Our parent who art everywhere Hallowed be thy name Thy love-order come, thy will be done On earth as it is in heaven Give us this day our basic needs and forgive us our mistakes As we forgive those who make mistakes against us Lead us not into selfish delusions But deliver us from choosing evil For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory Forever Continue reading My translation of the Lord’s Prayer
As a language teacher, I know about communicating. I also know how often people think they have communicated, but they really haven’t. I love to play the game of Telephone with my students. We start a whispered sentence in German, and by the time it gets all the way around the circle, it is usually completely garbled and hilarious. Or we play a similar game, except with sketches that get passed around. It shows them how fragile communication really is. “Purple monkey dishwasher” is my husband’s name for the phenomenon in which you explain something to your students, they nod … Continue reading half blind and half deaf
She’s not homeless today. She has a one-room place and a landlord who notices if she uses more water. She’s on her usual corner Encouraging her cornermates with kind words chiding them lovingly about not doing their part to pick up their trash. Today is a few weeks after the cop ticketed her For “aggressive panhandling” as she leaned on her walker at the corner and told her she should just go and die. Today her place seems big and empty and hers It’s months since she opened her home to her corner-mates Four women and a cat in one … Continue reading She
My son loves math. I’m gonna straight up brag, not even humblebrag. He’s gifted in math, way above grade level. Super bright. 3rd grade standardized math tests were yesterday. He bombed. He didn’t finish the test. He got caught up perfectionizing on one problem he couldn’t figure out the answer to. He felt so stressed that he shut down and gave up. If my son, who loves math and is gifted in math, and who is a privileged white boy, bombed this test, imagine how many other kids are not showing their true potential, for a myriad of different reasons. … Continue reading Why standardized testing must die.
When I was about 10 years old, a well-dressed white lady walked into my dad’s corpse-scented taxidermy shop reverently holding the body of a hummingbird that had smashed itself into her picture window. “How much will it cost me to … Continue reading What the Taxidermist taught his daughter about value
Children naturally compete for resources like food and attention. They are programmed by nature to do so. If they have enough and they feel safe and loved, many children naturally and good-naturedly share what they have with others. Children are naturally openly curious about those different from them, and may look shocked and surprised or ask embarrassing questions. Children often do not naturally make judgments about whether a person is more or less valuable than themselves. This is learned behavior. Human beings have many natural tendencies and learned behaviors that can be nurtured or squashed. SO WHY DO SO MANY … Continue reading are we teaching more than competition?
Friday, 8. March, 2019 As I was trying to leave to go to work today, my nose began to gush blood. I stood in the kitchen with a roll of paper towels, watching my life force drip into the sink. I stared at the erythrocytes bright red with oxygenation. I wondered about my white blood cells. Were they thrashing around trying to find some enemy to defeat, still living and moving in the red gush? How long until they realized they were no longer part of the organism and gave up? Were my platelets trying to coagulate, even though there … Continue reading Part of me leaked out today
Today’s journal prompt was about the ways in which we are smarter than animals, and the ways in which they are smarter than us. Here are some results from my 7th and 8th graders: WAYS HUMANS ARE SMARTER: “Better technology.” “Complicated buildings.” “Written language.” WAYS ANIMALS ARE SMARTER: “Animals don’t judge each other.” “My dog knows what I’m saying when I ask him to take a walk. But I don’t know what he is saying when he is barking. Maybe we just don’t understand their language.” “One thing that is better about animals than humans is disagreements; humans fight and … Continue reading are humans smarter than animals?
I teach middle school, y’all. These kids are full of energy and potential action; they need to be actively taught how to deal with life’s travails, not taught to avoid all discussion of the Big Issues like religion and politics, as my generation was. The way to do this is NOT to show them footage of horrifying things and shame them for not caring enough. (I learned this the hard way). It is to give them ways to engage with tough information, then show them ways to direct their frustrations and energies in constructive rather than chaotic ways. Karneval/Fastnacht in … Continue reading Rosenmontag; Art as Protest
from facebook, February 15, 2017 After decades of struggle with depression, I have spent the past year coming into a sense of personal peace. I felt for many years that I was standing on a tiny, shrinking island of safety in a boiling tar pit of nothingness. I was unconsciously holding onto my privileged, unrealistic delusions from childhood, and the cognitive dissonance was destroying me. I was trying to escape from everything and everyone, thinking that if I could just stop the stressors, I could be safe from the Nothing. One beautiful day last spring I took a long lunch … Continue reading The Nothing.
In an episode of the Simpsons, Lisa is trying to figure out why the bully, Francine, attacks some victims and ignores others. Through a series of experiments she finds that Francine does, in fact, smell fear, and then attacks her nerdy prey as a hawk would. As a middle school teacher, I can attest to the truth of this. Bullies can smell fear like sharks smell blood in the water. Bullies are needy humans; what they need, first and foremost, a sense of self-worth, so they don’t have to suck the blood of others to get it. I can sniff … Continue reading “I smell you.” Meditations on the Simpsons and True Detective.
March 2, 2019 some of my students were calling each other ghetto yesterday a flow of words coming through the door scrutinizing hair and clothing for signs of poverty then we watched Lion , and they saw the ghettos of Calcutta they asked why people washing clothes in the river why that boy wore the same thing every day and I told them how so many people don’t have running water hundreds of people bathing, pooping, washing clothes, all in that same river and my students’ flow of words slowed. ***** When I got home the water was out workers digging through … Continue reading taking water for granted
March 1, 2019 Your attention is valuable. Yes, you. There is someone in your life today who would really value your listening ear or undistracted eye; someone you can learn from. I met an interesting older gentleman today at the coffee shop. He talked of his mother, who he calls a queen of Kinloch. She died sixteen years ago. He was wearing a warm hat and nice glasses. He is gay. He is diabetic and has a number of other ailments. He showed me his medications in his backpack. He said that the doctor said he needed to take better … Continue reading People need to be seen and heard, y’all
There is a relationship between written words and fossilization. It is taxidermy of an idea. Words that have ossified can lose their meaning. Words work best when spoken and heard directly. They carry more of the original meaning. We all know about the game of telephone, which ends up with wild misinterpretations of the original. It is so, to a lesser extent, with almost everything people ever say or write. You could also liken it to making a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy; or of a cassette. It eventually gets blurry. We all have had misunderstandings over text … Continue reading Words are like fossils
September 1979 My little birdies cheep so soft that no one else can hear them. They live in a box under my dresser, and when I get them out sometimes there are four but today there are five. I am holding them so carefully so nothing can hurt them while I am checking on them. Rusty comes in and sees me sitting on the carpet by my dresser so he knows what I am doing and he grabs my hands and claps them together hard and says “ you smooshed them!” But I said “Those are the ROBOT birdies you … Continue reading Robot Birdies and Shapeshifting Buzzards
It looks alive, doesn’t it? The glassy eyes of the taxidermed hawk stare no mercy for the mouse he will never devour both wrapped forever in the limbic heat of attack The real hawk is merciful when sated And takes a joyous victory lap. Once a good idea becomes ideology the life has gone out of it It becomes a virus No longer creating joy or hope Merely replicating itself. If we hear a good idea Then do the good idea it can grow and change and fly then die when it needs to become Food for … Continue reading Taxidermy of Ideas into Ideology
The Taxidermist's Youngest 