It seems pretty clear that the Balabusta and the fella are going to move out of their current domicile come the lease is up.
There are a few problems with our El Cerrito cottage which have come up since the summer. Most of them have to do with water. The base of the sliding shower doors fills up, and spills over onto the floor, necessitating mopping, and, I suspect, warping the floor covering. The dishwasher misses when it spits into the sink, and floods the counters. And sometimes the toilet bubbles and gurgles while we're washing clothes. No, I'm not sure either. It just does.
And the layout is a little weird. It's hard to have friends over. (Maybe we should reconsider a couch when we move again.)
Also, the landlord takes the most ungodly amount of time to cash checks. Sometimes as much as six weeks. That's just plain annoying.
But the key issue right now is not the house's fault, the key issue right now is that the place is a mess.
Neither the Balabusta nor the fella are natural housekeepers. We put this off on laziness, and busyness, and both of these have something to do with it, but the fact of the matter is just that neither of us really has a clear grasp on how to keep a household tidy. We put things down, and they stay there until we need them again, or sometimes until we FIND them again.
It's annoying. Because, you know, being a Balabusta is one of my major life goals.
Right now I am trying again. I'm working on the living room. I have already found my long-sleeved orange T-shirt. I'm not going to tell you where it was. But I have it again, and will wear it to work tomorrow to celebrate it's reappearance.
Monday, March 20, 2006
Saturday, March 11, 2006
The Missionaries Came Back
Today, while I was out and about spending time with my family and my therapist, the fella was home alone at about ten A.M. when two people came by and knocked on the door to talk to him about religion. (Which religion is not totally clear, but we think it was probably some form of Christianity.)
The fella told them that this was a Jewish household, and they went away.
For some reason (perhaps only that my nonpracticing culturally Protestant sweetie said it), this strikes me as hilarious.
The fella told them that this was a Jewish household, and they went away.
For some reason (perhaps only that my nonpracticing culturally Protestant sweetie said it), this strikes me as hilarious.
Take This Job And Shove It
Canibus Lyrics said it best:
You could take a new job offer for more chips
Stick it out a little longer or forfeit
But my advice to anybody that wants to quit
It'll feel much better if you say it like this:
Take this job and shove it
I ain't workin here no more
Take this job and shove it
I ain't workin here no more
Take this job and shove it
I ain't workin here no more
Take this job, take this job, take this job and shove it
The Balabusta sent in a resignation letter, effective the end of the year. Subsequent to this, her principal gave her the first genuine smile she's seen since the job interview.
Got an interview on Tuesday, for a place that theoretically should have a decent discipline plan in place. (Military school.)
Wish me luck.
You could take a new job offer for more chips
Stick it out a little longer or forfeit
But my advice to anybody that wants to quit
It'll feel much better if you say it like this:
Take this job and shove it
I ain't workin here no more
Take this job and shove it
I ain't workin here no more
Take this job and shove it
I ain't workin here no more
Take this job, take this job, take this job and shove it
The Balabusta sent in a resignation letter, effective the end of the year. Subsequent to this, her principal gave her the first genuine smile she's seen since the job interview.
Got an interview on Tuesday, for a place that theoretically should have a decent discipline plan in place. (Military school.)
Wish me luck.
Sunday, March 05, 2006
Pesach is Coming. Send Help.
In a month and ten days, more or less, it's going to be Pesach. As God is my witness, I don't have the slightest idea what I should do.
At least she's panicking fairly early, you say. Great, I'm panicking early. I am, however, sort of panicking. We have a few different problems here. Let me address them in order:
1. The seder.
Ideally, I (or at least the Woman I Would Like To Be) would like to make the seder. I would lay a beautiful table full of color, zest, and glorious food. I would make my own haggadot (my parents did it, why not me?). I would invite all my friends and family. I would lead an engaging, traditional, egalitarian, fun, solemn seder, during which we would remember Jews in Iran, the people of Darfur, troops in Iraq, people with AIDS and the homeless and hungry of the world. The food would be a delicious blend of traditional Ashkenazi favorites, better-tasting but still kitniyot-free Sephardi recipes, and a little California cuisine for the healthy touch. There would be so much food that the table would have to be held up by an act of Congress. We would sing. The matzo balls would circle the table lazily, like something out of Harry Potter, diving into soup whenever anyone seemed low on matzo ball.
Unfortunately, my dining room table seats four. My house is tiny. I don't really have a lot of Jewish friends who can be coaxed over, and NO, I don't feel like doing a demo seder which will mostly be non-Jewish friends humoring me. My fella has never been to a seder, and has what I consider to be a morbid fear of unfamiliar religious observances. (Basically, all religious observances, in other words.) Most of my relatives live in Southern California, or back East, and we are not in close contact with them.
The smart thing to do might be to go back to Netivot Shalom and get some Jewish friends, but you know, probably not in the next five weeks.
The last several years, my parents and I have gone to assorted community seders, and we may do that again this year, but honestly, I am getting sort of sick of them, and we have, from time to time, ended up at tables where the conversation has been intensely unpleasant.
I have wonderful memories of going to my great-uncle's for the seder, and of seders my parents gave, or their friends did. I don't seem to have an adult replacement for myself quite worked out yet.
2. My kitchen
If anyone has easy tips for kashering for Pesach when you've got no Pesach dishes, a tiny kitchen, no time, no energy, and the microwave needs to be set aside for the fella so he can eat something chametzdik and not die over the holiday, let me know.
Normally, I do a lot of tinfoil and paper plates. Last couple of years I've basically eaten Pesach food off chametz dishes, and no one died, but it's not very spiritually satisfying.
My ultimate fantasy is someday to have a house with two kitchens. Not milchig and fleischig, but Me and Him. Honestly. A full kitchen with a granite island, and tons of shelf space, and four sets of dishes, plus nice ones for Shabbos, and then a comfortable kitchenette with a stove and microwave and a fridge, and all the happy nibbles and bacon and whatever that the fella could want. He wants ham and eggs, I can make him some right there. He wants a bacon cheeseburger in the middle of the night, he can knock himself out. When I switch dishes for Pesach, it won't affect him.
Thing is, I grew up in a home where we didn't keep kosher, but my mom was very thorough about Pesach. We changed dishes. We boiled and scrubbed. That feels like the norm to me. But I'm not there. I wish I was there.
3. Guilt
See above. See also, Story of My Life, What Else is New, and I'm Jewish, What Did You Expect.
I AM going to bake hamentaschen this year. That's all I can commit to right now.
At least she's panicking fairly early, you say. Great, I'm panicking early. I am, however, sort of panicking. We have a few different problems here. Let me address them in order:
1. The seder.
Ideally, I (or at least the Woman I Would Like To Be) would like to make the seder. I would lay a beautiful table full of color, zest, and glorious food. I would make my own haggadot (my parents did it, why not me?). I would invite all my friends and family. I would lead an engaging, traditional, egalitarian, fun, solemn seder, during which we would remember Jews in Iran, the people of Darfur, troops in Iraq, people with AIDS and the homeless and hungry of the world. The food would be a delicious blend of traditional Ashkenazi favorites, better-tasting but still kitniyot-free Sephardi recipes, and a little California cuisine for the healthy touch. There would be so much food that the table would have to be held up by an act of Congress. We would sing. The matzo balls would circle the table lazily, like something out of Harry Potter, diving into soup whenever anyone seemed low on matzo ball.
Unfortunately, my dining room table seats four. My house is tiny. I don't really have a lot of Jewish friends who can be coaxed over, and NO, I don't feel like doing a demo seder which will mostly be non-Jewish friends humoring me. My fella has never been to a seder, and has what I consider to be a morbid fear of unfamiliar religious observances. (Basically, all religious observances, in other words.) Most of my relatives live in Southern California, or back East, and we are not in close contact with them.
The smart thing to do might be to go back to Netivot Shalom and get some Jewish friends, but you know, probably not in the next five weeks.
The last several years, my parents and I have gone to assorted community seders, and we may do that again this year, but honestly, I am getting sort of sick of them, and we have, from time to time, ended up at tables where the conversation has been intensely unpleasant.
I have wonderful memories of going to my great-uncle's for the seder, and of seders my parents gave, or their friends did. I don't seem to have an adult replacement for myself quite worked out yet.
2. My kitchen
If anyone has easy tips for kashering for Pesach when you've got no Pesach dishes, a tiny kitchen, no time, no energy, and the microwave needs to be set aside for the fella so he can eat something chametzdik and not die over the holiday, let me know.
Normally, I do a lot of tinfoil and paper plates. Last couple of years I've basically eaten Pesach food off chametz dishes, and no one died, but it's not very spiritually satisfying.
My ultimate fantasy is someday to have a house with two kitchens. Not milchig and fleischig, but Me and Him. Honestly. A full kitchen with a granite island, and tons of shelf space, and four sets of dishes, plus nice ones for Shabbos, and then a comfortable kitchenette with a stove and microwave and a fridge, and all the happy nibbles and bacon and whatever that the fella could want. He wants ham and eggs, I can make him some right there. He wants a bacon cheeseburger in the middle of the night, he can knock himself out. When I switch dishes for Pesach, it won't affect him.
Thing is, I grew up in a home where we didn't keep kosher, but my mom was very thorough about Pesach. We changed dishes. We boiled and scrubbed. That feels like the norm to me. But I'm not there. I wish I was there.
3. Guilt
See above. See also, Story of My Life, What Else is New, and I'm Jewish, What Did You Expect.
I AM going to bake hamentaschen this year. That's all I can commit to right now.
Saturday, March 04, 2006
Multicultural Teacher Moment of the Month
One of my colleagues keeps hearing music in his classroom. Just that slight, scratchy, edge that lets you know some kid in the room has earphones on.
He searches high and low. He checks everyone out. He hunts. The kids giggle.
Finally, he realizes what's going on. One of the Afghan girls has on earphones under her hijab.
We have a bunch of Afghan kids at the school. About half of the families are observant enough that the girls cover their hair. The style of choice is a cotton-knit pull-over hood thing that pulls over your head and shoulders, and your face pokes out the front...I think in Iran this is called a maghnaeh, or something like that. The little girls buy them in a variety of colors, the grown-up women I've met seem to prefer black.
The student in question had slipped in her earbuds, run the cord down under the scarf and her sweater, to the IPod in her jeans pocket. No sweat, and when she was done listening to the lecture, she turned up her tunes and began to groove out.
Middle schoolers are remarkably resourceful. We won't let kids wear hoods up in class for exactly this reason, but of course, the headscarves need to be allowed. I cracked up. Must be boring to teach in a monocultural town.
He searches high and low. He checks everyone out. He hunts. The kids giggle.
Finally, he realizes what's going on. One of the Afghan girls has on earphones under her hijab.
We have a bunch of Afghan kids at the school. About half of the families are observant enough that the girls cover their hair. The style of choice is a cotton-knit pull-over hood thing that pulls over your head and shoulders, and your face pokes out the front...I think in Iran this is called a maghnaeh, or something like that. The little girls buy them in a variety of colors, the grown-up women I've met seem to prefer black.
The student in question had slipped in her earbuds, run the cord down under the scarf and her sweater, to the IPod in her jeans pocket. No sweat, and when she was done listening to the lecture, she turned up her tunes and began to groove out.
Middle schoolers are remarkably resourceful. We won't let kids wear hoods up in class for exactly this reason, but of course, the headscarves need to be allowed. I cracked up. Must be boring to teach in a monocultural town.
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
Oh, this is ridiculous
This morning, I am sitting in the ladies' room at work, peacefully minding my own business, when the door begins to unlock. "Just a minute," I yell.
I stagger out. One of my coworkers, who has been under a LOT of stress due to general administration hostility, is standing there crying.
There is a brief shuffle at the door. I attempt to put a hand on her shoulder and say something helpful, but she brushes past me, marches into the ladies' room, locks the door, and sobs that she's not coming out.
She repeats it a couple of times, just in case.
I am in a bind. A colleague is in the ladies' room, crying. She says she's not coming out. What to do? At a more normal school I might have gone to the principal for help, but in this case that would be sort of...counterproductive. "Excuse me, Mr. Javert? Mr. Valjean is in the bathroom, crying..." Not that I want to compare our principal to Inspector Javert. I have a soft spot for Javert.
So I got one of her colleagues from the horrible reading program that sparked the whole damn mess. He's a friend of hers, I think. He apparently got another (female) teacher on the hall to go in, and talk to her. We got through the rest of the day.
Then I went to the doctor, was prescribed Paxil, told to lose weight (but gently and in passing, because it's Kaiser), and reminded that my eggs will start to drop off in three years, and I should remember to reproduce soon.
Paxil. This should be interesting. I now have Paxil, Xanax, and beta-blockers, but must knock off alcohol. Too confusing!
I stagger out. One of my coworkers, who has been under a LOT of stress due to general administration hostility, is standing there crying.
There is a brief shuffle at the door. I attempt to put a hand on her shoulder and say something helpful, but she brushes past me, marches into the ladies' room, locks the door, and sobs that she's not coming out.
She repeats it a couple of times, just in case.
I am in a bind. A colleague is in the ladies' room, crying. She says she's not coming out. What to do? At a more normal school I might have gone to the principal for help, but in this case that would be sort of...counterproductive. "Excuse me, Mr. Javert? Mr. Valjean is in the bathroom, crying..." Not that I want to compare our principal to Inspector Javert. I have a soft spot for Javert.
So I got one of her colleagues from the horrible reading program that sparked the whole damn mess. He's a friend of hers, I think. He apparently got another (female) teacher on the hall to go in, and talk to her. We got through the rest of the day.
Then I went to the doctor, was prescribed Paxil, told to lose weight (but gently and in passing, because it's Kaiser), and reminded that my eggs will start to drop off in three years, and I should remember to reproduce soon.
Paxil. This should be interesting. I now have Paxil, Xanax, and beta-blockers, but must knock off alcohol. Too confusing!
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
A boyfriend of valor
Who can find, for his price is above rubies...
He observeth that the girlfriend is twitching and writhing from pain in her side, and encourageth her to call the advice nurse,
While she speaketh on the phone, yea, he riseth from his bed, and getteth on his clothes without discussion, and goeth to the computer to look up the directions to the emergency room in Richmond,
While she apologizeth tearfully for letting this happen on the erev of his thirtieth birthday, yea, he sayeth unto her, "Get in the van, sweetie, and if you say you're sorry again, I am going to turn around and drive you back home and let you suffer."
He parketh skillfully, and leadeth her to the ER check-in, and he watcheth MASH and Roseanne reruns without complaint until two in the morning.
He cheereth her up, and holdeth her hand whilst the urinalysis draggeth slow in the watches of the night, yea, he rejoiceth with her when the antibiotics are brought, and his paper cup is overflowing in ice water with, for some reason, a straw in it.
Plaid and denim are his clothing, and he shall get a mint chocolate cake in time to come...
(Note, it is just a UTI, and now that I have Cipro, (and three huge Tylenol in the ER), I am feeling quite a bit better. Apologies to the King James Bible translation team.)
He observeth that the girlfriend is twitching and writhing from pain in her side, and encourageth her to call the advice nurse,
While she speaketh on the phone, yea, he riseth from his bed, and getteth on his clothes without discussion, and goeth to the computer to look up the directions to the emergency room in Richmond,
While she apologizeth tearfully for letting this happen on the erev of his thirtieth birthday, yea, he sayeth unto her, "Get in the van, sweetie, and if you say you're sorry again, I am going to turn around and drive you back home and let you suffer."
He parketh skillfully, and leadeth her to the ER check-in, and he watcheth MASH and Roseanne reruns without complaint until two in the morning.
He cheereth her up, and holdeth her hand whilst the urinalysis draggeth slow in the watches of the night, yea, he rejoiceth with her when the antibiotics are brought, and his paper cup is overflowing in ice water with, for some reason, a straw in it.
Plaid and denim are his clothing, and he shall get a mint chocolate cake in time to come...
(Note, it is just a UTI, and now that I have Cipro, (and three huge Tylenol in the ER), I am feeling quite a bit better. Apologies to the King James Bible translation team.)
Monday, February 20, 2006
I-I-Ikea!
Today the Balabusta and the fella went to Ikea.
I like the movie _Fight Club_ very much, but I find it largely ridiculous, and one of the things I find ridiculous about it is the contempt expressed for Ikea by the less civilized alter ego. My God, what's the problem with Ikea? The fella tries to explain. Ikea represents the mass-marketed world. OK, but these guys, when they try to get back to essentials don't start to craft old-world furniture with antique tools. They beat the hell out of each other bare-knuckled. So who cares where their furniture is from?
Anyway. I like Ikea. I like the many things that you can buy there. I like the ridiculously reasonable prices these things are offered at. I like the beautiful little mini-apartments they put in the showroom, where you see how you can have a fabulous and fashionable home in 200 square feet of livable space. I like the weird and often unpronounceable names given to each model item. I enjoy buying weird lingonberry-flavored things in the little food store.
And the Balabusta and the fella had a gift card from the Balabusta's parents, so off we went.
We wanted three things: a throw rug for the living room, curtains for the computer room, and a desk chair for the fella, whose chair, after meeting incredible abuse, died in transit between homes. The fella has been sitting in a kitchen chair at his computer desk ever since. This is not a good idea, particularly since on a day off, he can rack up to ten hours of sitting time in front of the computer.
We found, almost immediately, the "Bonney", a perfectly nice desk chair. It comes in blue and black, also red, but the fella was not going to pick red. He tried out a couple other chairs, while the Balabusta sat in the "Jules" and scooted herself around using her feet, but the "Bonney" it was. We proceded.
We then found an area rug. Well, not before a brief showdown, when the Balabusta mentioned in passing that the rug we had admired when we moved in the summer was $500.00. The fella declared that he would never pay that much for a rug. This led to a brief bout of snarling, when the Balabusta pointed out that
a. The fella had picked out the $500.00 rug last time
b. had suggested they save up for it and
c. had discouraged the buying of a temporary rug, since they should put the money toward the rug they wanted
No one was hurt in the resulting fracas, although a Sturvikk cushion was thrown. We found an area rug. It is blue and mustardy-gold, and quasi-Persian in design. The fella found it, then was offended when the Balabusta said she didn't like the border, and refused to shop anymore. The Balabusta hunted the area, and came back to the fella's pick. It is now in the living room, on the floor. Name of "Brattsby". It is made of 100% polypropelene. The fella has been warned that in the event of fire he is NOT to stand on or near the living room area rug. We're trying to get it to lie flat, using technology, namely several heavy textbooks placed on the corners. So far, it appears to be adapting to its new environment.
Meanwhile, the fella was looking for curtains. This is a kind of a tricky item, since the Balabusta feels that curtains are to cover windows (like the wall of glass leading out to the deck from the computer room), and to lend some color and grace to a room. The fella feels that curtains are meant to block out as much light as possible from entering a room. By the time the Balabusta caught up to him, toting the Brattsby, he had found the curtains of his dreams. Dark, indigo blue, plain and heavy.
OK, fair enough, except that they're out of them. I vaguely remember they were also out of them in the summer. These are some popular curtains. We considered indigo LINEN (more expensive, and I imagine, prone to wrinkle, but nice), but eventually find some heavy cotton ones in a shade of much-washed denim.
So we got out of there, and decided to spend the remainer of our gift card money on dainties from the food shop. Gravlax! Cloudberry jam! Weird torte stuff! Swedish meatballs! Get to counter! Learn that they won't accept gift card! Stand for five minutes while we wait for supervisor! Learn that supervisor is only coming to reset cash register! Go through line again! Pay for gravlax!
And so we came home. A good day's shop, and a lovely Christmas present from the Balabusta's family.
I like the movie _Fight Club_ very much, but I find it largely ridiculous, and one of the things I find ridiculous about it is the contempt expressed for Ikea by the less civilized alter ego. My God, what's the problem with Ikea? The fella tries to explain. Ikea represents the mass-marketed world. OK, but these guys, when they try to get back to essentials don't start to craft old-world furniture with antique tools. They beat the hell out of each other bare-knuckled. So who cares where their furniture is from?
Anyway. I like Ikea. I like the many things that you can buy there. I like the ridiculously reasonable prices these things are offered at. I like the beautiful little mini-apartments they put in the showroom, where you see how you can have a fabulous and fashionable home in 200 square feet of livable space. I like the weird and often unpronounceable names given to each model item. I enjoy buying weird lingonberry-flavored things in the little food store.
And the Balabusta and the fella had a gift card from the Balabusta's parents, so off we went.
We wanted three things: a throw rug for the living room, curtains for the computer room, and a desk chair for the fella, whose chair, after meeting incredible abuse, died in transit between homes. The fella has been sitting in a kitchen chair at his computer desk ever since. This is not a good idea, particularly since on a day off, he can rack up to ten hours of sitting time in front of the computer.
We found, almost immediately, the "Bonney", a perfectly nice desk chair. It comes in blue and black, also red, but the fella was not going to pick red. He tried out a couple other chairs, while the Balabusta sat in the "Jules" and scooted herself around using her feet, but the "Bonney" it was. We proceded.
We then found an area rug. Well, not before a brief showdown, when the Balabusta mentioned in passing that the rug we had admired when we moved in the summer was $500.00. The fella declared that he would never pay that much for a rug. This led to a brief bout of snarling, when the Balabusta pointed out that
a. The fella had picked out the $500.00 rug last time
b. had suggested they save up for it and
c. had discouraged the buying of a temporary rug, since they should put the money toward the rug they wanted
No one was hurt in the resulting fracas, although a Sturvikk cushion was thrown. We found an area rug. It is blue and mustardy-gold, and quasi-Persian in design. The fella found it, then was offended when the Balabusta said she didn't like the border, and refused to shop anymore. The Balabusta hunted the area, and came back to the fella's pick. It is now in the living room, on the floor. Name of "Brattsby". It is made of 100% polypropelene. The fella has been warned that in the event of fire he is NOT to stand on or near the living room area rug. We're trying to get it to lie flat, using technology, namely several heavy textbooks placed on the corners. So far, it appears to be adapting to its new environment.
Meanwhile, the fella was looking for curtains. This is a kind of a tricky item, since the Balabusta feels that curtains are to cover windows (like the wall of glass leading out to the deck from the computer room), and to lend some color and grace to a room. The fella feels that curtains are meant to block out as much light as possible from entering a room. By the time the Balabusta caught up to him, toting the Brattsby, he had found the curtains of his dreams. Dark, indigo blue, plain and heavy.
OK, fair enough, except that they're out of them. I vaguely remember they were also out of them in the summer. These are some popular curtains. We considered indigo LINEN (more expensive, and I imagine, prone to wrinkle, but nice), but eventually find some heavy cotton ones in a shade of much-washed denim.
So we got out of there, and decided to spend the remainer of our gift card money on dainties from the food shop. Gravlax! Cloudberry jam! Weird torte stuff! Swedish meatballs! Get to counter! Learn that they won't accept gift card! Stand for five minutes while we wait for supervisor! Learn that supervisor is only coming to reset cash register! Go through line again! Pay for gravlax!
And so we came home. A good day's shop, and a lovely Christmas present from the Balabusta's family.
Sunday, February 19, 2006
I Don't Like Butter Cookies
Just never have cared for them that much. So I'm unlikely to be doing as Michelle Malkin suggests, and buying lots of Danish products to balance out the fact that the Saudis are now boycotting Danish goods due to the Great Cartoon Schism.
Look, you know there's some Saudi woman out there who loves her butter cookies, and will get them through the blockade somehow, so can we consider that she's eating mine?
I briefly considered that the fact I'm planning to go to Ikea tomorrow to buy a throw rug might count toward supporting Danish industries, but then I remembered that they're Swedish. Do they maybe have a chair factory in Denmark?
What do they MAKE in Denmark, anyway? Besides butter cookies and blond furniture that's probably made in Sweden anyway. Lutefisk? Electronics?
Never mind. This cartoon thing...
I finally saw the cartoons in question just now. Michelle Malkin posted them all to her site. Not real impressive. Two are just classic cartoony sketches of a man who looks pretty much as Mohammed looks in all the medieval Persian drawings I've ever seen. (And at least one modern Persian cartoon I've seen--which has so far not incited anyone to do anything.)
A couple I would indeed call offensive. The infamous bomb-turban is one is trashy. The 'stop the suicide bombings, we're out of virgins' one is an old joke.
Several are self-referential--the one where the artist draws himself furtively drawing a man in a khaffiyeh is interesting, as is the one of the artist in a turban labelled 'PR stunt', holding up his sketch.
Now that I am a big qualified expert, allow me to pontificate:
1. I STILL do not understand the exact reason this silly and unpronounceable paper decided to do this damnfool thing. Westerners have been portraying Mohammed for a long time. (So have Easterners.) This strongly smacks of making a big fuss out of breaking a taboo that never actually inconvenienced you in the first place--something I became familiar with in college, but still think is stupid.
2. Supporting freedom of speech does not, thank heavens, actually involve having to support the specific speech itself, or tell the people whose rights you defend that you think they're clever.
3. None of these pictures was worth anyone dying over.
4. The pictures didn't start the fire, any more than Sharon strolling up the Temple Mount started the intifada. This was a publicizable flash point for something already in progress.
5. The Italian government dude who made a t-shirt out of the cartoons didn't start the fire either, but still deserves to have his tuchis kicked for being annoying and stupid. I would do it myself, but suggest a more neutral observer--perhaps a Shintoist--should do it instead.
6. Somehow, I'm not really in a mood to exalt Denmark for this particular blow for free speech. It's not that I strongly disapprove, I just don't feel this was such a clever thing to have done that I should go out of my way to put a Danish flag on my blog and eat lots of butter cookies. As mentioned above, not crazy about butter cookies. Why don't Danes make caramels with real butter and sea salt? Why do they leave that to the French? They have butter and sea salt too.
7. The Balabusta hereby condemns all the usual suspects for inciting violence, hypocrisy involving cartoons about Jews, blah, blah, blah. Folks, we knew these folks did not like us, so what's the point?
As you may be able to tell, I am in a state of general annoyance with almost everyone involved with this. I am not impressed.
All this has made me nostalgic for a favorite cartoon, which I should try to find some time. In it, Moshe makes his way down Sinai, clutching tablets. He addresses the people. (No speech bubbles yet.) One of the people raises a hand and apparently asks a question. (No speech bubbles yet.)
"Good question," says Moshe. "I'll ask."
He turns around, and takes the tablets back uphill with him. The people wait. He returns, slightly singed, hair standing on end. He addresses the people.
"Yes. You have to obey all of them, all the time. This concludes the &&*#&*#&*# question and answer session."
Look, you know there's some Saudi woman out there who loves her butter cookies, and will get them through the blockade somehow, so can we consider that she's eating mine?
I briefly considered that the fact I'm planning to go to Ikea tomorrow to buy a throw rug might count toward supporting Danish industries, but then I remembered that they're Swedish. Do they maybe have a chair factory in Denmark?
What do they MAKE in Denmark, anyway? Besides butter cookies and blond furniture that's probably made in Sweden anyway. Lutefisk? Electronics?
Never mind. This cartoon thing...
I finally saw the cartoons in question just now. Michelle Malkin posted them all to her site. Not real impressive. Two are just classic cartoony sketches of a man who looks pretty much as Mohammed looks in all the medieval Persian drawings I've ever seen. (And at least one modern Persian cartoon I've seen--which has so far not incited anyone to do anything.)
A couple I would indeed call offensive. The infamous bomb-turban is one is trashy. The 'stop the suicide bombings, we're out of virgins' one is an old joke.
Several are self-referential--the one where the artist draws himself furtively drawing a man in a khaffiyeh is interesting, as is the one of the artist in a turban labelled 'PR stunt', holding up his sketch.
Now that I am a big qualified expert, allow me to pontificate:
1. I STILL do not understand the exact reason this silly and unpronounceable paper decided to do this damnfool thing. Westerners have been portraying Mohammed for a long time. (So have Easterners.) This strongly smacks of making a big fuss out of breaking a taboo that never actually inconvenienced you in the first place--something I became familiar with in college, but still think is stupid.
2. Supporting freedom of speech does not, thank heavens, actually involve having to support the specific speech itself, or tell the people whose rights you defend that you think they're clever.
3. None of these pictures was worth anyone dying over.
4. The pictures didn't start the fire, any more than Sharon strolling up the Temple Mount started the intifada. This was a publicizable flash point for something already in progress.
5. The Italian government dude who made a t-shirt out of the cartoons didn't start the fire either, but still deserves to have his tuchis kicked for being annoying and stupid. I would do it myself, but suggest a more neutral observer--perhaps a Shintoist--should do it instead.
6. Somehow, I'm not really in a mood to exalt Denmark for this particular blow for free speech. It's not that I strongly disapprove, I just don't feel this was such a clever thing to have done that I should go out of my way to put a Danish flag on my blog and eat lots of butter cookies. As mentioned above, not crazy about butter cookies. Why don't Danes make caramels with real butter and sea salt? Why do they leave that to the French? They have butter and sea salt too.
7. The Balabusta hereby condemns all the usual suspects for inciting violence, hypocrisy involving cartoons about Jews, blah, blah, blah. Folks, we knew these folks did not like us, so what's the point?
As you may be able to tell, I am in a state of general annoyance with almost everyone involved with this. I am not impressed.
All this has made me nostalgic for a favorite cartoon, which I should try to find some time. In it, Moshe makes his way down Sinai, clutching tablets. He addresses the people. (No speech bubbles yet.) One of the people raises a hand and apparently asks a question. (No speech bubbles yet.)
"Good question," says Moshe. "I'll ask."
He turns around, and takes the tablets back uphill with him. The people wait. He returns, slightly singed, hair standing on end. He addresses the people.
"Yes. You have to obey all of them, all the time. This concludes the &&*#&*#&*# question and answer session."
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
I'm on Drugs
Around Sunday I started to freak out completely with work-related stress. Mr. Balabusta Sr., who is a big believe in better living through chemistry, marched me to Kaiser and had me spill the whole wretched story to a nice doctor who gave me some anxiety meds and strongly recommended I talk to my general practitioner.
Who I have never actually met. Name of Fong? Something like that. Anyway.
I now have generic Xanax, and some beta-blockers. I have been taking them in small doses. I have really mixed feelings about this, but I have to admit the world has improved about a hundred and ten percent. I am calmer, and able to think of sensible solutions. I do not cry when I get to school. I do not have a panic attack when my principal walks by. I stay calm, and fairly stable. This allows me to go home and--well--act like a human being.
The fella is somewhat baffled. After months of weeping wailing snarling girlfriend, he has a happy, stable, rather playful woman wandering around the house.
I'm moderately disturbed by how unlike myself I feel, and by how nice that is. Appt. with therapist on Shabbos, will discuss.
Anyway. This isn't a permanent solution, but for the time being, it's allowed me to get through the week, which I would have bet against on Sunday.
Who I have never actually met. Name of Fong? Something like that. Anyway.
I now have generic Xanax, and some beta-blockers. I have been taking them in small doses. I have really mixed feelings about this, but I have to admit the world has improved about a hundred and ten percent. I am calmer, and able to think of sensible solutions. I do not cry when I get to school. I do not have a panic attack when my principal walks by. I stay calm, and fairly stable. This allows me to go home and--well--act like a human being.
The fella is somewhat baffled. After months of weeping wailing snarling girlfriend, he has a happy, stable, rather playful woman wandering around the house.
I'm moderately disturbed by how unlike myself I feel, and by how nice that is. Appt. with therapist on Shabbos, will discuss.
Anyway. This isn't a permanent solution, but for the time being, it's allowed me to get through the week, which I would have bet against on Sunday.
Thursday, February 09, 2006
Perfect Storm
Yesterday was more than a little surreal. I left the house at 6:25 AM, and returned 15 hours later, practically gibbering. In between--oh yeah--in between.
It was a 'minimum day', where we have no lunch and short classes, and the kids get out at 12:25. I taught. Then there was the language arts department meeting.
We're having some bad problems at our school site right now. Chief among them is that we have been ordered to teach 'strategic' cores next year. It was expected that we would vote on one of three methods of doing this.
It turned into a two-hour meeting. Two people cried. One of them was male. It was not fun.
After the meeting, I zipped off to my next meeting, the ELD meeting for the district. I like most of the people I see there. There is this one woman, though, who has my equivalent job at another middle school across town, who bugs me in certain ways.
She's extremely confident, and she lets people know, frequently, in no uncertain terms, just how good she is. She's one of those people who mistakes MY self-depreciation or non-confrontationality for timidity and general incompetance. She likes to help me, by telling me just what to do. She also tends to talk a lot of losh about people in the district. She's not intolerable, but she's someone I find it kind of hard to cope with.
Yesterday, I mentioned at the meeting that we have a new group of language arts classes, which are essentially sheltered or strategic classes, (long story), and that it's been stressful for the teachers working on it to create the curriculum and materials as fast as needed. I THINK that's all I said.
She comes up with a bright idea. We should use the most advanced level of the crummy program I teach in ELD as the strategic core text.
This is not a good idea, and it will not be taken kindly by the people who are teaching this class, but I vaguely murmur that I will mention it, that's an interesting idea, and I'll see if there's any interest.
This gal grabs my hand and says, assertively, "NO, Balabusta, you have to TELL them what they need to do!" I say, with a touch more acid, that I will ASK if they are interested.
So, we finish that meeting, and then go to a parent meeting, and then I get home and collapse.
Next morning I go to the teacher who's involved in the new core class, and ask if he's interested in my books. That would be a NO. OK, I say, and go away, mission accomplished.
Next thing I know, the daft woman who suggested it has e-mailed my principal and my VP, mentioned my name, and promoted the whole stupid idea to them again.
Eeeeeech. I e-mailed back, telling her I had floated the idea, and they AIN'T INTERESTED. She, by return e-mail, hopes I didn't mind, but thought I might want some support from my 'ELD colleagues'. Translation: I am too timid and stupid to transmit the idea and make it stick. She also implies that the teacher I approached can't be well-qualified to teach English learners. I shoot back another e-mail, defending him, and mentioning a little more aggressively that this kind of a touchy moment at our school, and my name should probably not be linked to attempts to push semi-scripted curriculum on other teachers.
Note to self: stay away from this woman. Combination of self-righteousness and chutzpah is not good news.
It was a 'minimum day', where we have no lunch and short classes, and the kids get out at 12:25. I taught. Then there was the language arts department meeting.
We're having some bad problems at our school site right now. Chief among them is that we have been ordered to teach 'strategic' cores next year. It was expected that we would vote on one of three methods of doing this.
It turned into a two-hour meeting. Two people cried. One of them was male. It was not fun.
After the meeting, I zipped off to my next meeting, the ELD meeting for the district. I like most of the people I see there. There is this one woman, though, who has my equivalent job at another middle school across town, who bugs me in certain ways.
She's extremely confident, and she lets people know, frequently, in no uncertain terms, just how good she is. She's one of those people who mistakes MY self-depreciation or non-confrontationality for timidity and general incompetance. She likes to help me, by telling me just what to do. She also tends to talk a lot of losh about people in the district. She's not intolerable, but she's someone I find it kind of hard to cope with.
Yesterday, I mentioned at the meeting that we have a new group of language arts classes, which are essentially sheltered or strategic classes, (long story), and that it's been stressful for the teachers working on it to create the curriculum and materials as fast as needed. I THINK that's all I said.
She comes up with a bright idea. We should use the most advanced level of the crummy program I teach in ELD as the strategic core text.
This is not a good idea, and it will not be taken kindly by the people who are teaching this class, but I vaguely murmur that I will mention it, that's an interesting idea, and I'll see if there's any interest.
This gal grabs my hand and says, assertively, "NO, Balabusta, you have to TELL them what they need to do!" I say, with a touch more acid, that I will ASK if they are interested.
So, we finish that meeting, and then go to a parent meeting, and then I get home and collapse.
Next morning I go to the teacher who's involved in the new core class, and ask if he's interested in my books. That would be a NO. OK, I say, and go away, mission accomplished.
Next thing I know, the daft woman who suggested it has e-mailed my principal and my VP, mentioned my name, and promoted the whole stupid idea to them again.
Eeeeeech. I e-mailed back, telling her I had floated the idea, and they AIN'T INTERESTED. She, by return e-mail, hopes I didn't mind, but thought I might want some support from my 'ELD colleagues'. Translation: I am too timid and stupid to transmit the idea and make it stick. She also implies that the teacher I approached can't be well-qualified to teach English learners. I shoot back another e-mail, defending him, and mentioning a little more aggressively that this kind of a touchy moment at our school, and my name should probably not be linked to attempts to push semi-scripted curriculum on other teachers.
Note to self: stay away from this woman. Combination of self-righteousness and chutzpah is not good news.
Monday, February 06, 2006
Cinnamon Dolce
Today I left school after an intensely weird staff meeting. (Coworker to principal: "This whole year was a joke! There has been no support! No respect! No organization." Principal: "Thank you. We have two minutes left. Does anyone want to add another question for the committee?" Coworker stuffs paperwork into shoulder back and leaves meeting two minutes early.)
I went into downtown (small East Bay community, name withheld) to pick up a prescription at Kaiser, and even though I felt like hell, it was warm, and breezy, and the whole world smelled like spring. And I stopped at Starbucks and got a cinnamon dolce latte, and it was marvelous, and the buses were running for me.
Down the street, a magnolia tree has started to bloom, and the cherry and almond trees are going berserk.
I wish I wasn't so stressed, and that I could open my classroom windows and let the spring breezes sweep in--but a little sweet goes a long way right now.
I went into downtown (small East Bay community, name withheld) to pick up a prescription at Kaiser, and even though I felt like hell, it was warm, and breezy, and the whole world smelled like spring. And I stopped at Starbucks and got a cinnamon dolce latte, and it was marvelous, and the buses were running for me.
Down the street, a magnolia tree has started to bloom, and the cherry and almond trees are going berserk.
I wish I wasn't so stressed, and that I could open my classroom windows and let the spring breezes sweep in--but a little sweet goes a long way right now.
Sunday, February 05, 2006
Is this what burnout feels like?
It's my second year of teaching, same school I started in. Right after finishing my credential, I bopped all over the Bay Area, interviewing everywhere.
From the start, I felt--I don't know--inadequate. As though I wouldn't be good enough and wouldn't get what I wanted. My credential program didn't really seem to have taught me what I needed to know--how to create a classroom system, how to enforce rules, how to manage paperwork. I loved my credential program, but it was very academic, and not real practical. Lots of political correctness. I'm good at that. Not so much 'what do you do when the kids won't ****ing sit down'?
Some of the people in my classes seemed really confident. They loved student teaching. They felt as though everything they were doing was right. They may have been delusional, but GOD I envied them. I related a lot more, though, to the redheaded guy from Boston who showed up to class drunk a lot, and was losing his marbles in student teaching because the high school kids couldn't understand mercantilism, no matter how loud he yelled. (We voted him 'most likely to become a college professor out of sheer frustration'.)
And I wanted to be like the woman who taught religion classes at a local Catholic high school, and was always correcting papers about symbolism in the Bible, and really seemed to love the girls she taught.
My lifetime goals are pretty simple. I want to raise a child, maybe two. I want to publish a novel, maybe several. And I'd like to buy a house (given the Bay Area, this may be the least realistic, but the fella and I have talked about it). But I'd also like a job that feels okay and pays the rent.
I don't have one. It pays the rent, it just doesn't feel remotely OK.
So, this is how I got here. I interviewed EVERYWHERE, and finally, just after Labor Day, got a half-time job teaching ELD at a middle school in an undisclosed community in the East Bay. I was told that I would have sixteen kids in my class, and that they were choosing me because I had a 'sweet manner' that they thought would be soothing to the poor, scared little immigrant kids.
Two weeks later, I had twenty-nine kids in my class, and they ranged from NO English to native speakers who'd been dumped on me because their grades were low. I struggled through the year, managed to wheedle myself a full-time job, and came back for more.
Big mistake.
I'm drowning.
Keeping order is pure hell. The administration sucks. The kids aren't afraid of getting in trouble. The kids are wild, many of them with undiagnosed LD and SPED problems. I'm the ELD coordinator this year and I'm drowning. The principal is hard to handle. The VP is affectless. The counselor quit at the beginning of December, so basically, all hell is breaking loose.
I assume I will not be hired back next year. Except for the cringing, horrible, ego blow, this is probably good, because otherwise some misplaced optimism might lure me back. I don't want to get up in the morning. I'm working constantly, and getting farther behind. I hate teaching.
I hate teaching.
I think I might like it if, say, I had just one or two behavior problems in a class, if I had more photocopies, if I had kids who didn't throw their silent reading books out the window. If I had a principal who just once said "What can we do to help?" rather than "You need to be able to control your class." If I spent an hour in transit every day instead of three. If I even had individual desks and chairs for the kids, instead of tables that make it impossible to group them or make sure everyone is facing forward.
I am tired of being the Wicked Witch of the West. I am tired of fighting with the kids every day. I am tired of everything.
I cry in the shower. I cry on BART coming home. If the fella weren't job hunting at the moment, I swear I would quit tomorrow. (Or would have quit last week.)
I think high school might work better for me. If I had the kids for fifty minutes, instead of two and a half hours. If I had students who understood my jokes, and parents who could talk to me.
I think this is burnout, and it makes me crazy. I went to so much trouble for this job, for teaching. I borrowed a lot of money to do this. I changed a lot of things. I can't stand the thought of losing it. I don't know what I'm going to do next. And I'm trying to stay calm, but I don't feel calm. I feel like hell.
Somewhere in my mind there's a picture of how this was supposed to be--me in a skirt and sweater set, teaching a bunch of kids who had mostly done the homework and could all read for a certain amount of comprehension. I drive a dinky little car, and help the kids try out for the drama club. I show the kids 'Throne of Blood' after we read "Macbeth".
I still want to be her.
From the start, I felt--I don't know--inadequate. As though I wouldn't be good enough and wouldn't get what I wanted. My credential program didn't really seem to have taught me what I needed to know--how to create a classroom system, how to enforce rules, how to manage paperwork. I loved my credential program, but it was very academic, and not real practical. Lots of political correctness. I'm good at that. Not so much 'what do you do when the kids won't ****ing sit down'?
Some of the people in my classes seemed really confident. They loved student teaching. They felt as though everything they were doing was right. They may have been delusional, but GOD I envied them. I related a lot more, though, to the redheaded guy from Boston who showed up to class drunk a lot, and was losing his marbles in student teaching because the high school kids couldn't understand mercantilism, no matter how loud he yelled. (We voted him 'most likely to become a college professor out of sheer frustration'.)
And I wanted to be like the woman who taught religion classes at a local Catholic high school, and was always correcting papers about symbolism in the Bible, and really seemed to love the girls she taught.
My lifetime goals are pretty simple. I want to raise a child, maybe two. I want to publish a novel, maybe several. And I'd like to buy a house (given the Bay Area, this may be the least realistic, but the fella and I have talked about it). But I'd also like a job that feels okay and pays the rent.
I don't have one. It pays the rent, it just doesn't feel remotely OK.
So, this is how I got here. I interviewed EVERYWHERE, and finally, just after Labor Day, got a half-time job teaching ELD at a middle school in an undisclosed community in the East Bay. I was told that I would have sixteen kids in my class, and that they were choosing me because I had a 'sweet manner' that they thought would be soothing to the poor, scared little immigrant kids.
Two weeks later, I had twenty-nine kids in my class, and they ranged from NO English to native speakers who'd been dumped on me because their grades were low. I struggled through the year, managed to wheedle myself a full-time job, and came back for more.
Big mistake.
I'm drowning.
Keeping order is pure hell. The administration sucks. The kids aren't afraid of getting in trouble. The kids are wild, many of them with undiagnosed LD and SPED problems. I'm the ELD coordinator this year and I'm drowning. The principal is hard to handle. The VP is affectless. The counselor quit at the beginning of December, so basically, all hell is breaking loose.
I assume I will not be hired back next year. Except for the cringing, horrible, ego blow, this is probably good, because otherwise some misplaced optimism might lure me back. I don't want to get up in the morning. I'm working constantly, and getting farther behind. I hate teaching.
I hate teaching.
I think I might like it if, say, I had just one or two behavior problems in a class, if I had more photocopies, if I had kids who didn't throw their silent reading books out the window. If I had a principal who just once said "What can we do to help?" rather than "You need to be able to control your class." If I spent an hour in transit every day instead of three. If I even had individual desks and chairs for the kids, instead of tables that make it impossible to group them or make sure everyone is facing forward.
I am tired of being the Wicked Witch of the West. I am tired of fighting with the kids every day. I am tired of everything.
I cry in the shower. I cry on BART coming home. If the fella weren't job hunting at the moment, I swear I would quit tomorrow. (Or would have quit last week.)
I think high school might work better for me. If I had the kids for fifty minutes, instead of two and a half hours. If I had students who understood my jokes, and parents who could talk to me.
I think this is burnout, and it makes me crazy. I went to so much trouble for this job, for teaching. I borrowed a lot of money to do this. I changed a lot of things. I can't stand the thought of losing it. I don't know what I'm going to do next. And I'm trying to stay calm, but I don't feel calm. I feel like hell.
Somewhere in my mind there's a picture of how this was supposed to be--me in a skirt and sweater set, teaching a bunch of kids who had mostly done the homework and could all read for a certain amount of comprehension. I drive a dinky little car, and help the kids try out for the drama club. I show the kids 'Throne of Blood' after we read "Macbeth".
I still want to be her.
Sunday, January 29, 2006
I'm out here, really I am
It's just that I'm insanely busy, and my computer is limited right now, which is why I'm not doing, say, the really interesting post on polygamy I'm thinking about. Soon. Like RenReb's thing on men being scum.
Things I'm thinking about:
1. Polygamy (not as an option, just as an interesting thing.)
2. Soup (the stuff that's left in a Crock Pot after you do a turkey breast in there makes a great base for soup). Cannelini, cabbage, zucchini, and some tomato sauce were involved.
3. Hamas. Not surprised, just apprehensive. Apparently I was supposed to be surprised. Let me be blunt. Would YOU vote for Fatah? I mean, these Hamas is crazy evil, and scares the hell out of me, but I can actually sort of see the voter's logic here. It's a logic that assumes that me and mine should be blown to smithereens, but if that's already a given, then I can sort of see where everyone is coming from here. (Note the chipper, upbeat, slightly hysterical tone of voice. I'm imitating Israelis of my acquaintance.)
4. My upcoming observation at work.
5. What I should get at Macys with a Christmas gift card from my grandma which got sent to several wrong addresses, I think, and finally found me.
6. The fact that San Francisco has Humbolt County mad at us for sending them homeless people who may or may not be theirs to begin with. (Moroni deported to Sweden. Claims he's not from there).
7. Mondegreens. Particularly, the one which hears the BART announcement as "This is a BART alligator update. All station alligators are currently in service," and "Who knows what evil lurks in the hot cement? The SHADOW knows."
Things I'm thinking about:
1. Polygamy (not as an option, just as an interesting thing.)
2. Soup (the stuff that's left in a Crock Pot after you do a turkey breast in there makes a great base for soup). Cannelini, cabbage, zucchini, and some tomato sauce were involved.
3. Hamas. Not surprised, just apprehensive. Apparently I was supposed to be surprised. Let me be blunt. Would YOU vote for Fatah? I mean, these Hamas is crazy evil, and scares the hell out of me, but I can actually sort of see the voter's logic here. It's a logic that assumes that me and mine should be blown to smithereens, but if that's already a given, then I can sort of see where everyone is coming from here. (Note the chipper, upbeat, slightly hysterical tone of voice. I'm imitating Israelis of my acquaintance.)
4. My upcoming observation at work.
5. What I should get at Macys with a Christmas gift card from my grandma which got sent to several wrong addresses, I think, and finally found me.
6. The fact that San Francisco has Humbolt County mad at us for sending them homeless people who may or may not be theirs to begin with. (Moroni deported to Sweden. Claims he's not from there).
7. Mondegreens. Particularly, the one which hears the BART announcement as "This is a BART alligator update. All station alligators are currently in service," and "Who knows what evil lurks in the hot cement? The SHADOW knows."
Saturday, January 21, 2006
Blame It On The Griots
It's called culture. Or racism. You decide.
Today I had to attend my stupid teacher induction program. My stupid teacher induction program has Saturday seminars which annoy me. They are in Moraga. I have to get up at six in the morning to get to Moraga, take BART, and then a cab. I don't care for this.
This month's 'standards' are the ones having to do with diversity in the classroom. This is better than last times'--technology--because I actually have diversity, as opposed to technology, in my classroom. But it's not great. Basically, talking about diversity in education settings sucks. But we had an interesting, if weird and intense, keynote speaker, and I attended a pleasant workshop in which we learned that it hurts children's feelings if the teacher doesn't react to racial and sexual slurs in the classroom. In the immortal words of Mr. Mackey from South Park, "Prejudice is bad, m'kay?" (Actually, the man teaching the workshop was excellent, and we had a good conversation. I'm just being snippy, 'cause I don't like being in Moraga of a Saturday.)
Then comes the grade-alike group. This is where a bunch of people I'm in a group with go and sit and are facilitated in discussion of the day's events. Unfortunately, I was put in the Special Education group. I don't teach SPED. I teach ELD, otherwise known as ESL. But there aren't enough of us, so we got SPED as our grade-alike group. I am trying not to feel that the message here is not loaded.
So we're asked for responses to the day, and one young woman starts to talk about how she attended a workshop about working with African-American students, and the disconnect they have from school. In the course of talking about this, she explains that the guy teaching the workshop gave an example of a project where students have to write about their family and heritage. She explains that Mexican-American students could write about their Mexican heritage. And Italian-American students could write about their Italian heritage. And black students say, for example, 'I'm just from Mississippi,' and the guy teaching the class tries to explain that no, that's not the point...
I raise my hand and say, trying not to be too snippy, that this sounds like great material, but that I'm at a loss to see what misses the point about saying you're from Mississippi, especially since African-American students saying this probably have a heritage in that area that goes back rather a long way.
I do not add, but think, that black American culture from the South is a cultural richness almost beyond belief, producing, among a lot of other things, great inventors, great writers, and the greatest music and musicians ever to rise from this earth. (OK, I know prejudice is bad, but I'm slightly skewed in judgement here. Sue me.)
Unfortunately, I'm dealing with STUPID people. The facilitator begins to explain to me that he was educated as a white intellectual (he's Asian by heritage) by Jesuits, and he has this whole range of awareness of the sweep of history, and blah, blah, blah, and when he visits, say, St. Paul's in Rome, he's aware of its significance, and, etc. Then he looks me straight in the face and says, "It's called culture."
Well, shut MY mouth. I will regret for days that I did not have the presence of mind--or foresight--to look back and say 'it's called culture by WHOM?' Instead, I tell him that St. Paul's is very nice, but that I had understood the assignment to be one where students wrote not about the sweep of human history, but about their own heritages, and I still don't get why Mississippi isn't a good one.
The theme is taken up by a young white dude in the group, who explains to me about ethnocentrism. He does an excellent job. I do not tell him that he's a condescending jerk, and that I have an effing degree in history from a liberal college. Instead, I explain that, once again, I understood this to be an assignment about personal family heritage. He explains carefully about family history not coming down from slavery days.
I wonder to myself how many white students outside Boston prep schools can give detailed family histories from the mid-nineteenth century. I repeat again my basic question, which is now starting to sound almost pathetic. It was basically an aside at first. I assumed she would laugh and clarify what they meant. Now I'm getting ticked off.
Our facilitator explains that Mississippi represents a small world view. I say that come to that, Mississippi is no smaller than Sicily. A couple of young women explain to me how black students are DISCONNECTED from school. I wonder silently if this could be because their heritage isn't considered adequate to write a school paper about. The facilitator explains that when he says a small world view, he doesn't mean the literal size of the place. I imagine banging my head on the table.
I sort of surrender, because this is starting to get surreal. Then we talk about how to connect black students. One white teacher explains how her class does a unit every year where they research the heritages of every person in class. She has seven black boys in her class, and "NONE of them knew where they came from until we learned about Africa in class."
Somehow I doubt that statement, lady. I do, however, see part of their unstated 'point', which is that West Africa, rather than anything that happened in the last, say 350 years, is the real 'heritage' of African-Americans.
Shortly after this we start hunting reasons for the African-American academic failure in earnest. We talk about this for about twenty minutes. No one says 'money', and no one says 'racism'. In fact, the word 'racism' is not spoken once during this whole discussion.
The facilitator discussed the school-phobic history of many black families--this is real enough--and then begins to explain that another problem is that 'Africa'--they never give a country or culture name, they don't even say 'West Africa'--has an ORAL tradition. These students come from an ORAL tradition, and then they wind up at school in a white, paper-and-pencil tradition, and, of course, feel alienated and fail.
I've got my jaw hanging open here. Of course black Americans have an oral tradition, but they also have a very imposing written one. (Thank God these people never got ahold of Richard Wright.) To be blunt, enslaved people risked their lives to learn to read. Over and over again, everywhere in the U.S. that it was forbidden. And plenty of white kids in U.S. schools had great-great-grandparents who got off the boat knowing how to write no more than their names. And now we say these kids fail in school because they have an ORAL tradition? Can I say that America has a RACIST and CLASSIST tradition, and perhaps we should put some blame on this rather than blaming the griots?
Sheesh. You know what the worst thing about this is? The worst thing about this is that these eejits think I'M uninformed, and maybe a little racist. And that they teach black students.
Today I had to attend my stupid teacher induction program. My stupid teacher induction program has Saturday seminars which annoy me. They are in Moraga. I have to get up at six in the morning to get to Moraga, take BART, and then a cab. I don't care for this.
This month's 'standards' are the ones having to do with diversity in the classroom. This is better than last times'--technology--because I actually have diversity, as opposed to technology, in my classroom. But it's not great. Basically, talking about diversity in education settings sucks. But we had an interesting, if weird and intense, keynote speaker, and I attended a pleasant workshop in which we learned that it hurts children's feelings if the teacher doesn't react to racial and sexual slurs in the classroom. In the immortal words of Mr. Mackey from South Park, "Prejudice is bad, m'kay?" (Actually, the man teaching the workshop was excellent, and we had a good conversation. I'm just being snippy, 'cause I don't like being in Moraga of a Saturday.)
Then comes the grade-alike group. This is where a bunch of people I'm in a group with go and sit and are facilitated in discussion of the day's events. Unfortunately, I was put in the Special Education group. I don't teach SPED. I teach ELD, otherwise known as ESL. But there aren't enough of us, so we got SPED as our grade-alike group. I am trying not to feel that the message here is not loaded.
So we're asked for responses to the day, and one young woman starts to talk about how she attended a workshop about working with African-American students, and the disconnect they have from school. In the course of talking about this, she explains that the guy teaching the workshop gave an example of a project where students have to write about their family and heritage. She explains that Mexican-American students could write about their Mexican heritage. And Italian-American students could write about their Italian heritage. And black students say, for example, 'I'm just from Mississippi,' and the guy teaching the class tries to explain that no, that's not the point...
I raise my hand and say, trying not to be too snippy, that this sounds like great material, but that I'm at a loss to see what misses the point about saying you're from Mississippi, especially since African-American students saying this probably have a heritage in that area that goes back rather a long way.
I do not add, but think, that black American culture from the South is a cultural richness almost beyond belief, producing, among a lot of other things, great inventors, great writers, and the greatest music and musicians ever to rise from this earth. (OK, I know prejudice is bad, but I'm slightly skewed in judgement here. Sue me.)
Unfortunately, I'm dealing with STUPID people. The facilitator begins to explain to me that he was educated as a white intellectual (he's Asian by heritage) by Jesuits, and he has this whole range of awareness of the sweep of history, and blah, blah, blah, and when he visits, say, St. Paul's in Rome, he's aware of its significance, and, etc. Then he looks me straight in the face and says, "It's called culture."
Well, shut MY mouth. I will regret for days that I did not have the presence of mind--or foresight--to look back and say 'it's called culture by WHOM?' Instead, I tell him that St. Paul's is very nice, but that I had understood the assignment to be one where students wrote not about the sweep of human history, but about their own heritages, and I still don't get why Mississippi isn't a good one.
The theme is taken up by a young white dude in the group, who explains to me about ethnocentrism. He does an excellent job. I do not tell him that he's a condescending jerk, and that I have an effing degree in history from a liberal college. Instead, I explain that, once again, I understood this to be an assignment about personal family heritage. He explains carefully about family history not coming down from slavery days.
I wonder to myself how many white students outside Boston prep schools can give detailed family histories from the mid-nineteenth century. I repeat again my basic question, which is now starting to sound almost pathetic. It was basically an aside at first. I assumed she would laugh and clarify what they meant. Now I'm getting ticked off.
Our facilitator explains that Mississippi represents a small world view. I say that come to that, Mississippi is no smaller than Sicily. A couple of young women explain to me how black students are DISCONNECTED from school. I wonder silently if this could be because their heritage isn't considered adequate to write a school paper about. The facilitator explains that when he says a small world view, he doesn't mean the literal size of the place. I imagine banging my head on the table.
I sort of surrender, because this is starting to get surreal. Then we talk about how to connect black students. One white teacher explains how her class does a unit every year where they research the heritages of every person in class. She has seven black boys in her class, and "NONE of them knew where they came from until we learned about Africa in class."
Somehow I doubt that statement, lady. I do, however, see part of their unstated 'point', which is that West Africa, rather than anything that happened in the last, say 350 years, is the real 'heritage' of African-Americans.
Shortly after this we start hunting reasons for the African-American academic failure in earnest. We talk about this for about twenty minutes. No one says 'money', and no one says 'racism'. In fact, the word 'racism' is not spoken once during this whole discussion.
The facilitator discussed the school-phobic history of many black families--this is real enough--and then begins to explain that another problem is that 'Africa'--they never give a country or culture name, they don't even say 'West Africa'--has an ORAL tradition. These students come from an ORAL tradition, and then they wind up at school in a white, paper-and-pencil tradition, and, of course, feel alienated and fail.
I've got my jaw hanging open here. Of course black Americans have an oral tradition, but they also have a very imposing written one. (Thank God these people never got ahold of Richard Wright.) To be blunt, enslaved people risked their lives to learn to read. Over and over again, everywhere in the U.S. that it was forbidden. And plenty of white kids in U.S. schools had great-great-grandparents who got off the boat knowing how to write no more than their names. And now we say these kids fail in school because they have an ORAL tradition? Can I say that America has a RACIST and CLASSIST tradition, and perhaps we should put some blame on this rather than blaming the griots?
Sheesh. You know what the worst thing about this is? The worst thing about this is that these eejits think I'M uninformed, and maybe a little racist. And that they teach black students.
A Great Inventor, Age 11
The new kid in my class has a suggestion to stop problems with kids throwing paper and goofing around behind my back. I should mount a rearview mirror on my shoulder, he suggests.
Thursday, January 12, 2006
Bad Neighborhood Blues
The scary night tour of Richmond brought back memories of the summer before last, when I was looking for my first teaching job.
Some people have a lot of job hunting luck, and self confidence. Those people are not me. I was desperate to get something, anything, and I went mildly berkserk while looking for a gig. I essentially applied to anything that seemed as though an English preliminary credential qualified you for it, and I went to any (almost) any interview I could schedule. My range was any place I could get to in about two hours by transit.
Obviously, especially if you're me, this leads to some interesting times. The one interview I turned down was at a place where they wanted a teacher's aide for severely emotionally disturbed kids. We got to the part where the woman on the phone said 'and you'll be asked to assist in forcibly restraining students who are a danger to themselves or others..." and I said, in my sweetest voice "Honey, I think you have the wrong woman."
But I interviewed twice at the school for students with Aspergers. I interviewed in Castro Valley. I interviewed in Union City. I interviewed in Oakland and San Francisco, and Antioch and San Mateo. I interviewed at private schools, public schools and charter schools. I got treated like scum--typically--at a Jewish day school, and asked how I would deal with it if gang warfare broke out in my classroom.
The neighborhood was always a wild card. I got one interview at a place that was in a neighborhood I'd avoided like the plague when attending college nearby, but time had morphed it into a pleasant working-class neighborhood with flowerbeds in front of houses. I got off BART at stops I'd never heard of. I experienced the racist bus service that exists in the suburbs outside the inner Bay Area (the buses run seldom, the buses do not go convenient places, the buses look like hell, and white people do not ride them. I think people were slightly afraid of me. I looked insane, with my interview suits, and my TransitInfo printouts.)
I shlepped to Moraga. I shlepped to places I couldn't find on the map. But I only failed to get to one interview.
East Oakland.
It was for a summer school job for a new charter school. They did explain it was an urban neighborhood. They did explain that the students were disadvantaged, and lived locally. But hell, that didn't tell me anything. People in education talk like that any time the school is urban, and the kids' parents aren't defense attorneys.
So I mapped out my route on TransitInfo, and I went. First, I took BART to the Oakland Coliseum. After that it got interesting.
I caught the bus from the Coliseum. We went through a swamp (OK, just marshes by the bay), and then through some corporate villages, and then we hit an iffy residential neighborhood, and after that it just got worse. And worse. And worse.
Finally, I was let off on a stretch of highway, with a half-mile walk still to go. I examined the neighborhood to one side of the freeway.
First I found a gate in the wall alongside it, and walked in. I got about half a block in, maybe a quarter, and looked around.
Dead lawns. Burnt-out cars. Boarded up windows. Fences around each lawn. And, at about ten thirty in the morning on a Wednesday, grown men standing around in the street talking loudly to each other and screaming with laughter, apparently with nowhere to go and nothing to do.
Me: medium-sized zaftig San Franciscan in black business suit, having heart attack. Retreat!
I walked down the highway a little more, and reached a large intersection where there was a gas station of a brand I didn't recognize on one corner. The wall ended. I peered down the street. Maybe I wasn't actually supposed to go that way. I am notoriously bad at reading maps.
There was a teenage boy sitting at the corner, so I asked him. He jumped. I mean, the kid looked scared. He gave me an incredulous stare--how the hell did a medium-sized zaftig San Franciscan in a business suit get here, and was she really there, or was he having a nervous breakdown? He did, however, confirm that my understanding of the directions was accurate.
I'm sort of iffy about telling this story since it's basically a story about a white girl being frightened of a black neighborhood, and I am enough of a creature of my college years (circa 1991-1995, the salad days of identity politics) to be afraid this sounds bad. But really. This was not urban, this was post-apocalyptic. I am not that much of a wimp. I interviewed in a really wide range of neighborhoods, and was happy in most of them. But this was a very bad location, and I looked like no one in my line of sight, neither in dress nor face. I stood out. A lot. In a place where you want to be invisible.
OK. Reality check time. No way in hell am I doing this every morning for six weeks. They would have to have a close relative or very good friend hostage at this school to get me to walk down there. So I cross the street to the gas station and ask the guy behind the counter to call me a cab. He is behind bulletproof glass, and isn't real friendly. He also tells me that I can call from the payphone outside.
I don't really want to go outside, but I do. I call a cab. They sound friendly until I give the address. Then they say it will be fifteen to twenty minutes, but I am not quite that naive. I understand that no cab will be coming. Ever.
Welcome to the 'hood.
I wait, and consider options. There is a bus stop nearby, so I figure I'll see if the cab does arrive, if not, wait for bus, do not panic.
After about ten minutes of waiting, a man in his sixties comes over and asks if I need a lift somewhere. He looks very pleasant, has a Ford pickup, and speaks to me kindly--I'm tempted. But a lifetime of not getting into cars with strange men prevails, and I tell him I'm fine. Clearly, this is a lie. He pretends to accept it.
Then Super Shuttle showed up. Super Shuttle is a local SF operation that drives you from your house to the airport. While the shuttle was gassing up, I asked if, for the standard fee, I could be taken to the nearest BART station. Or the airport. Wherever. No dice. They can't do pickups.
And then the bus arrived.
Unluckily, it was the SAME bus I'd ridden in on. The bus driver looked at me with some concern. "Did you get to where you were going, honey?" she asked.
"I found what I was looking for," I said.
My friend Niamh, who occcasionally posts here, suggests that the bus driver thought I was a high-priced call girl. Respectfully, she's nuts. If I was a high-priced call girl, I would not be wearing a suit from Mervyns, and I would not by TAKING THE BUS to East Oakland. I would have a car, if I were a high-priced call girl. And clothes from, say, Ann Taylor.
So I got home, called the school, and lied through my teeth. I said I had an urgent family crisis, and was not able to make, it, and that I was terribly sorry. I think the guy I contacted understood perfectly well what had happened. I never heard from the school again.
Some people have a lot of job hunting luck, and self confidence. Those people are not me. I was desperate to get something, anything, and I went mildly berkserk while looking for a gig. I essentially applied to anything that seemed as though an English preliminary credential qualified you for it, and I went to any (almost) any interview I could schedule. My range was any place I could get to in about two hours by transit.
Obviously, especially if you're me, this leads to some interesting times. The one interview I turned down was at a place where they wanted a teacher's aide for severely emotionally disturbed kids. We got to the part where the woman on the phone said 'and you'll be asked to assist in forcibly restraining students who are a danger to themselves or others..." and I said, in my sweetest voice "Honey, I think you have the wrong woman."
But I interviewed twice at the school for students with Aspergers. I interviewed in Castro Valley. I interviewed in Union City. I interviewed in Oakland and San Francisco, and Antioch and San Mateo. I interviewed at private schools, public schools and charter schools. I got treated like scum--typically--at a Jewish day school, and asked how I would deal with it if gang warfare broke out in my classroom.
The neighborhood was always a wild card. I got one interview at a place that was in a neighborhood I'd avoided like the plague when attending college nearby, but time had morphed it into a pleasant working-class neighborhood with flowerbeds in front of houses. I got off BART at stops I'd never heard of. I experienced the racist bus service that exists in the suburbs outside the inner Bay Area (the buses run seldom, the buses do not go convenient places, the buses look like hell, and white people do not ride them. I think people were slightly afraid of me. I looked insane, with my interview suits, and my TransitInfo printouts.)
I shlepped to Moraga. I shlepped to places I couldn't find on the map. But I only failed to get to one interview.
East Oakland.
It was for a summer school job for a new charter school. They did explain it was an urban neighborhood. They did explain that the students were disadvantaged, and lived locally. But hell, that didn't tell me anything. People in education talk like that any time the school is urban, and the kids' parents aren't defense attorneys.
So I mapped out my route on TransitInfo, and I went. First, I took BART to the Oakland Coliseum. After that it got interesting.
I caught the bus from the Coliseum. We went through a swamp (OK, just marshes by the bay), and then through some corporate villages, and then we hit an iffy residential neighborhood, and after that it just got worse. And worse. And worse.
Finally, I was let off on a stretch of highway, with a half-mile walk still to go. I examined the neighborhood to one side of the freeway.
First I found a gate in the wall alongside it, and walked in. I got about half a block in, maybe a quarter, and looked around.
Dead lawns. Burnt-out cars. Boarded up windows. Fences around each lawn. And, at about ten thirty in the morning on a Wednesday, grown men standing around in the street talking loudly to each other and screaming with laughter, apparently with nowhere to go and nothing to do.
Me: medium-sized zaftig San Franciscan in black business suit, having heart attack. Retreat!
I walked down the highway a little more, and reached a large intersection where there was a gas station of a brand I didn't recognize on one corner. The wall ended. I peered down the street. Maybe I wasn't actually supposed to go that way. I am notoriously bad at reading maps.
There was a teenage boy sitting at the corner, so I asked him. He jumped. I mean, the kid looked scared. He gave me an incredulous stare--how the hell did a medium-sized zaftig San Franciscan in a business suit get here, and was she really there, or was he having a nervous breakdown? He did, however, confirm that my understanding of the directions was accurate.
I'm sort of iffy about telling this story since it's basically a story about a white girl being frightened of a black neighborhood, and I am enough of a creature of my college years (circa 1991-1995, the salad days of identity politics) to be afraid this sounds bad. But really. This was not urban, this was post-apocalyptic. I am not that much of a wimp. I interviewed in a really wide range of neighborhoods, and was happy in most of them. But this was a very bad location, and I looked like no one in my line of sight, neither in dress nor face. I stood out. A lot. In a place where you want to be invisible.
OK. Reality check time. No way in hell am I doing this every morning for six weeks. They would have to have a close relative or very good friend hostage at this school to get me to walk down there. So I cross the street to the gas station and ask the guy behind the counter to call me a cab. He is behind bulletproof glass, and isn't real friendly. He also tells me that I can call from the payphone outside.
I don't really want to go outside, but I do. I call a cab. They sound friendly until I give the address. Then they say it will be fifteen to twenty minutes, but I am not quite that naive. I understand that no cab will be coming. Ever.
Welcome to the 'hood.
I wait, and consider options. There is a bus stop nearby, so I figure I'll see if the cab does arrive, if not, wait for bus, do not panic.
After about ten minutes of waiting, a man in his sixties comes over and asks if I need a lift somewhere. He looks very pleasant, has a Ford pickup, and speaks to me kindly--I'm tempted. But a lifetime of not getting into cars with strange men prevails, and I tell him I'm fine. Clearly, this is a lie. He pretends to accept it.
Then Super Shuttle showed up. Super Shuttle is a local SF operation that drives you from your house to the airport. While the shuttle was gassing up, I asked if, for the standard fee, I could be taken to the nearest BART station. Or the airport. Wherever. No dice. They can't do pickups.
And then the bus arrived.
Unluckily, it was the SAME bus I'd ridden in on. The bus driver looked at me with some concern. "Did you get to where you were going, honey?" she asked.
"I found what I was looking for," I said.
My friend Niamh, who occcasionally posts here, suggests that the bus driver thought I was a high-priced call girl. Respectfully, she's nuts. If I was a high-priced call girl, I would not be wearing a suit from Mervyns, and I would not by TAKING THE BUS to East Oakland. I would have a car, if I were a high-priced call girl. And clothes from, say, Ann Taylor.
So I got home, called the school, and lied through my teeth. I said I had an urgent family crisis, and was not able to make, it, and that I was terribly sorry. I think the guy I contacted understood perfectly well what had happened. I never heard from the school again.
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
4 Meme
West Bank Mama got me--and yes, I actually love these things!
Four jobs I've had:
1. Cat-schlock store clerk
2. Christmas cookie sales by phone
3. Tree saleswoman for JNF
4. Middle-school teacher
Four places I've lived:
1. San Francisco
2. Ireland
3. Cork
4. El Cerrito
Four of my favorite foods:
1. artichokes
2. burritos from Gordos
3. hot and sour soup at Ton Kiang
4. eggplant parmesan from Giorgio's
Four books I would read over and over:
1. A Vision of Light by Judith Merkle Riley
2. A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
3. Brendan O'Carroll's Agnes Browne books
4. The Once and Future King, by T.H. White
Four movies I would see over and over:
1. Mina Tannenbaum
2. Cradle Will Rock
3. Any of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but especially The Two Towers
4. The Commitments (The Snapper is a close second in this category)
Four places I've been on vacation:
1. Monterey
2. San Diego
3. Washington D.C. (does a march count as a vacation?)
4. Dublin
Four places I would rather be:
1. Ireland
2. A friend's house
3. On a Marin beach--Drake's, maybe
4. Stacey's Books
Four jobs I've had:
1. Cat-schlock store clerk
2. Christmas cookie sales by phone
3. Tree saleswoman for JNF
4. Middle-school teacher
Four places I've lived:
1. San Francisco
2. Ireland
3. Cork
4. El Cerrito
Four of my favorite foods:
1. artichokes
2. burritos from Gordos
3. hot and sour soup at Ton Kiang
4. eggplant parmesan from Giorgio's
Four books I would read over and over:
1. A Vision of Light by Judith Merkle Riley
2. A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
3. Brendan O'Carroll's Agnes Browne books
4. The Once and Future King, by T.H. White
Four movies I would see over and over:
1. Mina Tannenbaum
2. Cradle Will Rock
3. Any of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, but especially The Two Towers
4. The Commitments (The Snapper is a close second in this category)
Four places I've been on vacation:
1. Monterey
2. San Diego
3. Washington D.C. (does a march count as a vacation?)
4. Dublin
Four places I would rather be:
1. Ireland
2. A friend's house
3. On a Marin beach--Drake's, maybe
4. Stacey's Books
Late Night In Richmond
So, the Balabusta'n'fella's friends down the street needed some help with the last stages of their move, and we've got a minivan. So we loaded up the minivan with various random stuff, and followed the male half of the couple up San Pablo Boulevard to the city of San Pablo.
We admired their new house, a small 1948 quasi-bungalow, which they are planning to modify in dramatic ways (refinishing everything, knocking down walls), and ate pizza. Then the fella and I attempted to drive home.
First we lost San Pablo. Then we took a weird turn west. Then we found the oh-god uckola parts of the city of Richmond. It's now a quarter of eleven at night. It's pitch black. The neighborhood keeps getting worse. We're trying to find a freeway onramp.
Finally we end up in a cul-de-sac, beyond which we can see the freeway. No use. We turn around and drive up the dark, dark, dark street.
There's a gas station at the corner. The fella tentatively suggests asking for directions. "OK", the Balabusta says, feeling faint.
"Here?"
"What have we got to lose?"
"Well, we could get shot," says the fella. The Balabusta notes at this point that the street, despite darkness, has a decent lot of people on it. They are all young, male, and moving SLOOOOOOWLY. It's freezing out.
We keep going. We retrace our path. We drive through post-apocalyptic neighborhoods, and then less awful ones, until finally the Balabusta concedes that her nervous-white-girl sense--one of my better superpowers--is down to 'tingle' rather than 'kicking like a mofo'.
We find the intersection that hornswoggled us the first time and try again. And again. No go. We begin to get somewhat baffled, and also frustrated. And fearful. We have a bad track record for getting out of Santa Clara (long story), and this seemed to be a similar situation.
Finally, we retraced back to the friends' home in San Pablo. "How do you get out of this horrible town?" we screamed as they opened the door.
Luckily, another mover was heading back to Oakland, and knew how to get on the 80. We followed, like a nervous duckling--and made it home by 11:30.
We admired their new house, a small 1948 quasi-bungalow, which they are planning to modify in dramatic ways (refinishing everything, knocking down walls), and ate pizza. Then the fella and I attempted to drive home.
First we lost San Pablo. Then we took a weird turn west. Then we found the oh-god uckola parts of the city of Richmond. It's now a quarter of eleven at night. It's pitch black. The neighborhood keeps getting worse. We're trying to find a freeway onramp.
Finally we end up in a cul-de-sac, beyond which we can see the freeway. No use. We turn around and drive up the dark, dark, dark street.
There's a gas station at the corner. The fella tentatively suggests asking for directions. "OK", the Balabusta says, feeling faint.
"Here?"
"What have we got to lose?"
"Well, we could get shot," says the fella. The Balabusta notes at this point that the street, despite darkness, has a decent lot of people on it. They are all young, male, and moving SLOOOOOOWLY. It's freezing out.
We keep going. We retrace our path. We drive through post-apocalyptic neighborhoods, and then less awful ones, until finally the Balabusta concedes that her nervous-white-girl sense--one of my better superpowers--is down to 'tingle' rather than 'kicking like a mofo'.
We find the intersection that hornswoggled us the first time and try again. And again. No go. We begin to get somewhat baffled, and also frustrated. And fearful. We have a bad track record for getting out of Santa Clara (long story), and this seemed to be a similar situation.
Finally, we retraced back to the friends' home in San Pablo. "How do you get out of this horrible town?" we screamed as they opened the door.
Luckily, another mover was heading back to Oakland, and knew how to get on the 80. We followed, like a nervous duckling--and made it home by 11:30.
Monday, January 02, 2006
Do I want to see Munich?
The answer is probably no. But I do want to add, as an aside, that I have been hearing about how anti-Israel and hand-wringing _Munich_ is all over the Jewish blogs. I have no reason to doubt it. The guilt-ridden Mossad guy is a big ol' cliche, and honestly, I ain't in the mood.
Then I read the review in the San Francisco Bay Guardian. They're of the opinion that despite some backhanded attempts to humanize the Palestinians, the movie glosses over Israel's displacement and occupation of an indigenous people.
You can't please hardly anyone any of the time, can you?
Speaking of Mossad agents, does anyone out there watch NCIS? I am still mad at them for killing Kate off, but isn't Ziva gorgeous?
Then I read the review in the San Francisco Bay Guardian. They're of the opinion that despite some backhanded attempts to humanize the Palestinians, the movie glosses over Israel's displacement and occupation of an indigenous people.
You can't please hardly anyone any of the time, can you?
Speaking of Mossad agents, does anyone out there watch NCIS? I am still mad at them for killing Kate off, but isn't Ziva gorgeous?
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