Flynt: A Regal Portrait

When I adopted my dog, Flynt, I knew he was going to be very special. Unlike others who put lots of thought into their desired dog breed, I literally adopted him on a maniacally spontaneous whim while renting a car to move boxes into my new downtown apartment. “It’s now or never”, I reasoned, since I am not in the habit of renting cars often.  I knew I’d need to get him a collar/leash, anti-flea stuff, and a big bag of good dog food.  The task of adopting a dog from a country pound required wheels, and the car was due back the next day at noon.  

So, in a nutshell, I was out doing errands and realized I could go to the pound.  An older dog, already fixed, with a good reputation was what I sought.  Not too hyper, already housebroken and socialized, and my absolute biggest requirement of all: only barks when deemed APPROPRIATE by his owner.  This writer detests yippers. Anyway, I looked at several potential dog suitors before resting my eyes on his regal vision.  While other jailed dogs were busy barking and whimpering to get my attention, a cute, brown-eyed, spotted, floppy-eared guy (also how I like my men!) was sitting quietly and attentively–just wagging his tail.  I looked into his eyes–pools of love–and then at his “profile”: half Australian Shepard, half Sheba Inu.  Cool.  Sounds about right.  And, according to the director of the pound, he was a good dog whose owners moved and couldn’t take him along.  I took him home that evening.

Flynt earned his name by virtue of his status as successor to my previous dog: a pit bull type named “Hefner”.  Hefner was named after Hugh Hefner since I always found myself having to explain to people who feared him that he really only wants to play. He’s a playboy!  This then required me, in my quest to continue the pornographer theme in animal name choices, to commit to naming my next dog after Larry Flynt. When people over-think or over-analyze why a feminist radical would name her dogs after pornographers, just think: they’re DOGS!  Get it?  Maybe my next dog will be named after Dov Charney of American Apparel fame! 

Well, it’s been a few months for the two of us and I have no complaints about Flynt except he has hair–like dogs do.  Well, he does attack my vacuum when I am trying to clean up after him, and he also attacks waves on the shoreline when I am trying to take him swimming…  Most amusing of all is he makes an attack gesture toward cars when we are walking down busy streets–just like me.  (This habit has earned him the nickname “E.L.F.” after another entity–the Earth Liberation Front– that has also been known to attack cars.) In an effort to maintain the noble equilibrium of his canine existence, he instinctually goes after objects that move at certain fast speeds. Also how I like my men, he’s as playful as a puppy without all the other annoying puppy features like making crazy messes and chewing all my shoes up.

Each day with Flynt gets better.  The other night I realized he was waiting for me to sit down and eat dinner before he positioned himself near me on the carpet, with his beef twist upright between his two front paws, occasionally looking deep into my eyes in a manner that almost prompted me to dim the lights in favor of candles.  “Let’s break bread together forever,” he longingly suggested.  After five years of living alone and petless (except a live-in home care job and a brief miserable stint with vocally anti-Yankee room mates), I appreciate his insistently eager company at dinner, and all the time.  

Flynt didn’t have to be the perfect fit for me.  I was prepared to face more problems and compromises with him.  He was at the pound for weeks before I snatched him up: his days were numbered at this kill facility.  We found each other right on time, and now my dinner dates are booked for all eternity.

  

Proof is in the Pudding (Filled Donut)

Since my last blog post I have to boast a little that I did it! I managed to score an apartment that is under a one minute walk to work, allows pets, has a yard for gardening, and is modern/updated (enough) and affordable.  Most importantly, I can live alone.  Writers must contend with any number of daily obstacles that block our creative flow, and I am not sure if paid work or unwanted roommates is higher on the list of obstacles, but, if you don’t have to engage in either then don’t.  At my age, when you live with others but don’t want to, it’s a little death each day.  So in some ways I feel I added time back onto my life as opposed to staying in that overpriced boarding house of middle-aged misery.  (That landlord, by the way, was actively being foreclosed on last I paid him, so I evaded a real headache by moving.)

Given all of the time and energy I have put into writing these past six months, it was a good time to step away from the computer and focus on more practical matters like housing sanity.  After all, there was a bit of excitement on my part when Ras Baraka was elected mayor of Newark and I really thought we could maybe defeat the Facebook-Microsoft-Pearson agenda for Newark and New Jersey schools and send a strong message to public education destroyers.  But unfortunately I was wrong, since Gov. Christie renewed the contract of Newark Schools Superintendent–Cami Anderson–last week.  Baraka ran against her education plan–and the state double-crossed him once elected.  All that effort on so many people’s parts?  An insulting slap in the face, for sure.

So instead of wringing my hands over something I can’t control in a city I don’t live in, I was moving, buying used furniture, adopting a fabulous dog, and stocking my pantry while gleefully imagining not having to converse with curious roommates about the odd “ethnic” items on my food shelf.  “Yeah, Wanda (room mate’s real name), it’s curry paste… yes, it doesn’t just come in powder form…” Let’s not even talk about negotiating bathroom weirdness with two other adults who were strangers when you moved in.

I was also selling donuts.  Yes, friends, donuts.  This is the fortunate job I landed after being dismissed from my home care position in March.  It’s a heavily trafficked mom and pop shop, and I  report to work at 4:30 AM, 6 days a week.  So I have been spending much time arranging and frosting donuts carefully crafted overnight by a man who looks like he just walked off a Tim Burton film set.  Meets Rob Zombie. House of a Thousand Donuts.  No joke.  He’s been hand-making donuts for 30 years–so he’s pale as powdered sugar… We pass and greet each other politely, separate shift workers at dawn.

My job is to frost some donuts, powder and ice others, and lay them in the windows.  Then, as more employees trickle in, I become part of a closely knit team that sells more donuts in one day than you can possibly imagine.  Frisbee size ones, plum size ones, pink ones, blueberry ones, rolls, fritters, twists: we don’t do crullers or croissants, but thanks for asking. But we do offer a radioactive(?) fluorescent key lime filled variety that I strongly believe would be Homer Simpson’s favorite for obvious reasons.  This ain’t no ironic consumption, artisan-marketed yuppie food here, though.  The clientele, which joins us also for hardy biscuits and gravy and strong coffee (add a glazed onto that) each morning, are culled from the class war detritus of this county.  Rich. Poor. Everyone’s in on this secret.

And guess what else? I enjoy it.  Imagine a small town donut shop located directly across from the downtown high school as a way to spend your mornings (I’m off each day at 11 am).  Not too shabby in the grand scheme of this economy.  Beyond the excellent people-watching, entertaining mini-dramas, free food and drinks–there’s the tips.  People are either really generous ( a little guilty?) when purchasing donuts or they don’t want to wait around for the change, or they like my well-honed customer service skills… Who cares? I leave every day with reassuring cash in my hand.

Artists, writers, intellectuals, activists: I have entered the “donut era” of my career.  This is my manifesto of sorts.  I am preaching a new message of self-determination that transcends the usual clap trap about our outsider status, our struggles, our poverty, our misunderstood lifestyles– (drinking and smoking?)– habits, our impractical expectations for society and the world. I’m preaching the message of self-reliance, the need to find the set-up that facilitates your flow.  No one is out there worrying about you.  The proof is in the pudding (yes, we also offer a sweeter icing too) of your creations, which you should love first most of all.

I don’t celebrate the 4th, but I do celebrate the sanity of working in a family owned business that closes, sometimes, for several days in a row instead of staying open simply to make a buck.  I celebrate that motivation I found somewhere to get on Craiglist apartment rentals and do it “San Francisco circa 2000” style: show up with your check book and a blunt instrument in case you have to contend with competing renters “Tanya Harding style”.  I celebrate trusting my instinct that I can carve a space out for myself to try to work as freely and prolifically as I need to work. (Writing is work, selling donuts is where I socialize, eat, and surprisingly, get a great work out. I lost weight on National Donut Day– we were that busy.)

If you are lucky enough to have time off from work this coming weekend, and if you eat donuts anytime, feel free to think of me.

 

 

Mother’s Day Toe Jam

It’s probably our mothers who know our toes the best.  (Unless you are lucky enough to have a lover with a foot fetish.) My mom never hesitated to remind me I have “grandpa’s toes.”  This never gave me much confidence in the open-toed sandal wearing department, but after I got my first pedicure with my sister over five years ago, I realized HOW MUCH BETTER pedicures make our feet look.  I almost wept upon the realization that I can also, however fleeting, have attractive feet.  Now my preferred shoe is the (very Floridian) flip flop.

Growing up, my mom was never one for manicures and pedicures.  But when she lost her ability to walk, and spent more time in bed, a healthy preoccupation with her own hands developed.  She kept an easily accessible make up bag, filled with manicure tools and polish, next to her bed.  She was able to take her own polish off for quite some time, but not put it on.  I always reminded her that I was probably the last person she wants to have put her nail polish on.  The reminder–“I bite my finger nails, mom”–didn’t deter her from usually getting me to do something to her nails when we spent time together.  (She also managed to get quite a few foot rubs from me, that sneaky woman…)

Yesterday after standing on my feet for seven hours selling donuts–something my mom would refer to as a charitable act of “helping people” due to her immense sweet tooth– I decided I desperately needed a pedicure.  As I sat dumb-founded by all the nail polish colors and names (I wonder if you can get a job as an independent nail polish namer?), I was in a real (toe) jam. I didn’t want a color like I picked last time–“Big Apple Red”–because red goes from sexy time to “my foot just got run over by a mack truck” time real fast when your toe nails begin to grow and the polish chips away.  I also contemplated how the color green for polish bothers me because it linguistically reminds me of “gangrene”–or toe rot.  No green polish for me, thank you.  

Finally, and with relief, I settled on a color called “Natural Beauty” because it was the exact color my mom’s manicure bag was filled with: a non-committal, frosty, pinkish taupe concoction that says “I have polish on, but I’d rather be playing tennis.”  She had many variations of this same color theme in her bag.  No classic red, no sophisticated burgundy, no pumpkin orange. I now appreciate that this was her way of holding onto her natural style: as if doing her nails was some kind of concession to a less active identity that she resisted until the end.  

This was one of her most valuable lessons to me as she battled with her illness: try to stay true to yourself despite all external pressures.  (Although she may not necessarily have always agreed with my own real world application of this general life lesson!) 

Mary Patricia Sullivan Matisons: always the natural beauty.  All my love and gratitude on this Mother’s Day.                                                                  

 

Nest Egg

In my last blog post I spoke too soon about my crazy streak of good fortune when I momentarily lost my mom’s ring behind a chain link fence right before St. Patrick’s Day (my mom was full blown Irish-American, so the upcoming holiday was symbolically relevant to me.)  Several days later, I ended up losing my job when I fatefully challenged one of my employing home care company’s (think private companies conducting Medicaid scams on poor developmentally disabled people) policies.  I am going to forego the details, which are traumatic in the retelling, only to state that I defied company policy in an effort to take the best care of my client and follow the policies of my heart (and my immediate supervisor)–not the government agencies and private companies over-regulating for appearances while they starve disabled clients from much needed support services and underpay workers to the tune of sub minimum wage levels. (Obama approved legislation to correct the abysmal sub-minimum wage conditions of our nation’s home care workers by instituting the minimum wage, finally!  But I have a feeling companies will find loopholes to underpay the 24 hour live-in workers who are the backbones of the home care industry.) 

Anyway, this firing turns out to be a blessing in disguise; my job required me to live-in full time one week off and one week on for $1200/ month after taxes. Being the crafty, innovative individual I fancy myself being, I worked this system to my benefit by giving up my apartment and adding an additional week of work to my schedule–leaving only one week off.  I would stay in a fully equipped and modern hotel at $250.00/ week–which became my monthly rental payment.  Not too shabby, except I worked all the time.  But I was able to build a small nest egg for myself because I paid so little for housing.

Before St. Patrick’s Day, I had been on the clock at the same house for 2.5 months straight with one schizophrenic/ autistic client and one unclassifiable, very challenging client.  My co-worker (who alternates weeks with me at the same house) had a health issue and I signed on to take her weeks until she recovered. At this time I also hatched a plot to share a one bedroom with a fellow co-worker; I reasoned, if we worked opposite weeks, we’d get the most use out of an apartment that would otherwise sit idle while its tenants worked. Unfortunately, at the same time I lost my job I realized the living situation I had hatched was untenable.  (Her schedule changed and she ended up not only being off on my weeks off, she has three chain smoking, beer swilling, mom cursing, adult children, who treated our apartment like it was theirs.  Her daughter even took my laptop away for hours without asking me…) Suddenly, I was officially homeless and jobless in a thankless America.  The only thing saving me from the indignities of a terrible living situation was my hard-earned nest egg of several grand.  

One can only generously reflect on an enforced turn to the seedy underbelly of weekly rate hotel living, while job hunting, after the fact.  At the time, I was terrified.  It was spring break here, and the hotel prices were maxed out.  I stayed at a decent hotel across the street from one of the “better” strip clubs, and endured the threat of the club’s clientele crossing the street for easy access sex: I had someone knock on my door once, begging me to open up.  Bay County, Florida is not a desirable cosmopolitan coastal city, but it has suffered under comparable rental market increases as the desired urban hot spots.  Suddenly, people want at least $450 for a room in a house, plus utilities.  But worse, patriarchal economics had mostly men with leases in hand, posting for room mates on Craigslist.  In one case, there was a very cute, affordable room in a desirable location near the bay, and the man was asking a meager $350.00; the problem is he also asked for my photo when we were congenially texting back and forth about the room.  I regret not sending him serial killer Aileen Wuornos’ mug shot.

Panicked, I quickly acted on a room that I feel suits me well in a household of three other young adult to middle aged people: but I wanted to live alone.  Oh well.  I also rebounded on the low wage job  market it seems, and will start something new this week.  Most of you know I hate work and change jobs about every 6 months; or I grow the union or, at minimum, available union consciousness. The moral to my story is I would have eventually gotten out of home care anyway.  It allowed me to do tons of writing on my down time, but ratcheted up my personal life to a week on/ week off schedule–and I like my own free time each day. After experiencing the momentary possibility of having to turn to family members for help (not a fun prospect for prideful me) or accept a less than optimal cheap living situation with a creepy sexual subtext, I had the luck of some savings that buffered me while I looked for a situation that  keeps me feeling dignified in undignified times.  My books are lined up on my bedroom wall near my favorite Japanese silk screen with lily pads, lotuses, and the ever fortunate red and black cranes.  The kale is steaming on the clumsily communal kitchen stove top, and, most importantly, I’m writing again. Without that nest egg, or with one extra mouth to feed, who knows where I would be today…

That Funny (Lucky) Ring

Today I had a few hours off work, so I decided to walk to the closest place to buy some organic coconut oil: the Wal-Mart Center strip mall (with a Dollar Tree that has decent hardback books!) is about half an hour away.  I am off work for the next two weeks beginning Monday, so I also decided to start dressing better than the t-shirts and yoga pants I usually wear around my home care job.  Today, I did even one better and decided to wear jewelry–including my rings.  

When my mom died, I inherited two silver rings that go well together.  One is kind of a toned down Gaelic knot.  The other was a joke at one point between us; it’s a simple open silver band with a small colored marble in the center and extra differently colored interchangeable marbles.  It made us laugh when my mom got it from her mother for Christmas one year. We knew she would never switch the marbles out. (“Grandma tries, but she doesn’t get how busy my mom is,” was the thought that ran through my head when I saw the gift.)

One day after my mom died, my sisters dropped off some of her possessions: clothing, scarves, shawls, perfume and makeup, tons of costume jewelry.  I had to laugh when I saw the bright red velvet box that held the marble ring with extra marbles among the inherited items.  Nothing had to be said, but we all acknowledged it anyway.  I would make a point of not only wearing the ring, but switching the marbles out of it to match outfits or moods.  I would love both rings.

After walking on the side of a fairly busy road, I ended up along a path of pine needles next to a fenced in pond, directly behind the Wal-Mart Super Center.  I began to absentmindedly roll my marble ring up and down my right index finger as I bemoaned my destination (especially being that it’s a Saturday afternoon) and swore to be in and out of there quickly.  Coconut oil and dark chocolate only…  Next thing you know, that ring was off my finger, flying through the air, and landing on the other side of an eight foot tall chain link fence.  One of my most prized possessions is hundreds of feet away from one of my most despised destinations (minus the book section of Dollar Tree).   

Shocked is the only word I can think of to describe my initial reaction.  The bad news was I couldn’t see an opening in the fence so I could quickly grab my ring, but the good news was I was (amazingly) able to see where the ring landed–about six feet away on the other side.

I began to scale the fence, but started cutting myself on the rough edged chain prongs when I got to the top.  At that point, as I straddled the top of the fence peering down at the marble ring nestled among pine needles not far from a styrofoam cup, I made what I felt like was a grown up decision. I decided not to go over the fence.  I was already cut and bleeding on my hand and wrist from half of the climb.  I jumped to the ground on my side of the fence and defeatedly started the funeral march toward Wal-Mart.  I was cursing myself and laughing that it makes a great story, figuring out who to talk to about getting into the fence, and knowing that I could always get a long pole and kind of try to drag the ring back toward me so it would be close enough for me to grab.  Just seconds later, I noticed a padlocked opening in the fence that was just big enough for me to squeeze through and retrieve the ring.  And that’s exactly what I did, grinning ear to ear.

My mom’s rings are big enough for me to wear, but I learned they can slip off easily.  Her death is just enough in the past for me to start feeling really lively and springlike again, but I learned I don’t have to finish a daring climb over a dangerous chain link fence when I’m already bleeding from the ascent. And St. Patrick’s Day is just close enough for me to really appreciate how truly wild it is that the green marble was in my ring today.  I didn’t choose the green marble when I put the ring on today, but green sure chose me.   

I didn’t learn anything new about my constant stream of crazy good luck.  That’s my greatest inheritance from my mom.  I’ve always known about my luck, but I think I’m finished pushing it for now.  As my favorite poet, Adrienne Rich, wrote in the first line of her poem “Integrity”: “A wild patience has taken me this far.”

Just Add Water and Stir!

Artwork by the always illustrious Eric Drooker

What the hell has been happening to this potentially beautiful and peaceful place to live?  Yes, murder, slavery, and genocide is built into all generated wealth here, and we don’t have to rehearse arguments regarding electoralism’s various diversions, policing of potentially powerful social movements,  and propensities for ingrained political subcultures that rhetorically strive for unity, but are practically encumbered by division.  I still can’t fully grasp the neo-liberal onslaught.  Sure money is behind it, but how can people sleep at night?  Are they compensated free sleeping pills?  I decided to hone in on education not only because it’s my chosen field, but also because it remains my hope.  I hope future generations view our era as an apathetic blip on their screen of total revolt–and if they can’t get through schooling (i.e. do something constructive with their childhoods), total revolt will be harder for them to achieve.

I’ve been writing about the school end of the school to prison pipeline, now it’s time to focus on the prison end in order to connect the dots.  My friend Seth and I are embarking on a writing project regarding the bail bonds industry, which has gotten more powerful and may end up having more sway over other sectors (education, health care/ pharma, environment, energy, tobacco) than we collectively realize.  Why?  Because they are heavily involved in American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which crafts conservative instant model legislation– including Stand Your Ground.  Just add water and stir!  Presto! 

Here’s what I wrote last night to capture the tone with which I approach the industry that gets rich off of holding people captive before their trial:

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Stop ‘em and frisk ‘em, snatch ‘em and charge ‘em. Bail ’em or keep ’em. That’s the current state of affairs in the unjust business of criminal justice.  In New York City, stop and frisk, a large scale institutionalized form of racial street harassment, has grown controversial as an amped up form of racial profiling—more like a mobile checkpoint for people of color, with an emphasis on young men.  And speaking of young men of color. In Florida, the recent focus is not on police brutality per se, but on a highly disturbing development indicating the many police forces’ “above the law” mentality has permeated the “civigilante” populace.  The reactionary cultural  climate behind Stand Your Ground (SYG) self-defense laws has been rightfully blamed for Trayvon Martin’s and Jordan Davis’ deaths, but it is also looms behind Florida’s prosecution of Marissa Alexander.  Alexander has a legal case where SYG could be relevant, but it remains outside her legal team’s grasp.  This is because she’s a black woman who fired a self-defense warning shot in a domestic violence situation. Women conducting self-defense has been difficult enough for the state to comprehend, let alone a black woman. (Florida is retrying Alexander’s case, and prosecutors are seeking 60 years.)

The political climate delivering Stand Your Ground legislation is white supremacist.  It diminishes racial murder and the loss of black life (Martin and Davis) or takes quality of living away through incarceration (Alexander).  Since Trayvon Martin’s murder, there has been much talk about American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the Stand Your Ground authors.  If we’re keen to follow the money and influence within ALEC–and its proposed cuts in food aid/ social services, education restructuring, and environmental destruction– we need to start talking more about the commercial bail bonds industry.  With not one but two American Bail Coalition members on ALEC’s private enterprise board, the bail industry, alongside other powerful industries, helps pull ALEC’s “rightsizing” strings in our era of education and prison (especially drug law) “reforms.” Where there are no social supports, you’ll find a jail cell open–waiting to be filled. 

In My Florida Neighborhood Today

I wrote this poem after a long walk in my neighborhood today. It’s all true.  The bike shop did just put up a large confederate flag across from the multi-racial elementary school (signaling strength from the Dunn verdict, I presume).  But I forgot to take a picture since I was too busy telling the bike shop owner I would never buy a bike from him.  I did get a picture of the “Caution” sign I walk by almost daily, and yes, a man was reading “American Rifleman” (see bottom photo), casually lounging in his front yard.  Just another day in paradise.  Hey, if we all lived on the relatively cosmopolitan/ enlightened east and west coasts, we would be redundant–no?

The bike shop across the street from

The local elementary school

Proudly posted a confederate flag today

Standing their ground with snickering drool.

Further down the road,

A homeowner marks his fence

With a simple sign that reminds

If you dare set foot on his turf, he’s eager

To blow your ass away from behind.

Just down the street, a man reclines

On his front yard swinging bench

Reading “American Rifleman” and imagining

Places to build his trench.

Around the corner, the pine-treed ponds

Capture why some Floridians decide to stay

If we give the ground-standers this warm-weathered place

Are we like the birds, always flying away?

She Still Laughs

This  is my mom’s second birthday since she died.  I’ve been grumpy all week, possibly because I miss her and I always want to write something for her that captures the occasion well enough for me to feel satisfied.  It’s the least I can do. I’m also working on another article about New Jersey schools.  So I feel pressured this week about writing.  While searching for themes, analogies, metaphors, from which to build a birthday poem or a short prose piece, I’ve been drawing a blank. I went to bed last night extra early, grumpy and annoyed. When your day’s not working out, sometimes it helps to end it early.

Then I heard the rain. It woke me up in the middle of the night from a dream I was having about her. She was in her wheelchair and I was helping her pick out jewelry, which was always a fun activity because it signaled she was almost done getting ready for her day.  We settled on some dangling turquoise earrings.  I felt very happy because she was up, dressed, and looking great.  It may have been raining outdoors, but she was beaming like the sun in my dreams. 

Then I woke up again to the craziest sounds.  At first it sounded like a woman screaming in pure horror.  I imagined the possible scenarios that would cause a scream like that.  I imagined the next day’s newspaper headlines: “Man Kills Family Then Self.” Not that unusual these days.  Most likely it was a cat fight; but it sounded like something altogether other worldly.  I’ve heard cat fights and cats in heat many times, and it was different than that.  Still not sure what that crazy screaming was about.  

So, here’s to a woman who knows me all too well. She taught all her kids to love storms, and we do: a wise move for Nebraskans to love adverse weather in the big sky country.  Growing up, she also tolerated my fascination with the occult and ghosts and all thing horror related.  That screaming last night was some of the best I’ve ever heard.  I appreciated it later, once morning arrived.

I’m chalking this year’s birthday up to my mom’s usual playful Irish humor. She’s blanketing our Florida skies again with storm clouds (it rained last year on her birthday too), encouraging unashamed tears to fall down (happy and sad tears mixed together, called rain).  She also woke me up in the middle of the night with shrill sounds to chill my spine one hundred times over.  Just for fun. And most importantly, I received a message from the woman who saved graded college essays I wrote in philosophy and literature classes (from before we had personal computers and saved things on discs), letters and poems I wrote home–she even saved my hand-written valedictorian speech I gave at my college graduation.  

This wacky weather and her one-upping me on this year’s birthday symbols is her way of telling me to relax and breathe. I’m not always in charge.  She’s calling the shots today.  I don’t have to write something breath-taking, or even sufficient.  Hell, I don’t have to write anything at all.  I’m sharing the poem I wrote last year and pasted on my dad’s Facebook wall.  That’ll be “all she wrote” today unless I get inspired to write more later on.

Love and miss you, mom.

********************

She Still Laughs

It’s raining on MP’s birthday.
While her spirit fills the skies
The water falls down around,
To give the tears from my eyes a disguise.

Her Irish luck rains down too.
It touches all of our lives.
Placing more smiles than tears in our midst
She stills laughs: this is no surprise!

 

 

Children: Our Cosmic Catch Nets

When we consider the class bludgeoning attacks on public education across the U.S. (and elsewhere), it is easy to get disillusioned and depressed. In my mind, if the strident public education activism we see today was around one decade ago when G.W. Bush and Company was setting the traps of standardized testing and private services for public education functions, maybe we’d have a better chance at winning back our schools on a mass scale. This is how I feel most days.

But this morning, for no particular reason except seeing a photo of my two nephews and baby niece dog-piled in bed together, and reading about Portland teachers on the verge of striking with all their student support, did I realize how much children persist on driving their own lives. We should fold around them like pillows and soft blankets, and they should feel comfortable telling us what they need.

On that note, I’m changing the rhythm of my internally defeated tune. The predatory education reformers can’t, by definition, snatch childhood. Not because “it’s all about money,” but because corporate culture is tacky, pre-programmed, overly scripted and manipulative. And children’s culture is wacky, spontaneous, organic and open. Children are our cosmic catch nets and they will reject all of this tacky adult busi-ness. They lead the public education movement, thankfully. We should always be folding in around them.

Education Poems

Here are a few poems about education.  This poem was one out of five winners in the Badass Teachers Association Poetry Contest with hundreds of entries. The assignment was to write a poem on education reform using the words “data” and “rigor.”  Sad to think that the way Language Arts education is headed, it will be harder for kids to learn how to write poems (although I believe much rhyming is natural–there are some tricks!)

******************************

 

In the Blink of an Eye

How is it, you figure
That learning follows rigor?
It might come from kicking back
Or from what may look to some like slack.
The daydreaming child might be thinking
About what keeps a boat from sinking.
Or why an eye has to keep blinking.
How is it, you figure
That learning follows rigor?

Why is it you made a
System full of data?
But you can’t count all the ways
Children’s minds fill up their days.
The way they learn is what’s called “play”
Keep them separate, you say?
Why is it you made a
System full of data?

In the blink of an eye
And also on the sly
Rigor replaced dreaming
For their data driven scheming
Tests replaced play
And executives got paid
And justice got delayed
By the data fanatics and
Their rigorous ways.

 

 

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Education Reformers: The New Child Catchers

Child Catcher: “There are children here somewhere. I can smell them.”
Education Reformer: “We have their futures now, we can sell them.”

Child Catcher: “Come and get your lollipops, lollipops, come along my little ones.”
Education Reformer: “Come and get your data and test scores, we’ll test you silly and profit a ton!”

Child Catcher: “They’re all free today, cherry pie, cream puffs, ice cream, treacle tart.”
Education Reformer: “Go back to your new desk–we’ve no time for music and art.”

Child Catcher: “Come along, kiddie-winkies! What will it be?”
Education Reformer: “Computers? New teachers? We’ll sell your school in a jiffy!”