It's a Big World Out There

Whether or not you agree with American soldiers fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq and all the other places they go, the very fact they go in support of American ideals is a beautiful thing--because what our country represents is indeed beautiful. I have no qualms about saying the United States is among the most noble of countries, if not the most noble.

And think about those soldiers who willingly leave behind their families, their homes, their comfort in the name of freedom. How hard it must be to sustain faith at such a distance.

So take a moment and click on the link below and say a little thank you!

http://www.letssaythanks.com/Home1024.html

Smellin' the Petrichor

Now that we've had our first real rain of the year, we can all breathe in the glory of the petrichor. For those of you unfortunate enough not to know the meaning of this truly remarkable word, allow me to enlighten you. Petrichor is the smell of the earth after it rains. How cool is that! If there's one thing your English teacher likes, it's a super specific word.

What are the most delectably specific words you adore?

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3261/2587231576_637bc8278b.jpg

Gastronomical Musings on Food and Font

http://kalman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/26/back-to-the-land/?8dpc

So I saw this photo essay in the New York Times this day after Thanksgiving morn, having just recovered from my 6 hours preparing a feast for my mister and Henny, and it struck me in several ways.

First, despite my yearning for French fries and the autonomic response I have to dessert and various fast foods, I do believe Michael Pollan's creed: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly produce. In one of his books he also says to be wary of foods with more than five ingredients... Something I always weigh internally as my eager little fingers grasp Ben and Jerry's Coffee Heath Bar Crunch ice cream.

I also love the simplicity of the imagery and the way the font--both upper and lower case--complement the essay. Think about it. Remove the photos and you've just got a discussion on how we all eat. Make the font all Times New Roman and standardize the spacing, and you've made it even more generic. Still well written and informative, but not alive.

While in some instances a picture is worth a thousand words, here, it is the combination that elevates both into a higher realm.

I know most of you have little control over the comestibles placed in front of you, but how much do you think about the food you consume--how it's prepared, how the animals who make up that food live (or lived...), how it arrives at your table (and I'm not just talking about the trip from supermarket to home here!)

http://kalman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/26/back-to-the-land/?8dpc

(Mis) Adventures in Samsonland

I'm traipsing around the block with Lucy and Woodster and Memphis when I actually see the weird old woman who lives at the end of the block. She left town for some four months at the beginning of summer, leaving behind one bag of cat food and a vague request to one of her neighbors to feed her cat. Before that, we would only see her spying on people in the neighborhood from the safety of her car. Literally. For hours, she would sit in the car, the dashboard lights on, watching people. Weird, yes?

So anyway, my motley crew and I are making our way around the block when I see her. She's trimming some vines (why, I wonder? why those vines, considering her entire yard is a combination of dry dirt and overgrown foliage and piles of odd things) and leaving them in a messy heap in the middle of the sidewalk (where they remain, withering and prickly, several days later).

Hi, I say.

Hello, she responds. Followed by, Did you put two cats in my yard while I was gone this summer? When I left there was only one cat, but now there are three. I want to know who put them there.

I explain that while I was one of the many people who fed her cat (did she acknowledge this? say thank you? even nod her head the slightest bit? that would be a big fat no), neither I nor any of the other people who tended to her cat deposited the newcomers in her yard. Most likely they entered of their own volition, being homeless and in need of a safe place and regular food, I offer as explanation.

Well, I don't want them there. They need to go.

I offer to trap them for her to have them spayed/neutered, but tell her they must be returned to her property as that is the policy of the organization that helps with this.

No--trap them and take them to the pound.

I explain that they will be killed at the pound because they are feral.

Some back and forth--until she finally agrees that since she doesn't want to trap them and this is what I am willing to do for her, they can return.

As I prepare to depart, she says she wants a German shepherd.

To mask my shock at the inappropriateness of this (how can a woman in her seventies handle a dog that size? what about the feral cats in her backyard? what a miserable life that dog would have!), I simply say that's a big dog and take off.

I just don't get it! How can people be so out of touch! And on SO many levels! First--accusing me of dumping cats in her yard when I, along with so many of her neighbors fed her cat out of our pockets for months! And this was not convenient, either! Never saying thank you! Leaving her yard dumpings in the middle of the sidewalk! Announcing her desire for a large, rambunctious dog that would need major training and exercise! And let's not forget the spying from the front seat of her car...

What do you DO with people like that?

Truman Capote once said, “Writing stopped being fun when I discovered the difference between good writing and bad and, even more terrifying, the difference between it and true art.”

Each year I hear students say something to the effect that, because they don’t receive that coveted A on an English paper, they are not good writers. Each year concerned parents wonder if their children lack what it takes to write quality papers, and, in large part, they ask because they witness the often excruciating struggle between their children and the topic at hand. Sometimes they read their children’s papers and are struck by the plethora of awkward sentences. Perhaps they think, because it all comes at such a price, that something is wrong--that some skill can be taught to ease the ordeal.

While yes, some students possess innate fluency, most labor. Even those students for whom writing is not a chore find themselves deliberating over words, debating how to structure the sentence, confronting doubt at many turns. The best of them don’t just throw words on the page; they slug out a phrase or two, look to see how it flows from the preceding thought, return back to an earlier passage--the revision is incessant. Quality writing rarely springs forth untrammeled.

As I trawled through the dictionary of quotations, seeking out pithy axioms to better express these thoughts, the most frequent metaphor for this situation was that of giving birth--hardly an endeavor characterized by confidence or ease.

Even this, which is no more than a mere half page single spaced, was a distinctly less than pleasant experience. In order to adequately express these thoughts--and do note the word adequate because even yet my dissatisfaction with the end result suffuses each touch of fingertip to key, and were it not for the pile of papers bearing down on me, I might still rewrite--I found it necessary to delay the entry for several weeks, bake a coffee cake in between the first and second paragraph, jump around the entire passage multiple times, ensconce my cold feet in fresh warm socks, check my email and rebraid my hair.

And now, because it is ever so much more appealing to end with someone else’s words than my own, I shall quote a writer whose magnum opus I’ve never been able to read: “Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives” (James Joyce).

How do you feel about writing?

http://www.wastedspacez.com/wastedideaz/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/writers-block-4.jpg

A Boy Named Jane

so almost two weeks ago i move my spay/neuter operation about 1/2 mile away from the homestead and i take in this exceptionally friendly grey and white cat. so friendly that after i released her from the trap, she followed me to my car and made as if to leave with me. the following week, when i pick up another cat from her address, she runs into the cage and the woman who lives there asks if i know of anyone who wants her. evidently she's so friendly she trips them as they enter and exit their abode. i say i'll ask around and fend the cat off as i depart. the next day she runs over when i return with the next spayed cat. i hold her for a moment in the driver's seat, think better of it and release her.

and now. it's five days since i was at her home. in my car--no walking. today, i pull into the driveway and all of a sudden this cat shows up and starts snaking around my front porch. not shying away from any of the dogs and definitely fluffier than any of the grey and white ferals in my neck of the woods.

it can't be, i think. where did that cat come from, i ask the mister. and he says he literally just heard/saw her crash over a series of yards/fences to this one and from thence to the front. whereupon i walked over and just scooped her up. it's her. incredibly dirty, but purring and ever so hungry. so now she's on my lap, having devoured a can of food, availed herself of the litter, sniffed politely at the other cats and the dogs, and she seems quite content. we call her jane.

turns out, though, that jane is not quite a girl, so now she is known as a boy named jane, and his favorite pastime seems to be lying in our arms...

A Treat!

We have this here for no other reason than it made me laugh so hard that I wept! I figure after three miserable, tedious days of standardized testing, we all need a little amusement...

Anxiety

As some of you may know, today is the day Malcolm Gladwell speaks to the Third Years via Skype, and, despite the planning and troubleshooting that has gone into organizing this, I found myself gripped by anxiety last night. Instead of cotton candy dreams, I suffered from nightmare visions of how EVERYTHING that could possibly go wrong during second period today did in fact go wrong in ways that transcended even my most wild imagining. So wrong, in fact, that, in my dream, I ended up fleeing school for the safety of my bedroom, where I burrowed in the comforting bosoms of my furry menagerie. Whereupon I received a series of chiding and increasingly volatile phone calls from Mirman asking WHERE was I, didn't I know I had a class, was I aware that my students were waiting for me? Even now I am in countdown mode for the Malcolm Gladwell Q and A with my stomach in knots and my head

steadily a pounding. Logically I know that even if things don't go as swimmingly as I would like, it's hardly the end of the world, and yet!

What are some things that are irrational sources of stress for you?

http://nycagainstrape.org/art_popup_59.html

Bite Thy Tongue!

As many of you know, for the past four months I've been trapping feral cats from a house down the block--29 so far. What I do is lure the cats into a humane trap and then transport them the next day to Fixnation, which is a nonprofit organization that spays/neuters and vaccinates the cats all for free. I then release the cats back on property they came from.

Just last week I managed to get 5 female cats spayed from their home. You might not be aware of this, but the potential damage from 5 unspayed female cats is horrific. Because cats can reproduce several times a year, and kittens mature quickly, just 2 feral cats (the wild offspring of domestic cats) can quickly become 2,000. In fact, the feline reproduction statistics are staggering. 2 uncontrolled breeding cats produce: 2 litters a year, at a survival rate of 2.8 kittens per litter. Continued breeding will produce 12 cats the first year, 66 cats the second year, 2,201 cats in the third year, 3,822 cats in the fourth year, 12,680 cats in the fifth year, and on and on . . .

Pretty awful, wouldn't you agree?

Now the people who live in this house are definitively NOT helpful. In order for me to entice the cats into the traps, they need to be hungry, which means these people need to NOT FEED the cats on the day that I am trapping. It's not that hard, right? They know I'm coming, so they just skip the breakfast and dinner for the cats for ONE day. It's not like the cats are going to starve. In fact, the cats can all have dinner after I'm done trapping around 9:00 pm.

Do these people facilitate the trapping process (which is VERY wearying!) by withholding food for one little day? No. Of course not. In fact, each person in the house blames the other for feeding the cats, and one of them even keeps placing massive platters of tasty wet food down NEXT TO my traps, AND their dog keeps sticking his snout in the traps and setting them off as well. Is it asking too much for them to just keep the dog in ONE evening for a few hours and to wait to feed? I don't think so!

And yet, in order for me to continue trapping, I need to be polite and accommodating so that I can have permission to go onto their property. It literally drives me temporarily insane! All I want to do is lambast them for their selfish irresponsibility, but I have to smile and make nice...

When have you had to bite your tongue in the name of diplomacy when all you really wanted to do was point out all the ways in which someone or something was just WRONG!?

http://www.textually.org/tv/archives/images/set3/ANGRY%20FACE-1.gif

I've been thinking about accountability lately. We all know there's a difference between right and wrong. Right to be nice to people, wrong to step on someone's toes intentionally. Right to be patient with students, wrong to be testy. Sometimes, though, people do things that are really

wrong--wrong as in breaking the law wrong. Sometimes the people who do particularly awful things don't end up going to jail because they leave the country or create a false identity.

Sometimes these people manage to elude the consequences of their crimes for decades. Let's say that during those decades these people manage to live perfectly upstanding lives. Maybe they volunteer for charities. Maybe they are gainfully employed. Maybe they are uniquely talented in some way. But many years ago, they committed some criminal act for which they were not punished.

The question is this: If someone commits a crime--one for which they are found guilty in a court of law--but they flee instead of doing their time and are caught decades later, should they still be held accountable for their earlier crime? Or should the fact that they were "good citizens" cancel out their earlier crime?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/crobj/3367993034/

Save a (Literary) Life!

I recently rented Hamlet 2, which was very silly and a little uneven and had excessive amounts of profanity in it, but was overall quite entertaining. I know most of you haven’t yet read Hamlet, but basically, by the end of this play, EVERYONE is DEAD. In this movie, though, thanks to a time machine, Hamlet travels back in time and manages to save everyone he loves from his or her untimely demise. Silly, yes, but overall, very cool.

So, of course I’ve been obsessing over which characters I would save! Methinks I would rescue Boxer from Animal Farm, Tess from Tess of the D’urbervilles, and maybe John Proctor (The Crucible) or Ethan Frome (Ethan Frome). And definitely Lily Bart (The House of Mirth)! I think all of these characters, with the exception of John Proctor, who kind of earns most of his hardship, are such victims of fate--prisoners of circumstance, punished for things so beyond their control--and they are all such GOOD people at heart. Look at Boxer--he is so impossibly sweet and kind and trusting! It kills me every time I get to that chapter where the BAD THING happens to him! As for Tess, for those of you who like a BEYOND tragic character, this poor girl suffers so much, yet with such grace and dignity and it’s all so unjust! I just want to swoop in, wrest Boxer from evil Napoleon’s grasp and place him in a verdant pasture where he can chomp on as much fresh grass as his horse heart desires (and where I can rub his nose) and as for Tess, if I could just transport her to the 21st century, so she just wouldn’t have been used so horribly, I would be so happy! It does occur to me, though, that Boxer wouldn’t want to come with me, which is even more tragic...

Which brings us to the question of the day--if you could save any character from literature, classic or contemporary, who would it be and why?

Ze True Talent--Ephemeral and Transcendent

A while ago the mister and I were lost in the abyss of

excessive summer television, finding ourselves even

so desperate for entertainment that we watched a few

episodes of America's Got Talent. While some of

those contestants are truly talented, none of their

acts was what I would consider one of a kind. My

mister, ever inquisitive, went trawling on the Internet

in quest of what types of acts emerge victorious in

other parts of the world. And so we found Keniya

Simonova, winner of Ukraine's Got Talent. I know

the idea of watching an 8 minute youtube video

is fairly daunting, but TRUST ME, this will be worth it.

STRESS!!!

“Is it my fault the temperature outside rivals that of the underworld?”

“Is it my fault that your desktop doesn’t work correctly or the promethean board in your room lost its software connection?”

"Why are you taking out the disappearance of your website on me!?"

“Why are you taking out the lack of Indesign on me!?”

"It's not my fault!!!!"

Such were the questions the poor mister found himself asking me, his evil and angry wife, during this first week of school. After all, he has relatively no control over the order of the universe, let alone how life progresses up here at mirman. And yet here he was, bearing the brunt of my frustration, when all he wanted to do was serve me up a nice supper and hang with me and the hairy menagerie at day’s end. this, unfortunately, conflicted with what i wanted to do, which was rage relentlessly against the petty travails of my day. . .

So I was thinking as I drove up Woodcliff on route to school this morn about how we react to and handle stress. Some people have little meltdowns, others shut down, and others (me!) transmute stress into anger at the innocent (bad me!).

Which brings me to my goal of the year--to handle stress with dignity and grace.

What of all of you? What stresses you out and how do you handle it? What is your goal for this school year?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikekline/315631570/