scouring the magazine for any clue, all I can gather is that it doesn't expire until next January, so it looks like I'll be able to enjoy the mysterious gift before it expires this time...
But who are you, dear secret magazine purchaser? Step up and take credit so I can thank you for monthly articles about my favorite artists and a choice sampler CD... Katherine smiled and suggested an old ex, but somehow I don't see the shortlist of those men thinking of something like this...
Gratefully yours,
Ever the Music (only thing I love more than) Diet Coke fanatic
Friday, January 04, 2008
Call Me Overardent...
I taste victory...Glad I dragged Tigist, a dear ex-student from JDS, to LA Obama headquarters to watch the victory of a 7% lead over Edwards and Clinton (in third!) in Iowa... Saturday will find me learning how to lead precinct calls in Anaheim...
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Medicating with Media
A slight case of the winter blues and an ever-shifting sense of acceptance/dissatisfaction with family situations sent me spending all of my money leftover after buying Christmas presents on every film that struck my fancy. So, here's my holiday media countdown of favorites:
1) The Extras Christmas special--Of course, my favorite was also the only free item. Reminded me that Maggie deserved the honor I gave her when I named my new iPod after her. And thank the constellations of comedians for Ricky Gervais...and Stephen Merchant getting on his groove to the tune of his mobile phone with his workmates, which gave me just the gutlaugh I was needing when I sat down to it first thing after coming home from attempting to connect with family on Christmas day.
2) The Kiterunner-- Just found out about the big controversy surrounding the producers and the child actor who was hired to play Hassan, but luckily (or not?), I saw the film before knowledge of the scandal could tarnish my viewing of this film adaptation of a book that has made me cry like no other book before or since I first read it years ago.
3) Atonement-- Another film adaptation of a book I enjoyed quite a while ago. James McAvoy captures the fragile disillusionment of war and imprisonment as I can only imagine it must look.
4) I'm Not There--Already raved about this homage to Dylan in my Thanksgiving post... yes, I'm counting Thanksgiving as the beginning of my holiday viewings...
5) Across the Universe-- Another homage to musical greats, this time the Beatles. Clearly made by music fans who have managed to crawl inside the Beatles world and create a storied country from within.
6) Margot at the Wedding-- I found I related to both Margot AND her sister, but a bit horrified to find that I more often identified with Margot than I'd like.
7) The Savages-- These are popping up in pairs, I'm realizing-- this completes the pair of brutal humanity films along with Margot. As I told my mom when she asked me what the point of a film like this is after I had convinced her to movie-hop into viewing it, "It's to remind us that sometimes life just sucks, and that's all there is to it." I think trying to decide what to do with a loved one dealing with mental deterioration struck a little too close to home for us... which is exactly why we needed to see it.
8) Sweeny Todd-- I loved watching Johnny Depp on a silver screen as always, and the boy can sing, but this had more value due to surrounding circumstances than the film itself: toked with my little brother in a car in the mall outside the theater to enhance the viewing experience like you'd expect from any... freakin' teenager. And I don't regret it for a minute, though my parents, religion, and the law would probably ask me to rethink things...
And music? Well, my monthly e-music subscription came in today, so I bought the Hem Christmas tracks, the Kate Bush song featured on the Extras special, completed my Gillian Welch collection so that I now have everything she has out, did the same with Cass McCombs who I've been revisiting for the first time in a while since I started listening to him after seeing him in concert alongside some dreckful emo bands years ago, a new Jolie Holland aficionado named Eilen Jewell, a new JayMay album, a Richard Buckner album, and some random tracks by Mendoza Line and Okkervil River.
Can we say Merry Consumption? I prefer to call it Medicating with Media...
1) The Extras Christmas special--Of course, my favorite was also the only free item. Reminded me that Maggie deserved the honor I gave her when I named my new iPod after her. And thank the constellations of comedians for Ricky Gervais...and Stephen Merchant getting on his groove to the tune of his mobile phone with his workmates, which gave me just the gutlaugh I was needing when I sat down to it first thing after coming home from attempting to connect with family on Christmas day.
2) The Kiterunner-- Just found out about the big controversy surrounding the producers and the child actor who was hired to play Hassan, but luckily (or not?), I saw the film before knowledge of the scandal could tarnish my viewing of this film adaptation of a book that has made me cry like no other book before or since I first read it years ago.
3) Atonement-- Another film adaptation of a book I enjoyed quite a while ago. James McAvoy captures the fragile disillusionment of war and imprisonment as I can only imagine it must look.
4) I'm Not There--Already raved about this homage to Dylan in my Thanksgiving post... yes, I'm counting Thanksgiving as the beginning of my holiday viewings...
5) Across the Universe-- Another homage to musical greats, this time the Beatles. Clearly made by music fans who have managed to crawl inside the Beatles world and create a storied country from within.
6) Margot at the Wedding-- I found I related to both Margot AND her sister, but a bit horrified to find that I more often identified with Margot than I'd like.
7) The Savages-- These are popping up in pairs, I'm realizing-- this completes the pair of brutal humanity films along with Margot. As I told my mom when she asked me what the point of a film like this is after I had convinced her to movie-hop into viewing it, "It's to remind us that sometimes life just sucks, and that's all there is to it." I think trying to decide what to do with a loved one dealing with mental deterioration struck a little too close to home for us... which is exactly why we needed to see it.
8) Sweeny Todd-- I loved watching Johnny Depp on a silver screen as always, and the boy can sing, but this had more value due to surrounding circumstances than the film itself: toked with my little brother in a car in the mall outside the theater to enhance the viewing experience like you'd expect from any... freakin' teenager. And I don't regret it for a minute, though my parents, religion, and the law would probably ask me to rethink things...
And music? Well, my monthly e-music subscription came in today, so I bought the Hem Christmas tracks, the Kate Bush song featured on the Extras special, completed my Gillian Welch collection so that I now have everything she has out, did the same with Cass McCombs who I've been revisiting for the first time in a while since I started listening to him after seeing him in concert alongside some dreckful emo bands years ago, a new Jolie Holland aficionado named Eilen Jewell, a new JayMay album, a Richard Buckner album, and some random tracks by Mendoza Line and Okkervil River.
Can we say Merry Consumption? I prefer to call it Medicating with Media...
Thursday, December 06, 2007
Student Moments to Remember
I was thinking today that I need to start writing down some of the brilliant moments I'm having in the classroom.
First thing happened a few weeks ago. I make some cheesy joke like the ones I'm always making, probably something about me being a big English dork. Joey P. chuckles at my nerdiness, looks up at me, and says, "Ms. G., do you ever watch The Office?" I have never been so flattered in my life. I pretend to be offended and ask, "I love it, but WHY? Are you saying my humor reminds you of Michael Scott or something?" As he started to react defensively, I laughed and said, "I'm just kidding! I'm SO thrilled you asked me that. Even if I DO remind you of Michael himself, no one could ever compliment me any better than by saying I remind them in any way of that show..."
Second thing happened last night. I had to go to BTSA, or SHITSA as my English department chair tells me her daughter calls it, the new teacher induction program of redundancy that California makes new teachers attend for four hours every other week. We were focusing on cultural/gender/religious/racial bias with the 200 nameless other new district teachers in some elementary school's crummy auditorium. After reading some cheesy Chicken Soup for the Soul stories about teachers who looked beyond the labels others place on their students, they told us we needed to start opening up and sharing our own feelings. They had four corners labeled accordingly:
1) Gender/Sex/Sexual Orientation
2) Race/Ethnicity/Culture
3) Class/Socioeconmic Status/Level of Education
4) Religion/Morality
We were told we would be asked questions and have to make one of the four choices. When we arrived in the corner, we were asked to talk to others around us who made the same decision about why we made that choice. You know, forcing us to talk about the main things people usually avoid in dinner conversation... Sound like an episode of The Office yet? I immediately wanted to describe the scenario to Joey and his class the next day to muster some empathy for my pain.
First question: Which of the four areas do you like to talk about the most?
I went to Class/Socioeconomic status/Level of Education because frankly, I'm tired of talking about gender as a girl who used to be a diehard feminist; I definitely didn't want to mingle with the diehard Christian evangelists from the Orange Curtain; and I didn't really want to be the white girl to say condescendingly that she LOVES racial diversity, even if I do. Thinking about the upcoming elections, I decided class issues are the biggest concerns I feel to be facing our nation and the biggest control factor for student approaches/attitudes toward learning based on a book I read last year, the name of which escapes me right now. Of course it didn't occur to me that a room full of teachers, at our salary, would be there because they like to talk about status and how much they can earn. WTF? I mustered my strength to keep a fake smile on my face as I listened to the superficial kids who grew up in Huntington Beach talk about how hard it is for them to understand the lack of motivation for upward mobility among our student population.
Next question: Which of the four areas influenced your home life growing up most as a child and how did it help/harm you? I thought about going to gender when I thought about how my mom used to make me feel like there were just certain things she felt my brothers could be trusted to do that I couldn't, like early driving and roadtrips for high school graduation, but I decided I couldn't say my parents were very deeply sexist, especially given the role reversal of typical gender roles I see in my family and among my siblings, since Mom supports Dad and I'm the only one as an only girl with a college education and a job that keeps me afloat (albeit only barely) among myself and my two brothers.
Third question: Which of the four areas are you least willing to change about yourself and why? Didn't want to hear what the homophobes had to say in gender/sex/sexuality, so I stayed where I was. Then a woman comes up to me and tells me I'm her son's teacher. And I don't know what to say, because I don't know WHY she's in this corner-- because she loves her religion, like most probably were, or because, like me, she's tired of people trying to convert her to their religious convictions and because my humanist principles are something I hope I will never waver from upholding. I tried to avoid the conversation as long as I could, chatting about the beautiful milagro necklace she had on (milagros, as in miracles that devout Catholics wear on rosaries) from her latest trip to Mexico City, talking about how impressed I am with Max, etc.
Finally, she asked, "So, why did YOU choose this? I myself am here probably for reasons most aren't. You see, I'm a socialist, even I'd say a Communist, and although I believe in God, I just don't understand the passion that people have about joining a congregation and going regularly." HUGE sigh of relief and instant recall of my impulse to comment on Max's Che Guevarra patch on his backpack the day before, which I restrained, not wanting to appear to be the teacher who tries too hard to be cool. Also an instant supercharge of energy and understanding of why I've liked the kid from the first day I met him. Yea-- more kindred spirits...
First thing happened a few weeks ago. I make some cheesy joke like the ones I'm always making, probably something about me being a big English dork. Joey P. chuckles at my nerdiness, looks up at me, and says, "Ms. G., do you ever watch The Office?" I have never been so flattered in my life. I pretend to be offended and ask, "I love it, but WHY? Are you saying my humor reminds you of Michael Scott or something?" As he started to react defensively, I laughed and said, "I'm just kidding! I'm SO thrilled you asked me that. Even if I DO remind you of Michael himself, no one could ever compliment me any better than by saying I remind them in any way of that show..."
Second thing happened last night. I had to go to BTSA, or SHITSA as my English department chair tells me her daughter calls it, the new teacher induction program of redundancy that California makes new teachers attend for four hours every other week. We were focusing on cultural/gender/religious/racial bias with the 200 nameless other new district teachers in some elementary school's crummy auditorium. After reading some cheesy Chicken Soup for the Soul stories about teachers who looked beyond the labels others place on their students, they told us we needed to start opening up and sharing our own feelings. They had four corners labeled accordingly:
1) Gender/Sex/Sexual Orientation
2) Race/Ethnicity/Culture
3) Class/Socioeconmic Status/Level of Education
4) Religion/Morality
We were told we would be asked questions and have to make one of the four choices. When we arrived in the corner, we were asked to talk to others around us who made the same decision about why we made that choice. You know, forcing us to talk about the main things people usually avoid in dinner conversation... Sound like an episode of The Office yet? I immediately wanted to describe the scenario to Joey and his class the next day to muster some empathy for my pain.
First question: Which of the four areas do you like to talk about the most?
I went to Class/Socioeconomic status/Level of Education because frankly, I'm tired of talking about gender as a girl who used to be a diehard feminist; I definitely didn't want to mingle with the diehard Christian evangelists from the Orange Curtain; and I didn't really want to be the white girl to say condescendingly that she LOVES racial diversity, even if I do. Thinking about the upcoming elections, I decided class issues are the biggest concerns I feel to be facing our nation and the biggest control factor for student approaches/attitudes toward learning based on a book I read last year, the name of which escapes me right now. Of course it didn't occur to me that a room full of teachers, at our salary, would be there because they like to talk about status and how much they can earn. WTF? I mustered my strength to keep a fake smile on my face as I listened to the superficial kids who grew up in Huntington Beach talk about how hard it is for them to understand the lack of motivation for upward mobility among our student population.
Next question: Which of the four areas influenced your home life growing up most as a child and how did it help/harm you? I thought about going to gender when I thought about how my mom used to make me feel like there were just certain things she felt my brothers could be trusted to do that I couldn't, like early driving and roadtrips for high school graduation, but I decided I couldn't say my parents were very deeply sexist, especially given the role reversal of typical gender roles I see in my family and among my siblings, since Mom supports Dad and I'm the only one as an only girl with a college education and a job that keeps me afloat (albeit only barely) among myself and my two brothers.
Third question: Which of the four areas are you least willing to change about yourself and why? Didn't want to hear what the homophobes had to say in gender/sex/sexuality, so I stayed where I was. Then a woman comes up to me and tells me I'm her son's teacher. And I don't know what to say, because I don't know WHY she's in this corner-- because she loves her religion, like most probably were, or because, like me, she's tired of people trying to convert her to their religious convictions and because my humanist principles are something I hope I will never waver from upholding. I tried to avoid the conversation as long as I could, chatting about the beautiful milagro necklace she had on (milagros, as in miracles that devout Catholics wear on rosaries) from her latest trip to Mexico City, talking about how impressed I am with Max, etc.
Finally, she asked, "So, why did YOU choose this? I myself am here probably for reasons most aren't. You see, I'm a socialist, even I'd say a Communist, and although I believe in God, I just don't understand the passion that people have about joining a congregation and going regularly." HUGE sigh of relief and instant recall of my impulse to comment on Max's Che Guevarra patch on his backpack the day before, which I restrained, not wanting to appear to be the teacher who tries too hard to be cool. Also an instant supercharge of energy and understanding of why I've liked the kid from the first day I met him. Yea-- more kindred spirits...
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Belated Thanksgivings
After Forty Years of Marriage, She Tries A New Recipe For Hamburger Hot Dish by Leo Dangel
"How did you like it?" she asked.
"It's all right," he said.
"This is the third time I cooked it this way. Why can't you ever say if you like something?"
"Well if I didn't like it, I wouldn't eat it," he said.
"You never can say anything I cook tastes good."
"I don't know why all the time you think I have to say it's good. I eat it, don't I?"
"I don't think you have to say all the time it's good, but once in awhile you could say you like it."
"It's all right," he said.
Well, I realized I needed to count my many blessings after venting to Amy and James about my Thanksgiving frustrations with an ever-imperfect family. After all, in addition to the usual family holiday madness, we DO have some clinical insanity to deal with, and as I told James, it was nearly heartbreaking to watch Jon so heavily medicated that it was all he could do to munch slowly on his dinner, let alone hold any kind of conversation. Then there was Grandma, who not having attended church herself since she was put in rehab for overusing anti-depressants, first offended my practically atheist uncle by asking him to pray and then passed over her daughter, my mom, to the only other man, my father whom she despises, to make sure that the representative patriarch was praying for the sins of our heathen family, which could only chuckle nervously at the awkwardness. Still reeling from the variety of feelings that invoked, I reached over for a spoonful of Katherine's sweet potato pudding, deciding that, on Thanksgiving and after losing 26 pounds, it would probably be okay to cheat a little. My dad tut-tutted me, at which point I barked perhaps a bit overreactively, worried (irrationally) that my lifelong rebellion against my parents' constant pressure about my weight would revisit and somehow send me on a reversal landslide back to my original weight if he went any further. In the end, though, I've decided that with a few exceptions, Thanksgiving never is truly Thanksgiving in ANY family without a little family dysfunction, let alone an officially dysfunctional one like ours. And as I was just writing the other day, I AM proud of us all for managing to figure out how to cope with it better than we used to...
But Bob Dylan saved the day for me. After Katherine gathered her ex-husband and chicks to go to the beach house, and once my dad and Matt convinced Jon it was time for him to go back to his new home so they could hightail it home to Murrieta, my mom and I settled in on the couch in my uncle's empty house to watch No Direction Home, the most recent Dylan documentary. I had been trying to convince my mom since the day before to trek out to Irvine to see the new film inspired by Dylan's music and life, I'm Not There, so I figured it would help her see how interesting another movie about his life would be. When Joan Baez came on, her interest was officially piqued and we got out the paper to find the showtime. I couldn't help chuckling about my mom and her former pretentions to be a hippie when the film made Joan's ardent self-belief look a little silly, but I was mostly proud of us for being so cool as to give the holiday to Grand Master Dylan.
And I am grateful for more than Dylan this year. Even the holiday was an improvement on last year's ridiculous, maudlin display when I rushed through an airport with tears streaming down my face only to learn I'd missed a flight I had lied to everyone to try to catch to see someone who really didn't want to see me, which was followed by an awkwardly silent dinner with Mom as I choked back tears she didn't want to hear about and my brothers and Dad boycotted the meal altogether upstairs, locked in their rooms.
I am grateful for a job that I love, where I work with kids who GET me and need me and laugh with me. I am grateful that it also happens to be the first job that is paying enough for me to live reasonably comfortable, even despite all of the money that is funneled into paying off last year's foolhardy debts and a new car, Sophie, who I also love and appreciate dearly. I am grateful for a year of more great musical feasts thanks to monthly music subscriptions and even finally a renewed concert schedule that went on hiatus for far too long.
Most of all, though, of course, I am grateful for loved ones that make life worth living with their conversation, laughter, shared experiences, and patience.
The Orange by Wendy Cope
At lunchtime I bought a huge orange
The size of it made us all laugh.
I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave—
They got quarters and I had a half.
And that orange it made me so happy,
As ordinary things often do
Just lately. The shopping. A walk in the park
This is peace and contentment. It’s new.
The rest of the day was quite easy.
I did all my jobs on my list
And enjoyed them and had some time over.
I love you. I’m glad I exist.
"How did you like it?" she asked.
"It's all right," he said.
"This is the third time I cooked it this way. Why can't you ever say if you like something?"
"Well if I didn't like it, I wouldn't eat it," he said.
"You never can say anything I cook tastes good."
"I don't know why all the time you think I have to say it's good. I eat it, don't I?"
"I don't think you have to say all the time it's good, but once in awhile you could say you like it."
"It's all right," he said.
Well, I realized I needed to count my many blessings after venting to Amy and James about my Thanksgiving frustrations with an ever-imperfect family. After all, in addition to the usual family holiday madness, we DO have some clinical insanity to deal with, and as I told James, it was nearly heartbreaking to watch Jon so heavily medicated that it was all he could do to munch slowly on his dinner, let alone hold any kind of conversation. Then there was Grandma, who not having attended church herself since she was put in rehab for overusing anti-depressants, first offended my practically atheist uncle by asking him to pray and then passed over her daughter, my mom, to the only other man, my father whom she despises, to make sure that the representative patriarch was praying for the sins of our heathen family, which could only chuckle nervously at the awkwardness. Still reeling from the variety of feelings that invoked, I reached over for a spoonful of Katherine's sweet potato pudding, deciding that, on Thanksgiving and after losing 26 pounds, it would probably be okay to cheat a little. My dad tut-tutted me, at which point I barked perhaps a bit overreactively, worried (irrationally) that my lifelong rebellion against my parents' constant pressure about my weight would revisit and somehow send me on a reversal landslide back to my original weight if he went any further. In the end, though, I've decided that with a few exceptions, Thanksgiving never is truly Thanksgiving in ANY family without a little family dysfunction, let alone an officially dysfunctional one like ours. And as I was just writing the other day, I AM proud of us all for managing to figure out how to cope with it better than we used to...
But Bob Dylan saved the day for me. After Katherine gathered her ex-husband and chicks to go to the beach house, and once my dad and Matt convinced Jon it was time for him to go back to his new home so they could hightail it home to Murrieta, my mom and I settled in on the couch in my uncle's empty house to watch No Direction Home, the most recent Dylan documentary. I had been trying to convince my mom since the day before to trek out to Irvine to see the new film inspired by Dylan's music and life, I'm Not There, so I figured it would help her see how interesting another movie about his life would be. When Joan Baez came on, her interest was officially piqued and we got out the paper to find the showtime. I couldn't help chuckling about my mom and her former pretentions to be a hippie when the film made Joan's ardent self-belief look a little silly, but I was mostly proud of us for being so cool as to give the holiday to Grand Master Dylan.
And I am grateful for more than Dylan this year. Even the holiday was an improvement on last year's ridiculous, maudlin display when I rushed through an airport with tears streaming down my face only to learn I'd missed a flight I had lied to everyone to try to catch to see someone who really didn't want to see me, which was followed by an awkwardly silent dinner with Mom as I choked back tears she didn't want to hear about and my brothers and Dad boycotted the meal altogether upstairs, locked in their rooms.
I am grateful for a job that I love, where I work with kids who GET me and need me and laugh with me. I am grateful that it also happens to be the first job that is paying enough for me to live reasonably comfortable, even despite all of the money that is funneled into paying off last year's foolhardy debts and a new car, Sophie, who I also love and appreciate dearly. I am grateful for a year of more great musical feasts thanks to monthly music subscriptions and even finally a renewed concert schedule that went on hiatus for far too long.
Most of all, though, of course, I am grateful for loved ones that make life worth living with their conversation, laughter, shared experiences, and patience.
The Orange by Wendy Cope
At lunchtime I bought a huge orange
The size of it made us all laugh.
I peeled it and shared it with Robert and Dave—
They got quarters and I had a half.
And that orange it made me so happy,
As ordinary things often do
Just lately. The shopping. A walk in the park
This is peace and contentment. It’s new.
The rest of the day was quite easy.
I did all my jobs on my list
And enjoyed them and had some time over.
I love you. I’m glad I exist.
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Taking Time for Myself
I was supposed to run another OCSL tournament this weekend since Sal, the president who got me my job at Godinez and position as OCSL vice president was out of town for the second tournament of the season, but I called Steve on Thursday, my co-vice president and begged for a half-day reprieve so I could go with Mom to visit Jon at his halfway home in Southeast Los Angeles.
I almost surrendered the time for myself and my family (after all, I woke up feeling more nervous than I expected about the prospect of visiting Jon) when Jeanna shoved me in the judges' room and seemed to indicate I was running it on my own. At first I started to call to cancel with Mom, but after I got the first round of ballots off, I realized that there was someone there capable of running it and decided to insist on taking the day that Steve had promised me.
I'm so glad I did. When Jon seemed unwilling to leave with us and uncommunicative, I started to worry as I watched him get understandably edgy when my mom started to tut at him, hoping to guilt him out for not spending time with us after we drove so far to be with him. I sensed he just needed some time to himself (I found out right before we left that my dad came out yesterday to take him to a car show all day long in Los Angeles), so I cut through Mom's stifling to calmly ask him without a sign of pressure in my voice if he thought he'd want to go out for dinner and/or a movie later on if my mom and I first went to kill some time together downtown Los Angeles.
I really needed to get home to grade, but in a split second, I decided my mom would enjoy time with me in town and I needed a break, too, plus I'd still get the brother time I had set out to get, without crowding him out. After getting a half-commitment from Jon, I talked my mom down from being practical and boring (she wanted to go home to get Grandma her groceries and didn't want to waste my gas, thinking Jon wouldn't ever end up wanting to spend time with us anyway). We headed to Westwood after a brief driving tour to satiate our long-held curiosity about the fashion district (somehow didn't seem worth the hassle of parking in the end). Refreshed by the morning victory weighing of -26 pounds, I stayed strong while drooling as I watched Mom eat a cookie ice cream sandwich from Diddy Reese's, compensating with a sugarless green iced tea. Then I lumped my previous reservations and swiped the debit card at Urban Outfitter's for the Charlie Brown Christmas tree I want to set up for the delight of myself and my students in my classroom before walking my mom to the Borders so she could use my teacher discount to buy a friend a Christmas gift...where I caved and finally bought Stephen Colbert's latest literary gem. I pulled out an old Fairmont Christmas present gift certificate and was surprised to find $15 still on it.
We finally made our way back to Jon around 3 and he was eager to come, apologizing and regretful when he found out what we had done without him. We consoled his self-recriminations by promising to drive him to the garment district in the coming weeks, and then headed to the El Monte outdoor shopping mall, which was a perfect example of these little neighborhoods in Southern California that sometimes feel like instant transports to different countries. We soaked up the discount shopping at La Casa Barata (which I at first translated for them as "Cheap House" before agreeing with Mom when she suggested "Discount Store" was a better translation) and other Latino swapmart-type clothing stores before heading to eat dinner, where I treated Mom and Jon since Mom and I both didn't have our cell phones and couldn't call to activate the credit card she had just received in the mail after losing her old one (yes, I blame HER for my absent-mindedness, though she is MUCH less willing to admit that she suffers from the malady).
Everything felt good, even though I have to admit I'm a little too tired today to appreciate how perfectly everything seemed to click. It's starting to dawn on me now, though still fuzzily, as I struggle to keep my eyes open after grading 10 essays while watching a bad movie with Katherine: I'm starting to learn how to draw appropriate boundaries with my work so it doesn't consume me altogether and so I can genuinely enjoy my family, which I am better appreciating in spite of, even because of, our many dysfunctions and differences. Seeing Jonny's new digs finally set my heart at rest, too, which before was relying too much on my sometimes defeatist mother's depictions: yes, the neighborhood doesn't feel as safe as the Stepford tract housing air of Murrieta and his apartment, shared with four other people, isn't as impeccably-designed as my Mom's house, but he's in an environment that has the structure he needs right now, where he can take classes and be with people who aren't going to make him feel so much like a burden or outsider. And Mom is so much more happy now that she isn't dealing with the unreasonable stress of trying to sleep through Jon's midnight rants and dismantling of the house; she doesn't snap when we confront our differences about religion and the role of love as we individually see it. Which brings me to my last source of gratitude tonight: I'm grateful for the love I can show through my teaching and coaching and through trying to help friends when they need it, but I was reminded tonight that my own life and blood needs me probably more than those other people and things...and I actually know how to help them probably better than I know how to teach or befriend, because I have known them since I breathed my first breath... I miss romantic love sometimes, but somehow tonight I'm feeling how much more important is my family's love.
I almost surrendered the time for myself and my family (after all, I woke up feeling more nervous than I expected about the prospect of visiting Jon) when Jeanna shoved me in the judges' room and seemed to indicate I was running it on my own. At first I started to call to cancel with Mom, but after I got the first round of ballots off, I realized that there was someone there capable of running it and decided to insist on taking the day that Steve had promised me.
I'm so glad I did. When Jon seemed unwilling to leave with us and uncommunicative, I started to worry as I watched him get understandably edgy when my mom started to tut at him, hoping to guilt him out for not spending time with us after we drove so far to be with him. I sensed he just needed some time to himself (I found out right before we left that my dad came out yesterday to take him to a car show all day long in Los Angeles), so I cut through Mom's stifling to calmly ask him without a sign of pressure in my voice if he thought he'd want to go out for dinner and/or a movie later on if my mom and I first went to kill some time together downtown Los Angeles.
I really needed to get home to grade, but in a split second, I decided my mom would enjoy time with me in town and I needed a break, too, plus I'd still get the brother time I had set out to get, without crowding him out. After getting a half-commitment from Jon, I talked my mom down from being practical and boring (she wanted to go home to get Grandma her groceries and didn't want to waste my gas, thinking Jon wouldn't ever end up wanting to spend time with us anyway). We headed to Westwood after a brief driving tour to satiate our long-held curiosity about the fashion district (somehow didn't seem worth the hassle of parking in the end). Refreshed by the morning victory weighing of -26 pounds, I stayed strong while drooling as I watched Mom eat a cookie ice cream sandwich from Diddy Reese's, compensating with a sugarless green iced tea. Then I lumped my previous reservations and swiped the debit card at Urban Outfitter's for the Charlie Brown Christmas tree I want to set up for the delight of myself and my students in my classroom before walking my mom to the Borders so she could use my teacher discount to buy a friend a Christmas gift...where I caved and finally bought Stephen Colbert's latest literary gem. I pulled out an old Fairmont Christmas present gift certificate and was surprised to find $15 still on it.
We finally made our way back to Jon around 3 and he was eager to come, apologizing and regretful when he found out what we had done without him. We consoled his self-recriminations by promising to drive him to the garment district in the coming weeks, and then headed to the El Monte outdoor shopping mall, which was a perfect example of these little neighborhoods in Southern California that sometimes feel like instant transports to different countries. We soaked up the discount shopping at La Casa Barata (which I at first translated for them as "Cheap House" before agreeing with Mom when she suggested "Discount Store" was a better translation) and other Latino swapmart-type clothing stores before heading to eat dinner, where I treated Mom and Jon since Mom and I both didn't have our cell phones and couldn't call to activate the credit card she had just received in the mail after losing her old one (yes, I blame HER for my absent-mindedness, though she is MUCH less willing to admit that she suffers from the malady).
Everything felt good, even though I have to admit I'm a little too tired today to appreciate how perfectly everything seemed to click. It's starting to dawn on me now, though still fuzzily, as I struggle to keep my eyes open after grading 10 essays while watching a bad movie with Katherine: I'm starting to learn how to draw appropriate boundaries with my work so it doesn't consume me altogether and so I can genuinely enjoy my family, which I am better appreciating in spite of, even because of, our many dysfunctions and differences. Seeing Jonny's new digs finally set my heart at rest, too, which before was relying too much on my sometimes defeatist mother's depictions: yes, the neighborhood doesn't feel as safe as the Stepford tract housing air of Murrieta and his apartment, shared with four other people, isn't as impeccably-designed as my Mom's house, but he's in an environment that has the structure he needs right now, where he can take classes and be with people who aren't going to make him feel so much like a burden or outsider. And Mom is so much more happy now that she isn't dealing with the unreasonable stress of trying to sleep through Jon's midnight rants and dismantling of the house; she doesn't snap when we confront our differences about religion and the role of love as we individually see it. Which brings me to my last source of gratitude tonight: I'm grateful for the love I can show through my teaching and coaching and through trying to help friends when they need it, but I was reminded tonight that my own life and blood needs me probably more than those other people and things...and I actually know how to help them probably better than I know how to teach or befriend, because I have known them since I breathed my first breath... I miss romantic love sometimes, but somehow tonight I'm feeling how much more important is my family's love.
Monday, October 22, 2007
Valley of Ashes
I've felt odd, driving through the falling ashes and wishing the smell of fires in the air had more to do with the campfires I can't help thinking fondly of than the burning homes of displaced families that they actually represent, but part of me can't help appreciating the almost supernatural effect... Somehow it seems like something that only happens in L.A., belonging in a jaded movie script looking wryly at Hollywood's moral Satanists.
Yes, as you may or may not be able to see, I haven't quite escaped the clutches of the October blues that have haunted me since Chris, who would have turned 31 last Friday, died seven years ago. Unfortunately, I've finally realized that a motivating force for my clockwork depression at this time of year includes its inconvenient timing as the first six-week grading period of every school year, but I really thought I had kicked it this year as I celebrated the twenty-pound mark of my weight loss and laughed through the stress with students who can finally appreciate my sense of humor again. I even almost successfully convinced myself to be grateful that my brand new Sophie Rabbit got hit just after I finally had enough money to actually drive around with insurance again (don't ask...) rather than the disaster that would have ensued if old Gilbert the Golf had been nailed just months before, but I couldn't keep smiling when the bastardly insurance companies refused to grant me the deductible refund I deserve for the other fellow's fault in a collision where he tore out taking an unprotected left in front of me as I was all clear to accelerate through the intersection half a block forward so that I could enter the freeway there at a proper speed.
Anyway, my bitching session has now officially ended and, with that off my chest, it's time to go back to grading... My new full-time lover... I can hear my students groaning in disgust at THAT one...but I'll keep that bad joke to myself so as to remain in comedic graces on their stage.
Yes, as you may or may not be able to see, I haven't quite escaped the clutches of the October blues that have haunted me since Chris, who would have turned 31 last Friday, died seven years ago. Unfortunately, I've finally realized that a motivating force for my clockwork depression at this time of year includes its inconvenient timing as the first six-week grading period of every school year, but I really thought I had kicked it this year as I celebrated the twenty-pound mark of my weight loss and laughed through the stress with students who can finally appreciate my sense of humor again. I even almost successfully convinced myself to be grateful that my brand new Sophie Rabbit got hit just after I finally had enough money to actually drive around with insurance again (don't ask...) rather than the disaster that would have ensued if old Gilbert the Golf had been nailed just months before, but I couldn't keep smiling when the bastardly insurance companies refused to grant me the deductible refund I deserve for the other fellow's fault in a collision where he tore out taking an unprotected left in front of me as I was all clear to accelerate through the intersection half a block forward so that I could enter the freeway there at a proper speed.
Anyway, my bitching session has now officially ended and, with that off my chest, it's time to go back to grading... My new full-time lover... I can hear my students groaning in disgust at THAT one...but I'll keep that bad joke to myself so as to remain in comedic graces on their stage.
Thursday, September 06, 2007
My latest project
I'm exhausted from what has to be on record the most stimulating week of teaching in my life. Here's a snapshot of the latest thing keeping me from updating this as I should. Since my brilliant mom helped me to arrange the visit in conjunction with our class's reading of Elie Wiesel's Night, I will be delivering these introductory remarks in front of the entire school tomorrow during two different assemblies in our school theater. People in the area are welcome to come partake of this unique opportunity: 10-12 at Godinez High School in Santa Ana.
I’m going to keep my introductory remarks brief because time is short and I don’t want to sacrifice a second of our time with Mr. Dzieza this morning. We are truly so lucky to have this opportunity—an opportunity that will most likely not be available to your children, as Mr. Dzieza pointed out to me on the phone. For that, we would like to thank Mr. Dzieza from the bottom of our hearts.
Sol Dzieza was transported from his childhood home in Poland at the age of fourteen and survived six Nazi concentration camps before his liberation at the age of nineteen. He moved from Sweden to America in 1946, where he raised two sons. Mr. Dzieza was recently awarded the George Washington Honor Medal for his help in educating young children. As he speaks with you today, he carries on that important mission. We know that the precious gift he is giving in speaking to you today will affect you in the same way it affected his grandson, who wrote the following in a personal memoir published on the US Holocaust Memorial’s website:
I had always been aware that my grandfather was different from those of my friends, his halting accent, the numbers tattooed on his arm for example. But it wasn't until I was 13, when he thought I was ready, that I truly understood his story.
I thought I knew about the Holocaust. I knew the numbers of those killed: six million Jews; 200,000 Gypsies; hundreds of thousands who were disabled, homosexual, Jehovah's Witnesses, and so on.' I tried to comprehend the enormity by comparisons: three-quarters the population of New York, 260 times the population of my hometown, 266,666 times my 6th grade class. But they remained statistics. It wasn't until my grandfather's talks that these cold, neat, ledgers and columns grew faces, families, and lives.
I’m going to keep my introductory remarks brief because time is short and I don’t want to sacrifice a second of our time with Mr. Dzieza this morning. We are truly so lucky to have this opportunity—an opportunity that will most likely not be available to your children, as Mr. Dzieza pointed out to me on the phone. For that, we would like to thank Mr. Dzieza from the bottom of our hearts.
Sol Dzieza was transported from his childhood home in Poland at the age of fourteen and survived six Nazi concentration camps before his liberation at the age of nineteen. He moved from Sweden to America in 1946, where he raised two sons. Mr. Dzieza was recently awarded the George Washington Honor Medal for his help in educating young children. As he speaks with you today, he carries on that important mission. We know that the precious gift he is giving in speaking to you today will affect you in the same way it affected his grandson, who wrote the following in a personal memoir published on the US Holocaust Memorial’s website:
I had always been aware that my grandfather was different from those of my friends, his halting accent, the numbers tattooed on his arm for example. But it wasn't until I was 13, when he thought I was ready, that I truly understood his story.
I thought I knew about the Holocaust. I knew the numbers of those killed: six million Jews; 200,000 Gypsies; hundreds of thousands who were disabled, homosexual, Jehovah's Witnesses, and so on.' I tried to comprehend the enormity by comparisons: three-quarters the population of New York, 260 times the population of my hometown, 266,666 times my 6th grade class. But they remained statistics. It wasn't until my grandfather's talks that these cold, neat, ledgers and columns grew faces, families, and lives.
Monday, August 20, 2007
Before and After
Well, I am clearly WAY too hooked in by the Simpsons Movie advertising, because this is now my second post this summer dedicated to it. This comes courtesy Burger King this time. You download a photo of yourself and they animate you as you might appear in Springfield. I plan on using this as my new alter ego with my poor Godinez students this coming year. In fact, you can see me already running with the gimmick at the new blog for my class, http://ghardaenglish.blogspot.com. I have also saved images of the Simpsonized Nicole in front of Springfield Elementary School, inside the Springfield Nuclear Plant, on stage at a Krusty Show, and in Marge's kitchen for use in grammar Power Points where I will need silly sentences and images as examples for teaching students parts of speech, clauses, etc.
Weirdest of all, though: this image generator seems to actually be very sophisticated. With two different photos and the same exact settings, I got two very different creatures. The green-shirted gal comes from a more recent photo of myself. You can alter outfits and hairstyles, but the basic hair color and facial structure is not subject to alteration. That's right-- apparently the animated Nicole of this year is much hotter than the animated Nicole of last year, although I think I appreciate the wardrobe of last year's Nicole Simpson (D'oh!) more. The real-life Nicole has a brand new haircut and has lost 6.5 pounds in the past two weeks, so maybe that has something to do with it. Somehow I doubt it... Get a life, man, as Bart would say.
Another important improvement in my life, besides a new job and the beginnings of a new body is a new car. That's right: Gilbert the Golf finally went to his final resting place and I traded him in for a silver Sophie Rabbit. She's a beauty... most important, she has an iPod station in the center arm rest that charges her while Claire (de Lune) the iPod plays through the CD player. I didn't get to nab a snapshot of dinged up Gilbert or his melting engine before I traded him in, but I'll take a shot of Sophie when I get a chance.
Life is looking up; karma coming back my way... Thank heavens!
Sunday, August 05, 2007
1996 Fortune Cookie
"In telling of Watergate, textbooks blame Richard Nixon, as they should. But they go no deeper. Faced with this undeniable instance of governmental wrongdoing, they manage to retain their uniformly rosy view of government...As Richard Rubenstein has pointed out, 'the problem will not go away with the departure of Richard Nixon,' because it is structural, stemming from the vastly increased power of the federal executive bureaucracy...Since the structural problem in the government has not gone away, it is likely that students will again, in their adult lives, face an out-of-control federal executive pursuing criminal foreign and domestic policies" (Lies My Teacher Told Me, 229).
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Comrade Keller
"I had once believed that we were all masters of our fate-- that we could mould our lives into any form we pleased....I had overcome deafness and blindness sufficiently to be happy, and I supposed that anyone could come out victorious if he threw himself valiantly into life's struggle. But as I went more and more about the country I learned that I had spoken with assurance on a subject I knew little about. I forgot that I owed my success partly to the advantages of my birth and environment....Now, however, I learned that the power to rise in the world is not within the reach of everyone." --Helen Keller
For the past two days at speech camp, Sal has assigned my students to a coach who is headed to grad school next year. To my delight, while teaching them the basic components of limited preparation speaking events, he has been indoctrinating my kids with equal parts Marxism and Chicano pride. I was a little unnerved when, as he was explaining how educated and well-spoken his black civil rights law professor was, he stopped, looked at me, and said, "Dude was as white as you," but I restrained the urge to claim the Brown pride of being the (albeit disowned) daughter of an Indian father in order to avoid interrupting him from preaching the truth.
At first part of me worried that his radicalism might prove to be a bit jarring for my well-behaved ninth graders and another part worried that they were wandering too far from the training they needed in the event. But then I looked over at Kim, who had asked to write an original advocacy piece about Latino rights and had been denied the request by Sal with the claim that it was "too controversial" (only because we live, and will be judged by parents living, under the Orange Curtain), who was hanging on to Daniel's every word and sharing her frustrations that her own dad seemed to be ashamed of his own race in what she views as his obvious favoring of his "light-skinned" kids over his browner ones. And then I watched as Sebastian, my statistics nut, took the initiative to cross-check Daniel's argument that segregation still exists and can be documented most obviously in school demographics by searching online to find the percentage of "Hispanics" attending his last school (his findings: 94%). At that point, Aaron explained how he had seen the same thing proving true in his observation of the changing demographics of the passengers on the Fullerton-Santa Ana bus when they crossed the border into Santa Ana for the first time yesterday (I finally decided it's too much of a liability for me to be driving them home in an uninsured car, especially since my "check engine" light went off last Friday as I was fighting the traffic back to my aunt's and I won't have any money in the bank to check it out until the end of September when our first paychecks kick in). Mextli talked about how much her friend regretted being enrolled in the local private school, Mater Dei, feeling like one of the only non-white kids there. Rocio stayed quiet during the short time I observed, but I couldn't help recalling the story she told me last week about how her parents had managed to cross the border illegally or how difficult it had been for her to ask me for lunch money during the first week of camp and how hard it was for me to realize she still doesn't have access to the money she said she would now that I don't have anything left to give when I asked her why she wasn't eating with the other kids yesterday.
To make a long story short, in those brief two minutes, I decided Daniel was giving them the very education James Loewen advocates in the book I picked up to read over the weekend, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. I figured I was pretty edgy and progressive as a literature teacher who is always trying to open up the canon of selected works for reading, but I realized that I missed the boat just last year when I complained my way through teaching the play about Helen Keller, The Miracle Worker. Turns out that after the sister struggled to learn her table manners and show her gratitude to her teacher by spelling "T-E-A-C-H-E-R" into Anne Sullivan's hand, she later reclaimed her necessary wildness to advocate as a radical socialist when she gained a "vision" (har har-- ouch!) of the role that class was playing in the incidences of blindness in the country ("Men who were poor might be blinded in industrial accidents or by inadequate medical care; poor women who became prostitutes faced the additional danger of syphilitic blindness" (21)).
I realize I'm still unwillingly a contributing member to the system of oppression that keeps all of this madness in motion, especially now that I'm a federal employee, but I'm just feeling grateful today that I've broken free of the private school bubble, at least when it comes to the kids that I finally have the credentials to learn with.
For the past two days at speech camp, Sal has assigned my students to a coach who is headed to grad school next year. To my delight, while teaching them the basic components of limited preparation speaking events, he has been indoctrinating my kids with equal parts Marxism and Chicano pride. I was a little unnerved when, as he was explaining how educated and well-spoken his black civil rights law professor was, he stopped, looked at me, and said, "Dude was as white as you," but I restrained the urge to claim the Brown pride of being the (albeit disowned) daughter of an Indian father in order to avoid interrupting him from preaching the truth.
At first part of me worried that his radicalism might prove to be a bit jarring for my well-behaved ninth graders and another part worried that they were wandering too far from the training they needed in the event. But then I looked over at Kim, who had asked to write an original advocacy piece about Latino rights and had been denied the request by Sal with the claim that it was "too controversial" (only because we live, and will be judged by parents living, under the Orange Curtain), who was hanging on to Daniel's every word and sharing her frustrations that her own dad seemed to be ashamed of his own race in what she views as his obvious favoring of his "light-skinned" kids over his browner ones. And then I watched as Sebastian, my statistics nut, took the initiative to cross-check Daniel's argument that segregation still exists and can be documented most obviously in school demographics by searching online to find the percentage of "Hispanics" attending his last school (his findings: 94%). At that point, Aaron explained how he had seen the same thing proving true in his observation of the changing demographics of the passengers on the Fullerton-Santa Ana bus when they crossed the border into Santa Ana for the first time yesterday (I finally decided it's too much of a liability for me to be driving them home in an uninsured car, especially since my "check engine" light went off last Friday as I was fighting the traffic back to my aunt's and I won't have any money in the bank to check it out until the end of September when our first paychecks kick in). Mextli talked about how much her friend regretted being enrolled in the local private school, Mater Dei, feeling like one of the only non-white kids there. Rocio stayed quiet during the short time I observed, but I couldn't help recalling the story she told me last week about how her parents had managed to cross the border illegally or how difficult it had been for her to ask me for lunch money during the first week of camp and how hard it was for me to realize she still doesn't have access to the money she said she would now that I don't have anything left to give when I asked her why she wasn't eating with the other kids yesterday.
To make a long story short, in those brief two minutes, I decided Daniel was giving them the very education James Loewen advocates in the book I picked up to read over the weekend, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. I figured I was pretty edgy and progressive as a literature teacher who is always trying to open up the canon of selected works for reading, but I realized that I missed the boat just last year when I complained my way through teaching the play about Helen Keller, The Miracle Worker. Turns out that after the sister struggled to learn her table manners and show her gratitude to her teacher by spelling "T-E-A-C-H-E-R" into Anne Sullivan's hand, she later reclaimed her necessary wildness to advocate as a radical socialist when she gained a "vision" (har har-- ouch!) of the role that class was playing in the incidences of blindness in the country ("Men who were poor might be blinded in industrial accidents or by inadequate medical care; poor women who became prostitutes faced the additional danger of syphilitic blindness" (21)).
I realize I'm still unwillingly a contributing member to the system of oppression that keeps all of this madness in motion, especially now that I'm a federal employee, but I'm just feeling grateful today that I've broken free of the private school bubble, at least when it comes to the kids that I finally have the credentials to learn with.
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Timely Words
"Too often we honor swagger and bluster and wielders of force; too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of others... When you teach a man to hate and fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the policies he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies, to be met not with cooperation but with conquest; to be subjugated and mastered...We must admit in ourselves that our own children's future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge. Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land." --Robert F. Kennedy
Friday, July 20, 2007
Books not Bombs
I have had a fabulous two weeks of reading alongside working in Utah and helping Sal run the speech camp back here in California. Two books: Barack Obama's Dreams of My Father and a book co-written by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin, Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace...One School at a Time. Both books reinforced my most core belief system: secular humanism, or the belief that it may just be fine--actually possibly more miraculous and life-affirming-- if the closest thing to divinity we ever experience in this life or the next is the power of human compassion, here on Earth.
Obama's book was written long before he launched his political career, fresh out of law school, and documents his early life. He splits the book into three phases and labels them according to the four geographic centers where he grappled with his racial identity as the son of a black father and white mother: Origins (Hawaii and Indonesia), Chicago, and Kenya. In reading about his years spent between his undergraduate work at Occidental in California and law school helping with a community development social program in Chicago, I was a little nervous that his main goal was to paint a picture of his achievement of bringing religion and liberal social efforts into one by documenting his path to religious conversion. He did manage to achieve the former by taking advantage of the organization and humanitarian elements of the churches in this struggling Chicago neighborhood to help improve the lives of its struggling working-class inhabitants, but he demonstrates marvelous restraint from wearing his religion on his sleeve, managing to avoid alienating readers with ideological rhetoric while still affirming the power of faith in a general, non-specific sense. I was struck primarily by how his own background almost fated him to be the perfect messenger for this kind of balance, as I read about the influences of his Muslim biological father from Kenya, his Buddhist step-dad from Indonesia, his first Jewish supervisor urging him to work with the Christian churches to transform their focus Chicago neighborhood, and his humanist mother from Kansas.
I think the last seems to have had the most influence on him, though. Early in the book, he writes, "My mother's confidence in needlepoint virtues depended on a faith I didn't possess, a faith that she would refuse to describe as religious, that, in fact, her experience told her was sacrilegious: a faith that rational, thoughtful people could shape their own destiny. In a land where fatalism remained a necessary tool for enduring hardship, where ultimate truths were kept separate from day-to-day realities, she was a lonely witness for secular humanism, a soldier for New Deal Corps, position-paper liberalism." It is this influence that I hear most prominently in a passage near the end of the book, speaking to his dead father: "You, the son, might have taught your father that this new world that was beckoning all of you involved more than just railroads and indoor toilets and irrigation ditches and gramophones, lifeless instruments that could be absorbed into the old ways. You might have told him that these instruments carried with them a dangerous power, that they demanded a different way of seeing the world. That this power could be absorbed only alongside a faith born out of hardship, a faith that wasn't new, that wasn't black or white or Christian or Muslim but that pulsed in the heart of the first African village and the first Kansas homestead-- a faith in other people." In the name of...HUMANS, amen.
Obama would definitely find a cause for affirming his faith in humanity in the account of Mortenson's work building schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan that I read immediately after reading the last lines of Dreams. Greg Mortenson began the project on a very small scale after stumbling into a small village at the foot of K2 when he got lost after finding himself forced to turn back before reaching the top of its peak many years before 9/11.
After he was nursed back to health, he asked the village elder to show him the school and was amazed to find unsupervised students sitting quietly on the ground, diligently studying work given to them by a teacher in a neighboring village who was only able to come and check in with them a few times a week because the pre-Musharraff government had failed to extend its promised funds to build a school and pay the dollar-a-day salary of a permanent teacher. From fulfilling his promise that day to build one school, he has continued building and funding more than twenty schools and women's vocational centers through the years that took us to war with Afghanistan, up until today's current reported resurgence of El Qaeda activity in Pakistan.
Finally, a story of an American HUMANITARIAN effort to gently show communities who are at-risk for breeding terrorists another way, giving students thirsting for an education an option other than the extremist Islamic maddrassas that were otherwise the only choice. Mortenson's story inspired a Taliban contingent in Afghanistan that had at first imprisoned him when rumors began circulating about his efforts to educate girls alongside boys in non-maddrassa schools to not only release him, but to throw him a party in the process, and quietly undercut-- through the power of the story of his work alone-- two fatwas initially issued to expel him from the regions where he was working. As he wisely advises, "If we try to resolve terrorism with military might and nothing else, then we will be no safer than we were before 9/11. If we truly want a legacy of peace for our children, we need to understand that this is a war that will ultimately be won with books, not with bombs."
I still find myself yearning to be doing something large like these men, but this week with Sal has been fantastic. Favorite snapshot of an experience diametrically opposite the one I found at Fairmont:
Me: So, Aaron, when I started calling you to remind you about speech camp, your mom said you were working. What were you working at?
Aaron: Nothing much. My mom just doesn't want me inside watching TV all day.
Sebastian: You have a TV? You're so lucky!
(No response from the car, as if this is the norm.)
Aaron (comforting): Well, we only get a few channels and the cartoon channel comes in fuzzy anyway.
Hurray for kids who don't take life for granted...
Obama's book was written long before he launched his political career, fresh out of law school, and documents his early life. He splits the book into three phases and labels them according to the four geographic centers where he grappled with his racial identity as the son of a black father and white mother: Origins (Hawaii and Indonesia), Chicago, and Kenya. In reading about his years spent between his undergraduate work at Occidental in California and law school helping with a community development social program in Chicago, I was a little nervous that his main goal was to paint a picture of his achievement of bringing religion and liberal social efforts into one by documenting his path to religious conversion. He did manage to achieve the former by taking advantage of the organization and humanitarian elements of the churches in this struggling Chicago neighborhood to help improve the lives of its struggling working-class inhabitants, but he demonstrates marvelous restraint from wearing his religion on his sleeve, managing to avoid alienating readers with ideological rhetoric while still affirming the power of faith in a general, non-specific sense. I was struck primarily by how his own background almost fated him to be the perfect messenger for this kind of balance, as I read about the influences of his Muslim biological father from Kenya, his Buddhist step-dad from Indonesia, his first Jewish supervisor urging him to work with the Christian churches to transform their focus Chicago neighborhood, and his humanist mother from Kansas.
I think the last seems to have had the most influence on him, though. Early in the book, he writes, "My mother's confidence in needlepoint virtues depended on a faith I didn't possess, a faith that she would refuse to describe as religious, that, in fact, her experience told her was sacrilegious: a faith that rational, thoughtful people could shape their own destiny. In a land where fatalism remained a necessary tool for enduring hardship, where ultimate truths were kept separate from day-to-day realities, she was a lonely witness for secular humanism, a soldier for New Deal Corps, position-paper liberalism." It is this influence that I hear most prominently in a passage near the end of the book, speaking to his dead father: "You, the son, might have taught your father that this new world that was beckoning all of you involved more than just railroads and indoor toilets and irrigation ditches and gramophones, lifeless instruments that could be absorbed into the old ways. You might have told him that these instruments carried with them a dangerous power, that they demanded a different way of seeing the world. That this power could be absorbed only alongside a faith born out of hardship, a faith that wasn't new, that wasn't black or white or Christian or Muslim but that pulsed in the heart of the first African village and the first Kansas homestead-- a faith in other people." In the name of...HUMANS, amen.
Obama would definitely find a cause for affirming his faith in humanity in the account of Mortenson's work building schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan that I read immediately after reading the last lines of Dreams. Greg Mortenson began the project on a very small scale after stumbling into a small village at the foot of K2 when he got lost after finding himself forced to turn back before reaching the top of its peak many years before 9/11.
After he was nursed back to health, he asked the village elder to show him the school and was amazed to find unsupervised students sitting quietly on the ground, diligently studying work given to them by a teacher in a neighboring village who was only able to come and check in with them a few times a week because the pre-Musharraff government had failed to extend its promised funds to build a school and pay the dollar-a-day salary of a permanent teacher. From fulfilling his promise that day to build one school, he has continued building and funding more than twenty schools and women's vocational centers through the years that took us to war with Afghanistan, up until today's current reported resurgence of El Qaeda activity in Pakistan.
Finally, a story of an American HUMANITARIAN effort to gently show communities who are at-risk for breeding terrorists another way, giving students thirsting for an education an option other than the extremist Islamic maddrassas that were otherwise the only choice. Mortenson's story inspired a Taliban contingent in Afghanistan that had at first imprisoned him when rumors began circulating about his efforts to educate girls alongside boys in non-maddrassa schools to not only release him, but to throw him a party in the process, and quietly undercut-- through the power of the story of his work alone-- two fatwas initially issued to expel him from the regions where he was working. As he wisely advises, "If we try to resolve terrorism with military might and nothing else, then we will be no safer than we were before 9/11. If we truly want a legacy of peace for our children, we need to understand that this is a war that will ultimately be won with books, not with bombs."
I still find myself yearning to be doing something large like these men, but this week with Sal has been fantastic. Favorite snapshot of an experience diametrically opposite the one I found at Fairmont:
Me: So, Aaron, when I started calling you to remind you about speech camp, your mom said you were working. What were you working at?
Aaron: Nothing much. My mom just doesn't want me inside watching TV all day.
Sebastian: You have a TV? You're so lucky!
(No response from the car, as if this is the norm.)
Aaron (comforting): Well, we only get a few channels and the cartoon channel comes in fuzzy anyway.
Hurray for kids who don't take life for granted...
Friday, July 13, 2007
Desert Healing
Well, here I am again in Utah, where I swore I'd never return. As I told Becky, the ONLY thing that brings me back to this place is my deep love for the Englands. I started working on Gene's papers after graduating from graduate school six years ago and I'm back for a week to try to get it moving with the sisters again. Then I have to fly back to help Sal run speech and debate camp, but now I'm thinking I'll come back with my last flight credit for ten days between the end of camp and the beginning of Godinez teacher inservices so I can catch the end of Sunstone and work some more on the papers.
As part of many sweet gestures of gratitude that I've been given every day that I've been out here, Becky paid for me to have a full body massage yesterday after she found out that I'd never had a massage. The idea of stripping down for a stranger to put their hands all over my body used to creep me out, but somehow I've overcome some of my body shame and I was ready when she asked me if I would be interested. It was fascinating to see the areas of my body where I have the most tightness. I seem to carry all of my tension in my neck and shoulders, which is why I get a lot of stress headaches. I figured my weight would build tension in my legs and/or back, but she didn't find anything to smooth out there. She had a hard time getting me to relax my arms when she lifted them up, saying they were in a holding pattern, which Becky had just used as a description of my LIFE when I told her I didn't know how to deal with my dad's latest drama.
Well, I have to run now. Time to start helping Becky write an introduction to what is perhaps the greatest piece of controversy among Gene's papers: the letters between himself and Bruce R. McConkie where McConkie raised the threat of a curse on Gene's family if he continued to talk about the concept of eternal progression-- that God's judgment and our progress will never be final. I've felt torn between sadness to see Gene fighting to create dialogue against so much pressure to conform, frustration that he didn't strike out so he could say more without feeling impeded, and relief that I have chosen not to put myself in that position. And then there's a small aching voice of the past that wonders if I'm just a weak coward for not trying to fight from within...
Sunday, July 08, 2007
Only in Los Angeles...
So, inspired by a friend to try to find the unique beauties of Los Angeles, I came across this in the blog of an illustrious los angelino: the Simpsons' Kwik-E-Mart has come to the west coast, complete with Buzz Cola products, Frosted Krusty O's, and a Squishee machine. I think I'm going to have to put this down as a summer must-see...
Saturday, July 07, 2007
So maybe I'm not meant for the stage, but...
every stage needs a good audience. Enjoying a pleasant summer afternoon reading in the garden to kill some time before tonight's concert, I came across this passage in Ann Patchett's Bel Canto: "Some people are born to make great art and others are born to appreciate it. Don't you think? It is a kind of talent in itself, to be an audience, whether you are the spectator in the gallery or you are listening to the voice of the world's greatest soprano. Not everyone can be the artist. There have to be those who witness the art, who love and appreciate what they have been privileged to see" (219).What's on the summer slate for this privileged appreciator?
May 29: Arcade Fire @ the Greek Theater with Amy
June 3: Indigo Girls and Thao Nguyen @ Pechanga with Mum (kidding her that, given the audience, we looked like we were there as a couple)
June 16: Lavender Diamond @ the Troubadour with Amy
July 7: The LA Philharmonic accompanies Band of Horses, Andrew Bird, and the Decemberists @ the Hollywood Bowl with Amy
August 23: Daniel Johnston @ the Henry Fonda Theater with me, myself, and I
August 29: Wilco @ the Greek with Amy, Justin, Brandon, Robert, & company
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)