Still Here

Yesterday was roughly a thousand hours long. It was a day for me to take R for her colonoscopy (which went very well, found nothing) and to generally drive around, picking her up and later bringing her home, getting food, and a whole lot of waiting around. I did get to finish my Fannie Flagg book, which, btw, you should all read. Her writing is like curling up in a cozy blanket, with cocoa at hand.

Anyway, so in the middle of the R saga, K called from her school that she was having car trouble, but AAA came and sorted that out, so I didn't have to drop R at home at 3:00 to sleep off the rest of her sedation and dash over to pick K up. Which I had been anticipating all day. But it was all okay.

I slept until NINE this morning; can you believe it? Very cool.

Nothing substantial going on here. K is getting very excited about what she's doing, and teaching in general, which is very rewarding for me to see. Not because she's my kid, although I'm certainly happy to see my kid excited about her future career, but that's not what I mean. There are teachers, and there are teachers. There are some people who do it because it's a job with good vacations off, but honestly, I don't know how those people can make themselves do it day after day. Teaching is emotionally demanding, among other things. But there are people who were born to do this, just as there are people who are born to do other things, and it's exciting to recognize that calling, if you will, in the young. It's like watching a brand new baby teacher hatching out of her egg. Not that I haven't seen it in K for years, but now that she's into the meat of it, I can see that it really is what she wants to do. She came home this weekend with papers to grade for her mentor teacher. When my sister and I were little, our Aunt Rose, who taught third grade for what was ultimately 43 years, would let us grade spelling tests and arithmetic quizzes. I guess she saw it in us, too.

Oh, the debate, right. Well. First, pre-debate; let me share this article with you, which recounts Sarah Palin's "annoyance" with Katie Couric because she didn't ask the questions that she (Palin) wanted to answer, and didn't give her an opportunity to bash Obama. Oh, I'm sorry. Is that what she would do with the leader of a foreign country who didn't do things the way she wanted, just be inarticulate and be annoyed? Cause so far, you know, that approach doesn't seem to work with terrorists. In fact, they live to annoy us. So what would she do, just not deal with them until they do it her way? You can send your kids to time-out, but Bin Laden not so much.

The debates, then. First, let me say that I would like them to pass a law in this country, or whatever regulation they need, that says this: POLITICAL CANDIDATES CAN NEVER MENTION THEIR OPPONENTS. THEY CAN ONLY TALK ABOUT THEMSELVES AND THEIR POSITIONS ON THE ISSUES. This is true for both parties. Negative campaigning has got to stop; we don't allow it in high school elections and it does nothing for the voter in real elections except provide sound-bytes and confusion. Next. I thought that Sarah Palin was incredibly rude to Gwen Ifill when she said upfront that she wasn't going to answer the questions she was asked, she was just going to say what she had to say and what, I believe the words were, "the American people want to hear." This American person wants to hear her answer a damn question, just for once. At that point, I think Ifill should have said, "Thank you governor, but the idea here is that I ask questions and you answer them. That's how this works." By not answering questions, she's only showing that she can read the scripted words on the podium, not think on her feet.

The scripted words are just as often lies as not, I think. They make things up to suit the point they're trying to make and hope that no one will catch it, or will listen when the lie is reported. They lie about good things they've done, they lie about bad things the other side has done. Do both sides do this? I'm going to have to say Maybe. I think that McCain is extremely guilty of doing this, and that his team is encouraging Palin to do the same. I have heard Biden apologize for his occasional mis-statements, and Obama may be guilty of this as well and I'm just not aware of it.

Next. Yes, Palin did not do anything that was obviously idiotic, so, credit to her there. But she did not come across as knowledgeable or able in any way. I thought her continued winking to the audience was inappropriate, and I hope Tina Fey gets that right on SNL tonight. She may be a wonderful, wonderful person -- I have some questions there, but they're not really relevant -- but she is not qualified to be president of the United States, and since the Vice-President has only two specific jobs and one of them is to become president if the president can't serve, I think that's really important. And did you notice that McCain didn't even bother to tell her that he was suspending his campaign in Michigan? I don't think he thinks much of her either, and we know that he has previously called his wife the c- word and that during an on-air interview, so I can't imagine he thinks much better of Palin. And what won't he tell her if he's in office and she's his VP? How much will she not know if she has to take over suddenly? My answer would guess all of it. She would not know anything she needs to know. She makes Dan Quayle look like Stephen Hawking.

Joe Biden, on the other hand, really is just a regular guy to me, the closest to it of any of these candidates, really. He shows compassion and feeling, not to mention mastery of the information and understanding of the situations. He is a gentleman and he has class. I like him more every day.

There will be a town-hall meeting style debate this Tuesday, or so the paper says. (What was McCain complaining about?) I want real answers to real questions. I would especially like McCain to explain how his health care plan even is a health care plan, and how it is designed to do anything other than make insurance companies richer and give people less access to health care. Seriously, read about his health care plan. We would all be screwed.

Okay, enough. Now I have to go find more Fannie Flagg to read to calm me down.


WATCHING TWO AND A HALF MEN :: ENTRY #1870
READING: Dear Senator by Essie Mae Washington-Williams

Where Was I?

I just noticed that I didn't post yesterday. I have no idea why, or what else I might have been doing. Huh.

I stopped at Whole Foods before to get some chicken, and I also got something called "Yucca Fries." I looked it up when I got home; it said that although the yucca plant is sometimes eaten (parts of it, anyway), usually, when you see yucca as food, it's really yuca, which is what tapioca comes from. So I ate it. It was really good. Medical report to follow.

I am not actually reading tonight (although I put a new book title down there), but earlier today I finished this teen science-fiction/dystopia book that I started reading while I was on hall duty Monday: Unwind, by Neal Shusterman. The premise is that in the future, following a war between the Life Army and the Choice Brigade, a compromise is reached and passed into law: human life begins at conception and there are no abortions. However, when a child reaches 13, his parents may choose to have him "unwound"; that is, they make a choice and their child is taken away to lead a "divided" life, in which all of his parts -- organs, everything -- are used as replacement parts for other people. Kind of like a retroactive abortion, but technically still alive, just split up into parts scattered around the world. When the kid reaches 18, he's safe. An interesting and thought-provoking book.

Yesterday's news was that K went to the school where she'll be student teaching and everything looked good, the teacher she'll be working with seemed terrific to her. Good news, since that tends to be a kind of make-or-break thing. The kid's taking her "Methods of Teaching" class this semester, which is the biggie, and it seems to be getting really excited about going out and doing it. Nice to see for an old veteran like me.

Funny, we do discuss various aspects of teaching, lesson planning, philosophies involved, and so on, and I sometimes think that she's a little surprised that I know what I know. It's that old prejudice that school librarians aren't really teachers, and she should know better and probably does, but when I discuss pros and cons of certain very specific techniques with her, it's as if she didn't think I would know that because I'm not a classroom teacher. It's like being Rodney Dangerfield, y'know: I don't get no respect. I think when I retire, I'll just tell people that I was a librarian, and not a school librarian, and maybe then they'll know what I do. Did.

Anyway. I'm all full of chicken and yucca fries, and I have to go wash out my little lunchbox for tomorrow.

WATCHING FAMILY GUY :: ENTRY #1862
READING: Welcome to the World, Baby Girl! by Fannie Flagg

Keeping Up

I've gotten in a lot of good keeping up with folk time in the last 24 hours. And everything is kind of running into everything else, not in a bad way.

In therapy the other day, we devised a plan to forestall some of the tension that might be involved in the start of the new school year for me. One part was that I would call the principal and go in and discuss a few issues with him. The other is that I would follow up on the Martian's email that said we would talk things over when things settle down by asking her if she wanted to go have lunch and see if we could totally put that behind us.

I had to put this off for a day or two because I was waiting for a call from the orthopedist's office, which was scheduling an MRI of my shoulder. Yes, another MRI, to see if I have a bone spur, which means a bit of surgery could be in order. (Note: I am not having this surgery. Not. Having. But if I do have a bone spur and in a year or two I can't live with it, then I'll know and maybe I'll do it. Maybe when I retire. I am not wasting sick days on shoulder surgery when I might need them for Crohn's, especially when the pain is like 2 on a scale of 10.)

Ahem. Anyway, the MRI is Monday morning, and before I could call the high school, the principal's secretary called me to make an appointment because he wants to discuss a few library issues, so, TA DA! And when I'm there, I can talk to the Martian and make my lunch proposal. I'm going in Tuesday morning right after therapy, so I will be strong.

In the meantime, I needed to call the Colleague, to whom I have not spoken in several weeks, because, you know, she works right there too, and anyway, I wanted to know what was going on in her life. A nice, almost hour-long talk with her last night, and then an unusual talk later with my sister. (I'm coming back to that.)

I also hadn't heard from the Chum in several days, which was odd, because I had sent her this long email describing my summer's travails and all I had gotten was a quick note saying she would write more when she could. But she called this morning and said they've been having power and Internet problems, so she called, and I had another nice long talk.

If I catch up with OldFriend tonight or tomorrow, I'll be all set, telephone- and catching up-wise. I don't talk to anyone else, really.

Ah, the Sibs. I'm not really sure how to tell this story; I don't think I've mentioned it yet. Let me see.

There's a commercial that runs on TV here, like a public service announcement, about New Jersey Public Schools and how wonderful they are. Appearing in the commercial is a young doctor who is a graduate of a New Jersey urban school system. He's doing very well in life, so they decided to make another commercial with him, or maybe a series of commercials. His parents will be in one, anyway. So they asked him who the inspirational teacher in his life was, because they wanted to make a commercial with him and that teacher.

Turns out it was his tenth grade English teacher. My sister.

So she filmed her commercial yesterday and told me about it when she got home, which wasn't until maybe 8:30. I am so incredibly proud of her. I can't wait to see her on TV!

WATCHING GILMORE GIRLS :: ENTRY #1814
SUMMER BOOK #3: The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon

Science Quiz

My grade certainly wasn't as high as the empress's was, but unlike the empress, I remember my 8th grade science teacher very well. I tried to find his picture via Google, but alas, all I came up with was one print reference.

His name was Barney Finn, and he was unlike most other teachers we had in junior high school, and especially in elementary school. For one thing, he was a man, and there were few male teachers in grades 1 - 6, elementary school. For another, he was old. I'm guessing that he was maybe 65 when I was in his class the first year. Which was, I think, his first year teaching.

Imagine that Santa Claus, after years of loyal service, has been told that due to a medical condition beyond his control, he can no longer fly, or work in a cold environment. He has to do something, right? So he shaves off his beard and gets a crew cut, puts on a gray suit, and stands up in front of a junior high school science class in New Jersey. He's still great with kids, and still has the twinkle in his eye.

Okay, it was almost like that. Except Barney Finn had been a top college football player, and then a professional football player, in the 1920's. My father, who learned to read only so he could read the sports sections in the Boston newspapers, remembered his name. When he retired from playing, Barney Finn became a well-known and respected referee in college football.

The print reference I found on the Internet was about a questionable call he made during the 1964 Army-Navy game. When I started seventh grade in 1965, he was my science teacher. And he did indeed look exactly like a clean-shaven, crewcut Santa Claus.

Something he said once -- and he didn't teach a lot, but he loved to tell stories -- led us to believe that he had had to leave his previous career because he developed a vision condition in which he gradually lost his peripheral vision. A quality that a football referee would need, I guess.

Anyway, my seventh grade class was full of hooligans, and I stood out as the one little good girl, so Mr. Finn loved me. In eighth grade, I was the underachiever in an honors class, and he still loved me, but by then I realized that he loved all the kids who were bright enough to get his very dry sense of humor, which was my entire eighth grade class. We adored him. He rarely taught anything, but he stood up at the front of the room at the big lab desk -- he didn't walk around much, and when his attention was diverted, he turned with his whole body to look -- and held a yardstick in his right hand. (Actually, it was a metre stick, as we were supposed to be learning about the metric system that year.) When we became unruly, he smacked it down on the black surface of the desk. Occasionally, a chip or two would fly off the end of the stick. By the end of the school year, the stick was maybe ten inches long. Which we all thought was pretty funny.

I just loved him, and I learned a great deal about being a person and a grown up from him, as did we all in that class. I don't suppose he taught for very many more years; I never knew why he was teaching at all. I know that he had gone to college as a science education major -- Columbia University, I seem to recall -- but had either never taught or had taught some little bit while he was playing football. I know I once mentioned his name to the FIL, who would have been one of his bosses in the school system, and he just beamed. There wasn't much you could say about Barney Finn, except that anyone who knew him pretty much loved him.

WATCHING L/O :: ENTRY #1707

All I Meant Was

I never meant to imply that teachers have it rough. I was only comparing different ways teachers use their in school/out of school time between what I know and what boxx writes about. Although, people who say that teachers have it easy are a real hot button thing for me; I'll leave that rant for another day. People who think that teachers have it easy, though, should try it for a couple of days and see how they like it. As for the pay, teachers are just your basic middle class people with jobs, no more, no less. The pay is compartable to police officers and firefighters, in most places, although if you ask me, firefighters should be paid more than corporate CEO's or anyone else in society, for that matter.

Well, then.

R was supposed to work today, but it got cancelled (unfortunately, after she and all her co-workers had already commuted into the office in the city), so she got here by 1.00 and we went out to pick up a few things for the new apartment. She got a chair, but was unsuccesful with the hunt for a futon frame, or for that matter, anything to put her mattress on. So we need to keep looking for that. No idea of tomorrow's plans yet, although her new chair, in its box, is in the back of my car, so I'm definitely bringing that over tomorrow. We'll see whether she decides to pack more when she gets home or go to the new place and start assembling her shelves into a place to hold her TV as well. (She saw a picture of a new configuration at The Container Store and is anxious to give it a try.)

I finished The Half-Blood Prince a few minutes ago, and now I want more Harry. I'm just saying. I have to wait along with everybody else. Haven't decided what to read next; I have the newest Traveling Pants book and a biography of Ingrid Bergman. Hmm.

It's a gray drizzly day today, was yesterday, and will be for another day or two. Bummer. It's cold, too. I had to wear a jacket when I went out the morning. I don't like that. It's May.

My desk is a mess here, and I've got a couple of bills to pay, so I guess I'd better sort that all out. Good weekend, all.

watching Top Model :: entry #1469