LOL

I remember falling in love with Woody Allen a long time ago; I think it was when I saw Sleeper. When he later proved himself to be a total perv, I kicked him to the curb as boyfriend material, but I still think he's funny. Today, the New York Times quoted this quintessential Allen joke from his book, Getting Even:

A man in asks his uncle, “Could it not be simply that we are alone and aimless, doomed to wander in an indifferent universe, with no hope of salvation, nor any prospect except misery, death, and the empty reality of eternal nothing?”
The uncle replies, “You wonder why you’re not invited to more parties.”

I lol-ed. Ever feel like this guy? Sometimes I do, but I've learned to keep questions like this to myself, cuz I need all the party invites I can get.

An old boyfriend and I used to joke about the Annie Hall scene from which this quote is taken:

Alvy Singer: Here, you look like a very happy couple, um, are you?
Female street stranger: Yeah.
Alvy Singer: Yeah? So, so, how do you account for it?
Female street stranger: Uh, I'm very shallow and empty and I have no ideas and nothing interesting to say.
Male street stranger: And I'm exactly the same way.
Alvy Singer: I see. Wow. That's very interesting. So you've managed to work out something?

The people Alvy's talking to in this scene are both thin, blonde, perfectly groomed, and dressed in the latest styles. I think we laughed because we weren't. Ever. But we thought we had a lot of other things going for us...like the tendancy to pose depressing, existential questions. Come to think of it, we didn't get invited to many parties either...

Bah!- Another obnoxious forward

I'm back to complaining about the email forwards I often get from people who like to share their views with me, unsolicited. If you have been reading my blog, you will remember that I complained about one recently, in which immigrants were demonized. Here's another one from my inbox today. A "sweet" story about a child and his/her dog:

A dog had followed his owner to school. His owner was a
fourth grader at a public elementary school. However,
when the bell rang, the dog sidled inside the building and
made it all the way to the child's classroom before a
teacher noticed and shoo'ed him outside, closing the
door behind him. The dog sat down, whimpered and
stared at the closed doors. Then God appeared beside
the dog, patted his head, and said, "Don't feel bad fella'....
they won't let ME in either."

Where do people who send these types of messages get the idea that God isn’t allowed in school? I work in a public school where kids openly express their faith and beliefs all the time, posters in the halls announce the activities of Christian youth groups, and there is even “prayer at the pole,” in which a group of very committed Christian students occasionally gather at the flag pole before school to pray. Granted, these expressions and demonstrations are only Christian, but isn’t that, after all, the “God” to which this little story refers? And that’s what bothers me. I know the people who send these kinds of messages believe theirs is the one true religion, but for the 67% of the world’s total population who do not, the least they could do is be honest.

How about substituting the word Christ for God in these emails, and how about admitting that what they want are public schools where Christianity, not God, is “let in”? What kind of outcry would come from the person who sent me the story above if Buddhism, Scientology, or Islam was "let in" in the way she wants Christianity to be "let in" ?

News flash: One of the founding principles of this country is that no specific religion may be sponsored by the state. Why don’t some people get it? There is no prohibition on believers expressing themselves in public, and that includes public schools; a believer from any religion has an equal right to legal forms of expression, but a public school can’t promote Christianity or any other faith. Students can pray all they want, or speak and write about God, but teachers (and others in charge at school) can’t show a preference for a particular belief or make statements to suggest one particular religion is true and the others are false. And that includes Christianity, and I’m fine with that.

To me, sending these veiled pro-Christian messages either shows an ignorance of the law or promotes exactly the kind of rabid, exclusive religiosity that is the source of...terror. You know, Terror, that thing we have all come to fear? If you want your child to be in a “religious” school, fork over the tuition dollars to send him/her there. Cuz this is America. Those who say God is not "let in" at school might want to check into the laws of the land to which they pledge their allegiance, and to use the vernacular of many of those who promote this attitude of exclusivity in America, “Love it or Leave it.”

Opera in the Moooovies

Speaking of opera, remember this scene from Philadelphia? One of my favorites from all of moviedom:

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(Don'tcha just love youtube?!?!? What a wonderful thing on the internets!)

I've listened to this aria without Tom Hanks' character's narraration, and it wasn't as moving. It's the combination of the story (this character's story, and the story he tells us from the opera), the way the scene is shot, and the music that makes it sublime.

I've never seen an opera live. One of those things I mean to do before I meet my "morta."

New Boyfriend

Here's something that will lift your spirits. Isn't the human voice capable of making the most beautiful music, more beautiful than any manufactured instrument? Paul Potts will make you a believer. This guy just won Britain's Got Talent. I think there's a similar show here called America's Got Talent and I hope I don't have this confused with Pop Idol/American Idol or one of those other t.v. talent shows. Anyway, Mr. Potts, who works for a cell phone company and has always loved to sing, just won the competition. The way the clip is produced is a little on the cheesey side, but it has the best sound quality I could find.



I'm a sucker for beautifully sung opera. It always brings me to tears, and this was no exception. I'm no opera oficionado, but I am familiar with this aria and love it. It's from Puccini's Turandot and is called "Nessen Dorma." There's something about this man's humble demeanor that adds to the charm of his performance.

Brian Lamb just lost his spot as my boyfriend. I hope he isn't too heartbroken.

In case you're interested, here's the great Pavarotti singing the same aria.
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Considering the years of training and professional practice Pavarotti has on him at the time of this recording, I'd say Paul Potts' performance is pdg. You?

Iowa roots and Father's Day

I think there's a perception that the midwest is the midwest and there isn't a great deal of difference between the states in flyover country, but this just isn't true. My part of Minnesota, an hour's drive north of Minneapolis, is rural, but the topography is less conducive to large farms and is usually left in a more natural state for homes on acreages or hobby farms. The land is carved up into smaller plots, with a few acres of beans or corn here and there among the small lakes and marshy areas. I've just returned from driving straight down I-35 into the heart of Iowa, and the land there is farmland like none other.

When I was a kid growing up in Iowa, farms were smaller, and the scenery was dotted with the barns and silos of farmsteads that were four or more to a square mile.I always loved looking out over that Iowa countryside, and I remember visiting those farms with my dad as I rode along on his route selling and servicing milking equipment. Nearly every farm had some cows to milk, but that's no longer the case, and farms have gotten much larger, resulting in fewer homes and views of miles of uninterrupted crops. This time, in particular, I was struck by the flatness of it, and oh, the green! Shades of green, rather actual topography, is what provides the relief in the landscape of central Iowa. There's a beauty there I sometimes think one has to have lived with in order to appreciate; only Nebraska tops Iowa in the contest for the number of disparaging remarks made about the lack of scenery its highways provide.

It was hot; the temperature as I drove up I-35 was over 90 degrees. I recalled my dad never complaining much about the summer heat, saying hot weather was good for the corn-- knee high by the fourth of July and all that. Although now, if corn is only knee high by July 4, a farmer worries about crop failure. I wondered what my dad would think if he were here to see the way countryside has changed due to corporate farming and the use of highly engineered seed, chemicals, and fertilizers. I thought about how being my father's daughter, growing up in Iowa, provides a unique persepective as the Iowa summer landscape rolled by on this Father's Day.

School's Out

Thursday was the last day of school with kids, and Friday was the teachers' last day of the year that was 06/07. My friend Heidi told me about one particular "last day" for her when she was teaching, in which she simply swept everything off the top of her desk into a drawer and called it done. It was close to that for me. I opened cabinets, stood back to look for holes in the disorganization inside, and stuffed those holes full of things that needed to be stored.

We do a barbeque on the last day, followed by a year-end program. A chicken hat was made for our principal, to honor his diving for a chicken let loose in the school by our departing seniors. Cambridge likes to think of itself as a bedroom community of the twin cities, but I say any town in which a chicken is let loose in school is rural, no matter how you slice it.

Tomorrow I will attend graduation and then...let the summer begin!

Day-oh

Teachers are generally sensitive people, or people people; whatever they are, I'm one of them, and today was a day that made me wonder why. This is unusual because most days I know exactly why I am one. Having been one for about seven years now, I can remember what it was like to work in the world where a vacation was two weeks, three tops, and almost never all at once. So why is it that I now feel like I'd have to quit my job (and quitting my job is something I have NO business doing) if I wasn't four days away from a 10-week respite? Perhaps because it's all relative.

I am remembering some advice given to me by a teacher who was teaching me to teach. She said something like:
Teaching is the most rewarding, exasperating job there is. Sometimes, at the end of a terrible day, all we can do is know we do our best, and leave it at that. And teachers don't get permission to "leave it at that." So, once in awhile, give yourself permission and screw the rest of it.

I've spent the entire evening screwing the rest of it, and it has helped a little.

Or, as my friend Mary told me at around 4 p.m.:
Go home; take a shower and wash off the day.

I took a shower as soon as I got home. I even went so far as to watch the water run off my body and down the drain.

Or, as my friend Nancy said when I was gushing about a wonderful class of creative writers I was teaching:
Enjoy it, Rox. Really enjoy it, because you know it isn't always like this.

I did enjoy it. I only wish I could have bottled it, as I could use about a gallon of that tonic before I put myself to bed tonight.

Let's see if I can manage to end on a lighter note-
Props to teachers and to teaching... with its long summer vacation.

Ahhhhh art

This is amazing!

Youtube tags it "500 Years of Female Portraits in Western Art"

Speaking Up

I get a lot of email forwards from people of many different opinions and beliefs with whom I don't necessarily agree. Usually, I don't respond. Today, though, I got this one, and I felt compelled to respond to the way the message was twisted to represent a xenophobia that is downright unbecoming. Those who make ignorant assumptions or harbor misconceptions about immigrants in this country need to hear from those of us who don't share their views. I couldn't let this one go without sending a reply to EVERYONE on the list of recipients.

Here's the forward:

The year is 1907.....but the speaker knew what he was talking about. READ PRINT UNDER PICTURE



Theodore Roosevelt's ideas on Immigrants and being an AMERICAN in 1907. "In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language ... and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people." Theodore Roosevelt 1907 EVERY AMERICAN NEEDS TO READ THIS!

Here is my reply:

This is true, and while we are agreeing with this, we need to remember our parents and grandparents who spoke their "first" language at home for years while they became fully versed in English, kept and honored the customs of their countries of origin, and loved and longed for "the homeland" while they were proud Americans. We see evidence of this all around us, and it remains part of the beautiful, complex heritage of our country today.

Immigrants have always been demonized, but don't be fooled by those who say Mexicans and other immigrants don't want to assimilate- I am a teacher in a public school and I see evidence, every day, of this desire to become one of us. Don't be fooled by the tongues that wag and mouths that spout hatred for those who look and speak differently than we who are blessed to have been born here by an accident of birth. The people who have come to this country recently are willing to work the most menial and difficult jobs, and have, against all odds, made their way to America. They are so grateful for the opportunities this country affords them. They are willing to work hard, they want their children to do well in school, and they desperately want to take part in our democracy and become full-fledged American citizens.

Sometimes, a girl's just gotta speak her mind.

Give Me a Day

This morning, I learned from The Writer's Almanac web page that the piano tune ushering in Garrison Keillor's voice every day on that site is a Scandinavian folk song called "Gi Mig En Dag" ("Give Me a Day").

Next, I did a Google search and found a paper on the "internets" written by a musicologist named Frans Mossberg. He uses the tune to offer some "principal and methodogical issues on studies of timbre in words, music, and vocal performance." Yup, that's what Frans' paper does. I think I'll leave that work to him, but he provides this English free translation for part of the song:

Give me a day of winds and of sun by beaches so light and so clear,
Where silences roam in meadows and grass by the sea down by the valleys of Osterlen.

Lovely words, aren't they?

Then, I wondered exactly what timbre means. This comes from my dictionary on cdrom:
timbre (tàm´ber, tîm´-) noun
1. The quality of a sound that distinguishes it from other sounds of the same pitch and volume.
2. Music. The distinctive tone of an instrument or a singing voice.
[French, from Old French, drum, clapperless bell, probably from Medieval Greek *timbanon, drum, from Greek tumpanon, kettledrum.]

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition copyright © 1992 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Electronic version licensed from InfoSoft International, Inc. All rights reserved.

Life would be so much less interesting without our computers.

Unholy & Cannoli

I haven't had any tears over the war for a long time, now. The daily grind of hearing the awful news seems to have numbed me in the way that war does when you're far from it, not making any personal sacrifices. But I did last night, and it surprised me. As I drove home from school, NPR was reporting the killing of the two Iraqi newsmen who worked for ABC. I listened and drove on. Then, at home, I had the tv on in the background and something in the voice of the reporter stopped me; there was such a remarkable sadness, I had to take myself over to the box and look. There it was again, the story of the deaths of these two men. There were pictures of them doing their jobs, clips from stories they had covered, and a brief description of their personalities. One had been a joker, a boisterous fellow with a wife and two small children, the other described as a shy man. He looked like a shy man. In the moment I felt a stab of utter futility, did a sort of coughing thing and banged out a sob. It caught me completely off guard.

I signed up for a daily podcast called "The Writer's Almanac." There's a daily vignette from Garrison Keillor that includes a brief "today in history" report and a poem. I've been listening first thing every morning and have fallen in love with its musical introduction, a sweet, simple chorded piano piece that reminds me of the kind of music my second grade teacher used to play for us in the classroom. Remember when second grade teachers all played the classroom piano?

Today's poem addresses a much less traumatizing version of that same surprise of emotion that caught me off guard last night:

Appeal to the Grammarians
by Paul Violi

We, the naturally hopeful,
Need a simple sign
For the myriad ways we're capsized.
We who love precise language
Need a finer way to convey
Disappointment and perplexity.
For speechlessness and all its inflections,
For up-ended expectations,
For every time we're ambushed
By trivial or stupefying irony,
For pure incredulity, we need
The inverted exclamation point.
For the dropped smile, the limp handshake,
For whoever has just unwrapped a dumb gift
Or taken the first sip of a flat beer,
Or felt love or pond ice
Give way underfoot, we deserve it.
We need it for the air pocket, the scratch shot,
The child whose ball doesn't bounce back,
The flat tire at journey's outset,
The odyssey that ends up in Weehawken.
But mainly because I need it—here and now
As I sit outside the Caffe Reggio
Staring at my espresso and cannoli
After this middle-aged couple
Came strolling by and he suddenly
Veered and sneezed all over my table
And she said to him, "See, that's why
I don't like to eat outside."

Here's the link if you want to listen or sign up:
http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/

Needing some summer

School is getting to me! I've seen this look on the faces of kids lately.
Could this be what they're thinking? Could it be we all need to get us some summer?
I know, I know, teachers have it made, having summers off.
Seriously, I don't know if I could do this job if it didn't involve getting away from it for a couple of months at a time. I guess we adjust to the circumstances of our work, so I'll just say that if this job didn't involve summers off, I'm not sure if I'd be any good at it at all, and leave it at that. Cuz I have 15 days left at the moment, and at this stage I'm ready to crack.

Code Monkey Dance

Today I read about Jonathan Coulton, a musician who quit his job in the tech industry to devote himself to music full time. He markets his music on the internet and committed to writing a song a week for a year. His song "Code Monkey" is a tribute to his former life, and his fans love it. I haven't heard a lot of this other stuff, but this one is very pop-y. Confession... I love pop-y sounding music! And I like this song. I think it's funny; extra funny considering Mr. Coutlon's former life as a code monkey.

Here's a YouTube version I particularly like:


A girl in what appears to be a dorm room sets up her web cam and does the Code Monkey dance. In an interview about the infectious nature of the web, he said he was playing a gig and some people in the venue were doing the dance.

I was singing this song in my head all day at school. Have I mentioned I really like monkeys?

Pi

I decided I'm going to read Life of Pi again this summer. I really liked that book, and after watching something about people lost at sea on the Discovery Channel (it was really gruesome), I simply have to read it again. My friend told me her son read it for a college class, so now I can't wait to attack the kid when he gets home this summer, to find out what was said about the story in his class. I have theories and I WANT VALIDATION!!!!

Speaking of reading, I'm presently reading and grading short stories from my creative writers. Does this sound like fun? It's actually one of the most difficult things about my teaching job. Sometimes I find myself thoroughly impressed by the talent of a student, sometimes I read and spend a reeeeeeeeeally long time figuring out what to say about a story that leaves me wondering how this writer could take my class and write THIS story. Someone's not listening...... Nuff said.

It's Mother's Day. I got a card from my daughter that says this:

Today, we celebrate our most valuable resource-- mothers....
Tomorrow, we go back to oil.

I just luuuuuuuv my quirky, funny, smart, Texas daughter! You can read her blog at:
http://butterflypalacedispatch.blogspot.com/
It's a goodie!

A Poem

This poem came out of nowhere, but I'm putting it somewhere, so I don't forget it.

I went to Screw U
But didn’t learn a thing
About any of it
Until I met the one I’d
Leave by waiting
For the locksmith
Early in the morning.
Then I figured out you
Change it all and don’t
Look back until you’ve
Gone so far
The phone book won’t help.

The pots and pans don’t even
Remember a time the meals
Were made by chopping up stuff
Throwing it all together
They took on new
Flavors and less fat.
Where there was fearless
Faltering at every turn
I turned in to a little place
Where I unlocked the secrets of
My adult education.

Kind of crotchety, isn't it? Not the kind of poem that becomes a beautiful morning like this! I'm going peace walkin', and then I'll see if I can stand to cough up the 60 bucks for a Wisconsin fishing license with a trout stamp.
I recently drove over to have a look at my perfect little stream near Red Wing. I'm almost afraid to get my fly rod out of its case, after not using it at all last summer. If it's bent or something, I don't think I'll be able to stand the sadness. Or I'll figure out a way to fish with a bent rod.
One of the best things about the stream is that there is almost never anyone on it, except for some cows and a bull I fear greatly. But not as much as I fear being seen by "the fellas," or the yuppie experts with their $300 polarized lenses and other fancy gear, who would detect, in a heartbeat, that I have almost no idea what I'm doing.
But HA!- Even they don't know about this glittering little gem, perfectly landscaped for a shy novice without waders. Well, there's one old guy who's nice; I trust him not to watch me spend 15 minutes tying on a fly and then flinging it into the weeds behind me. If he does, he keeps his distance and minds his own beeswax.

Holy Cow!

I haven't been able to sign in to my blog for...a really long time. I switched to the google version, and it screwed up everything. The "it" being me, probably, as I'm sometimes so absent-minded and disorganized I charge into a new tech situation without understanding just what it is I'm doing. My take on this is that you gotta hand it to me for the charging in in the first place, but, as I have learned (well, evidently not), that can sometimes create problems.
So, just this minute, I was fooling around with ALL the issues forums, trouble-shooting, and suggestions and it worked!
Now, I fear I'll never get on again, as I have no idea what I did that made the signing on happen. Story of my life, in one way or another, and as fears go, a rather minor one.
But I'm back. For this moment in time. We shall see about the rest of them.
And why am I Holy-Cowing over my return? I missed me! Ha!

Up for Air

I'm staying home this Thanksgiving, to come up for air. I made a concerted effort to do a better job with the word "no" this school year, and I can't say that it's helped. If I made a list, here, of the things I have said "no" to so far this school year, I wouldn't be able to live with the guilt, so I won't. And here's the kicker: It doesn't seem to have helped me feel less busy, or more accurately, overwhelmed.

I have a couple of theories concerning this phenomenon:
First, I'm an anxietal goofball when it comes to teaching. I was talking to my sister about this and said I seriously have to wonder what's wrong with me in that I live alone, have no obligations to young children, husband, or anybody but me for that matter, and I can't seem to keep up. I live like a slob half the time and commit cleaning frenzies the other half; I reduced my possessions, hauling untold loads of the stuff to the thrift store last summer, and I consider myself generally low maintenance. So on the home front my responsibilities are few. But I find myself very frequently mired in a ton of school work and am constantly obsessing about my students and my teaching.

Isn't she wonderful? She cares so much! Um, well, the truth is, not so much; I honestly want to care less. I think being less neurotic about all of this would be better for my students and a healthier way to conduct the business of my life. Once, when I was training to become a teacher, I was obsessing in the way that I do, and my boyfriend said, "Rox, it's not rocket science." Obviously I was offended, because I remember those five little words to this day, but moreover, he was right! Rox can make rocket science out of teaching. God knows what the state of my mental health would be had I actually become a rocket scientist, but there's little danger of that, considering my next theory:

Isn't there some principle relating to available space and the expansion of matter? Go ahead and take a moment to grieve the decline of general knowledge among public school teachers; then give the system credit for guiding me to a major in English rather than physical science. But I digress. What I mean to say is it seems that saying "no" has only created more space to fill with guilt and other matters of teaching.

So, on this Thanksgiving, one item on my gratitude list is the four days I have to come up for air. Other things are (in no particular order) :
The glimmer of hope concerning the mid-term election results and Rumsfeld's "resignation"
My daughter Kara and her new husband Charley
Nature
The love of family and friends
Naps
Books
Cotton

> WARNING

PRAIRIEHOMIE is radioactive. Wear protective clothing at all times.

Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Still Here

I haven't posted for a very long time. I guess it's quite evident that summer's over and "school brain" has set in. This happens. It takes awhile for me to get back into school...then it takes awhile to get my life back when I'm back into school. So, for the time being, I come home, sit, and stare for a half-hour or so, then try to get a walk in, then hit the books: grade books, lesson plan books, text books, books that contain meeting notes- arrrrrrrrrrgh!

I love my job, I really do.

I'm still here. And I'll be back, as soon as I can eat, sleep, THINK about anything other than school.

Sorry, Joe

I haven't posted for awhile, and I wonder if anyone noticed that in my last few posts I made an effort to stay away from politics. Anyone? I know there are those who are political and those who aren't, and the constant discussion of political issues can bore the face off of those who aren't. It's hard for me to understand this, as I find the subject the single most relevant aspect of life in our democracy, not to mention that I find it endlessly fascinating. I follow politics the way some people follow sports, or Hollywood, and I'll be the first to admit I feel superior about it, because I know politics actually MATTERS- ha!

So, I have something to say about Ned Lamont's victory over Joe Lieberman in the Connecticut Democratic primary:

I'm glad Lamont won. I'm glad that he beat the guy who is seen as "reaching across the aisle" to Republicans. If it's true that he won solely on his antiwar stance, I'm glad for that too. I'm glad Americans (or at least Democrats) are taking a stand against a failed military effort that has killed thousands of people for reasons that are still a mystery to most of us. I don't want my party to continue to be represented by a senator who votes to cut estate taxes for multimillionaries while the administration continues to spend billions on this war and our health care system is broken, our schools are underfunded, middle class earnings are falling, and huge corporate subsidies continue while the poor and elderly are largely ignored.
I want a Democrat who IS a Democrat, and Lieberman hasn't been acting like one lately. Republicans say the Democratic party doesn't have an agenda, that we don't know what we stand for; well I'm a Democrat who does know. Call me an idealogical polarizer, better yet, call me a bleeding heart liberal because, proudly, I am one. I'm a Democrat who knows what I want from my country and my party, and if Ned Lamont's primary victory sends a message to my party about that, sorry Joe, but I'm glad you lost.