8:46, Thursday night

Tonight is a night to
feel sorry for myself.
Before, I'd probably
use this blog as
a way to write my way out
of the funk
of going to the gym
of pretending to forget my wallet,
of instead going
to ChockChai
to get takeout
of grubby, greasy Thai food
to clog my arteries.

I'd write about the nap
I stole this afternoon
filled with strange, frightening dreams

But I don't,
or I can't,
really do that
anymore.
Here.

Instead, I'll just hope
that tomorrow's a better day,
that the first date
that I have next week with a girl
that has an old woman's name
goes well,
that I begin to transform
this debilitating loneliness
into strapping solitude
that this minor
bout of unhappiness
passes like the
month of November.

Why I hate insurance companies and doctors offices

I don't hate doctors. I hate the process.

I move small mountains to get a Primary Care Physician who will see me on Election Day, when I have time off, so she can give me a referral for my shoulder, which has hurt for eight months. I couldn't get in with the new doctor for three weeks, because he only sees new patients on Thursdays and because one of those Thursdays was Thanksgiving. I make an appointment for 1:40 today, so I only have to miss two classes that are pretty easy to cover. I get there at 1:35. The nurse calls me in at 2:15 to see the doctor. The doctor looks at me and talks with me for ten minutes, then says I need to get an MRI. The MRI needs insurance approval. They're working on that. I have no idea when I'll be able to have one, but wouldn't be surprised if it were weeks away.

Every student is wrong until she cries. And then she is right, instantly...

What a helluva day. Last night was a friend's birthday, and quite a fun night. I forget how underrated Holy Frijoles is. Cheap happy hour drinks, cheap (and good) food. But the margaritish time led to a slow morning, punctuated by a trip to Dunkin' Donuts and realizing in line that I forgot my wallet in my pants from the previous night. Oops.

I recovered well, taught a couple pretty good lessons, and then headed back to Dunkin' Donuts during my planning period to get my wallet as well as that egg and cheese bagel that I had my eyes on from earlier. While there, I made the spur of the moment decision to get my two afternoon classes (75 kids) donuts. Buying six dozen donuts (I figured at least three kids would be absent) was a $40 hit, but they've been working hard for me, and they deserved it.

After school, a kid told me that it was a good thing that I had brought them in, because my approval rating had dipped pretty low in the last week.

And that was certainly true. A girl ran from my 9th period class crying today. I had no idea it could have been about me, but later, when I checked on her, I realized it was. "I spend all my time doing work for you," she sobbed. Continuing on, she said, "I skip all the work for my other classes just to get yours done." See, they've known they were going to have to write a 1000-1500 word essay at the end of this unit, and today I gave them the assignment. It was also the due date of a previous big assignment. Maybe I piled them together too quickly. I'm giving them a week, though, and don't have anything else big for them to do at home during that time.

Still, the crying student - and she cried for almost 20 minutes - made me feel bad, and I did my best to make her feel better. I give them an extension a year, and urged her to use hers for the essay next week, and praised her on the quality of the work she's been doing. I wasn't sure what else to do. The class is supposed to be challenging. I think I've been pretty fair about due dates and time given. Part of the deal is that I expected them to use the four days I was out wisely, and I'm sure some of them goofed off during that time and now are feeling those oats.

The other kids hugged her, gave me knowing looks, and left me alone. I stayed at school until 7 o'clock. At least an hour of it was spent creating a crossword puzzle for The House of the Spirits. I'm going to be out tomorrow afternoon for (finally!) that doctor's appointment for my shoulder, which is continuing to kill me, so at least I left something light for them. I hope they even have some fun. Friday is their Ring Ceremony, so this was actually the last day I'd see them this week. Maybe we need a break.

Of course, after school, my room was still full of Juniors, who had come to hang out and talk shop with me. I guess I'm not evil.

She said, "We must get together," but I knew it'd never be arranged.

One of my all-time favorite songs. Check out Big John Wallace on bass and backup vocals.

My Hall of Fame Ballot

My ballot would have 8 players. Gossage goes first because his non-selection over the last several years is the biggest travest. Ripken is an obvious candidate. I have no idea why Lee Smith isn't in the Hall of Fame. Tony Gwynn is pretty obvious, as well. Blyleven and Morris were the premier starting pitchers of the generation of starting pitchers between Nolan Ryan and Roger Clements. Trammell was the 2nd best shortstop of his generation and deserves it far more than Ozzie Smith, who already has been selected. Rice is borderline, but mostly because he retired at 35 - his dominance in his prime was unmatched.

In the following order of importance:
1. Gossage, 2. Ripken, 3. Smith, 4. Gwynn, 5. Blyleven, 6. Morris, 7. Trammell, 8. Rice

Just falling below the cutoff line are McGwire (I won't vote for him until after the Steroids era has sorted itself out), Dawson (good player, but not great), and Murphy (see Dawson).

I really liked Eric Davis. Injuries cut into his chances.

Total list: Harold Baines, Albert Belle, Dante Bichette, Bert Blyleven, Bobby Bonilla, Scott Brosius, Jay Buhner, Ken Caminiti, Jose Canseco, Dave Concepcion, Eric Davis, Andre Dawson, Tony Fernandez, Steve Garvey, Rich "Goose" Gossage, Tony Gwynn, Orel Hershiser, Tommy John, Wally Joyner, Don Mattingly, Mark McGwire, Jack Morris, Dale Murphy, Paul O'Neill, Dave Parker, Jim Rice, Cal Ripken Jr., Bret Saberhagen, Lee Smith, Alan Trammell, Devon White, Bobby Witt.

Danny Baez signs with the O's

Wow, if I were a big Orioles fan, would I ever be mad right now at their off-season. First, backing up the truck to Jamie Walker's bank account to the tune of $12 million. Now, making Danny Baez the highest paid non-closer reliever in all of baseball? Absolutely ludicrous.

That's just being penny smart but dollar dumb. They've spent over $30 million on a couple of middle relievers, and they can't make a competitive offer to Derek Lee or Alfonso Soriano or Mark Mulder? They still don't have a first baseman?

Mike Flanagan was a cool player to watch pitch, but he's sure a poor GM. Unless there's some sort of Master Plan that I'm just not seeing. To hazard a guess based on what I've seen the last few years, that's just not the case. They're doing something to make it seem like they're doing something.

This is a team that needs to rebuild. Trading Tejada last summer when his value was highest would have been a start. Signing a couple of mediocre middle relievers for much more than they're worth seems to be the opposite direction. Nothing against Walker or Baez - they're both decent pitchers - but they're not worth anywhere near the money they're getting, and both of them could be replaced from the major league scrap heap without losing much quality.

It's not about payroll. It's about spending the available money wisely. The Orioles just aren't doing that at all. David DeLucci just signed with the Indians for less than Walker (who will pitch - maybe - 60 innings this year) signed with the O's. He would been a big step towards solving their corner outfield problem.

This totally reminds me of the horrid management the Tigers were hindered with for years under the "guidance" of Randy Smith, who was probably the worst GM in the history of baseball. Flanagan is giving him a run for his money, though.

20 days in a row

Today kicked off twenty straight school days until we're out for the Christmas holidays. This probably doesn't seem like a lot, but it's the longest stretch we'll have this year, without any inservice or long weekends or respite. The planning and grading will be relentless. I've got to somehow stay ahead of the wave.

Today wasn't a good start. My lesson was mediocre first period, bombed third period, and was only slightly better in 4/5. I'm not sure the kids learned much today. Maybe a little. And I'm really disappointed with the behavior of the students in my 3rd period class. Tomorrow, I'm going to whip out the daily grade which will actually include a provision to lose points for touching others. Yes, even that's a problem in there.

Anyhow, I'm hoping those twenty straight days of school will at least be broken up by a snow day or two. December snow days are the best. As a rule, I don't like winter - there's a reason I moved from Michigan, dammit - but I like it for the months of December and January. Otherwise, it can be 65 as long as it wants to be.

Movin on

When Fool moved out as my roommate about a year ago (but before she ended her blog and then dropped off the planet), ending her tenure as the best roommate I've ever had, the landlord lowered the rent to $500 because the house was basically in shambles - getting fixed up on nearly every level. In the last year, she's put in new windows, new drywall, painted the house, re-did the kitchen, and a slew of other things that I'm sure I'm forgetting. In exchange for living amongst the dust, she has kept the rent at $500 even though she said that by October of this year, she would raise it to $850. Before October came, I was pretty sure that I'd be buying a house in the next few months, and I e-mailed her, asking whether she preferred if I moved out in October, or tried to find a new roommate for a couple of months, or what. The house ended up being not in as good as shape as she had hoped at that point, and she said, "Well, as long as you think you'll be out by January or February, then go ahead and stay at $500/month until you find a house." She's a friend of mine, and definitely wants be to buy one in a mentor-pupil way.

The thing is, grad school is costing me way more money that I had hoped. That, combined with lots of expensive travel to Detroit, Nashville, and Philadelphia this semester has resulted in my bank account being much lower than I had hoped. I have some savings, but shouldn't have any savings, because I get the skivvies about having credit card debt and would rather dump all (small amount of ) savings my credit card debt (almost all accrued from grad school). So, I basically feel like I'm treading water until I finish with grad school, that I'll never be able to completely catch up. That, combined with the fact that my car payments continue to take at least $400/month from me - until January, when it's paid off - make me feel too nervous about money to buy a house. If a good HUD home opens up that I could buy in the Teacher Next Door Program, I'll do it, but I've sort of been trying for a while and, unless I'm looking at the wrong website, the houses are sparse and sucky. Far sparser and suckier than I remember when I looked last year (we're talking only six or so houses).

Therefore, I've painted myself into a little corner. I told her that I thought I'd have a house bought by January or so, which I did think at the time. However, it's not going to happen. As I have been saying for years, I really shouldn't even think about it until the bad debt of my car is paid off. And, perhaps I shouldn't do it until after I don't have to spent a couple thousand every semester to pay for grad school.

The thought bubbles up that maybe I'm just waiting too much. Which might be the case. But I still won't be able to do it by the new year, or even by the spring.

I could e-mail her and tell her that I don't think I'll be buying a house after all at this point, but I would feel bad about this, and felt like I was getting an unfair deal on rent for the last couple of months. She would probably understand, and let me take on a roommate, but a big part of me is looking at this as an excuse to move out. I'm pretty sick of living here. It's the only place I've lived for six years here in Baltimore, and I'm just tired of living in such a huge place all by myself, as well about all the construction, as well as having a yard, and a bunch of other things. I'd like to consolidate my life a bit, and maybe the forced moving will do this. A fresh start would be good.

Therefore, I've been looking at apartments. I don't want to sign a year-lease, but I'll probably have to. I also have a dog and a cat, which complicates matters.

I have an offer to move in with a friend - the same friend who stayed with me for six months last year - and may take her up on it. The dogs and cats get along great. But, I worry about where I'd put all my things (I think the deal would be one bedroom), and it's not a sure thing (it hinges on a breakup, which is never something that you should root for).

Anyhow, big changes afoot. The hemming and hawing that many readers have shaken their heads over throughout the years will end by early next year.

The double tip

I feel like karma came back to me yesterday for giving the man a big reward for finding my wallet. I got double-tipped, I think, which is the server's equivalent to the holy grail. I'm not sure if they tipped me twice (on a $300 bill) or if they just didn't see the automatic gratuity, which I had highlighted to make it clear. Maybe they were just extra generous. I didn't notice until they left and I'm not going to argue with it. It's pretty cool.

Getting my wallet back

At 7:57 am today, my phone rang. It was the (wo)man who had found my wallet. He said he tried and tried yesterday to get a hold of me, but couldn't. It got to the point, he said, where he was more worried about my wallet than his own wallet. He told me to meet him out front of The Charles at 8:30, then asked if there would be a reward involved.

My cynical side went "a-ha" at the question of a reward, but my optimistic side looked at the good things he said.

I showed up at the ascribed time and place. A small, gaunt, dark-skinned man in his fifties, with a voice like Whoopi Goldberg, came out of the theater's front door with a smile on his face and my wallet in his hand. I gave him $50 - maybe a bit steep, but I had my social security card in there even, imagine the problems that would have resulted - and he exlaimed joyfully that I made his holiday season for him. I thanked him, got back in my car, and kicked myself for believing the worst.

A few questions still are stuck: Does The Charles have a lost-and-found? Why didn't he just turn it in? Why didn't he say in his messages that he worked there? Does he actually work there? But I don't care that much. I got my wallet back, untouched, and , as far as I'm concerned, a nice guy did something nice for me.

The one where I lost my wallet and a stranger tries to extort money from me

So I lost my wallet yesterday at The Charles. At least I think it was The Charles, which was the only place I went yesterday.

Today, upon returning home from shopping with my parents, I had seven voice messages on my machine from a woman saying, "I've got your wallet. I'm calling back in twenty minutes." The messages were left between noon and 4pm, and she called almost every half hour. Then, they stopped. The last message said, "Alright, I guess the wallet isn't that important to you."

No number was left. No name was left. I have a listed number, and I'm sure she just looked me up in the phone book.

My dad, the cynical retired cop, thought the messages were vaguely threatening, in that she is going to expect money for returning the wallet - like several hundred dollars. So I made a police report. It's been three hours since her last call.

I'm not sure what she'll do. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do. The credit cards haven't been touched yet. Also in the wallet were my driver's license, my social security card, my BCPSS ID card, three credit cards, and my Visa debit card. No cash, only some receipts and the free passes to The Charles.

Shit. This sucks.

Bottle #2

Thanksgiving dinner was fantastic. I tried cooking my Tofurkey in a crockpot this year, and it turned out great. Mom, along with making her turkey breast, also made her green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, and stuffing. Good stuff.

Dad and I went to see Babel afterwards, which was terrific. I'm still a little shellshocked by it. Wow.

Once we got home, Mom wanted to watch The Break-Up, which I had Netflixed, and we just did. During that time, I proceeded to drink a whole bottle of wine. I don't think my parents noticed. In fact, I don't think they've noticed that I'm drunk.

I'm opening up bottle #2. It's Thanksgiving, after all.

My parents like to get up at 5am and go Christmas shopping on Black Friday. I can't think of what I want for Christmas. We make lists for each other, and the only things I can think of are too expensive to ask for for Christmas - namely, an I-Pod, which I've wanted for a couple of years now.

Wow.

A bit of beautiful American cynicism for your Thanksgiving. William S. Burroughs' "Thanksgiving Prayer":

My students are funny

In my e-mail box last night:

Because I am a disorganized, lazy, subpar student, I forgot to turn in my journals today. I got home today and looked in my englsh folder to find them still there. I have attatched all of them, and can give you a hard copy on monday. my usb drive is still in your computer, creating the perfect storm of disorganization.

No, Faith, in "Young Goodman Brown," was not a "dummy" ("Dummy," by the way, is slang for a woman who likes to give fellatio)

I had a great day in my triumphant return to the classroom, with the exception of making a kid cry in 3rd period. The star basketball player at our school, he's been my student for the last two years. He failed my class with a 68 last year, and had to take summer school, and I was pleased when he started off first quarter with a grade in the 90s. But his poor behavior and wavering work ethic caused that to slip to a 78 by the end of the quarter. Today, he decided to make a wildly inappropriate comment in class during a discussion of "Young Goodman Brown," and I just put him out. It shocked him, as I guess our ensuing discussion did. I haven't written up anyone this year, but a recent request from our principal to write up more kids has emboldened me to do it more often, and I told him I'm writing him up and that he'll continue to get written up for any infraction in my classroom that impedes the learning of other students. He begged me not to, and as I continued to lay into him, this tough kid starting crying. It was a good reminder that he's just a kid, and also a good reminder that serious one-on-one conversations are the most effective way to deal with poor behavior.

My parents are here for Thanksgiving. They arrived fifteen minutes after I got home. I haven't had a weekend day to myself in three weeks, and just got back from a grueling conference, so my house isn't as clean as I'd like it to be, but they commented on how nice my first floor looked. Then, though, my mom went upstairs to the kitchen to see where she'll be cooking her Thanksgiving dinner. She was upset. "You weren't raised this way," she said, scrubbing candle wax off of the stove that I've used once in nine months. "I'm surprised you're not sick." The biggest infranction was the coffee maker, which I never use - but I had left an old filter of coffee grounds in there that was full of mold. The coffee maker was packed away. I just didn't know. Oops.

Otherwise, though, the visit is going well. We headed to Ze Mean Bean Cafe for dinner, engorging ourselves on hriby dip and pierogi. Then to the liquor store to buy some wine, Kahlua, and beer. Now back home, where mom and dad have watched more TV in the last hour than I have in the last month. Imagine that.

Scratch that. I forgot the hotel room on Sunday night, where I got to watch much of Election again. Great, great movie.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours...

Baseball off-season news and views

1. The Orioles signed Jamie Walker to a 3-yr, $11.5 million contract. I like Jamie Walker. I've enjoyed watching him pitch for the last several years. He can get lefties out with the best of them, and he's a fine role player. However, this is the kind of move that symbolizes why the Orioles are such a poor team. You just don't give $12 million bucks to a guy like Jamie Walker, a pitcher who was the Tigers' 4th best relief pitcher last year and whose fine numbers are a result of being used carefully and often not in tight spots. It's a shitty move, a move that shows an organization that doesn't know what it's doing. That $12 million could have been invested in much smarter ways. It'll be interesting what else the team does in the off-season, but if I were a huge Orioles fan, I'd be worried that signing a 35-year old reliever for over two times as much as he's worth would be the crown jewel of the off-season.

2. Justin Morneau wins the AL MVP Award. Wow, this makes me happy. Everyone thought it would go to Derek Jesus, especially all those smug Yankees fans. It's even more interesting because the Twins had three strong candidates, and you'd think that this would have made their vote split. But Morneau won it, deservedly. Jeter had a good season, but not as good as, say, Carlos Guillen with the Tigers. Jeter gets so much press attention because he's in New York, so it's nice to see a deserved midwest guy get it. It almost makes me want to troll New York Yankee message boards and cause some trouble.

3. The Tigers trade for Gary Sheffield. I don't like it. Trading for a 38-year old DH coming off an injury just smacks of desperation. Why not sign Frank Thomas and not lose out on that good young pitching? Why not sign Nomar for half the money they're giving Sheffield? It'll be good to have a big bat in the lineup, but this could turn out pretty badly if Sheffield hurts himself again or begins to lose effectiveness with his advancing age.

4. The Tigers re-sign Sean Casey. Can't we find a first baseman who hits double-digit homeruns?

5. The Cubs sign Alfonso Soriano. Would have loved for the Tigers, or the Orioles, to have signed him. Good for the Cubbies. What a fun player to watch. I hope he can keep up his 2006 numbers because without the power and patience he showed in 2006, he's just an above average player, not a great one.

RIP Robert Altman

Those wikipedia folks really are good. I heard the first report on NPR - right off the wire - of Robert Altman's death, and I check his wikipedia page, and it's already there.

RIP to a great director. I credit Altman with Paul Thomas Anderson - my favorite director - and his interconnecting stories, as well as with Aaron Sorkin, whose overlapping dialogue and long pan shots are reminiscent of Altman's best work. I just watched A Prairie Home Companion earlier this week. He ended his career well. Nothing will top Short Cuts, though. Nashville and The Player were also great films. Still have never seen M*A*S*H, though. I know, I know.

Proposed smoking ban

I'm so happy about the smoking ban that looks like it's coming to Baltimore by 2008. The City Council just passed something or other about it, and, listening to Sheila Dixon now, it sounds like it will go through.

I was hanging out with my friend Marcia over the weekend. She's a chain smoker - literally four cigarettes in twenty minutes - and is one of those who says, "You know, I just don't like the government legislating this kind of thing. Leave it up to the businesses. Smoking is legal, so it should be allowed that bar-owners can have smokers smoke there."

I'm sympathetic to this, but it doesn't convince me. I respect her right as a smoker, but why does that right supercede my right to clean air that won't cause me red, dry eyes, coughing, and, possible, cancer? I guess the option for me is just not to go out. Or go to a coffeeshop. Or Red Maple, the only non-smoking bar I know of in Baltimore, where you can't even go in wearing a t-shirt. But these options seem like putting me way more out of my way than the minority smoker who is causing the disruption of clean, healthy air. Again, why is the smoker's rights more important than mine? Or, for that matter, the workers'?

And I also don't buy the hurt business argument. In Boston, the smoking ban has helped business. I think it would do the same here.

Again, I'm usually pretty much all about government's hands off, except in this case, where the greater public health is affected.

But this is all justifying it in a legal/ethical sense. I like to have an objective argument. But the reason I'm looking forward to the ban is because, well, I hate smoking. I even freely admit I'm probably more anti-smoking than most. I grew up with smokers, and hate it. My mother smoked like a chimney and I used to hide her cigarettes so she couldn't do it anymore. It never worked. When I see a mother in a car smoking with her kids in there, it makes my blood boil because that was me, 25 years ago. I could never date anyone who smokes. I just can't stand it that much. The smell is irritating and makes my eyes hurt. So I'm not the most unbiased observer of this. But I definitely look forward to what might happen if this ban would happen.

No more having to leave early because my eyes hurt. No more sore throat when I wake up. No more smoky clothes that sometimes require a dry cleaner. No more meals interrupted by that particular rudeness.

Now I have more to look forward to in 2008 than the exit of George W. Bush from office.

A day of planning

Since I got an earlier flight than expected, I probably could have worked today, instead of taking another professional development day. But to quell my guilt, I've decided to spend most of the day actually working on school stuff. I've planned out the rest of the calendar year in both classes, which feels good.

In my American Lit course, I'm finishing up Dark Romanticism and am moving into Transcendentalism. I think I'll read the Emerson selection from "Self Reliance" from the textbook, and then act out parts of The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail to cover Henry David. I'm considering the idea of the Transcendental High School project that my colleagues enjoy as a culminating activity (students design a high school based on transcendental philosophies), but I may need to move on to my Huckleberry Finn / A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass unit, which I'd like to start around Dec. 15 and spend two weeks on before having the students finish up one of the books over their Christmas break. This will put me in good position to get through most of realism by the end of January, and allow me to focus on the post-war works of Fitzgerald and Hurston after second semester, and keep my dream of having some time to read something after Hurston - like The Autobiography of Malcolm X, for example.

My Juniors are working hard right now. I gave them one week to write seven small essays that I call journal entries. They have to be typed, single-spaced, and one page, and all cover topics from Isabel Allende's The House of the Spirits, the wonderful novel we just finished. They're due on Wednesday. Next Wednesday, the last two are due, plus a pastiche of Allende's style. Nine small essays and a pastiche - they're working hard. I told them I didn't want them working hard over Thanksgiving (America's best holiday - it's not commercialized, it's not religioius, it's just about gratitude and family), because that's a time for them. But I did want them working very hard before and after the holiday. I'll be interested in what I'll be getting tomorrow. I've already received two e-mails requesting extensions. I graciously declined. Their late penalty is just 10%, and they had the entire time and class periods I missed to work.

We start Bao Ninh's The Sorrow of War on around Dec. 1. It's a short novel, and very strange - lyrical, very sad, confusingly structured - and I am not anticipating a lot of kids will enjoy it. But Ninh plays around so much with structure and character that I think they'll have a lot to write about. It will be a novel that makes them feel smart at times and dumb at other times. I just re-read it on my trip, and it's harrowing, haunting, and maddening.

We'll be finished with that by Christmas break, when I'm going to give them the choice of reading How To Read Literature Like a Professor or The Known World. It was just going to be the former, but rumor has it that the latter author may be visiting our school in the spring, and I'd like to give kids the options of meeting one of our greatest living authors. Have you read The Known World? Best novel of the century so far, with apologies, perhaps, to Ian McEwen.

Next semester, we'll be reading, in this order, the following: Frankenstein, my favorite pre-1900s novel, so scary and influential and flawed; Song of Solomon, (arguably) the best post-World War II American novel, I just re-read it over my trip and was amazed at its readability, its mystery, and its characters; Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, the best piece of non-fiction ever produced in America; and, lastly, Huraki Muraki's sublime, ironic, funny collection of short stories, The Elephant Vanishes. I'm so lucky to be able to teach literature that I love.

With rigor for all

I just got in from Nashville. Today, I spent $110 out-of-pocket to attend a day-long session entitled With Rigor For All: Teaching Challenging Classics to Contemporary Students by one of my teaching heroes, Carol Jago. It didn't disappoint.

I'm now at home, after flying to Charlotte and flying to Baltimore and taking a cab and picking up the dog and getting back in my house. I took tomorrow off already, but am considering going in because I hear my students have been especially bad and it might be a good idea to go in and scare them. Sigh...

My parents come in on Wednesday and I have to be honest, I'm not ready for them. The house is a mess because of construction while I was gone, and I'm left feeling kind of nervous about it all. It doesn't help that the new manager at the restaurant has scheduled me for both Tuesday night and Wednesday night, so I just can't get ready for them like I'd like. The former manager didn't schedule me during the week. The new one hasn't figured that out yet. I'm actually scheduled for four days this week, after just working one or two in each of the last several weeks. I just can't do four. That's getting up to my 80-90 hours/week shit that I had going on last fall. Luckily it's a holiday week so I don't have to worry about that this week. But I'm so exhuasted from the conference that I just need to have more time to myself.

How Nashville is going

1. The presentation was a big success. We were nervous, but we ran through the whole thing during the session before and it made things go well. About 60 people attended; there were only 50 seats. The NCTE conference is hungering for practicle, applicable ideas, and we helped to fill that void.

2. In response, a bit, to the comments on my last post, I have to say that I'm certainly not against dead white men. As the commenter says, I'll be that myself someday. Our current book club book is DeLillo's "White Noise," for example, which we're considering adding to our curriculum somewhere. I think DeLillo is white, right? We've studied "The Tempest" together. "All the King's Men." The point isn't necessarily the fact that they're not dead white men, but that it's beyond the standard traditional works. Three years ago our American Literature contained no minorities (zip) and only one woman (Emily Dickinson), and no major works by either. The key question of the class is "Who are we as Americans? How did we come to be this way?" and we couldn't answer that question using just the canon. And I don't think that, for example, Alice Walker or August Wilson or many writers of color who have Sparknotes made (which Harry Potter also has, by the way) or movies made (too countless to mention) are part of the canon just yet. The cream does rise to the top, but it takes some different curriculum decisions to do so.

3. The title was intentionally provacative. I didn't title it. It worked, because tons of people came.

4. All the rest of the session, people have been coming up to me/us and complimenting our presentation. I was out on the town in Nashville last night, and three young women came up to me and talked to me about it. It made me feel like a rock star. It ended up a good night.

5. Nashville is a cool town. Our conference is in OpryLand, though, which is this huge indoor facility with no windows, with a fake river and a fake boat and fake hot air balloons and a fake christmas tree. It's all very fake, and it feels good to leave every day and go to see the actual Nashville. Yesterday, we visited the Country Music Hall of Fame Museum and hit a number of night spots. The day before, we had perhaps the best meal I've ever had at a family style place called Modell's that was in a house and featured some of the best biscuits I've ever had.

I'm off to go back to the conference.

Journeying beyond white men to Nashville

Tomorrow morning, I'll be flying to Nashville, to attend the NCTE conference in Nashville. I am traveling to Nashville with a colleague I still teach with, and meeting a former colleague (and department head) who has since moved on to St. Paul, and another former colleague who has since moved on to Costa Rica. We're speaking together, and this is the introduction that the St. Paul colleague wrote. I'm excited, and I need to get my s* tonight so my part goes well.

********

“We could have been teaching this curriculum in 1970.” So said (Mr. Epiphanyinbaltimore), our first speaker today, in response to seeing every single literature selection that was being taught at that time at (our school) High School up on the board in his room, room 237, in the spring of 2003.

My own response was more political. I glanced at the list and said that it resembled the current political thinking with respect to Iraq – there was the U.S., Britain, and the rest of the world.

On that spring day, the seeds of this session: BEYOND DEAD WHITE MEN: HOW AND WHY YOU SHOULD CHANGE YOUR LITERATURE CURRICULUM were planted. Good afternoon, and thank you for coming.

So we began to throw out titles, ranging from the predictable, like A Raisin in the Sun, to the obscure, like The Collector. But a problem quickly emerged. Whenever anyone suggested anything outside of the traditional school room canon, not enough of us had read it to make a compelling case for its inclusion or exclusion. So we were stuck. Stuck teaching the same books we’d always taught and, in many cases, the same books that had been taught to us.

Mr. (Epiphanyinbaltimore), who had the audacity to get through high school without reading The Scarlet Letter, and I were frustrated. We spoke about ways we could make more informed choices about what to include. We came up with the idea of an English Department Book Club. Each month, a member of the English Department would select a book, encourage others to read it, and then we would meet, either during our allotted professional development time or on our own time to discuss the book and to consider whether to include it in our curriculum.

I chose first – a title that had always intrigued me by an author who was (and is) very much alive and is most definitely not white. I chose Sherman Alexie’s The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. But our informal rules did not require that we abandon the classics, only look for more neglected ones. This gave rise to later selections like Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men and The Tempest. (In the latter case, the group met in a Baltimore restaurant shaped like a boat.) This became what one colleague called as we discussed Angels in America, “real professional development.” These meetings brought us together as a department and gave us the courage to think about making changes.

Mr. Epiphanyinbaltimore, a long-suffering Detroit Tigers fan, will start us off with what he thinks of as a rather conventional choice to introduce the students to the works of Ernest J. Gaines, notably A Lesson Before Dying. But he will spend the majority of the time talking about his unconventional decision to link Mr. Gaines’ work with the work of James Baldwin – a risky choice for any age group, but especially for the age group that he was then teaching – 9th grade.

Ms. (Colleague) will speak next about her choice to dislodge one classic, The Scarlet Letter, in favor of another, Their Eyes Were Watching God.

Ms. (Colleague) was not able to join us today, so Ms. (Colleague) will speak about how and why both she and Ms. (Colleague) used Manuel Puig’s Kiss of the Spiderwoman.

After that, Ms. (Colleague), who brought to both her colleagues and her students a whole new world of poetry, will talk about some of the poets she has used in the classroom.

Now comes the second part of the question. Why did we do this? After all, aren’t there certain texts, perhaps even The Scarlet Letter that, to echo deliberately Mr. Hirsch, every high school student needs to know? I am a graduate of the University of Chicago. I was taught that the canon was sacred. (AB), our department head at the time of the meeting I’ve described, emphasized the idea of anchor texts – that every 11th grader should read Frankenstein, for example – but she stressed that we ought to focus our curriculum on skills. She supported the choice of any text that would allow us to teach those skills. So the book club gave us courage and our department head gave us support.

Why else did we do it? The group you see before you was, at that time, the vertical International Baccalaureate team of teachers. Even if our population and current affairs didn’t make it necessary to diversify our literature selections, the International Baccalaureate program required it. The book club gave us the courage, our department head gave us the support, and the IB program gave us the mandate.

As I mentioned, Mr. EpiphanyinBaltimore will speak first, then Ms. (Colleague), then Ms. (Colleague) will wear two different hats. After that, I will moderate a Q & A period with any time remaining. I now introduce Mr. EpiphanyinBaltimore will start us on our journey beyond dead white men.

****

Taneka

I taught tough-as-nails Taneka as a 9th grader, and I'm teaching her again now as an 11th grader. In that time, I've realized that her rough exterior and sometimes snide comments are just her way; she's actually a frightfully honest ("Yeah, I know I only got 2 right out of 15! I didn't read!"), and very funny individual, who might seem rude on the outset but really isn't.

She failed my class this quarter, receiving a grade in the 40s. I bumped it up to 55, and let it stay there. She came to talk to me after school today, something she does on occasion, but usually just to chat or to find a refuge from the loud hallways. Today, though, she wanted to ask why her grade on her journal was so low. I asked her to get it out. She had completed just 2 of the 4 required. They needed to be single-spaced, one per page. She double-spaced the two she had done, and even then they were too short. They also had no evidence. They were terrible. I explained this to her, and she said, "Well, is there anything I can do now? Can I re-do these?"

"I don't mind if you do, Taneka, but I don't think you should. I assigned you a whole lot of work for this week and next. You should concentrate on that work, instead of this old stuff. I already bumped your grade up enough so your first quarter won't hold you back too much. So just work on the new stuff, and get yourself a fresh start. Alright?"

She nodded her head, with her too-proud-too-beg exterior still in place. Then, though, a solitary tear poked its way out of her left eye.

I was shocked.

The right eye started gushing at that point, and I put my arm around her shoulders and led her out into the hallway where we could talk in private.

I honestly didn't know much of what to do. I have found that students cry in front of me mostly because they've screwed up badly and have no one to lash out at and no one to blame but themselves. And I know there is often more to that story, but in the handful of times I've had students cry, I know this to be the case - and I don't begrudge them for it. I think it's most natural to cry when there's nothing else you can do.

I offered my consoling words, such as they were, and hoped she would talk, for the silence was killing me. Finally, she did. She let me know that she's doing fine in the rest of her classes except for math, which she also failed. It's homework she has a hard time with. See, Taneka moved out, or was kicked out, of her mother's house over the summer. She's living with her grandmother, who really can't take care of her financially. Therefore, she's working every day after school and mostly fending for herself money-wise.

Now, I had a job every day after school, sort of like Taneka. But I drove to mine. I used mine for saving for college and buying CDs. Taneka is using hers to buy books for school, buy her clothes, and buy food. She has to take an hour bus ride to get to her job, both ways. She doesn't get home until nearly 11 every night.

This sucks, and the conversation has been running through my head all day. My stomach is in knots. I told her she's not allowed to pay for her books any more this year, that I've got that covered for her. I told her I could be flexible with due dates. Otherwise, I'll just be watching out.

Conservative, Christian, Right-Wing, Republican, Straight, White American Males

Where did this week go? I leave for NCTE at 11am on Thursday. I have 5,000 things to do before then.

To do list

I just spent the last several hours planning the rest of my The House of the Spirits unit, getting most of my The Sorrow of War unit planned, and laying out a daily calendar until Dec. 22 in my IB course. It was a lot of work, but I'm pretty proud of it. I'm sure it will be met by groans and complaints tomorrow, but it's doable for them. I'm going to be our for four days attending the National Council of Teachers of English Conference this weekend in Nashville, including speaking at it, and I needed to get this shizitt done before I'm off.

My to-do list for tomorrow:

1. Finish 1st quarter grades.

2. Write two essays for grad school and e-mail them by 5pm.

3. Add any necessary details to the work I did this afternoon, print out, and run off.

4. Figure out where Holden will stay this weekend. I just can't ask the Polish girl again. I feel like I'm taking advantage already.

5. Do the same sort of planning I did today, except with my sophomores.

6. Begin working on my presentation for NCTE.

It will be a busy day. It will be a busy week.

Thoughts from the weekend

1. The Departed, which I saw on 23 Mile Road in the New Baltimore area, was one of the most satisfying movies I've seen in a long time. I was thoroughly engrossed and entertained for the entire 2.5 hours. The film has some holes, particularly in the plot (what happened to the envelope? why did Decaprio call the 2nd cop to the building? is Nicholson trying just a little too hard?), but, wow, I loved it overall.

2. Traveling 600 miles and spending a couple of hundred dollars to see a wedding of one of my best friends is one of the drawbacks of hoisting my life into another state, I suppose. I don't have many left, though. Single friends, I mean, in Michigan. I had three weddings of good friends this year back there, and this was the only one I made; timing and money just didn't work out for the other two. I have one left, and it's a big one. I'm even in that wedding party when it occurs next Memorial Day Weekend.

3. I love airports, especially moving sidewalks.

Field trip a huge success

I've got to hand it to Center Stage, and take back some comments I made on an earlier post this week. The field trip was a huge success, and I enjoyed Death and the Maiden much more from the new vantage point. While I still had some issues with the lead actress' portrayal of Paulina, I thought she was more consistent, and some of the things were done exceptionally well. The kids loved it. The field trip was a huge success, and afterwards we headed to the Inner Harbor to eat lunch at Harborplace. All in all, a great day, and a nice ending to the week.

Tomorrow, I fly to Detroit and get ready for a wedding on Saturday night. The date of 11/11 has been etched in my mind for a year or so, and I can't believe it's finally come. I'm looking forward to the visit to the airport, the flight, and driving a rental car around the Motor City.

My thoughts on Election Day

It is pretty much official: the Democrats have taken the House, the Senate, the Governorships, as well as most of the state legislators. It's pretty amazing, and I never expected it. This is something that gives me some faith in the American people. I wonder what's changed so much in the last two years since Bush won the last election, and why these fickle middle voters now have turned against him when they voted for him before. I'll probably never understand the folks in the middle who can vote one way one year and one way the next. The parties have clear differences and clear positions. These differences and positions are important for me every year, not just some years, so I just don't get how Bush's approval now stands at about one-third when just two years ago it was 51%.

As for the Democratic takeover, my main hope is that it's not in vain. The 2008 election is more important than this one, because the next President will probably appoint at least two more Supreme Court Justices, so it's important not to disappoint that fickle middle now. Dems need to do something over the next two years, and I'm excited to see what they might do.

A few things I'm especially pleased about:

1. Cardin beating Steele. Steele ran a great campaign, and convinced a lot of folks that he was a moderate Republican or just plain without a party. But he's not, and I'm glad that voters were smart enough to realize it. I'm glad black folks weren't fooled into voting for him by Russell Simmons ads on black radio; after all, this guy was from the administration that failed to support the Thornton Commission's funding of city schools.

2. I'm really intrigued by some of the possibilities of O'Malley becoming governor. City schools, as a whole, have improved markedly under his leadership in the city, even if my personal school situation has not. I thank him profusely for saving my job a few years back by lending the school system money and avoiding teacher layoffs. There were plenty of things I disagreed with him regarding education - I think he should have allowed the state takeover of a few of the failing high schools, for example, because it would have forced the city and state to work together and made the state put up or shut up - but having the state and city on the same side should be even better for the kids of Baltimore. Ehrlich was motivated to make Baltimore appear as horrible as possible, and O'Malley will be motivated by the opposite, and that can only make the city (and its schools) a better place, even if it means 11 months of Sheila Dixon as mayor. Bob Ehrlich spent four years in office doing almost nothing. He wasn't as bad as I thought he'd be - at worst he was just highly ineffectual - but his bash-Baltimore campaign really grew tired, and I'm glad to see the most negative campaigner I've ever seen head out the door. Basically, I think he's a combative dick, and I think O'Malley is a good person, and the type of leader who has the capacity to inspire. I've seen it happen before, in fact, in speeches to my students.

3. I've grown to really like McCandless in Missouri and Webb in Virginia, and seeing both of them win was inspiring.

4. Besides McCandless' gracious victory speech, and Schwartzenegger's funny victory line about sequels, the graceful concession speeches of Rick Santorum (!) and Harold Ford, Jr. were other highlights for me while watching the coverage.

5. Michigan seems to be a Democratic stronghold right now, which is kind of cool. However, I've heard really mixed things about the Governor.

The lowlights:

1. With all the victories for Democrats, it was really disappointing to see Harold Ford, Jr., lose. A moderate black Democrat, he could have been a star someday. Plus, I loved his response to folks about why he attended the Playboy party. It's especially disheartening that he was up 47-44 a couple of weeks ago, and then the Republican Party ran the racist "Don't let those black folks sex our white women" ad and Ford suddenly was a few points behind. Other things happened in the interim, and I'd like to believe that those things contributed, because I'd hate to think it was just racism that made him lose.

2. I'm really disappointed that I was no able to vote for Kweisi Mfume. I like Cardin alright, but Mfume would have been a better Senator. And it's silly to talk about since obviously black people showed up in droves, but I would have been a lot less nervous in the last two weeks if I had known Mfume - who would have beat Steele handily, I'm pretty certain - was on the ticket.

3. One of the lowlights of the day was reading that Laura Ingraham, the conservative AM radio host who rivals Ann Coulter for worst celebrity in the country, encouraged her listeners to call the Democratic hotline established for voters to report voting problems. She succeeded in jamming the hotline a few times. She must really hate America.

4. I honestly hate hearing about raising the minimum wage, because I don't think it does hardly anything to help the poor and instead does more to give teenagers more spending money that they don't need. It's an issue, though, that voters love, so I guess so be it. I just wish that it wasn't made into such a big deal. Tell me what you're going to do about education. Tell me that you will protect a woman's right to choose. Tell me that you'll fully fund embryonic stem cell research. Tell me that you'll support gay civil unions. Minimum wage probably wouldn't make my top 50 of domestic social issues.

5. I'm bummed out the Tammy Duckworth lost.

Days off

I pride myself in almost never taking a day off. In six years of teaching, I've never used my emergency sub plans; even when I had major emergency eye surgery, I came in during the morning beforehand and got my shit together for the next week. This is why the next few weeks will be very unusual for me. At the beginning of this month, I took two days off to go to a conference that my school sent me to. On Friday, I'm taking a Personal Day to go to a wedding in Michigan. And the week after, I'll be gone for four days as I travel to Nashville to speak at the National Council of Teachers of English.

As for the wedding, I probably could have squeezed in a late-afternoon flight and a late-night arrival, but after realizing that it's the Friday of our Homecoming Week, and that the school has a major pep rally planned, as well as lots of other activities throughout the day, I decided that probably not much learning will occur that day anyway. It will be a day that the marching band will go down the halls randomly to drum up excitement. It will be a day of cheering and face painting. Now, I'm usually all about this stuff, and I'll especially miss all the alum who come to visit that day, but it's also a good day to miss if a teacher has to miss - a day of lots of stress, water balloons, food fights, and not much in the way of academics. I'm taking my first personal day in a few years to take a 12:29 flight and get to Detroit before dinner so I don't have to worry about driving around in my rental car in the dark.

Next week will be even crazier. I leave for Nashville on Thursday the 16th (oops, and still no dog sitter) and will be arriving back in Baltimore late on Monday the 20th. I think the only other time in my career when I've missed four days or more is when I had my surgery three years ago, but I'm not even sure if I missed that much then. My sophomores will be watching The Crucible and answering a bunch of questions that I hope will materialize out of thin air by then. As for my Juniors, I'm not sure. We're about to start reading a book about Viet Nam, and I had them - on a recent quiz - rate their personal knowledge about the Viet Nam War. Almost every kid rated themselves a "3" or below, so I should probably provide some background information on the war before we begin. Since they're going to be without me for four days, perhaps showing a film might be a good idea - but it has to be something school appropriate, and I just don't have much knowledge about Viet Nam films. It might be better to assemble a packet of information and some questions to answer. That's a lot of work.

At the same time, I'm taking a bunch of kids tomorrow on a field trip, and that's a ton of work and stress. Grades are due on Monday and we haven't yet been given bubble sheets. The kids are pretty crazy this week and I had to go next door today to a class with a sub and harangue kids for playing cards, talking on cell phones, and in general being dopes; the teacher is out on maternity leave and the substitutes we have been given are not competent. School is just, in general, a tough place to be right now. I don't mean to get down, and I try my best to stay optimistic, but... that is all I'll say about that...

Death and the Maiden at Center Stage

Last night, while the voters of this country were making America a better place, I was at Center Stage, watching Death and the Maiden. It marked a first for me; I had never before seen a play that I have studied so intimately, for which I know almost all the lines. I've seen my kids act it out, make their choices as performers, and discuss its themes at length. Not only did I see the movie when it came out 12 years ago, but I watched it with my students, then read all their film critiques of it. I've never been able to see a play that I know this well before, as I don't think seeing edited, student productions of Romeo and Juliet counts.

So, did I like it? In a word, no. But it grew on me as it went, and I ended up liking it more than I had expected to after the first ten minutes. My biggest problem was with the central performance of Paulina. There are a lot of ways to play this character - the seminal one being Sigourney Weaver's amazing performance in the film version - but I just felt like she was all wrong. I rarely believed her. She was too young, too girlish. She did this fake vomiting thing that really distracted me. She had some okay moments, but I just found her too uneven.

I didn't much like her husband either (both in the play and in real life), but there were only a couple of scenes where he was distractingly bad. The doctor was fine. But I just didn't understand how the acting could have been that off base. Perhaps this is a function of knowing the play so well. Maybe. My friends all liked it, though a few of them thought the girl was off-base. Hmmm.

I will say, however, that the play grew on me as I went on, and the second half was much better than the first. Maybe it was getting over the shock of the characters not matching my expectations. I felt like the central metaphor of the play - that the healing of a couple can mirror the healing of a nation - was drawn well. The set was simple and perfect, and there were times when the blocking was done amazingly well (particularly for drawing out that metaphor). The play found humor in lines that I thought were only mildly funny, and the laughs broke the tension nicely.

Tomorrow, I'm bringing 70 of my students to the show. This field trip is costing the students $25 each - $15 for the ticket and $10 for the transportation. We've been studying the play since the start of the year, and I added it to the curriculum because Center Stage had scheduled it for this year. Yet, Center Stage didn't bother sending the actors or director to speak with the class, and the Community Director could only make one of the two periods that I'm bringing. It's a pretty disappointing showing from Center Stage, which has been trying to reach out to the community more and more in recent years, and purportedly trying to open up theater to a generation of younger people and people of different races. Yet, they pale in comparison with what Everyman Theater does. Everyman offers student performances for every single show they do, and they always do a talk-back session, and they always send an actor to the classes. And, best of all, the kids don't have to pay; they offer free performances for the schools in the city. There might be some sort of grant associated with that, or perhaps Everyman just builds that into their budget, but either way it's so good for the students.

Center Stage, until it starts doing things like this, will never be at the forefront of Baltimore theater. They might offer amazing deals to yuppies like me ($60 for 6 shows in their season ticket deal), but they aren't doing much to grab the youth of this city before they get my age. I mean, why in the world did I pay $10 for my tickets at night (for each show) and my kids all have to pay $15? Disappointing. I mean, I love Center Stage's productions for the most part, and certainly love their deal. But I doubt if I'll ever bring students again.

Voting and doctor

Voting - and the feeling of coming together with my community to choose my next leader - always puts me in a good mood. My precint is pretty ecelectic in the only way that Baltimore really can be; it's old and young, black and white, gay and straight. My heart filled with happiness to see an old lady, her bones withered, moving slowly with her cane towards the voting booth. I hope she voted Democratic because otherwise my picture of her is ruined.

Voting was convenient and easy. The place was full of people but there was no line. Everyone was smiling. I voted, then went off to enjoy the rest of my off day, which included a visit to a doctor (finally), an older Indian woman with a soothing voice and soothing hands who put me into her schedule at the request of her son-in-law, a co-worker of mine. She called me overweight and shuddered when I told her my family history of diabetes, heart disease, and high blood pressure. The doctor's visit prompted me to go to the gym, my first visit in a couple of weeks. Being healthy for me is a habit that I haven't been in yet this school year, and I've gained back a third of the 120 pounds I lost a few years back. It's happened slowly - say, a pound a month - and pounds don't concern me nearly as much as just a general feeling of unhealthiness that seems to have creeped up around me lately. I ran for an hour at the gym, stopping much more than I should have to stop, and hopefully it's the start of a triumphant return to daily workouts.

No lifting weights, the doctor said, until I get this shoulder tendinitis straightened out. I was embarassed to say that my shoulder has hurt since March, to the point where I can barely pick something up over my head, and she tsk-tsked me in her motherly way and wrote me a referral to get a steroid shot that she swears I'll think is a miracle cure.

Now, the only thing I can think about is the election, but I'm trying not to. I have such conflicting views about O'Malley, and thus did not do much for his campaign, but now wish I had. I hope he can pull it off. Cardin, I'm not so worried about.

Vote.

More stirring words from our nation's bravest journalist, Keith Olbermann, on the even of this very important Election Day.

We are, as every generation, inseparable from our own time.

Thus is our perspective, inevitably that of the explorer looking into the wrong end of the telescope.

But even accounting for our myopia, it's hard to imagine there have been many elections more important than this one, certainly not in Non-Presidential years.

And so we look at the verdict in the trial of Saddam Hussein yesterday, and, with the very phrase "October, or November, Surprise" now a part of our vernacular, and the chest-thumping coming from so many of the Republican campaigners today, each of us must wonder about the convenience of the timing of his conviction and sentencing.

But let us give history and coincidence the benefit of the doubt — let's say it's just "happened" that way — and for a moment not look into the wrong end of the telescope.

Let's perceive instead the bigger picture:

Saddam Hussein, found guilty in an Iraqi court.

Who can argue against that?

He is officially, what the world always knew he was: a war criminal.

Mr. Bush, was this imprimatur, worth the cost of 2,832 American lives, and thousands more American lives yet to be lost?

Is the conviction of Saddam Hussein the reason you went to war in Iraq?

Or did you go to war in Iraq because of the Weapons of Mass Destruction that did not exist?

Or did you go to war in Iraq because of the connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda that did not exist?

Or did you go to war in Iraq to break the bonds of tyranny there — while installing the mechanisms of tyranny here?

Or did you go to war in Iraq because you felt the need to wreak vengeance against somebody — anybody?

Or did you go to war in Iraq to contain a rogue state which, months earlier, your own administration had declared had been fully contained by sanctions?

Or did you go to war in Iraq… to keep gas prices down?

How startling it was, Sir, to hear you introduce oil to your stump speeches over the weekend.

Not four years removed from the most dismissive, the most condescending, the most ridiculing denials of the very hint at, as Mr. Rumsfeld put it, this "nonsense"…

There you were, campaigning in Colorado, in Nebraska, in Florida, in Kansas — suddenly turning this 'unpatriotic idea'… into a platform plank.

"You can imagine a world in which these extremists and radicals got control of energy resources," you told us. "And then you can imagine them saying, 'We're going to pull a bunch of oil off the market to run your price of oil up unless you do the following."

Having frightened us, having bullied us, having lied to us, having ignored and re-written the constitution under our noses, having stayed the course, having denied you've stayed the course, having belittled us about "timelines" but instead extolled "benchmarks"…

You've now resorted, Sir, to this?

We must stay in Iraq to save the two-dollar gallon of gas?

—

Mr. President, there is no other conclusion we can draw as we go to the polls tomorrow.

Sir… you have been making this up as you went along.

This country was founded to prevent anybody from making it up as they went along.

Those vaunted founding fathers of ours have been so quoted-up, that they appear as marble statues: like the chiseled guards of China, or the faces on Mount Rushmore.

But in fact they were practical people and the thing they obviously feared most, was a government of men and not laws.

They provided the checks and balances for a reason.

No one man could run the government the way he saw fit — unless he, at the least, took into consideration what those he governed saw.

A House of Representatives would be the people's eyes.

A Senate would be the corrective force on that House.

An Executive would do the work… and hold the Constitution to his chest like his child.

A Supreme Court would oversee it all.

Checks and balances.

Where did that go, Mr. Bush?

And what price did we pay because we have let it go?

Saddam Hussein will get out of Iraq the same way 2,832 Americans have, and thousands more.

He'll get out faster than we will.

And if nothing changes tomorrow, you, Sir, will be out of the White House long before the rest of us can say… we are out of Iraq.

And whose fault is this?

Not truly yours. You took advantage of those of us who were afraid, and those of us who believed unity and nation took precedence over all else.

But we let you take that advantage.

And so we let you go to war in Iraq. To… oust Saddam. Or find non-existant Weapons. Or avenge 9/11. Or fight terrorists who only got there after we did. Or as cover to change the fabric of our Constitution. Or for lower prices at The Texaco. Or… ?

There are still a few hours left, before the polls open, sir, there are many rationalizations still untried.

And whatever your motives of the moment, we the people have, in true good faith and with the genuine patriotism of self-sacrifice (of which you have shown you know nothing)… we have let you go on…

Making it up.

As you went along.

Un-checked… and un-balanced.

Vote.

See him read it

Olbermann says things much better than I do, but here are a few of my random thoughts...

1. The Maryland races scare the shit out of me, so much so that I'm already gearing myself up for a double Democratic loss. Gosh, I hope O'Malley can pull it off. He's not perfect, but he's a heck of a lot better than Ehrlich.

2. McCandless and Ford will both lose. Both will be close, but both will lose, and this pains me becuase they're both great. However, Webb will win against George "Macaca" Allen.

Putting up throwaway

Thank you, The Examiner, for putting choosing this throwaway post (out of the thousands I have on the Internet about teaching the youth of Baltimore) into your article about blogging:

Blogtimore.com bills itself as “a blog of blogs.” Of course, it also calls itself — tongue-in-cheek — “The Greatest Web Site in America.” The blog appears as just a collection of headlines from other sites, but it has the depth of the human experience. In one post headlined, “Time to get back to the gym,” a blogger named “Epiphany in Baltimore (epiphanyinbaltimore.blogspot.com),” lamented “A student told me today that I looked just like Kevin James. Aughhh.”

Oh well.

Wanna hear something funny? I've never ever seen The Examiner. I know it exists, because I've heard a bit about it, but it's not delivered to my middle-class Baltimore neighborhood and I haven't been lucky enough to find one in one of its boxes when I go downtown.

I am a footnote

Sometimes I get so bored working on the things I have to for grad school that instead of continuing to google-scholar things like "feminist curriculum", I google-scholar my own name. Of course, everyone has googled their name, but this was the first time I'd done it in Google Scholar. And I got a little ego boost that my name does in fact come up, and that a paper I wrote in college about spoken word poetry has been used as a reference in someone's book called Stand and Deliver: political activism, leadership, and hip hop culture. Wow, I guess I should order this book. Or at least put it on my wishlist. (Done. Just click on the right.)

Belly

I'm hoping one of the good things that comes from 8 years of George W. Bush is some great music again. Starting in the late 1980s, after 8 years of Ronald Reagan, popular music went through a six-or-seven year period where music really mattered. New voices emerged and new genres were born - Tracy Chapman, U2, De La Soul, Suzanne Vega, Nirvana, Smashing Pupmkins, A Tribe Called Quest, Sinead O'Connor, Ben Harper, Ani DiFranco, Arrested Development - and music on the radio was really, really good. I don't know if we'll ever get there again - though artists like Kanye West and Ray LaMontagne make me feel like it could - but I think great art emerges from times of great frustration and powerlessness, so we might have some really great American music again sometime around 2010.

I thought of this while listening to Belly today. They don't even make minor two-hit wonders like Belly anymore. Listen to this, and I dare you not to feel joy.

Borat and flying

Just so I can add to the buzz that I'm sure will be generated in the next week or so surrounding this movie - which is opening up at #1 this weekend despite being only released on about one-third of the number of screens that most big films are released on - I wanted to say that I took an impromptu trip to The Charles today in between visits to The Book Thing and the gym and saw the Borat movie. It worked out nicely; I had decided I was going to see whatever was showing at that time, whether it be The Last King of Scotland or The Queen or whatever, but Borat was my first choice. It was playing at 12:30, the moment I walked in the door, and I saw the movie and laughed so hard that at times I had a hard time breathing. It's a lot of fun.

Meanwhile, you know those $49 Baltimore-to-Detroit flights that have been advertised ad nauseum by Southwest lately? Well, they're only good for 6:50am return flights, at least this weekend. I could have gotten a $49 flight out of Baltimore, and then paid $129 for a return flight - or leave at 6:50am after what will almost certainly be a crazy wedding celebration night. So, I went through Expedia, spent $129, and don't have to leave at the butt-crack of dawn. I'm flying this weekend up to Detroit, and the weekend after to Nashville for the NCTE conference.

Working a double

I went in and unlocked the restaurant's front doors at 8am, and waited tables until 5. In the meantime, a waiter for the evening shift called and said he was sick, and asked if I could work for him in the evening. I agreed; money's been short these days and this will be my last shift for a couple of weeks because I'm heading out of town. What ended up was a day in which I worked from 8am until nearly midnight, without sitting down. It was a good day, though, and even though every part of my body is sore right now, my wallet is feeling a lot thicker. I sold $1700 worth of meals yesterday and made enough to afford contact lenses. Woo-hoo!

TGIF

A payday Friday, a Happy Hour at Brewer's Art, and a visit from Bobby... can't ask for a better Friday. Well, within reason, of course...

Took Bobby to Wal-Mart and bought him a winter coat and long johns. He didn't ask for one; it was a surprise. He joined the ROTC at U of Md. as another job. I'm wondering if it's a good idea. I hope so.

Brewer's Art was fun as always. I don't know how I was there, had dinner, had fries, and hung out for five hours and only spent a bit over $20. I'm a bit broke these days because I'm waiting for - I kid you not - $2500 in reimbursements from the BCCPS for classes took and training trips taken. I've fronted cash for all that, so I'm pretty strapped right now, so much so that Wednesday's blogger happy hour was probably out of the question even if I didn't feel crummy and wasn't at school until deep into the evening. But Friday's payday happy hour? At the best bar in Baltimore? The only one with a non-smoking section? The one with the fries and the Resurrection? Yup. I can do it. In fact, I parked my car at 3:56 pm and was literally the first one in there today.

Have to work all day tomorrow at the restaurant. But have the night off. Hopefully it'll be a good weekend. I find myself a little excited by the cold weather, because it reminds me of snow days.

This is my life

It's 7:02 pm. I just walked in the door from a long afternoon/evening of planning tomorrow's lesson and grading stacks and stacks of papers. Upon walking in the door, I immediately let the dog out, went upstairs, opened a can of black beans for dinner, and now I'm blogging. I'm hoping to head out to the gym tonight, and maybe buy some lightbulbs so I don't have to take a shower in the dark again tomorrow morning, but otherwise, this is my life.

The current stress is the field trip. I'm taking 75 kids to see Center Stage's production of Death and the Maiden on Thursday morning. The tickets cost $15/each, and I had to put it all on my credit card to ensure the show wouldn't be sold out. Now is the time to book the buses, and I priced them all last week, and finally found a company that, for $340, would take us to the play, then take us to the Inner Harbor to eat lunch at HarborCourt, and then back to school. They faxed me the bill today - it's $680. I called the place, and it's actually $340/a bus. That's going to increase the per-student cost to go to this field trip to $25. And all that money is channeling through me in coins and crumbly dollar bills and personal checks from parents made out to me. I hate dealing with money and I really just need a personal assistant for all this. I'm pretty sure I'll end up getting screwed out of a hundred dollars or so. I can just feel it. I hope it's worth it!

The good thing is that, lately, I'm having a lot of good moments with students. I've taught these kids for two months now, and am really starting to get to know a lot of them well. I know that Darryl needs to sit right in front of me to do his work, but, when he does that, he's able to produce great stuff. I've learned that Robyn is all bark and not bite; she seems like she has an attitude, but she really cares a lot about her learning and is a conscientious student. I have discovered that Cam's horrible handwriting does not hide his thoughtful ideas; I have realized that I really taught Anthony well last year because now, teaching him again, he's heads and shoulders ahead of the rest of the class. I know that I can make fun of Cheyene when she asks a silly question by saying, "Don't be a D.A." and she will know that I mean "Dumb Ass" but I will feign ignorance and say I meant "District Attorney" because she was arguing, and she will laugh and laugh. I've realized the boy in 8th period with the cornrows might be one of the most brilliant kids I've ever taught, with a love for language and trying new words that I wish all my kids had - his classmates call him "Mr. Dictionary." I'm learned that Jasmyn with the eyes doesn't just seem smart because she has intelligent eyes, but she actually is; she says some of the most perceptive, evocative things in class so my initial stereotype of her as intelligent was well deserved.

So, yes, I'm getting to know these kids. I wish 3rd period was a little nicer (every time I even pause to breathe, they take that as an opportunity to start running their mouths) and that 8th period was a little less whiny, and that all the classes were smaller, but it's turning out to be a pretty good year.

Mental note: The first two paragraphs of this post are depressing as hell, so I made it a point to try to cheer myself up by remembering the good parts of school, and did so. Now I feel revived. Hmmm. I should do that more often.

Another attempt to find a doctor

"Hello, Dr. Diamond's Office."

"Hi, I'm wondering if you're taking new patients?"

"What insurance are you?"

"Optimum Choice."

"Yes, we sure are."

"Well, I'd like to make an appointment if that's okay."

"Sure. When would you like to come in?"

"Well, I'm a teacher, so any time after 3:30 is probably fine as long as I can get out of school quickly that day. Or, better yet, how about Election Day?"

"I'm sorry, we don't see new patients after 4:00."

"That's okay. I just need an appointment by 3:30 and I should be able to make it. We get out at 3:10."

"I'm sorry, you need to start your appointment no later than 3:00 in order be done by 4:00."

"Hmmmm. Another teacher recommended me to you, said you saw patients after school hours. Is that not true?"

"Yes, we see patients after 3:00, just not new patients."

"Hmmm. So, what you're saying is, you really can't take on a new patient who has a job?"

(Getting bitchy in tone) "No, that's not what I'm saying at all. We just can't see you after 3:00."

"Unfortunately, I have school until 3:10, so I guess it's just impossible for someone who, say, has a job as a teacher in the city to get an appointment as a new patient, huh?"

(Still bitchier) "No, I didn't say that. Teacher's don't work every day. For example, you have Columbus Day Off, and Election Day off, and we could see you then." (Random note: we do not have Columbus Day off.)

"Yes, that's why I initially asked you about Election Day."

(Pentacle of bitchiness.) "No, you didn't. You asked about appointments after 3:30."

"I'm not going to sit here and argue with you. You're simply too rude of a receptionist for me to ever consider visiting your doctor." (That's Dr. Earl Diamond in Pikesville who just lost out on a patient.)

I hung up.

I still need a doctor.

I admittedly have a big ol' chip on my shoulder about doctors who don't take patients after 3 o'clock. I feel like doctors are biased against people who work for a living. Ugh. Today, I couldn't lift my shoulder over my head. I need to go in to see one.

Tracy Chapman, "Freedom Now"

After a day like today, I need some Tracy Chapman to center myself again. She has a gift for taking anger and making it sound beautiful. Cheers to one of the greatest songwriters and voices of the generation. Not only that, but this song is pretty topical this week, as the bastard who locked up Mandela for decades croaked on Monday.



So many Youtube posts lately... sorry... I'm loving Youtube, and not loving personal revelations on the Internet so much lately.

Time to get back to the gym

A student told me today that I looked just like Kevin James. Aughhh.