Notes from a graduation ceremony in prison

One of the most overwhelming experiences I’ve ever had.  I had to keep telling myself, “I’ll just write about it.  I’ll just write about it.  I’ll just write about it.” As if the capacity to get it all out into language could have anything to do with the capacity to make sense of that experience.

My notes, in italics. 

1.  SEX/VIOLENCE

     -------------------

the comeback underdog

As we waited for the ceremony to begin, J, a man I know who is a writer, came in and sat next to me.  We got to talking about the nature of doing our work in the context of a political landscape where Donald Trump seems to be the current winningest communicator.  J explained to me: Sex and violence are always going to win the attention of the American public.  But we also really love to root for the underdog.  That’s us.  The underdog.  We just gotta communicate that better.  How?

2. LWOP’s circle of influence

In the same conversation, I told J that I was having a hard time wrapping my head around offering GED prep to men who are never going to be released (not all of our students, but some).  I told him that I was rethinking what it meant for education to be instrumental – outside of the economic and political ways we typically think about it.  He insisted that I was wrong, that I wasn’t considering the LWOP’s (Life Without Parole) circle of influence.  Just because he isn’t getting out, doesn’t mean his homies aren’t. Doesn’t mean his kids can’t be moved by his example.  He told me about a guy he knew, LWOP, who was taking college classes and whose son was incarcerated at another institution.  When his son read about his dad’s accomplishments in the prison newspaper, he quit gang-banging and went back to school, too.  Pretty cheesy example, but still.  Yeah, I gotta think about that. 

3. “guys in blue”

A jazz band (made up of musicians who are incarcerated) was playing up at the side of the stage.  A White guy, some prison staff member, walked over to one of the guys and said something to him.  One of the guys in the band came to the microphone on the stage and said, “Guys in blue, we gotta return to our cells for count.”

Somebody was missing, so all of the guys in the prison were being sent back to their cells so that they could be counted and accounted for.

Guys in blue.  Fifty or so of the men in that space were wearing black caps and gowns over their prison blues.  They stripped them to go back to their cells.

M, who was sitting with us, reassured us, “Don’t worry.  We won’t be gone for long.  They’ll probably find him.  If we don’t come back, I’ll see you Thursday.”

“Guys in blue.”  That language.  I’ve only ever heard prison staff refer to the men as “inmates.”  Not sure what to make of the staff member passing off the voice of the command to one of the men.  But not sure what I would have made of the staff member voicing the command himself and using “inmates.”

4.  “Hopefully, he’s alive.  Don’t forget we are up in here.”

As the last of the men trickled out, one of the family members, a Black woman, stopped the White staff member who’d passed off the command, “Why do they have to leave?” While he was like, “Ma’am, security measures, inmates’ locations, mumble mumble,” she just looked at him.  Then, with him still standing there, she addressed the others sitting near her, a whole bunch of other Black women, “When they find him, hopefully he’s alive.”  She turned away from the staff guy, “Don’t forget we are up in here.”

Sandra Bland had been found dead in her cell less than two weeks before this ceremony.

The White guy stood silent for a couple more awkward seconds, then walked away.

5.  “You’re a brave woman.”

While the men were off being counted, we were encouraged to get some fresh air, have some coffee.  (Oh yeah, the coffee tasted so much like chicken broth.  It was uncanny.)  We milled about.  I noticed one of the guards was pregnant.  One of the visitors, as she walked past her, told her, “You’re a brave woman.”

Yeah.  What?  Need to think more about pregnancy inside a prison.

6.  color guard’s tucked in shirts

The men came back.  The ceremony started with a colors ceremony.  That means the presentation of the US and Californian flags.  Four guys from a Vietnam vets group did it.  All the usual fanfare: the orders, the synchronous marching, holding the US flag a little higher.  And all four of them had tucked their prison shirt into their prison pants.  What.

7.  “forward thinking prison,” “we have a lot in common,” “empower the people that are within our custody to give them the tools”

Lines from the keynote speaker, a local sheriff, patting this prison on the back – and likening it to his own jail.  As if somehow it’s possible to be both an instrument of incarceration and of paternalistic “salvation.”  This “we give the tools” talk is common in most schools, though, and I’m sick of it.  Blahhhhhhhhh.

Another way to think about what happens in education spaces is that authentically humble educators listen, learn, and tap into the “funds of knowledge” that exist in the communities they serve (not my phrase – Moll’s).  Or, like they say in Teaching as a Subversive Activity:

Contrary to conventional school practice, what [educate] means is that we want to elicit from students the meanings that they have already stored up so that they may subject those meanings to a testing and verifying, reordering and reclassifying, modifying and extending process.  In this process, the student is not a passive “recipient;” he (sic) becomes an active producer of knowledge.  The word “educate” is closely related to the word “educe.”  In the oldest pedagogic sense of the term, this meant drawing out of a person something potential or latent. 

8. “then a supporter of mine when I ran for supervisor,” “campaigned on redemption,” “we were part of that five,” “Bobby Kennedy’s daughter”

Speaker moved on from saving the graduates before him to ignoring them for the sake of just straight up bragging about his own self.  How progressive his jail is. (Oxymoron.) Bobby Kennedy’s daughter omgggg sat on the panel that would ultimately decide whether or not his jail gets some big award.

9. “not just a GED, a high school diploma”

At his jail, the “inmates” can earn high school diplomas, not just these piddling GEDs, he says to a gathering of forty or so men who are beaming with the pride of having earned their GEDs.

Dumdum.

10.  “for us to use your time in the most productive way”

For US to use YOUR time.  Good god. 

Maybe it’s because by this point in the talk, he was pissing me off real bad, but I don’t think it’s a stretch to liken this thinking to the thinking of plantation owners who used the labor of the people they enslaved for their purposes.  I mean, the owners’ use of the enslaved people’s time was productive.  They got so so rich.  And they deeply embedded our system of White supremacy such that as a country, we still, apparently, aren’t outraged at theu se of largely Black and Brown (and poor, and addicted, and mentally ill) labor for “our” profit. 

11.  “Somebody get this guy a baby to kiss,” “Hey, they have hearts, too, okay?”

M, my incarcerated colleague’s whispered comments as the speech rolled out on top of us.

12.  letting family in

This was good.  The speaker went on and on about how important it is for the leaders of carceral institutions to be mindful of the effects of incarceration on families.  As he did so, M whispered to me that the warden at this prison had recently announced that this would be the last graduation ceremony to which family members of graduates could be invited.  And that warden is sitting up there on the stage right next to the podium.

13. reduced phone charges by 70%: “Did he just call us poor?”

Speaker brags about his work to reduce the cost of phone calls for prisoners by 70%, so that the system wasn’t getting rich off of “poor families.”  Okay he does have a point there, that’s some useful (if incremental) reform. 

M leaned over to me and said, with a wry smile,“Did he just call us poor?”

14.  Grey Poupon

Speaker said, jokingly, if it was up to him Grey Poupon would be served in jail chow halls.  Huh?

15. “I’m living as a memorial to him,” “I love you guys, and I’m proud of you,” sitting together, “I apologize to everybody”

Cut to the speech by the valedictorian of the daytime GED class.  I was struck particularly by his dedication of this accomplishment to the memory of his victim, for whose lost life he expressed great remorse.  “I’m living as a memorial to him,” he said.  Dang.  I had a hard time moving past that as he went on to congratulate his peers, to apologize to society.

As we listened to his speech, I looked around and realized that almost every guy in the room who is a part of our evening program was sitting within a few feet of us.  We never talked about sitting together, we just were.  Sometimes, it’s hard to feel like much of a coherent community since we only get to meet twice a week, we’re separated into to classrooms, there’s so much work to be done, etc.  Looking around and seeing us all together really made me wonder.

16.  print keyboards

After the ceremony, L, one of our students, came to me to give me some feedback as he knows that we’re in the middle of planning next semester.  We really need typing practice, he told me, and I know we can’t get computers, so is it possible for you to print out a picture of a keyboard so that we can practice with paper copies?  I know it’s not ideal, he said.

Fuck.

17.  team leader

The same guy, L, suggested that we need to offer some student leadership opportunities.  He knows he can motivate some of his classmates to get together and study outside of class, he said, but it would be way easier if he were somehow “officially” endowed by us with some role, like “team leader.”  Genius.

One of the most exciting things about this work, so far, is how much brilliance and how many deep relationships there are for us to build from.  I know that these things exist, too, in every high school classroom (and every other classroom), but there’s something  particularly… something… happening in this peer-led space.

shockingly shameless

Check out two of the most popular articles on the Time website right now:

Ex-Wives and Others Eagerly Await UBS Tax-Cheater List
Michelle Obama and the Shorts Heard Round the World

Sorry for being so unladylike (...NOT), but what the FUCK.

Maybe if the one about offshore bank accounts had any sort of statistic -- gosh, even some sort of unconvincing "fact" even -- to back up their presumption that the holders of such are men, then maybe that sort of shit wouldn't be so outrageously fucking sexist, but even then, probably no. I find that woman as sort of bitter, ruthless, gold-digger bullshit incredibly offensive. In fact, I actually feel kind of personally insulted by this suggestion. And y'know what, the article is pretty heteronormative, too, huh?

Maybe it's because I read this article after reading about how Michelle Obama "just didn't look particularly good in shorts. Her arms are much admired. her legs are just, you know, legs." I've posted before about how infuriating it is to me the way the media so often belittles Mrs. Obama, but this shit is... GOSH.

I mean, the way this article ends sounds like it was written in the 1950s. Srsly.

For women, Michelle's shorts were long on significance. They give accomplished, glamorous people license to do what the power brokers at Vogue do, and that is to wear whatever the hell they like sometimes. So, ladies, get out your least flattering outfits — your terry shorts, your oversize T-shirt, those extra comfortable arch-supporting shoes — and wear them with pride. All the fashionable women are doing it.

Oh, really? I can? *bats eyelids* Thanks! *punches Time Magazine in the face.*

"Professional protestors"

From Time's "Church Politics: Why the Pope Is Side-Stepping Notre Dame":

"It is clear that Notre Dame didn't understand what it means to be Catholic when they issued this invitation," said Cardinal Francis George, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). The conservative Cardinal Newman Society organized a petition calling for Notre Dame president Father John Jenkins to disinvite the President. Professional protesters such as Alan Keyes and Randall Terry have descended on the South Bend campus, pushing blood-covered baby dolls in Spongebob strollers and getting themselves arrested. And Cardinal James Francis Stafford, one of the highest-ranking Americans at the Vatican, has declared Obama an unfit honoree because his statements on abortion reflect "an agenda and vision that are aggressive, disruptive and apocalyptic."

Obama on abortion:

"I think that most Americans realize that this is a profoundly difficult issue for the women and families who make these decisions. They don't make them casually. I trust women to make these decisions in conjunction with their doctors and their families and their clergy, and I think that's where most Americans are. Now, when you describe a specific procedure that accounts for less than one percent of abortions that take place, then, naturally, people get concerned, and I think legitimately so... There's a broader issue, though. That is, can we move past some of the debates around things about which we disagree, and can we start talking about things we do agree on? Reducing teen pregnancy, making it less likely for women to find themselves in the situation where they've got to anguish over these decisions. Those are areas where I think we can all start mobilizing and move forward rather than look backward."

Now, remind me, who's the one who's got a point? The bloody-doll-pushing, apocalypse predictors, or the guy who wants to mobilize to reduce teen pregnancy and other issues that cause women to have to choose? I mean, the good thing for pro-choicers like me is that the pro-lifers seem to be making our job pret-ty easy.

Uggggggggggggggghhhhhh

Cool.

For more, click here.

I am NOT tripping.

For whatever reason, I have developed an intense aversion to the word trippin. I'm NOT trippin.

Today in class, after we excerpted the Communist Manifesto, listened to John Lennon's "Imagine" and then to Pitbull and Nas's remix of that song, I asked the students to write a paragraph summarizing the overlapping main ideas in these songs and commenting on personal connections they could make with these main ideas. The second the word paragraph escaped my lips, it was greeted with a chorus of "Man, you trippin"s. (They're well able to write paragraphs in a few short minutes, and thoughtful ones at that. It's like my distaste for the word trippin is matched only by their distaste for the idea of writing. How do I get rid of that?) WTF.

I probably wouldn't have written a blog post about the word, though, if it hadn't been for an incident later that same class period in which I told a student doing math homework while Molly was giving directions to put it away. Her response? "Oh my GAWD! Why are you TRIPPIN?"

The thought occurred to me as I was taking a shower this evening, that it might be convenient and funny (for me) to create a poster that says, "I AM NOT TRIPPIN," that I could silently point to whenever a kid says it. Too much?

(That "Too much?" is not rhetorical. Seriously, mood-lightener or whack? Seeking feedback on this one.)

also this is funny

The guy on the left is like, "Uh... yeah. So uh... any questions?"

"When people get married, they should prepare for dying," Delaney said.

My Uncle Bob is home from his post in Poland with the State Department and is staying with my Grandma. He's been helping her go through all of her stuff, and shared with us at Christmas dinner an old San Antonio newspaper article called, "Body to Science Called Realistic Way to Go," featuring my Dad's Grandpa, Hubert Delaney. Here are my favorite excerpts:

Although Delaney certainly isn't against philanthropy or helping the field of medical science along, it wasn't basically philanthropy that led him to donate his body to medical science.

It was money.

Delaney reports that under the agreement his widow won't have any funeral or burial expenses in connection with his death. The medical school, he said, will pay all the costs of transportation and costs incident to the preparation of his body for the medical stint.

That can come to a sizable sum, Delaney avers. He pointed out that a body in a coffin costs double the fare in transportation rates.

Two factors primarily triggered Delaney to will his body to medicine. The best-selling "The High Cost of Dying" started him thinking, and a short stint as a cemetery lot salesman after his retirement transferred his thoughts into action.

...

"I listened to salesman sell people cemetery lots in the shade, and I wondered what difference it could make after you're dead," Delaney observes.

But Delaney admits he had been thinking of ways of beating the undertaker long before he took the medial school route. Seven years ago when he and his wife took a cruise from New Orleans to Europe aboard a freighter with no doctor aboard, he told her if he died enroute, he wanted "to be sewn in a canvas and thrown overboard."

"I told her I didn't want to be carted around the world dead in a freighter," Delaney reports.

A Catholic, Delaney reports he checked out his after-death plans with his parish priest and that it has his okay.

"When people get married, they should prepare for dying," Delaney said.

...

Delaney didn't make any points with his personal physician when he suggested after his (Delaney's) death that the doctor go by and see what mistakes he had been making, if any, in his treatment.

"I just thought it might teach him something," Delaney chortles.

Pretty funny stuff. There's also a type-writer produced letter he wrote to my Grandma and her sister. The best part:

I have been writing to congressman, senators, and influential people all over the country asking them to pressure Congress to put a limit ON THE TOTAL AMOUNT OF ASSETS THAT ANY ONE PERSON MAY HAVE AT ANY ONE TIME IN HIS LIFE WHETHER THAT LIMIT IS ONE MILLION OR FIFTY MILLION JUST SO SOME LIMIT IS SET. It may be raised or lowered as seen fit. As to birth control I am for quality control. Anyone contemplating marriage should submit his health record and if his or his family record shows any incurable diseases, insanity, or pronounced physical defects he must submit to an operation so he or she could not bring children in the world so I am with the Pope on birth control. I might add the latter suggestion of mine was published in the paper here and some guy called me Hitler and Kay told me if he hadn't she would have so you know how she stands."

They're milking this presidenial-race stuff for all it's worth; "and I'm reaping all the benefits."

Two articles I found thought-provoking:
Lose the BlackBerry? Yes He Can, Maybe

But before he arrives at the White House, he will probably be forced to sign off. In addition to concerns about e-mail security, he faces the Presidential Records Act, which puts his correspondence in the official record and ultimately up for public review, and the threat of subpoenas. A decision has not been made on whether he could become the first e-mailing president, but aides said that seemed doubtful.

For all the perquisites and power afforded the president, the chief executive of the United States is essentially deprived by law and by culture of some of the very tools that other chief executives depend on to survive and to thrive. Mr. Obama, however, seems intent on pulling the office at least partly into the 21st century on that score; aides said he hopes to have a laptop computer on his desk in the Oval Office, making him the first American president to do so.

At the risk of sounding like some young and naive "digital native," um, what? The president doesn't have a computer in the Oval Office? What in. the. hell. does he do? I mean, if that's the case, then fuck all these technology-laced lesson plans I'm writing for my kids so as to better prepare them for 21st Century careers. They can be President of he United States and not have to type, apparently. Apparently, that's even the rule.

Diana Owen, who leads the American Studies program at Georgetown University, said presidents were not advised to use e-mail because of security risks and fear that messages could be intercepted.

“They could come up with some bulletproof way of protecting his e-mail and digital correspondence, but anything can be hacked,” said Ms. Owen, who has studied how presidents communicate in the Internet era. “The nature of the president’s job is that others can use e-mail for him.”

I'm wondering if maybe he can keep his BlackBerry, just for messages like these that help him maintain his awesomeness:

“How about that?” Mr. Obama replied to a friend’s congratulatory e-mail message on the night of his victory.

and

Mr. Obama used e-mail to stay in constant touch with friends from the lonely confines of the road, often sending messages like “Sox!” when the Chicago White Sox won a game.

and the other article is The Wild Wordsmith of Wasila

I suppose it will be recorded as among political history’s ironies that Palin was brought in to help John McCain. I can’t blame feminists who might draw amusement from the fact that a woman managed to both cripple the male she was supposed to help while gleaning an almost Elvis-sized following for herself. Mac loses, Sarah wins big-time was the gist of headlines.

Again... um, what? Just FYI: Feminism is not about "crippl[ing]" men. Not even a little bit. Honestly, I think it would be more difficult to locate a feminist who supported Sarah Palin's candidacy for VP than it would be to find one who sees Palin as participating rather loudly and proudly in the dominant mysoginist ideology. I'm one, for example.

He continues,

What on earth are our underpaid teachers, laboring in the vineyards of education, supposed to tell students about the following sentence, committed by the serial syntax-killer from Wasilla High and gleaned by my colleague Maureen Dowd for preservation for those who ask, “How was it she talked?”

My concern has been the atrocities there in Darfur and the relevance to me with that issue as we spoke about Africa and some of the countries there that were kind of the people succumbing to the dictators and the corruption of some collapsed governments on the continent, the relevance was Alaska’s investment in Darfur with some of our permanent fund dollars.

And, she concluded, “never, ever did I talk about, well, gee, is it a country or a continent, I just don’t know about this issue.”

It’s admittedly a rare gift to produce a paragraph in which whole clumps of words could be removed without noticeably affecting the sense, if any.

(A cynic might wonder if Wasilla High School’s English and geography departments are draped in black.)

There's nothing more annoying to me -- hyperbole -- than people whose first response when I tell them I'm a high school English teacher is, "Ugh. I hate grammar." Except maybe the not-so-few-and-far-between people who say, "Oh good! We need people teaching kids to speak English, and not Spanish! This is America; they should speak our language!"

One thing that Sarah Palin has in common with my students, btw: Ask about Africa and receive some well-intentioned but problematically under-informed "Let's save those poor people... :(" rhetoric.

----
UPDATE: I'm feeling pretty cool because one of my favorite profs just blogged about the no-BlackBerry thing, too. He says:

"George W. Bush gave up the chance to digitize the White House by giving up email when he took the oath of office – something to do with executive privilege, the imperial presidency, and not being able to type and chew gum at the same time."

The Problem of Silliness in U.S. Public Education

I went to an all-day workshop today on co-teaching with my co-teacher. Co-teaching is one way that schools are trying to meet the goals of inclusion of students with special needs. Basically, we don't want to "pull kids out" for "being special" anymore. It's stigmatizing and humiliating. So we put a general educator and a special educator in a classroom together with students who have and do not have disabilities, and find ways to make sure that all of them learn and achieve. Which is easier said than done. Hence the workshop.

The presenter, who, incidentally, is the sister of Cheryl from Curb Your Enthusiasm (!), asked those present to name one thing that they feel like they need in the classroom in order to be successful (i.e. a desk, a computer, an arrangement of student desks that allows for easy accessibility, etc.). And this woman in the back goes, "Chocolate!"

At that point, Molly, my hilarious co-teacher, mutters under her breath, "Jeezus! I hate that kind of silliness!" I giggled, and then refocused on the question at hand. At lunch, though, the matter re-emerged. Why is there so much silliness in the teaching profession? Why do so many (white, middle-aged, female) teachers wear those gawd-awful emboidered apple turtlenecks, denim jumpers, and dangly earrings that match the lesson of the day or the nearest holiday? Why the cheesy teacher-bags? Why the annoying signs with truisms on them like "Where there's a will there's a way!"? Why the surplus of tackniess? Why the relative out-of-touchness with... I don't know, reality?

Am I being overly judgemental, here?

Um, what.

WTF. Check out this story, which was the main focus of the front page of the Daily Illini today: Abnormal student behavior could lead to meetings for help.

According to James Finkle, junior in LAS, a student sitting eight rows back near the isle caused a commotion. He said the student was carrying on a conversation with his Teddy bear.

"Somebody shouted something like, 'Oh, I love you Mr. Bear. How are you Mr. Bear? You went and saw roses with another bear? I thought I was your bear,'" Finkle said.

Kathryn Clancy, professor of anthropology and leader of the lecture, confirmed this report.

"I started hearing a student clearly talking to a Teddy bear," Clancy said. She said she made her way down the stage towards the student to deal with the situation.

"I wanted to encourage his performance to end sooner," Clancy said. "Clearly there was some sort of tryst between the student and the bear."

Finkle said he agreed.

So, if it's a student joke, then why is this news? Why is this front-page news? We're electing a new president in five days. There's no way this could be considered a slow news week. UHS' student newspaper just put out an extra edition, for Chrissake. If it's a student joke, the prof deals with it in office hours. It doesn't get campus-wide media coverage. I mean, why would it?

If it's not a joke, then the student in question probably has some kind of mental illness. So why are we gossiping about it in the DI. And if the student is mentally ill, then why the jocular lead, "Teddy bears never felt so hurt." Mental illness isn't funny.

There's also a weak attempt to link the incident to the threatening note found in the undergrad library earlier this month. I can kinda make that connection, but if I do, I still don't see what's funny.

And I mean, look at this accompanying photo. A reenactment? Seriously? How is that not meant to be funny? In the print version of the paper, it was the largest element on the front page. What. the. hell.

Here in Champaign County,

we operate on an eye-for-an-eye justice system. (Or ear-for-an-ear, I guess, in this case?)

An Illinois judge has sentenced a man to listen to 20 hours of classical music as punishment for playing hip-hop music too loudly out of his car stereo. The judge offered to reduce Andrew Vactor's $150 fine down to $35 if Vactor agreed to spend 20 hours listening to works by Brahms, Beethoven, Chopin and other classical composers.

Champaign County Municipal Court Judge Susan Fornof-Lippencott claimed that her decision did not imply that listening to classical music qualilfies as punishment, but by making Vactor to listen to music he might not prefer, he would feel the same way the public did when he blasted rap music from his car stereo.

Um, what. Say it ain't so.

freaky subculture no more!

Check out the card I've seen for sale in more than one major retail chain:

1. The Irish dancer pictured does not have red hair.
2. The Irish dancer pictured is not holding a beer, nor is she visibly drunk.
3. The Irish dancer pictured is not a leprechaun.

and here's the kicker:
4. It's not a St. Patrick's day card!? The inside says, "You're gonna be Vice President, so work on your moves." Typically, Irish people figure into pop culture -- during the month of March only -- as cheerful, drunk, green-wearing, happy-go-lucky chatter-boxes. And frankly, I don't know that the general public is quite ready for the world of contemporary Irish dance to be unleashed into it like this. Trust me, it's kinda weird. (Weird, but AWESOME.) I mean, exhibits A and B:



And just as a side-note from this forever-member of the cult of Irish dance: that girl should work on her posture. But she's got nice poods.

can'tstopwon'tstop

Something I've learned about myself lately is that I do things really quickly. Call it a compulsion; I have to walk, talk, make decisions, eat, cross things off my necessarily-never-ending to-do list all at break-neck speed. Living by myself all summer has allowed me to be blind to all my weird "things" but my awesome new roommate doesn't let that shit go without remark, and rightly so.

This morning for example, I asked a hotel desk worker for directions to the nearest McDonalds, and could barely stand to wait there while she told me. In my head, I was thinking, frantically, "PLEASESTOPTALKINGPLEASESTOPTALKINGGOTTAGETOUTOFHERE." Not because I was in a rush for any reason, but just because my internal clock was telling me that it was time to be done with the where-is-McDonald's conversation.

And my Mom just told me about a deal on flights to Ireland in the coming months, and I gottabookitnow.

What's up with that? I need to chill. the fuck. OUT.

why is this a song

old and paunchy

This is me:

And this if my friend and colleague, Matt:


Last night, while we were teaching together, a student asked if he was my son. And then another one told me that she could "totally tell" that I am pregnant. I am not.

Dear blog,

I miss you, but I don't have time to write in you. I'm doing and learning all kinds of interesting things this week. Also, so far, no students have told me that I "look pregnant," which is an improvement from last week.

I'll hopefully resume blog-writing next week, since I'm planning on using this weekend to catch up with all of the website-ing, lesson planning, packing for moving, and classroom organizing that's torn me away from you for so long. I'm also hoping to catch up on my farmers' marketing and pineapple margarita drinking. Also my Dark Knight watching.

Your friend,
Ellen

silver lining

Earlier this week I inadvertently deleted every single document on my computer -- moved them to the "Trash" and then selected "Empty Trash." Yeah. Not smart, I know. Anyway, some saint in user services at the University recovered everything today to a neat desktop folder called "documents." But all of the documents were completely unorganized and named "D00467" and the like. So I've been spending the whole day reorganizing all my shit. A sort of blessing in disguise, because now I've got this compulsive little project that will take me a few days.

Anyway, the best part is rediscovering all of the sweet shit I've got on this computer. Like I found this photo:

"Teen charged with crime for bringing pony to school"

The only crime I can see here is the re-use of an originally unfunny joke.

angry blog commenting: yea or nay?

Probably nay.

But I was just reading the blog of a guy who I worked in Kolkata with, and I was really tempted to leave a comment that said something along the lines of, "Um, get fucked, Edward." Really not productive, I know.

Seriously. Edward's an ass. He spent the whole summer close-talking and leg-touching women volunteers, disappeared for a week and blogged that he was off at some priest-house deciding whether or not he's been called, came back convinced that God wanted him to take a wife, just in time to lecture me, before I left, on how I should really be more devoted to the Virgin Mary. Get fucked, Edward. Seriously. I know you want to. You know you want to.

(Note: When I've used the phrase, "Get fucked," before in conversation, I've not been clear enough that I actually mean something like, "Fuck you." In this case, I mean it both ways, I guess. I just didn't realize it until I got to the end of my second paragraph.)

In a post titled, "Sad. Sad. Mr. Barack Obama," Edward comments on Obama's remarks in this video. (His link, not mine, for the record). He takes issue with this statement:

"I've got 2 daughters 9 years old and 6 years old. I'm gonna teach them first of all about values and morals, but if they make a mistake I don't want them punished with baby, I don't want them punished with an STD at the age of 16."

He responds in his post, "If a baby is a punishment, then what are the elderly, the sick, the disenfranchised, the forgotten?"

First of all: Right, because that's the point Obama was trying to make . That babies are punishment. It would be convenient for you, motherfucker, if that's what Obama was saying. But all the simplifying that you'd like to do of the statement doesn't make Obama anti-life. What I see when I read that statement, is that Obama is seeing and validating the complexities of the pro-life/pro-choice dialogue. Yes, he's acknowledging, having an abortion might not be the ideal situation for any young woman; that said, he's also acknowledging that it's not ideal for a sixteen-year-old woman to have a child to care for, nor is it ideal for her to have an STI. He sees the moral dilemma that that hypothetical pregnant sixteen-year-old faces, and he empathizes with her. (Truthfully, I'm not a fan of the "punishment" and "mistake" wording Obama used. Pregnancy and STIs are not punishments; they are potential consequences. Punishment feels a little too judgment-day-ish, Barack. Sounds like something Edward would say.)

Second of all: While I'm pretty sure that the point you're trying to make is that "elderly, the sick, the disenfranchised, the forgotten" aren't a "punishment" either, but the way that you set them up with a sort of "Well if you think babies are bad, wait'll you see these guys!" is pretty wack. I know you're more into serving and converting than empowering, but seriously, Edward? Ever heard of person-first language? People who are sick. Not "the sick." I'm nit-picking here, it seems, but reading this little piece of condescending bullshit reminded me of how much I can't stand self-congratulatory and preachy assholes like you. Don't call people "the forgotten;" your phrasing contributes to the denial of agency that you purport to be decrying. I don't know much about your background, but I do know that you fly over to Kolkata, you work for, certainly not with, those poor people. You take a bunch of photos of the people you "help" like they're a fucking tourist attraction. You get to be that "one drop in the ocean" that your homegirl talked about. (No disrespect, Mother Teresa. I just think Edward's missed the day they talked about humility as a virtue, and needs a verbal ass-kicking.) It's handy for you, isn't it, that there are "the disenfranchised" out there for you to help? Moe used to say to a a pro-life guy went to high school with, "Call me when you have ovaries." Ha. Either that, Edward, or call me when you don't have access to funding to get yourself over to India for the summers. Then maybe we can brainstorm ways for a sixteen-year old girl to buy diapers, formula, bottles, blankets, onesies, child care, medicine, books for college.


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For the record, there are people who I like a lot more than Edward who are pro-life. While my protestations of his remarks stand, all the swearing and anger is more just about Edward and his nose in the air reminder of "the forgotten." Not that this rant indicates so, but I do think it's important for those of us who consider ourselves pro-choice to be in dialogue with people who consider themselves pro-life. We have a lot in common, I know, I just don't want to be Edward's conversation partner...