Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," praise and worship suggestions for No Child Left Behind! New Jersey has been released from NCLB ... I know not why. Since I get most of my classroom's books from NCLB (and since the vast majority of my students pass the demanding high school proficiency test), I'm not sure I'm happy about this. But anything that takes some heat off teachers should be warmly welcomed.
Teaching has been very hard on me. Sadly, it has been harder on Decibel the Parrot.
When I worked at home, I used to be around Decibel all day. Now there are days when I uncover Decibel's cage in the dark of the morning and don't return to her side until bedtime. She is alone, all alone, all day.
Matters have been worse since my desktop computer suffocated (under the weight of parrot dander). Now there's no reason to go into my home office at all, and that's where Decibel has located for the winter months. Her name is Decibel for a reason. She can be heard two blocks away when she gets heated up -- which is frequently.
Lately, when I have found a moment to grade papers or blog on my netbook alongside Decibel, we have been singing to each other. I sing. She mimics. It's adorable.
But I think it should be a swan song.
Unless I get a reprieve from my school teaching, Decibel will be doomed to near-solitary confinement for the next ten years. I wouldn't wish this on an enemy, let alone a poor little parrot.
I am seriously considering putting Decibel up for adoption at the local bird store. She would be "consignment," but I wouldn't want any money for her -- only a home where she could split the eardrums of her family and be around some hustle and bustle.
Decibel is very attached to met, but I am getting older, and she is still young. She bites, but I think that the right owner could get her back into pirate mode.
Just another cheerful thing for me to contemplate at this juncture in my life. When people speak of "empty nest syndrome," they don't usually think about pet birds. I'm thinking about it. For all her love of me, her vocabulary and occasional tunes, Decibel isn't living with the stimulus a parrot needs. It's hard to know what to do. She can speak, but she can't speak her mind.
Showing posts with label Made Anne cry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Made Anne cry. Show all posts
Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," East Coast earthquake edition! I'm your host, Anne Johnson: shaken and stirred.
Murphy's Law: If there's a measurable earthquake in my neighborhood, where do you think I'll be? Taking a shower, of course! And that's what I was doing when the whole house started to rumble and grumble, the bathroom door began banging, and all the slippery surfaces under my wet feet began to sway. When I determined that no one was actually rattling the bathroom door, I knew it was an earthquake. I experienced one once, in Detroit. So I just grabbed the shower bar, and -- voila! -- in a few seconds it was over.
On the other hand, Heir, Spare, Mr. J, and most of my neighbors hadn't ever felt a quake. The street filled with panicked suburbanites. Heir immediately began to fret about aftershocks, and when she turned on the news and heard about all the building evacuations in Philly, Baltimore, and DC, she was just sure we should all lay flat on the ground out in a field somewhere!
Pish, tosh, said I. Mr. J and I went forward with our plans -- a short honeymoon getaway in New Castle, Delaware. It was very romantic, peering across the murky Delaware Bay as big barges motored by, at the vista of smokestack-cluttered Jersey on the far shore.
Ah, well, it appears that the flatlands will be my home for the rest of my sorry life.
The earth did indeed move on August 23. My highly motivated cousins found a buyer for the family farm on Polish Mountain. Out of nine people with a vested interest in the property, I am the only one who didn't want to sell it. My ancestors lived in that area as early as 1720. They were the first non-native residents of that rocky region. I am the first generation to have sought my fortunes in the big city. Even my dad taught school in Appalachia.
By the time the government takes taxes from my share of the sale, I'll be left with enough money to cover one semester of college tuition for one of my daughters. One set of useless textbooks, one cluster of pompous scholars in return for all of this beautiful land.
With the sale of the property, I don't believe (in our culture) that I can call myself "Appalachian." I can say I'm "from Appalachia," but if I don't own a chunk of it, I can't claim citizenship.
At a crucial turning point in my life, I chose to go to Johns Hopkins in Baltimore to study writing, instead of going to Frostburg University to study forestry. Needless to say, my parents were thrilled by this decision. Mom had a new mantra: "You'll marry a doctor!"
I moved to the city. I've lived in cities ever since. But I always had the farm to "go home to." Honestly, I was hoping no one would step up to buy it, especially in this economy. And from the sketchy report sent by my cousin, I fear that the buyer is a developer. He owns other properties in the area. But I certainly can't meet his price, and if I did he might up the ante.
On August 23, I felt an earthquake that lasted 15 seconds. And an earthquake that will last forever. An inner San Francisco that has crushed my heart.
Murphy's Law: If there's a measurable earthquake in my neighborhood, where do you think I'll be? Taking a shower, of course! And that's what I was doing when the whole house started to rumble and grumble, the bathroom door began banging, and all the slippery surfaces under my wet feet began to sway. When I determined that no one was actually rattling the bathroom door, I knew it was an earthquake. I experienced one once, in Detroit. So I just grabbed the shower bar, and -- voila! -- in a few seconds it was over.
On the other hand, Heir, Spare, Mr. J, and most of my neighbors hadn't ever felt a quake. The street filled with panicked suburbanites. Heir immediately began to fret about aftershocks, and when she turned on the news and heard about all the building evacuations in Philly, Baltimore, and DC, she was just sure we should all lay flat on the ground out in a field somewhere!
Pish, tosh, said I. Mr. J and I went forward with our plans -- a short honeymoon getaway in New Castle, Delaware. It was very romantic, peering across the murky Delaware Bay as big barges motored by, at the vista of smokestack-cluttered Jersey on the far shore.
Ah, well, it appears that the flatlands will be my home for the rest of my sorry life.
The earth did indeed move on August 23. My highly motivated cousins found a buyer for the family farm on Polish Mountain. Out of nine people with a vested interest in the property, I am the only one who didn't want to sell it. My ancestors lived in that area as early as 1720. They were the first non-native residents of that rocky region. I am the first generation to have sought my fortunes in the big city. Even my dad taught school in Appalachia.
By the time the government takes taxes from my share of the sale, I'll be left with enough money to cover one semester of college tuition for one of my daughters. One set of useless textbooks, one cluster of pompous scholars in return for all of this beautiful land.
With the sale of the property, I don't believe (in our culture) that I can call myself "Appalachian." I can say I'm "from Appalachia," but if I don't own a chunk of it, I can't claim citizenship.
At a crucial turning point in my life, I chose to go to Johns Hopkins in Baltimore to study writing, instead of going to Frostburg University to study forestry. Needless to say, my parents were thrilled by this decision. Mom had a new mantra: "You'll marry a doctor!"
I moved to the city. I've lived in cities ever since. But I always had the farm to "go home to." Honestly, I was hoping no one would step up to buy it, especially in this economy. And from the sketchy report sent by my cousin, I fear that the buyer is a developer. He owns other properties in the area. But I certainly can't meet his price, and if I did he might up the ante.
On August 23, I felt an earthquake that lasted 15 seconds. And an earthquake that will last forever. An inner San Francisco that has crushed my heart.
Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored!" Isn't that a cheerful title? Well, we all have to face it, unless we're divine. The Grim Reaper's gonna arrive at our doorsteps someday and -- off we go.
This would be more depressing if there was only one Heaven and Hell, but considering the number of deities and pantheons and praise and worship teams out there, I'll bet there are thousands of Heavens. That's why I promote the bored gods. I haven't traveled much in the apparent world, but I plan to voyage far and wide once I'm finished with this challenging mantle of mortality.
Twenty-two years ago, when my daughter The Heir was born, my mother-in-law and her mother invited themselves up for a week to "take care of me." I was 30 at the time and was up on my feet in two days, but the two Mom Moms lingered a week to cosset The Heir.
When things got dull, the two Mom Moms went to work. They cleaned my entire house. Then they washed all 38 windows. At that time we still had the old 1920s-era storm windows with hooks that had to be taken down by hand. They did it. And they were so efficient that my next door neighbor tried to hire them.
This was 1989. Mom Mom Senior was 76. Mom Mom Junior was 56. They worked like fiends from dawn till dusk.
Ten years later, when I invited them up for Thanksgiving, Mom Mom Senior went missing. She was 86. Know where we found her? My basement. She had cleaned it from top to bottom. She had scrubbed the floor. Never had been done before, never has been done since.
Mom Mom Senior owns a beautiful waterfront property on the Severn River just minutes from Annapolis. As you might imagine from the above, she poured her vast energy into the place, and it's gorgeous. She and her husband bought the land in the early 1950s for $3,000. If her heirs ask anything less than a million for it, I will be shocked.
Even though she never learned to swim, Mom Mom Senior had a 100-foot pier out into the estuary, from which she hung crab traps and went fishing and boating. Her favorite thing in the world was a soft crab sandwich.
Every time all of us younger folk watched her bustle relentlessly, we would joke that the Earth had finally produced its first immortal human.
Not so.
On Tuesday, Mom Mom Senior's closest family members will decide whether, at 98, she will be placed in a nursing home or brought to her daughter's apartment for hospice care. Having seen my own parents in similar straits at much younger ages, I would bet that this former dynamo of a woman will go to Catholic Heaven in a few months. Mr. J and I, Heir and Spare went to see her yesterday in her current room in a rehab unit (she wants no parts of the rehabbing or the pureed food that has no salt or sugar). We all emerged sobbing.
Can you imagine owning a waterfront property minutes from Annapolis and not having a hearing aid? We literally had to shout right into her ear for her to hear us at all.
I have held my tongue about Mom Mom Senior's elder care because she isn't my blood relative. But it sickens me to see that her son and daughters have gone on the cheap, not getting an equity loan or reverse mortgage or anything, to provide top-level care for her. Then again, I've heard enough of the family lore to know that there's not much love lost between children and parent in this situation. So Anne, after having given advice that was unheeded, said no more.
The moral of this sermon is not really the "live life to the fullest" platitude that you might expect. I would say, "Live life the way you want to." Eat cake, drink hard liquor, smoke a spliff, I dunno, whatever makes you happy in the moment. The most frugal and hardest-working among us will meet the Reaper some day. Tra la la! Praise the gods and pass the brownies!
This would be more depressing if there was only one Heaven and Hell, but considering the number of deities and pantheons and praise and worship teams out there, I'll bet there are thousands of Heavens. That's why I promote the bored gods. I haven't traveled much in the apparent world, but I plan to voyage far and wide once I'm finished with this challenging mantle of mortality.
Twenty-two years ago, when my daughter The Heir was born, my mother-in-law and her mother invited themselves up for a week to "take care of me." I was 30 at the time and was up on my feet in two days, but the two Mom Moms lingered a week to cosset The Heir.
When things got dull, the two Mom Moms went to work. They cleaned my entire house. Then they washed all 38 windows. At that time we still had the old 1920s-era storm windows with hooks that had to be taken down by hand. They did it. And they were so efficient that my next door neighbor tried to hire them.
This was 1989. Mom Mom Senior was 76. Mom Mom Junior was 56. They worked like fiends from dawn till dusk.
Ten years later, when I invited them up for Thanksgiving, Mom Mom Senior went missing. She was 86. Know where we found her? My basement. She had cleaned it from top to bottom. She had scrubbed the floor. Never had been done before, never has been done since.
Mom Mom Senior owns a beautiful waterfront property on the Severn River just minutes from Annapolis. As you might imagine from the above, she poured her vast energy into the place, and it's gorgeous. She and her husband bought the land in the early 1950s for $3,000. If her heirs ask anything less than a million for it, I will be shocked.
Even though she never learned to swim, Mom Mom Senior had a 100-foot pier out into the estuary, from which she hung crab traps and went fishing and boating. Her favorite thing in the world was a soft crab sandwich.
Every time all of us younger folk watched her bustle relentlessly, we would joke that the Earth had finally produced its first immortal human.
Not so.
On Tuesday, Mom Mom Senior's closest family members will decide whether, at 98, she will be placed in a nursing home or brought to her daughter's apartment for hospice care. Having seen my own parents in similar straits at much younger ages, I would bet that this former dynamo of a woman will go to Catholic Heaven in a few months. Mr. J and I, Heir and Spare went to see her yesterday in her current room in a rehab unit (she wants no parts of the rehabbing or the pureed food that has no salt or sugar). We all emerged sobbing.
Can you imagine owning a waterfront property minutes from Annapolis and not having a hearing aid? We literally had to shout right into her ear for her to hear us at all.
I have held my tongue about Mom Mom Senior's elder care because she isn't my blood relative. But it sickens me to see that her son and daughters have gone on the cheap, not getting an equity loan or reverse mortgage or anything, to provide top-level care for her. Then again, I've heard enough of the family lore to know that there's not much love lost between children and parent in this situation. So Anne, after having given advice that was unheeded, said no more.
The moral of this sermon is not really the "live life to the fullest" platitude that you might expect. I would say, "Live life the way you want to." Eat cake, drink hard liquor, smoke a spliff, I dunno, whatever makes you happy in the moment. The most frugal and hardest-working among us will meet the Reaper some day. Tra la la! Praise the gods and pass the brownies!
Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored," waxing righteously indignant tonight and every night over the great gap between the wealthy few and the needy many. Oh, say. We've come a few baby steps from the slave labor used to build the Pyramids and grow cotton! But generally we're still wired either to dominate or recede.
I live in a place named Snobville. I teach in a place named Camden. It takes me nine minutes to drive to work, from Snobville to Camden.
Yesterday my daughter The Spare used this space to record a conversation she overheard from her classmates in which they extolled the virtue of bikini-shopping and moaned about having to fly to various resorts in coach amongst the "dirty people."
Yesterday and today I walked around my classroom as my students wrote about memorable moments in their lives. My students are nearly the same age as Spare and those girls she overheard.
Here is what is on the mind of my students:
*Mom dying of cancer, making plans with student to care for the younger siblings.
*Cousin being shot in a drug deal gone bad.
*Dad dying of liver cancer.
*Mom dying of a heart attack.
*Mom having so many heart attacks student learned how to dial 911 at age six. Mom has since died.
*Mom can't go home to Mexico to see her dying father because she doesn't have papers.
*Student gets called a gringo by his family in the Dominican Republic because he was born in America.
*Apartment fire, everything lost but our lives.
*Mom and Dad fought so much that a divorce is a relief.
*Cousin died, shot in crossfire.
*First ride in a squad car.
*Mom works six days a week, but on Sunday we have breakfast.
*My brothers were deported. I'll never see them again.
*Dad works three jobs to give us what he never had.
*I'm not allowed to write about my family. We are distantly related to Trujillo.
*No one in my family can speak English but me.
The misery these young people have seen is stunning. Their triumphs are few. Those who are upbeat write about love, parties, music, friends. Teenage things. But a patina of fear and resignation cloaks everything.
Even Spare, dear Spare, does not live with the expectations that her cousins will be shot and her apartment burnt down. But when I think that there are teenagers who wax indignant because they have to fly coach to a Mexican resort, I ... I ...
oh, crap. I feel a Billy Jack meltdown coming on. Clear the streets of Snobville while there's still time.
I live in a place named Snobville. I teach in a place named Camden. It takes me nine minutes to drive to work, from Snobville to Camden.
Yesterday my daughter The Spare used this space to record a conversation she overheard from her classmates in which they extolled the virtue of bikini-shopping and moaned about having to fly to various resorts in coach amongst the "dirty people."
Yesterday and today I walked around my classroom as my students wrote about memorable moments in their lives. My students are nearly the same age as Spare and those girls she overheard.
Here is what is on the mind of my students:
*Mom dying of cancer, making plans with student to care for the younger siblings.
*Cousin being shot in a drug deal gone bad.
*Dad dying of liver cancer.
*Mom dying of a heart attack.
*Mom having so many heart attacks student learned how to dial 911 at age six. Mom has since died.
*Mom can't go home to Mexico to see her dying father because she doesn't have papers.
*Student gets called a gringo by his family in the Dominican Republic because he was born in America.
*Apartment fire, everything lost but our lives.
*Mom and Dad fought so much that a divorce is a relief.
*Cousin died, shot in crossfire.
*First ride in a squad car.
*Mom works six days a week, but on Sunday we have breakfast.
*My brothers were deported. I'll never see them again.
*Dad works three jobs to give us what he never had.
*I'm not allowed to write about my family. We are distantly related to Trujillo.
*No one in my family can speak English but me.
The misery these young people have seen is stunning. Their triumphs are few. Those who are upbeat write about love, parties, music, friends. Teenage things. But a patina of fear and resignation cloaks everything.
Even Spare, dear Spare, does not live with the expectations that her cousins will be shot and her apartment burnt down. But when I think that there are teenagers who wax indignant because they have to fly coach to a Mexican resort, I ... I ...
oh, crap. I feel a Billy Jack meltdown coming on. Clear the streets of Snobville while there's still time.
Welcome to "The Gods Are Bored" on a night when I can't even poke fun at myself. If you're looking for laughs today, move on. I'll see you tomorrow.
Last week I dreamed I was visiting a fancy hotel. I parked my car outside. When I went to get my car, it was gone.
I rushed back into the hotel and reported my car missing. I had a feeling that the hotel management was somehow responsible, that they had done something with my car and couldn't return it.
I demanded the immediate return of my car. Someone said, "Your car is outside." I went outside (it was cold and raining). At first the car looked like mine, but on closer inspection it had a station wagon back. It was not my car.
I went back inside and freaked out. I got angrier than I've ever been in my life. I slammed my fist down on the counter and screamed, "I want my car, and I want it NOW!"
Then I woke up.
Unless you're into boats or horses, you probably have a bond of identity with your automobile. This is the modern age. For better or worse, we are our cars. I have always chosen sensible little economy cars that don't go very fast but are cozy and not terribly attractive to thieves.
I am my car, and in my dream it was gone. The replacement car looked somewhat similar, but it had bad differences that I couldn't live with.
This is where my life is right now. Who took my car? Who took me? Where is A.J?
Last week I dreamed I was visiting a fancy hotel. I parked my car outside. When I went to get my car, it was gone.
I rushed back into the hotel and reported my car missing. I had a feeling that the hotel management was somehow responsible, that they had done something with my car and couldn't return it.
I demanded the immediate return of my car. Someone said, "Your car is outside." I went outside (it was cold and raining). At first the car looked like mine, but on closer inspection it had a station wagon back. It was not my car.
I went back inside and freaked out. I got angrier than I've ever been in my life. I slammed my fist down on the counter and screamed, "I want my car, and I want it NOW!"
Then I woke up.
Unless you're into boats or horses, you probably have a bond of identity with your automobile. This is the modern age. For better or worse, we are our cars. I have always chosen sensible little economy cars that don't go very fast but are cozy and not terribly attractive to thieves.
I am my car, and in my dream it was gone. The replacement car looked somewhat similar, but it had bad differences that I couldn't live with.
This is where my life is right now. Who took my car? Who took me? Where is A.J?
