i'm going to miss my senator

Like most Americans, I spent a good portion of yesterday on the couch watching television. Unfortunately, I was watching my beloved senator get lowered into the ground to be among his brothers. Ted Kennedy was my senator since before I was born; he's been as much a part of the world I live in as air and trees and grass. Even if we didn't personally communicate, I have needed and appreciated his presence in my landscape. Sitting there on the couch next to my fiance, who also grew up in Massachusetts, we were both more overcome than we expected to be.

However, since Wolf Blitzer is incapable of leaving a tender moment alone, I mostly felt like watching it on mute. Wolf only shut up when the priest began to speak. Of all Ted Kennedy's flaws, I count Catholicism as one of the worst, but I forced myself to listen to this robed maniac. I nearly vomited when I realized that the bulk of what he planned to read was a letter to the Pope from Kennedy, written very soon before his death. Did Ted really want his last words to be begging a Nazi for prayers?

Nope, Ted Kennedy wanted his dying wishes to be heard on national television. Fox included. That letter, after talking about prayers and crap, was a plea for national health care.

For once, the Pope was useful.

It was a talking point for politicians all over the country. Something for them to say to the folks in small town America who think health care for everyone is the work of the devil. He was trying to do one last good thing for regular people, which, with a few exceptions, is what he did his whole life.

High five Ted Kennedy. If there is reincarnation, I hope you come back as universal health care. Peace be with you.

how to buy a wedding dress

It's simple really. You drive to a mall you have never been to, because you'll need to go in the kinds of stores that have restrooms with extra little rooms that contain flower arrangements and cushioned seats, all precedents to the actual bathroom in which you do your business. These stores employ women (dressing room sharks) who are there to make you feel poor and fat. Accept it. You are supposed to want to buy your way into another life. Try to remember that your life, without perfume that only takes one squirt to smell up the whole room, is just fine the way it is.

You are here, deep breath, for a dress.

On your way by the herd of perfume counters, be sure to spray something on your wrist. The dressing room sharks can smell fear, and they can also smell bar soap. Given the bandana on your head, the 11 year old loafers on your feet, and the way you have to keep pushing your glasses up every two minutes, this perfume gesture is a little bit like putting lipstick on a pig. But, hey, you've given it a little bit of effort.

You may have to ask for directions. The store has an organizing principle that you don't understand. Aside from the shoes being with the shoes and the perfume being with the perfume, there seem to be groupings of clothing that, other than being divided by gender, make no sense. If you stand in one place and just stare blankly, someone will help you.

"You look like you have a question."

"I have two, actually. I need a restroom and a fancy dress."

She will find this sweetly pathetic, and point you to the restroom like a lost child and then say, as you back into the entrance flanked by potted evergreens, "evening gowns are down the escalator to the right."

The restroom is larger than your apartment and the sound of your peeing echoes. The handsoap is divine.

The evening gown section will be right where she said it was. It glitters. Dressing room sharks named Tiffany and Amber descend upon you within minutes. Gaze over their heads at the clearance rack. Resist. This is, after all, your wedding dress. If everything goes as planned, you will only ever get to wear one of them.

Tiffany and Amber immediately bring you two white dresses, a few golds and ivories. They start a fitting room. The fitting room is somewhere mysterious. They keep disappearing with every dress you pick up.

The more expensive an item of clothing, the less important it is that the thing fit, apparently. So try on dresses sized between 2 and 12, mentally adding a tailor to the list of people you must pay to be married. Tiffany and Amber alternate knocking on the fitting room door to ask if you need anything. They will always knock when you are bent over trying to step into something, causing a fresh jolt of panic every time. Bonus: there are mirrors to reflect back to you, at angles you hope to never see again, every inch of your reaction.

"What size shoe do you wear?"

Wonder why, suddenly, the sharks are making conversation through the slats of the dressing room door.

"Seven..."

You can't comprehend, for the life of you, why this information is important.

Like magic, a pair of gleaming heels appears outside the door. A shark says, "I left some heels outside the door." You realize that you are supposed to wear heels with this thing. Stick your arm out of the door and snatch them in quickly before one of the sharks peeks in and tries to influence your opinion of the current dress. They are laid in a box, peeking out from tissue paper. They are sharp, dangerous, frightening. Put them on the floor in front of you, press your hands to the walls, and try to balance in them. Stand in them, precariously, in one dress for about thirty seconds. Put them, carefully, back in the box and leave.

Sigh heavily in the food court.

Enter with caution the only Bridal store with a capital B. The teenaged sales girl is on the phone, chewing gum. Pick up the most extravagant, gigantic, almost too heavy to lift, white monstrosity off the rack. She says, "Okay I gotta go. Call you later."

She puts the thing in a fitting room. Inside, totally surrounded by mirrors, you step into this complicated morass of lace and satin and strings. Pull it up, stare at yourself, squint even. Drop it back down to your feet, step out of it, and leave.

Stop at a sporting goods store and, with some reverence, touch a few sneakers. You are good at sneakers.

Arrive, finally, at the other end of the mall and the last giant, shiny department store. On the clearance rack there is one dress, a crazy patterned thing without any straps. Figure that you might as well try on one dress you actually like, even if it isn't a wedding dress. Tiffany and Amber are nowhere in sight. Ask a tiny old woman in a purple sweater if you can have a dressing room. She says only, "There ya go," and wanders back to whatever she was doing.

Perfect. Alone, at last, kick off those beloved loafers and step into the dress. It's fun. It's spicy. Decide that you want, more than anything, to be having dinner and a drink somewhere, done with this shopping trip. Look in the mirror. Picture flowers, a haircut, maybe some makeup. Decide, suddenly empowered, that white, and really any solid color, is just not going to work - this is The Dress.

You have to carry it way above your head or it will drag on the ground. The cashier whisks it over the counter and zips it into a garment bag. You present your credit card, which boasts a lovely mountain scene and lets everyone know that you support some nature conservancy organization. The store, of course, will not take Visa.

Leave the store to find an ATM. Extract more cash than you needed to purchase your first car. Bring it back, more determined than ever, to be done with this transaction.

At dinner in a mall restaurant, pull the chair on which you have draped the dress close to the table. Protect it like it's a baby. Be suddenly terrified that something will happen to it. Grow, ridiculously, attached to this material thing. Register the silliness of it all, but involuntarily flinch every time a waiter passes with something spillable on a tray.

On the way home the car smells like the perfume you put on earlier. Go ahead and be somehow annoyed by this.

In your living room later that night, put the dress back on. Stare and stare and stare at yourself in the mirror. Admit, to no one but yourself and the internet, that at that moment, alone in your living room, in a very expensive dress, your little grinch heart swells a bit, and you have an inordinate amount of fun.

On the Management of Customer Care

Dearest Michael, and all other customer care mangers of the world,

In an uncertain world, I feel lucky every time I settle on something that I know to be a fact.  My favorite variety of fact is the kind arrived at following a long period of discovery.  The sort of fact that comes with life experiences.  Like...

Fact: the Greek style yogurt really IS worth the extra 30 cents at the supermarket

Fact: learning to ride a bicycle is much easier when you are under the age of 25

Fact: the only thing worse than shopping in a store owned by a monstrous corporate machine is working in a store owned by a monstrous corporate machine.

One doesn't need a crystal ball to predict what would happen if I revealed the hour and day of my visit.  One simply needs some experience working in a monstrous corporate machine (MCM).  Fortunately, I spent seven years waiting tables in a place where the menus had pictures and the soundtrack was dictated by "corporate."  A place in which, if you ever had a grievance, you were told, "Take it up with corporate."  A place that (shudder) had people with titles like "regional manager" and "secret shoppers."  

I know EXACTLY what would happen to every single person assigned to that shift.  They would be told there was a "Mandatory Meeting."  Signs on colored paper would be taped in the bathrooms and break room.  "Mandatory Meeting on such and such a day at such and such a time.  All Employees Must Attend."

If some poor apron questioned the pimple-faced 12 year old manager, the apron would be told, "It's mandatory.  No big deal, just show up."  No additional information would be provided, and a current of frustration and worry would start to flow through the smoke breaks and lunch times.  Layoffs?  Annoying team building exercises?  A test?  What is this meeting about?  

By the time the meeting happens, one person has figured out what it is about and therefore everyone already knows.  Because the staff discovered the purpose of the meeting via leaked information or subterfuge of some kind (rather than open and honest communication) everyone arrives annoyed, sharply aware of their expendable and powerless position in the company, and preemptively dismissive of any information the meeting presents.  Many have to come on their day off.  Some have to take time off another job just to make it, since skipping the mandatory meeting, the taped-up notes insinuated, jeopardized one's job.

Presiding over the meeting is a slightly overweight white male wearing blue chinos and a blue button down oxford shirt.  If you want to be a regional manager, you had better fit the above profile.  You also must hate your life.  You must hate your life in the particular way a regional manager hates his life, however.  For example, you must smile.  Picture a very, very ugly room that is poorly constructed, dark, and terribly decorated.  Now paint it bright purple but do nothing else to fix it.  That is exactly the sort of smile you need to be regional manager.

Everyone comes in slowly and sits as far away from the regional manager as possible.  The regional manager says hello to people according to spec - most MCMs have a specific script for greetings and the regional manager always adheres to spec.  So he will say, "Hello (glances at name tag) what can I help you build today?"  Or whatever.  Anyway, the more annoying it is the more effective he imagines himself to be.

He will use some sort of corporate-mandated assistant for his talk.  Either a powerpoint or a manual or something.  Whatever the circumstances, the following lines are guaranteed:

"Without the customer we don't have...what...somebody finish the sentence...what don't we have?"

Blank stares.  Someone finally says, "Jobs."

"Right!  Jobs!  Without the customer, I don't get paid.  And neither do you."

"What does the customer want?"

"Anybody?"

"I'm gonna level with ya..."  [this one is particularly unhelpful, given the fact that the whole manner in which the meeting was called already made it quite clear that there is no 'let's be honest with each other because we're a community of equals' kind of crap going on in this MCM]

"What's our mission statement?"

"Anybody?"

Yada yada yada.  The meeting usually ends with some kind of activity or quiz and everyone is reminded that performance evaluations determine whether or not they get raises and hey, have a great day if this is your day off!

Now, Mr. Customer Care Manager, if you want your people to treat other people well, treat them like people.  My guess is everyone in there hates her job.  But I have had plenty of "crappy" jobs, in terms of pay or the work I was doing, that I didn't hate.  Usually, though, they were jobs working for small, independent businesses.  Coincidence?  Probably not.  Give everyone in an apron a day off.  Paid.  And don't send in the blue shirt guy.   

Home Depot: you can't do it, and they can't help you

Welcome to this June, my first ever June without work.  Normally, in spite of being a teacher, I work in the summer.  Not so this year.  Betty Friedan should have warned we modern females of the "summer vacation mystique."  As a person who rather enjoys her job but looks ever forward to the break at the end of the school year, this elusive summer vacation has been held up as the greatest 2.5 months of every teacher's life.  It's a time to enjoy a slower day, read more books, listen to music, get things done that just didn't make the to-do list during the busy school year, plan for next fall, and just plan relax.

No one tells you that if you only have one thing to do all day it is nearly impossible to get that thing done.  Give me an astonishing amount of work to accomplish in not enough time, and I can do it.  Ask me to run to Home Depot to pick up a simple thing today....and I'll have it done by next week sometime.  

Here's another thing I didn't know.  Apparently, when you are a teacher with the summers off and you are approaching 30 years of age, June, July and August become one long marathon of HGTV.  When you start talking about bird watching in your yard, you're old.  When you start talking about what you've done to the new bathroom, you are old in training.  

I admit it.  I can't stop talking about my own home improvement projects.  And I don't even own this place!  I guess it's like when people who want to have children buy dogs and begin displaying weirdly parental behaviors toward their Weimaraners.  It would seem even we the childless aren't totally immune to certain degree of "settling down."  Getting married.  Shopping for a house.  All of these behaviors feel exactly the same as trying on grandma's clothes when I was 8.  Extremely fun, but somehow not my own.

Of all the things I have done so far in this summer of domestic boot camp, finally making the solo trip to Home Depot was the least enjoyable.  I went in with what I thought was a simple request.  I wanted to find a test-kit to make sure my kitchen floor tiles didn't contain asbestos.  I went to the customer service desk and waited in line.  There was only one elderly couple in front of me, but all four orange aprons were consumed by whatever they needed.  I waited for about three minutes until another apron walked by and I asked her where I could find the asbestos test kits.

"Asbestos?"

"Yes, I'm ripping up my kitchen tiles but I want to make sure they don't contain asbestos before I do that."

Blank stare.  Pause.

"Oh, ok.  That would be in plumbing."

I must have looked skeptical, and I was.

"Well I think so anyway, let me check."

She uses a walkie-talkie to get plumbing to confirm her thoughts.  They don't answer but somebody in Paint does, and they claim to have it in aisle 40.

Great.  I walk to aisle 40, which is filled with lighting supplies.  Big sparkly ceiling light fixtures.  Etc.  Not paint and certainly not test-kits of any sort.

I go to the end of that aisle and approach the now 6th apron I have seen.  He also looks shocked at the mention of asbestos, which surprises me because it says right on the box of tiles we bought to make sure and check for the stuff before laying down new tiles.

He uses his walkie-talkie because he thinks it will be in flooring.  Flooring confirms that yes, it will be in flooring.  He tells me to go to flooring. 

On my way to flooring several aprons ask me if I need help and I make sure I'm going in the right direction, to flooring.  A nice gentleman tells me he's "going that way anyway" and will escort me (because god forbid someone actually like see me through to the end of this very fucking simple task).  We get almost to flooring when apron #9 sees someone he knows and stops the cart to chat with these folks.  I contemplate heading to flooring, which is now in my sights, on my own but I figure this guy is invested in me now and he'll make sure that if it isn't there he will find out where it is.

It isn't there.  

He radios someone in paint, and they swear it's in paint.  I walk like 7 miles back to paint, where, through extended consultations with two additional aprons, there is no such test kit.  

Enter: Manager.  He is about 12 and needs exercise, sunlight, and acne medication.  He also needs an inventory lesson because he has "no idea if we carry something like that."  He is also the fourth apron to say "Asbestos?" and wrinkle his brow as if he had never heard of such a substance.  

My favorite part is that each apron, upon discovering that they didn't know the answer to my question, looked at ME like I was the idiot.  If anything was going to make me grateful for my break from the Department of Education, this was it.  

 

just in case you have the audacity to feel like going for a run at night, ladies, here is a guide

Here is my step by step guide to running at night in the city as a female:

7:40 pm - Wonder if you should use headphones, as you could not hear an attacker behind you if you use them

7:45 pm - Put in your headphones, but turn down the volume

7:46 pm - standing on the front steps, looking at the sky, ask "is it too dark already?"

7:50 pm - Running, looking at the trees in bloom, have the following argument with yourself: "I want to run on the gravel by the reservoir, my feet don't hurt so bad when I run on the gravel...yeah but there aren't any street lights over there...fine I'll run on the street...you are really going to let yourself be scared into doing something you don't want to do...I guess it isn't too dark..."

7:54 pm - Run, in place, at the bottom of the steps that lead to the reservoir.  It's dark.

7:55 pm - On the gravel.  Feet are happy, and the water looks so peaceful at night.  Try to remember how much you like water at night.

7:56 pm - Run your fastest mile ever because you are a bit scared.  Perhaps this is a good way to build up speed?

7:57 pm - Pass a couple, feel slightly more relaxed, couples are good, couples have cell phones, couples don't rape people

7:58 pm - Switch directions to stay in close proximity to the couple

7:59 pm - Look behind you.

8 pm - Slow way down at the curve, where it gets really dark.

8:01 pm - Turn around again.

8:02 pm - Look behind you.

8:03 pm - Try to force from your thoughts all the news stories you have read about women "foolish enough to go outside after dark alone."

8:04 pm - Look behind you

8:05 pm - See a man with a dog.  Wonder if the dog is a trick to get women to trust him.

8:06 pm - Look behind you.

8:07 pm - Decide that your heart is beating too quickly, slow down, and suddenly feel the hard, solid pressure of a desperate need to get the fuck off the dark gravel path and into the streetlights right that second.

8:08 pm - Look behind you.

8:09 pm - Pass a man running, headphones on, looking unafraid and oblivious.  Suppress your desire to clobber  him.

8:10 pm - Look behind you.

8:11 pm - Start to feel that weightless dizzy kind of scared.

8:12 pm - Run like hell back down to the street, heading to the streetlight like a moth.

8:13 pm - Look behind you.

______________________________

When I was in college I worked at a bar.  At 2:30 a.m., when I was done for the night, the quickest way home was to cut through the Boston Common.  Now, most ladies would take the longer way rather than risk it, but it made me mad that I had to walk a longer distance just because I was a girl.  So I stuffed my tips into my underwear, held my wine opener corkscrew-out in my fist, and marched.  I used to think that if they got to the money, they might be distracted for a split second, and I could gouge an eye out.  I actually planned this, just in case.  Only later did I realize both how stupid walking through the common was and how incredibly unfair it was that I had to picture gouging a human eyeball from its socket to make me feel safe enough to walk home.

I was reading an editorial in the New York Times this week in which Nicholas Kristof pointed out that the evidence in rape kits generally sits around, uninvestigated, for decades.  Rape, and the manner in which it is treated as compared to other violent crimes, isn't something I hear many men discussing.  It was refreshing to see it even mentioned in the paper, since it happens so often yet manages to stay out of the headlines.  What he didn't mention, and what no one ever seems to mention, is that even on the nights when nobody attacks us we still have to live with the threat of it.  It's like a living breathing thing, chasing us whenever we go out alone after dark.  And it fucking pisses me off.

Another "Let's Respond to the Insensitive Moron" blog

So, I got this comment from someone too scared to identify him/herself:

Formalized schooling is a joke. It is not only expensive, it is downright prohibitive to actual learning. Leave the system behind. You have already wasted too many years of your own life feeding the beast. Abolish the DOE, both federal and state, and return education to its true owners: Families =. There should be a true and strong BOE in every town in America, and the world for that matter, who are answerable only to the children and parents that they teach

I don't know where to start.  I think I will go line by line.

"Formalized schooling is a joke."

A product of formalized schooling myself, I find this personally offensive.  That being said, I'll be the first to admit that I have deep concerns about the state of American public education.  Without a system of formalized education, however, we ensure a de facto caste system in which each child born into poverty is guaranteed a lifetime in exactly that position.  Public education, free for all, is the foundation on which a socially mobile democracy sits.  

"It is not only expensive, it is downright prohibitive to actual learning."

Again, I will be the first to admit that kids sitting in silent rows staring at a blackboard is the hallmark of an old, tired system.  I am not opposed to reform.  I also teach in a school that qualifies as "formalized schooling" but which contains no rows, no blackboards, and I'm pretty sure learning happens.  

Per schools being expensive - you either pay early or you pay later.  Every dollar spent on Pre-K education saves more than that dollar on prison costs later.  Students who graduate from high school are exponentially more likely to become tax paying, law abiding students - and guess which schools have higher graduation rates?  The ones we spend the money on.  If you want safe, productive communities you have to educate the people living in them, even if they aren't your kids.  If you don't mind paying billions of dollars in corrections costs, then screw the schools and pay for the prisons.  You'll pay either way.

"Leave the system behind.  You've already wasted too many years of your own life feeding the beast."

This one really hurt.  I did some crying; I can admit it.  Whoever you are, have you read any other entries on this blog??  I have met some of the most amazing kids on the planet.  Kids who have overcome barriers I can't even imagine.  Kids who have battled homelessness, domestic violence, physical and mental disabilities...kids who have lost family members to gang violence...kids who thought, every day, for years, about killing themselves.  And yet they came to school and worked their asses off and kept a sense of humor the whole time.  Many of them overcame their own sense of worthlessness, and actually started to believe in themselves.  I'd like to think I had some tiny part in that, and I'd like to offer you, anonymous prick, a giant FUCK YOU for calling it worthless.  Really.  Fuck you.

"...return education to families."

This is the most ridiculously overprivileged elitist argument I have ever heard.  Not everyone is  blessed with a family.  And if a person does have a family, that family might not be capable of offering an education.  Maybe they have to work three jobs and need public education to take care of it.  Maybe they don't give a shit.  Whatever the case, it certainly isn't the child's fault.  Had my education been left to my mother...well I shudder at the thought.

Look, jerk, public education might not be perfect.  I'll be the first to admit that.  But getting rid of it gets rid of democracy.  It will solidify every current social class, keep the poor in poverty and benefit the rich, white overlords.  Public education was supposed to be the "great equalizer."  If you abandon it, you abandon any hope for equality.  So, to that end, I'm going to go ahead and keep wasting my time.  You, sir, can kiss my ass.  

The Department of Redundancy Department

During my time as a graduate student, there was a case in North Carolina regarding the rape of a stripper and several Duke rugby players.  Perhaps you remember it too.  Some insensitive prick wrote an article in the Harvard Crimson immediately following the incident, and I wrote a blog about it.  Said blog prompted my father, lifetime editor of my writing, to say, "You know...you are good at writing about things that make you mad...but...um...you are terrible at writing WHEN you're mad."

All that to say, it is inadvisable to write this blog about the Department of Education at this very moment.  Excuse me.  All that to say, it is inadvisable to write this blog about the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education at this very moment.

But those fuckers have earned themselves what promises to be an incoherent, disorganized blog.  Actually, they have earned this honor in partnership with the Office of Educator Licensure at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.  Together, they form the Department of Redundancy Department.

Ahem.  Let's start at the beginning.  Or, rather, let's start at the end of undergraduate studies.  A distant moon ago, I completed my bachelor's degree and took a job as a paraprofessional in a local school.  While working at that job, I decided to pursue a career in education.  This decision necessitated a Master's degree, which I got.  Following that, I took the required state exams for teacher licensure in my subject, passed both of them without a single question wrong thankyouverymuch, and got the bottom rung license one can get, assuming I would move up the license ladder as I got more experience teaching.  

The above paragraph took 7 years and cost approximately 127,000 dollars.   (And yes, shaping young minds is priceless.)

Since earning this teaching license, I have been teaching for a tad under three years.  Now, with two years left on my "bottom rung" license, I need to think about beefing that sucker up.  Enter the Dept. of Red. Dept.  

I call.  I ask.  They say, "With a Master's you should be able to get the next level just by applying."

Gee, that's simple.  It must be a lie...

And, indeed, it is.  I apply for said license (earning the Dept. of Red. Dept. 147 dollars) and promptly get a rejection.  The stated reason: my institution does not endorse this license as I did not complete a Teacher Education Program Approved by the State of Massachusetts.  Duh, I knew that.  I completed a sort of policy meets poetry writing meets teacher training program.  BUT I had lots of Teacher Education Program folks in my classes.  In fact, aside from one or two required courses and an internship, I completed the very same program they did.  Some of those credits must transfer...mayhaps I could take a few more classes and be done with it??

Again, the Dept. of Red. Dept.:

"It is up to your school.  Call them and they can tell you what classes you still need to change your license, and you can probably use your current job as a teacher for the practicum."

Okay now this makes sense, sort of.   I call my school's office of Teacher Licensure - they have one because the Dept. of Red. Dept.'s policies are so convoluted and confusing that it takes a full-time employee 40 hours a week to understand them.  The secretary answers.  This office has its own assistant.  Please digest this...

It takes two full-time employees a total of 80 hours per week to explain the Dept. of Red. Dept's policies to Harvard students.  

I get the boss.  This woman is a fucking peach.  Granted, I would be too if it were my job to understand the D. of. Red. D.    We get to a point in the conversation in which she says:

"Are you writing this down?  I am giving you the facts.  These are the facts.  This office cannot tell you what you need to do.  Only the Dept. of Red. Dept. can decide whether or not you need specific classes or internships.  This school has no say in the matter.  I am going to say it again, slowly, so you understand."

At this point I am trying not to smash things, so I just hang up.

I call the Dept. of Red. Dept. 

My call was potentially monitored for quality and training purposes.  I find this especially entertaining.

"Hello?"

"Hello this is [bureaucrat] how can I help you?" 

"I just called, and I'm calling again.  I was told that in order to change my license I needed to call my school and they would tell me what else I needed to take in order to get their endorsement.  Correct?"

"This is correct."

"They said only you could decide that."

"We have no power to decide that.  Only the school can decide what qualifies."

Rather than bother with Harvard again, I call another school, and explain the problem.  Will they look at my transcripts, my current teaching job, a portfolio, and tell me what classes I need to take in order to change my license??

Yes, sort of.  They (UMass Boston) have a certificate program for people with Master's degrees.  I will have to apply to their graduate school, earn 24 credits, and I can use my current job in lieu of an internship placement so that I can continue to work.  (Harvard doesn't understand that people work at jobs for a reason; they have always struggled with that concept.)  

Great!  So I can take night classes, for which my school will pay, and somebody will come watch me teach once and a while, and at the end of it all I can get what I need for nearly zero dollars and I don't have to quit my job.  Super.

Ohhhh hold on a second there cowgirl.  That sounds a bit easy, now doesn't it?  I had better make sure the Dept. of Red. Dept. accepts this kind of route.

Dept. of Red. Dept.

"What are you currently teaching?"

"English."

"At a public high school?"

[with immense guilt] "No...it's...a private school."

[real or imagined disdain?] "I see.  And it is a particular kind of school?  A special education school or parochial perhaps?"

"It's a special ed school."

"Hmm.  So you'll need your special education license and your English."

[I don't mention the history classes.]

"I just spoke with Umass Boston and they claim that I can take a post-graduate certificate course of study and upgrade my English license that way.  I could go back for my special education certification after that, right?"

"How would you be completing the practicum?"

"At my school, Umass said they let you use your current job as placement."

"You can't use a special education classroom for an english practicum."

I won't bother you with the rest of this conversation.  The facts are as follows:

In order to do my current job for more than two years, I need to-- 1. quit my job and get an internship somewhere else for  a semester where I teach English to non special ed students 2. get another master's degree and certification in special education 3. not teach history anymore

It is IMPOSSIBLE to teach English while also teaching special ed, is the message I am getting here.  

---------------

deep breath

---------------

Here's the thing that gets me.  Well, it all gets me.  But the thing that gets me the worst is that I spend every awake second of my day doing my job.  There isn't a second I'm not thinking about how to do what I do better than I'm already doing it.  At the gym, I'm on the treadmill thinking about how the day went and where I went wrong.  Making dinner, I'm thinking about a new way to approach that one kid who keeps giving me trouble.  Falling asleep, I'm worrying about the kid who missed three days in a row.  Brushing my teeth, I am wondering if what I planned for the day is going to work.  I spend my evenings and my weekends grading papers, and I think and think and think about every sentence, from every kid, every time.  And I can't help being immensely pissed off by the thought that these people who keep me on hold all day only to read stock answers from info sheets posted on the sides of their cubicles spend exactly 35 hours per week and not a second more thinking about what's best for kids in schools.  I know it's an old, tired thing to be pissed off about, but it feels fresh to me.  

When I first got to my current school, I asked for a description of what I would be teaching.  

My principal said, "Humans."

Now, the message from the Dept. of Red. Dept. is that in two years, I won't know how to do that.  The real truth is, nobody fucking knows how to do that.  

Eric Holder, Attorney General and also Mister Awesomely Right On (subtitle: how to kinda sorta talk about race in white suburbs)

I was worried for a minute there. I spent lots of time at my last job figuring out how to make a classroom talk about race in a safe, meaningful, real way. I stopped and processed every racially charged statement I heard (over many moans and groans). I didn't allow the n-word in my classroom (or its shortened "friendly" counterpart which ends in an "a" rather than an "er" and is just as much of a problem). My argument was that by using it amongst friends you are keeping the word in the lexicon of your enemies. Why not just eliminate it from the American vocabulary altogether? I did a lot of arguing, and listening. I didn't even know what the goal was, really, except to be able to bring it up in conversation when it came up, rather than avoid it (which is what I usually wanted to do, if you want the truth.)

Anyway, I was worried because I still think the hardest conversations to have are usually the most important and I wasn't sure how they were going to happen at my new school. At my last school, with statements like "I'm gonna put her Puerto Rican hood rat ass back where it belongs" floating around the hallways, there were plenty of opportunities to say..."Um...can we talk about what you just said?"

But rich white folks' kids don't usually say stuff like that. They do this:

Last week, in Literature class with the youngest students, we were reading a story. The story's narrator is born and raised in Harlem, and talks, thinks, and acts like a person few if any of these kids have ever met. He hangs out at a barber shop and has tense relations with the police and thinks 18,000 dollars is the most money he's ever even heard of, never mind actually possessed. After reading the story, I asked the kids to point out some things they noticed.

"They are in New York."
"They are weird."
"They talk weird."
"They are, well he is...you know, everyone in the story is Afr- Bl-"

This poor girl fell all over herself trying to figure out how to say that the characters in this story were black. She wanted to use whatever the most politically correct polite words she could, but she had a very hard time figuring out what those were.

As far as I am concerned, this kind of freaking out while trying to talk about a person whose skin color is different from your own warrants a conversation as desperately as shouting racial slurs in the hallway. This is the problem our amazingly awesome Attorney General was talking about last week. We can't get past this if we can't talk about it.

Of course, it's not always easy knowing what to say. So I said two things:

"Are you trying to say that the characters are black?"

She said that yes, she was trying to say that but "she felt bad."

So I asked her why she thought that made her feel bad.

She couldn't really figure that out. But that's okay, at least she started thinking about it. I also tried to get from the kid who said everyone was "weird" why he thought that, but he didn't really know what to say either.

I think maybe she felt bad because if we had been reading a story narrated by a white person we probably never would have said, "Well I noticed that the narrator is white." Because isn't that the norm that we measure against? When a Christian pro-life wacko shoots an abortion doctor, he isn't a Christian extremist, but when a Muslim shoots someone, what do you think he's called? When Sarah Palin talks to a crowd of all white hockey moms, she's just talkin' to regular Americans, but when Barack Obama talks to an all black church group in Chicago he's playing to a special interest, right?

All this to say, I'm no longer worried about having big, scary, important conversations at my new school. Like everyone else, these kids see the world from where they are standing. And like everyone else, it would probably do them some good to look at it from different shoes once and a while.

Camelot?

Plenty of we the graduates of master's programs in education have spent oodles of time picturing utopia: the school. We know what its teachers are like, what's on the walls, what the classes sound like, what the students feel like every day, and a million other things. I have spent time building this school in my mind in idle daydreams like many girls do their weddings. For two years, I have been trying to shape my school into this place. At every turn, I met resistance. In part, since I did have many victories, this made the job rather satisfying. In other ways, it made it exhausting. Exhausting in the way beating your head against a brick wall is exhausting - you bleed, the wall doesn't.

The students, though, I loved. I love things that are as tough as they are delicate. I don't think I'll ever meet a group of young people more resilient, who went through so much and still somehow figured out how to laugh and trust and learn.

This is why I feel an overwhelming sense of guilt, everyday, for taking my new job. It is an incredible place. So many parts of it are living models of my dreamed-up school. It's uncanny, at times. The art on the walls. The laughter in the classrooms. The passion of the staff. And, in so many other ways, it fulfills all of the selfish needs my other job did not. Money. Vacation. Health care. Better coffee. The list of perks, significant and otherwise, adds up to a situation marvelously sweeter than the last. But...but....

It's a private school. It is the exact racial and economic inverse of my last school.

Can this be utopia?! If a teacher wants to quit her night job, get decent benefits, and teach in a place where art and music aren't subjects of controversy but rather are central to the school itself...does she really, still, in 2009, have to teach only upper middle class white students?

I've been there one month. For the drama session, in which the entire school does nothing but put on a musical. For 2009: Camelot. I tell you, in spite of the magic of this place (and it is magical) neither side of segregation can be Camelot.

arne duncan: please go back to playing basketball

The real education progressives aren't thrilled about Duncan, and neither am I. For those of us who feel that schools can't be pro-business and pro-military while still being pro-child, this guy is cause for serious concern.
Good article here...

And, an excerpt:

Duncan leaves his position in Chicago with quite a legacy. He used the punitive aspects of No Child Left Behind to close underperforming schools, mandate curricula, and fire entire school staffs based on standardized test scores. Working with the Commercial Club of Chicago, a group representing the city's wealthy businesses, Duncan headed a program called "Renaissance 2010," designed to close the most "underperforming" schools based strictly on test scores and open new charter schools in the same neighborhoods - neighborhoods also primed for gentrification. Some of Duncan's plans have been foiled by community advocacy groups, the only force willing to stand up against the collusion of government officials and corporate interests.

Over the past seven years, Duncan helped the city of Chicago open over 100 new schools (at least 84 charters run by Renaissance 2010 with 31 more planned), including the city's second Disney-run elementary school, 5 military academies with more in planning stages, for-profit schools, non-profit organizations receiving financial backing from "educational venture funds," and charter schools funded by big business (Boeing, Citigroup, Bank of America, Washington Mutual, and the Gates Foundation among others - all given corporate tax breaks, buyouts, and tax deductions that take money from our public schools). There are, undoubtedly, a number of remarkable charter schools in Chicago offering a high-quality education, but they are a small minority. However, since the beginning of his tenure in 2001, Chicago schools have become more segregated (in fact, America's schools are more segregated now than during 1954's landmark Brown vs. Board legislation) in part because of expanded charter schools.

______

Do we really want to send our kids to "Boeing Elementary?" At least for me, the answer is a resounding "fuck no."

requisite "year in review" blog

Despite my lifelong battle with being quite ordinary, I'm going to do the banal, trite, ordinary "year in review" blog. Rather than the ever-tempting top 20 of 2008, though, I'm going to shoot for a stream-of-consciousness-brain-fart sort of thing. Let's see if you can make sense of it. It was a pretty crazy year.

2008 begins and I'm having an allergic reaction right next to the stack of espresso pods and people are expecting more champagne and dessert but fuck them and fuck their dessert and while I'm at it fuck waitressing I have a master's degree how could this happen well it seems like it isn't turning respiratory so I guess the pills are working and at least there's a cute boy waiting for me somewhere ok he's not waiting for me but I'm going there anyway the drunk drivers aren't too bad this year and his blankets are scratchy but warm January: month of total chaos last state of the union by that miserable war criminal prick I'll just read the blogs I can't stand to hear him talk Richard Rothstein says NCLB is dead in the water mild rejoicing at edaction February: stupid god damn giants ruin everything and my mother doesn't understand the concept of time zones nayad meets a man and goes to church which makes us all quite suspicious SUPER TUESDAY no dennis but barack okay and the NSA gets away with a bunch of bullshit spying state of the police state? March: Peace out Huckabee and your crazy Jesus horse! I go to an Ambassador's mansion and eat caviar with people who frighten me terribly hatred of the wealthy reaffirmed I still live in their neighborhood in a house full of crazy and also wonderful friends California sends word that my old love is heading back home, some unconscious gate cracks open April: I'm a fool, for sure, but the girls at edaction and I keep trying to save public education how ridiculous meanwhile we're starting to ignore the newscasters when they tell us people are dying in Iraq people die in Iraq everyday and so it musn't be news... May: things fall apart and come together at the same time my community organizer job sends me to a terrible conference lots of talking and very little doing but none of it matters much when I walk the same little circle out in Boston Common and fall stupid in love with the same guy I always fall stupid in love with over and over June: BABYPROOFED victory sweet victory I stay in bed for many hours afterward and feel a kind of relief that defies description, then I eat sushi and watch tennis on tv July: Venus, Serena, offshore oil drilling, impeach (go Dennis!) but it's the summer of BIKES I take my newly acquired ability to the streets and knock on wood don't get hit by any cars, move my stuff, again August: Obsessively watch the DNC coverage, China decides air pollution is worth fixing for photo ops, back to school but not before a camping trip, canoes on a pond and wonderfully terrible cups of coffee the smell of trees and dying fires, far away Georgia and Russia reopen wounds and Mark David Chapman still in jail John Lennon still dead September: Move my stuff, again, to our new place we're finally home, together, only took like 9 years, Sarah Palin shocks the world with just how dumb she is, my first ever Hub on Wheels and then school school school October: DEBATES, American taxpayers dole out 700 billion dollars so that wall street big wigs can still go on vacation and housing prices continue to fall people are forced from their homes, meanwhile we go to Maine easternmost point in the US take pictures of boats drink strong coffee long drive back grading papers in the passenger's seat Jean home from Korea, briefly November: day before the election students say they'll "kill themselves" if barack doesn't win, but weeks of knotty stomachs worth every second our 44th president wins and everybody feels alright, for a minute, about being American, I turn 28 and Bill makes everyone jealous with his roses December: Snow, finally snow sweaters ice scrapers school cancelled three straight days Bill turns 30 skis down mountains but I prefer the fireplace and old, crappy movies family family family and finally a chance to take a nap 2008 the year I got my way good bye idiot president hello handsome brilliant awesome president (we hope) and hello hello hello baby proofed body and the body it sleeps next to every night and misses all day long.

formatting

If anyone knows how to make the formatting NOT look like shit go ahead and let me know. Sorry about the last blog's quote looking so weird...blogger is dumb. (The question of whether I am referring to myself the blogger or blogger.com is yours to enjoy.)

snowed

The best thing about being a teacher in New England is not the proximity to so many great institutions of higher learning where you may build your content knowledge and wear tweed. Nor is it the apple picking field trip, the general lack of environmental disasters, the ability to spew left wing rhetoric at your students without a single complaint.... no no. It is your governor on the radio, a full evening ahead of you, telling you to sit back, have a glass of wine, and just forget about going to work tomorrow.

The bliss ends there.

I hate to break this to all of you who are currently enjoying your reproductive rights, but the Bush administration has dealt a final blow to gender equality, human rights, etc. He hates that stuff!

I got this in the mail from my buddy Cecile Richards:

Minutes ago, President Bush's rule limiting the rights of patients to receive complete and accurate reproductive health information when they visit a federally funded health care provider was made official. And, unfortunately, it will take a great deal of work to reverse it — starting today. Please help.

We knew this was coming, of course. With your help, we've been fighting it for months. The rule is clearly a parting gift from Bush to the anti-choice fringe that supported him all these years.

Now, anti-choice medical staff can withhold information about abortion, birth control, and sex education from their patients. Facilities that receive family planning funding, like Planned Parenthood, will have to certify that they will not refuse to hire nurses and other providers who object to abortion and even certain types of birth control. For example, a doctor who opposes pre-marital sex could refuse to provide a prescription or even information about emergency contraception to an unmarried woman.

This is the most frightening thing I've heard in a long time. As if unwanted pregnancies weren't enough of a problem, it's going to get a hell of a lot harder for women to prevent them. Nay, it's going to get a hell of a lot harder to even get INFORMATION about BIRTH CONTROL. What?! Beyond that, this will disproportionately affect women with limited access to information (poor women, English language learners, you know, the vulnerable people who Bush loves to shit on.)

I debate this issue with my students all the time. Many of these girls have been, as it were, totally snowed. They learned to believe, at some point very early in their lives, that getting pregnant is a sacred gift from god and...well I'll put this in their words:

"If you open your legs, you have to pay the price."

Three things:

1. How sad to be the child whose entire life is payment for something the mother eternally regrets.

2. How much sadder to be the girl who has been so beaten down by society that she actually believes not only that she is powerless, but that she should be.

3. Okay, so you believe "life is sacred" - but should you really advocate for those beliefs to be legislated? Because the people who are stirring this pot you're in don't give a flying poop about life being sacred (or at least not military prisoners or Iraqi citizens or death row inmates...those lives aren't sacred). They want to keep power in the hands of men, and taking decision making power out of the hands of women is the quickest way to do that. The life is sacred thing is just a convenient slogan these power mongers capitalize on to advance their anti-woman, anti-parenting, anti-medical ethics, anti-American agenda.

What a great trick you've pulled, you murdering sexist bigot war criminal. I wish that shoe hit you right in the fucking smirk.

"what do you mean 'we?'"

Well it finally happened. It was the weirdest thing. I knew, eventually, this would happen. I spent a lot of time thinking about how I would react, how I would deal with it, whether it should be the type of thing one "reacted" to. But how could I not?

For the past two years, I have been the only white person in my classroom (except during staff meetings). We talk about race all the time in my class. And I've taken quite a few light-hearted jokes directed at white people, which thus far have been part of a healthy conversation. I have been very careful in my pursuit of a space in which talking about race is safe, appropriate, and expected. I never purport to know what I'm doing in this regard, and my students are always very helpful when it comes to telling me what to do.

This month, I welcomed a new student into my class. He is

The. White. Kid.

in the inner city alternative school.

And all the shit I was afraid to deal with has already started to happen. Case in point:

We're studying the American Revolution. One of my personal favorite things to teach. It is a sensitive subject, what with the tendency of old lame-ass text books to glorify the brave colonists and paint them as champions of liberty who fought for their freedom and secured us all a Great American Future. Fortunately, my school can't afford text books so it's up to me to put together my own photocopied collections of readings.

All this being beyond the point. The point is, we were having a conversation, as a class, regarding why the English, rather than the Spanish or the French, ended up putting the "winning" group of colonizers on North America. This usually sparks a conversation regarding why it is ANY European colonizing bastard felt he had the right to be there in the first place.

But here's what happened. The new kid says, "We had more independence from our crown in the first place, so it was easier for us to break away and really make the new colony our own."

And I, without thinking, engage this conversation, the entire time using the pronoun "we."

And after three minutes of engaging this kid in conversation I look around, and I had lost everyone else. So I try to back up.

"Let me just check in here, what do WE mean when we say 'we?'"

And one kid pipes up and says, rather pointedly, "Yeah, what DO you mean we?"

What did I mean? Am I the teacher I read about in all those articles in grad school? The one who, regardless of all her efforts, engaged the student of her own race in conversation more readily than those of a different race? The one who used words carelessly without considering the points of view of all her students?

All of this, of course, calls into question all the work I've done so far. Did I really create a safe space for tough conversations...or did I create a precariously safe space that's easily thrown by a change in group dynamics?

Jeez. Teaching is hard. They should pay us more. Goodnight.

Baby Bling

I read an article a while back about wealthy suburban couples competing with their wealthy suburban friends through a new wildly popular status symbol. Not huge cars, not elaborate vacations. Babies. Lots and lots of babies. Apparently (and one need not look further than the latest Pitt-Jolie headline in the checkout line mags) babies are the new bling.

Needless to say, this is distressing on several levels. Firstly, even to a heartless wench like me, using children to prove to one's friends (or the media) that one is a superstar with immense wealth seems an unjust use of children. Secondly, and more distressing, it's hard not to think of the wee little planet on which we pile all these grubby little water drinking plastic dependent cherubs. Do we really want to make it "cool" to have gigantic families?

I can say this: it's cool in school. There hasn't been a single month, in the entire time that I have been teaching, that hasn't brought news of at least one more pregnant student. Many of them have children already. And the news is always greeted with "awwws" from the other students, who rush over to the latest big belly and rub it, give the mom to be lots of attention, and totally freak me the fuck out.

How do we compete with cool?!

Our school has counselors on staff, and we all sit down once a week to chat about the students' states of mind, hash out strategies to deal with difficult situations, and, inevitably, lament the list of newly pregnant teenagers.

These girls, for all their lives, have been under mountains of shit beyond my ability to imagine. Abuse, homelessness, crumbling, segregated, violent schools, gang violence, hunger, lack of health care...not exactly the recipe for self-love and self-respect. So when they get the chance to be loved and needed, they take it. When they get the chance to be in control of something, they take it. And in so doing, they become part of a rapidly expanding group of their peers, and are accepted. This is just as damaging to young girls' futures as gangs are to boys' - and both behaviors are unfortunate responses to the same set of shitty realities.

I recognize that the lack of mandated, funded, comprehensive sex education in public schools is partly at fault for the rising number of teen parents. But this isn't just a sex education crisis. It's a self-esteem crisis. Hopelessness crisis.

I assure you, the last possible thing we need is for this to become cooler than it already is.

...I've sat here staring at a blinking cursor for quite a while now. I have no answers. I have no clue what to do. I'm throwing my hands up in the air, in the middle of a crisis, and saying: "What. The. Fuck."

"unmanned firehose"

I'm watching MSNBC and I thought that I'd like to do that "live blogging" thing I've so enjoyed reading from other bloggers during and after other debates and major political events.

But I can't think about anything pundit-ty because it's the Keith Olbermann show. And there are two things I know in this world.

1. The number of women currently getting tubal ligation surgery should be quadrupled for the good of the world and the women themselves.

2. Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow are totally fucking.

It's HILARIOUS!! They are dropping little innuendos. Rachel Maddow actually just engaged in a conversation about manned and unmanned firehoses. And she's blushing. Giggling.

This is too much for me.

Okay. Now on to super serious live blogging. Full disclosure: I have company; we're drinking wine and playing PalinBingo. Feta cheese is involved. This will be wildly unintellectual.


8:44 pm
Sarah Palin has arrived at Wash. U. Per Olbermann "none were injured."

8:45 pm
The merlot is really nice. It's from Chile.

8:56
Every week thousands of Americans file for bankruptcy because of medical bills. Thanks AARP commercial. In related news, Sarah Palin can't read.

8:56
It's still 8:56.

9:00
Sarah Palin asks, "Can I call you Joe?" She seems real nice.

9:01
Bailout bill...was this the worst or best?

Biden: Bam. One against Bush. One point Biden. Points out fundamental disagreement between Obama and McCain, he and Palin.

Palin: Soccer mom. First "Betchya." I'm winning bingo. She's come up with an example of McCain's record!

9:07
Biden brings up Violence against Women Act. Ding. Paints himself as able to reach across the aisle. "Fundamentals of the economy are strong" line. "Out of touch." Attacking McCain.

Palin: "McCain was talking about the American workforce." Ummmm...they don't have jobs.

Gwen points out that neither of them answered the question...

9:09
Who was at fault for the sub-prime mortgage crisis?

Palin: "Darn right it was the predator lenders."

I'm just going to go ahead right now and say [sic] and apply it to all her quotes...

Republicans love strict oversight...new from Sarah Palin.

Biden attacks deregulation and accuses McCain of voting for it more than 20 times. And then connects it to McCain's plan to 'deregulate' health care. The middle class needs relief. Ding. Two points.

Palin: "Darn right we need tax relief." Darn right number two. Cuteness points: two.

Biden: "That is absolutely not true. John McCain voted the same way." "John has voted 477 times to raise taxes."

9:10
Palin's sparkly pin is distracting me.

Palin: Talks about all the taxes she cut in Alaska. Biden smiles widely.

Biden: "Where I come from it's called fairness. The middle class is struggling...they got not a single tax break [from McCain.] He brings up the old 95% people under Obama's plan will have lower or same taxes. "We have a different value set."

I agree. We have them. They don't. Values, I mean.

Palin: Appeals to small business who fit into the 250,000+ range...will cost jobs...says government is the problem, not the solution.

To her, the definition of patriotism is the near absence of government. Hmm.

9:19
5,000 tax credit...health care plan...it's shitty.

"With one hand you give it, with another you take it."
-Biden on McCain plan. I love it.

Bridge to nowhere joke! Zing!

100 Billion dollar tax dodge is unpatriotic! Ha!

Palin: Calls Biden/Obama two-faced. She says that Obama voted for the tax cuts for the oil companies. She says "the oil companies, bless their hearts, don't like me too much..." She took on the big guys. One point Palin.

9:24
Sarah's dumbness gets into the airspace...

Small government = "MASSIVE OVERSIGHT"
Palin. Maker of sense.

9:28
"There has been so much revelation made aware to Americans these past weeks...rear the head of abuse...it's a toxic mess on Main St. that's affecting Wall Street."
And. I. Quote.

9:29
Biden says homeowners should be able to adjust mortgage principles when they are near bankruptcy.

Palin doesn't engage it. She goes back to energy. She says we have energy all over the U.S. but East Coast politicians won't let us have it!

9:30
The climate change question. What is true Palin...?

"Alaska feels and sees climate change more so than other states...I'm not one to attribute it all to man...there are cyclical changes in the climate...I don't want to argue about the causes...we gotta reduce emissions[even though that's not what's causing it according to her]....we're allowing other countries to pollute more than America would ever stand for [WHAT?!!]"

From Biden:
"I think it is man made. I think it's clearly man made...if you don't know the cause you can't solve the problem...John voted 20 times against...clean energy sources...we can create jobs in wind and solar...John thinks the answer is drill drill drill."

Palin:
"The chant is drill baby drill"

Way to correct him, Sarah Barracuda. Brilliant.

Biden 10 points.

9:35
They both support carbon emission caps.

9:36
Ooooh same sex question.

Biden
"In our administration there will be no distinction between same sex and opposite sex couples in the constitution or anywhere else" (slightly paraphrased because I got excited.)

Palin
"Not if it goes to redefining marriage as anything other than between a man and a woman...I am tolerant...we won't prohibit visitation rights in hospital...my non-support for anything other than traditional marriage.

Biden, do you support gay marriage?

Biden: "No."

Okay he's an asshole. Ten points for me for being a better citizen than both these people.

Did he really say that?! What an ass hole.

9:41
On to Iraq...

Palin: "It would be a travesty if we quit now in Iraq...etc etc" No mention of a clear plan. She did mention "grow our military." So I guess that's the plan.

Biden: Lays out a clear plan. Mentions the 10 billion dollar per month bill for Iraq. Ding.

"We will end this war."

Palin
"Your plan is a white flag of surrender. That is sure not what our troops need to hear right now....The surge worked..." Blames Obama for cutting off money for the troops.

Biden
John McCain voted to cut off money for the troops...because the bill had a provision in it to end the war and he didn't like that.

Ding.

John McCain has been dead wrong. Obama has been right.

Ding.

9:45
Tough question about Pakistan vs. Iran in terms of dangerousness...

Biden: Says a lot of smart stuff. Believes Al Qaeda attack will come from Pak. or Afg. not Iran and they are more of a worry, which contrasts with McCain's view that, in terms of an attack on us, central war on terror is in Iraq.

Palin: More worried about Iran because they are a threat to Israel...brings up Obama's willingness to meet with world leaders without pre-conditions.

"Those who try to destroy what we stand for should not be met with." -Palin

Basically she hates diplomacy.

Biden: "I'm surprised John doesn't realize that Ahmadinejad doesn't control the nuclear capabilities in that country."

Ding!

"John McCain said he wouldn't sit down with the government of SPAIN. Our NATO ally...I find that incredible."

Double ding!

Palin
Reasserts that she and McCain are friends of Israel. Claims she's preventing another Holocaust. Because that's what Iran is threatening...a Holocaust.

Minus 10 points.

Biden
"No one has been a better friend to Israel in the Senate than Joe Biden."

Talking about yourself in the third person? Kelly hates it. Minus 1 point.

"These last 8 years have been an abject failure."

Palin
Accuses the dems of being incapable of making change when all they do is talk about how bad the past is.

I guess one point.

Biden
The past is a prologue! I still haven't heard how your ticket will be different from bush's! But how are you going to be different from george bush??? The same policies in Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, Iran...it will lead down the same road we're on now!

Crickets.

127 points Biden.

9:58
I got up to get more wine. They were talking about Afghanistan. No points awarded in the interest of fairness.

10:00

Biden lets out a heavy sigh.

10:01
Darfur? Do we have the stomach for it?

Biden
We have the stomach for success. Look at Bosnia. We took Serbs, Croats, and Bosnians and we have a relatively stable government there now. McCain disagreed at first, and then he agreed. "I don't have the stomach for genocide." Ding. Several million points. "We should rally the world..."

Palin
"You voted for the war and now you're against it...Americans are craving that straight talk...you supported McCain's war strategies adamantly...as for Darfur we can agree on that making sure all the options are on the table there also...as governor of a resource rich state...[they had business with Sudan] we called for divestment to make sure we weren't seen as doing anything in support...that legislation hasn't passed yet but it needs to."

3 points.

Biden
"I never supported John McCain's strategy on the war."

Palin
John McCain knows what Evil is....he knows how to win a war.

10 points.

What would you do if you became president?

Biden
I would carry out Obama's policies...all stuff taking care of middle class. Awesome. "I agree with everything Barack Obama says." 37 points.

Ha ha. He mentions Bush Doctrine!!

ZING!

Palin
I don't agree with McCain on everything. I would push him on the ANWAR thing. I will put government back on the side of the people. I will put Wasilla in the white house and show Washington how we feel about all this bureaucracy.

10 points, people will like this one.

Biden
Ask any regular American whether or not the last 8 years has been kind to them. They'll say no.

15 points.

Palin
We're not the bush administration.

3 points.

Palin came from a house full of school teachers. How is that possible.

"we need flexibility in NCLB..."

We need to get RID OF IT!!! Minus 9 zillion points. (Oh and FUND whatever goes in its place!)

Biden
We need to get back to education.

I can't blog this part because I'm having an orgasm. Go Joe GO!

Funding for ECE...Funding for NCLB...etc etc all awesome. Plus 900 points.

10:16
Am I watching Fargo?

10:17
Palin wants all the powers (in two branches of government...) that cheney seems to think the VP gets. Biden thinks cheney is dangerous and has read the constitution recently. 10 points Biden.

10:18
On experience...

Palin
She resents the experience accusation. As an executive in my big state, being a mom, my connection to heartland in America, going through no health insurance periods in life, sending kids to college...etc I understand what it's like to be an average American.

Oh here she goes about the exceptionalism as Americans. Fuck that. We don't want to be exceptionally good or exceptionally kind or exceptionally fair. We just want to be exceptionally hypocritical. We can point fingers at other nations for extremism, but be incredibly extremist in our policies at home. We can say global warming is a problem, but we won't change any of our own behaviors at the risk of offending a few fat wallets. We say other nations are dangerous, but we invade countries that didn't do a damn thing to provoke us. We say democracy means peace, but we are in the middle of two wars. She means exceptional in that we don't give a shit about anyone other than Americans, and even IN America we don't treat the majority of our citizens with respect.

10:23
Biden proves the Maverick title is bullshit. 700 billion points!

"So, Maverick he is not." Bam.

Oh man that was awesome.

10:30 pm

Well, she didn't totally fuck up. I'm slightly disappointed. BUT, she did go totally off topic a lot, doesn't know what the Holocaust was about, can't reconcile McCain's love for deregulation with his "reform of wall street" crap of late, wants to be even more powerful than cheney, and she did a heck of a lot of winking.

Biden was awesome. Except for the gay marriage thing. What a dick.

In other news McCain has pulled his people out of Michigan. Ha! We're gonna win. Ohhh please let us win.

10:40
Rachel Maddow has sex hair. High five Keith. I'm going to bed.

peace out

Of the approximately 200 million Americans with more foreign policy experience than Sarah Palin, one of my personal favorites has left the building. Permanently.

In an attempt to sleep with a handsome young man in grad school, who happened to be a fan of some writer called David Foster Wallace, I read some of this guy's books. 3,768 pages later I can go ahead and assert that the work of DFW outsmarts, outfunnies, and outcrazies any other writer out there. His work is the best I've read, and I haven't looked at writing the same way again. I would kill to see the world through whatever hyper-aware ultra-smart lens he's got.

Unfortunately, Mr. Wallace hanged himself on Friday night.

The peculiar emotion that comes with the loss of someone important to you but whom you do not actually know is something I really wish DFW had stayed around long enough to write about, because it is both right up his alley and way beyond my capacity. I woke up this morning at the crack of 11, a bit hungover, and I stumbled to the kitchen table and opened my computer, as I do first-thing every morning. The pre-coffee news was shocking, of course. I gave a shout and my better half, who was also doing his pre-coffee computer opening news-checking ritual, did his best to be comforting.

But I am not upset about the loss of a person, am I? I'm not going to miss David Foster Wallace's great back rubs. Or his awesome eggplant casserole. Or his terrible singing voice. I am upset in a very selfish manner. I am upset that I was saving two of the stories in Oblivion, so that I would have some unread DFW material at all times, while I waited for his next book to come out. I was rather terrified of having read all of his work, and having nothing at all to which I could look forward. Now I am two stories away from having no more Wallace to read. I am sorry for the literary world. I made sure to post my grief on Facebook.

It is this exact kind of crap that he wrote about. The detached people of the modern world, their helpless pathetic searching for a cure for loneliness. The empty entertainment to which we cling. The odd places we find comfort. I think he would find it just fitting that people asserted their status as mourners on a social networking website.

And now here I am blogging about it.

At this point in America, with the ever-growing population offering no cure for an increasingly isolated, lonely collective existence (not to mention the growing popularity of extremism and the demonization of intelligence) any person as in tune to it, as able to characterize it so crisply as he was would be bound to suffer terribly. So I guess he ended that suffering. Or some other sort of suffering that he didn't write about. I have no idea; I didn't really know him.

run dnc

After suffering through the dull parade of people throwing their bodies around in the air for little trinkets and the chance to hear their national anthem one more god damned time, we finally got to the best show of the summer. Bill Clinton's teary-eyed "God I love her." Dennis Kucinich's insane arm-waving shouts to "wake up America." The apparent love child of Chris Farley and George W. Bush, Governor Schweitzer of Montana, delivering an SNL-worthy performance. Ted Kennedy passing the torch. The beloved crowds of protestors all over the city. There is no event I more enjoy watching on television...actually, I'll rephrase. There is nothing I more enjoy watching on television, event or otherwise, than the Democratic National Convention. Normally, if I am in front of the boob tube I can stand about five minutes, ten if it's a Seinfeld rerun, and I'm up out of the seat looking for something else to do. I find the thing terrifically boring. However, the giant blue circus that is the DNC held my attention for nearly seven hours straight yesterday.

It's basically the nerd's Kentucky Derby:

Thanks to CSPAN I got to watch the whole thing uninterrupted and without any of those pesky news channel morons blathering on about strategy, wardrobe choices, and who knows what else. So I got to the see the B-listers like Cecile Richards (my hero), the Congressional Black Caucus, the Women of the Senate, and my forever favorite B-lister Dennis Kucinich.

The B-listers are my favorites because with a lesser spotlight you get more personality, and they tend to really let it all hang out. Kucinich of course does this all the time, regardless of the position he's in, which is why I love him so much. But, sadly, the awesomeness ended there this year. Cecile Richards was what every Planned Parenthood executive is: poised, spotless, strong but careful. The Congressional Black Caucus didn't mention race. (In fact, nobody has mentioned race at all. They've mentioned gender about 67,000 times, though. Hillary's introductory montage was all about women's rights...Michelle Obama's speech commemorated women's suffrage (she did mention it, remember, right in the middle of her suzie homemaker speech that everyone but me seemed to love.))

This brings me to the women of the Senate. I am frickin' pissed off at you ladies!!!! The touchiest issue they brought up was equal pay for equal work. And they should bring it up, what with this 77 cents on the man's dollar bullshit. And they brought out the lady the Supreme Court told she was paid less and would just have to deal with it. Fine, fine, fine.

But where oh where, I ask you, was the discussion about reproductive rights?! Remember those, the ones that are in grave danger as we speak? They just left it all to Cecile Richards. Women of the Senate, shame on you all.

So in case you happen to be speaking at the dnc tonight, let me break it down for you.

Stuff you CAN talk about:

The Economy

Energy

The War

Equal Pay for Equal Work

Health Care

Stuff you CAN'T talk about:

Race

Reproductive rights

So don't fuck it up, because we wouldn't want anyone getting uncomfortable.

Crap! Is it August?!

Besides being a reminder that I’m one of the several hundred thousand Bostonians about to move on good ole September 1^st, the arrival of August is always moderately depressing. One begins to reevaluate one’s summer. There have been exactly zero trips to the beach, days off, picnics, one nasty tan line from a day of biking but otherwise still Scottishly pale… And of course every new month delivers the sinking, cold realization that I have criminally neglected my blog yet again.

I’ll go ahead and sum up all that I missed in…

Top Five Things I Totally Meant to Blog About Last Month

Or

My Summer Thus Far

#5 PROOF that my asshole coworker actually is an asshole

Oh most desired gift at last you’ve arrived. For the entirety of my employment I have known that this woman (referred to in previous blogs as Jabba the Hut) is an asshole. Like the worst kind of asshole, she manages somehow to evade what should be a companywide intervention based on the universal consensus that she is so egregiously awful that it is a violation of state safety regulations to force other employees to work anywhere near her. Rather, she manages to win the favor of certain administrators who, uh, clearly find their asses and elbows indistinguishable from one another.

What she does is the following:

We’re in community meeting, a weekly gathering of all students and staff wherein all may make announcements to the entire school and student leadership may put various things to a vote and blah blah blah. At this particular meeting one student, who had not attended the graduation ceremony, was receiving an award that came with a small scholarship. She was sitting with her case manager (our school has counselors assigned to each student) and both ladies were jokingly grabbing the scholarship check back and forth from one another during the rest of the meeting. Jabba the Hut notices this playful act and bellows, to a roomful of people who HADN’T necessarily noticed what was going on, “Whoops! Hang on to that check, you gotta watch these Puerto Ricans every second!”

Pause. Digest.

Now, if a student had yelled some racially charged statement like that in the middle of a meeting, I would stop everything and process the statement with everyone. I am constantly doing the work of getting the students to reflect on their own racialized statements and beliefs so that, someday, we might be in a place where those kinds of statements aren’t even thought, let alone screamed at the top of one’s lungs.

But what was I to do when a staff member did it?

Apparently I was to drop the dry erase marker I had in my hand, and say, “I can’t believe you just said that.”

Everyone tittered awkwardly and things moved right along. How the hell are we going to get the kids to start reevaluating their beliefs about race if the teachers make these kinds of statements?!

Silver lining: now everyone knows she’s an asshole.

#4 Culture Clash: Bikes v. Cars

I’ll admit right away that I used to loathe bikers. Those idiots weaving in and out of lanes wearing pants three sizes too small and flipping everyone off. But now having seen Boston drivers from behind the handle bars, I would flip everyone off too if I wasn’t so scared of riding without holding on… Car drivers’ sense of superiority and imagined entitlement to the entire road is at worst dangerous and at best really fucking irritating.

I had a run-in with just such a gas guzzling enemy of the planet mid-July while on a leisurely bike ride through Watertown. I don’t know how many of my several thousand dedicated readers are familiar with Watertown, but it’s a pretty mellow place with many residential areas. My boyfriend and I were taking a left off one residential street onto another, waiting in the middle of the road for oncoming cars to pass, just as a motor vehicle would have done. The car behind us begins laying on horn, yelling, “Get out of the road!”

This poor soul thought that only cars had the right to use the roads that all we taxpayers pay for. As I often do, I responded to potential conflict with grace and respect for another point of view…

OR

I screamed a string of obscenities in the direction of the speeding car as it headed toward a red light one hundred feet away. My better half responded the way a person as level headed as I never would, and chased after the car. The following interaction ensued:

My better half (MBH): Hey you really didn’t need to yell at us

Patty Petroleum (chewing French fries): Get out of the road

MBH: You get out of the road; I have just as much right to be on it as you do

PP: You have the sidewalk

MBH: Sidewalks indicate their purpose in their name and bikes aren’t allowed on the sidewalks anyway

PP: Whatever

MBH: So it’s okay for you to scream at people, but it’s not okay for me to-

Light turns green. Petroleum Patty wields her enormous arm to form a familiar gesture with its sausage fingers and yells the following brilliant statement out the window:

PP: GET A CAR!!!!!

Well we hadn’t thought of that! Thanks, Patty Petroleum! I mean, it’s really hard to eat all my meals out of a Styrofoam box while riding my bike! I could just GET A CAR! It’s been such a drag being able to park right next to my destination rather than patronize my friendly neighborhood garage three blocks away! I should buy a CAR! I really hate fitting into the same jeans I’ve worn since my early twenties, I need to gain weight so I can rationalize buying new clothes. I’ll get a CAR!

….of course, I do own a car. But I’m nice about it. Eat me, Petroleum Patty!!!

#3 JUST IN CASE YOU STILL DON’T THINK MY COWORKER IS AN ASSHOLE

Oh boy is this one priceless. We are in a staff meeting, headed by our boss who is African American. Jabba the Hut is taking the notes, and says…

“How do you spell your name again?”

Our boss, who has worked with us for three months now, replies.

Jabba says, “Oh that must be one of those made up black names.”

… … …

I’m just going to leave that hanging…but trust that it did not make it into the meeting minutes.

#2 Dante’s Sixth Circle of Hell

Otherwise known as the Boston Children’s Museum. A cesspool of diapers, whining, snotty sleeves, untied shoelaces, frantic parents, disobedient little persons darting around with no regard for passers by. When I face my ultimate comeuppance, it will be there I am sent.

During summer school we take the students on field trips every Friday. Since most of our students have children themselves, we take one trip on which students may bring their families. The amount of hatred I harbor for this annual event cannot be properly expressed in words. See, a group of teenagers gathered together, regardless of whether they are playing the role of parent or student, behaves like a group of teenagers. So when you combine a group of teenagers with a group of sub-3 year olds plus cell phones plus all the social pressures and conflicts and norms of school you get:

“Oh hell no she won’t. I am not playin’ with that ho- ”

“Don’t say ho in front of my kid.”

“Why hasn’t he met his momma?”

“Bitch I am not PLAYING with you.”

“Baby get out of the ROAD get out of the fucking road get the fuck out of the road.”

“Yo your baby is mad cute!”

“I’m at school. I don’t know a museum. I told you don’t be chirpin’ me at school….hello? Motherfucker I KNOW you didn’t hang up on me.”

“Hello? Did you just-”

“HellOOOO?”

“Where the bathrooms at?!”

“Where’d Miss Kelly go?”

Miss Kelly went straight to the museum shop, where she sat and read a book for the entire day.*

*Conscience alert: If I were a different blogger, I might have talked about observing my students in their roles as parents and how a palpable sense of community made the chaperons smile as the students encouraged their kids to play together. And I might have also mentioned the moments of unguarded, unselfconscious curiosity and wonder while they learned with their kids at various exhibits…but we can’t have that messing up my reputation.

#1 Unprotected Sex

Second only to the Children’s Museum as a reaffirmation of my decision to barricade these baby tubes with two coils of steel, this delightful endeavor is ill-advised for most of you poor saps but gee golly if it isn’t making fine and dandy my vacationless summer vacation. High five!

Retreat! Retreat!

According to the dictionary, retreat means: 1 a (1): an act or process of withdrawing especially from what is difficult, dangerous, or disagreeable

According to my boss it means disguising a team building marathon as a mini work vacation. The main mode of disguise is location. Meetings aren't meetings when they happen in some OTHER conference room!

Thus, the gaggle of overweight pale grouchy non-profit employees in second hand clothes and comfortable shoes gathered in the early morning sun at a dock in the Boston Harbor, bound for trust falls and ice breakers. The teaching staff was especially attractive, the ancients in their sun hats, I in the same skort and sneakers I wear every day all summer long, and the bipolar chain smoking bad poetry writing weird ass new girl in some kind of hemp outfit. Our boss waddled up to the dock dead last, laden with the giant Post-it easel pad and a copy of The Complete Idiots Guide to Team Building.

As we motored through the harbor, flanked by rows of rusting freight cars and floating plastic bottles, I leaned over the railing and stared at the water. There is a certain mindless peace that comes only on a boat. I had my own twenty minute retreat, which was interrupted by the question, "Hey which Gilligan's Island characters would we all be?!"

I. Would. Rather. Drown.

The new girl was mystified by her nomination to the Gilligan role, proof of a casting job well done. My role was decided as follows:

"Kelly's the professor."

"No she's Ginger."

"Ginger??"

A glance in my direction.

"The movie star? The one that dresses up all the time?"

"Yeah, but wasn't Ginger really self absorbed?"

"Oh, yeah. Okay Kelly's Ginger, so who's the professor?"

And the team building just kept on rolling, all day long.