The missing link

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6416735.stm

The things "they" didn't teach us

The older I get, the more I'm certain that is has nothing to do with what school we go to, but our willingness to be responsible for our own education, to forgive those who didn't/couldn't know it all and were products of their own time and tradition. The great--universal?--heritage of humans is one of curiosity, especially about each other. I found the first glimmer of curiosity that lead me to the link below in NAACP's The Crisis Magazine. None of us are inherently morally superior to others. We are all struggling to honor individuals and groups, to make sense of the global parfait --the "fallout" of human curiosity and migration.



And, if you ever find yourself as the lone white-girl at a gathering to listen to one of Dr. King's comtemporaries and the auditorium opens by rising and belting out the following song -- that you are left standing, silently, in the middle of while your body thrums with the energy around you the . . .here are the words

The Black National Anthem"
by James Weldon Johnson

Lift ev'ry voice and sing,
Till earth and heaven ring.
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise,
High as the list'ning skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on till victory is won.

Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chast'ning rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet,
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past,
Till now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who has brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who has by Thy might,
Led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,
Lest our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee,
Shadowed beneath thy hand,
May we forever stand,
True to our God,
True to our native land.

Lathrop shout-out

I appear to be running Lathrop High School's suspension ward today and tomorrow. We had one gentleman with a reservation and five others as walk-ins. Things are actually going quite well. I finished knitting my first alpaca-roving-lined slipper and taught an angry, 6' hockey player how to finger knit with his left hand. His paperwork came in "expect trouble". Not if he's wound up in alpaca yarn.

Wish me luck tomorrow. It's not all knit-purl-cast-off in here.

Statistics Lie

We know that pie charts and graphs can be manipulated and are greedy for their own kind of impersonal 'voice', HOWEVER, to look at trends I don't think they're so bad. I don't have time this morning to flesh out the whole essay, but I've been looking very closely at--what heretofore has been the subjective observations of someone in "the animal industry"--some relationship between skyrocketing consumer spending on pets (from 17B$ in 95 to 40+B$ in 04)and a new kind of green revolution . . .the hundreds of blogs and voices and publications and books about the family farm, local ag. Adults and children are literally hungry to know their food in a much deeper way. We are on the cusp of something good here.

The following link broke down US consumer spending,family size, income etc. from 1901 until 2003. Between that time, an American household went from spending nearly 44% of its annual income on food, down to nearly 13%. I know just enough about economics to provide lots of counter arguments (including some to mitigate the 'pet spending' stats above) but, subjectively, Americans now expect food to be really inexpensive, healthful and . . .humane? . . .and they expect this for the fabulous price of $15 out of every $100 they bring home. Friends, do not get your hackles up about how your neighbor is mean to his dog and it lives on a chain. Keep that in mind, but save some of that energy . . . Please, before you buy another snowsuit for your little dog, please, consider how the sun feels warming a chicken's feathers(yup, they're noisy AND messy, too!) consider letting your beef eat grass . . . consider paying a full $5.25 for a gallon of milk that came from a dairy animal with a name. I think humans need to know their farm animals. There was even an article recently in JAVMA about "psycological first aid by veterinarians in rural areas of livestock depopulation". When global economics or the CDC come in and slaughter the family herd, the vets that used to treat the animals are left to explain, console, suggest, help them adapt. It argues a need for grief and crisis counseling for these animal professionals in the broader service of keeping the local community and economy going (the article sites rates of farmer suicides).

There's no perfect answer, and we're all allowed to have fun painting our dog's toenails and sending their photos into funny websites.

As an aside, the AVMA is still embroiled in the fois gras debate . . .hotly counter-contested by Connecticut, saying it's production is NOT cruel. Hmmm . . .couldn't we just make fois gras like, once every five years, and savor the taste and the sacrifice of it . . .or . . .did I even spell that correctly? FOY GRA? tehe

http://www.bls.gov/opub/uscs/report991.pdf

At this time, I'd like to honour them

Yes, I'm thinking about leaving the country.
----
OH WE'RE NOT GONNA TAKE IT
NO, WE AIN'T GONNA TAKE IT
OH WE'RE NOT GONNA TAKE IT ANYMORE

WE'VE GOT THE RIGHT TO CHOOSE AND
THERE AIN'T NO WAY WE'LL LOSE IT
THIS IS OUR LIFE, THIS IS OUR SONG
WE'LL FIGHT THE POWERS THAT BE JUST
DON'T PICK OUR DESTINY 'CAUSE
YOU DON'T KNOW US, YOU DON'T BELONG

OH WE'RE NOT GONNA TAKE IT
NO, WE AIN'T GONNA TAKE IT
OH WE'RE NOT GONNA TAKE IT ANYMORE

OH YOU'RE SO CONDESCENDING
YOUR GALL IS NEVER ENDING
WE DON'T WANT NOTHIN', NOT A THING FROM YOU
YOUR LIFE IS TRITE AND JADED
BORING AND CONFISCATED
IF THAT'S YOUR BEST, YOUR BEST WON'T DO

OH.....................
OH.....................
WE'RE RIGHT/YEAH
WE'RE FREE/YEAH
WE'LL FIGHT/YEAH
YOU'LL SEE/YEAH

OH WE'RE NOT GONNA TAKE IT
NO, WE AIN'T GONNA TAKE IT
OH WE'RE NOT GONNA TAKE IT ANYMORE

OH WE'RE NOT GONNA TAKE IT
NO, WE AIN'T GONNA TAKE IT
OH WE'RE NOT GONNA TAKE IT ANYMORE
NO WAY!

OH.....................
OH.....................
WE'RE RIGHT/YEAH
WE'RE FREE/YEAH
WE'LL FIGHT/YEAH
YOU'LL SEE/YEAH

WE'RE NOT GONNA TAKE IT
NO, WE AIN'T GONNA TAKE IT
WE'RE NOT GONNA TAKE IT ANYMORE

WE'RE NOT GONNA TAKE IT, NO!
NO, WE AIN'T GONNA TAKE IT
WE'RE NOT GONNA TAKE IT ANYMORE

JUST YOU TRY AND MAKE US
WE'RE NOT GONNA TAKE IT
COME ON
NO, WE AIN'T GONNA TAKE IT
YOU'RE ALL WORTHLESS AND WEAK
WE'RE NOT GONNA TAKE IT ANYMORE
NOW DROP AND GIVE ME TWENTY
WE'RE NOT GONNA TAKE IT
A PLEDGE PIN
NO, WE AIN'T GONNA TAKE IT
OH YOU ON YOUR UNIFORM
WE'RE NOT GONNA TAKE IT ANYMORE

--Twisted Sister "We're not gonna take it" off the STAY HUNGRY album

BTW, 1984 was a really, really good year for me

What happened to JaNoWriMo?

I had fun and "success" with November's NaNoWriMo, so I decided to try and rewrite the manuscript closest to my heart, the one that's been rewritten a few times, the one that matters too much sometimes, for the smaller and less celebrated JaNoWriMo. With everything going on and the depth of life-sorting I've been doing this has proved an unrealistic goal for this month. Last year I told myself not to expect heavy writing production in January . . .and here I went against my own vow. What future Januaries (ever seen that month pluralized?!) will hold in store is what comes more rhythmically to this Alaskan season: reading. This is the month for reading all those books you would LIKE to write. It's an intake and processing time. I've been able to see more of how to change this manuscript. I even wrote my first critical paper in 8 years on Morrison's

The Bluest Eye

in my attempt to apply to graduate school AND write something that would help me with 'Foundling'.
What I am looking to do in the next week is rewrite the first 50 pages so I can send that out and share it with a writing buddy.

Random Acts

While house sitting I have a different commute into town. Carved in the snow, against a long fence next to Chena Pump Road, in letters three-feet high to be readable from the road was the phrase: YOU ARE NOT UGLY.
Yesterday, I really needed to see that.

I am wondering, though, if it had anything at all (Karma-wise) to do with my action on MLKing day of writing King quotes on note cards and putting them on car windshields in the F. Meyer parking lot. I didn't distribute too many. He was such a brilliant humanist, and he gets lost in the woo-hoo-day-off sometimes.

Things of note, in unaffective sentence fragments

1. Watched Michael Moore's "Sicko" and nearly wept with gratitude at his expression and plea in favor community-minded health care. Funny. Rational. Full of heart.

2. Bought 27# of ground yak in the Sears parking lot from a nice man with a small heard in Delta. Planning to go for a visit to his ranch soon . . .Asked if he'd ever heard of dzo-- a yak/cow hybrid that gets ten gallons to the square mile [of pasture] (crossing a heifer with a yak bull yields much higher milk production, they're both bovids, but male offspring are sterile.)

3. Finished Annie Dillard "The Living"--almost 'plotless,' but immersive . .

4. Writing a little, not so much. Working on taking care of mind, body, spirit instead of coming up with flashing, "soap-bubble-grabbing" plans. Trying to take my time to think things through, talk to people. Applications and manuscripts are flying around or have been submitted . . .hopefully, mistakes have not been made.

5. Looking forward to the school district's "Diversity Book Club" starting next week. (Titles include: Rethinking Columbus, We can't teach what we don't know, The kids Behind the Label, Affirmative Action. ) Maybe there'll be folks who don't want to disband and we can keep reading through the summer and fall.

Housesitting Adventures--chapter 89

I couldn't figure out why someone who so conscientiously left me folded towels on the end of the beautifully quilted guest bedroom could forget to put toilet paper on the roller in BOTH bathrooms. I found the paper, put in on, and woke up to find each bathroom had a massive cumulus-cloud like structure of mauled white tissue.

There are two orange kitties that came with this job: Willie Wag and Jack Wabbit. I suspect the one with the nub-tail (Manx) is defending me from the Charmin. Turns out that the TP is in firmly-lidded Tupperware behind the bowl.

We had a huge snowstorm the night I took my friend to the airport. They have a beautiful, multi-level house in the Rosie Creek area, with lots of steps and a looooong driveway. My snow blower skills still work, that's always good to know. I am here for two weeks while they're in Florida. That should give me enough time to try all the different kinds of wild game and fish in their freezer . . .
Wish me luck with ALL the many plants. Fortunately, they all have sticky notes that specify how much water each week. (Did I mention my friend is a veterinarian used to calculating micrograms of meds?)

One last image from my two days at Hutch: one of the infants in the daycare has both parents finishing HS at Hutch. At break time and lunch, "Daddy" carries the little slumped four-month-old on his shoulder through the crowd of teenagers and down he hall to the vending machine. They are back at daycare by the next bell for the next class.

Cottage Cheese

It was enough of a religious experience that it belongs on the blog.

"Nancy's organic cultured cottage cheese". . .

what was that other stuff I was eating for 30 years? plastic?!?!?!?

" . . .bottles of beer on the wall"

I've mentioned Hutch high school before, but they are a "vo-tech" school with about 350 students and a very strong teen-parenting program. Their daycare center and the curriculum for young mothers really gets them launched (in my opinion). I was cleaning up after the lunch-bomb went off in the commons and one of the daycare workers, a woman with a fabulous singing voice and a long-gray braid down her back, came wheeling through with a six pack of one-year-olds. They were in three rows of two in this specialized stroller gizmo. I kept cleaning and she wheeled around the corner. A little later and she showed up again, singing a different song, and now with five tots on board. I kept cleaning. Then she came around again, with four tots. Yup, she was still singing. I cleaned. Then three tots. Then I figured out what was happening. The next time I saw her round the corner she had two on board, and the one in the very front was about to keel forward onto her big head, she was so fast asleep. I looked up. "You're about to lose that one in the front." I said.

"Finally! She hates to nap."
I don't know this woman's name, but she said she was happy to see me again (I was there in October for a week.)

Also, though I knew one of my writing teachers from 1995 did some supplemental classes at Hutch, I wasn't prepared for how much it helped to see her "office"-- a door on the other side of the library with the embossed words "storage" and her name typed onto a piece of paper and taped just below. I thought she was God when I took classes from her when I was twenty. I thought writers were creatures that would receive accolades for being profound, for being sensitive, that, if they worked hard and were really smart, people would recognize them somehow. We are, so much more often than not, quiet people, in storage closets and basements, still writing because we just can't do anything else, nothing else flames in that particular way.

Thanks Mr. Nick. And thank you, Mom.

I was writing with great abandon AND concentration yesterday when I stopped to login to the sub teaching webcenter to pick up available jobs for next week. (checking between 11am and 4pm sure beats getting NINETEEN weird phone messages if you aren't home between 5pm and 11pm, the call-out times). It turned out that 'S', the custodian at Hutch HS was going to be out M-W of next week. The woman is a saint . . .to spend her days picking up squashed lunch leftovers from surly teenagers and deal with plugged toilets. She's friendly, but quiet. She is not "white"--as most of the employees at the school are. I mention this to touch on all our buried suppositions of economic/social/racial class that we like to pretend aren't there. Hutch is a school I know pretty well, and I place a like very much. Directly after accepting the position my preschool friends e-mailed wanting me to work the next two Wednesdays, plugged into the system as a classroom teacher, something that garners a slightly higher wage than other temp work. I called the office at Hutch to see how they felt about me being there only 2 days instead of 3. "You know you took a custodial position with S's job, right?"

To be fair, I think the inquirer had my best interests at heart . . .why not play roulette that I'd get a different 'classroom' call out for Monday and Tuesday and make a little more money for a days work. The answer is that I like Hutch, I like 'S', it's close to home, the workday runs from 715am-3pm, and I don't have to be "on" the way a classroom teacher does. And the custodial wage is not that far from what I made as a vet tech for most of my years . . and is FAR better(like DOUBLE) than what I made as a housekeeper in the mid nineties. I was in preschool this past Wed, and will be for the next two. Good enough.

My family (mom especially) enabled me to go to a private elementary school in Connecticut in the early eighties that was very small and community-based. You ascended from kindergarten through grade 8, with the same core group of kids. We were white and black, Jewish and Catholic, European and Japanese, Taiwanese, PuertoRican, red-haired, curly-haired, blond-haired, and braided. The only visible sign of cohesion I see in my mind when I remember the line of us passing through the hall to go to music or art, was our height (until 7th grade or so) and our green-blue plaid uniform. And, if we were lucky, we got to see Mr. Nick on his rounds. We would sometimes get so excited in waving and greeting him you'd think we'd spotted a gazelle in the woods. For decades "Mr. Nick" was the sole caretaker of buildings and grounds. I think he had minions in the summer for repainting and stuff. His face would light up when we greeted him. You knew he was kind right away. Sometimes he rescued us . . .in bathrooms when we felt sick, when the milk spilled inside the fish tank. He hugged us when school started up again in the fall. Come to think of it, though, he didn't talk to us much either. Was he Italian? Does it matter? These "categories" or far more stark in places just outside of New York -- where we were.

I hope Mr. Nick is enjoying retirement, and crawling with grand kids. Wonder if he could imagine that a girl in Alaska will be thinking of him with her hip-radio and spray bottle come Monday --

Of paychecks and stage fright

Some wonderful people I do temp vet work for recently forgot to pay me (I finally got brave enough to ask about it and they felt terrible) and then my FNSB (Fairbanks North Star Borough)School District paycheck for the Dec.2-21 got lost in the mail. Yesterday -- January 9th-- I opened my p.o. box to find it dog-eared and crumpled, its perforated edges ripped off. They sent it from an office three miles from my house on the morning of Friday, Decemeber 21.
So I can
A. Feel sorry for myself some more, or
B. get on with it
. . .option 'b' comes complete with the imagery of my hand reaching into the postal sorting machine in Anchorage and yanking my paycheck out of the gears. Thanks. That's two months of rent right there.

I've read this book before, but picked it up again and opened it to the exact page I needed:

The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer's Block, and the Creative Brain
by Alice Weaver Flaherty

I've long known that the more emotionally invested I am in a project, and the further along in its revision I am, the harder it is to get the work done without trashing my body with coffee, sugar, and lousy self-talk. Which then looks like, volume-wise, writers' "block". Flaherty spends much of her book discussing temporal lobe epilepsy, hypergraphia, the neurology of hormones and the infamous Ann Sexton. But the page I opened to said "[something, something, something else] for this type of block, psychologists must look at stage fright as a model . . .".

Bingo.
And it's helping so far, this "feeling the fear" and green tea and other sensory distractors and stuff.
The book I am writing "Foundling" is a creation myth, and it opens with the biblical genesis followed the creation of a strong interracial friendship (a meta-discourse of Afro-Europeanism) I'm "copying" Toni Morrison in the way she used the "Dick and Jane" myth as signalment in The Bluest Eye. Did I mention you should read that book . . .

The function of Despair?

Upon receiving the book "Of Earth and Sky, Spiritual Lessons from Nature" I sent my distant friend a message of great thanks. He said he felt unworthy of such praise, but it occurred to me that Despair functions to soften us into far more affective people. Instead of being created by a "hammer and an anvil" we have a juncture where we are like pulpy fruit in a toddler's fist. Our receptivity is profound.

My friend has since sent more readings, and though I'm not despairing anymore, I am equally filled with gratitude.

Again, the book he originally sent expounds on the seven virtues: Prudence, Fortitude, Temperance, Justice, Faith, Hope, and Charity. And, as the book admits, the most troubling one for most of us in America is the one labelled archaically "Temperance". I just now deleted an entire paragraph about twentieth century American economics, generations, and culture. I do not believe that capitalism AND the virtue of Temperance are incapable of co-existing. The idea of Temperance, I think, is to set free the soul of ourselves, to loosen the tethers just enough to grow.

Here is an example question that has helped me immensely.
"Make a list of specific things in your life that serve to limit your personal freedom. Choose one of those specific limitations, and consider the freedom that you enjoy within those limits. Consider the advantages you enjoy. Pray for the ability to see your limitations as a natural definition to your life, and not as a restraining straitjacket."

I bet, every one of us, no matter where we are in our life's journey, would say that lack of money limits our personal freedom.
Can we answer the rest of the question?

oh, and the carrot--

http://www.cezannescarrot.org/vol3iss1/index.html

Foundling

This month I am doing fewer things with more energy. I sent off a new fiction piece on New Years' Day. I am doing a variation of NaNoWriMo for January that will rewrite "Mother Africa" into a beautiful novel that I'm actually PROUD of. Despite my despair over job-related news, I sure seem to be working a lot, both as a vet tech and as a sub teacher. My exercise routine has been going strong for two weeks now, and I'm feeling physically much better. There's a lot more to write here . . .about spirituality, patience, sifting through all the advice and well-meaning words from friends and family . . .about stopping the scramble in order to hear The Voice.