Through a Teacher's Eyes

I became a teacher because I had a teacher--a really great teacher! She came along at exactly the time that I had no idea who or what I was to become, and a nasty high school environment had managed to rebuff my edginess and my originality. She celebrated me! She got me! In her eyes, I was beautiful, not awkward, not too tall, and not too red-haired and freckled. I was brilliant, even though my grade point average reported nothing to write home about...and I wasn't in the Latin IV class, or in Honors English Literature with all the girls who were Eastern girl school bound. She appreciated my creativity and my iconoclastic humor, and in doing so, she persuaded me to see myself in a light that was certainly more positive.

Years later, one of my best and most-loved students spoke at the graduation exercises at the high school where I had been teaching for seven years. She said that the main thing about me, as a teacher, was that I helped students to see themselves not as they were, but as they could be. I helped them see themselves through my eyes--my adoring eyes. Jayne was right--I did adore them...they were emotionally open, sassy, opinionated, brilliant, silly, serious, faithful and true. And they needed me to love them. And I did. And I do.

Wolverine Poem

Still we see our brittle truths
Of conflict, fear and power
All across our land—and
The truths of possibility

Imagine glass and concrete
City landscapes—
Each rough line prolonging itself
Straight off into the gray horizon’s edge

Or a small log cabin tucked beside the
Sturgeon River—its twisting song
Rolls through clinging cedars and
Vigilant pines—spilling its coppered water turmoil
Into the mirrored blue of Burt Lake

When the quieted village seems asleep
Heavy—full of forgotten songs and dull dances,
Poems are read aloud to the stars
An offering by a woman who came again
To learn how to live
Whispering the truths of her own possibility.

Evangelical Christian Terrorists

Pat Robertson finally gets it! After years of publicly denying any empathy for terrorists, he stepped into a giant pile of hypocrisy. He's so frustrated with Chavez that he wants him "taken out!" Gee--that's real Christian of him. If only he were willing to strap on a few sticks of dynamite and blow himself up in front of the Venezuelan embassy...

Mad Hot Ballroom--or All We Need is Dance Lessons

I saw the acclaimed documentary film Mad Hot Ballroom this weekend and I loved it--who couldn't love those adorable little ethnically diverse kids and their wonderful teachers? But something in the back of my brain kept nagging at me--and after a while, I began to see that this kind of story, as uplifting (not my word) as it is, masks the real problems. It says to us: look how easily we can solve the problems of poverty, drug abuse and single or absentee parents! It matters not that our so-called "safety net" has holes big enough to drive a M-1 tank through; and the bottom rungs of the ladder to the American Dream have been cleverly sawed off by the Bush Administration's tax gifts to the wealthy. Not to worry! A concentrated series of dance lessons and a city-wide competition and it all goes away! This documentary, for all it's hopeful moments, fails to examine the systemic stranglehold of poverty and the third rate school systems that our urban areas have to tolerate because we refuse to examine the unjust method of funding through property tax. I noted this as I read about my own suburban high school adding a new swimming pool this summer while the roofs of Detroit's school leak onto 25-year-old desks. The movie I want to see would follow these same dancing kids through high school. I don't imagine my Republican friends would recommend such a movie so enthusiastically. Don't get me started.

We the People

What Was She Wearing??

The first question a right-wing conservative will ask when told about a rape on a deserted street, late at night is, "What the hell was she doing there at that time?" Moreover, if the woman was wearing a mini-skirt and a thong, she must have been "asking for it." Yet, these same folks become apoplectic if anyone even hints that the US might possibly be doing something (oh, I don't know...occupying their country???) to provoke terrorism. They refuse to examine the question at all and will persistently overtalk anyone who wonders aloud about the wisdom of our current situation.

As a Peace Movement veteran, I have been spit at, shouted at, called names, threatened, and nearly run over for suggesting that peaceful solutions can be found for all problems, big and small, domestic as well as global. Okay, so I give up. The next right-winger who so much as raises an eyebrow at me risks a massive head injury. Are you happy now?

Pretty Disturbing????

Just south of the Baghdad airport, a bomb exploded recently, flipping the 25-ton amphibious assault vehicle which was transporting soldiers at the time. "'This was a catastrophic event,' said Sgt. Jason Knapp, an Air Force bomb technician who arrived at the scene of the multiple attacks the next morning. He found a foot from one of the American soldiers in the shallow water of a nearby canal. 'It was pretty disturbing," he said." Pretty disturbing????

When do we begin to understand that traditional military solutions will not work in the post-modern arena? When do Americans begin to listen to leaders who speak the truth about this atrocity instead of the pre-programmed talking points meant to reinforce the distortions and lies in which our current administration has invested so heavily? When do we finally realize that this war is not about anybody's freedom, our or theirs--it is about access to natural resources, both oil and water, and the building of permanent military bases to secure these resources for the use of our global corporate robber barons. And Americans have been manipulated by fear into supporting it.

As a resident of a city struggling to maintain its fragile and aging infrastructure in the face of capital flight and unrestricted sprawl, I'm wondering if an Al Queda training camp, just south of 8 Mile Road, might be a better strategy than all the swearing, wishing and hoping we do around here. Either that, or a new mayor.

I think I'll go lay or lie down...

Whenever I have a stack of papers to grade, a pile of laundry, a long list of gardening chores, a room to paint, or a sink full of pantyhose, I look for something else to do. Blogging may be the answer. Or not. If this, too, becomes work, I'm not sure I want to try to do it every day. Then again, I always tell my students to respect the process and trust the process. So, respect and trust, it is. I've not been successful at exercising daily, so maybe writing might work--not as a way to lose weight--but as a way to keep from talking to myself. The older I get, the more I enjoy myself as a conversational companion--so agreeable, so insightful, so funny! I really get me! So I think as bloggers, we simply want others to get us--it is a way of sharing that offers few, if any risks. And, its either a great way to procrastinate, or another task to put off. I think I'll go rest now.