Joy

I Don't Get It

This excerpt from an op-ed by Micheal Kinsley in the NYT perfectly articulates the mixed message we are getting from "experts" in the media who tell us how to manage our money and care for our nation's economy. Am I the only one who's confused?

So should I buy that coffee maker (or insert whatever gizmo you may be looking at in a store) to stimulate the economy? Or should I save the money in order to “grow” the economy and provide for my own old age? I can’t do both.

This is the dilemma that 30 years of Reaganomics (the real Reaganomics — keeping the economy overstimulated with huge deficits and irresponsible consumer borrowing — not the fantasy Reaganomics of government run like a family and tax cuts that pay for themselves) has left us with. So what do we do? The nearest thing to an actual plan seems to be something like this: stimulate first, to avert various short-term disasters, and then — at some signal from the Treasury Department — turn around and start saving like mad, to avert various long-term disasters. In other words, we need to get back our consumer confidence, and then lose it again.

We hear about the horrendous credit card spending and other debt that is consuming the paychecks of many working people. In the next breath, we hear that banks are being urged to "free up" consumer lending.

Huh?

I guess my economic policy ignorance is showing, cuz I don't get it. And, by the way, thanks, Reaganomics.

This is my precious grandchild, Phoebe Josephine Savvas, born July 31, 2008. The first leader of our country whose name she'll articulate will be President Obama's. Life is beautiful!

Tickling My Snarky Side

I haven't posted in a long time. No excuses. Here is something I found on the internet that I can't resist sharing. I love dark comedy and satire. This website on George Saunders has a couple of video clips that tickled me silly. First, a puppet-performed version of an essay from Saunder's most recent book. Click on it to satisfy the sarcastic cynic in your own self. Then, below that, my boyfriend, the brilliant Stephen Colbert interviews Saunders. Let the snarkiness and hilarity ensue:

http://www.saunderssaunderssaunders.com/

Poem

Since I haven't posted a thing lately, I thought I'd at least share this sweet poem from Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac. It's the best I can do these days.


"Words from the Front" by Ron Padgett, from How to Be Perfect. © Coffee House Press, 2007.

Words from the Front

We don't look as young
as we used to
except in dim light
especially in
the soft warmth of candlelight
when we say
in all sincerity
You're so cute
and
You're my cutie.
Imagine
two old people
behaving like this.
It's enough
to make you happy.

Amen!

Book TV carried the Miami Book Fair all weekend! It was the sweetest dream imaginable for this lefto book lover, watching political writers talk about their books to adoring crowds.

I'm so darned brain dead lately I haven't been able to come up with anything original to post, so yup, here's more New York Times. Here's quote from Frank Rich's op-ed column on Bush's mess in Pakistan, the supposedly DECENT people in the senate giving the nod to Mukasey's fake-out on torture, and other things. And to this I say, "AMEN!":

Last weekend a new Washington Post-ABC News poll found that the Democratic-controlled Congress and Mr. Bush are both roundly despised throughout the land, and that only 24 percent of Americans believe their country is on the right track. That’s almost as low as the United States’ rock-bottom approval ratings in the latest Pew surveys of Pakistan (15 percent) and Turkey (9 percent).
This next paragraph is SO true, for me:
Wrong track is a euphemism. We are a people in clinical depression. Americans know that the ideals that once set our nation apart from the world have been vandalized, and no matter which party they belong to, they do not see a restoration anytime soon.
This, from earlier in the piece, explains it:
What makes the Democrats’ Mukasey cave-in so depressing is that it shows how far even exemplary sticklers for the law like Senators Feinstein and Schumer have lowered democracy’s bar. When they argued that Mr. Mukasey should be confirmed because he’s not as horrifying as Mr. Gonzales or as the acting attorney general who might get the job otherwise, they sounded whipped. After all these years of Bush-Cheney torture, they’ll say things they know are false just to move on.

Ok, Boys and Girls

This, from an article in the NYT:

Catalyst’s research is often an exploration of why, 30 years after women entered the work force in large numbers, the default mental image of a leader is still male. Most recent is the report titled “Damned if You Do, Doomed if You Don’t,” which surveyed 1,231 senior executives from the United States and Europe. It found that women who act in ways that are consistent with gender stereotypes — defined as focusing “on work relationships” and expressing “concern for other people’s perspectives” — are considered less competent. But if they act in ways that are seen as more “male” — like “act assertively, focus on work task, display ambition” — they are seen as “too tough” and “unfeminine.”
Women can’t win.

I find this to be true, even in teaching. Male teachers don't seem to be held to the same standards as women teachers. I see it in my school. For the no-pay jobs that teachers are often asked to do, especially those which require relationships to be formed or nurtured, or social functions to be managed, the men volunteer less often and are often not asked. Even inside a group of teachers looking for additional help with a particular project, it's the names of women that are most often brought up as those to call upon.

Recently, in a school program I'm working on, this remark was made by a male teacher about a female assistant principal in our school:
"*** has no business doing the job of assistant principal. She was good at mothering the ninth graders in her job as ninth grade dean, but she doesn't have what it takes to be a principal."
This was said without any hesitation on the part of the jerk who said it.

What's more, in my experience students also view men teachers differently. Men have fewer problems with classroom management. You don't often hear a male teacher mention having to have "the talk" with a class about disrespecting the teacher. It's not that kids in their classrooms never show disrespect, but when it does happen, a word or two tends to bring things under control. Generally speaking, when a male teacher talks tough, kids listen. You might hear kids refer to a male teacher as being "strict," but "bitch" or any similar derogatory label attributed to someone in authority is usually not attached.

I don't hear much about male students having issues with male authority, but it's commonplace to hear that a difficult boy can't take direction from female teachers. Often times, when a pattern of misbehavior from a student, male or female, in a woman's classroom is discussed among teachers (and these things are discussed, come on, we're human and need to vent like people in any other profession), the male teachers in the conversation say they've seen few of the same behaviors from the same student. They might agree that the student is quiet and surly, or doesn't do his or her work, but usually not the outright disrespect that women teachers experience. Once, when I called a student on some bullying behavior in the media center at school, the student looked at me and said, "Go away, you're not my teacher." I'd bet a year's salary this wouldn't have happened had I been male.

I've seen male teachers tease kids in a way that a woman teacher would be called to task for- by the student and the administration. Men seem to be able to get away with making a student feel embarrassed about bad behavior, whereas a woman teacher saying something similar would have the student in her face, and if administration was called in to mediate, the female teacher would be reprimanded for this kind of teasing. Now this is only from my personal observations, but I don't think a man would.

I like my job and I find that most kids are respectful. The ones who aren't can usually be managed with the tools we have available to help us bring them around. But I have seen, with my own eyes, the differences between the ways women and men teachers are perceived and treated, and there is a difference.

More on Health Care

Here's another article from the NYT on health care. This one involves a survey of patient satisfaction here and in countries that have a national system. It confirms what those who are against universal coverage most like to talk about: elective surgery. It also supports what we already know about those who can't afford good coverage: 37% of us now avoid care because of costs!!!!

What I don't understand is how those who still support the present system don't see that adequate care for everyone is so important to the well-being of all of us.




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

November 1, 2007
Editorial
America’s Lagging Health Care System
Americans are increasingly frustrated about the subpar performance of this country’s fragmented health care system, and with good reason. A new survey of patients in seven industrialized nations underscores just how badly sick Americans fare compared with patients in other nations. One-third of the American respondents felt their system is so dysfunctional that it needs to be rebuilt completely — the highest rate in any country surveyed. The system was given poor scores both by low-income, uninsured patients and by many higher-income patients.

The survey, the latest in a series from the Commonwealth Fund, is being published today on the Web site of Health Affairs, a respected health policy journal. Researchers interviewed some 12,000 adults in Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Given the large number of people uninsured or poorly insured in this country, it was no surprise that Americans were the most likely to go without care because of costs. Fully 37 percent of the American respondents said that they chose not to visit a doctor when sick, skipped a recommended test or treatment or failed to fill a prescription in the past year because of the cost — well above the rates in other countries.

Patients here were more likely to get appointments quickly for elective surgery than those in nearly all the other countries. But access to primary care doctors, the mainstay of medical practice, was often rocky. Only half of the American adults were able to see a doctor the same day that they became sick or the day after, a worse showing than in all the other countries except Canada. Getting care on nights and weekends was problematic.

Often the care here was substandard. Americans reported the highest rate of lab test errors and the second-highest rate of medical or medication errors.

The findings underscore the need to ensure that all Americans have quick access to a primary care doctor and the need for universal health coverage — so that all patients can afford the care they need. That’s what all of the presidential candidates should be talking about.

BOO!

They Didn't Give Me a Stick

Here's something I wrote yesterday; it almost made me late for the Peace Walk (again). "They" say you have found your passion when time slips away while you're doing it.

Isn't this image a hoot? The perfectly groomed, fashionably suited, model teacher in her heels smiles radiantly. I'd buy a ticket to see the looks on my kids' faces when she walked in with that pointy stick- ha!




Teaching English 9

Warm up for handstands and somersaults,
Peruse the roll call rows of too-tall and not quite
Broken hearts, urgent news, hollow eyes, big drama,
Asking, no, pleading, “Who will come along?”
Hands flail and pages fly, looking for a sign.

Life is here, in its lovely and misbegotten forms,
I’ll take the one who sits in a sacred slump
Of hungry bedhead and yesterday’s clothes or
The earnestly fresh, breathless, breakfasted.
This is no place for the particular.


Misplaced modifiers and Tybalt’s temper,
Right now, Ms. C., there are bigger fish to fry,
Let’s at least make something,
Pots or end tables or computer programs.
Why love, death, and grammar?

And now, for something totally different

Because it seems like I complain all too often here, I thought I'd take the opportunity to say this:
This was a good week at school! We are studying Romeo and Juliet in English 9, and I loooooove teaching Shakespeare to kids who are new to it. The creative writers are, well, this term's creative writers just are. Some classes are more into it than others, and I've learned not to take it personally. Also, I'm in the midst of planning a big Link Crew event, and that's moving along without major glitches.
Having just come off last week's three-day week, I thought this one might feel like a crawl, but it didn't. The kids are learning, I'm caught up (relatively speaking), and there are no big crises at hand.
It has been a good work week :-)

Who, Me???

This is the poem from The Writer's Almanac today. There was something about it that rang true- ha! I thought I would share it.

Poem: "I.D. Photo" by Rachel Hadas, from The River of Forgetfulness. © David Robert Books, 2006. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

I.D. Photo

Since I can feel my radiant nature shine
Out of my face as unmistakably
As sunlight, it comes as a shock to see
The features that apparently are mine.

Mirrors are not a lot of fun to pass,
And snapshots are much worse. Take the I.D.
Picture taken only yesterday
(Take it-I don't want it): sallow face

Pear-shaped from smiling-lumpy anyway,
Droopy, squinty. General discouragement.
I'd blame the painter, if this were in paint,
But can't avoid acknowledging it's me,

No likeness by an artist I could blame
For being bad at matching in with out.
What I see, alas, is what I get.
Victim and culprit are myself and time—

Having seen which, it's time to turn aside;
Look out from, not in at, an aging face
That happens to be mine. No more disgrace
Lies in having lived then having died.

Am I Preachin' to the Choir?

Thomas Friedman's Op-ed column today ends with this:
"So if you want to be a green college kid or a green adult, don’t fool yourself: You can change lights. You can change cars. But if you don’t change leaders, your actions are nothing more than an expression of, as Dick Cheney would say, “personal virtue.”

It drives me nuts when people tell me they don't really follow politics, or worse, that they don't vote because "Politicians are all alike" or "It doesn't make a difference who wins an election; it's all just politics, and we are powerless." ARRRRRRRGH! No they ain't and and yes it does!!!!

Read Friedman's column to understand why:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/21/opinion/21friedman.html?th&emc=th

I Love Fall

This is a lonesome song, but so beautifully done by Eva Cassidy. I wanted to share it.

Sunday Fun

Warning: If you care to follow this post all the way through, there's a lot of cutting and pasting, due to my inept blogging skills. Sorry about that.

I know I've said it before, but Stephen Colbert has to be one of the funniest people on the planet. I am in love with him. If anyone knows what I have to do to make him my boyfriend in the next life, let me know.

I will do ANYTHING.

A Colbert quote:

“Dick Cheney’s fondest pipe dream is driving a bulldozer into The New York Times while drinking crude oil out of Keith Olbermann’s skull.”

I didn't actually hear him say this, but Maureen Dowd did, and that's good enough for me. In her column she challenges him to come in and write a guest op-ed. Of course he accepted the challenge. Read about it here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/14/opinion/14dowd.html?em&ex=1192507200&en=20f45a4743acfc14&ei=5087%0A

If you want to be astonished by his bravery and amazed by one of the funniest productions of political satire imaginable, watch his May 1, 2006 speech at the White House correspondents dinner. His words are genius; the look of fury on Dubyah's face as he sits RIGHT THERE makes life worth living. Colbert is brave, honest and so utterly sexy I could eat him alive- ha!



It takes awhile to load, and all of it isn't there because he went on, and on, and on... with his truthiness. You can find a transcript of it here:
http://politicalhumor.about.com/od/stephencolbert/a/colbertbush.htm

If you want to be thorougly entertained every night, watch his show on The Comedy Channel. I rarely miss it.

For Alex

How is it that we
Humans straddle the fences
Of joy and sorrow?

His mother’s delight,
A longed-for, cherished newborn
Looks on with wise eyes

While her aching heart
Sinks into the memory
Of the world-weary.

They're Meanies

Here I go again, going all political on you. But this op-ed from today's NYT is too good not to post, and since it so perfectly expresses what I fear (and I do mean fear, as in that creepy feeling one gets when stumbling upon a terrible truth) is the right wing's thing, I'm doing it. They can dress it up in religious rhetoric, appropriate taxation, or patriotism, but the truth is, they're Meanies.
Thank you, Mr. Krugman



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

October 5, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
Conservatives Are Such Jokers
By PAUL KRUGMAN
In 1960, John F. Kennedy, who had been shocked by the hunger he saw in West Virginia, made the fight against hunger a theme of his presidential campaign. After his election he created the modern food stamp program, which today helps millions of Americans get enough to eat.

But Ronald Reagan thought the issue of hunger in the world’s richest nation was nothing but a big joke. Here’s what Reagan said in his famous 1964 speech “A Time for Choosing,” which made him a national political figure: “We were told four years ago that 17 million people went to bed hungry each night. Well, that was probably true. They were all on a diet.”

Today’s leading conservatives are Reagan’s heirs. If you’re poor, if you don’t have health insurance, if you’re sick — well, they don’t think it’s a serious issue. In fact, they think it’s funny.

On Wednesday, President Bush vetoed legislation that would have expanded S-chip, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, providing health insurance to an estimated 3.8 million children who would otherwise lack coverage.

In anticipation of the veto, William Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard, had this to say: “First of all, whenever I hear anything described as a heartless assault on our children, I tend to think it’s a good idea. I’m happy that the president’s willing to do something bad for the kids.” Heh-heh-heh.

Most conservatives are more careful than Mr. Kristol. They try to preserve the appearance that they really do care about those less fortunate than themselves. But the truth is that they aren’t bothered by the fact that almost nine million children in America lack health insurance. They don’t think it’s a problem.

“I mean, people have access to health care in America,” said Mr. Bush in July. “After all, you just go to an emergency room.”

And on the day of the veto, Mr. Bush dismissed the whole issue of uninsured children as a media myth. Referring to Medicaid spending — which fails to reach many children — he declared that “when they say, well, poor children aren’t being covered in America, if that’s what you’re hearing on your TV screens, I’m telling you there’s $35.5 billion worth of reasons not to believe that.”

It’s not just the poor who find their travails belittled and mocked. The sick receive the same treatment.

Before the last election, the actor Michael J. Fox, who suffers from Parkinson’s and has become an advocate for stem cell research that might lead to a cure, made an ad in support of Claire McCaskill, the Democratic candidate for Senator in Missouri. It was an effective ad, in part because Mr. Fox’s affliction was obvious.

And Rush Limbaugh — displaying the same style he exhibited in his recent claim that members of the military who oppose the Iraq war are “phony soldiers” and his later comparison of a wounded vet who criticized him for that remark to a suicide bomber — immediately accused Mr. Fox of faking it. “In this commercial, he is exaggerating the effects of the disease. He is moving all around and shaking. And it’s purely an act.” Heh-heh-heh.

Of course, minimizing and mocking the suffering of others is a natural strategy for political figures who advocate lower taxes on the rich and less help for the poor and unlucky. But I believe that the lack of empathy shown by Mr. Limbaugh, Mr. Kristol, and, yes, Mr. Bush is genuine, not feigned.

Mark Crispin Miller, the author of “The Bush Dyslexicon,” once made a striking observation: all of the famous Bush malapropisms — “I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family,” and so on — have involved occasions when Mr. Bush was trying to sound caring and compassionate.

By contrast, Mr. Bush is articulate and even grammatical when he talks about punishing people; that’s when he’s speaking from the heart. The only animation Mr. Bush showed during the flooding of New Orleans was when he declared “zero tolerance of people breaking the law,” even those breaking into abandoned stores in search of the food and water they weren’t getting from his administration.

What’s happening, presumably, is that modern movement conservatism attracts a certain personality type. If you identify with the downtrodden, even a little, you don’t belong. If you think ridicule is an appropriate response to other peoples’ woes, you fit right in.

And Republican disillusionment with Mr. Bush does not appear to signal any change in that regard. On the contrary, the leading candidates for the Republican nomination have gone out of their way to condemn “socialism,” which is G.O.P.-speak for any attempt to help the less fortunate.

So once again, if you’re poor or you’re sick or you don’t have health insurance, remember this: these people think your problems are funny.

Here's Looking at Us, Kids

It's Tuesday, and the following people have been in my classroom, observing my teaching THIS WEEK:

A principal was in for a "walk-through" observation; these are new this year. Actually, she didn't walk through, she sat down for about ten minutes after coming into the classroom unannounced and tapped away at her pda-- recording how the classroom is arranged, what teaching activity is occurring at that moment, whether the "essential question" for that piece of curriculum is posted, how the kids are responding, etc.

A speech-language specialist was in, to sit with a student who gets her services. She helps the student, and makes suggestions for modifying the curriculum for her needs.

A para comes in daily with a special ed student to help him.

A visiting teacher from Germany came to Creative Writing, as she was curious about how it's taught in the US.

I have friendly relationships with all of these people, they say nice things to me about my teaching, the classroom, the kids, and their attentiveness and responses. I have nothing to hide, I feel fairly secure about my teaching skills, and I've been at it long enough now to know that some days are diamonds and some days are stones, that those who don't actually DO my job really don't have much of a clue about what it actually takes to do it. But geeze. If I was a first-year teacher and all these people who are not my students were WATCHING, I'd be a wreck.

The evaluating, observing, testing, coaching, mentoring, and managing of teachers seems to be the thing in education these days. There is actually an adage teachers used to repeat back in the day that goes something like "shut the door and do your thing"- boy is THAT a thing of the past.

Oh, and did I mention that Monday was a 13-hour day? After a day of school, there were parent-teacher conferences from 4-8. I teach two sections of freshmen, and there was a freshman parent meeting that night, so business was booming at conferences. I can't complain about parents who care enough to come in and check on their kids, now can I? So I won't, but 13 solid hours of being "on", in addition to all the observing is, for an introvert like me, a bit, um,.........taxing.

I have a group of actors coming into each of my freshman English classes Thursday to conduct a discussion of a play the kids will see that morning. Am I the hostess with the mostess or WHAT?

Thank heavens I love my job. But it's the KIDS I love about my job. Anyone remember the kids???

NYT Excitement

The most exciting thing that's happened to me lately is that the NYT has decided to scrap their genious plan of allowing only paid subscribers to access certain columnists and has opened the entire online paper to cheap-os like me. Since I'm lame and can't seem to come up with anything original to post these days, here's a goodie from Thomas Friedman:


http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/30/opinion/30friedman.html?ex=1191902400&en=336cfbe0723157c7&ei=5070

Sorry I still can't seem to get a link right. You'll have to copy and paste this to your browser.

Here I Am in all my Whinyness

Don't like to complain, but I'm pooped. I'm in the thick of the first term with the creative writers; their first piece has come in and I need to finish grading it before the next one rolls in. Crunch time. The freshman are writing too, and that always adds more work to an already busy assessment routine for them. It will let up, though, as the creative writers turn to poetry and script writing.

The byproduct of this is that my creativity dipstick reads about two quarts low. I'm burning the candle at both ends and my brain's a bit on the mushy side. Also, school is a very social place, and to be honest, socializing takes a lot out of me.

Introvert, thy name is Roxanne.

I miss feeling good at blogging. I don't like posting just to post, but I do it because I want to continue blogging.

I'm tired. I'm whiny. I think I'll stop now.