Heat

It's 106 today.  It was 107 degrees yesterday as I passed a bank clock at 5:15 p.m. on the South side of Oklahoma City.  I waited in traffic with the other schmucks, my air conditioner blasting slightly cooler air than what you'd find outdoors, sweating from the top of my melting hair to the bottoms of my low heeled pumps.  On the South side, you'll find about 60% of the people in their cars lack a/c.  Their windows are wide open, they drive fast to encourage air flow and have short tempers.  Their hair tends to be dirty with pollution and skin is more tan, at least on the window side of their ride.

I stayed on the city streets, skirting the outskirts on my way home.  If I took the highway, I would be more cranky, sitting in a traffic jam with hundreds of others, all inconsiderate and cutting in front because their destination and time are so much more important than my own.  Sigh.  It happens more in the summer.  People get more aggressive; either that or I just notice it more.

During the summer in Oklahoma I either head north for a couple of weeks and find a place to hang out that is both cool and near water, or I simply dig in and wait out the heat inside an air conditioned house/car/office/world because I cannot take the heat.  It is depressing, like seasonal affective disorder in the summertime.  Too much sun; too much heat.  Not enough snow.  Last year we had 63 days in a row of over 100 degree temperatures. Everything not inside died.  This year I planted cucumbers, basil, and a ton of other decorative plants under the porch awning where they are more or less protected from the sun.  As long as they are watered every day, they should live. Should. Except that (as my friend Laura says) it's like a pizza oven out there. We only had one day where it snowed and I felt more alive than usual.

The heat makes people a little crazy too. In the years that I have made my cell phone number public, I have never had a crank caller. I have never had hang ups and I have never had anyone sell my number to a telemarketer.  Only this week has anything strange happened.  I got a text from an Oklahoma City cell phone number.  It said "Can you Send meme pics of your schnou" with no regard for basic grammar. I'm not sure, but I suspect that it is from one of my students. Yes, I just berated someone's grammar before their poor choices.

I have been directly approached by college students and former college students for anything from sex to romance.  There is this rule that every educator knows and every educator follows or they are taking advantage of the power they have over that student, either by their grade or by the regard with which the student holds them. Generally speaking, you're a low-down dirty dog sun of a beeswax if you have sex with your students.  You just are.  Think of Mary Kay Latourneau, John from Oleanna, and any number of other scandalous rotten teachers. And that's just the female ones.  I have seen my share of both female and male professors in relationships with students.  There is a sense of decorum in waiting until after grades are turned in but not everyone who begins a romantic entanglement with a student has the ethical fortitude to do so. Me? I have to watch my own reaction to such activities. My fingers itch for a stick. My advice to all teachers everywhere is this: Don't f**k your students.

In no way am I interested in sending pictures of my schnou, nose, the crack of my butt or the crack of my cat's butt across the interwebs for the personal or public entertainment of another without payment.  I didn't respond. It's not that I don't have anything to say to the request.  I'd like to respond with "May I have your credit card information?" or perhaps "You are obviously in need of some higher education.  May I direct you to my English class instead?" or the classic "What the hell is wrong with you?", because this really is horrifying.  Then I wondered if I could look up some strange medical disease dictionary and forward those. Yes, I have a mean streak and do not like to be messed with. Must be the heat.  I settled on ignoring it.  If the person texts again, I will track them down and call their mom, girlfriend, wife, or clergy member and embarrass them.

This one is free, but the arm, leg, and schnou will cost ya!

During the course of writing this blog post, my dog has been outside. I have to get a pancake turner and scrape him off the sidewalk where he has melted around the edges.

It's that hot.

Towards a Better...

At my middle school, testing season is almost over.  Next week we will have make up tests and that's it for the year.  Things got thrown into panic mode since we were set to do paper and pencil tests for the 7th graders and at the last moment the state department said we had to do computerized testing.  We only have about 50 computers in the school and 500 students. It wasn't a nightmare but the counselor had never arranged this sort of thing before so we all suffered a bit.  Both the administrator and the monitor must stay in the room during testing and roamers are to come check every once in awhile to make sure that students are comfortable and that administrators don't need a break.  I really dislike having a room full of kids who have to pee for three hours and nobody comes to get them to take them to the bathroom.

Anyway, I am sure my kids did a great job.  I'm not allowed to see or to help or to look at test scores.  Likewise I instruct the kids not to talk to me about them.  However, it leaks out and sometimes in their exuberance, someone will brag to me about what they got.  I'm happy for them but also say they can't say those things to me. I think that the English scores will increase dramatically this year.  I'm in the English department and the main sixth grade teacher and eighth grade teachers really did a great job this year.  Those scores will follow us as well, wherever we go.

Speaking of going, my student intern is almost at the end of her stint in my school. Next week she is going to institute the poetry unit I asked her to create.  She has used my materials to come up with curriculum, written lesson plans and will institute them and assess at the end of the unit.  She is doing much better in the classroom and I feel comfortable having her there to help teach.  She thinks she is ready to go out on her own.  I hope so.  I've been teaching for that last however long and I'm still never as prepared as I want to be.  There is also a lot the kids throw at you and even when you are prepared, you have to watch your face and reactions.  So I've been thinking of some advice of my own for Title 1 public school teachers.

1. Don't take it personally.  Kids have it rough in public school.  Their home lives, especially those who live in poverty, are sometimes (though this is not the rule) challenging.  When they say or do ugly things, it's almost never about the teacher. When you hear ugliness, look immediately beyond the words to the child spouting them.  At all costs, avoid sarcasm.
2.  Not everyone who is poor is troubled.  Lots and lots of my students have happy home lives.
3.  My goals and values may not be their goals and values.  I am White.  The vast majority of the students I teach are either Hispanic or Black.  While we all have common American experiences, there are cultural differences and I do not have the right to make a kid feel bad because they realize from an early age that college is not for them. I do have a responsibility to learn more of my student's cultures and to pull those things into the classroom so that we can all learn better.
4.  That does not mean that I can give up talking about literacy, a better life, and college.  The fact is that as a 7-8 grade English teacher, I might be the last literacy educator they see.  This makes my job that much more important and urgent.  The buck stops here.
5. You know what my goal is? My goal is to be a better person.  That's why I teach. That's what it boils down to.  I want to look in the mirror every day and see someone I can be proud of.  How I go about teaching ties into that.
6.  My personal life has little place in my classroom.  My students know I am White and that I speak some spanish.  I tell them a little about growing up where I did, about the migrant children who became my friends and about Spanish lessons from 6-12 grade.  I tell them about my past teaching jobs, including the prison which fascinates them, and I talk about my dog and cat.  That's about it. If I am teaching curriculum and listening to their talk and their world and entering a realm that ultimately does not belong to me, I want to be as empty of a vessel as I can rather than a cup spilling over.
7.  Take the weekends off.  I know it is difficult.  Grade papers before you come home.  Set up curriculum and lesson plans on your plan period.  Do as my friend Bonner suggests and touch a door or some piece of the school as you leave and say "I am leaving this place" and do not come back until Monday.
8.  Laugh.  Tell jokes.  Enjoy these students because junior high is brutal and hormone filled and frightening.  Laughter is important and instructive and makes life easier.
9.  When you are wrong, say you are sorry. Publicly and with sincerity.  I apologize to my students when I get stuff wrong.  I take responsibility and get more respect for that than if I never admit mistakes.  This shows that if I can get better and be a strong person who is compassionate, then they can be too. It's a pathway and an example.
10. You spot it, you got it.  I stole this from an Al-Anon meeting (that's friends and family members of alcoholics).  When the kids were spending their lunch hours smearing food up and down the hallways and throwing trash on the grounds, I was dismayed and angry.  I decided that instead of some punitive action, I had a responsibility to teach compassion and responsibility.  I took an entire day and had the students write letters to Margarita and Griselda, who are our custodians.  I walked them around and we picked up trash.  We gave the letters to the ladies and made them cry.  I asked that if anyone saw people throwing trash or food where it shouldn't go that they speak up.  Now our hallways are mostly clear and the grounds look better.  Such a simple thing, really.  If you can, then do.

I feel strongly that we are the guardians of innocence.  Our middle school kids are half child, half teenager and spend a good deal of time just trying to figure out what to do next.  When someone or something threatens their ability to do so, it turns me into a raging witch.  For instance, one of our students dropped out for three months.  His dad dis-enrolled him and took him to Texas.  When he got back, his mom came to re-enroll him.  Only he had gotten a gang tattoo on his neck in the intervening time.  He knows that in order to be part of our school, he has to cover that tattoo but chooses not to.  Every single time I catch him, I take him to the principal and he spends time out of class sitting, waiting for his mom to come bring him a turtleneck.  It's crazy.  But I have to do that- to keep gang symbols and tattoos and signs and graffiti out of my school.  It's not just my job, it's my moral responsibility as an adult and as a human to protect others.

In other news, I have bronchitis again.  My doctor will be so thrilled.  Last weekend I missed an important play in Oklahoma City and this weekend, I missed a great play here in Tulsa.  I simply had no energy to walk from the damn car to the theater to sit there for two hours without coughing my head off.  I'll go on Monday for a shot and some antibiotics and blah blah blah...it's the same story.  My job is killing me because each time I walk into the building, I inhale dust and mold and probably asbestos.  I'm hoping next year will be better and working, always working, towards a better world.

Far To The Horizon

Barbara Billingsly died at the age of 94 yesterday. She was June Cleaver on the 1950's show "Leave It To Beaver". June Cleaver was an icon for White women of the time and also the standard by which women were judged. Up with the sun, making pancakes and bacon, rousting her children around to get them to school, taking care of her husband's needs (whatever that meant) and in general doing something known as "keeping house". One assumes that meant cooking, baking, vacuuming, cleaning windows and making beds and doing stacks of laundry from a washer that was located in her own home. I'm pretty sure June had her own car so she could shop at the local market and I'm also sure she did her own canning and didn't use boxes of anything for cooking.

There's something else, though. A few important things to remember about the Cleaver family.

1. They were prosperous. There was never a conversation about lack of money. The children always had nice clothes and June and Ward dressed well too.
2. June didn't work outside of the home, though I'd bet that she theoretically volunteered some of her time to charities.
3. June and Ward were obviously well educated, and their children had easy access to adequate schooling.
4. None of the main characters was an alcoholic, nobody fucked around and nobody hit anyone.
5. Dirt didn't exist.
6. You never see a hair out of place on June's head. Man, that must've been difficult. Jerry Mathers remarked that while Billingsly was a wonderfully talented actress and quite talented, she was often stifled on the set due to the bounds of her character. Oh the irony...

I get the feeling that this family didn't really exist, even in the 1950's, a time when we as a nation were dong fairly well. The middle class was growing and segregation was never addressed on television. Gays and lesbians were left out as well, though we know that more than hetero White people existed in the 50's. This show merely attempted cultural replication- a reaffirmation that everything was ok and that all problems could be solved with a father/son talk in half an hour.

If you fast forward to the 80's, you have a new iconic family: the Cosby's. Now that's a family I wanted to be part of. They had music, their own rooms, secrets, educated parents and kids who did sometimes stupid things and were loved anyway. Claire Huxtable was the head mom of five lively kids. She was worked full time and was somehow a good lawyer, mom, wife and friend. I bet she had a housekeeper. The best part for me was watching Cosby as Cliff Huxtable because he showed me what a normal dad could be like- listening to his kids and taking time for them but also being funny and strict and authoritative rather than authoritarian. And he was really, really funny. Their kids didn't seem a burden but rather a joy (despite Cliff's repeated insistence that all children eventually move out and stay out). That's the family I hoped would exist in real life.

Fast forward to today. We've got "Family Guy", "South Park" and "King of the Hill", and, and, and well, that's about it. Some animated cartoons portraying exactly what not to do- kids with dangerous attitudes and parents who are disconnected and self-absorbed. In fact, our entire nation seems self-absorbed. And I think it's safe to say that our definition of family in 2010 has changed and needs to be somehow acknowledged. More than that, I think that the way we think of an American woman's place in society needs to come back into proportion.

Oklahoma pretends that it's not been hit by the recession. This article in the Oklahoman- a newspaper repeatedly voted worst paper in the U.S.- reports that food stamp recipients rose for a record 30th month in a row in Oklahoma. Yes, even Oklahoma has felt a recession. And we're one of the poor states. Must be part of that trickle-down effect.

Why do we need a new perspective? Because the other day someone posted on Facebook that he was tired of all the jobless welfare mom's sucking off of society. Once I recovered from the shock, I took time to think about this from a perspective that isn't my own. I don't blame him-he works hard for his living and has to pay an enormous tax bill for being middle class. And it's true that some people take advantage of a system that is intended to help people who need it. And when I consider this carefully, this person would probably help someone in need. He's an Okie; that's how we do.

But I don't think that the problem merits such vehemence across the American conscience. We have this image perpetuated of some poor woman- Black, White, whatever, with bad teeth and bad English with four or five children stuck to her hip with a cigarette hanging out of her mouth standing in line at a grocery store in a mink coat, purchasing a cartful of choice cuts of meat with food stamps. Then the same woman trades the leftovers for a 50% markdown of cash so she can buy alcohol, cigarettes and meth. Then she neglects their children and lives in an opium den (ok, trailer park) and either she or her kids or both go to jail in an endless cycle.

Let's get a grip and discuss a real societal ill, mmkay? Let's talk about corporate greed politicians in people's pockets and the astronomical damage to our environment, our economy and the American ways of life. In a minute...

First, let's talk about single moms and single dads. We'll start with my mom.

My mom was pregnant with her fourth child in 1972 when her husband was killed. She was a hosuewife, an acceptable and expected occupation at that time. She moved back to her hometown where her family helped her some for a couple of years. She married off and on and always worked a job or two to help make ends meet. In her first marriage, she was home with the kids. By the time I was growing up, she worked at home and at a part time job. When necessary (especially between marriages) it was two or three part time jobs. Full time wasn't an option because then the employer would have to pay benefits like health insurance. She made less than 10k per year. I remember being an 8 year old latchkey kid. Our income qualified us for food stamps and government health care. We did not apply because my mother was too proud to take what she considered a handout. I didn't go to a dentist until I was in 10th grade. I cracked my pelvis in sixth grade when I was sledding and never even went to the doctor because my mother couldn't afford xrays. I spent several painful months recuperating. She did accept the Social Security income from my dad's passing. I remember distinctly how much it was and that the check came on the first of every month.

I wish my mom had gone on Welfare. I wish the stigma wasn't so prevalent.

I wish society would seek to understand the underlying causes for the need and use of Welfare. I wish we Americans understood poverty as a class issue and not just an economic one.

Think of it- you're a single woman and you get pregnant. The father might stay around and help, at least for awhile, or he might take off. Society doesn't judge him for that; they judge the woman. If she has an abortion she doesn't tell anyone and suffers that pain alone or with one good friend. Incidentally, it's now more difficult than ever in Oklahoma to obtain an abortion. This is why I go to protests.

Or maybe she grows up hearing that abstinence is best and therefore gets married at 18 and divorced at 23 with two children. Her ex may or may not help out. Either way, the daily energy devoted to taking care of the household falls mostly on her shoulders. If you're a single dad, just reverse the roles. Single dads get to be heroes for stepping up and being parents in this situation; it's just expected of women. I know and like several single dads. They're doing what they should but they don't think what they do is extraordinary. In fact, they have to fight twice as hard for custody if that's an issue.

Regardless of the cause, a woman, especially one without an advanced education, will have a hard time making it with children. She's relegated oftentimes to section 8 housing in bad neighborhoods. Childcare while she works her just-above-minimum-wage (so the employer can assuage their conscience while taking advantage of this plentiful workforce) job is equal to or even more expensive than what she makes if she puts her kids in regular day care. Private day care is better; if she takes the government subsidized option, the quality of care is likely to decline and her children will be more likely to need Head Start programs. A shoe-string budget doesn't have room for cars to break down and for expenses like braces and contact lenses. If that car does break down, she must fix it herself, rely on relatives or make friends with those who live close by so that they can form a network to get everyone where they need to be when they need to be there. One thing I have noticed between poverty class and middle class is this: If you're poor and your car breaks, you just knock on your neighbor's door. They will do their best to get you where you're going, to fix the problem or give you a ride. If you're middle class, you're socially inhibited from asking because you're expected to do everything for yourself. Self sufficiency, bootstraps and all of that rot. This was the weirdest transition for me, to not be asked for help or to not be able to rely on the people around me if I need something. It was my grandparent's greatest concern when I bought a house- that I make friends with the neighbors. In return, the woman in question can cook, do laundry or offer home made confections to thank the person who helped her. This is especially great for single men who don't often get home cooked meals.

So she pays all of the bills and once a month gets to go out with her friends. And people criticize her for that because she's not at home playing educational reading games to her kids 24/7 on her off time. Or maybe for three weeks of the month her kids eat macaroni and cheese so on the first she buys meat or takes them to a restaurant that isn't McDonald's. Her teeth may not be great, her accent might be off and maybe eventually she figures out that the only way she can make it is to quit that job and go on Welfare full time. At least she gets to be at home with her kids. And society judges her and punishes her and blames her for all societal ills. For me, my choice is to continue to support and change the amount and type of assistance offered. You can't just offer money (and I know it's not the only type of assistance) or token housing that's often dangerous and unreliable for heat or electricity. There must be a path, a way out; some sort of light and hope for a better life.

Incidentally, I know exactly TWO middle class families with a stay-at-home mom. One family has one child and they're doing alright. The other family has four children and they struggle every month to make sure ends meet.

And on to my secret confession of the day. I'd love to be a mom. I would. Couldn't imagine a higher calling than to populate the earth with little mini-me's, out there reading poetry and using words as leverage for change and acceptance and a world where we stop polluting the shit out of the environment. But I can't. At this point I'd be a single mom. And because I would want to put myself into that endeavor 100% and I can't afford to be a stay-at-home mom. Even if I were married or if I had a life partner, I'd still have to work and take my focus off of home life. And that's just not fair to anyone, including me. I'm busy enough as it is- a full time job and a 144 mile commute every day, plus two graduate courses AND general exams coming up tomorrow. No wonder we're a tired and heavily medicated nation.

The United States is the most overworked society in the world. Moms from two-parent households are more likely to work full time, shoulder the majority of the housework and parenting and must still conform to standards of health and beauty. I can't imagine how a single mom or a single dad must do it. How she or he must sacrifice and when those sacrifices aren't made for a day or two, how much guilt that would bring on.

The U.S. Social Security Administration defines social welfare expenditures as the cost of "cash benefits, services, and the administration of public programs that directly benefit individuals and families." This broad definition includes expenditures for social security (Old-Age, Survivor's, Disability, and Health Insurance, or OASDHI), health and medical programs, education, housing, veterans' programs, and public aid programs.

Let's talk about some real problems. Problems not concerned with individuals who take advantage of a system. Problems that create the environment where we need so much from such a system. I'm not sure how much the nation spends on Welfare programs for single parents. You can find out more here, but that includes all social programs. I do know that in one year, we spent $40 billion on private contractors for the war effort. I know that corporations regularly and repeatedly rape the middle class and exploit the poverty class. I want to know why those people are hailed as captains of industry while stealing billions and single moms are ridiculed and crucified without so much as anyone asking that population what they want, what they're doing or if they have hopes and dreams of their own.

Barbara Billingsly died and may she rest in peace. She sounded like a nice lady. Perhaps now is the time to move on. Please, America, stop this bit of strange thinking. It makes me tired. Stop hating women. And Oklahoma, do me a personal favor and cut down on the female incarceration rate. We're 300% over the rest of the nation and are #1 in the world in percentage of women locked up. And what the fuck is with private prisons anyway... ah but that's a rant for another day.

At some point soon and hopefully in my lifetime, we're going to have to change our entrenched conservative thinking. We're going to have to change with the times and adapt or else risk the waning of our sun in the sky. I'd like to see a world where Welfare is used for what it's intended to do- to help people when they need it. Look far to the horizon and fix the root cause; then the rest shall fall into place.

How I Learned to Drive

Yesterday, I sold my little Ford ZX2. It got good gas mileage and was gray and I just sold it because I want something else. I learned to drive when I was 14, I think. I had a step-dad named Gene and he was a pretty cool dude. Long tall Texan in Washington state. Real easy personality. Not much bothered him. Red/orange hair, short beard, freckles and a roadrunner tattoo. Buck teeth. Nice man. Family man. Treated us well. He and my mom bought a little 50 acre place way up the North Touchet, past Baileysburg, Crall hollow, Hatley gulch (really washboard, that road was), and past Wolf fork. You go left at Eaton's old place which is the property just north of Don Beaver's cabin with the carved beaver statute in the front.
Half mile driveway, all gravel~nobody else lived in that particular gulch. Had a little spring crick (that's slang for creek) running through it and seven acres of hay. Little barn half way up. Wild fruit trees, roses, bull snakes and some rattlers. Deer elk, occasional bears, lots of coyotes and sheep. Our sheep. Rogers gulch. If you get to Cahill or Bill Stearn's place, you've gone too far. Bill had a big dog too. Remember Bobby, that Great Pyrenees that would lay in the road? Yeah, cars would pull around him. Too much damage if you ran him over. He'd come over and beat up on our dog. Poor Corky-snorky-muppet-butt. It was probably because of his name.
Our house was really two trailers pushed together. One was a two bedroom double-wide with an extended out living room. The second was more of a camp trailer with two rooms and a kitchen/bath in between. Gene insulated them from the cold Washington winters with hay bales and we built a huge deck with a pantry and a roof that spanned both trailers. It was cozy, if ugly. Gene also built several outbuildings and a shop for himself and later an air compressor. And he trapped coyotes and foxes for their hides. I could go hunt or skin and dress an animal, but just couldn't bring myself to learn how to stretch a hide.
Gene taught my sister Patti how to change the oil and a flat tire. He taught me how to drive. In our one-ton Dodge pickup with lockboxes and manual transmission. It was the Blue Turkey. It looked a little like this. He parked it on the the lower driveway and I climbed in the cab. Gene explained about the clutch/gas exchange and how I'd need to practice that transition or none of it would work. I killed it. I killed it again. And again and again. I wanted to stop, quit and not learn how to drive a clutch. Nope, nothing doing. We still had the 1973 Toyota Corona Deluxe that Patti let me drive when I was 8. Why couldn't I learn on that? Because this was a valuable lesson. I got frustrated and had to calm down, but Gene didn't let me get out of the cab. He wouldn't let me give up. So I didn't. Finally, the truck went forward. Then backwards. Then forwards again. I realized I was shaking and that I had a death grip on the steering wheel.
Over the course of six months, I got better at it and used the truck to haul hay from the barn to the animals. Corky would jump in the back for a short ride. Once, I backed it into the broad side of the barn. Didn't even phase that truck.
I've had other cars over the years. I drove the Corona a lot, and our little blue Datsun truck through the rest of high school. No tape deck, only a radio that worked some of the time. If you pressed the gas too quickly, some thingamajigger would come undone. It would accelerate out of control until you turned it off, pulled over and popped the hood, reconnected the accelerator and went on your way. No real big deal. No air conditioning on any of our cars anyway. We had 2/80 a/c. Roll down two windows and drive 80 miles per hour the way nature intended. With our mom in her Bronco, it was 4/60. Not as good. Yvette and I would be late for school (as usual) and we'd go as fast as we could, honking past Uncle Vernon's house and performing a little low altitude flying. That's about as much fun as I ever had, and I didn't even realize it.
Over the years I've had a few different vehicles. Most were crappy but some were fun. I bought a 1977 Firebird that I taught myself to powerslide in. When I lived in Las Vegas, my car was rear-ended and my ex-husband let me drive his non-air conditioned, two-toned (primer black and brown) Toyota. Yes, no air conditioning in Vegas. I almost died on a daily basis. No wonder I hated it there.
I'm not sure what I'm going to get next. I have a little time, what with my scooter and bicycle and only needing to get to the city to teach twice a week. I sort of want an old reliable truck so I can haul stuff. The kind like the Blue Turkey, where if I wanted to I could put a camper on the back or some stock railings and haul around a couple of sheep. I guess it doesn't make a huge difference though, since I don't have a camper or a bunch of livestock.
What I really want is what I already have: someone to believe in me.