I don't know what Trayvon Martin's last words were. I don't know what Tamir Rice said either. I wonder what Breonna Taylor talked about before going to bed that night. I do know what Eric Garner and George Floyd were saying before they were killed by police. I can't breathe. When I started painting masks this spring, it was a way to use up a surplus of cardboard boxes in my house and to do something concrete. Around mask 15, I had this idea to paint James Baldwin after seeing a portrait of him that I liked, and because I want everyone to read him until we live in a time where his words seem like history rather than words needed every day. Then I tried my hand at Frida Kahlo even though I have no illusions that I can manifest her in portraiture better than she did herself. The news crept in, and I learned that Ahmaud Arbery was shot, then Breonna Taylor, and now George Floyd was suffocated, and others who have been murdered without witness or video proof whose names I may never hear or learn. I don't watch the videos in fear that I will become numb to the visual of watching a fellow human be murdered. Repetition is not always a good thing. And the list starts in my head of Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, who am I forgetting? John Crawford III. Who did I forget to name? Names matter. Who did I forget? I painted Breonna Taylor, and I don't think I got her quite right. I put a halo over her head. I got that right. I am thinking about whether to paint George Floyd, and then I wonder how will I keep up with the list. It's as if I think painting will stop the murders. I have this memory that keeps going through my head. It is from July 13, 2013. It is the day that Trayvon Martin's murderer was allowed to walk free and there was another news story that was filling my Facebook feed. In Charlottesville, several young white women won their day in court against the police officers who had tried to stop them. The women were coming from a meeting about sexual assault and were on edge. The police officers were in plainclothes and banged on the window of the car to get the women to stop. I don't remember why, it doesn't really matter now. The women in their fear did not stop. They were not shot and the court found them not guilty. There is more to this story, and I am really happy that it ended in the way that it did. That day all of my white friends were posting this story and celebrating the court's decision. I live near Charlottesville, so this makes sense. However, there was a contrast in the feed. All of my black and brown friends were posting in grief that another black boy's death had gone unpunished. I don't remember a single post from a white friend about Trayvon Martin. I don't think I posted anything about either story, but I remember the day. I remember being really troubled that none of my white friends were posting about the killer of a black boy walking free. Why didn't we? I also remember being completely frozen by what my role should be. I did not know how to process what I witnessed from my little corner. I keep working on that. I still don't know what Breonna Taylor talked about before going to bed that night. I do know that I will run out of gold for halos if we don't figure out how to listen when someone tells us that he can't breathe. “To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time. ” – James Baldwin
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As I have mentioned in prior posts, verbs can be a challenge in Spanish. Over the years, I have discovered that contrary to popular belief, there are a finite number of spelling rules and irregular verbs. It is hard to convince my students that this is true. This weekend I had quite a bit of grading to do. Procrastination being what it is, this is what came of it. The first document is verbs with patterned spelling changes. The second document highlights the irregular verbs. There were a couple that I keep going back and forth about where they best go, namely oler and -ducir verbs. I am not sure when it started, but at some point I noticed the insertion of "just" into many of the emails that I receive.
This is just a post. This is just an email. This is just a reminder. This is just a ______. I know that I, too, have been known to use this word, once even so naive as to think it a means to soften a reminder. Like so many things in life, once noticed they start to grow. However, instead of a beautiful pearl that started as a grain of sand in the oyster, this particular sore now causes a physical response from me that does nothing to reflect light into the world. A reflexive grimace of annoyance, a clenching of my stomach, a reaction to a threat. A potentially harmless, even useful word, now a weaponized passive aggressiveness especially when inserted into a work related email. No longer a reminder, now it is just a reminder because you were just going to forget otherwise. Even today, when I remember to proofread my emails, I often find one and need to exercise my delete button. It is just everywhere. I promised myself to write while I am on break. Even if only for five minutes. I can do anything for five minutes. Except, man, I have to pee. I will be right back. I think I am hungry even though I just ate some lunch. Is there any chocolate anywhere? Maybe I should check Facebook again or was it Instagram. Oh, yeah, I wanted to see what was new on Twitter. What was I doing? Right, I was writing. Andi said that if you write for one hour you can usually write four pages. She did not promise four good pages, but simply some pages. A page would be good for me, even a sentence or two. Hey, look, there they are. If you are reading this then you know I wrote some sentences. Probably now is the time to apologize for wasting your time. Nevermind. Forget the apology, no one forced you to read this far down on the page. Besides, if you have read down this far, you are probably procrastinating, too. Listen to that, do you hear the voice from the kitchen? There is a question forming and I am the only person who can answer it. It could also be answered by Google, but why try the obvious when you can bother me with a question that I probably won’t know the answer to so that you can wait for me to try asking Google, #LMGTFY. I guess my annoyed voice is soothing. I can spend hours in my home and no one talks to me. But, let me sit down with my computer in my lap and suddenly I am the most popular person in these four walls. Next time I feel lonely or ignored, I need to remember to put a computer in my lap. Does it work if I want to be disturbed or do I put out different wavelengths when I want attention? Wow, look at that! Two whole paragraphs. Except maybe you could ignore the previous paragraph of whining because now the voice from the kitchen is offering to make me some tea. Maybe I do want attention when I put a computer in my lap, only I have unwritten rules of the kind of attention I want. I am almost always happy to receive the offer of a cup of tea kind of attention. And, no, not the consent cup of tea. That is a metaphor or was it an analogy? I am talking about a genuine offer of a warm cup of tea. Okay, so maybe I won’t make it a full hour. After all, I need to sip on my tea. inversión alfabética
cuyo culto culo Some things don't translate. Maybe it is better that way. What have you been doing, dreaming of, hoping and fighting for? answer in 250 words or less.5/19/2017 A request came from my boarding school, Pearson College UWC: write a one-pager of what you’ve been doing, what you’re dreaming of, hoping for, fighting for…. When I went to Pearson there were 200 students from 70 countries, and I was one of 5 from the US. Kurt Hahn (of Outward Bound fame) started these schools with the thinking that bringing young people together from across the globe would be a path towards greater cross cultural understanding and, with that, a hope for world peace. It is time for a cluster reunion, and they are calling it my 30th. I won't be able to attend, and I thought I'd give this prompt a shot. I wish I had been asked these questions when I was a recent graduate from Pearson. I was young enough that I would have thought I knew the answers.
What have I been doing? After college I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Panama. I worked with farmers and thought a lot about soil conservation and seed preservation. I learned that there was much I did not know about poverty, development, land ownership, and that there is a difference between what looks good on paper and what works. During those two years, I lived without electricity and only recently have begun to enjoy candlelight as ambiance. I learned that I can live a pretty good life with very few material possessions when I have access to clean water, shelter, food, and health care. These were big realizations for my twenty-three year old self and good reminders to myself every day. After a couple twists and turns, including marriage and a few more years in Panama, I ended up working at a boarding school in the United States. Pearson influenced my decision to join the Peace Corps, and working at a boarding school allowed me to appreciate the experience that I had at Pearson. Thinking about Pearson, I wish I had asked more questions of my peers, tried to listen more and talk less. But even with all the background noise that comes with being a young adult, there are many things that got through. Pearson emphasized giving and leaving the world a better place. That was clear when I filled out the application. I did not know how hard it is to stay true to that goal. What took more time to register is how much Pearson helped me understand that there is more than one way to do things and celebrate those differences. It would be reasonable to assume that my time in the Peace Corps was when I felt I gave back the most. This is far from the case. The people who I met in rural Panama taught me more about how to live in an imperfect world than any expertise I provided them. Instead, I have tried to figure out how to give back where I landed. Today, my world is quite small as I navigate adulthood with the mundane but important task of raising a family. As an educator, I have opportunities to consider when a different perspective might plant a seed. Here is one small example. When I was a student, an alumnus, visited campus to talk about the importance of supporting students of all sexual orientations. At the time I could not see what it had to do with me, and I confess that I was not even curious enough to attend a meeting. At my current school I have worked extensively with the administration, faculty, and student body around this very need in an environment where there are conflicting viewpoints. The seed to consider the perspective of someone different from myself was planted at Pearson. Those roots have become important because the conversations are not always easy ones. Working at a boarding school, I have also grown to understand the importance of alumni involvement in order for the experience to be passed on to the next generation. Would many of my classmates gone on to do great things even without Pearson? Probably yes. With so many incredibly bright and talented people, I hope that this would be the case. This is what I do know: Pearson shifted my world view, and it no longer spins on the same axis that it once did. I know that after the recent US election, it was my Pearson friends that I turned to to help me process. It is their collective experience, wisdom, and gentle reminders of their own political realities that helped me, as my students would say, get over myself and figure out how to move forward. I know that I watch, read, and listen to the news with a different lens than many of my current colleagues. And, I know that when there is happiness or sadness in the world, it echoes in my heart because of all of those I met at Pearson. I am pretty good at putting my head in the sand as the world turns around me. After t and p were elected, I cried off and on for several days. In live in an area where t is very popular, so it was not that I did not consider it a possibility. I knew very much that it was possible. I still cried. I hated being right. I kept telling myself that I shouldn’t be so pessimistic. I hate being wrong. I also told myself that it was about time that I take stock of things.
First steps? Speak from the I perspective.
Today we marched. And not unlike the tale of the six blind men and the elephant or the shadows of a cylinder (from one angle there is a circle and the other a rectangle), no two marches were the same. One friend made it to the rally area at 9 am and never left that point (Read her account here). Problem with that 'plan' was lack of water and sufficient porta potties. However, she was right in the thick of things, I suspect. My four-year-old niece thought we were all marching for "silver" rights having misheard civil rights. Silver probably should have rights, too. She was marching in NYC rather than DC. I imagine still others saw the line at the metro and turned around to go home. Without peer pressure, I never would have made it past that point myself. But I had the peer pressure so here is my march. My daughter and I did not leave central Virginia until close to 6 pm on Friday to stay with some accommodating folks in NoVa. Highlight of the evening, finding out the my daughter had scored two pussy hats and my first meal at Chuy's Tex-Mex. After an admittedly leisurely breakfast, we arrived at the metro stop on Saturday and saw a never- ending sea of bodies pouring out onto the sidewalk from the metro entrance. I questioned our sanity for even thinking this was a good idea. We parked the car and realized that we were near the metro ticketing area. Skipping the majority of the line and armed with our pre-loaded metro cards in hand, we soon found spots on the train. Although not on the most direct route, we stayed on the ever crowding train until L'Enfant Plaza. The ride was long but we had a delightful conductor. Worth staying on the blue line just for her. We finally reached our destination, but not quite. It took around 45 minutes to exit L'Enfant Plaza. Praying that no one would spook and cause a stampede, I moved forward slowly. The above photo is from the Metro; there was a larger crowd behind me. Three hours after parking my car, I was AT THE MARCH. I would describe it as organized chaos. We made our way along. The the realities of nature called our name and we found a relatively short line for a bathroom. Thank you folks from the National Park Service who keep the one by the Washington Monument clean. We marched some more. Fun people watching along the way. Got to The Ellipse. Admired each others signs. Then the hangry and thirsty started and we made our way forward to a food establishment. My march was a piece of the march as seen from street level with no sense of scale except that there were a lot of people and that I was glad to see so many different people come out for the march. Seeing aerial photos from the marches across the country and the world is an entirely different kind of elephant. Wow! Once I get my breath back, maybe I'll come up with something more articulate. For now, all I have is "Wow!" Today I heard on the radio that Natalie Babbitt, author of Tuck Everlasting, had died. I did not know she was still alive, yet I was sad for what might have been. Does this happen to you? I don't necessarily imagine the authors of my books as alive. (Maybe I did with the Harry Potter series, but how often does the author rise so fast and maintain a stardom like JK Rowling?) Then again, I don't necessarily imagine the authors as dead either. It is more that they are ageless like the characters in their books. NOTE: As soon as I learned about Natalie Babbitt, I rushed to the Google and was reassured to find out Katherine Patterson is still around, complete with Website and Facebook page to prove it!
But there it is. Authors, artists, actors, musicians, all of them, do age. And when they die, I am invariably taken back to our first introduction. Such a one-sided introduction it was, too. All my outpouring of emotion and trust. A relationship where I know them better than anyone else in my acquaintance. First, in the case of authors, they own my attention as I imbibe the words off the page. And then they show up at the strangest moments as I meander through life. Inexplicably, I know that they somehow know me since the characters are so often a reflection of my true self. Oh dear, did you think they were talking about you? Like so many people in my life, their death makes me wonder why I did not spend more time on our relationship when I had the chance. Good thing I can still find them hidden in the pages of their book, on the surface of their canvas, or in the lyrics of their song. Just like their characters, they can remain the age they were on their last page, brushstroke, or note. Everlasting. P.S. A short, very incomplete list of some people who surprised me by both being alive in my lifetime and by dying without saying goodbye. Knowing that I shared the earth at the same time that they were around has given me the reassurance of being part of something bigger than me: Natalie Babbitt 1932-2016 Maya Angelou 1928-2014 Gabriel Garcia Marquez 1927-2014 Pablo Picasso 1881-1973 I like figuring out other people’s quirks especially since I don’t have any. Anything I do is normal, right? If your quirk allows you to judge others then we’ve moved into a special form of quirk otherwise known as a pet peeve. Pet peeves are fun since they rarely follow logic and can be unpredictable. I’ve been thinking about a few of mine, and they mostly trace back to childhood. Maybe they are more predictable than I first thought. Here are a few that I’m willing to admit in a public forum. I'm certain that there are many of you out there who would happily add a few more to my list. It's acceptable to refrain from that impulse.:
One thing I learned while living overseas is that it does not matter if you love or hate a quirk of your new home, the quirk simply is. The fact that ahora does not mean now at least how I understand the meaning of now, no matter how many textbooks claim otherwise, stands out as a simplistic example. Culture, by the logic of my current thought process, may then be described as a set of quirks, pet peeves and otherwise, held by a group of people. Sociologists and anthropologists out there are welcome to roll their eyes at my proclamation which is based on no rigorous investigation whatsoever. |
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