tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31969083706146747892024-02-26T02:03:14.995-05:00The Philosophy of KLoOriginally, this blog was intended to be my take on life, a way to write regularly, and so forth. I'd like to move it in a different direction a bit, using my own lens to contemplate stuff going on in the world. Please comment ... I love conversations!!!!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13955854427063032485noreply@blogger.comBlogger563125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3196908370614674789.post-45590932944197652792018-06-02T14:11:00.000-04:002018-06-02T15:16:00.571-04:00Are Minorities Discouraged from Taking Upper-Level Classes?: The Elephant in the Room<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
As a public school teacher for sixteen years, I sometimes feel like I’ve seen it all. <br /><br />I’ve seen Standards come and go (and despite the brouhaha about Common Core, it’s really not that different than anything that’s come before). I’ve seen standards come and go (I have hope that they’re starting to come back).<br /><br />I’ve seen parental attitudes change from, “I cannot believe my kid did that! There will be major consequences at home!” to “You’re targeting my child”/”He was only doing what every other kid does and gets away with”/”Your course is too challenging for my child”/”Your course doesn’t challenge my child”/”School problems stay at school”/all the excuses.<br /><br />I’ve worked with caring, inspiring, passionate, gifted teachers and administrators. I have worked with administrators and teachers that undoubtedly should have chosen a different profession. I have been bullied so badly by an administrator and two teachers in a district I once worked in that I developed PTSD related to being raped as a college student and the abuse I suffered at the hands of my ex-husband. I have worked with administrators, faculty, paraprofessionals, secretaries, custodians, and lunch ladies that have gone out of their way for me, and I have tried to always go out of my way for my colleagues.<br /><br />I have loved each and every student that has been in my classroom. I love them unconditionally, accepting the faults that each carries as I hope that they accept my faults and shortcomings. I taught them reading and writing, and I believe that I taught most of them well. I further believe that I taught them patience, kindness, acceptance, manners, and, yes, respect.<br /><br />One of the reasons that teaching has never been dull for me is that I take the time to get to know my students. I try to connect with them quickly and strongly. They are people, after all, and if we can connect over dogs or movies or music right away, if they know that I remember (and care) when their birthdays are or that they, like me, have lost a parent, that I struggle with ADHD, that it always hurt me that my sister is “the smart one” in the family, the end result is that they know I care about them. They matter to me and they know it, so if it matters to me if they know how to use commas or use good evidence to support their argumentative essay or analyze the responsibilities of friendship in <i>Of Mice and Men</i>, they have a solid history of rising to the occasion.<br /><br />I would go to the mat for my students, and they know it; however, I also have high expectations for them, as students and as people, and they know that as well. I have never pigeonholed them by socioeconomics, or race, or sexual orientation, or gender. I have not altered my expectations for them.<br /><br />This is important, so if you’re just skimming this long piece, please read this part closely: I used to tell myself that I was colorblind, that I treated the black kids, white kids, gay kids, poor kids, rich kids exactly the same.<br /><br />It’s even possible that I did.<br /><br />But how many of us have seen this comic? <br /><br /><br /> <img height="425" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/qh5E4g63gKKNw2XG-yEugKQunNWtzLkKWkt_2w_FU7-ucotUFYEOIBPdFZcbMvsi6HgnVhI7ga3h1tYDKqBzxiV3dNKzaXsp47pzOek5gkyZULECBV_HUKcZSkj82CVPbpVB1-oI" width="640" /> <br /><br /><br />The gist of it is that some people are simply born well-equipped to succeed very easily in our educational system, and some are born doomed from the start.<br /><br />I hate this comic.<br /><br />I hate it because it makes it about the test … and it should always be about the students.<br /><br />All children come to the educational table with strengths and weaknesses. There have been educational philosophies intended to bolster the one and ignore the other. There have been movements to teach “Executive Functioning Skills” to all, when the students that need them are going to need far more than a cookie cutter weekly lesson on notetaking to truly develop any substantive results and those that already possess strong notetaking skills still have to sit through the lessons because “reinforcement won’t hurt them”.<br /><br />Students bring their life experiences--the good, the bad, and the ugly--into the classroom with them. Skin color, sexual orientation, gender identification, which end of town you hail from … those are key parts to who a student is. Ignoring that fact is a grave disservice to not just students but people in general. As an approaching-middle age white woman raised in an affluent family, how can I presume to understand what it feels like to be anything else?<br /><br />And haven’t my life experiences shaped who I am and the decisions I make? Am I like any other other approaching-middle age white woman raised in an affluent family? Of course I’m not. I was seven months pregnant at my high school graduation. I drank heavily in college. I was raped by an acquaintance. I was hospitalized for a month with pancreatitis in my twenties and for a month with post-surgical complications when I was forty. I have lost a parent. I suffered horrible abuse from my abusive alcoholic/addict ex-husband. Would anybody know those things about me by looking at me? I repeat, though, haven’t they shaped who I am? Would pretending they never happened be doing me any favors?<br /><br />I heard a colleague become very angry at a recent training intended to drive home the idea that it is doing kids a disservice to say, “I don’t see Bobby as a black kid. I just see Bobby as a kid” or “I don’t see my cousin as a lesbian. I just see her as a person.” “I’m colorblind!” she said over and over. With that mindset, we are taking away a huge part of the experiences people have had as a result of the hand they were dealt.Teachers cannot even begin to tap into the difference we can make to children if we refuse to see their colors, their shapes, the fact that they work a full-time job to help their mother pay rent.<br /><br />I’m pretty sure this colleague is in the minority, but it is a vocal minority.<br /><br />Teachers that take the time to know their students--and I believe that most of us truly do--will take into account the many and varied experiences, good as well as bad, that each child has experienced. To do otherwise is to do a disservice.<br /><br />We look at where they are at when they come to us, and we do everything in our power to push them ever higher. We show them pathways, we encourage them, we are open and honest with them when we think they are making a mistake, and they will and do listen to us.<br /><br />Sometimes, though, they ignore us. This is true of students from all races, creeds, sexual orientations, socioeconomic statuses, mental illness, addicts/alcoholics, and so on.<br /><br />Sometimes, no matter how much we care, no matter how much we try, teachers can only do so much.<br /><br />And here is the elephant in the room, the elephant that nobody wants to talk about, the elephant that frightens me terribly even as I write this. I am, after all, a public school teacher that loves her job, and I do not want to be squashed by that elephant.<br /><br />I think my point can best be made with an anecdote.<br /><br />My first teaching job was at a middle school in a large city. I had a minority student, “Victor”, in my Honors class. He was a strong student and an incredibly nice kid, the kind of kid that would stop and help you if you dropped a huge jar of M+Ms in a busy hallway. Victor was a straight A student across the board, and he could have pursued and excelled in any career path he wanted.<br /><br />Increasingly, Victor came to school with bumps and bruises. Once, he had a tooth knocked out. Because I was young and idealistic--and most of all “colorblind”--I pulled Victor aside and asked what was going on. “Just some guys giving me grief,” he said, cheerfully enough. “It’s no big deal.” I wasn’t so sure about that, but Guidance told me that it’s a common occurrence and, if it happens off of school ground, there is nothing they can do.<br /><br />I thought they meant fighting and tried to forget it.<br /><br />One day, I was leaving work and Victor was sitting on the sidewalk in tears, his vandalized and unrideable bicycle next to him. I ran over to him, and he quickly stood up and wiped the tears from his face.<br /><br />“I’m fine, Mrs. L,” he said.<br /><br />“What can I do to help you?” I asked. “Do you want a ride? Do you want me to bring your bike to a repair shop? I’ll pay to get it fixed, Victor. This is horrible. We need to call the police.”<br /><br />Victor looked stricken at that. “Please, Mrs. L, just leave me alone.”<br /><br />“But … why, Victor? You are such a nice kid, such a smart kid, why would anyone do this to your bike? Why would they beat you up?”<br /><br />“You really don’t know, do you?”<br /><br />Almost in tears myself (please remember, I was twenty-four at the time), I shook my head.<br /><br />“They used to be my friends, but now they don’t like it that I do well in school. They keep saying I decided to ‘go white’.”<br /><br />“‘Go white’? I don’t understand.”<br /><br />“In my neighborhood, in my family, we don’t take honors classes and get straight As and awards from principals. We stick together. We don’t try to be better than what we are.”<br /><br />“But … you’re a straight A student in Honors classes. You can do anything you want, Victor.”<br /><br />“I know,” he said with a sunny smile. “That’s why I don’t let this stuff bother me.”<br /><br />The next day, Victor was not in school. He had been badly beaten for talking to a white teacher outside of school. He came back to school a few days later, determined as ever to break the mold. I left the district to take a job closer to home, but I remember thinking that Victor would be okay; he would be a success story. <br /><br />I returned to that district at the high school level two years later, missing the size and the diversity and the unique challenges that I loved working with.<br /><br />I saw Victor once, in a crowd of students in the same minority group as he. He saw me, did a double take, then looked away. Confused, I went on my way. I did ask around, though. Victor was a D/F student in low level classes. He was involved in gang activities. Rumor had it he’d been in police trouble on several occasions. He was no longer “a nice kid”.<br /><br />I have no idea what happened to Victor, the story that transpired in the years I worked in a different district. I do know that he changed dramatically, that he had clearly made the decision that ‘going white’ was no longer his path.<br /><br />It was not the school staff that did this to Victor, nor was it necessarily his family. Victor had, somewhere along the way, lost the strength to stand up to his peer group. He had accepted his peer-defined identity of who he should be as a minority, and that identity did not value Honors or AP classes, never mind school itself.<br /><br />Nobody wants to talk about the power of peers when it comes to minority groups possessing an “Us versus Them” paradigm, but that is the very base of it. I say that from fifteen years in education.<br /><br />It is the elephant that nobody wants to name because we fear being labeled racist even as we squawk about being colorblind.<br /><br />I take each child that I am given the privilege to teach, and I work with them from where they are at on what they are able and willing to give and receive. I truly believe that most teachers do the same.<br /><br />So why am I writing this today?<br /><br />The city I live in is in upheaval over student representatives being added to an ad-hoc school board committee tasked with exploring ways to include student voice on the school board. Each high school principal was asked to choose a representative from their school. The principals, I’m sure, worked hard to ensure that these representatives were not white, Harvard-bound males. It is a diverse city, and ignoring that diversity would be wrong. Principals know their student body, and they know the student that would best represent its unique voice.<br /><br />What has happened is that a group focused on community organizing, a group made up of exclusively of minority students, a group that has made derogatory and false statements about their schools, a group that has misrepresented adult leaders as students to the press, has pushed their way into the ad hoc group made up of the principal-selected representatives.<br /><br />Among other things, this group has been vocal about minorities being discouraged from (or even forbidden from) taking upper level classes. They blame the schools. They blame the teachers. They blame the school board.<br /><br />Victor was the most extreme case I’ve seen, but based on my experience as a teacher it is the peer groups that want to keep anyone from defecting, from ‘going white’. The opportunities are there, for minorities and for all students, if they are willing and able to work to achieve them. They are encouraged by teachers. In fact, teachers and school administration would love it if their upper level classes were a perfect balance of diversity. What a feather in the school district’s cap that would be!<br /><br />But teachers and citizens that are not of this minority group do not want to say anything. They don’t want to name the elephant because “Racist” or “Sexist” or “Prejudiced” is not a label anyone wants to wear. It would be all too easy to dismiss anyone who tries to raise this issue with one of those labels without ever addressing the issue itself.<br /><br />And that group? They do not want to talk about the elephant in the room either, but perhaps they should if they truly want to engage in a dialogue that leads to understanding.<b id="docs-internal-guid-f3989653-c1ae-51cc-9c2d-b09000d73604" style="font-weight: normal;">
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13955854427063032485noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3196908370614674789.post-39134950656474776252017-07-20T11:39:00.000-04:002017-07-20T11:39:59.911-04:00Parents vs. Schools Regarding Required Summer Reading: Both Miss the Point<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: inherit;">My eighth grade daughter has "recommended" summer reading activities. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">She is expected to come up with three goals, write out a plan as to how she is going to accomplish them, and fill out a chart of her "summer learning activities"<a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GwlAN863HcJebH85XUG8CzIFzIAN51rFcuwfOXbQ1rk/edit"> (this requires an "Authorized Signature", which I assume means me??, and a spot on the grid to write how it made her <u style="font-weight: bold;">Grow</u>)</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">There is also a <a href="https://sites.google.com/mansd.org/bookedforsummer/middle-schools/summer-reading-list">suggested reading list</a> with books selected from the<span style="font-weight: 700; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC)’s 2017 Summer Reading List for Grades 6-8. I haven't heard of any of them, and I'm pretty sure my daughter hasn't either. None of them exactly pique my interest, and I'm a voracious reader (I should note that this particular daughter is not, although you can see from the pic below that she once enjoyed books)</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><img alt="Image may contain: one or more people, people sitting, child and indoor" src="https://scontent.fbed1-2.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/1927917_93013475250_9102_n.jpg?oh=0a1a56085d92463db24ec43d842b4a0f&oe=59FFEBB0" /></span></span><br />
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<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">There is also<a href="https://sites.google.com/mansd.org/bookedforsummer/middle-schools/lesson-plan-for-summer-learning"> a link to a lesson plan that teachers were apparently supposed to go over with students</a> at the end of the school year. According to my daughter, this did not happen, and the message she got from her teacher was not to waste her time because nobody cares anyway. Part of me wants to applaud her teacher for her honesty with her students regarding this.</span></span><br />
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<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The whole thing is asinine, in my opinion as both a parent and a certified English teacher. </span></span><br />
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<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And, as you can imagine, some people in my city are going wild on the issue. Largely on Facebook, of course, but this is probably where you'll get the most honest feedback.</span></span><br />
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<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Some samples (All SIC):</span></span><br />
<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">* "I don't agree with [mandatory reading over the summer] at all. Both my boys are working full time and involved with family activities. They work hard in school all year and this is the time for them to just be kids. I'm not going to spend my summer forcing my boys to read. It's time to relax and recoup. It is not a time for more school-related pressures."</span></span><br />
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<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">* "Most kids were burned out of reading after the reading challenge in elementary school making them read makes them despise it."</span></span><br />
<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">* "Between football starting next week--ugh--working, visiting family, and dare I say it, just being a kid, there leaves little time to get all this done. It's too much."</span></span><br />
<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">* "I think summer vacation means vacation away from school. If you had a vacation off from work and they asked you to do something over that time period you'd think twice about it. J/S."</span></span><br />
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<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">There are many, many more, but that probably makes the point. And, to be completely fair, there are lots of intelligent, invested parents rebutting these kinds of statements. </span></span><br />
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<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Like me, they seem to focus on the idea that kids should be reading *something* in the summer, not just a book from an arbitrary list. Like me, many are appalled that some see reading as such little value. Like me, the idea that having to find time for reading is troubling bothers them.</span></span><br />
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<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Children should NOT stop learning because it is summer vacation. My daughter has learned, to give a small sampling, how to put up a pool and monitor chemicals, how to cook a meal, how to hike, how to teach her little sisters to swim, how to beat Super Mario Brothers, how to zipline, how to do different types of French braids, how to survive her first sleepaway camp, how to play the ukelele, how to master gymnastics skills she's been practicing ...</span></span><br />
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<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">She has also been reading, albeit reluctantly. </span></span><br />
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<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">She reads a graphic novel series that her father buys one of each month for her. She's reading <i>Thirteen Reasons Why</i> because she was interested in the difference between the book and the Netflix series and whether the story was helpful or harmful to teens (we are both English teachers, so she's heard lots of conversation on that topic) and wanted to be educated enough to weigh in. </span></span><br />
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<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">She is currently at sleepaway camp (I miss her so much ...), but when she gets back, we are going to require structured reading time. We are going to know what she is reading and discuss it with her. We are going to recommend books to her and read them along with her. She will not love this, of course, because she is not a natural reader, but she will go along because she understands that reading, that <i>learning</i>, is important. </span></span><br />
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<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I am not going to require her to fill out those forms but instead keep a log of what she's read and a sentence or two of reflection. </span></span><br />
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<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I am going to encourage her to continue swimming, hiking, hanging out with friends, playing with her little sisters, going to Canobie Lake, and whatever else allows her to be a normal thirteen-year-old in 2017.</span></span><br />
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<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">We made a decision a few weeks ago to cut off her iPad and wireless access on her phone at 10:00 pm. She's certainly gotten more sleep, which has also made a difference.</span></span><br />
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<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">We are also going to make an effort to go to more museums, historical sites, and that sort of thing.</span></span><br />
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<span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">That is what learning is about ... and learning <i>should </i>happen in the summer. Reading <i>must </i>happen in the summer if we want to keep our children's reading fluency and knowledge base where it needs to be. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Should the school set out a canned summer learning recommendation list for all students without taking into account what happens at home? No. Families that value summer learning have, with all due respect, long since put things into place that are far more meaningful than what's been offered.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Families that do not value summer learning need more than a bunch of printouts (and poor printouts, at that). They need to be educated on how to turn experiences into learning, which is far more valuable than how to break down a goal into parts. They need support and explanations and suggestions for how to make learning an integral part of every day.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Am I way off base with my frustration here? </span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13955854427063032485noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3196908370614674789.post-82996506805212013382017-07-08T14:58:00.000-04:002017-07-08T14:59:59.827-04:00We Won't Treat Your Pain: A Different Type of Opioid Epidemic Victim<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Just to get this right out front, I feel terribly for victims of the so-called Opioid Epidemic. I don't think anyone wants to have their lives controlled by pills or needles.<br />
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I recognize that addiction exists, that it is a legitimate condition, and that every single human being experiences addiction in some way, shape, or form. People have the capacity to be addicted to everything from exercise to crystal meth to chocolate to weed to cheeseburgers to tobacco to muscle relaxants to caffeine to ... well, you get the idea. Addiction is real.<br />
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For a long time after the words "Opioid Epidemic" came to be, I rolled my eyes and was not especially sympathetic.<br />
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Part of this, of course, was being married to <a href="http://philosophyofklo.blogspot.com/2010/06/open-letter-to-ex-husband.html">a violent and abusive alcoholic</a>, which developed in me the erroneous mindset that those allowing chemicals to change who they were must be weak and pathetic people indeed. <br />
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The other part was an annoyance that people tried drugs like heroin in the first place. I mean, it wasn't like every American school child in recent memory hadn't been told the dangers of drugs. I don't know anybody younger than fifty that wasn't educated about drug abuse in schools, that wasn't fully aware that shooting heroin was a dumb idea. I wasn't aware then (because I didn't care to read too closely) that those addictions were often born as the result of prescription pain medication.<br />
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I have lost people close to me from drug overdoses. There is actually a current mini-epidemic among people I went to high school with that is just breaking my heart. I am saddened and distraught that people I know, love, and respect have lost a battle with a formidable enemy.<br />
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Anyway, does it do any good to say, "Well, they never should have started in the first place?"<br />
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And then I became a victim of the Opioid Epidemic myself, if not the traditional type, and I slowly realized that the problem is much larger than people dying of overdoses, families struggling to keep it together after the loss of their loved ones, first responders and public schools trying to figure out the situation with Narcan.<br />
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I'm guessing most people have seen this meme, right? Things are pretty out of control.<br />
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So how did I become a victim, albeit not the way you would think, of the Opioid Epidemic that has so badly shaken America?<br />
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In mid-April, I had a surgery that was supposed to be pretty straightforward. Prior to the surgery, the doctor gave me a prescription for 20 oxycodones to have at home. Filled it, put in the medicine cabinet, used it sparingly alongside ibuprofen and Tylenol when I was released from the hospital, no problem.<br />
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A couple of weeks later, I developed a complication. Went to the doctor, used the rest of the oxy while dealing with significant pain, no big deal.<br />
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I don't want to get into detail about the additional complications other than tell you that they resulted in two hospitalizations, one of which was ridiculously lengthy. While in the hospital, I was able to have oxycodone every four hours once the Dilaudid pump was removed. <br />
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Anyone I e-mailed or texted during this time, I apologize. I was largely in Lala Land.<br />
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When I was discharged for the final time (well, knock on wood it's the final time), I had prescription painkillers. I also had pain, and a limited number of prescription painkillers.<br />
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The pain, though ... unspeakable pain. Keep-you-up-all-night pain. Sleep on the couch watching <i>Grey's Anatomy</i> because it was too hard to concentrate on a book pain (and for anyone that knows me, I can always concentrate on a book).<br />
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I called the surgeon about the pain, and they had me come in. Not unexpected, they said. Try Tylenol, they said. (I was, at this point, already alternating Tylenol and ibuprofen around the clock). Call if it gets worse. It got worse, so I called the next day and they had me come in. Not unexpected, they said. Have you tried Tylenol? Well, try alternating it with ibuprofen. Call if it gets worse. It got worse again, so I called the next day. Have you tried an ice pack? How about heat? Oh, and Tylenol should help.<br />
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I finally called my Primary Care doctor, who made a joke about all the reading he has done about me over the past few months. He's been my doctor for years, and I was very frank with him. I explained that I was in pain, horrible pain, hadn't slept in a week, and the surgeon's office did not seem to care. I was not, I told him, looking for a heavy duty prescription, but surely there must be something between Tylenol and oxycodone. He thought for a moment and said, "What did they give you in the hospital?" I told him, and he asked if it worked to control the pain.<br />
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"Well," he said, "there are a couple of in-between things I can give you, but it seems logical to me to give you what worked. I'm going to give you five oxycodones. Take it as directed, don't sell it, you know the drill. Call me if you use it all, and we'll reevaluate."<br />
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I did indeed know the drill. I needed two of those pills, by the way, then the pain was manageable with ibuprofen and Tylenol.<br />
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There were further complications, of course, but my new surgeon (because I was totally all done with the other guy) actually gave me prescription pain medication when she did a procedure. Not a lot, but the same message as my PCP--we will evaluate if you use it all. I needed it for a few days, then I was fine with ibuprofen and Tylenol.<br />
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I'm not getting into detail about what was going on, but suffice it to say that my pain wasn't in question, even by the yahoo that told me to use an ice pack. Bloodwork and CT scans supported the fact that I was in excruciating pain. This wasn't me going in and asking for pain medicine with no documentation of obvious pain. It was "Tough it out because we do not want to be seen as contributing to the Opiate Epidemic".<br />
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I'm not saying that doctors were a little loose with the narcotics for many years, by the way. Far from it.<br />
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Ten years or so ago, I experienced recurrent pancreatitis because my liver was messed up. Pancreatitis, by the way, makes childbirth seem like a paper cut. This went on for years as they tried to fix the liver damage, and I had a standing prescription for both Percocet and Vicodin. I would call the doctor, say which I needed more of, and they'd call it in. I mean, it was ridiculously easy to get narcotics, and I know that many, many people developed opiate addictions as a result of a situation like this.<br />
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I am lucky; I do not have a propensity for opiate addiction, I guess. I've struggled with other addictions over the years--caffeine, cheeseburgers, tobacco, probably even alcohol at certain times in my life. However, opioid narcotics have never been something I've used other than for short-term pain relief.<br />
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So here is my issue with the Opioid Epidemic ...<br />
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Yes, the ease with which doctors doled out narcotics unquestionably led people to become addicts and, when the prescription pad was put away, those people turned to heroin. Doctors were irresponsible. This is a tragedy, no two ways about it. I know people that have experienced this. I know people that have died from this. <br />
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That being said, it is equally irresponsible for doctors to allow patients to suffer terrible pain, which has been happening since new regulations came with the term "Opioid Epidemic" in 2015.<br />
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I have huge respect for my PCP and my new surgeon, who have the courage to balance the dangers of opiates with the need for them. Their mindset of giving small quantities of opiates when medically indicated while being incredibly responsible in overseeing the usage of said medications seems like how it should be.<br />
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For over a week, when I was crying in pain non-stop, when I was humiliated by a doctor's office telling me to take Tylenol and use a heating pad when I'd already told them I was doing all these things, when I did not sleep and was grouchy to my family and friends, I was a victim of the Opioid Epidemic.<br />
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Doctors refused to provide the necessary help because they were afraid ... but I will tell you that pain, true and unspeakable pain, is something people should not have to experience if there is a way around it. I said to myself more than once, usually at two in the morning when I hadn't slept for an increasing number of nights, "I understand why Kurt Cobain wanted to kill himself over his chronic stomach pain ... and also how he became a heroin addict."<br />
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There is no earthly reason for someone to try to exist in the pain I was in, especially long-term. A week may not seem long-term, but when you are the person living with the pain, it is a cruel reality that cannot be put into words.<br />
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The Opioid Epidemic is generally understood as having victims that are killed by addiction. This is true, and it is terrible.<br />
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But there are other victims, too. </div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13955854427063032485noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3196908370614674789.post-76362114568355771002017-06-30T12:11:00.000-04:002017-06-30T12:11:46.846-04:00A Strange, Sad Skunk Story<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I'm pretty sure that most pet owners have a skunk story ... it sort of goes with the territory. <div>
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This is Howard, a lab/boxer/shepherd mix. He is a very good dog. </div>
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<img alt="Image may contain: dog and indoor" src="https://scontent.fbed1-2.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/1394127_10151911351183057_428775564_n.jpg?oh=efd850ae789fa88af238026207e4f449&oe=59C83253" /></div>
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Howard has had several run-ins with skunks over his almost four years. They have inevitably ended with him sprayed, rolling around in the backyard trying to get the spray off, and shivering miserably in the bathtub while Jeff washes him with Dawn dish soap (we learned pretty quickly that tomato juice was not the best thing for getting skunk odor off). </div>
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I have cursed a lot of skunks.</div>
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Yesterday, though ...</div>
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I let Howard outside into the fenced-in backyard, just like I have a hundred times. He climbed down the porch stairs, started heading to the area way in the back where he does his business, then I suddenly saw him move very quickly with a small black and white animal in his mouth. I knew it was a skunk before I smelled its defensive spray.</div>
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I should mention that I've had a couple of major surgeries in the last few months, and that I am still recovering from numerous complications. I am not supposed to lift anything heavier than a gallon of milk; this includes my two-year-old and, I quickly surmised, a 55+ pound dog.</div>
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Since I knew I couldn't realistically break up the melee physically, I did the only thing I could think of. I yelled, "Howard, stop! Let it go! Howard!"</div>
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I was as surprised as anyone when he dropped the skunk and ran into the backyard, where he started his roll of shame to get the skunk smell off. The skunk ran into the tangle of flowers next to the garage, and I walked on the other side of the yard to get my dog.</div>
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I had to hold onto his collar, but he came with me willingly, and I got him onto the porch and locked the door. I didn't want to bring him into the house since I knew I couldn't lift him into the bathtub, so I went inside and got a couple of wet towels and the Dawn. I cleaned him up as best I could, and the smell was very faint. The skunk had looked very small to me, so I'm pretty sure it's "skunk glands" weren't too strong yet. I didn't see any blood in Howard's mouth or on the white fur that's on his neck and chest.</div>
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I called Animal Control, but they were, as usual, all tied up for the day. I called Howard's vet. The police called me back and asked if the skunk was still there. I couldn't see it in the growth of flowers, but I was too afraid to go looking too closely. They said if I couldn't see it, Animal Control would not be able to make it ... there was no point.</div>
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When Jeff got home from summer school, he went out and looked for the skunk. He found it in the flowers, dying and covered with flies. This was one of the times, he told me, when he wished he had a .22 because the skunk was clearly suffering. Every time he tried to get too close, the little skunk lifted its tail, so Jeff sprayed water from the hose in its general direction and, when he went to look, the poor skunk was drinking some water. It was as comfortable as it was possible for it to be.</div>
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I asked Jeff if he had thought about killing it with a rock or something like that, and he said he couldn't. A gun he could point and look away, but actively killing an animal he was looking at, in a way that might cause it more pain along the way, was something he could not do. I told him this was one of the reasons I love him and that I felt exactly the same.</div>
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When we got back from the concert for Ari's music camp, the skunk was dead. Jeff buried it, and I am so grateful that he is able to do things like that, because I just couldn't. </div>
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The skunk Howard killed was just a baby. Later that night, as he was coming home from the store, Jeff saw a mother skunk with six babies on the street near the house. This broke my heart.</div>
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The thing is, adult skunks are a nuisance and a danger and completely unnecessary when you live in what is pretty much the inner city. During the summer, Jeff has to go out at night and do a perimeter check before he takes Howard out because, if he doesn't, Howard will sometimes encounter a skunk and get sprayed.</div>
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But this was a baby skunk, defenseless, separated from its mother, probably petrified, and hiding in the safest spot it could find.</div>
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And my dog, my sweet and gentle dog who sleeps in our bed and is infinitely patient with my children, found it and killed it.</div>
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I know Howard was doing what dogs do. I even think he might have been more aggressive than he otherwise would have because I was the one taking him out and he has been especially protective of me since I'm not well. If it was an adult skunk, I might even have been relieved that we wouldn't have to deal with it anymore (although I'm not sure Howard would have been the clear victor if it had been an adult skunk). I know my children go running into the backyard to go in the pool or on the play structure without doing a skunk check. </div>
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But it still makes me sad. </div>
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The worst part for me is that Howard didn't kill it outright. It laid in the flowers suffering for most of the day. It's easy to say, "It was just a skunk", but its mother and siblings were looking for it last night. They didn't get to see it one last time, and it died alone and scared.</div>
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Perhaps I'm emotional because of the severity of my medical situation over the past few months, but this was a terrible and tragic reminder of the fragility of life.</div>
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RIP, Baby Skunk. </div>
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<img alt="Image may contain: one or more people, people sleeping, dog and indoor" src="https://scontent.fbed1-2.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/16508243_10154981249833057_744106285808994129_n.jpg?oh=7de3da1a630c318370b71057ecd9e38f&oe=59D3C8C2" /></div>
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<img alt="Image may contain: 1 person, dog" src="https://scontent.fbed1-2.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/16684316_10158086305025251_7214267651870475719_n.jpg?oh=c172064aca19801da60b3f49b7df9b83&oe=59D2DD87" /></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13955854427063032485noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3196908370614674789.post-76140579671010861762017-01-19T21:04:00.000-05:002017-01-19T21:04:12.963-05:00Call Me a Bleeding Heart Liberal, but I Will Always Keep Trying to Help (Even When I Get Burned)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
When I was driving into work on Tuesday morning, the day after Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, I decided that I'd give my students a King quote for their quickwrite. The one I chose was:<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."</span><br />
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I projected the quote onto the screen and had my students write about it for eight minutes, then we had a discussion. It became an incredibly deep discussion, which is always exciting when you're a teacher. As we were wrapping up and transitioning to <i>Romeo and Juliet</i>, one of my students asked where the quote came from.<br />
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When I told them, one of them noted, "Oh, Martin Luther King ... so THAT's why you chose it."<br />
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It was ... and it wasn't.<br />
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Let's face it, America is going to change when Donald Trump becomes president. <a href="http://philosophyofklo.blogspot.com/2016/10/dear-trump-supporters-there-is-no.html">Trump's candidacy and election have scarred me deeply on a personal level</a>, and I spend far more time thinking about unhappy things than I should.<br />
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During that drive to work (it's about forty minutes), I got thinking about the people that say, "Invite a Syrian refugee to stay with you!" or "Why don't you pay higher taxes if that's how you feel?" I know people that say these things. I even like some of these people.<br />
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But I don't understand them.<br />
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Why? Because I have an inherent need to help, to fix, to make life better for others. My mother used to tear her hair out over it (I once gave away a brand new and evidently very expensive jacket to a child on the bus that had no jacket and lived in a very poor neighborhood); she referred to me as "a social worker", and it was not meant as a compliment.<br />
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I understand my mom's frustration now, since I have tried desperately to help people before and gotten burned badly as a result. The student I lent $100 and never got back (I no longer loan students money as a result). <a href="http://philosophyofklo.blogspot.com/2010/06/open-letter-to-ex-husband.html">My abusive alcoholic ex-husband.</a> You know, the usual suspects.<br />
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There are a couple of recent attempted random acts of kindness, however, that have gone shockingly awry. Those are the ones that keep me up, those strangers that myself and my family went way out on a limb for, and we ended up feeling guilty and sort of like the bad guy.<br />
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This summer, a woman and her three children moved in across the street. We noticed immediately that she was always hollering at her kids, even yelling swears and epithets like, "I'm going to kill you!", but a DCYF report was pointless unless we had "video evidence". It upset all of us, needless to say.<br />
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One summer day, when it was 98 degrees and humid (which, in New Hampshire, is unbearable and, <a href="http://philosophyofklo.blogspot.com/2009/07/why-do-people-always-complain-about.html">if you're me</a>, means you're not leaving the air conditioner for anything), I was watching out the window as this woman tried to move a couch into her house. It wasn't going well, and her kids were running into the traffic, throwing rocks at her to impede her progress, and poking a dead bird with a stick. She finally sat down on the couch, put her head in her hands, and started sobbing.<br />
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I called down to Jeff and told him that I was going to go try to help her get her house inside. Being more suited for this duty (and well aware of how pleasant I am after three minutes in the heat), Jeff volunteered to go in my place.<br />
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Long story short, we were soon babysitting the kids every Monday night while their mother went to visit her ex-boyfriend in jail. We'd feed them, keep them from hurting each other, and try to teach them some manners and control. In return, they would break our kids' toys and throw epic, loud battles when it was time for them to go home.<br />
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Once school started, the thankless babysitting gig got to be too much for us, so she stopped asking after we said no once (I think one of our kids was legitimately sick). It was honestly something of a relief, although it made us all sad that the kids were stuck getting screamed at all the time.<br />
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Anyway, over Christmas vacation, I got a text from her out of the clear blue sky asking if we could watch the kids for two consecutive days from 8-5:30.<br />
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I said no.<br />
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No reply, no "Thanks anyway", no "Thank you for all the times you did watch them", nothing.<br />
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That stung. <br />
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The other situation involved a guy that wanders around neighborhoods asking to do odd jobs for cash. I was petrified of him, but Jeff would hire him to mow the lawn or something. It got to the point where he was doing bigger jobs, but he was also coming over ALL THE TIME trying to find jobs to do so we'd pay him.<br />
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It got out of control when he was injured in an accident, and we felt bad for him and fronted him money that we couldn't afford to front. He then came and did the agreed-upon work, but he wanted to be paid for it. It got very ugly, and he spent a lot of time begging Jeff to hire him again.<br />
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He said no.<br />
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So even bleeding heart liberals have a breaking point, I guess. Being taken advantage of and used isn't pleasant ...<br />
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However, I would rather live a hundred scenarios like these then not try at all. You see, I know that the few times mine hand has gotten burned for reaching out and trying to help, memorable and painful as they are, is both a warning and an affirmation.<br />
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I could stop trying to help people in need. Yeah, those people going on and on about the Syrian refugees when we have people in need of help right here--I don't see them stepping up. I did, and I'm not sorry. If my fatal flaw is a desire to help others, then so be it.<br />
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I would rather help other people genuinely and at their level of need than sit around looking down at them.<br />
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It was easy to look down on the screaming and incompetent mother, the would-be handyman who we suspect fell off the opiate wagon after being put on painkillers following his accident. I'm not proud; I looked down on both of them, both before and when I was trying to help them. This is not something I'm proud of, but I'm being completely honest here.<br />
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I take pride in being a good person, one who helps others in times of need, but there is a part of me that knows that pride is dark and ugly and perhaps influences how some situations end up. Who knows?<br />
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My students got talking about King's quote vis a vis being a good and "loving" person and driving out the darkness through that, but they also recognized (and vocalized) that we are all a balance of good and bad.<br />
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I can tell you from personal experience, some dark will not allow any late, no matter how brightly you may shine; some people will never allow love to replace hate. It's just the nature of the human beast.<br />
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I have always tried to help, particularly the downtrodden, and I will continue to do so no matter the cost.<br /><br />
If that makes me a bleeding heart liberal, so be it.<br />
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I am a work in progress, and I will never stop trying.<br />
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<img alt="Image result for Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that." 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" /></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13955854427063032485noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3196908370614674789.post-86199992618585565142016-10-13T21:27:00.002-04:002016-10-13T21:27:36.095-04:00Dear Trump Supporters: There is No Timeline for Bringing a Sexual Assault to Light<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span class="m_-377900020609914459s1">I suppose it was only a matter of time before the victim-shaming started vis a vis Donald Trump's latest debacle (why don't we call it "Pussygate").</span></div>
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<span class="m_-377900020609914459s1">I've spent the last week in a state of shock as I heard Trump boast gleefully about his inappropriate behavior with women. I've been distracted, I've been having panic attacks and nightmares, and it's only getting worse.</span></div>
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<span class="m_-377900020609914459s1">My feelings are at a fever pitch today as I've read about women coming forward to allege that Trump's "locker room talk" went way beyond words, that he actually <i>did</i> many of the things he boasted of to Billy Bush according to numerous women, including <a href="http://people.com/politics/donald-trump-attacked-people-writer/">former <i>People </i>magazine writer Natasha Stoynoff.</a><span class="m_-377900020609914459Apple-converted-space"> </span></span></div>
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<span class="m_-377900020609914459s1">And these women are being crucified by Trump supporters, who are making comments about the convenience of the timing, that they are shooting for optimal financial opportunity and publicity, and even one of my Facebook friends writing, "I have a hard time believing women who jump on the bandwagon 15-30 years later."</span><span style="font-size: 12.8px;"> </span></div>
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<span class="m_-377900020609914459s1"><span class="m_-377900020609914459Apple-converted-space">I do not talk about the night I was raped. I have written about it <a href="http://philosophyofklo.blogspot.com/2016/01/nightmares-my-20-year-old-rape-and-bill.html">here on this blog</a>, where I have a degree of anonymity and privacy, but I still cannot talk about it.</span></span></div>
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<span class="m_-377900020609914459s1"><span class="m_-377900020609914459Apple-converted-space">I do not know my rapist's last name. I do not know where he lives. I do not want to know. I have been fortunate, if you want to call it that, to fall into what could best be classified as "date rape by an acquaintance", which means I've never had to see the monster again.</span></span></div>
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<span class="m_-377900020609914459s1"><span class="m_-377900020609914459Apple-converted-space">If the man that raped me--Tom--suddenly started running for public office, if his face was all over the news, if he was spreading hatred, I'm still not sure I would have the courage to come forward publicly. Why would I? The statute of limitations on that crime has run out, and any physical evidence is old and probably useless. </span></span></div>
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<span class="m_-377900020609914459s1"><span class="m_-377900020609914459Apple-converted-space">The vast majority of women (and men) who suffer sexual assault are not going to want to make it a public thing. Those that have the strength to do so immediately, you have my utmost respect, by the way. It eats me up sometimes to think that Tom has probably done what he did to me again because I <i>didn't</i> go to the police (or my mother or a rape crisis center) right away when physical evidence existed, and I could have stopped it by reporting it. I didn't have the strength, though, and I hate myself for that. </span></span></div>
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<span class="m_-377900020609914459s1"><span class="m_-377900020609914459Apple-converted-space">Here's what happens in the aftermath of a sexual assault. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">You have to deal with the physical first. My rape was extremely violent, and there are physical ramifications that still exist today. If you're smart, you get tested for STDs ASAP (I was sort of smart...I did get tested, but I did not share my reasons for wanting this testing done with my doctor).</span><span class="m_-377900020609914459Apple-converted-space" style="font-size: 12.8px;"> </span><span class="m_-377900020609914459s1"></span></div>
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<span class="m_-377900020609914459s1">After that, you try to find your life again. This can take a long time. Sometimes I think I'm still working on it, nearly twenty years later. You crave normalcy and try to avoid at all costs anything that will bring back the rape in your mind.</span></div>
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<span class="m_-377900020609914459s1">By the time you get to the point where you're "okay", you do not want to go back down that rabbit hole. Why would you?</span></div>
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<span class="m_-377900020609914459s1">And so you live your life. You slowly learn to live and love and trust again. You do the best you can. Some days are better than others, and blah blah blah.</span></div>
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I wrote that I would probably not have the courage to bring Tom's name forward even if he became a public figure, and I meant it. </div>
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There would, however, be one exception: if Tom was caught on a hot mic joking about raping stupid college girls that didn't know enough not to put down their drinks, particularly if he was running for President of the United States, I would come forward. I would share my story, no matter what people might say about me. </div>
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There is no timeline for bringing a sexual assault to light, and I'd wager a guess that about 85% go unreported. However, we all have a line. That would be mine, and if Tom crossed it, if he lied about who he was and what he did to me that long ago night and how he basically ruined my life, I would still feel a moral obligation to speak up, to not let the sleazeball get away with it anymore.</div>
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I suspect Natasha Stoynoff knows that line well. </div>
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Although she no longer works for <i>People</i>, the magazine ran her story. In fact, <i>People </i>might well have been the only major publication that would run it as they were no doubt able to match up her story with a timeline of their own. <i>Was </i>Stoynoff a family friend of the Trumps until that day? <i>Did </i>her professional relationship with them change afterwards? <i>Do </i>the details in her story jibe with what the magazine knows?</div>
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Well, a magazine that reports on celebrities believed in Natasha Stoynoff enough to run the story, risk alienating Trump as well as other stars, and <a href="http://people.com/politics/people-editor-in-chief-why-we-printed-natasha-stoynoffs-story-of-being-assaulted-by-donald-trump/">issue a statement explaining why they ran it</a>. That would really be going out on a limb for a publication company that depends on maintaining good relations with the people they want to interview and report on.</div>
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So to all of you muttering about convenient timing and payouts, please just stop. </div>
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Living with the aftermath of a sexual assault is something no amount of money can assuage, and there is <i>no </i>convenient timing, only the right timing for you in your own personal situation.</div>
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That Donald Trump brought about this reaction in so many women speaks to how horrible their experiences must have been, how frightened and damaged they were, and how truly deplorable a human being he is.</div>
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He brought about the timing--and the collapse of his house of cards--all on his own.</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13955854427063032485noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3196908370614674789.post-83087300999781088372016-07-08T23:01:00.000-04:002016-07-08T23:20:50.313-04:00Trends on Facebook Today, and Why I'm Scared for America<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I confess, I have an unhealthy addiction to Facebook.<br />
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I like to know what's going on in the lives of my family and friends, obviously. I'm an introvert--increasingly so all the time, it seems--so Facebook is something of a lifeline for me in terms of maintaining relationships that are difficult to hold onto otherwise. I like to stay on top of current events. I enjoy clever memes. And, yeah, I gravitate toward spoilers and theories about The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones. And quizzes about '90s music, iconic movies, and Stephen King books, which I usually ace. Go, me.<br />
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Usually, there is a pleasant balance of personal, educational, and entertainment offerings on Facebook to keep me going back.<br />
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Today, though...today was different. Where were the pics of cute kids wearing "3 months" stickers? The memes about dogs and thunder? Even Donald freaking Trump?<br />
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I guess the first thing is that there are many cancer scares going on in my circles. Tumors removed. Cells regrowing. Radiation therapy. Some of my peeps are sharing positive news, but in general the Big C is beating down many that I love. It's pretty depressing, yet I love that they have the courage to share their journeys when many don't. On any other day, it would make me pensive and thoughtful and probably increase my chats with God (yes, we have a relationship).<br />
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Today, though...<br />
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And the son of one of my sister's old friends was in a very bad car accident. A bright, handsome, kind-hearted boy who volunteered his time and openly loved his momma and baby sister now lays in a hospital bed with swelling in his brain, a brand new tracheostomy after removing the breathing tube didn't go well, and the real possibility of a permanent shunt. The boy is still unconscious, but it seems likely that there will be some degree of permanent damage. A lot? A little? Only God knows, and only time will tell. He is strong, and he's a fighter, but the hopeful tones of the daily updates have darkened a bit. I chat with God about Tyler, too.<br />
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Today, though...<br />
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People are angry about the shootings of African-American men Alton Sterling in Louisiana and Philando Castile in Minnesota at the hands of police officers. People are angry that a militant named Micah Johnson went to a peaceful demonstration against officer-involved shootings (and both Sterling and particularly Castile were pretty obviously victims of heavy-handed police officers, yet the demonstration was by all accounts peaceful until Johnson destroyed it) and killed five Dallas police officers. People are angry that President Obama is doing nothing, yet Obama characterized the Dallas shootings as "vicious" and "despicable" (further, he has tried desperately and taken much heat for trying to keep assault rifles out of the hands of people like Micah Johnson, but that's an inconvenient truth that nobody really wants to talk about). People are angry that "Black Lives Matter" has become "a thing". People are angry that "Black Lives Matter" has had to become "a thing". People are angry because they are incapable of seeing how you can be both appalled at the brutal murders of two men by police officers abusing their power yet hold police officers as an entity in the highest regard.<br />
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People are angry because they are scared. Philando Castile was trying to comply with an officer's request to get his ID after informing the officer that he had a license to carry and was armed when he was shot. In front of his girlfriend. And her four-year-old daughter. We want to tell ourselves that this doesn't happen in our country. It did, though...Castile's girlfriend had the presence of mind to videotape it.<br />
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And Sterling? A homeless man was harassing him for money. Threats were made. Police were called. Two officers had him on the ground. He had no gun in his hand (one of the officers took it out of the pocket of his pants). He was shot in the back multiple times. And what are people talking about? That he had a criminal record. Why? Because they are scared and shocked that this happened, and even though his prior criminal activities have nothing to do with this situation, it seems to make people feel better about his death to imply that he brought it upon himself, at least a little, through past bad acts.<br />
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I could never be a police officer, and I respect those that are tremendously. However, police officers that do go too far, that act without thinking, that kill before understanding the situation when there IS no pressing emergency requiring multiple bullet wounds in the back or shooting off the arm of a compliant cafeteria worker in front of a young child...it is a problem, and the dawning awkward reality that this is happening increasingly to African-Americans cannot be ignored.<br />
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All lives matter, and we need to make sure to focus on our black brothers as well as our blue brothers in the aftermath of this latest ugly chapter. All colors, all races, all people need to step up to the table and say, "What can my part be to solve this problem?"<br />
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Make no mistake. It IS a problem, and it's not going away. Instead of spewing hateful rhetoric on Facebook and Twitter, let's try to solve it together.<br />
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Any ideas?<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13955854427063032485noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3196908370614674789.post-42515247069239784812016-05-06T13:21:00.001-04:002016-05-06T13:21:26.403-04:00As I Rebrand this Blog into What I Hope Will be a "Think Tank" (with Guest Posts Galore) , Here are 10 Things That I'm Thinking About Right Now<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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1. Although I love to learn, always have, always will, I was not a traditionally good student. I have ADHD and two learning disabilities, so the way I learn was not always conducive to how my teachers wanted me to learn. It was quite a slog, let me tell you.<div>
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2. I am an iPhone girl, although I tried desperately not to be. I tried desperately to be pro-Android, but the iPhone is just far superior.</div>
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3. I have lost myself in the past two years. I am trying desperately to find myself again. Results are mixed so far. Keep your fingers crossed for me.</div>
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4. William Shakespeare got human nature before anyone else, in my humble opinion.</div>
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5. I have learned more from my students than they will ever learn from me.</div>
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6. My favorite foods are cheeseburgers, lobsters, potatoes, cannolis, and maple sugar candy.</div>
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7. I am what they call "working poor". I work three jobs but can't afford medication, new socks, clothes, and often gas to get to work. If you read what I write and feel compelled to donate via the button on the right, I would be deeply appreciative. I would love to have more time to write...</div>
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8. My four children are my entire world.</div>
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9. I have been irreparably damaged. I have told some of those stories. I hope to live long enough to tell all of them.</div>
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10. I believe that you can be in love with more than one person at a time. This is a terrible tragedy. </div>
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Thanks for reading this to the end. It is my hope to explore many rich and thought-provoking topics on this blog moving forward. Please <a href="mailto:katiemayhowe@gmail.com">email</a> me any and all suggestions you might have for me to tackle here or<a href="https://www.facebook.com/The-Philosophy-of-KLo-197261723632325/"> hit me up on Facebook</a>.</div>
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Let's make<a href="http://philosophyofklo.blogspot.com/"> The Philosophy of KLo</a> great :-)</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13955854427063032485noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3196908370614674789.post-63145757357741954452016-05-03T11:43:00.001-04:002016-05-03T11:43:37.044-04:00Teacher Appreciation Day--Share a Story!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Today is National Teacher Appreciation Day.<br />
<br />
As most of you know, I am a teacher (from a long family history of teachers). For the rest of this week, I am going to write posts about teachers that have impacted my life.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7dyK8ZiVA4QgohUKsVrLL5FexMsCSXa-sJtblHTogqpdx2bRnF2yfq6SPYiX1o9JjlFaPjzCFwGyIEovVvYDSvs9yUtequrg7q4_WcxETNRIou_k0VzW_1fWECWbEKYE2oTkLJtSIZuj5/s1600/Teaching.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7dyK8ZiVA4QgohUKsVrLL5FexMsCSXa-sJtblHTogqpdx2bRnF2yfq6SPYiX1o9JjlFaPjzCFwGyIEovVvYDSvs9yUtequrg7q4_WcxETNRIou_k0VzW_1fWECWbEKYE2oTkLJtSIZuj5/s320/Teaching.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
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<br />
For today, though, I wanted to extended an invitation to you, my readers, to share stories about teachers that have made an impact on you. Those stories mean more than you will ever know to those of us that are (or have been) in the trenches).<br />
<br />
Share stories in the comments. Share stories on<a href="https://www.facebook.com/The-Philosophy-of-KLo-197261723632325/"> Facebook</a>. Send me an <a href="mailto:kloud1026@yahoo.com">e-mail</a> and I'll add them to this post.<br />
<br />
Oh, and <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/04/29/presidential-proclamation-national-teacher-appreciation-day-and-national">here is the official proclamation from President Obama</a>:<br />
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Our country's story, written over more than two centuries, is one of challenges, chances, and progress. As our Nation has advanced on our journey toward ensuring rights and opportunities are extended fully and equally to all people, America's teachers -- from the front lines of our civil rights movement to the front lines of our education system -- have helped steer our country's course. They witness the incredible potential of our youth, and they know firsthand the impact of a caring leader at the front of the classroom. </div>
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As our national narrative has progressed, we have become a more equal society, cleared paths to opportunity, and affirmed the extraordinary potential of all our people -- regardless of their race, their gender, their sexual orientation, their religion, or the zip code they were born into. But there is still work to be done. If our country's story is going to reflect the diversity we draw strength from, it needs to be written by people that represent the wide range of backgrounds and origins that comprise our national mosaic, and as the next generation rises and prepares to shape that narrative, our teachers will be with them every step of the way -- imparting critical knowledge and opening their minds to the possibilities tomorrow holds. In working to ensure all our daughters and sons have the chance to add their voice and perspective to America's story, our teachers help shape a Nation that better reflects the values we were founded upon. </div>
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When I took office, I did so with a bold vision to foster innovation and drive change within our education system, and to expand educational opportunities and outcomes for all America's learners. Central to that goal is our work to build and strengthen the teaching profession so our teachers are enabled and equipped to inspire rising generations. I have worked hard throughout my Presidency to make sure my Administration does its part to support our educators and our education system, but the incredible progress our country has seen -- from achieving record high graduation rates to holding more students to high standards that prepare them for success in college and future careers -- is thanks to the dedicated teachers, families, and school leaders who work tirelessly on behalf of our young people. </div>
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Just as we know a student's circumstances do not dictate his or her potential, we know that having an effective teacher is the most important in-school factor for student success. That is why my Administration has been committed to better recruiting, preparing, retraining, and rewarding America's teachers. Following the worst economic crisis our country has seen since the Great Depression, my Administration supported significant investments in education through the Recovery Act to keep more than 300,000 educators in the classroom. We have invested more than $2.7 billion through competitive grants to better recruit, train, support, and reward talented teachers and educators, and we have worked to make sure teachers have a strong voice and a seat at the table in the policymaking process. At the urging of the Department of Education, all fifty States are advancing teacher equity plans to ensure that districts can support and retain educators in schools that need them most. In my State of the Union address in 2011, I announced a national goal to prepare 100,000 public school STEM teachers by 2021 to help ensure more of our young innovators can seize the opportunities of tomorrow -- and I am proud that we are on track to meet that goal. </div>
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I recently signed the bipartisan Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which ensures students are held to high standards that will better prepare them for college and careers. And because cookie-cutter solutions are not always effective considering the diversity of our communities and of the students in our classrooms, ESSA reflects my Administration's approach to education reform by empowering States and local decision makers, who know what their students need best, to shape their own progress with accountability. ESSA also aligns with the Testing Action Plan I announced last fall to help reduce the burden of standardized testing so educators can spend less time testing and more time teaching. This law will also allow more States and districts to support teachers and expand access to computer science, a critical skill our students need in the innovation economy. </div>
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Our future is written in schools across our country. It is likely that the first person who will go to Mars is in a classroom today. Our students are our future teachers, scientists, politicians, public servants, and parents -- a generation that will steer the course we will take as a people and make possible things we have not even imagined yet. We look to the women and men standing in front of classrooms in all corners of our country -- from cities to reservations to rural towns -- to vest America's daughters and sons with the hard skills they will need to put their dreams within reach and to inspire them to dream even bigger. On National Teacher Appreciation Day and during National Teacher Appreciation Week, let us ensure our educators know how much we value their service in the classroom, how much we appreciate all they do for our students and families, and how thankful we are for their contributions to our national progress. </div>
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NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim May 3, 2016, as National Teacher Appreciation Day and May 1 through May 7, 2016, as National Teacher Appreciation Week. I call upon students, parents, and all Americans to recognize the hard work and dedication of our Nation's teachers and to observe this day and this week by supporting teachers through appropriate activities, events, and programs. </div>
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IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-ninth day of April, in the year of our Lord two thousand sixteen, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and fortieth. </div>
</blockquote>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13955854427063032485noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3196908370614674789.post-36239747223197692112016-05-01T00:13:00.000-04:002016-05-01T00:15:36.811-04:00Why People are Getting Angry About Tom Brady's "Deflategate" for the Wrong Reasons<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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In the name of full disclosure, I live in New Hampshire and am a fan of the New England Patriots in general and of Tom Brady in particular. I think Brady is a tremendous player, has done some outstanding philanthropic work, and I am truly a part of Patriot Nation.</div>
<br />
That being said, I can't help but be a bit disturbed by the direction society (and I'm sorry, New England, but this is mostly you) is going with their reaction to this.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://russellstreetreport.com/2015/05/07/filmstudy/deflategate-new-england-patriots-tom-brady-evidence/">From <i>Russell Street Report</i>,</a> which gives a pretty good bulleted list of the findings of <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2073728-ted-wells-report-deflategate.html">the Wells Report</a>, and makes clear that "the standard of proof required to find that a violation of the competitive rules has occurred".<br />
<br />
In other words, the Patriots knowingly cheated. I don't want it to be true as a Patriots fan, but I have a hard time looking away from a preponderance of evidence. Read the report if you haven't ... the Wells Report is dry, but <a href="http://russellstreetreport.com/2015/05/07/filmstudy/deflategate-new-england-patriots-tom-brady-evidence/">the bullets from Russell Street </a>are pretty easy to follow. It outlines the evidence.<br />
<br />
Which does exist. (Sorry, but it does)<br />
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Football is a game. It's a game well loved in America, and I've certainly done my share of drinking beer and eating pizza while watching men in uniform dance around the line of scrimmage.<br />
<br />
When something happens during a game to directly impact the integrity of the game, there needs to be a game-level consequence. Unnecessary roughness. Holding. Encroachment. False start. All are dealt with during the game.<br />
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Deflating footballs was a different level of offense ... and so it had to be dealt with at a higher level.<br />
<br />
However, it was still an offense about a game.<br />
<br />
Deflategate is, when you take the air out of everyone's arguments (heh), a rich and powerful football team trying to cheat and win a big game. They got caught. They got punished.<br />
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Along comes this meme. though, and others like it, and I get upset. Appalled. Shocked. Unable to understand why people are unable to see what they are saying ...<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtOi3km22liQC1pfC5d1cmDCJ76ifdn8Gbf3Kw8nBwySEy99NvT-btHoOVs9Yc8Tg6fZfX-2rPGjk43PpMFX2JuHwcYi_9rVv_05kIQvsjgv253RIXorE9ZuSzvfgaACvYFVwX1V5uC0Y9/s1600/deflategate.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtOi3km22liQC1pfC5d1cmDCJ76ifdn8Gbf3Kw8nBwySEy99NvT-btHoOVs9Yc8Tg6fZfX-2rPGjk43PpMFX2JuHwcYi_9rVv_05kIQvsjgv253RIXorE9ZuSzvfgaACvYFVwX1V5uC0Y9/s1600/deflategate.png" /></a></div>
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<br />
I think the person who made this meme (and those who are posting out, many of whom are my friends on Facebook) has this mindset:<br />
"<b>These terrible men did awful things and the major sports leagues don't say anything. Tom Brady has knowledge of deflated footballs and he gets suspended for four games. How unfair is that????"</b><br />
<br />
While Brady looks pretty silly standing in that company over air pressure, the fact is that his is the only offense that was in direct violation of the game of football. He is the only one of the six men on the meme that cheated at his given sport, was caught breaking the sport's specific rules, and has to pay the consequences.<br />
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If you want to have a beef with anybody, take it up with the national sports leagues. They allow violent athletes to act a certain way off the field or out of the ring but rarely hold them accountable for this terrible behavior as long as they hold it together while on the team's turf.<br />
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I want to make it very clear that I am not making apologies for the men in this meme.<br />
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<a href="http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/04/16/roethlisberger.incident/">Ben Roethlisberger</a> is accused of sexually assaulting multiple women. <a href="http://www.npr.org/2015/11/05/454829069/double-murder-charges-still-haunt-ex-raven-linebacker-ray-lewis">Ray Lewis</a> was charged with two counts of murder. <a href="http://deadspin.com/mayweather-on-being-a-serial-woman-beater-only-god-c-1634290732">Boxer Floyd Mayweather</a> used the mother of his children as a punching bag. <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/football/ray-rice-elevator-beating-doesn-define-article-1.2176204">Ray Rice</a> knocked his former fiancee (now wife) unconscious in an elevator. <a href="http://www.ijreview.com/2014/09/177641-see-photos-got-star-rb-adrian-peterson-indicted-child-abuse-decide-went-far/">Adrian Peterson</a> beat his son with a tree branch. <br />
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These are not nice people. No, these are horrible people, and I can say as a woman once married to a man who <a href="http://philosophyofklo.blogspot.com/2009/08/is-alcoholism-recoverable.html">abused both myself</a> and <a href="http://philosophyofklo.blogspot.com/2015/09/getting-stuck-in-middle-of-government.html">my children</a> as well as <a href="http://philosophyofklo.blogspot.com/2014/06/so-i-woke-up-in-bad-mood-today.html">a rape survivor </a>that I would never be an apologist for this sort of behavior. It is never okay to do the things that Peterson, Rice, Mayweather, Lewis, Roethlisberger, or <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/sports/2016/02/18/3750960/peyton-manning-rape-culture/">Peyton Manning </a>(just because he kept it under the radar does not mean it didn't happen!) did. <br />
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Their bad actions do not make "Deflategate" less legitimate, however.<br />
<br />
The NFL isn't wrong to punish the New England Patriots for the air pressure debacle that has become known as Deflateglate. This was a football game issue, and it is being sanctioned as such. We may not like it, but it is fair. <br />
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What they, and many other national and international sports teams ARE wrong about, however, are that no set sanctions exist for deplorable behavior such as those monsters in the meme posted above.<br />
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This opens up a can of worms where people will start screaming about what exactly constitutes "unacceptable behavior" (a DUI? shoplifting? marrying a cousin? using the wrong bathroom in North Carolina?) and we'll have the whole political correct screaming fit because<a href="http://philosophyofklo.blogspot.com/2016/04/when-did-respectful-discourse-become.html"> it's impossible to have respectful discourse anymore</a>, but it seems to me that something has to be done.<br />
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This bad behavior has been allowed to continue because these athletes are so very talented and it's off the field, so the contractual language is fuzzy.<br />
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Yeah, friends and neighbors ... Deflateglate's a smokescreen for a bigger issue that nobody wants to talk about.<br />
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Let's please have that conversation... <br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13955854427063032485noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3196908370614674789.post-12276561723282826052016-04-30T21:35:00.000-04:002016-04-30T23:07:18.596-04:00The Angst I Felt at the Prospect of Having an Average Child ... and Will She Ever Forgive Me for (Even for the Short-Term) Believing That About Her?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
There was no question leading up to the days before her birth last June that my fourth daughter, Clara Hope, had some large shoes to fill. I think most babies coming into the world with older siblings do to a degree, but poor Clara has the gift (or curse) of truly incredible sisters.<br />
<br />
Although her next oldest sister, Gabrielle, had <a href="http://philosophyofklo.blogspot.com/2014/01/hesitating-sharing-of-joyor-fragility.html">by far the worst birth story</a>, Clara's pregnancy was the most difficult (when they tell you that childbirth gets more difficult when you approach forty, they're not lying). I was uncomfortable all the time, my feet swelled, my blood pressure fluctuated, I had unspeakable migraines, I had weird bouts of confusion and pain that were ultimately tied to potassium and other vitamin deficiencies, and so on. Because of the drama of Gabrielle's birth, there was no question that Clara was going to be a C-section delivery, then we found out she was breech, so this opened up a whole new can of worms.<br />
<br />
Anyway, her C-section was scheduled for a Friday morning, but my water broke Wednesday afternoon and she was born that evening.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNYs1f9LYl8RV3rahsww3PDI7KdRubb5WGh4U70GFtnmiMgOPN1yN0giwooarRo_cwyiaoTI05XuA9USSuaf9FGizFMnq82aiSEWfYjhZ25i9iQ6-xkPLy1fTw7x9TC-QBeKm1rkQPU7vb/s1600/CH+Newborn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNYs1f9LYl8RV3rahsww3PDI7KdRubb5WGh4U70GFtnmiMgOPN1yN0giwooarRo_cwyiaoTI05XuA9USSuaf9FGizFMnq82aiSEWfYjhZ25i9iQ6-xkPLy1fTw7x9TC-QBeKm1rkQPU7vb/s320/CH+Newborn.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<br />
The day after she was born, we were informed that Clara had failed her newborn hearing screening. They'd need to repeat it the day we were discharged. When they repeated the hearing test, she still failed. They set up an appointment for several months in advance and let us bring her home.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvFKjyqzbWp993HjbR6WyNLUSV4XOvkIbGVyoBUFy_Z22774lvmTzndHQUkaljvq7OPoieInVguKDpLGnlZjx8-JFb1xIqvtP7ACiBMtEiN5ttVb03ecRAZQxujNB32qHdiIaZA1kW2rtu/s1600/ch+and+HH.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvFKjyqzbWp993HjbR6WyNLUSV4XOvkIbGVyoBUFy_Z22774lvmTzndHQUkaljvq7OPoieInVguKDpLGnlZjx8-JFb1xIqvtP7ACiBMtEiN5ttVb03ecRAZQxujNB32qHdiIaZA1kW2rtu/s320/ch+and+HH.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<br />
Once home, Clara decided that she did not like to nurse. Ironically, I've never been one of those vehement "breast feed or die" women, but at the same time, I've had incredibly good luck with my first three daughters and they breast fed almost to a year old. I didn't know how upsetting it would be for me that Clara wouldn't nurse, but it was terrible!<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2vAhWbEVCFfvm8GRY3Co5GU4uhEC1S0uoYItgJ9Pg7q6emB4jOAkx6_BK9ShszlwZX1nXCkr_EYNnivv8-_12uizGlxNciq1-QFq91XoWdA-TGQqNclIWzjSBHRt3wCPh2K-4x_aEEw-w/s1600/More+Hungry+CH.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2vAhWbEVCFfvm8GRY3Co5GU4uhEC1S0uoYItgJ9Pg7q6emB4jOAkx6_BK9ShszlwZX1nXCkr_EYNnivv8-_12uizGlxNciq1-QFq91XoWdA-TGQqNclIWzjSBHRt3wCPh2K-4x_aEEw-w/s320/More+Hungry+CH.jpg" width="239" /></a></div>
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<br />
And then I got to feel like a selfish jerk for the first of many times, because here I was having a pity party about my baby not wanting to nurse and she was literally wasting away. She was at the doctor's every day for a week while we tried to figure out how to handle it (in case you're wondering, I became slave to the breast pump and we supplemented it with formula ... it was a very long summer).<br />
<br />
We worked very hard to get her weight up, and things seemed to be going well, and then out of the blue, Clara stopped breathing one night. I was out with my oldest daughter celebrating her 21st birthday, and when I got home the baby was coughing and coughing, which she'd evidently been doing all night, then suddenly she stopped and couldn't breathe. It was a nightmare I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. They kept her in the hospital under observation for two days, and it was unspeakable. She was such a trooper, but the rest of us were collective messes.<br />
<br />
The big stuff settled down after that; well, as much as possible with four children, a dog, a cat, and all adults working full-time jobs. I took Clara to her three-hour hearing screening, and she passed it with flying colors. Life is good.<br />
<br />
And yet, I have this problem ...<br />
<br />
Clara's sister Gabrielle is sixteen months older than she is. What that means, of course, is that it's impossible not to do a bit of comparing, no matter how hard you try to avoid it (and Gabby's so young still that it's hard to avoid).<br />
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<br />
Gabrielle walked early. She talked early. She is, at the age of two, the most naturally funny human being I've ever met. Her speech was slightly delayed by a year's worth of ear infections, but once she got tubes put in her vocabulary has taken off like a rocket. As a very young baby, her receptive language was unbelievable, and that has continued.<br />
<br />
When she was a year old, Gabby said Mama, Dada, Ari (her sister), Mimi (grandmother), Howard (the dog), kitty, cheese, cracker, more, all done, and so on.<br />
<br />
Clara says Dada. Possibly Mama. There are rumors that she said water once, but no witnesses.<br />
<br />
When Gabby was Clara's age, she was building block towers that meet milestones set for three-year-olds. Clara bangs two blocks together on a good day.<br />
<br />
I see what I'm typing, and I hate it. Gabby's my favorite child and is going to be an engineer, and Clara is going to be a bank teller, right? No, that's not it at all.<br />
<br />
I have two other daughters, one an exceptional musician and linguist (I could brag for hours but I won't) and one a competitive gymnast (same). These two girls are superstars.<br />
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<br />
If our beliefs about Clara are tied to her crawling well over a full month after Gabrielle did, what is going to happen when you add in phrases like "Fulbright Scholar" and "elite gymnast"?<br />
<br />
And so for awhile, we believed that Clara was just going to be an average child. In a family of academics, this is something that I think Jeff and I struggled with silently and separately ... what if Clara wasn't as smart as the others?<br />
<br />
We've gotten to know Miss Clara Hope pretty well by now, though, as I'm sure you can imagine. I look into her eyes, see the sparkle, and wonder how I could ever have doubted that her mind is just as brilliant (and likely just as diabolical, at times) as every one of her sisters'.<br />
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<br />
My mother kept saying to me that, even if she wasn't smart, she wouldn't be loved any less, and this was always, always the truth.<br />
<br />
Now we know that she is smart--too smart, not to beat a dead horse ... she sits at her day care and steals pacifiers from the other babies, laughs, then gives them back; she locates every possible piece of detritus on the floor (it doesn't matter if the floor was just vacuumed) and gets it into her mouth; she waves bye-bye and claps her hands when you say, "Yay, Clara!" and loves playing in her toy kitchen with her sisters.<br />
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<br />
It took us awhile to realize that Clara is a child that will never do something until she decides that she wants to do it. Not walk, not talk, not crawl (although she started doing that this week), nothing. It occurs to me that we do at times treat Gabby like a trick pony--"You have to see Gabby count to ten ... her Hulk impression ... her rendition of 'Happy Birthday to You' ... how she hits the high note in 'Let it Go' ... her block towers."<br />
<br />
Nope, Clara saw that writing on the wall and decided to pull this average thing. Too bad we're on to her ... although I think it's been a tremendous learning experience for all of us.<br />
<br />
I loved Clara Hope when she was inside me, I loved her the second she was born, and I've loved her every minute since then. I would not love her any less if she was not exceptional like her sisters because I love her for <i>her</i>, which is of course how I got to see that she was never "average" at all, even after I'd resigned myself to it.<br />
<br />
I don't know why the idea of an average child was hard for me, but Clara helped me come to terms with it, just before she looked at me again with that sparkle in her eye so much like Gabby's and said, "Mama."</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13955854427063032485noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3196908370614674789.post-14172961917520456472016-04-21T20:28:00.000-04:002016-04-21T20:28:00.901-04:00When Did Respectful Discourse Become a Thing of the Past?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Fact: I used to love writing pieces that generated discussion.<br />
<br />
I didn't care if people agreed with me or not. In fact, I kind of liked it when they argued with me, and we could have a generally respectful conversation about the issues at hand.<br />
<br />
I am a very well-educated woman. I am also extremely well-read, and not just on one side of an issue (I tend to get historical or cultural obsessions; for example, I'm pretty sure I've read every book ever written about the Kennedy assassination with every possible bias--don't try to sell your "Oswald acted alone" bullshit to me--and I don't think there's a person born later than me that knows more about the Manson family than I do). I am something of an introvert (in other words, I do a lot of listening).<br />
<br />
I do form opinions. I was raised in my formative years by an attorney and a nurse and later by a contract specialist. It was possible--not frequent but possible--for opinions to change in my family.<br />
<br />
More important than the changing of opinions, though, were the discussions that happened, and I owe my parents and stepparents deeply for giving us the great gift of open mindedness.<br />
<br />
My siblings and I accepted same-sex relationships because we were extremely close to family and adult friends that were gay. We were never exposed to anything but natural and appropriate love from these people. When we heard our friends making fun of homosexuals or were exposed to politicians go on and on about the dangers of exposing innocent children to these terrible people, we were flummoxed.<br />
<br />
I can't believe that it's 2016 and people still want to beat down some of my family members because they were born with an attraction to the same sex. I think it's ludicrous. I spent weeks living with lesbian couples during school vacations, and it did no harm to me. I was never touched inappropriately, exposed to bizarre rites, or even privy to any porn. I would even go so far to say that it might even have been more normal than my living situation at the time.<br />
<br />
It used to be that someone would say, "I am morally opposed to homosexuality," and I would ask, "Why?" and even though I didn't agree with what the person said, I could see where he or she was coming from. I could respect that. He or she could respect me.<br />
<br />
I have friends that own guns and keep them in their house. I do not. They make their choice, and I respect that. I am not trying to take away their second amendment right. They are not trying to force gun ownership down my throat. We can discuss this. We can agree to disagree.<br />
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Why--and how--has this changed?<br />
<br />
I use the anti-vaccination movement as an example.<br />
<br />
A British quack named Andrew Wakefield <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/01/05/autism.vaccines/">faked a study claiming that there was a link between pediatric vaccinations and childhood autism</a>. It has <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Wakefield">been widely debunked</a>. For some reason, people don't want to debate this, which is really a non-issue (The <a href="http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/autism.html">CDC website states unequivocally, "Vaccines do not cause autism."</a>).<br />
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No, they want to fight about it. They want to put up Aidan Quinn and Jenny McCarthy as poster children for the "my kid got autism from a vaccination" movement. They have no idea how dangerous this is. (**Note--I am a teacher, and autism is a mighty challenge, although I see in both my professional and personal life parents that raise magical autistic children that they view as the gifts they are).<br />
<br />
And when I say fight, I mean FIGHT.<br />
<br />
You could show them statistics proving otherwise until you are blue in the face, and they will just stick to their pathetic, holier than thou, "You don't know what you're talking about."<br />
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THEN FREAKING TELL ME!<br />
<br />
I used to enjoy debating politics, but it's ugly now. People see only in black and white. I'm noticing it more now because I'm not really thrilled about any of the American candidates, I suspect, but people are just vehemently opposed to civil discussion.<br />
<br />
THEY JUST WANT TO WIN.<br />
<br />
I thought I married men that cared about what I had to say, that thought I was interesting, that wanted to talk to me and hear my thoughts and share their thoughts so lots of mind augmenting could go on. I was wrong on both counts (but at least one never hit me or drove drunk with my children in the car), so I thought for awhile that it was just me.<br />
<br />
The more I watch the news, though, the more I look at my Facebook feed, the more I listen to conversations around me, the more frightened I am as I realize that there are precious few conversations characterized with respectful discourse going on anymore.<br />
<br />
I don't have to agree with you, you don't have to agree with me ... but I need to be able to see where you are coming from on some level. That seems to happen less and less likely these days.<br />
<br />
Or is it just me?</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13955854427063032485noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3196908370614674789.post-83556311332548871262016-01-09T13:59:00.000-05:002016-01-09T13:59:04.813-05:00Children's Hobbies: Contemplating When Passion Might Not be Possible<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
My sixth-grader, Ari, is a competitive gymnast. She grew up with <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0GjbZCEdJI&feature=email">a musical prodigy</a> for an older sister, but Ari never really had a burning passion for anything.<br />
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When she started asking for gymnastics lessons, we signed her up. Ari has always been a free spirit, just sort of floating through life with a smile on her face and sharing her beautiful heart with the masses.<br />
<br />
Weeks after her first gymnastics lesson, Ari was moved into the advanced beginner class. A week after that, she broke the growth plate in her foot hopping on the colored tiles at Hannaford and was out of commission. We sort of figured that would be it, that her unreliable attention span would flit onto something else, but we were mistaken.</div>
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When Ari was able to return to gymnastics, she was put on the pre-team class. Then she had to have her tonsils and adenoids out, which meant being out of gymnastics for several months.</div>
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Despite the setbacks, she quickly became an accomplished gymnast with a sweet and natural form. She competes well (she qualified for the state championship at her second meet of the year), and the discipline she puts into gymnastics has given her an impressive work ethic. Without gymnastics, she would not be a straight-A student or endlessly patient with her younger sisters or understanding about certain financial sacrifices we've all had to make.</div>
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Gymnastics has made my sweet, dippy, empathetic, kind, funny, sassy girl into a truly amazing young woman.<br />
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At a mid-November meet, Ari tore her Achilles' tendon during warmups. She competed anyway, choosing not to tell either her coach or her family that she was in serious pain. She won first all-around, but it came at a cost--no gymnastics until her injury healed.</div>
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This week, almost two months (and lots of doctor visits and physical therapy), she has returned to her gym. She is still going easy, but I haven't seen her smiling like this in months.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dy_xGG2U9acmA6h8cKfsYjrtO9TK9b9EUFml8G3L1aS1DYbjuak7PEhedr4qwtPTXj-7ynA14HqvOsW_rMjDQ' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Ari goofing around on the tumble track.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">First back walkover on the high beam since the injury.</span><br />
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What scares me is what will happen if there is another injury, one that is not as possible to recover from. What would that do to this little girl, to whom being a gymnast has become so much of her identity?<br />
<br />
She has two hour classes with her competition team three days a week and goes to open gym on the weekends she does not have competitions. She spends countless hours in the basement practicing on her panel mat and the balance beam her aunt acquired for her in a sketchy CraigsList deal.<br />
<br />
Ironically, physical therapy to rehab her ankle and strengthening exercises helped take up some of the time while she recovered, but what if there was an injury that did not allow this?<br />
<br />
Gymnastics is a physically grueling activity, and my Ari is tiny and breakable. With this recent injury, I find myself wondering if I should try to downplay the sport's status as the center of my daughter's universe.<br />
<br />
I want Ari to see herself as more than a gymnast, talented as she may be. I want her to be able to say, "I am a smart, beautiful, kind, funny, thoughtful young lady". That she focuses her energy on moving onto the next level of gymnastics instead of loving the zillions of other amazing things about herself hurts me a little.<br />
<br />
I love the happiness that Ari has found through gymnastics and the self-confidence and direction it has given a girl who was once kind of a drifter. I love watching her compete, and, yes, I like it when she places.<br />
<br />
Sometimes I just wish she'd discover a safer passion.<br />
<br />
I never had to worry about Emily breaking her neck on sheet music or falling off of her piano or dropping her bassoon on her head.<br />
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What gymnastics has given to Ari is priceless. I just fear that it is temporary, and the cost of that on my little girl would be even higher.<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13955854427063032485noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3196908370614674789.post-47982868456454139072016-01-06T21:38:00.001-05:002016-01-07T15:05:58.931-05:00Nightmares, my 20-Year-Old-Rape, and Bill Clinton<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
In January of 1998, I was raped at a Maine ski resort at a friend's condo where a small party was going on following a bit of barhopping. The story isn't particularly original <a href="http://philosophyofklo.blogspot.com/2009/04/its-never-too-late-to-come-to-terms.html">(it's here</a> if you're interested in reading it), and it's certainly not why I'm writing about this long-ago event at this late date.<br>
<br>
I should mention that I've written about the repercussions before as well,<a href="http://philosophyofklo.blogspot.com/2014/05/repercussions-of-rape-part-i.html"> here</a> and<a href="http://philosophyofklo.blogspot.com/2014/05/repercussions-of-rape-part-ii.html"> here,</a> but that's also not what has me in a a bad place right now.<br>
<br>
No, it's like it's coming back, and I am just a hot mess.<br>
<br>
I had the rape nightmare last night...and the night before. Not a random mosaic of images obviously symbolizing the rape in some way that I'm hopefully smart enough to figure out, not an "anxiety attack", but what was essentially a reenactment.<br>
<br>
I've been a disaster for days.<br>
<div>
<br></div>
<div>
You'd think that after all these years, I would stop doing this to myself, that my brain would just say, "Geez, Katie, it's been almost twenty years, let it go already!"</div>
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<br></div>
<div>
Yeah, not so easy...</div>
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<br></div>
<div>
It usually happens a lot in January, because that's when the event itself happened, but it has not ever been quite like this.<br>
<br>
It took me a bit to figure out why I'm going through this, why I am again ripped apart by the smart, sassy, feisty little girl who died in January of 1998 to be replaced by the woman typing this. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3w_cMlzpkXG44jazR8sO5Kr8ZZl6StCtfYs5uOUzIf_xrWoiygdzGkqBuCZBV8az1XZE-h2akAwy7T2FPDf9YvZ1pvLTq-4tPIiPxjNHEoDloqeAgzt3DX9kqpYgRr8qnibOuKb66LZE5/s1600/three+musks.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3w_cMlzpkXG44jazR8sO5Kr8ZZl6StCtfYs5uOUzIf_xrWoiygdzGkqBuCZBV8az1XZE-h2akAwy7T2FPDf9YvZ1pvLTq-4tPIiPxjNHEoDloqeAgzt3DX9kqpYgRr8qnibOuKb66LZE5/s320/three+musks.jpg" width="319"></a><br>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Me, brother Mike, sister Meghan </span><br>
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><br></span>
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmsRq6jZDxzUl_RVFJrnT5oDyhvaEri5lIIa8qWfd7GaPKFV_5LwTpF9qZmOLTTypqYkaIouj3tQeIDJhtFlu8Bh-4ajNjxK2z3uzXG97SkTX3z9dD7mdSuMUYDqRfxiSGTecNyryYMjhq/s1600/childhood.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmsRq6jZDxzUl_RVFJrnT5oDyhvaEri5lIIa8qWfd7GaPKFV_5LwTpF9qZmOLTTypqYkaIouj3tQeIDJhtFlu8Bh-4ajNjxK2z3uzXG97SkTX3z9dD7mdSuMUYDqRfxiSGTecNyryYMjhq/s320/childhood.jpg" width="320"></a></span><br>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">In the old neighborhood (I'm on the right, holding a play I'd written for the neighbor kids to perform, I think)</span><br>
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTHddSS5LojhwFkvl8ZYDh8hN_4Rd5qtIzs9fC5r17eWVjkXE4Xh2LXroWC-4QEY3XVfnKinXer-vsWkjUu2v_k44c203DvxrRN7AioiuiL5eNTfe1ZOEbsvJv2r491OEJn2LB4XgId05q/s1600/more+childhood.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTHddSS5LojhwFkvl8ZYDh8hN_4Rd5qtIzs9fC5r17eWVjkXE4Xh2LXroWC-4QEY3XVfnKinXer-vsWkjUu2v_k44c203DvxrRN7AioiuiL5eNTfe1ZOEbsvJv2r491OEJn2LB4XgId05q/s320/more+childhood.jpg" width="240"></a></span><br>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">With another childhood friend.</span><br>
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<div>
A woman who put on a lot of weight, because I was pretty the night I was raped and I do not want to be pretty anymore.<br>
<br>
A woman who struggles with virtually every relationship, from family to friendships and everywhere in between, because she trusts nobody.<br>
<br>
A woman who cowers with fear at bullies, injustice, and those who habitually do the wrong thing.<br>
<br>
A woman who almost lost her passion for her profession because of the pain she lived with, pain she lives with to this day.<br>
<br>
A woman who apologizes all the time, to the point where it's annoying and she knows it is, but she can't help it.<br>
<br>
It took me years to share that this had happened to me, years. I'd buried it down deep, and while it shaped the adult I ultimately became, I do not think I experienced direct emotional pain on a regular basis. And once I shared, of course, everyone said, "Get help."<br>
<br>
So I tried to get help, from a variety of sources using a variety of techniques. I think about the rape and my rapist more since trying to "get help" then I ever did before, largely because I had a huge flashback brought about by<a href="http://philosophyofklo.blogspot.com/2014/01/hesitating-sharing-of-joyor-fragility.html"> the bloody trauma of my daughter Gabrielle's birth</a> that led to what was eventually diagnosed as PTSD and Postpartum Depression.<br>
<br>
The last treatment I tried involved the therapist forcing me to relive every detail. Remember and retell and relive every single freaking detail. Blood sticky on my legs. Having my face forced into a pillow, smelling laundry detergent and tasting cotton. The pain getting ever worse. Blood, everywhere. The laughter of my rapist, which echos in my nightmares. He thought it was funny.<br>
<br>
After that, I figured I'd just deal on my own, and I've been doing okay.<br>
<br>
Until this year.<br>
<br>
I couldn't figure out what had changed, why the rape has been on my mind constantly, marring any happiness I should be enjoying.<br>
<br>
And then it hit me ...<br>
<br>
The so-called "liberal media" has gone crazy posting pieces implying that Bill Clinton is guilty of sexual assaults (which I read to be "rapes") in order to knock down Hillary Clinton's chances of breaking the glass elevator and becoming the first female president.<br>
<br>
It was the terminology "sexual assault", not "sexual inappropriateness" that got me going, I think.<br>
<br>
Women had affairs with Bill Clinton, and they were paid handsomely in cash or favors to keep quiet about it (I've had bosses imply that my future with a company would improve with sexual favors). Women were sexually harassed by Bill Clinton at the workplace (I have been sexually harassed at the workplace, more than once).<br>
<br>
Those women, women who were certainly victims but took bribes to keep quiet about it, don't know anything about being sodomized and screaming and unable to keep your mouth open because it is literally cracking at the edges, about being gagged with their own bloody panties, about having pieces bitten out of their skin. They don't know what it is like to have these images flash every time a man kisses you, even if it is a man you know and trust. They don't know what it is to scream for help knowing that everyone upstairs is passed out and the music is too loud.<br>
<br>
And yet they are putting themselves out there as victims for political gain.<br>
<br>
I would not ever intentionally cheapen the sexual assault of another human being, but it seems that this is being done to me ... and I can't possibly be the only one.<br>
<br>
So I guess I can blame Bill Clinton for my nightmares, a sleazeball who was a sexual predator but by most accounts lacks the violent, sadistic streak that killed the finest parts of me on a cold winter night.<br>
<br>
Or, I could politely ask the right-wing, anti-Hillary people to just shut up about it. My wounds are salty enough, and every time I read about Bill's dalliances and sexual misappropriations, they burn more and more.<br>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmRU2iiflR9GnOwH6FQ65_fEgHyk0AZaZUvJiY1aDgGvJXihNX26y1ddR5HaIgxFmtttF_1CJeqQaod8YZlxYZH8FxdTaQeJ7XMg15U80CBtv8r5EAPMmddUlEGVfybCeiOg7StnIPJdHU/s1600/unpretty.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmRU2iiflR9GnOwH6FQ65_fEgHyk0AZaZUvJiY1aDgGvJXihNX26y1ddR5HaIgxFmtttF_1CJeqQaod8YZlxYZH8FxdTaQeJ7XMg15U80CBtv8r5EAPMmddUlEGVfybCeiOg7StnIPJdHU/s320/unpretty.jpg" width="320"></a><br>
<span style="font-size: x-small;">Most recent pics: still shooting for unpretty...</span><br>
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRifYm_APqV_IfL5bw9HI2VY-gxLYZYe1uOnl0Kz_Pe4kVt3Tgn2t6dswLclzimi6gx5W_W8IUgh5RJ2T-ZGYS8Y5USu8hbru6Xv1lFr3OVW1sKh6KNpNxljEoIe66XCX8sOc6RNDgPjn7/s1600/unpretty+with+hat.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRifYm_APqV_IfL5bw9HI2VY-gxLYZYe1uOnl0Kz_Pe4kVt3Tgn2t6dswLclzimi6gx5W_W8IUgh5RJ2T-ZGYS8Y5USu8hbru6Xv1lFr3OVW1sKh6KNpNxljEoIe66XCX8sOc6RNDgPjn7/s320/unpretty+with+hat.jpg" width="320"></a></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13955854427063032485noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3196908370614674789.post-43215065950541368042016-01-03T22:21:00.000-05:002016-01-03T22:42:40.912-05:00On The Oregon Militia Stand-off, Guns, and Terrorism<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Although the big media outlets have been slow to pick up on it, you've probably heard about the current situation going on in Oregon right now. The bottom line is, <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/03/us/oregon-wildlife-refuge-protest/">a militia group has taken over a federal government building and are refusing to leave</a>. (While they are not calling themselves a militia group, it fits the parameters)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Their ostensible reason for their actions is that father and son Dwight and Steve Hammond have been ordered back to court tomorrow (Monday, 1/4) to serve out the remainder of their sentence. The Hammonds were jailed on arson charges following them allegedly burning many acres of land to cover up evidence of deer poaching (The Hammonds, of course, are offering a different explanation for the fires, but they were tried in a court of law by a jury of their peers, as is their constitutional right).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It's important to note that both Hammonds have made very clear that they have not asked for not do not wish any sort of "help" or "publicity" from this group, led by <a href="http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2016/01/03/3735627/gop-candidates-who-supported-cliven-bundy/">the well-known Bundy group</a> (father Cliven and son Ammon, not Ted). Noteworthy is that the so-called Bundy group has received accolades from candidates ranging from Donald Trump, Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Mike Huckabee. Other Republican candidates, such as Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, have spoken out against this dangerous group.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Perhaps most frighteningly, the Bundy group and their terrorist militia are also refusing to give terms for what they want, for what would make them leave, which makes the whole thing even stranger.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBomoTCOTXnu_BaLiXEwl57Ybh10t7tvRkzWLkF5QcOoZuh5OEeC9pJNXUQY4cv5DY3NX6e-AVaWlxCXmYfmHPgEG-liQG4iOkftLZuhEMUvAywqLXqUvEb9zCht5kZLjaMO5t5xCqVUKL/s1600/Cliven+BUndy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBomoTCOTXnu_BaLiXEwl57Ybh10t7tvRkzWLkF5QcOoZuh5OEeC9pJNXUQY4cv5DY3NX6e-AVaWlxCXmYfmHPgEG-liQG4iOkftLZuhEMUvAywqLXqUvEb9zCht5kZLjaMO5t5xCqVUKL/s320/Cliven+BUndy.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">Cliven Bundy</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/03/us/oregon-wildlife-refuge-protest/index.html">From CNN</a>:</span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When asked what it would take for the protesters to leave, Bundy did not offer specifics. He said he and those with him are prepared to stay put for days or weeks.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"We feel that we will occupy this as long as necessary," he said.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"We are using the wildlife refuge as a place for individuals across the United States to come and assist in helping the people of Harney County claim back their lands and resources," he said.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"The people will need to be able to use the land and resources without fear as free men and women. We know it will take some time."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Oh, and then there's the fact, also <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/03/us/oregon-wildlife-refuge-protest/index.html">reported by CNN</a>, that "<span style="background-color: #fefefe; color: #262626; line-height: 30.0001px;">After the march Saturday, the armed protesters broke into the refuge's unoccupied building and refused to leave. Officials have said there are no government employees in the building."</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It is my understanding that, with that action, these people crossed the "T-Line" and are now officially terrorists. Merriam-Webster defines a terrorist as, "T<span style="background-color: white; color: #3b3e41; letter-spacing: 0.64px; line-height: 24px;">he use of violent acts to frighten the people in an area as a way of trying to achieve a political goal." Neighbors have spoken out about being frightened, and obviously these yahoos have a political goal.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #3b3e41; letter-spacing: 0.64px; line-height: 24px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #3b3e41; letter-spacing: 0.64px; line-height: 24px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They are terrorists.</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #3b3e41; letter-spacing: 0.64px; line-height: 24px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #3b3e41; letter-spacing: 0.64px; line-height: 24px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This country is in a uproar right now, with hysteria about Syrian refugees and violence against African-Americans leading to cries of "Terrorism". </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #3b3e41; letter-spacing: 0.64px; line-height: 24px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #3b3e41; letter-spacing: 0.64px; line-height: 24px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And yet ... nobody wants to call this impending mess in Oregon, this collection of white right-wingers toting automatic weapons as they take over a federal building, terrorists. </span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fefefe; color: #262626; line-height: 30.0001px;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I think it comes down to two things, really ...</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">1. We all have that crazy uncle that you never know how far he is willing to go. I see a crazy relative in the face of these guys ... makes it a bit less scary.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">2. There are many people, a silent militia of frighteningly large numbers, with a gun collection that claims to keep it "just in case it's ever needed".</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So, yeah, perhaps it really is as simple as guns, that this is going to be the second amendment showdown that these people have long been spoiling for. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I have never shot a gun in my life. I'm pretty sure I've never even held one. I'm a little bit fuzzy on the actual process of firing a gun, and honestly I don't even know whether you load bullets or clips or what.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My dad owned guns when I was growing up, but I didn't realize it at the time because he kept them hidden. I'm sure many of the houses I went to as a kid also had guns, but it never really came up in conversation.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Simply put, guns were never really part of my life beyond books, movies, and the city of Dover's police department.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Why they are suddenly such a hot button issue blows my mind, and I'm trying to figure out if my lack of personal experience with guns makes me a voice of reason or a clueless dolt. Please let me know in the comments ...</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I have no problem with owning guns for hunting. While I would never be able to hunt myself, I understand that there are people that rely on the food they hunt. Go, hunters!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Okay, onto the next thing: home protection.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If you want to have a gun to feel safe at home, more power to you. Make sure you are trained in how to use it and make sure you're never going to be hyped up enough to accidentally shoot your husband when he comes in through the back door or something.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I also strongly believe that these guns (intended for home protection) should be locked, always. I'm a mother and a teacher, and the idea of guns running amok makes my blood run cold. (I'm going to pretend not to mention that the odds are that you would struggle, during a home invasion by a stranger, to get your hands on your own secured gun).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The other contingency of gunowners, and by far the largest, are those that have many guns, at least some of them automatic weapons. Their argument for this level of stockpile is that they are preparing to protect their property should anyone try to take it away. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">These, my friends, have the mindset that they are essentially part of a militia, and the Bundy group fits into this category like a glove.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So the people in Oregon (I read comments following an article earlier today, and one line resonated with me: "If the right-wing is going to invite these yahoos to their parties, they cannot be shocked when they want to dance.") are perhaps unknowingly setting up quite the interesting situation in our country. I pray it's not another Waco or Ruby Ridge, but with the current political situation, it could be something equally disastrous.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Take Republican frontrunner Donald Trump, for example. If he speaks out in support of this latest action, he is ultimately condoning the fact that militia movements are going to be America's new domestic terrorism. If he speaks out against the Oregon nuts, he will potentially lose a huge percentage of his supporters. As of this writing, Trump has (wisely, in my humble opinion) said nothing about the takeover of a federal building in Oregon. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">While some people are confident that these are people that will give up and go home if ignored long enough, I'm truly frightened. These gun-waving white men scare me more than Syrian refugees, more than the recent spike in African-American violence. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There are <a href="http://rogersrangers.8m.com/">these underground militias everywhere</a>, in all fifty states if I had to guess. Will this nonsense from the Bundy group (who are brave enough to express outrage in the names of people who asked him to keep his outrage to himself, brave enough to take over an unoccupied government building) lead to militia outings all over America ... and a further split over how the approach is different when the "terrorists" have white skin.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What are your thoughts on this debacle?</span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13955854427063032485noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3196908370614674789.post-48347770037403282392016-01-02T21:11:00.003-05:002016-01-02T21:39:05.761-05:00Exploring the Concept of "Smart" in 2016<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Just to get this out there, I come from an educated family.<br />
<br />
The question was never, "<b>Are</b> you going to college?" but "<b>Where </b>are you going to college?" My sister has a PhD in Microbiology. My mother is a nurse practitioner. My father is a lawyer. As merely a teacher, I'm in fact under-educated for my family.<br />
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I'm sure you've all heard of "book smart" versus "street smart" ... virtually everyone in my family falls in the "book smart" category, high on analyzing Shakespeare but low on common sense.<br />
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I used to buy into that line, that you were either smart at learning or smart at learning how to do stuff. Instead, I've come to believe, both as a teacher and as a person, that we all have a combination of these basic intelligence slants, some higher than others but some combination thereof.<br />
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Much of my changed thinking on the nature of intelligence is based on someone near and dear to my heart, a friendship that goes back to high school.<br />
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Let me introduce you to "Will" (obviously not his real name), an ironworker and a musician. Will graduated from high school in 1995 and has had almost exclusively labor-intensive jobs since then. (He took one college course along the way and, of course, earned an A.)<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj35KWlC3XauQonJ842uzssFLpKh_iBFyH5E8PEbYA94E9qsTnZNa-z3lQfmXhI-Nt2XNdtq5D-_B1FVxnJXFV4NWklfwyVd3HhWHHyq1oODfVNGJVE7YP4WiwqwI_R3xbMHlHJp4NUqCJ2/s1600/IMG_0368.JPG" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj35KWlC3XauQonJ842uzssFLpKh_iBFyH5E8PEbYA94E9qsTnZNa-z3lQfmXhI-Nt2XNdtq5D-_B1FVxnJXFV4NWklfwyVd3HhWHHyq1oODfVNGJVE7YP4WiwqwI_R3xbMHlHJp4NUqCJ2/s320/IMG_0368.JPG" width="240" /></a><br />
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Will is gifted at working with machines and metals, often coming up with innovative solutions to problems that seem insurmountable. He does this at work all the time, and he does it in other facets of his life as well. He has done lots of work on various cars I own over the years, sometimes a simple brake job, sometimes greater challenges (one of my headlights did not work on low beam; it was not the bulb, and the mechanic couldn't figure out the problem. I kept getting pulled over for having a headlight out, but I'd take it to the mechanic and it would suddenly be working. In desperation, I called Will; he simply cross-wired the low beams and the high beams, and everything worked just fine).<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIAV0zgTdOqTz0lR-jEBb5q2NUQ31TrbeeqVYhR5d0UqbYSKTBeWS4FPvbVrPCQ8XEuJEZUH5Iimyn4l7EIOykygxKX_SQUFObb0PQbFeJ5c30ADHXriTuIhl47ZLs27gse2EMNblW30Xr/s1600/IMG_0374.JPG" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIAV0zgTdOqTz0lR-jEBb5q2NUQ31TrbeeqVYhR5d0UqbYSKTBeWS4FPvbVrPCQ8XEuJEZUH5Iimyn4l7EIOykygxKX_SQUFObb0PQbFeJ5c30ADHXriTuIhl47ZLs27gse2EMNblW30Xr/s320/IMG_0374.JPG" width="240" /></a><br />
I said to him just yesterday, "One of these days, something is going to come up that you will not be able to fix."<br />
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He shrugged (he's kind of cocky about his skills) and mentioned a couple of failures he's had.<br />
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Will is often on fire (literally) at his job, so he is usually dressed in dirty jeans with burns in them and t-shirts stained with steel dust. His hands are permanently discolored despite the fact that he washes them regularly. He is tall and big, wears glasses, and the overall effect upon first glance is, "Laborer. Good at his job. Not smart enough for anything more, but he looks like he works hard."<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6pIBy6rbAuf2-pA0lV5xUqwZXWIbKZECyerlmrdIMoarEV-I23wDCEf_DRBRmhbSW6Y0yNpEPa-TiJ71tGuzyGS_hyphenhyphenAEhUQ42SwVpBBvFvZUMZwYPBlHc7zK4QvyCkPbXk2kZ3CO1Pe8B/s1600/IMG_0375.JPG" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6pIBy6rbAuf2-pA0lV5xUqwZXWIbKZECyerlmrdIMoarEV-I23wDCEf_DRBRmhbSW6Y0yNpEPa-TiJ71tGuzyGS_hyphenhyphenAEhUQ42SwVpBBvFvZUMZwYPBlHc7zK4QvyCkPbXk2kZ3CO1Pe8B/s320/IMG_0375.JPG" width="240" /></a><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuXzFh-5R0PfbCcm69Xl1iOUk-NP34luR3serlsj1ueI57wZLF2NdEMIhoNsn81TNKqX9DvaMCKbfhp5N89tYWp5qMbCIoBw6kTzo0VEqQ9J5tnnXYhpVUROmQfNN2dugCparPcv5wDU9I/s1600/IMG_0370.JPG" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuXzFh-5R0PfbCcm69Xl1iOUk-NP34luR3serlsj1ueI57wZLF2NdEMIhoNsn81TNKqX9DvaMCKbfhp5N89tYWp5qMbCIoBw6kTzo0VEqQ9J5tnnXYhpVUROmQfNN2dugCparPcv5wDU9I/s320/IMG_0370.JPG" width="240" /></a><br />
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But I have known this man since we were fourteen-year-old kids. I know that he took college-prep classes and got As and Bs with pretty much no effort, that he is a bookworm that can understand and discuss literature that I studied in college (I was an English major, too), that he reads informational magazines, that he watches the History Channel, Discovery, Nat Geo, and so on obsessively.<br />
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While Will never went to college (for financial reasons, not because he didn't get a much higher SAT score the one time he took it than I did in my five attempts), I would argue that he is educated because he takes the time to educate himself--through books, through documentaries, through conversations with experts.<br />
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And then, of course, there's Will's other passion--music. He has been playing with live bands, guitar and bass guitar, since we were in high school. Music is an art, but it is one that requires strict discipline and regular daily practice. He is a gifted musician, can tune a guitar in minutes (and tell if it's out of tune in a nanosecond or two), and is able to think on his feet quickly enough to stay in synch with other band members.<br />
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When ice fishing or boating or hiking or fixing cars or replacing drywall or rebuilding a garage, Will keeps us a running commentary on what is happening or why. He's taught me, among other things, that you can see where stripers are running by watching the seabirds flocking; that setting up a tent requires a lot of concentration (but not a manual); that you need to hold a nail gun flat and squeeze the trigger quickly; that you should be absolutely sure that you got the right oil filter before asking someone to change the oil on your car; that you should take the cover off the brake fluid reservoir when doing brakes; that getting your mom's Jeep stuck in a mudhole isn't totally insurmountable (but it will not be clean); that there is one person in the world that I have never beaten at chess (Will, of course); that meals should always begin with onions, mushrooms, and garlic and almost always include beer; that <i>Lord of the Flies</i> was a depressing book because the boat that came and stopped the massacre of Ralph just in time was itself on its way to massacre human beings; and about a million other things over the years.<br />
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Both in terms of learning (book smart) and in terms of learning by doing things (street smart), Will is the smartest person I know.<br />
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If you met Will, though, I doubt that you'd share my opinion on that. He often looks like a big dumb dirty ironworker (and will, in fact, often say, "What do I know? I'm just a stupid ironworker". The idea that he could be not just street-smart but book-smart might appear ludicrous. I stand by what I said, though.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgc4hVhdlg3dmr4rBZuaD13fXrr2sBgc-IlWGcI53LQITT5BRdXmIn0a5GrScVtLi6eN3G8vWXgE5DAfBIVUmkOjG8phBxZWZx2yjiI8NtjJ5kbwctANi-2ChSSc2sok-6lwu0FcfUhOaJQ/s1600/IMG_0372.JPG" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgc4hVhdlg3dmr4rBZuaD13fXrr2sBgc-IlWGcI53LQITT5BRdXmIn0a5GrScVtLi6eN3G8vWXgE5DAfBIVUmkOjG8phBxZWZx2yjiI8NtjJ5kbwctANi-2ChSSc2sok-6lwu0FcfUhOaJQ/s320/IMG_0372.JPG" width="240" /></a><br />
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Will might be the only person I know that is incredibly "smart" both innately and by education, but I have recently started to notice the different combinations that make up people I know.<br />
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My father, a lawyer, has always enjoyed building stuff. He used to be terrible at it, but he has improved greatly over the years. Carpentry is a learned skill for my father, not an innate one, but he is good at it. <br />
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A family member was recently hanging a TV and needed some help. I am married to a highly educated man with some innate intelligence, and he went and mounted the TV for my family member. I could not have done that as I have no knowledge whatsoever of wall studs and such, yet I have a beautiful college transcript (both undergrad and graduate) that contains more As than other letters.<br />
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In 2016, "smart" means something different different than it has traditionally. I am convinced that we have to focus not on book smart vs. street smart but on knowing and understanding the checks and balances necessary to maximize our own innate potential with education.<br />
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What are your thoughts?</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13955854427063032485noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3196908370614674789.post-31213465792753838402015-09-24T12:25:00.001-04:002015-09-24T15:44:38.904-04:00Losing a Recent Student<div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">On Tuesday morning, the faculty and staff at my school was called to the lecture hall. There, the Dean of Operations tearfully broke the news that one of our recent students had been killed in a car accident the night (or early morning) before.</span></div><div><br></div><div>We've had a lot of staff turnover, so for some her name meant nothing. Others of us, however, worked closely with this young lady every day for years. Speaking for my myself, I taught her either English or Advisory for over four years. I am distraught beyond words...</div><div><br></div><div>That doesn't mean, of course, that staff members unfamiliar with D were unaffected. It's always tragic when a child of 18 dies, no matter the circumstances, and most new staff members had to aid in supporting distraught students. D was a fellow student and peer of the group of kids that graduated in June, so many kiddos remain that were very close to her.</div><div><br></div><div>I teach in a very small town, and one of the great things is how everyone comes together in times of tragedy, whether they get along otherwise or not. Everyone in this small town is lifting high D's spirit to heaven and keeping her parents, siblings, and close friends in their thoughts and prayers. I fear that when the shock of this tragedy wears off, the gossip mill, the biggest thing in any small town, will go into overdrive. For right now, love is abounding, as it should be, and love and prayers for D are all over Facebook and the accident site and in the halls of my school.</div><div><br></div><div>D. is not the first student I've lost (RIP Teddy D...please show D. the ropes in heaven...you will like her, everybody does), but she is the one I had most recently and one I had an extremely close connection with at one point.</div><div><br></div><div>I don't know if this is common knowledge, but most teachers refer to their students as "my kids" or "my kiddos". For over four years, D. was one of my kids....and because I am me, she will be forever.</div><div><br></div><div>These are the things I will always, always remember about D.:</div><div><br></div><div>1. The Mickey Mouse sweatshirt she frequently wore. Every time I see Mickey attire, I will think of D.</div><div><br></div><div>2. The way she greeted me with, <span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">"Hey, Miss Loud, hey Miss Loud, hey!" every time I saw her.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">3. The ability she had to connect with a book. D. did not love to read (although I'm pretty sure she in general liked </span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;">it). When D. found a book that called out to her, she would devour it in a matter of days. She would write about it insightfully. She would discuss it intelligently and thoughtfully. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue Light', HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;"><br></span></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif">4. She adored her niece and wrote often in her journal about babysitting and time spent with the little girl.</font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif">5. She was loved by many different factions of students. Looking at D's Facebook wall, outpouring of emotions are coming from students of all social groups, all ages and grades. She was well-known; it's safe to say that she transcended most typical "cliques".</font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif">6. Although D was delightfully sassy, she had a heart of gold. Her laugh was infectious, and she shared it generously with pretty much everyone.</font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif">7. I once gave a writing assignment where my students had to write about a "defining moment" in their lives. Some students didn't understand the depth I was looking for ("a defining moment for me was when the dog ate my homework"), but D wrote the most poignant defining moment essay I have ever read. I will never forget D's defining moment and that she was willing to share it with me.</font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif">8. D's handwriting was like the cliche of what "girl handwriting" looks like in the 2000s...it's pretty, but big...a little bit of cursive combined with a little bit of print. She filled many class journals with this interesting script...</font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif">9. D did not like to read aloud or share answers she came up with for questions in school. She tended to say in a melodramatic voice, "I just don't know, Ms. Loud. I think maybe you'd better ask someone else." The irony, of course, is that she had great insight and very often correct "answers". I spent years trying to convince D that she was a smart girl that would never, ever be dismissed as "the stupid kid". I wish I had been able to convince D of her potential and how to believe in herself a little bit more. She knew that I cared, knew that I wanted her to succeed, knew that I believed she could succeed...but she never totally believed in her own potential at school. I wish with all my heart that I had tried harder...</font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif">10. D had a tremendous zest for life. She lived fully every day that she was alive, and there are some people (including myself) that need to learn how to do that, how to suck the marrow from the bones of life and find passion in the mundane. D taught me that, if you are bored or unhappy or lonely or thinking bad thoughts, you need to find it within yourself to change that. It's not always easy, but her grit pulled her out of any unhappiness and forced her to focus on finding happiness, humor, and hope.</font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif">If you are a parent, as I am, please hug your children extra tightly today. </font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif">Every child is a gift, a joy, a potential for greatness on his or her own terms. D taught me that, among other things.</font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif">She was loved by many (every time I saw her mother in town, we chatted about D and what a good kid she was and what she was up to these days). Her Facebook wall is an outpouring of grief from friends and former classmates that are in shock and completely brought to their knees by this terrible, tragic loss.</font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif">The site of the accident has become a shrine to D (pics taken from Facebook walls of those honoring D)<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9jWZVVuUp4CUK1FQxHbNpP4TuV6LGnTY2LiH8Vak12P8wwAPR-3kgc_iXb-ABC6e9__3zwuhEoIgpwHfod1yDPZ5QhCTy4Ro3GMoF7cepzB3y50igtqM5Pp7Ogsd1_HiLkC6qHDpvm612/s640/blogger-image-1985864697.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9jWZVVuUp4CUK1FQxHbNpP4TuV6LGnTY2LiH8Vak12P8wwAPR-3kgc_iXb-ABC6e9__3zwuhEoIgpwHfod1yDPZ5QhCTy4Ro3GMoF7cepzB3y50igtqM5Pp7Ogsd1_HiLkC6qHDpvm612/s640/blogger-image-1985864697.jpg"></a></div></font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif"><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-tZovkNUiITWScabPaNrn2xYGvAF5sMd6IunI-Iz9qYbuMnrdFW3PaLk99S2LD0X1TYExzn_Rh0HhuZF9NVEQ662O_D11rxai-l5a-qqP3z6WtXsGWGP0WvZJAPykb9-niSKCzfRJR2jj/s640/blogger-image--833409409.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-tZovkNUiITWScabPaNrn2xYGvAF5sMd6IunI-Iz9qYbuMnrdFW3PaLk99S2LD0X1TYExzn_Rh0HhuZF9NVEQ662O_D11rxai-l5a-qqP3z6WtXsGWGP0WvZJAPykb9-niSKCzfRJR2jj/s640/blogger-image--833409409.jpg"></a></div><br></font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif">The world will sparkle a little less without D, but she was the kind of person that touched pretty much everyone she met in some way or another. For that gift, she has impacted many, many people and left many legacies for those she left behind to follow.</font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif">D, I will always be honored that I was your teacher. I was proud of you all the time, more than you know. </font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif">Fly high, beautiful angel...you will always be loved by those of us here on earth lucky enough to have had you in our lives.</font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif">I will never forget you, D ❤️</font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif"><br></font></div><div><font face="Helvetica Neue Light, HelveticaNeue-Light, helvetica, arial, sans-serif"><br></font></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13955854427063032485noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3196908370614674789.post-33391538623366917762015-09-15T14:49:00.001-04:002015-09-15T14:49:29.068-04:00Today's Lesson Flopped ... <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
It's easy to understand why teachers get jaded, especially after a day like today!<div>
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After eleven years as a classroom English teacher at the secondary level, I made the change to a Literacy Interventionist (basically a Reading Specialist). I get to work with kids of all ages, and I get to run diagnostics to figure out their strengths and challenge areas and then design individual programs to address those specific needs (and bolster specific strengths). </div>
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I love my job, but at times it is very frustrating. I have one class that has me digging into the very dregs of my bag of tricks, and I'm coming up empty.</div>
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If you imagine struggling readers at the middle school level, you can probably imagine that sitting in a desk doing seatwork is not going to fly for these kiddos.</div>
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With this particular crew, I'm working with their core academic teachers to provide support through pre-teaching vocabulary, exploring articles in advance, and allowing class time to work on writing assignments. </div>
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Teaching content vocabulary has been a flat-out nightmare ... </div>
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"Why do we have to do this?" "Can I go to the bathroom?" "I don't want to do worksheets!" "I can't sit still after lunch." "I have to go to the bathroom!" "You're not our science teacher!" "I really have to pee!" "Why are we doing science in here?" "If you don't let me go to the bathroom, I'll pee in front of the door." </div>
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It's seriously like something out of a bad movie.</div>
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I've tried given students lists of words to define. They hated it. Refused to do it.</div>
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Gave them a list of words defined and asked them to use it correctly in a sentence to show that they understood meaning. Hated it. Refused to do it.</div>
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Make a visualization sketch of a word when given a definition AND sample sentence? Hated. Refused.</div>
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So me being me, I asked them for suggestions after their cries of, "This is boring!" bore completely through my eardrums. It is, I explained, my job to improve their reading skills, and working with content words for an upcoming science article will make them better prepared to read the article. </div>
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"We're not going to read the article anyway, you know," one of them pointed out.</div>
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I shrugged. "Hope springs eternal."</div>
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Then I asked them more directly, what can <i>I </i>do to improve your experience? </div>
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One of them mumbled something about wanting to do work that was a bit more hands on.</div>
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Okay! Hands on! A direction ...</div>
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And so I scoured this article for potential vocabulary words. I pulled them from the text and wrote them down onto two sets of note cards (actually, they were printed on colored paper cut like note cards by my amazing paraprofessional), one green and one yellow.</div>
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I was so pumped that I almost asked my supervisor to come observe the activity. Haha, good call on not sending that particular e-mail ...</div>
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I had them do a quickwrite about what they think would be the greatest challenges faced by miners at work (the nominal topic of the article), then I divided them into groups, gave them a stack of words, and instructed them to work together to tape each word on the correct definition written on the board.</div>
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Objectives were essentially:</div>
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* Students will be able to read grade level vocabulary</div>
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* Students will be able to use process of elimination to identify definitions for a set of word</div>
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* Students will be able to work collaboratively </div>
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Yeah, after about twelve seconds, they started whining that they wanted to sit down because they were tired. Then they said it was too hard and they refused to do it.</div>
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I showed them strategies--read through the words and make a pile of words you know, read through the definitions and see if any words jump out at you, try to narrow down options using the definitions, et cetera. They didn't care.</div>
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I told them the winning team would get a prize tomorrow. They cared enough to try for another seven minutes before flat out giving up.</div>
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I'm only a little daunted. Thirteen years of teaching, after all, and there's more than one way to skin a cat ... or teach vocabulary, as the case may be. I'll get back on the horse tomorrow and try to come up with some other creative way to reach these reluctant readers.</div>
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Today, though, I'm wallowing in the experience of my lesson flopping.</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13955854427063032485noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3196908370614674789.post-38482020620899602262015-09-14T20:15:00.000-04:002015-09-14T20:15:24.856-04:00Equalizing Education? Not with This Obstacle ...<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
While the United States provides public education to its population, the quality of such is all over the map. It's simply unavoidable.<div>
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There are many and varied reasons for this, of course.</div>
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School districts that pay their teachers and administrators well are likely to retain a strong, talented staff of educators. The converse, of course, is also true.</div>
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Larger schools have a larger pool to pull from in terms of athletic teams, extracurriculars, and students to fill in Advanced Placement classes.</div>
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Smaller schools often provide a family feel, where students and staff know each other well and would go to the mat for each other. </div>
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Inner city schools are frequently rich in culture and diversity.</div>
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Consolidated country schools offer original electives such as cow care and snowmobile mechanics.</div>
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Whether we are using "Common Core", sold as the great educational equalizer intended to level the playing field, or not, there is no question that schools are vastly different. I live in New Hampshire, and my children have gone to three different school districts. Extremely different.</div>
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Are all New England Schools alike? Of course not. The South? Runs the gamut, I'm sure. California? The so-called Bible Belt? Alaska or Hawaii? </div>
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It's hard enough to compare schools in one state or one region, but let's be real; no two schools are alike. I've been an educator long enough to know that each and every school has both significant strengths and weaknesses.</div>
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There is--I'm just going to say this--no way to uniformly educate the children of America. Geography, finances, quality of teaching staff, and so on ... it's just not possible to enforce uniformity.</div>
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And that's okay ... because the biggest obstacle facing American children in 2015 is none of those things.</div>
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Nope, my theory is that the detriment to American schoolchildren is their families.</div>
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Wait, their families? Not the Common Core? Not teachers on strike? Not shoddy materials? Not shabby facilities?</div>
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That's right. Their families. </div>
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I learned early on that, when I asked my eldest daughter, Emily, how school was, the inevitable answer was, "Fine." It took me a few years, but I eventually learned to ask direct questions. <i>What was on the history quiz? Are you enjoying <u>Of Mice and Men</u>? What music are you playing in band? </i>It was harder for her to give monosyllabic responses to that.</div>
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And then Ari came along, and she couldn't talk about school enough. Well, let me rephrase that ... Ari couldn't talk enough about the social aspects of school. The kid should have written an elementary school gossip magazine. However, I'd learned from her stoic sister that specific questions led to discussion, so I ended up hearing all about her classes as well.</div>
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Yup, it was pulling teeth to get any sort of curriculum conversations going with either of them, excellent students both ... and I'm a teacher.</div>
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I wonder sometimes how many parents want desperately to talk about school with their kids, to analyze Steinbeck and conjugate Latin verbs and weigh the pros and cons of the Vietnam conflict. I suspect the number is large, even for those that never have said conversations. Children can be tough nuts to crack, and if school is their private world they might well want to keep Mom and Dad out of it.</div>
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I persist, though, and I think a lot of parents do as well. I have a fairly good idea of what's going on with each of them, even though Emily is in college now (hating her astronomy class, disappointed in her language acquisition course, and learning lots in history of the English language) and Ari is a middle schooler (exponents in math, warning sign identification in science, the story behind their first name in Language Arts).</div>
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It would be really easy for me to say, "I'm an involved parent. I talk to my kids about school, even digging for details. I check their homework. They ask me for help when needed. I am so involved it's not even funny." </div>
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Except that's not precisely true.</div>
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Personally, I hate big crowds of people I mostly don't know. Going to open houses and festivals and concerts and such bring on anxiety attacks. I know Ari would like it if I volunteered at her school (if I had the free time) or took her to middle school football games or encouraged her to have friends over. Sometimes I can even handle this, but much of the time, I can't. </div>
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Also, I could stalk the online grade program and/or e-mail her teachers all the time, but I don't want to be a pain.</div>
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Overall, though, parental involvement should not be a concern for me, right?</div>
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Wrong again.</div>
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Parental involvement is a problem for <i>everybody</i>!</div>
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The biggest problem shared with me by both Emily and Ari is one and the same: the other kids act like monsters and keep the teacher from being as effective as he or she would otherwise be.</div>
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You might say, the teacher should send the kid to the office. The teacher should call home. The kid should be punished. This shouldn't be allowed.</div>
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Sadly, these kids have missed out on a lot of learning when they languished in the office. Phone calls home run from, "Well, he says you have it in for him!" or "Everyone else was throwing spitballs, too" to, "That's a school problem. I have a hard enough time dealing with him at home." </div>
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Because those parents enable, make excuses for, or give up on their children, my children miss out. </div>
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Is that fair to my children? No ... but yes. You see, my children have had to learn to extend their education on their own. Instead of being one of those obnoxious and overbearing parents that call teachers the second week of school and say, "My child is bored", I strive to teach my kids to read more, to list questions about topics in history class that we can discuss as a family later, to write in a journal. My children are bright and successful, but I would never extol them as special snowflakes.</div>
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Parental involvement is a multi-faceted thing. It's not just talking to kids about school. It's not just having sports dates and days off written on the calendar. It's not just going on teacher websites. It's not going to school events, whether you want to or not.</div>
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It's all of those things, and it's more.</div>
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As a parent, I raise my children fully aware that their teachers are playing a role in their upbringing as well. As a teacher, I buy everything from lunch to deodorant to tampons to notebooks to sneakers for my students. I teach them English, but I also teach them manners and respect.</div>
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But it's an uphill battle.</div>
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Until parents are unified in their view of what education means for American children in 2015, the problem will exist. In fact, it will get worse. Parents work long hours. They are too tired to attend school events. They might not have transportation, and it's increasingly common for parents uncomfortable with speaking English to avoid going into schools out of fear and discomfort. Kids are seduced by drugs and gangs and horribly short skirts from American Eagle. </div>
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The only way for education to be equalized is for parents to become fully invested in their children's schooling. Only then can we all work together to provide a high quality, equal education to every student. </div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13955854427063032485noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3196908370614674789.post-36025943818569159902015-09-13T20:59:00.000-04:002015-09-13T20:59:03.735-04:00Getting Stuck in the Middle of Government Minutiae ... and Finding that "Equal" is Bogus<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
In one of the great ironies of life, I've found myself a victim of government minutiae. Yes, me, a liberal Democrat, is screaming, "There is too much BUREAUCRACY in our government!"<br />
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I try to be a good person. I work hard at my job. I take parenting very seriously and I'm proud of how amazing my children are. I would do anything I can to help a person in need, whether I know him or not.<br />
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I'd like to think that karma would give me a break at some point, but I seem to exist under a dark cloud of bad luck. I used to say to my parents all the time, "I'm cursed", and they would roll their eyes at me. As I grew older, though, the presence of my bad luck became increasingly difficult to deny. To this day, my mother will occasionally say, "Okay, maybe you really <i>are </i>cursed."<br />
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I've spent a lot of time venting about my ex-husband. I'll just say that he is an abusive, lying, alcoholic monster and leave it at that.<br />
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Our divorce was finalized in April of 2010, and he was ordered to pay $79.22/week of child support for our daughter Ariel. He was also supposed to pay half of her medical expenses and any activities which she participated in, but I knew way back in April of 2010 not to hold my breath on that.<br />
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For awhile, he paid the weekly child support. Sometimes he was late by a couple of weeks, but he did pay it. Over time, he has let it add up to fairly staggering amounts when you consider the drop in the bucket that $79.22 a week is in the great scheme of things, but he usually did make an effort to pay it. He would pay off the balance when it got close to $1,000 (that seemed to be his guilt threshold), and then the circus would start all over again.<br />
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For the past year, though, it's been a nightmare. The biggest issue is that our daughter has become a competitive gymnast, and gymnastics is a very expensive sport. For awhile, he committed to paying half of her gymnastics classes, but that lasted for one month. Her classes are $200 a month, plus there are costs like team leotards and attire, competition fees, beam shoes, and required summer camps. Ariel is not my only child, but I spend more money on her gymnastics than on her siblings (happily, because gymnastics brings her great joy and she is also very talented). However, the times when my ex-husband would man up and pay a lump sum of back child support that always seemed to come in the nick of time (car registration, repairs, Christmas, dog to the vet, and so forth) are long gone.<br />
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I have a court order stating that he is ordered to pay $79.22/week. The problem is, getting someone to enforce that is virtually impossible.<br />
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When I complain about this, people say, "Go to court." I did go to court. There is a court order. He flagrantly ignores it.<br />
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One of my friends suggested I contact his employer directly about wage garnishment considering I had the court order. His employer said it had to be done through court.<br />
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Another friend suggested I go to the Department of Health and Human Services because child support enforcement is apparently under their umbrella. When I took a day off from work last year to go there and get it figured out, I was told that because he didn't live in New Hampshire, I would have to file for enforcement in the state he lived in.<br />
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And he didn't just live in one other state ... oh, no, that guy bounced all over the place.<br />
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So it seemed easier to just nag him until he paid a small piece of what he owed. He kept crying poverty while going on vacations all over the country. He promised that he would pay the full past-due amount the next time he got paid. The check was in the mail (the U.S. Post Office must have lost a hundred checks allegedly mailed by him). I documented all of this, doing my nagging via e-mail and making him communicate the same way.<br />
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I should mention that he is only allowed to see Ariel with supervision. He has shown decreased interest in seeing Ariel for years, and he has not seen her since early 2014 purely by his own choice. In his frequent travels, he is at times in the very city we live in and frequently within an hour of her, yet he does not make any effort to see her. I can in good conscience say that I did everything I could to allow him to have a relationship with Ariel, yet he has shown over and over that he cares nothing for her. In the court order, she was supposed to call him every night at 7:00. He would sometimes go a week without answering, and she would be a nervous wreck. He then asked that she call only on weekends. He still didn't answer most of the time. When he didn't answer the phone on Father's Day, Ariel had a meltdown. To hear my little girl sobbing about how her daddy didn't love her and all she wanted to do was wish him a happy Father's Day and she wasn't a good enough daughter for him and so on ... it broke my heart. Anyway, I e-mailed him that Ariel was not going to be calling anymore as it was just too painful for her when he almost never answered, especially on Father's Day. I did say that whenever he wanted to talk to her or see her, all he had to do was call or e-mail. I got no response. I'm not really surprised. <br />
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We had a couple of huge financial hits, and it seemed ridiculous that he owed all of this money and nothing could be done about it when it was looking like we were going to have to pull Ariel out of gymnastics, at least temporarily. However, at least I could file paperwork to get the weekly amount taken out of his paycheck (assuming he has a job ... that has been quite an issue for him).<br />
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I printed out the application for child support enforcement for New York state and filled it out. I collected all the documents they required and sent my ex-husband one final e-mail (because I was trying to give him a chance to do the right thing). No response.<br />
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When I went to mail the package to New York State Child Support Enforcement, though, I hit a snag. There was no mailing address available. I called the number, and I was told that I needed to have a number. I said that's what the application was for, to begin the process. They told me that I had to begin the process in New Hampshire.<br />
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New Hampshire had told me that I had to begin the process in the state in which he lived.<br />
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I mailed the application anyway, generically posting it to New York Health and Human Services Child Support Enforcement in Albany. The same day, I requested an application from New Hampshire. I filled it out and sent it off (I still had copies of all the documents) the next day.<br />
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I have done everything I can possibly do .... the state I live in, the state he lives in, and the documentation.<br />
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I know it's going to be a slow process, though, and that makes me crazy.<br />
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One of my friends has a son who had a one night stand with a girl. The girl named him as the father and demanded child support as soon as the baby was born. She requested that the child support be paid in oxycontin and marijuana. The girl lives in Section 8 housing and receives Medicaid, food stamps, and welfare money. The kid didn't feel right about having drugs count for child support, particularly when he didn't think the baby was necessarily his, so he said no. The State of New Hampshire set up a paternity test, and he apparently is the father. He had to fill out some forms about his income and living expenses, and now he has $150 taken out of each paycheck. This entire process, from the paternity test to the wage garnishment, took three weeks. Why? Because the money goes to the state to pay for her welfare.<br />
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If you're on welfare, apparently it makes sense for child support laws to be enforced quickly.<br />
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If you try to do it the right way, you sit there waiting for years for someone to help you. And once you realize that you apparently have to fill out applications and start the process in multiple states to hopefully get something to happen, there is no rush on the part of the government.<br />
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The paperwork has been sent out. To two states. Applications for child support enforcement. Birth certificates and divorce decrees and uniform support orders. No news yet ...<br />
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I'm giving them another two weeks (I figure I'll give them the same time that the girl on welfare that was essentially pimping her kid for drugs got), then I guess I'll have to find myself another job.<br />
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And a Republican candidate for President that I can live with ... </div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13955854427063032485noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3196908370614674789.post-19409400302644135272015-09-13T17:10:00.000-04:002015-09-13T17:10:29.774-04:00Toddler's Death Ruled a Homicide, I Have a Nightmare, and the Beat Goes On ...<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
On September 5, just last Saturday, a little girl living in the same city where I reside died of blunt impact head injuries. The death of Sadence Willott was declared a homicide a few days later.<div>
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Little Sadie Willott was only 21 months old. </div>
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So is my daughter, Gabrielle.</div>
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There are terrible stories in the news every single day, of course. Life in 2015 is an ugly, scary place, and I think a frightening number of us have become almost immune to the terrors of the news. Every time I have the news on or see news pieces that come up on my Facebook feed, I am appalled.</div>
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But usually, I just shake my head and sort of mutter, "What a world" or something like that. Even the really bad stuff. </div>
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I internalize it a bit more when it's about children, of course. I have four children of my own, and I'm a teacher, which means I've "raised" hundreds of kids in my career.</div>
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I don't usually carry it around in my heart anymore, although I used to when I was younger and less jaded and had more hope that the world would get better. </div>
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But this one, <a href="http://www.wmur.com/news/death-of-manchester-girl-ruled-homicide/35183824">the story about Sadie Willott</a>, hit me like a kick to the gut. </div>
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I was staying at a friend's house close to work following a night meeting when I learned that someone had hit or kicked or clubbed Sadie's little head, a head that was around the same size as Gabby's melon, until she was dead. </div>
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I fell asleep early that night, but I woke up soaked in sweat at 3 in the morning, a scream on my lips. </div>
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Nightmares are a funny thing. Sometimes, you wake up and you know you had a nightmare but can't remember what happened, just that you're glad as heck to be awake. Other times, you wake up and think to yourself, "A purple people eater? Really? No more bedtime margaritas for me!"</div>
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And then sometimes, you remember. And you know what brought the nightmare on. </div>
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And it doesn't help a bit.</div>
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In my dream, I was walking through the halls of a hospital with a female doctor wearing a white coat. I kept trying to ask her questions, and she just shook her head and said, "Not yet." She finally reached a set of double doors (made of stone and crumbling as though they were very old) and slowly opened them.</div>
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"I've finished the autopsy. You don't want to see her. You should go pick out a coffin."</div>
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And then I saw my Gabrielle on a metal table, white and lifeless. Her curly blonde hair had blood in it, and her head was misshapen. I had one crazy, morbid thought--do they make coffins that small?--and then I woke up.</div>
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Thank God.</div>
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I spent three hours awake and crying because I didn't think going home and waking up the dog and scaring everybody was the best choice. I texted as soon as I knew that everybody was awake, and of course I was assured that Gabs was just fine.</div>
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I didn't relax until that afternoon, though, when I picked her up at daycare and hugged her so long that she asked to be put down.</div>
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There have been a few nightmares I've had that will be with me always--the one where I got eaten by a shark, the one where I encountered a raccoon in the woods and he flipped me off before jumping on my face, the ones where I relive <a href="http://philosophyofklo.blogspot.com/2014/05/repercussions-of-rape-part-i.html">the time I was raped </a>over and over again. </div>
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This was, without question, the worst dream I've ever had.</div>
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Gabrielle is napping on the couch next to me as I type this. She is perfectly fine (other than still using a pacifier at her age, but that's a different story) and happy and healthy. Her head is its usual beautiful shape, and she's even snoring to dispel the myth that she is perfect at this moment in time.</div>
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Gabby is fine, Gabby is safe, Gabby is loved and adored and protected by people that would do anything in the world to keep her from any sort of harm.</div>
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But Sadie Willott was murdered by blunt force head trauma.</div>
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There are millions of kids like Gabrielle in the world, kids adored and revered by their parents and families. Those kids are, in generally, blissfully unaware that there are children in far more dire circumstances.</div>
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I have read about murdered children before. I will read about murdered children again, I am sure. </div>
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I will always remember and honor Sadie Willott, though, and keep her in my prayers and in my heart.</div>
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The terrible power of that nightmare has ensured that.</div>
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It has not, however, answered the dark and ugly question that haunts me, asleep or awake:</div>
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Who would do that to a child?</div>
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And why?</div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13955854427063032485noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3196908370614674789.post-90203376373771865342015-01-18T11:52:00.001-05:002015-01-18T12:29:07.290-05:00We Know You're a Jerk...Did You Really Have to Reinforce It?It's funny, with most people that show their assholian tendencies, you just stop hanging out with them, talking to them, associating with them, or whatever. A perk of being human is free will, and in general you can avoid people that are truly horrible.<div><br></div><div>Unless they're family. Or co-workers. However, both of those situations are usually short-term (as in, I guess I can handle the occasional get-together with totally miserable family members or sit in a meeting an hour a week or so where highly immature and rude co-workers think it's okay to make jokes about a rather structured colleague water boarding peers for stepping out of a meeting), and we all have our crosses to bear.</div><div><br></div><div>My ex-husband seems to enjoy being a cruel and emotionally manipulative force in my daughter's life, though. It is utterly unnecessary, and I will never understand why he (and others like him) can't just accept the terrible damage that they've done to others and walk the hell away. Reopening the wounds over and over again, for six years now, just drives home the fact of your douchebaggedness over and over...</div><div><br></div><div>He's playing this "I've found God" game lately, so I'd like to put this into language that goes along with that: a true and just God will make you burn in hell for eternity. No matter how many Facebook posts you make about the greatness of God and how amazing life is since you've found Him, I'm pretty sure that He hears actions louder than words, so really you should be quaking with fear if your religious claims are true. Douchebag.</div><div><br></div><div>My children are the most important thing in the world to me, and I'm especially protective of my middle daughter, Ari, because of the emotional torture she's had to endure (and the physical torture she's had to observe) at the hands of her biological father. Nobody needs to hear the saga beyond the fact that court paperwork is explicit that he is not allowed to be alone with her because of his "issues". That, I assume, speaks volumes.</div><div><br></div><div>If you aren't equipped to be a parent, if your presence is going to damage your child, nobody would blame you for walking away. In some cases, this would be the greatest gift you could give your child.</div><div><br></div><div>If you make the choice not to do this, however, then there is an implied expectation that you will do your best to make up for six years' worth of cruelty and mind games. </div><div><br></div><div>One very small way to do this would be to answer the phone when your daughter calls (at the time you've requested, on the number you've requested) on her birthday. Seriously, picking up the phone and saying, "Happy birthday" is a very simple thing to do; it's a seemingly small gesture that nonetheless shows a degree of care, no matter how small.</div><div><br></div><div>Yet you couldn't be bothered.</div><div><br></div><div>And not because you were on a bender (which Ari understands because it's happened so many times) or were in jail/rehab/et cetera (been there, done that, many times, so she gets that as well).</div><div><br></div><div>Even though Ari primarily hates you due directly to your own actions six years ago and your constant emotional manipulation in the years since, there is still a part of her that hopes. Your daughter has a beautiful and giving heart, something you will never understand, and so she still wants you to answer the phone when she calls.</div><div><br></div><div>I am not going to tell her that you didn't answer the phone because you were too busy with your girlfriend's grandson that you somehow have custody of (you aren't allowed to see your own child unsupervised, yet you are allowed to raise a baby...what a sick world).</div><div><br></div><div>I would never show her this post your girlfriend made last night:</div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg052mbxXwgLo0p7rx2deb7q4LW0KP2OoltyBpsa7z3VQW4U3krzpGqWag756KNJID_hLHWQcehxnIi45mO3e6vA1NHBx6LAfHwh1k6746WJDZ8zu0Uhg5NWOz1FsHLXaFaV1InHwrrUDN3/s640/blogger-image--1969769292.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg052mbxXwgLo0p7rx2deb7q4LW0KP2OoltyBpsa7z3VQW4U3krzpGqWag756KNJID_hLHWQcehxnIi45mO3e6vA1NHBx6LAfHwh1k6746WJDZ8zu0Uhg5NWOz1FsHLXaFaV1InHwrrUDN3/s640/blogger-image--1969769292.jpg"></a></div></div><div><br></div><div>This was Ari's birthday:</div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizMQqQqSLE8y3O3dwSBXLfl3ZuxvBLzxlIf_cRPnQfAwlNDgXWFJINt9wnkl0T9ranbzVP2nF7Mm8L_1MZcibs3Qm9P9zd7qLO1gdOOjwJ31BlbUA-T5jlsvX1lpvkfxjFhn9bWrRgk_Ec/s640/blogger-image--856362803.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizMQqQqSLE8y3O3dwSBXLfl3ZuxvBLzxlIf_cRPnQfAwlNDgXWFJINt9wnkl0T9ranbzVP2nF7Mm8L_1MZcibs3Qm9P9zd7qLO1gdOOjwJ31BlbUA-T5jlsvX1lpvkfxjFhn9bWrRgk_Ec/s640/blogger-image--856362803.jpg"></a></div><br></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizwDGq5lXWJ-Ums7PxtEVPalCHZ6DuQQWK_ew0iWmAAAXTZuEBGwlNaxTtdEgmTLI5bqkEoucB4d2etCw4j5bnUazgRwbc6v34jqjDbKUcewBw0tM0czaZmTKze-bPZMjHQI1rETyI2lfE/s640/blogger-image-1615991435.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizwDGq5lXWJ-Ums7PxtEVPalCHZ6DuQQWK_ew0iWmAAAXTZuEBGwlNaxTtdEgmTLI5bqkEoucB4d2etCw4j5bnUazgRwbc6v34jqjDbKUcewBw0tM0czaZmTKze-bPZMjHQI1rETyI2lfE/s640/blogger-image-1615991435.jpg"></a></div><br></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1ukHvWFNWVPhz6o2jRKGYs2RwFWEM3IgCcyMEKJH8F57W21Ox_uj3wInfKjYmS_7yquHg38DcNIjLFg-1qF8yk61_kodQubbUJP71BIGthAUcT4rxVClKw5pLPuIeXNe2ly6xAvEhUNnt/s640/blogger-image--1014404097.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1ukHvWFNWVPhz6o2jRKGYs2RwFWEM3IgCcyMEKJH8F57W21Ox_uj3wInfKjYmS_7yquHg38DcNIjLFg-1qF8yk61_kodQubbUJP71BIGthAUcT4rxVClKw5pLPuIeXNe2ly6xAvEhUNnt/s640/blogger-image--1014404097.jpg"></a></div><br></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrFckOmIugFXOKqY6zcy9eAJOoPZV_g2U9eCNbmUiPFrKTTFWQssllO-UiImAdkUeIKNq72h84ysTyhdqPadOlAQQbubD6026sYB88e-stqK_4Oj7-hUzkUgS9gA31AV7TEnZQkxeRyWJc/s640/blogger-image--570843262.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrFckOmIugFXOKqY6zcy9eAJOoPZV_g2U9eCNbmUiPFrKTTFWQssllO-UiImAdkUeIKNq72h84ysTyhdqPadOlAQQbubD6026sYB88e-stqK_4Oj7-hUzkUgS9gA31AV7TEnZQkxeRyWJc/s640/blogger-image--570843262.jpg"></a></div><br></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcBJD5oWoMt6ftRPIiXMg1gUClMKsz1fywcVY3QfeJb_jdW080HiE0zbGC2AptXvOvlJrXDBpl-4Ya427GXZRRnK84Grw5W6Wbq_ua3xgtby-chksq0G7xlhS_Ur9wLZR6lUOJexkfxQie/s640/blogger-image-219356189.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcBJD5oWoMt6ftRPIiXMg1gUClMKsz1fywcVY3QfeJb_jdW080HiE0zbGC2AptXvOvlJrXDBpl-4Ya427GXZRRnK84Grw5W6Wbq_ua3xgtby-chksq0G7xlhS_Ur9wLZR6lUOJexkfxQie/s640/blogger-image-219356189.jpg"></a></div><br></div><div>She had a wonderful day, and she was surrounded by people that loved her--aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, sisters--but you taking twelve seconds to answer the phone and say happy birthday (or call back, or text, or whatever) could have been a positive addition to the day.</div><div><br></div><div>Instead, you chose to reinforce what a loser you are.</div><div><br></div><div>Why?</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13955854427063032485noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3196908370614674789.post-809860860361848962015-01-15T19:51:00.001-05:002015-01-15T19:51:44.779-05:00Pretty Sure I Saw Racism at the PharmacyTrue story...I've had a sickness of some sort (it's been called bronchitis, pneumonia, even whooping cough) since early December. I've taken three rounds of antibiotics, got better for the course of treatment, then I'm sick all over again.<div><br></div><div>Started feeling it coming back yesterday, so I decided to be proactive and call the doctor today. Apparently it's a sinus infection this week, and they're trying a different antibiotic along with still more codeine cough medicine.</div><div><br></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqJZPyZ6hJyGWX_wKUwrkpnBpOaBfNTcpC7TAna0YVx6EorhOr5DZGtgJlD4eiXxhi8t6NaQYvSvdRMxm-IQ-GXe8q8-_nVPgYToWnJujWkwBrcOhjFiPxpkKDAhCnN5ZV3Mgtjh2GIA3C/s640/blogger-image--1163314276.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqJZPyZ6hJyGWX_wKUwrkpnBpOaBfNTcpC7TAna0YVx6EorhOr5DZGtgJlD4eiXxhi8t6NaQYvSvdRMxm-IQ-GXe8q8-_nVPgYToWnJujWkwBrcOhjFiPxpkKDAhCnN5ZV3Mgtjh2GIA3C/s640/blogger-image--1163314276.jpg"></a></div><br></div><div>The doctor faxed the Clindamycin script to Walgreen's, but the Phenergan with Codeine is apparently a controlled substance, so I had to deliver a paper copy, show ID, promise there is no meth lab in my basement...</div><div><br></div><div>I should probably mention that my pharmacy is sort of in the ghetto. It's an inner-city kind of drugstore. I almost never leave there without some sort of story...</div><div><br></div><div>For example, today there was a guy talking in rapid Spanish on his cell phone, quite loudly. I know enough Spanish to infer that he was getting hell from his wife/girlfriend/maybe even mother for not coming home last night. His excuses were increasingly creative, and when he got called up to the pharmacy and said, "Te amo" into the phone, he got hung up on. Poor guy's night got even worse because he was apparently one day early for his nicotine patch prescription. He was pretty irate because he'd been waiting for awhile and it took him that long for Walgreen's to inform him that he'd have to come back tomorrow. I felt like stepping in and saying to the pharmacy tech, "Come on, dude, he's in deep shit with a female in his life. He wants a patch instead of a cigarette. You'll give it to him at nine in the morning but not now?", but I was already pretty pissed off about something that happened to me earlier.</div><div><br></div><div>So I mentioned that my Walgreen's is an inner-city one. I enjoy going there because I almost always encounter interesting people. I am usually an ethnic minority and I perhaps have a higher grasp of the nuances of English grammar, but none of that really matters. I've had men that don't speak English get something off a shelf for me. I've held the newborn baby of a young Hispanic mother while she went to the bathroom (must be my honest face...she didn't speak English, either). I've crawled around on the floor picking up a display of boxes an old man accidentally knocked over (tears of gratitude on that one).</div><div><br></div><div>So, yeah, this is my store. These are my people. I have never felt unsafe or in danger there. I've never felt disrespected or looked down on there. </div><div><br></div><div>Until today.</div><div><br></div><div>I knew it was busy from the moment I had to park my car in a spot not right in front of the store, so I wasn't surprised that there was a line at the pharmacy. There were four people ahead of me. </div><div><br></div><div>My cough sounded wonderful, and the young African-American kid in front of me kindly offered to let me go ahead of him. I thanked him but told him he'd been waiting and that was fine. He asked if I was sure (I suspect he didn't want to catchy my pestilence), and I said that I was but appreciated the gesture.</div><div><br></div><div>And then the game-changer walked toward the pharmacy...</div><div><br></div><div>He was a middle-aged man wearing a camel hair suit coat, creased khakis, loafers that I'm pretty sure had "Gucci" stamped on them. He was wearing a Rolex, and he carried himself like he was better than everyone else.</div><div><br></div><div>He carried himself, in fact, right past the long line and to the front of the counter, where he stood drumming his fingers on the Walgreen's sign and looking expectantly toward the pharmacist. "Picking up for Jones," he called in a calm voice that was loud enough to carry over.</div><div><br></div><div>And I'll be damned if they didn't stop what they were doing and get this guy his prescriptions! </div><div><br></div><div>Never mind that the waiting line was five people deep. Never mind that those of us waiting had shown patience, tolerance, and, yes, kindness to each other.</div><div><br></div><div>It wasn't until that moment, as I started coughing so hard I thanked God for pantiliners that catch leaked pee, that I realized I was going to have to wait even longer to even *drop off* my codeine cough medicine, never mind get to bring it home and take it.</div><div><br></div><div>And why?</div><div><br></div><div>Because this rich-looking white guy thought the rules didn't apply to him...and the idiots at Walgreen's backed him up on that!</div><div><br></div><div>I was appalled!</div><div><br></div><div>Anyway, I finally got my prescription dropped off (and heard the saga of Unfaithful Nicotine Patch Dude), but I was so disillusioned.</div><div><br></div><div>It got me wondering if I had worn a dress and nice shoes (I have both, although I don't often wear either) and put my one-carat diamond earrings in, replaced my trusty Vera Bradley purse with the more stylish one with a Coach label, straightened my hair and put on makeup (I can still look pretty good when I try; I just don't see the need to try very often)...could I have pushed my way to the front, gotten my medicine, and been treated like I was superior to the other customers?</div><div><br></div><div>Sadly, I'm pretty sure the answer is yes.</div><div><br></div><div>Racism (or maybe it's classism??) still exists, make no mistake about it. I just wish I hadn't had to see it...</div><div><br></div><div>Has racism ever reared its ugly head when you were least expecting it?</div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13955854427063032485noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3196908370614674789.post-65978207791377798882015-01-14T21:05:00.001-05:002015-01-14T21:05:42.035-05:00Trying to Find Writing Again ...<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
So I think it's safe to say that I've lost writing.<br />
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This is heartbreaking to me, as writing has been my solace, my sanity, and my safety since I was a very little girl. I don't remember NOT writing ... and now I can't seem to do it.<br />
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There's a part of me that says, "Gee, you know, maybe I've said all I need to say." Deep inside, though, I know this isn't the truth.<br />
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So, then, what is?<br />
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I think the truth is that the things I have to say are complicated. They are inflammatory. They put a lens on people, including myself, who have not acted well.<br />
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That lens is strong. It's unbreakable. It's also got a "no going back" clause.<br />
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I have always had a rebellious streak. I never wanted to do what I was supposed to do in the way I was supposed to do it.<br />
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However, I also have a "people-pleaser" streak. I would hope that nothing I write would never hurt people. At this point in time, I'm not sure that's possible.<br />
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I could write about fluffy bunnies and Christmas spirit and how beautiful the ocean is ... but who really cares?<br />
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What I want to write about ... well, I suspect people would care, but it might piss off a lot of people. Intentionally lighting fires under folks is not my style.<br />
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And so I'm silent.<br />
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The other problem is that there is a novel brewing. It's very John Irving-esque, and it's largely true. Writing that novel could either kill me or save me. I'm not sure I'm ready to roll the dice on that one.<br />
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Yet it haunts me, that story that is begging to be told, that story that has never been told. Even with the protective label of "fiction", I don't know that I have the courage to go there, and so I beat myself up metaphorically every time I fire up my laptop.<br />
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Anyway, I'll stop rambling. I am going to try to write more.<br />
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I don't feel like me without writing.</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13955854427063032485noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3196908370614674789.post-7421123536734770012014-07-10T21:38:00.000-04:002014-07-10T21:38:12.387-04:00A Violent Bedtime Song = A Bad Mother?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
When Emily was born, I was seventeen years old and still had a pretty good singing voice from years of private voice lessons. <br />
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I sang to her all the time from the very beginning, and Jim Henson's "The Rainbow Connection" quickly became her favorite (it rose above the soundtrack to both <i>Miss Saigon </i>and <i>The Phantom of the Opera</i>, which she also heard a lot of). It was her official "lullabye" by the time she was a month old, and I sang her that song every night until she was probably five or six. <br />
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I could sing that damn song in my sleep.<br />
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When Ari was born, I started singing "The Rainbow Connection" to her when we were still in the hospital. I was over show tunes by then, so she got a lot of Irish folk songs I listened to with my dad as a kid. She liked "The Gypsy Rover" and "A Lament for Brendan Behan" and "Four Green Fields" and "The Holy Ground" and tons more, but "The Rainbow Connection" was also<b> the</b> bedtime song.<br />
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Leave it to<a href="http://philosophyofklo.blogspot.com/2014/01/hesitating-sharing-of-joyor-fragility.html"> this one</a> to break the mold ...<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwxPi54xhPI4spAuP3ia3Af6qFZQVeWWnNmC95dXMi9QpPmfDaTmXLeDmQ1RQKlXBv8rAwduMI-fnwSQyIV6vHNcC80MzQvD_ML38hsUC-BNaqFgmf1u4PEx6M2c08lMUpv9Etmpmd5_aM/s1600/Gabba+Dabba+Doo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwxPi54xhPI4spAuP3ia3Af6qFZQVeWWnNmC95dXMi9QpPmfDaTmXLeDmQ1RQKlXBv8rAwduMI-fnwSQyIV6vHNcC80MzQvD_ML38hsUC-BNaqFgmf1u4PEx6M2c08lMUpv9Etmpmd5_aM/s1600/Gabba+Dabba+Doo.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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I tried to continue the trend, I truly did. From the very beginning, I sang "The Rainbow Connection" to Miss Gabrielle every night. However, she decided early on that she preferred a different song.<br />
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A song about war and violence.<br />
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A song with swears (well, "arse" and using "Christ" several times).<br />
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A song where a soldier has his legs blown off.<br />
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Yup, Gabby's favorite song is "And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda" (written by Eric Bogle, but here is Liam Clancy doing it ... this is the version I grew up listening to).<br />
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"And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda" is a song about an Australian wanderer being forced to fight in World War I. After losing both of his legs, he is shipped back home along with the rest of "the armless, the legless, the blind, the insane" and is just grateful that nobody is there waiting for him to get off the boat "to grieve, and to mourn, and to pity". As the years pass, he sits on his porch each April watching his aging counterparts walk in a parade, noting that, "The young people ask, 'What are they marching for?', and I ask myself the same question."<br />
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Yeah, it's kind of a depressing tune, but it's cerebral and empathy-inducing, thought-provoking and characterized by a gorgeous melody.<br />
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It also has words that are fun to say, arrangements of letters that feel good rolling off your tongue, even more so when you're singing--Gallipoli, Suvla Bay, billabong, Murray's green basin, outback, waltzing matilda, Australia, quay, hump tent and pegs, and so on.<br />
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So here is my dilemma ...<br />
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Gabby freaking loves this song. She freaks out if I don't sing it to her. The other night when I was out, Jeff played Liam Clancy singing it, and that worked, but she needs that song every night.<br />
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Sorry if this is too much information (although <a href="http://philosophyofklo.blogspot.com/2014/06/so-i-woke-up-in-bad-mood-today.html">I'm pretty sure I crossed that bridge</a> long ago), but I still breastfeed Gabby at night. On one side, she gets "The Rainbow Connection", but she is clearly in a mad rush to get that one over with, to get to "And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda" where she smiles as she nurses (I'd post a pic except, well, nobody needs to see my boob).<br />
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So I have three options, I think ...<br />
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1. Eliminate that song from our bedtime routine. I mean, she's going to be picking up the words pretty soon, and I don't think having her run around singing, "For ten weary weeks, I kept myself alive/While around me the corpses piled higher" is the best idea, which leads me to<br />
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2. Sanitize the song. Cut out the particularly violent verses or substitute words for them.<br />
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3. Let it rip as is. It makes her happy, it's part of her bedtime routine, she loves the song, I love the song, and the world can kiss our butts.<br />
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I am torn ...<br />
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Oh, Gabrielle ... why couldn't you have just liked "The Rainbow Connection" like your sisters?</div>
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