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?

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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?

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