beanblog

whoa

2005-06-08T00:26:00.000-07:00

Haven't posted since late April. I got a digital camera and went wild, taking between fifty and three hundred photos a day, this while teaching full-time, plus night classes, plus a hundred other things. I stated posting more and more photos on flickr.com, and hope you take a look here.

So instead of communicating with words, I've been saying it with photos. Today I had enough leftover to both write and photograph, because I needed to face something very sad and empty.

Today one of my former students died, the results of ingesting meth amphetamine. He was a tough nut to crack, too smart for his own good. He wore his brilliant potential like armor and dared us all to draw it out of him, while he seemed to do everything in his power to stall for time. He was going to be great, we all saw it, it was just a matter of growing out of his angst and attitude. He hung out with the best and brightest. Not the academic kids, but the edgy writers and artists and poets. He could write, that's for sure. And play the sax. And he was funny, a brilliant wordster. He'd hang back on the edges, quiet and self-contained, unless he could make a sarcastic remark, or crack a small smile at something one of his friends added.

I kicked him out of my class because after trying and trying to accommodate and draw out his potential, letting him do independent projects, anything so long as it was creative, he tried to placate me with a little animation he said he had made. I watched it. No, no way. I clicked on 'get info' and saw it had last been modified three years previously. Even after that he used to show me his writing from time to time. I still have a folder of it.

He and his friends graduated a couple of years ago, and they're all out in the world, designing, writing, making music, but he never got a grip. No school, no job, nothing beyond the good intentions stage. I think he was just too damn burdened by that damn potential everyone kept mentioning, too scared to try. And it's a damn shame, because it's nothing now. Before he had a chance to give it back to the world with his own stamp on it.

What a damn waste.

Art among the rubble

2005-04-23T01:10:00.000-07:00

I was supposed to drive to Berkeley today, two hours away, to see my friend Matt, a former student who I think the world of. I wanted to show him the amazing, wonderful art show out in the marshlands, atop a landfill. A group of people named SNIFF have been making art with found objects out there for a long time. It's not cutsey, it's gritty and bawdy, but it IS art in a big sense of the word. It's inspired.

So anyway, I slept badly because once again, in defiance of the nature spirits, I have insisted on walking in the land of poison oak with my dogs, and as punishment, I am covered in itches in the most nasty places, like my eyelids, behind my knees and the undersides of my arms. My face. My everywhere. And so I slept fitfully and was tormented mightily by demons of itchiness.

I got up and took benadryl and then I felt like I imagine chemotherapy feels; all hollow and fried and on edge. Didn't want to do anything, least of all drive and drive, but finally I made myself leave.

The plan had two other components; to walk the dogs while exploring said art, and to photograph the art, because it is out in the open, and won't last forever, so I want to document it to share with others, because it's so amazing. I went one other time, but the light was terrible, glaring right into my camera, the nerve! and I didn't have a good camera then, and then the battery died.

I set out and traffic was just horrendous, and then it started to rain, and then it started to pour. And the traffic went from horrendous to 'parking lot.' I got drowsy and had to pull over and get coffee, and the only coffee was in a cigarette store and it came in a styrofoam cup and was just gross and I was a miserable wretch and I ITCHED. Yes, without being really life-threatening my day was managing to feel like its own special hell, the kind that happens to middle class white girls in consumer-oriented democracies, not the real hell that leads to maiming or loss of life, not like that.

Got to Berkeley in almost twice the time it usually takes, almost four hours, and it was still pouring. Managed to find Matt and his girlfriend, Kara, stuff them into my VW bug with three dogs, and make our way through Friday afternoon rush-hour traffic to this special place called the Berkeley Bulb.

And suddenly everything changed, as if I had passed some magical test and it was time for my reward. The rain stopped. We started our walk out to the point along the water, and the air smelled like fennel because it grows wild there, along with wild mustard and phlox. Matt and Kara were instantly enthralled, and sharing a special place with friends who 'get it' really amplified the pleasure and magic of it.

We walked and the dogs romped and cavorted. Mrs. Beasley walked about the same amount as we humans, Bunny ran back and forth, going about double the distance we did, and Bosco dashed madly everywhere all at once, and must have covered ten miles for every one we walked.

We found a whole sculpture area I had never seen before, full of amazing sights, especially a magnificent bigger-than life-size figure of a winged man about to take flight. Icarus? Gabriel?

We visited the paintings and the other sculpture area, and Matt found a small clubhouse right on the edge of the water, overlooking the whole Bay. Now I'll stop writing and let the photos speak.

Needless to say, I drove home in much better spirits.

I'm not ready with the photos of the SNIFF paintings yet, but here are some from our outing, including some of the sculpture, and later interlude in Berkeley late at night.

Birthday Beast

2005-04-16T23:53:00.000-07:00

It's my fifty-third birthday today. I'm one of those people who love their birthday, and will tell anyone how old I am. I've earned it.

Tomorrow night a friend is cooking for me, and including a few close friends ranging from eighteen to fifty-eight, so today was a pretty quiet day, with a few calls and emails, and my friend Thor's annual birthday ode arriving with the mail, which is always hilarious and full of teasing references to various quirks of mine.

Boyfriend came by and took me to breakfast and out for a dog walk. By the time I got back there was a call from Bosco's little schnauzer friend, or at least his social secretary, asking if they could have a play date, so I had two puppies wrestling and tumbling all over each other continuously for a couple of hours, a combination of comedy show and tornado.

Even after all that, when six o'clock rolled around it became clear that the dogs still expected their afternoon romp, so we drove over to the deserted army lands where we go for rambles. It's quite beautiful these days, walking by fields of tall grass laced with purple lupin and live oak dripping with spanish moss.

As we came to the last field before getting to the road where we park, Bunny spotted a large coyote and took off after it. Mrs. Beasley sprinted fifty yards or so half-heartedly before giving up, and the puppy, who had been busy elsewhere, came along too late to join in.

Bunny re-appeared, WITH the coyote, loping along side-by-side! Maybe she told him about the life of luxury she leads and he wanted a piece of the action. He saw me and stopped. I took his photo. He finally took off.

As we walked to the car several coyotes began howling and doing that high-pitched yipping they do, and it was close-by and eerie. Maybe they were singing happy birthday?

The coyote photos came out very blurred and strange, but I like them a lot. I didn't do anything but crop them and intensify the color a bit. The second one looks almost like a person in a wolf suit.

Folly on a theme of Dogs

2005-04-12T22:12:00.000-07:00

Dashed home from school and did some last minute cleaning because a friend wanted to bring her husband over to see the house. I really like these friends, and they're both fantastic artists, so I wanted the house to look especially nice, because I'm vain about it, and also because I knew they'd appreciate my own particular aesthetic more than most people.

I was determined not to fall into my usual pre-visit frenzy, where I try to clean and fix everything to such a ridiculous degree that I use up all the time set aside for our daily long dog romp, and the dogs are stuck with no outing or exercise that day.

The time came. I had an hour and a half before my friends arrived, and I made myself stop bustling and get in the car. We headed out to where we hike, and ten minutes into the walk, Bosco charged into the tall grass barking. She usually doesn't bark unless she's scared of something, but I couldn't see anything through the grass except my small dog jumping straight up in the air like she was on a pogo stick.

Mrs. Beasley joined the fray, and so did Bunny. I still couldn't see anything, but I called them and kept walking, and eventually they broke away from whatever it was and caught up with me. And so did the smell. Yes. Skunk.

Of all the days to get skunked! We headed back, and a few minutes later I turned to see Mrs. Beasley on her back, flipping and flopping, rolling in manure. Yes, the dog girls were certainly going all out to get ready for our guests.

I stuffed them in the small car and rolled down the windows. As I drove home, an overture from a Rossini opera came on the radio, full of energy and frenetic dashing, pompous flourishes, and clownish folly, and it suddenly came to me that it perfectly illustrated the absurdity of my life at that exact moment. I began to laugh out loud.

They got baths outside with the hose and lots of Wood's Oil Soap, which made them fairly bearable, and me soaking wet and covered with fur. My guests were due in five minutes.

This is why I don't have to watch reality TV. My own life is a sitcom, complete with a musical score and guest stars.

my glamorous life, if you don't count the itching

2005-04-10T23:30:00.000-07:00

I was so busy feeling sorry for myself on account of the ITCHING (see previous post) that I forgot about the glam part of my weekend. For the first time in the five years since I've taught at this particular school, I actually went to the student fashion show. I had NO idea...

Dashed out on Saturday night to walk dogs, and then, mud-spattered and funky, I showed up at school fifteen minutes before the show. The parking lot was mobbed, and each and every person in it was dressed to the hilt, except yours truly. I was in my usual NYC black urban uniform; black jeans, black tee shirt, black clogs, black leather jacket, black ironically nerdy glasses and shaved head, all coated with the usual layer of mud and dog hair. Charming. Really.

I got out of the car and was being swept along with the crowd, when I heard my name shouted. Thank goodness. Two of my very favorite arty students, Ashley and Will, appeared and let me tag along with them.

Ashley had designed the logo and program for this year's show, so she had free tickets. We brushed past the hoi-palloi waiting in line and sashayed right up to the front, smack dab under the catwalk, just like we were Mick Jagger or something. There were tables for the fancy folk, and folding chairs for everyone else. Our table had a bowl with gardenias and candles floating in it, and the cloth itself was dusted with red rose petals and a metallic star that caught the light and glowed in the dimness. There were cookies and pastries in fancy wrapping donated by a local bakery. Not too shabby for us poseurs.

It's late, so I'll skip the details, but it was a very glam, very slick production. Local stores had lent clothes, the wife of a teacher who had been a model coached the kids on how to walk, the lighting was done by a professional, as was the music. It was choreographed. It was the real deal.

I liked that many of the models were boys, many football players. I liked that proceeds went to charity. And I took over 200 photos, even though I hadn't planned on it. It asuaged my guilt about sneaking into the front. Here are a couple.

heaven and hell

2005-04-10T21:32:00.000-07:00

Woke up with horrendous poison oak yet again. I get it because I can't stay away from the beautiful place where I walk with the dog girls, and even though I stay on the paths, they dart in and out, tearing through underbrush, springing through fields. And then I pet them. And then I pay.

One of my eyes is almost closed with it, so I look like popeye once again. My arms are red and blotchy. I have great lotions that take care of the worst of it, herbal magic recommended by a friend. But not on the eyelid. I'll just have to suffer the itching and temporary disfigurement philosophically. I sometimes break down and get cortisone shots, but they don't seem to work all that well, and they're creepy, so I avoid them as long as possible.

The heaven part is that wildflowers are carpeting the fields, and this old former army land is such a balm for whatever inner life I can scrape together. The exquisite softness of the grasses that no camera can adequately capture, the wind playing on it, the colors, the quiet, and the constant vaudeville show that is Bosco-the-wonder-dog, hopping and scampering like a little bunny rabbit, digging for gophers, charging hither and thither hoping to catch something, anything.

The two older dogs trot along, sniffing, taking it all in. Mrs. Beasley constantly lags behind, because she sniffs ever-so-carefully and doesn't want to be hurried. And because she's a stubborn old queen-of-a-dog who likes to maintain her dignity. Occasionally she disappears for a while, and when she comes back, she's smeared some disgusting thing on herself, and she has her guilty sly look, and blinks a lot, and tries to act casual so I won't notice.

I saw a coyote today, but fortunately the dogs didn't spot it and it was smart enough to flee. They picked up its scent later, and searched the field furiously, rushing back and forth, but it was long gone.

Time to lotion up. The itching demons have overtaken me. Here are today's photos.

Just as I finished typing this I heard a noise outside and went to investigate. Great, another exciting Sunday night in the 'hood. Things like this are just the reason I need the nature walks so badly. It was a false alarm.

pixel power

2005-04-09T08:06:00.000-07:00

My experiment worked, and I can now post photos here. The hard part will be showing restraint so I don't drown my small cadre of readers in a torrent of images. I'm going to put a whole bunch up today, and maybe after this I'll just put pick o' the day. I can stop any time I want. Really. It's not a problem...

photo test

2005-04-09T06:40:00.000-07:00

I used to be obsessed with photography, starting in my teens. I took workshops with Ansel Adams, Paul Caponigro, Aaron Siskind, Minor White, all while still in high school. I lived and breathed large-format black and white photography, majored in it in college, taught it, and after about a dozen years, burnt out. The muse just said, "This has been a great party 'n' all, but I gotta go."

Suddenly, on a trip to Vancouver last December, with a small, junky digital camera borrowed as an afterthought at the last minute, it all came back. The passion of the hunter. So after thirty-five years, I bought myself a new camera and joined the ranks of the digital, shooting color, which I have a tenuous relationship to. My new routine is to grab the camera as I go out the door in the late afternoon to take the dog girls for our romp in the fields of a deserted army base nearby.

The last few nights I've been taking photos while driving home, too. The roads are so little-traveled that I can stop and snap for several minutes without any cars behind me. The dogs think I'm nuts, but what else is new.

The we go home, they get their daily egg, and I spend the rest of the evening unwrapping presents, or at least that's what it feels like. I download the photos and start playing with them, sometimes doing little but saving for the web, sometimes experimenting wildly for hours to bring out forms or colors in different ways.

Let's see if I can post them here using a Mac. I have some on flickr, but I want to drop them where I can write.

Pop Tart

2005-04-06T22:55:00.000-07:00

In the middle of a busy class, as my students clumped into various pairs and groups to work on the student paper, two very blond girls appeared in my room. The leader looked like a short Paris Hilton wannabe, and she had brought her little friend, who had to come with her to keep her company. I could tell they wanted a favor, and even though I didn't know them, one girl held a clue, in the form of a video camera, so I had a pretty good idea what the favor was about.

It turned out to be one of those times when, looking back, I bitterly regretted not having my own reality TV crew on hand to cover what happened next. It wasn't a big dramatic moment, it was just so funny in so many small, detailed ways, that now, many hours and many students later, I can't remember the fine points and subtleties that made it such a rich comedic experience. I'll just deliver some highlights and let your imagination fill in the rest as best you can.

It started when the main girl held out the camera like a burnt offering and asked me if I could fix it, because she had a super important tape in it that she had to finish and send off to a college as part of her entrance requirement, and it was due by Friday. Seems it was working just moments before, but now all it would do was play the tape looking all weird.

I looked at it, and she was right, the picture was just blurry fuzz. I started probing around and as I did I began asking questions, like, "did you do anything to it that might have caused it to break?" She got a sheepish look on her face and mentioned that she might possibly have dripped popsicle juice inside it. " Hmmm. I see. What color? Something like the color on that little thing inside there?" "Yeah. That exact color." Hmmmm. OK then.

It emerged that it was a tape of cheerleaders doing their routine, and suddenly things made more sense. And it also came to light that this was for UCSB, one of the most notorious party schools this side of the rockies. She had another tape, and we tried that with the same results, but after I fast-forwarded the entire tape, rewound tape it and tried to play it again, it began to work. Guess the popsicle juice got spread around enough to stop interfering with the transport controls.

I was drawn into watching her tape. It seemed there was a drawing of a deer with no antlers, and a teenage boy was standing by the drawing, but he did have antlers. He. Was. Wearing. Antlers.

While I fiddled with the camera Miss Cheerleader was on her cell phone. When the camera was fixed she squealed with delighted relief, and she and her little friend left. A while later they were back. She had lost her phone. Nope, not in my room, and she was off for good this time, groaning about what an awful day she was having. Ah youth.

on a brighter note

2005-04-04T00:26:00.000-07:00

After that last post I needed something more positive to report. I went to a little traveling carnival that landed here for a few days. I was wary of being asked to leave, but I was so wrong. The carnies were wonderful and eager to talk about their new ferris wheel, which they had just recently bought used.

I asked them where they found a used ferris wheel. Online. Silly me.

I took lots of photos with my new camera, which I've just posted on Flickr, here.

The good, the bad and the ugly

2005-04-03T19:05:00.000-07:00

What an intense week. The April Fool's edition of our school paper came out, complete with a photo of the principal on the cover, washing dishes in the cafeteria, a photo I have saved for over six months for just this purpose. We wrote an article saying the school board had decided to shuffle staff assignments randomly to be more equitable, and went on to pick the most unlikely staffers for several positions, including a photo of a rather stout male teacher doing a pirouette, wearing a tutu, courtesy of photoshop, whom we pegged as the new dance teacher.

It was great fun, and the principal got his revenge in kind, announcing during his morning broadcast that we had outdone ourselves, and that they would miss me, since it was my last day. One student from Costa Rica came in almost in tears, because she didn't understand about April Fool's day and thought I was really leaving.

Friday was Bosco-the-puppy's first birthday, and I decided to have a little celebration at the dog park where we go several times a week. I wanted to thank all her doggie friends and their owners for their part in getting her really well socialized these last several months. She plays well with others, which is such a big deal.

I filled bags with dog treats for people to take home and Boyfriend baked cupcakes for the humans.

The atmosphere was festive until suddenly a very large dog, part mastiff, part bloodhound, named Duke, who has come there several times, grabbed a Chihuahua puppy in his maw and wouldn't let go. Duke is usually really placid and slow, but prey drive must have kicked in. It wasn't a fight between two dogs. It was hunting.

People began screaming, several men tried to pry his jaws apart, another hit Duke on the head, but he just sat there. Finally someone stepped on his tail, and they were able to get the small dog out. No puncture wounds, but he was crushed, and died on the way to the vet's.

People reacted in different ways. Some were maudlin, some angry, some dramatic and others, like me, just sad. I get a bit detached, knowing my reactions won't help or change anything. It's my way of coping. Others needed to talk of vengeance, baseball bats, police, law suits, never coming to dog park again. Realistically, we can't protect ourselves or our loved ones or pets from things like this. Duke had never seemed particularly threatening or aggressive. In fact, he seemed like a sleepy giant. No one saw it coming, except in hindsight.

The little dog had been obnoxious, bothering other dogs, trying to hump them, and not taking no for an answer even after they snarled at him. Just last week a Daschund had attacked him after he repeatedly bothered him and got in his face. There was something about him that didn't get the social rules. Still, it was very sad.

I went back yesterday and talked with some of the others about making something positive out of the tragedy, creating a separate area for the small dogs, laminating some emergency info and park guidelines to put by the entrance. That's my impulse, to go on, to make things better, but then again, my puppy is still here.

A Gigolo's Tale

2005-03-26T12:01:00.000-08:00

In my previous post, about the fake names used to spam me, I mentioned liking the name Tad Bacon, and thinking it sounded like the name of a gigolo, or a character from a John Water's movie. Imagine my surprise then, when I got an email from a real Tad Bacon, a scientist, not the hoped-for gigolo, but that's probably just as well.

There is a back-story to my affection for the name Tad, and since it's Saturday, and I'm avoiding the inevitable school work, I don't mind spinning a tale.

Several years ago I moved back to California after years spent on the East coast. While essentially rebuilding my life from the ground up, I went through a series of mishaps and tragedies that would have made me an excellent candidate for that old '50s TV show, Queen for a Day, where the woman with the most compelling sob story wins a washing machine, and is wrapped in an ermine-lined red robe with trailing train, seated on a throne and crowned with a lopsided tiara, sobbing all the while.

There was cancer in the family, a hellish control-freak boss who re-named me to his liking on my first day at work, breaking up with a sweet-but-hopelessly-prodigal boyfriend, renting a room from a pathologically needy, soul-sucking egotist I dubbed 'Worm-Woman', plus many, many other pranks on the part of what seemed like my personal demon, culminating in my car, on long-term loan from a step-sister, being stolen, then found driven into a telephone pole and inexplicably filled with thousands of used golf balls.

All through this series of plagues, I was emailing my best friend in Boston, and when she got news of the stolen car, she sent me back something roughly like this:

"OK, I get it now. You're sitting under a palm tree, nightingales singing in the branches, soft tropical breezes wafting by. A scantily-clad, painfully buff waiter appears, to offer you, oh so solicitously, on a silver tray, a capsule of ecstasy. You brush him away. You have no time for this now. You need to write another chapter in the story of your life, 'CAUSE YOU MUST BE MAKING THIS SHIT UP! GIRL, NO ONE GETS THEIR CAR STOLEN AND THEN GETS THE F***ER BACK BEFORE THEY BURN IT AND YOU COLLECT THE INSURANCE MONEY!"

Taken with the imagery, I quickly wrote back:

"You clever thing. You've seen through my little ruse. (Oh Tad, dear, bring me a little drinkie, there's a good boy.) Such a dear. I don't know what I'd do without him. He used to be one of my bearers, right front position, but the sedan chair was terribly heavy, and he was such a sensitive boy, so when he developed that horrible allergy to nightingales, I thought he'd be so much more useful around the house anyway. He's now my social secretary and I've come to rely on him for so many little details of everyday life, you see. "

Thus Tad the gigolo was born. Email mentions of him and my enviable lifestyle got more and more elaborate, and began to spread, as my sister and other friends were brought into the collective fantasy. One family friend, a very stylish, dandified gay man who makes his living as a society jeweler, began inviting Tad to visit him, and got so insistent, even after I protested that I simply couldn't spare him, that he actually broke off communication with me. I felt bad, but as I had explained to him, Tad was just so busy closing up the house for the season, wrapping linens in tissue, polishing silver, putting the dust covers over all the furniture and chandeliers, leaving instructions for the groundsmen and grooms, and similar tasks that just must be seen to. You'd think he would have been more understanding under the circumstances. Oh well, que sera, sera, as they say.

Eventually my friends tired of hearing about my little domestic arrangements, and who can blame them? I think there may have been a hint of envy, but I like to keep a positive outlook so I don't dwell on such unpleasant thoughts, preferring an attitude of noblesse obligee. (Tad, be a darling and fetch me my riding crop, would you? And have the chair brought to the front gate. I'm going to pay some morning visits. Thank you dear, dear boy.)

URGENT ASSISTANCE

2005-03-20T23:25:00.000-08:00

I'm getting a new strain of spam every few hours now, with a decidedly different flavor from the usual afrospam, which reads like that game called 'Ad-libs' that we used to play at parties back in the day. One person asks you to think of adjectives, nouns or other parts of speech, fills your answers into a paragraph you can't see, then reads the whole thing out loud including your answers, to create a completed story that makes everyone howl with laughter.

Dear (affectionate salutatory name). I am writing to you personally on behalf of my (type of relative), formerly head of (name of military or government branch) in (name of African country). Just before the unfortunate (name of some tragedy or upheaval) that took his life, he entrusted me with (large amount of money) which I now must deposit into an American bank. I ask your assistance in this urgent matter, because our mutual friends have confided in me that you are totally trustworthy. Once the money has been deposited in your account, I will give you (percentage) which comes to (amount of money over 1 million dollars) cash as your fee for this noble assistance...

You get the idea.

I used to collect afrospams, but I've gotten so many hundreds, or maybe thousands, that I just hit delete and go about my business. But now there's a new spam scam whose chief amusement factor is the wildly improbable name of the sender, obviously generated at random. At least they make me laugh while I'm hitting the delete button. I've started a running list of these fine names, in case one of you out there is with child and needs a monniker for the new tyke. Those baby name books are all alike, but here, HERE are some NAMES:

Shriveling Q. Opportunism
Penny V. Spartan
Goatee K. Marat
Nutritionist P. Christ
Adult D. Spore
Malevolence S. Weatherizing
Holly Apologia
Tad Bacon
Outbursting S. Overdressed
Sunburning D. Minx
Breeziest L. Fawn
Redid U. Lodged
Solidifying O. Boardroom
Hereby L. Skivvied
Oppressed T. McDonnell
Leathernecks B. Funicular
Walloped B. Clot
Junkyard I. Hubbub
Elvis Eckert
Phoebe Salinas
Minnie Finch
Wrongdoer B. Conks
Bora Storey
Ruby Tulip

Oddly, Ruby Tulip turned out to be email from a friend. Oops. My favorite, and it was a tough choice, is Tad Bacon. I think this would be an excellent name for a gigolo or a character in a John Waters movie. Maybe he could date Breeziest Fawn, but quickly drop her for Sunburning Minx. Perhaps he'd get mixed up with Junkyard 'Junky' Hubbub and do some hard time, only to find salvation through the gentle ministrations of Minnie Finch. The possibilities, like spam, are endless.

Merci, Monsieur!

2005-03-13T14:13:00.000-08:00

Like most sullen middle school students, my biggest inner whine was that I was wasting my time studying subjects I was never going to use and had no interest in. So it was with great disgust that I discovered I was required to take a foreign language. My choices were French or Spanish, and I chose French because it seemed arty.

My first teacher was from Texas, and spoke English with a drawl so thick it made the class an exercise in futility. I do remember her telling us about some big-deal bicycle race, but since this was forty years before Lance Armstrong came on the scene, we had very little interest. I don't remember a thing about my second French teacher, except that she was not from Texas.

Then I got to high school, and once again French was on my schedule. I slumped in the door. A very tall, very thin, elegant man with mocha-brown skin dressed in an immaculately tailored suit stood at a podium at the front of the room.

He had two little puffs of hair, one on each side of his head, which met in the middle in a widow's peak. Everything about him gave the impression of length, his high forehead, long face and body, long fingers. We could tell his French accent was the real thing, and his English was strangely inflected. There were all sorts of rumors about him; a Creole mother, a previous career as a concert pianist, someone who had heard him speaking perfect English... One impertinent boy asked him if he was married. His reply: "Sometimes kids, sometimes"... accompanied by a radient smile and arched eyebrows."Sometimes."

His mannerisms were supremely dignified, formal and totally effeminate, a strange combination. He looked out at us and smiled his special smile, his beaming, heartbreakingly vulnerable and innocent smile bubble that no one, not even the most nasty, cynical rebellious boy had the nerve to burst. This smile was his weapon, a trusting expression that only puppies or children under the age of two could pull off, that miraculously, he had, and wielded like a laser beam.

Another facet of his stage persona was that it was completely asexual, despite his obviously queenishness. He could, and did, do outrageous things, and yet there was never the slightest taint of impropriety.

He had a huge poster of Bridgette Bardot, then a reigning French sex goddess, leather-clad astride a motorcycle. Occasionally, while quizzing us on verb tenses, he would dust Bridgette's body, all the while smiling at us with the most innocent look imaginable, and if his hands were not attached to him at all.

The smile was part of a very complex persona, full of odd mannerisms, expressions and peculiarities, and every day he combined them to give us a new show, all the while being a very rigorous teacher, and keeping a tight reign on the class without breaking character. He used this persona as the fourth wall, that invisible wall created by unspoken agreement between actor and audience, that says, "I act—you watch."

He had us sit alphabetically, and began to call role, saying each name and peering over his reading glasses, fixing each student with his smile and bobbing his head a bit in recognition.

Each and every name was mangled in an absurd, and often pointedly funny way. If a student had an older sibling Monsieur would manage to reference them in the name. My own name, spelled Bein, pronounced Bine, he proclaimed, "Beentz!" and the smile he flashed while saying it precluded any correction. I spent two whole years in his class without knowing the names of my fellow students, only the weird nicknames he had dubbed them. Some names evolved as the semester went on and he got to know us better.

Directly facing me across the aisle sat identical twin boys, the type who were athletic and got all A's. Monsieur immediately took a shine to them, and when it came time to call their names, he indicated one and said "Bob." The boy looked startled, but it was obvious he was being called on, so he said, 'Here.' Monsieur turned to his brother, "Bob deux" and the equally confused brother said, "Here." Thus he dubbed them the Bobsey Twins. To this day I have no idea what their real names were.

He varied their names each and every time he called on them, which was often, and he usually called on the second brother right after the first, with a variation on the name he had just used, saying, "My Boy," then, " My Other Boy" or, "Bobsey", "Bobsey Deux." The variations were endless, but I only remember a few;

Bop-sie, Mopsey
My Bob, Bobsey Boy,
My Un, My Deux, ,
Boy Un, Boy Deux,
Bop-sie Boy, Boob-sie Boy,
Boobs Un, Boobs Deux,
Babs, Babs Deux,
Bobbert, Robbert,
Rob's Bob, Bob's Rob
My favorite, My other favorite
Mon Préféré, Mon autre Préféré,

And all the while, as we silently convulsed with laughter, Monsieur beamed his innocent, "I know nothing about this and don't have the faintest idea what you're talking about." smile and did his quick little head bobs and raised his eyebrows, making him look even more cartoonishly naif.

My neighbor was called Bree-zay, which morphed into Breezy, and Breezy Boy and Windy. My own name was fairly stable at Beentz or Beentzie, but one day, perhaps in honor of my well-endowed chest, I was called 'Beentzie boobs.' I'm amazed he could do any of this with a straight face. I only once saw him come close to losing it, but more of that later.

The seats were arranged in two sections which faced each other, separated by a central aisle. At one end of the aisle was his podium, at the other was a blackboard with a door on either side of it, leading outside to the hall. He would take his pointing stick which was three or four feet long and slowly twirl it in one hand, using his elegant fingers, each in succession, which is ridiculously difficult and ackward to do, but which he did effortlessly.

As he twirled his pointer he paced back and forth from his podium to the blackboard, quizzing and drilling the class about grammar. He would pose a question in French, then pause, and POOMPH, his twirling stick would dramatically land point-first on someone's shoulder. This was not a class where students dozed. He would fix his victim with an expectant smile, his face open and trusting, and at that moment, even the most testy student would want to please him. If the answer was correct, our reward was a bobbing head and pleased expression. But if the answer was wrong, there would be a horrible pause, and his entire face would crumble. Even slacker students like myself would feel terrible for letting him down, and vow to be prepared the next time.

Sometimes, after a particularly bad answer, he would blurt, "Well, you've made a complete salad of it, kid." Except he pronounced kid with a 't' instead of a 'd', calling us kits. Later, when he spoke only French to us, he would simply say, "Quelle salade!" We never quite got the reference, but we figured it was a mix-up.

Continuing his verbal quiz, he wanted to use an example of two girls going to a pool, and the sentence was acted out in pantomime. As he said, "Bridgette," one hand rose to his chest, his long fingers squeezing an imaginary breast, " et Sophia," (an obvious reference to Sophia Loren, a very busty actress) the second hand rose to make the same outrageous gesture at a second breast, "vont a la piscine." And he walked around repeating the sentence, long fingers fluttering in front of his imaginarry breasts, bobbing his head slightly, beaming, while we intoned, "Brigette et Sophia vont à la piscine." and tried not to laugh in shocked disbelief.

One day he was doing his usual verbal grammar drill, pacing back and forth. He called on one student, smiled expectantly, and received the wrong answer. His face fell. After a dramatic pause, he turned to another. His face lifted into a beatific smile, and he said, "Babs knows, kits!" Babs didn't know. His face fell. He went on like this all around the room, fixing each of us in turn with his 'all innocence' face, getting the wrong answer, face collapsing like a brick wall turning to rubble. Not one student knew the answer. Even the Bobs let him down.

There was a terrible silence. He let our a sigh and walked to the podium. He looked out at us and picked up a book, raising it in both hands without opening it. SLAM! It fell to the podium. Again. SLAM. pause. SLAM. He was slowly, methodically dropping it onto the podium. What the..? Then he took his lovely long hand and SLAM, brought it down onto the podium, knuckle-side-down. SLAM. Pause. SLAM. We now felt horrible. Suddenly he blurted out "Well, kits, I'm going to pump gaz!"

HUH?!

Then, so fast we could hardly catch it, "I'm going to pump gaz. Maybe I'll be good at pumping gaz since I'm obviously not good at teaching French!" The picture of this refined prince-of-a man pumping gas was so ridiculous we almost burst trying not to laugh, and blessedly, the bell rang.

Occasionally, when students were talking out of place he would say loudly, "Don't be foolish virgins, kits!" Just the fear of hearing that silenced many. Every once in a while, when the occasion called for an enthusiastic response, he would blurt out the word 'Oui,' in such a loud, visceral manner it sounded like a huge belching WUP! Boys tried to imitate it, but no one could come close.

He told us stories about France, and French provinces, and one memorable time, about the author Rablais. He used his long body to mime various points, and between his words and actions, we understood him so well we often forgot he was speaking French.

He began his lecture on Rablais,
"Quand Rablais était un petit garçon, (his hand makes a gesture at his side, showing us the height of a small boy) il était très religieux (crossing himself frantically and very dramatically) TRÈS religieux (Putting his long hands together in prayer, closing his eyes, sighing, shuddering, crossing himself again. Dramatic pause to let it sink in)

Mais....quand Rablais était un jeune homme (his hand makes a gesture, showing us the height of a larger boy), il était très religieux (again with the praying hands), mais ... il aimait des filles (his hands slowly outline the sinuous curves of a female body, his little eyebrows arched), du vin, (he mimes drinking down a glass of wine with obvious relish) MAIS, TRÈS religieux! (He again crosses himself frantically). The story was so vivid that thirty-five years later I still remember his exact words and gestures.

He had other tricks for making us learn. He used to write on the board in very swishy handwriting, making elaborate tails on some letters, and just when he got to a word or phrase that we were supposed to have looked up, his writing would become illegible. He would say, "It's simple (pronounced 'sample') kits, it's sample. Just like math; X plus 4Y equals 3Z! " And he would beam at us, his smile saying, "Look it up yourselves, you lazy little shits."

One day he was writing furiously on the board, which was between two doors leading into the hall. He came to the end of one word ending in 'y' and continued the flourish on the tail of the 'y' along the board, onto the wall, out the door, back into the room via the other door and dotted an 'i'. We spontaneously burst into applause and he bobbed his head and smiled in rare acknowledgment.

Sometimes, during one of his demanding written tests, as he moved around the room, he would reach down and without looking, or making any change of expression that might acknowledge what he was doing, take the pen from one of the Bobs, tucking it neatly in the breast pocket of his suit jacket. The flustered Bob would raise his hand and ask for his pen back. Mr. Johnson would feign ignorance. "Ce stylo, c'est à toi? Non!" "Yes. Could I please have it back, Monsieur? "Vraiment, c'est à toi? Tu es sûr?" He knew very well that Bob would ace the test, even with this little diversion.

He did something else to tweak the perfect Bobs. They both had large metal clips on the cover of their notebooks, holding loose papers in place inside. As Monsieur paced back and forth in his daily grammar quiz mode, pointing his stick and firing questions at us, his hand would reach down and take the clip off a Bob notebook. Usually he would clip the lapels of his suit together with it, which looked totally ridiculous as he continued to pace and turn, this highly proper man with a clip sticking out of the middle of his chest. Sometimes he would clip it onto his pointing stick and wave it around, making the stick even more ominous. He would never acknowledge any of this, naturally.

The Bobs finally decided to get revenge. One day, as we sat as usual, trying to remember French verb tenses, hoping the pointing stick would mercifully skip us when we didn't know the answer, Monsieur was up to his usual tricks. We watched as he went for the clip. He did so without even a glance in the direction of his hands, and clipped his suit together. Bob was doing something though. He had tied almost-invisible mono-filament thread, used for fishing lines, onto the clip, and he was reeling it out as Monsieur continued to pace back and forth, oblivious to the addition. We watched in mute fascination as Monsieur became more and more tangled up in fishing line with each turn, back and forth, back and forth. We were dying to laugh. We were bursting.

Finally, Monsieur went to turn, but he had reached the end of the line, and only got half-way through his turn when he was stopped by a tug. He looked slowly down. He was completely wrapped in fishing line. He turned his back to us and put his hands to his face. We could see he was vibrating with laughter, struggling mightily not break up. We lost it. Kids were actually falling out of their seats onto the floor laughing, howling. Finally, after considerable time had passed, he turned to us, and with every ounce of self-control he could muster, made an incredible pun in French about how it wasn't nice to keep your teachers tied up. The bell rang. We poured out of the class in hysterics. We had almost seen him crack. He never messed with Bob's clip again.

Even though I was a lousy student, I adored Monsieur and was in awe of him. My friend and I had heard him talk about opera, and how he loved Wagner. When we heard the Metropolitan Opera was coming to town, and was performing Wagner, we saved up and got him two of the best tickets we could. He was very pleased, and when he came back after the performance, he said, in typical fashion, "Oh kits, I just died."

I've had a few inspiring teachers since, but he did something none of the others did; he made me love something I was prepared to hate. Eight years after his class, with no additional preparation, I went to France and could get around and be understood. My grammar is horrible, because I never studied, but I have a feel for the sound and rhythm of the language that most French majors envy. I'm imitating him. He managed, single-handedly to imbue me with a love of a language and country. And what a show he put on. Merci, Monsieur. Merci bien!

From Among my Memories

2005-03-06T15:14:00.000-08:00

In the small Vermont town where I went to college, there were several characters, people who made the little picture postcard come to life, but none as memorable as the proprietor of the local Texaco Station, George Boardman.

Imagine, if you are of an age to remember, the actor Robert Mitchum. Strong, straight Roman nose, eyes that seemed to see everything at a glance and could stare the truth right out of you, a tangible sensuality, and the feeling that things could turn violent just like that. On less of a man the cleft chin would have been weak and slightly receding, but by some inner force his gave the impression of jutting out, like a dare.

George Boardman had these same looks, alright, although most who knew him then would have laughed long and hard at the comparison. He was grizzled and bear-like with a barrel chest and a gut from the beer that often accompanied him. His face was dark with the grease of a thousand cars, giving him the look of a coal miner, and contrasting starkly with light blue eyes that crinkled in the corners, broadcasting his roguishness.

The closest thing to the sound of his broad Vermont speech was a cockney accent. In fact, in the unlikely event that the town ever staged a production of My Fair Lady, he would have made an excellent Alfred Doolittle, father of Eliza, retired dustman and scamp extraordinaire.

His Texaco was the only gas station in town and was always full of cars in various stages of being worked on by him and 'the boys.' The building itself was generally what one would expect of a structure inhabited by car guys: filthy in the extreme, and if I remember correctly, Texaco eventually got wind of this and took away its patronage, which made absolutely no difference whatsoever to George or anyone else. George kept a couple of German Shepherds hanging around in the back, which was another time-honored gas station custom, before gas stations lost their individuality and became sterilized convenience stores with gas pumps out front owned by faceless corporations.

George's grown son worked at the station too. Feature-for-feature he looked just like him, but where George radiated a manly presence his son seemed a product of the unlikely mating between his father and Ray Bolger, the scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz, with George's Roman nose, but a weak chin that held back where George's provoked you to poke it, and a taller, thinner, hunched body which gave the impression that it would clinch back into a fetal position at the smallest provocation. Perhaps because of this, perhaps because of a million other things we will never be privy to, he carried a perennial sourness about him which contrasted greatly with George's robust self-confidence.

Heavy arctic Winters lasted six months in this Vermont hamlet, followed by mud season, which is six weeks of just what it sounds like. Spring was the blink of an eye, then black fly season, hot and buzzing and lazy, then a magnificent Fall where every view was a page torn from a calendar. Three weeks or a month into it, the tourists left, silence engulfed the town and Winter seemed to say, 'it was all a dream. I am the only real season you will ever know. I am the real Vermont. Get your boots on and start shoveling.'

It was during just such an unrelenting winter in 1970 that this daughter of Los Angeles drove her small black 1965 MGB sports car into town. It was only a matter of time before I met George Boardman. I don't remember the exact circumstances, but I do remember the steamy gray morning that I stood shivering outside his shop as he took a cursory glance under the hood and said, 'Bring ol' 'enrietta in 'ere, Sus'n, an' let's take a look at 'ah.' My car was thus christened, Ol'Henrietta, and from that day forth I was one of the faithful who came to beg and tithe at George's greasy altar. He and the boys usually worked late into the night, especially if some desperate and savvy customer thought to bring a few six packs. Passing by you could see lights burning and steam and exhaust outlining the silhouettes of noisy men, dogs and cars within. They always seemed to be having one hell of a time.

On nights when it was especially cold, implying temperatures under thirty below, George would stop by my apartment, announcing his presence the same way everyone did in those parts, by stamping the snow off their boots outside the door. Walking right in with my car battery gripped under one arm he would deposit it on the radiator. Early the next morning, on his way into town, he would stomp in, heft the battery back out to my car and hook it up again. I'm not sure why I didn't have an engine block heater, but it wouldn't have been nearly as entertaining.

My last year in Vermont, a college girl started working for George, sitting in the cramped office, writing up invoices and taking care of the paperwork. She was taller than him, with short hair and a tomboyish look to her. Occasionally I would see her riding shotgun with him in the wrecker. She seemed to fit right in. Some time after I left, I heard that George had stopped drinking, trimmed down, cleaned himself up, divorced the wife no one ever saw and married this girl.

I never heard more than that, but in my own private movie of his life, that is the happy ending, the one we all know isn't really an ending, but will just have to do, because it's all we're going to get. In the snow-globe in my mind, George will forever be working with the boys, hammering out bent frames, fixing fuel pumps, covered in grease, smelling of beer, laughing and cursing in his thick Vermont twang, looking, I don't care what anyone says, just like Robert Mitchum, while the snow falls silently outside.

Ah, the quiet times

2005-03-06T15:04:00.000-08:00

I've been quiet here only because I've been reassessing my entire job situation, going through the anger phase (their position is simply draconian!), the self-pity phase (When I think of all I've done for them…), the depressed phase (oops, there went the weekend and all I did was mope, eat and do crosswords) and finally coming into the creative solution phase (I'm going to swoop in with a totally new job description, completely eliminating everything I hate doing, and create my own new position)

Today the very man I wanted to pitch my new idea to, the Techno-Tzar for the entire school district, asked me for a ride, yes, stuck his thumb out, hitched up his pants to show a bit of ankle and wiggled his derriere. I sensed the time was ripe, despite the fact that my car smelled like a wet dog and the seat was so far forward that he had to scrunch himself in half to get in.

Once he was trapped inside my fetid pupmobile, I blurted out my pitch, offering to teach three design classes and spend the rest of my time training teachers, writing grants and coordinating websites for the district, instead of teaching night classes and goddamn video and going to inane meetings. He was so taken with the idea, he gushed that just training teachers would probably be enough. So, first hurdle cleared despite the fact that he was covered in musty dog hair by the time I dropped him off.

It didn't hurt that I had been in a meeting with him all day, formulating a new district technology plan so that we can go to the school board and ask for tons more money. I was assigned to work with two others drafting a new mission statement, and in addition to the usual lofty fluff, I had produced a pithy alternative, expressing what we really wanted to say, which I recited while suddenly, inexplicably seized with a Jamaican accent:

(XUSD= my school district)

We gots a new plan for da XUSD
It's a great big plan fo' da tec-no-lo-gee
It's gonna help de kids, and we know you like-a dat,
So you betta pull some mo-nay from you' big fat...hat.

It was well-received by my fellow meeting sufferers, who then accepted our 'real' mission statement without a change.

Meanwhile, back at school, a stranger with no computer skills or design knowledge was substituting in all my classes. I got back to a note telling me that one newly-blonde vixen had been caught visiting 'Lives of strippers' websites and regaling her fellow students with all-too-vivid snippets. She had been sassy and defiant when confronted. It seems she was impressed with their earning potential, because next day, when I asked this candidate-for-future-hootchie-mama about the incident, she said, "Oh, you mean my research project for Economics?"

They had been extremely busy, my little designers, cutting paper snowflakes, strings of hearts and paper dolls out of the pink scrap paper, festooning the room, strapping several to my desk with yards of tape bearing silly messages, like 'we love you miss bean, get well soon', "We want to have your children,' 'I love lamps' (huh?) decorated with little pictures. Oh yes, so glad I wrote elaborate instructions about what they were supposed to accomplish.

During office hours a sweet freshman boy came in to ask a favor. I hadn't met him, but I quickly connected his name with an email his proud father had recently sent, telling me about this son who was already making animated games and knew more programming than I will in three lifetimes. The boy had made a video for science class about the lives of a cell, and was having trouble with a technical glitch.

We put it in the DVD player and began to watch. It was like an elaborate Saturday Night Live skit, with costumes, characters, and props, shot against a green screen he had rigged up, so that he could superimpose people in front of different photos he had gotten off the internet. One part of the cell was personified as a club bouncer who wouldn't let salt past the membrane, but let sugar in. Another was a Godfather, stroking a lapdog as he gave orders to eliminate an intruder. It had a soundtrack. It was funny. It was better than any video any of my students has made all year. He is fourteen years old. Later, in the last period of the day, we went to a concert given by the school jazz ensemble, and there he was, doing a solo violin riff that brought down the house. This kid is going places.

During my 25-boy free-for-all video class, a terse note came from the vice principal, telling me to keep all my students inside. Campus guards herded in several whining boys who had been out filming, and suddenly several more had to go to the bathroom or get drinks or go to their lockers. I felt like I was trying to keep restless cattle in a corral without a gate, but I stood as tall as a five-foot-two person could and held them back. I had a funny feeling.

A counselor came around to all the classes with a message from the principal to be read aloud. A troubled freshman boy had brought a gun to school with several rounds of ammunition. One of his friends ratted him out and he was quickly carted away to the hospital to be 'evaluated.' He won't be back. The vice-principal later told me he was a drug baby raised by grandparents, and there were some synapses not firing. Kids told me he had taken money for sex with other boys in the bathroom and sold drugs, which might or might not be true. Tragic that his life trajectory could be so off-course by the age of fourteen.

But the drama wasn't over. The vice principal suddenly appeared in my room, with a burly man holding a black labrador on a leash. The drug sniffing dog had arrived to search the room for drugs and/or traces of gunpowder. Twenty-five boys were herded into the hallway while their backpacks stayed inside to be sniffed. Much to my surprise, he didn't turn up anything, and while my boys made jokes about that, drug dog and company moved on to the next class.

Another note arrived, this time summoning a model student to the office. A model student with a quirky wardrobe, he of the PJs and Homer Simpson bedroom slipper incident, the boy who once wore a sarong to school, not to be confused with the boy who wore a skirt. He was wearing his pajamas to school yet again because he had been up most of the night finishing a project, and there were snide remarks about the fashion police, but he didn't return. During my prep time he was escorted in by the guard to get his things. The drug dog had found something in his car, which turned out to be incense, but meanwhile they had found a small pocket knife in his glove compartment, so he was being suspended for having a weapon at school. Even the guard was livid about this. After pressure from parents, the administration came to their senses, and he returned to school, wearing a tight, bright yellow woman's pantsuit from the '70s and matching yellow sunglasses. He too did a solo turn at the jazz concert, on electric guitar, looking like a deranged rock star in a banana suit.

In my ongoing dispute with the administration over my schedule, my supervisor sincerely apologized to me for having addressed me as 'missy,' as in 'You're full time here, Missy," which took that thorn out of my side, but left me still determined to redefine my job, and find a way to change the principal's mind. And so ended my week at school in this sleepy little tourist community. We have a week off, in which I will attempt to recover, or perhaps regenerate would be a better word, so I can go back for more.

odd bits from a Sunday

2005-02-13T15:47:00.000-08:00

It's Sunday afternoon. Poison oak, my constant companion, because I insist on walking my dogs in beautiful wooded places and am violently allergic to it, has once again raised red welts on my wrists and hands. This time there is a special bonus, and it's appeared on my right eyelid, causing it to squint shut, making me look like Popeye the Sailor, without the cute little corn cob pipe. My head being already shaved, the effect is really quite terrifying. Too bad it's Valentine's day instead of Halloween. Pity my poor, long-suffering boyfriend.

I'm in the midst of an ugly fight with school administrators, and it's engulfing me in anger and frustration. I had a dream I was trying to get to my class, but was caught in a crazy mall-from-hell full of glitz and style and couldn't find it. I was begging vain salesgirls to stop looking in the mirror long enough to show me how to get to my class. I kept taking escalators that led nowhere, and asking more people, and I was in tears because class had started without me.

Someone has left a comment on one of my blog entries twice now that are nothing but links to porn websites. My brother has sent an email to his friends, mentioning my blog, and inviting them to feel free to harass me, in return for years of disfunctional babysitting. He was kidding, of course. HE WAS KIDDING! No, I'm sure those two things aren't related.

It's true I did babysit my younger siblings a lot. They were six and seven years younger, and I was a very responsible child. The only time I really remember was the night they got in a fight, as usual, and brother hit sister in the nose, or the ironing board fell on her nose, depending on who is telling the story. It swelled up and blurred across her face. I put an impromptu ice pack on her and called my uncle, the doctor for a consultation. Meanwhile, in the other room, my remorseful brother had gone in to apologize, they had quickly gotten into another fight, and he hit her in the nose...

It's time to walk the dogs in the wooded area and no doubt invoke the poison oak demons once again.

kvetching + a cartoon

2005-02-09T21:07:00.000-08:00

Random, unrelated things are conspiring to make me very very grumpy:

Yesterday, as I headed off to work, driving by a house a few doors down from mine, I noticed that their garage door was open. Now usually this doesn't signify anything special, but on my street, I'm the only person who actually keeps their car in the garage. The rest are rented out to desperate souls or used as attics.

This particular garage has great significance. It's the office of a drug dealer who has been in jail for several months, and the fact that it was open...Yup, there he was, FAT KENNY, unmistakably. A four-hundred-pound black man holding court, surrounded by his homies. Their version of a welcome-home-from-the-big-house party, no doubt. Oh hell, here we go again.

Worked a 15-hour day, getting home at 10:30 pm, and just as I was falling asleep at midnight, POP POP POP POP POP POP!!! No, not a gunfight. Chinese New Year. I guess it's traditional to start the new year by waking and angering the whole neighborhood. Year of the cock. Yeah, well that's fitting. They too strut around waking people up at god-awful hours, caring not a whit, and have brains the size of peas.

Today, standing talking to the school secretary, I felt a tug and suddenly I was being sucked downwards. Oh ho! The paper shredder had decided to grab the hem of my favorite garment and pull it into its merciless metal maw. Tatters.

OK, if you've gotten this far, I owe you something besides complaints. Hmmm, let's see. Imagine a bulldog puppy playing with a wolf, and you pretty much have a picture of my puppy playing with her best friend at dog park. She teases him into chasing her around and around a segment of old baseball bleachers that act as benches, and just as he's about to catch her fat little rump she takes a shortcut underneath and comes out on the other side, and they start all over again. If people happen to be sitting on the benches, she uses the place between their calves and the bench as a tunnel to run through.

After they finish with the benches they run over to lay down and wrestle in the dirt or sometimes on the grass, where the wolf picks up grass stains on his light fur and gets a greenish tinge to him.

The other day they were doing the bench run, as I sat on it with a friend. An absolutely massive new dog by the name of Duke, part mastiff, part bloodhound, easily weighing 150 pounds, was standing on the sidelines, watching the chase, drooling slightly. Suddenly my friend and I found ourselves flung backwards, legs in the air, shrieking in surprise and laughing as Duke decided to join in the merriment, and pushed his way through our leg tunnel to lumber after them. It would have made a great Looneytoons feature cartoon, ending with my porky little dog saying, " Th' th' that's all folks!"

My life is on 'fast forward'

2005-02-03T07:23:00.000-08:00

Five minutes before it's time to launch myself out of here into my day. It's 7:25 am. First on the docket is an excruciating once-a-week hour-and-a-half class with twenty-five teenage boys, the fabulous video production. At the new semester on Monday, a girl transferred in. Tuesday she brought me the little 'I'm outta here' paper to sign so she could flee to study hall. Don't blame her a bit. A friend of mine described this class like being caught in a stable of race horses, but I corrected her. It's like being in a stable of race horses and clydesdales, and someone has let all the horses out of their stalls, but locked the door to the outside.

Then it's off to community college, where I have a new class of 25 adult students. I love these classes. Grown up people with volume controls and manners, who are there to learn. Such a nice contrast.

Then a quick dash home to collect dogs, fling them at dog park, and home to dish out kibble.

Time to leave for night class, where more kind adults await, and blam, it's after 9 pm and I'm too tired to do much except crawl home and collapse. Is it June yet?

OK, deep breath. Here we go...

ouch

2005-01-27T23:30:00.000-08:00

It's half-way through the school year, and I am burnt to a crisp. Charcoal. I've got three days to get my grades done and rise from the ashes anew. Unfortunately, I'm not feeling all that phoenix-like at the moment.

I still have the cold from hell, and I'm still reeling from the nasty and mean-spirited comments one of my students wrote to me about journalism class. I like constructive criticism, and some of the things he didn't like are things I totally agree with, but many others are just wrong, like his indignation and anger over the fact that I won't let them use photos from the internet in the school paper unless they get permission from the photographer. Even then, I strongly discourage it because they aren't print quality, and because it doesn't encourage the same creativity as taking our own photos does.

He was in journalism last year with a different teacher, and he wants it to be like his old class. Only problem is that the paper has been just totally awful in almost every way for the last several years. It did come out more often, but that's about all that can be said of it. The students thought it was horrendous and made fun of it, and the staff felt it was an embarrassment. It was because of this that I was allowed to take over the class.

All this nastiness came from a student I've had in other classes, liked and been nice to, so it felt like a real kick in the teeth. I know the class needs more structure and stricter deadlines, and I'm still in the first stages of learning how to teach it, but man, that smarts!

Day four, in which we emerge from the fog

2005-01-25T06:39:00.000-08:00

At approximately two-thirty in the morning, as I was finally deep in slumber, a demon rose from the bowels of hell and, taking the form of a dog, began to bark somewhere out there in the darkness. After about twenty minutes, just enough time to make sure I was thoroughly awake, he slunk back into the night and all was silent.

This morning I put feet on the floor, hefted my bulk to an upright position and staggered through a drugged haze to feed the dogs and get ready to face school where I must give two final exams. The song I found going through my head was an old classic, but unfortunately, I only remembered the first three lines, so the loop was short.

"Great green globs of greasy grimy gopher guts,
mutilated monkey meat,
french-fried flamingo feet..."

It was time to take a bath. As I relaxed into warm bubbly water and felt the crusted gunk start to melt away…the puppy whined to be let in. She had finished digging in the dirt and she really, really needed to come in just at that very moment. And when the whining didn't work, she tried out her new grown-up dog bark. BARK BARK BARK. Oh, hey, that was fun!

Time to get out of the bath.

It's almost seven a.m. and I have assumed human form, or as close as I'm going to get this morning. Pity my students.

the yuck report

2005-01-24T15:49:00.000-08:00

Update from the land of gunk. My head feels like an ache-soaked sponge, there are huge cosmic thumbs pressing on my eyes and my face is pinched into a sour pucker of self pity. I'm fighting a strong urge to snarl and whine simultaneously. My bed looks like it is covered in flower petals, but on closer inspection sodden kleenexes have been flung randomly around the room. Extra-Strength Wretchedness has descended upon me. Strong drugs have been taken with no discernible results. This is the Superbowl Champion of colds.

Just now, in the middle of writing this, the phone rang. It was a tele-marketer mangling my name. My usual response is a terse-yet-polite request to put me on their do-not-call list. But today I paused—then let out a terrifying snot-inflected shriek and hung up.

And then I realized it was probably my doctor's office, calling to remind me that I have an appointment tomorrow...

germs uber alles

2005-01-23T11:41:00.000-08:00

Those icky germs I mentioned in a previous entry, the one where the student showed up in my class in his pajamas and slippers, carrying kleenex, and his GERMS? Yup, got 'em. Thanks kid, thanks very very much you little &*%$#. Can you tell I'm in the 'mucous 'n' misery stage? It's a chest thing at the moment, with the cough option thrown in at no extra charge. And did I mention CRANKY?

Mrs. Beasley seems to understand. She did something she rarely does: curled up with me and took a nap. She prefers to be completely under the covers, and with her rhythmic breathing and warmth, it was like having a stuffed animal/hot water bottle combo to sleep with.

Unfortunately, puppy does NOT understand, and kept waking me up to be let out. In. Out. In. And then she needed to play. Really, really play play play play play. I called her little schnauzer friend, Oscar, but got his machine. It's a sad day indeed when you get a dog's answering machine.

I should be thinking about the finals I'm supposed to be giving. No, I should be doing more than thinking about them. All I want is fresh orange juice and sleep. Is that too much to ask? Apparently. Woof.

basic training

2005-01-22T13:30:00.000-08:00

Bosco, the nine-month-old bulldog/boxer/pitbull/who-the-hell-knows puppy has a new game. It's compulsory. It's not enough now to give her a rawhide bone. No, I have to torment her with it, pass it right under her nose, dangle it just out of reach, tickle her whiskers with it, tuck it under her collar so that she has to gyrate like Houdini to shake it loose, drum on her fat little rump with it, pretend to eat it myself with great relish, and finally, throw it out the window so that she has to run through the house and garage, out into the yard to get it. Every day she adds another step in the tantalization process.

My punishment for not doing at least this much is that she puts it down, looks at me with those imploring puppy eyes and whines. My training is going quite well.

never a dull...

2005-01-20T11:10:00.000-08:00

Internally cringing as I rushed to my Thursday morning office hours, I knew that in a mere half an hour I would face the class I've come to think of as the primate house at the zoo. What else would you call being locked in a room for an hour-and-a-half with twenty-five high octane boys between the ages of sixteen and eighteen? Squirrel cage describes the energy, but doesn't take into account the hormonal ozone or the sheer body mass involved. And did you fully grasp the fact that there is not one girl in this class?

Just as I got to my room, one of my little monkeys arrived, and something seemed to be going on with his feet, which had become huge and yellow, like giant marshmallow chickens, but no...they were slippers...in the form of.... Homer Simpson's head. And immediately after this revelation, came another equally alarming one. He was still in his pajamas. He was wearing the requisite backpack, which looked thoroughly ridiculous over his pajamas, and carrying a kleenex box decorated in moons and stars. Seems he's sick, you see, but he arose from his sick bed to rush in and finish the video project due tomorrow, and to pass along his icky little germs to all of us so that we can all come to school wearing PJs and Homer Simpson slippers.

More monkeys flooded into the room, flinging backpacks hither and thither, scratching themselves and making noises. With their usual foresight and planning, they had all figured on being able to use one of our three cameras today, because certainly the other twenty-one boys would have finished their videos by now. So naturally, since every last one of them had waited until the very last minute, a certain amount of squabbling and squalking had to happen, followed by whining and other variations on audible self-pity.

Mr. PJs seemed to be making a video starring several stuffed animals, behaving in ways I didn't want to imagine. I'm hoping he edits those parts out so I don't have to deal with it.

One student announced triumphantly that he had finished his video, and I went to have a look. He had managed to create a video totally lacking in plot, people and premise, the three required elements. It was just shots of a pool table, and some unseen person playing rather badly. The end. We had a gentle little talk about story-telling.

I'm not good at this. To paraphrase Scotty from a long-ago Star Trek, 'Dammit, Jim, I'm a doctor, not a zoo keeper!'

keepin' it real

2005-01-19T14:04:00.001-08:00

Every Wednesday and Thursday, instead of having every class for an hour, we have half our classes, and each one lasts for ninety-five minutes. Depending on the class, this is either heaven or hell. There is no middle ground.

Today I had Journalism class, and even though I was wildly busy trying to keep track of what twenty different teens were doing, I really enjoyed it, because they're great kids, smart and funny and full of themselves.

Here's real dialog from today's class:

Teacher: "What are you doing?"
Student: " Keepin' it real! What are YOU doin'?

Teacher: (To a different student) "Why did you suddenly run from the room when we started reading your article out loud?"
Student: ".Uhhhh...(eyes flit side-to-side).....Uh, because I left the oven on?"

Then we decided that the front page should have a group photo of all the boys in the class, to go with an article titled, 'Guys,' so off they went with the digital camera, and instructions to take several photos, so if eyes were closed or expressions were goofy, we could fix them in photoshop.

We downloaded the seven photos and looked them over. It took two or three before they figured out that the really tall guy should probably stand in back. One boy looked totally asleep in all seven shots, which I could comment on here, but I'd better not.

So I was sitting around with several of the kids, looking through the photos, and someone noticed how one of the boys had unconsciously clasped his hands at crotch level, like he was protecting himself. And we all looked, and there was this silence, ...as we all saw at the same time, that EVERY boy was doing some unconscious variation of the same gesture. In every photo.

I can just hear it now: "Hi honey, what did you learn in school today?"

Long day, long life, long blog

2005-01-16T23:52:00.000-08:00

My self-appointed alarm dog, Bunny Shmenkleman, got us all up at six a.m. as usual, pounding her tail against the wall with joy to announce breakfast time. And I began the day by yelling at her, as usual.

But even though it was Sunday, instead of going back to sleep as soon as they were fed and given pacifying rawhide chews, I got up and loaded us all in the car to make the two-hour trek up to San Francisco for a one-day outing.

The occasion was that my old friend, Norman, was in town with his seven-year-old son, Max. I met Norman when I lived in Brickbottom, an amazing artist's building in Boston, for eight years back in the mid-eighties to early nineties.

Brickbottom was an old A&P warehouse complex that artists had developed into 300 condo units of raw loft space. It was heaven on many counts. Great people, great spaces, just the right balance of privacy and community and underground heated parking.

We had a massive open studio and sale every year, but what really set us apart from other artist's buildings was our annual clean up day called the Ladybird Brickbottom Beautification Trash Round-up and Scrumptilliumptious BBQ. Every year we added a word to the title. The city brought garbage bags and we fanned out to clean up the industrial streets surrounding us. Afterwards we had a potluck dinner in our garden/courtyard and awarded silly prized for the most trash collected, most enthusiastic, best found object, best costume. Then, in dramatic culmination, a new trash queen (the title remained the same for either a male or female sovereign) was crowned by the previous year's queen, who was required to provide a custom-made crown for their successor. Being artists, there were some doozies over the years. Some outgoing queens, not content with mere crowns, also threw in hand-crafted scepters and once, a long cape with a train dragging behind, made of clear vinyl in which was embedded various bits of particularly lovely trash, artistically arranged.

One trash queen was especially memorable. He is a character among characters, a man who lives in a perennial Masterpiece Theater set of his own making, a man trapped in the wrong century, the wrong country, who bears it with grace and panache and a monumental sense of style. Being elected Trash Queen the previous year, he took his duties quite seriously, and showed up dressed in a military outfit that looked like he must certainly have nicked it directly from Tsar Nicholas's dry cleaners. White coat with gold epaulettes and buttons, white cap with a black visor and a white square of fabric attached at the back to keep the wearer's neck from the sun while reviewing the troupes. Suitable boots of the same vintage, riding crop, dress gloves. He was magnificent!

Striding into the courtyard, where several people were busy pulling weeds, he set up his gramophone, yes, really, and proceeded to favor us with some music from his collection while he mingled with the peasants, offered encouragement, kind words and advice, occasionally mopping his brow in ever-so-refined a manner with a monogrammed handkerchief.

Pier Gustafson, for that is the name of this unique individual, is also known as 'The Pen God' for the logical reason that he collects, restores and deals in old fountain pens. He can draw anything. Anything. And his humor is, well, perhaps you should visit his old site and see for yourself. My favorite drawing of his, on the site at least, is to be found here and the stamp he's included for those who scroll down a bit is special indeed.

If you're still with me, you may be wondering what happened to my friend Norman, the man who's been patiently waiting around since my massive digression in the fourth paragraph. He lived just down the hall with his girlfriend Debbie and ran a catering business while she went about the business of being an artist. Norman is a mensch with an edge, really nice and would do anything for you, but blunt and often delightfully outrageous.

In the decade since I moved back to California, Norman and Debbie got married, and at age forty-five, Deb had their son, Max. Today, as we were strolling on the beach watching Max and my dogs play, we got to catch up a bit, and I got to ask about many of the people we knew.

I remembered that Debbie had an amazing grandmother who had been busily planning her ninetieth birthday when I first met her years ago. The grandmother had been born an Italian Jew, and had become a doctor, and maried another doctor. During WWII they fled to Morocco and set up a medical practice out of their house, often treating people in exchange for chickens or other bartered items.

So I asked about the grandmother, assuming she was long dead, and was shocked to learn that she is very much alive. Apparently, she was in a car accident just before her hundredth birthday and suffered a broken neck, but recovered in time to celebrate the birthday. They've had some trouble with her in recent years, because her vanity was so strong that she refused to stop wearing high heels, and fell several times while negotiating stairs. Now she is planning her hundred-and-fifth birthday. She wants to have it in Morocco! I say, "Go for it, Grandma, kick up your (high) heels!"

before sleeping...

2005-01-01T23:22:00.000-08:00

Finally finished sorting out over 600 photos I took in the last five days. I hadn't planned it this way, but my vacation in Vancouver turned into a manic photo safari. I just couldn't get enough photos, so every morning I would pick a destination or two that I wanted to see and head out, camera in hand. I must have been starved for creativity. I rarely do my own work, but the impulse has been creeping up on me lately, and it poured forth on this little soujourn.

I walked everywhere for the first couple of days, hours and hours of walking. Finally I began taking busses, as my adventures took me farther and farther outside the downtown area, and the last day I took the skytrain, which is their sexier name for the subway, and a ferry. Some of my favorite photos were taken right from my hotel window, and many at night.

I want to write in more detail, but the typos are coming fast and furious, which is one of many indicators that I should sleep NOW, so I'll have to put off the epic for another time. Meanwhile, I want to post links to the photo fest. Here are the different galleries. There is some overlap, just because...

• My own arty favorites are here

• A better feel for reality resides here, but they're still arty

• Masks from the Anthropology museum here, but I must warn you, many are blurred. They were crammed into musty cases behind full-glare glass in semi-darkness. This is the best I could do, and even this required massive clean-up, removing plastic holders that went in front of chins, glare, etc.

• And just for fun, some shots out the hotel window of lights at night, here.

Time to join three snoring dogs. No, I don't snore. I'm the only one who doesn't.

Sleepless in Vancouver

2004-12-29T23:57:00.000-08:00

It's past midnight. I've been in Vancouver for four days and have lots of adventures to report, but for now I'll just put a quick link to a handful of photos I've done and get to sleep. I can only post from their 'Business Centre', and it smells like an apricot in here. An aggressive little apricot. An apricot that is pushing its way into my poor tired nostrils, screaming, 'APRICOT!!!' Why do people insist that the world smell like rotting leaves, flowers and fruit constantly? Maddening.

Oops, got a bit sidetracked by my rant. Here's the link. It's just a beginning. Couple of posters I did on the plane, few from various tourist spots. The most exciting photos for me by far have been taken right outside my hotel window, but more of that later. Take a peek.

en route

2004-12-29T23:54:00.000-08:00

I'm in the sf airport, sitting through the three-plus hour wait for my flight to Vancouver. I managed to sleep deeply door-to-door on the two-and-a-half-hour bus ride to the airport, except the couple of times I woke myself up snorting in my sleep. I needed this vacation.

Did the automated computer check-in, the assembly-line security check, and shlepped to the gate. It was quiet for all of two minutes, and then a toddler and a cellphone drone appeared simultaneously and began to make unpleasant noises. No problem, I thought, as I got my headphones and iPod out. Wrong.

Looks like I have a dead iPod for the second time in two months. Grrrr. And what a time to die. I have an eight hour trip, and I need to shut out all those petty annoyances, someone else's children behaving badly, idiots who haven't yet figured out that we don't want to overhear their phone conversations, a million little sound bytes that grind away at cranky travelers like me and make us much, much crankier.

I plugged the headphones into my laptop, but I knew it would never last if I didn't find a place to plug in. Picking up my bags I started to wander the terminal. Plywood boards blocked off an area, and cheerful signs on them announced that this would soon be a sushi restaurant, and this would be Peet's Coffee, and this would be a chi-chi bistro. But not now. Now it was just plywood. Let them eat plywood.

I poked my head into a deserted shoeshine booth, now closed for the evening. A small extension cord dribbled along one wall. I plugged in, and yup, we had power. I climbed into the weird customer chairs that put me several feet off the ground and worked away with headphones blocking out the world around me.

Looked up to see a sixtyish man removing his loafers. He wasn't wearing sox. His lips were moving. Seems he wanted me to shine his shoes.

Now I'm sitting here, high in my strange perch in the shoeshine nook, typing away. The harshly fluorescent lighting is like something out of an interrogation room. I've just noticed a sign saying, 'Shoe Shine, $5. Spit Shine, $7." I guess they charge $2 for spit around here. This little roomlet is an island of shabbiness in the slick, modern terminal. There is a tall wooden box, obviously homemade and painted blue with a cheap hardware store lock on it. Its edges are worn and chewed up, and there are scrapes and stains on the top. The wall is stained with splashes of shoe polish, and a piece of blue stripe running at eye level along the wall is torn off, revealing brown dried glue that once held it in place. The seats are upholstered in a textured gray vinyl that looks like something last manufactured in the 1930s. Despite efforts to the contrary, some evidence of humanity lingers here.

The world passes by on the carpeted walkway in front of and below me, on their way to who-knows-where. No one is coming near me with their germs or noise or cel phone soliloquies or shrill two-year-olds. Occasionally someone happens to glance in my diretion, but they're hurrying somewhere, and this is not on their itinerary.

Time to descend into the milling humanity once again. More news as it happens.

the Hieronymus Bosch painting that is my neighborhood

2004-12-23T07:59:00.000-08:00

Crows pluck chicken bones from neighboring trash and retire to the trees in front of my house to pick the remaining flesh off them. Having removed the last specks of carrion, they rain them down onto the carpet of ground-cover below. This suburban food chain continues when my dogs wriggle free from the grasp of the front door and scramble to find these prize bones before I capture their tuck-tail butts and drag them back inside, crunching madly, trying to swallow before I can force the splintering prize from their jaws.

Next door the El Salvadorans have reverted to their old ways, storing up all manner of trash in their front yard while the city-provided bin goes unused. A child's mattress, crumpled happy meals, bits of this and that. At least there are no longer soiled diapers. Their children are older now. Time to call the authorities again to give them the hint that our customs are different here.

Across the street, where headless plaster geese peer through the cyclone fencing and the dead lawn looks like it contains the entire contents of a garage sale gone terribly wrong, a tiny bald Phillipino woman, newly widowed, lives with ghosts and demons. She is highly superstitious, (as are many Phillipinos according to one of my adult students, also a native, who remembers being told that demons would try to pull her down the toilet.)

Since her big gruff American husband dropped dead on a jaunt to Las Vegas a few months ago she has been afraid to be in the house. She wears mismatched clothes because she's afraid to go into their bedroom so she takes whatever is in the laundry and puts it on. She spends most of the day sorting through the jumbled mess in the trunk of her car so she doesn't have to face going inside. She's become a bag lady despite the real estate. Her sons and their families live up the street and drop by to check on her every day. She won't live with them. I don't know what will become of her.

Meanwhile the weeds grow, and the bag of golf clubs, dried up potted plants, fading plastic knickknacks, odd bricks and wire clothes hangers festoon the yard.

On the opposite corner lives the man I call Grumpy, and his long-suffering wife. He looks like Mr. Wilson from Dennis-the-Menace, only much, much older. Mr. Wilson's grandfather. He emerges from the house every Tuesday morning to put the trash out, wearing that charming precursor to the wife-beater, the undershirt. Sure it looked great when Clark Gable stripped down to it in a movie and caused a sensation, but seeing as how Grumpy is about the same age as Clark would be today, and several pounds heavier, he should not be seen in public that way.

His temperament has only two speeds; surly grumbling and obscenity-spewing rant. We've all learned to ignore him when he's on a roll, standing on the corner, shaking with rage, shouting fowl threats at those annoying buzz machines helmet-less neighborhood teens use to careen illegally around the streets here.

And yet this neighborhood is in California, on the Central Coast. Tropical plants grow outdoors here. It never snows. When the night is finally still I can hear the Pacific Ocean pounding into the shore, and if I get in the car I can be on a beach in less than five minutes. The worst house on this hellish street populated by bus boys and laborers (and this public school teacher) would sell for half a million dollars quickly. I could retire to a palace in the midwest. Yeah, I think about it often as I curse the noise and trash of my neighborhood, feeling trapped, surrounded by ignorance and filth. Just biding my time, checking out my options, paying off my mortgage.

lazy person's photo gallery

2004-12-20T11:54:00.000-08:00

Yet another attempt at non-specific ego gratification. I've joined a free online photo gallery so I can post photos more easily and frequently. Boy, is their page ugly, but oh, well. Click here for the grand opening. If it works, I'll have more, and newer photos soon.

Oh, and by the way, I love getting comments, so please leave one if you're so inclined.

Dogs in Elk

2004-12-18T09:01:00.000-08:00

For any dog owners out there, the ultimate dog story is here.

Prepare to laugh. Hard.

Class Party

2004-12-17T19:50:00.000-08:00

This morning, the last day of school before the holiday break, I left the house before seven to rush and buy cookies, milk and eggnog for my students. For various reasons having to do with my own snobbish vanity, I am incapable of buying cheap, lousy stuff, so I spent $60 on fancy cookies with the word 'chunk' in their names. Got to school and set out the diabetic's- nightmare-of-a buffet as the kids flooded in.

I opened iTunes on my computer and set it to play random music from the vast mishmash of tunes in my library. It was a few minutes after that that the earthy, raunchy tones of Bessie Smith rang out, singing 'Empty Bed Blues' for all she was worth, and I overheard one boy tell another it was Ella Fitzgerald. An immediate sense of outrage washed over me, and I couldn't help correcting him. He insisted that they sounded the same. I pointed out that they sounded about as much alike as Mendelssohn and Metallica, but I could tell he was convinced that they were sonic twins, and that was that in his mind. Teenagers—gotta love 'em.

The Big D

2004-12-17T19:18:00.000-08:00

Local TV reception being what it is, we don't get any channels at all without paying a monthly fee for cable or satellite. Since I don't do this, my TV is just a glorified VCR, and I only get around to watching things if I hear from dozens of rhapsodizing friends that some show is a must-see, and then usually only several years after it has left the airwaves. Even then I have to be avoiding work to motivate me to rent or watch anything.

Just that sort of procrastination is how I ended up spending almost the entire weekend watching every episode I could get my hands on of 'Six Feet Under.' if you haven't seen it, each episode begins with someone dying. Some of the deaths are poignant, some gruesomely funny, some horrendous, some poetic justice, some tragically unfair. Some are mundane, some freakishly outlandish. All are beautifully set up and staged in a minute or two, small gems of storytelling.

As a result of this front row seat on so may deaths all at once, several times a day now I feel as though I'm a player in my own little end-game vignette, and the ax is about to fall in some surprising way before we cut to a station break.

I just hope I don't end up rotting unnoticed for weeks until the neighbors complain about the smell, like the 'invisible woman' of a recent episode. In my case, my dog Mrs. Beasley would probably figure out how to use my credit cards to order food online and have it delivered, and they would only come snooping around when she failed to pay the monthly bills for long enough to elicit a visit from a collection agency. At that point she would owe for 214 cases of 'Wet 'n' Beefy' dog food, 75 pounds of pig ears, 107 pounds of soup bones, 5 sides of beef, 537 BarB-Q'd chickens, and several dozen assorted variety packs of beef jerky, not to mention the massage therapist three times a week who thought the house smelled funny, but didn't want to say anything.

Reward Time

2004-12-14T19:43:00.000-08:00

For most teachers, the real rewards are small moments when you actually see that you've made a positive mark on another human being, or recognize that special instant when someone gets something, sees something that they're never been able to see before and they're excited and changed by it. It can be as small as hearing a student mutter, "Oh, NOW I get it..." or seeing their face light up as they realize something new or use the tools you've shown them to create something wonderful.

I haven't had too many of those rewards this year, but Monday brought a whopper. A while back a man had asked my beginning design class to create a logo for a local girls' softball team, and he came back Monday to announce the winner, picked by the girls, and present a hundred-dollar check to the student who created the chosen logo.

Much to my surprise, they picked a very traditional design, but the minute it was announced, I saw that it meant more to that particular student than it would have to any of the others. It was a huge deal to him.

At the beginning of the year, when they first walked in, looking like young Brandos in Streetcar Named Desire, all swagger and bulging muscles under their tight T-shirts, I thought he and his buddy were thugs. I was right about the friend, whose surliness and quick temper made it a sad relief for many of us when he dropped out of school after a few weeks.

But this other boy defied my preconceptions and became a fairly good student, working hard and occasionally liking some of the things I taught him, playing with Photoshop and Illustrator, making things he thought looked cool. There was still a 'something' under the surface, but I didn't know what it was.

Later I mentioned the award to the vice-principal, and she suggested I call and tell his dad, insinuating his dad needed to hear good things about him. I tried to call, but the number was dead. Hmmm. I called the home number, and got a woman who told me she was his guardian. Seems he's living with his best friend's family, and his dad is, well, let's just say he has problems of his own, and isn't able to parent or care for anyone, including himself at the moment. Not even a mention of a mom. The boy had no money, and no real way of making any.

So for one afternoon there was a Santa Claus, and I remembered why I teach.

Purple Heart, er, I mean teaching credential

2004-12-09T06:41:00.000-08:00

In a quiet, anti-climactic moment, I opened the manilla envelope that arrived in the mail and found my professional clear teaching credential. The official one is an ugly thing on green patterned safety paper, and looks something like an over-sized check. Also enclosed was a fancy-schmancy, suitable-for-framing one, with swirly borders and faux calligraphic writing.

If I had designed it, it would have looked a bit different, to reflect its real significance. It would have looked like it was crumpled into a ball and then smoothed out again, spattered with blood, LOTS of blood, torn, dog-eared, bullet holes through it. There would have to be a soundtrack too. Maybe it could have one of those little pull-strings on it like they put on the backs of talking dolls, and when you pulled it, it could speak edu-babble words like, "Hegemony, paradigm, rubric, authentic assessment, standards, AAaaaaaaaaarrrrrrgggggg!"

Talk about cool and gutsy

2004-12-08T23:09:00.000-08:00

Among my students there are a brother and sister, twins, both handsome and stylish and very, very smart. Both nice and cool, but I didn't realize just how cool until yesterday.

The boy, who tends towards somberness and self-containment, is in my web design class, and there he was, working away, and I was helping other students, and suddenly I turned around and he was standing up and only then did I realize that he was wearing a long black—skirt.

And damned if he didn't look totally natural and right in it. It sat low on his hips and flared out into a full skirt down to his ankles. It had subtle black appliqued trim on it. Seems that he woke up with a yen to wear an intensely yellow shirt he had, but couldn't find anything to go with it until he came across his sister's skirt. At least I think it was hers.

Weird thing was, he looked totally masculine in it, and dignified, elegant even. And the other great thing was that no one made a big deal about it. No snide remarks from any of the boys, just business as usual. All very matter-o-fact. How amazing for a high school senior to have the confidence to pull that off. I'm in awe.

canine cane caper

2004-12-03T23:45:00.000-08:00

Last week I made one of my rare appearances at the local Tuesday farmer's market. I mean to go more often, but things always seem to get in the way, or the day comes and I forget.

It was just before Thanksgiving, and the stalls were piled high with produce. One stall, selling various Asian vegetables, had thick purplish black, bamboo-like stalks of sugar cane for sale. They were beautiful objects, and only a dollar each. I wondered if maybe the dogs would like them for chewing on like bones, only sweeter. Why not?

The woman at the stall bound the stalks together using a plastic bag, twisting it into the semblance of a rope to tie them near each end, and then fashioned a handle with another twisted bag, tying it like a bridge to both end bindings, a very practical, charming and thoroughly Japanese packaging solution.

I got them home, and they looked so beautiful I didn't give them to the dogs right away, but just left them on the counter so I could enjoy seeing them there, and there they sat for ten days.

This afternoon I opened the door, and it looked like someong had chopped down an oak, put the entire tree through a shredder, loaded the chips into a huge garbage bag and onto a helicopter, flown over my house, lifted the roof off and dumped the chips in from a great height.

Every inch of floor, bed, and couch was covered in chips and splinters of sugar cane. There were telltale muddy paw prints on the counter where she had reached her 15-inch self to the grand height of 32-inches to grab the cane by stretching with all her might, and maybe even giving a little hop. And the answer was a resounding yes. YES, dogs do like sugar cane.

post op post

2004-11-28T23:05:00.000-08:00

I went to pick the puppy up from the vet after getting her spayed, still feeling guilty and way too maudlin. She bounded out to greet me, wiggling and waggling, and has not missed a beat since. She doesn't seem to notice her stitches, has not slowed down one iota. At least one of us isn't neurotic!

Rite of Passage

2004-11-24T01:24:00.000-08:00

This morning at six the dogs woke me as usual, or at least one of them did. Bunny's ten years old, yet still wakes up like a child on Christmas morning, each and every morning, trying to push it earlier and earlier. Her tail wags madly and pounds the wall, the table, the metal cabinet. It's akin to being wakened by a brass band playing a Sousa march, and every morning right on cue I get grumpy and scold her into sitting down so her tail will stop its crass tintinnabulation. This lasts as long as her attention span, which is to say two seconds at most, and the band starts up again.

The other two dogs, Mrs. Beasley and the puppy, Bosco, blink and yawn and stretch like sensible dogs, then Bunny leads the way, hopping, whirling, ricocheting off the walls, the heater, the furniture, while the rest of us stagger towards the garage door, and outside. I scoop kibble from a bin into three bowls while three dogs squat and pee in unison. Bowls are strategically placed so Bosco can't get at Mrs. Beasley, who eats about ten times slower, having long outgrown the chug-a-lug style favored by puppies and less refined beasts of her acquaintance.

This morning was different though. Instead of eating, Bosco was whisked away to the vet to be spayed. I had a very hard time leaving her, and my eyes welled with tears as I did. I've always gotten dogs after they've been fixed, and this first experience was quite traumatic, even though it's her who has the real trauma. I know intellectually it's the right thing to do, but I kept thinking of her plump little pink belly and getting all maternal and mooshy.

I'm supposed to keep her calm for a couple of weeks after I bring her home tomorrow. Riiiight. Keep. a. puppy. calm. Yah... I can't even keep a ten-year-old dog calm for crying out loud! She and I may both need sedatives by the time this is over.

The Real Thing indeed

2004-11-22T01:09:00.000-08:00

Saturday night I went to the high school play, Arthur Miller's 'Twelve Angry Men,' expecting to grimly sit through it, because by the weekend I'm in the mood for comedy, having had enough real-life drama during the week.

I try to go to every production, about four per year, to support the drama kids, and their wonderful teacher, who is a very busy local professional actor. He does a top-notch job involving them in all aspects of theater, far beyond what most high schools can offer.

This production featured three of my students, and a few others I knew, and much to my surprise, they pulled off a riveting performance from beginning to end, and I found myself loving it, despite my initial bad attitude. The main antagonist, one of my students, was totally convincing, and I was able to forget they were kids, forget I knew any of them. It was wonderful, and I was very proud of them.

Today I went up to San Francisco, to a fancy theater, and saw the last performance of a Tom Stoppard play, 'The Real Thing.'
The glossy playbill was full of page after page of benefactors, lists of those who had given over $100,000, those who had given a mere $25,000, and on and on. Much to my surprise, it was just awful. Boring, empty, pretentious. I didn't care about any of the characters and neither did any of the three friends I went with. It was so bad that by the second act I just sat back and took a nap.

I guess if I was asked which play should be named, 'The Real Thing,' I would have a difference of opinion with Mr. Stoppard.

You read my mind...

2004-11-09T06:33:00.000-08:00

A friend sent me this link (click on the title of this post), and it expressed so well my post-election sentiments, except for one thing; I AM checking out real estate prices in Vancouver! And off-leash dog parks, and job opportunities, and immigration policies. It sounds like heaven on earth; public transportation, sophistication, landscapes and oceanscapes, a cosmopolitan feel, moderate climate, French-as-a-second-language. Near enough to my parents that it's not a burden to visit. Affordable. Lots of lofts for sale at prices I can pay, until I realized that they were listed in Canadian dollars, so they were even CHEAPER! I'm thinking I'll go check it out over Spring vacation, visit again during Summer vacation, and see if I can make it happen.

I really like my job here, although I constantly feel overwhelmed and never caught up, but I do feel well-used. I think a college or university level job would be a better fit. More students who are there voluntarily, and eager for what I have to offer. I love my sullen, hormonally-distracted teens, and my adult classes, but colleges classes allow me to be much more rigorous and intellectually challenging. The diversity is more fun, too.

I've noticed a distinct pattern in my adult life; every eight years I go through a complete molt. I change location, job, appearance, almost every facet of my life. It's never a conscious decision or result of boredom or anything like that. Something just comes along and POOF, away I go. I'm in year seven of being a high school teacher on the Monterey Peninsula. For the last several years I couldn't see beyond my present situation, couldn't imagine why I would leave or what I would do, but this may be the next gig coming up on the horizon. Too soon to tell, but I'm pondering, googling, checking it all out.

Election Day

2004-11-02T13:05:00.000-08:00

Early this morning, driving to work, I stopped for a red light at a major intersection in the ghettoish little seaside city where I live. There across the street, standing in the cold were dozens of people, every last one of them black and dressed in what was obviously their finest clothing, suits, ties, elaborate hats, smiling and waving for all they were worth, and in front of them an enormous sign that just said, "VOTE!"

Without a second's hesitation, and with no conscious though whatsoever, I choked up and started crying. Sure, later I could put some words to it, ponder it, realize that they were the embodiment of the fact that people died, actually died so we could have this day, and this right, and they were there celebrating the fact that their voices could be heard and their vote could count. Desptie the cynicism and despair and lies and skullduggery, they were there reaffirming the hope and idealism of that fact, and it was hugely touching. And yes, you betcha I'm voting!

Fall Photo Fun Fest & ego gratification

2004-10-31T13:06:00.000-08:00

I've just put some new photos online. From the age of fifteen I was a fervid photographer, taking workshops with Ansel Adams, Aaron Siskind and Paul Caponigro while still in high school, spending every waking hour taking photos or in the darkroom, living and breathing it. Edward Weston was my teenage idol. I majored in photography in college, got a teaching fellowship, taught, and finally burned out but good.

Now, thirty years later, the muse has suddenly waltzed back into my life, shrugged her shoulders like it was no big deal, and settled on my head. I'm seeing photos everywhere, starting to carry the camera every day, having a blast. Most are in color, which I would have considered totally gauche in my 'serious' days, and all are digital. My 4x5 view camera sits idle. No darkroom, but Photoshop.

The current batch falls into three rough categories; photos of my frowsy autumn garden, my carousing mutts, and some arty stuff that just kinda snuck in, because I can't help it, plus a few odds 'n' ends. Easiest way to get there is to click on the title, "Fall Photo Fun Fest' above, or here's the URL

http://themeanmissbean.com/recentphotos

Teacher as student

2004-10-30T23:51:00.000-07:00

Just back from an all-day class in the aesthetics of editing (film and video). A two-hour drive each way to SF, and seven hours of class time, but it was worth it. The teacher, Matthew Levie, was wonderfully articulate and interesting, as were many of the class members, so we had lively, intelligent discussions, and watched examples of films and videos that illustrated various points.

He also gave us an overview of the history and development of film, from the very first pioneers, Edison in America and the Lumiere brothers in France to MTV, and how people built on the innovations of others and added their own to gradually get to where we are today, step-by-step.

One particular facet that emerged for me was that in the US, early films, in the form of one-minute nickelodeons, so called because they cost one nickel, were really entertainment for the working classes. Wealthier people went to the theater or opera. I hadn't thought of early movie viewing being confined to any particular class.

In France, early movies were projected on the walls of cafes, and several short movies were shown together to form a montage. Their audience tended to be intellectuals rather than workers. There weren't story lines, they were movies of things like a train arriving at a station. The novelty of seeing moving pictures was enough to sustain interest.

Another huge difference was that the camera Edison invented and used weighed 500 pounds, while the Lumiere brothers' camera weighed about twenty pounds, so they could be portable, while Edison was confined to doing studio shoots.

Edison owned all the patents for film and movie cameras in the US, and when D.W. Griffith wanted to make a longer film with a story, which hadn't been done, Edison wouldn't let him, so Griffith made his movies with film and equipment smuggled in from France.

All this just in the first half-hour or so, so you can imagine how packed seven hours was. We saw a huge variety of film examples and analyzed them, looking at all sorts of clever ways movies can manipulate viewers to tell a story and evoke complex and subtle emotions.

Matt used another great example as a starting point for discussion, the beginning of Orson Welles' "A Touch of Evil." As the opening credits roll we see a city street at night. A man in front of the camera sets some sort of timer on what looks like a bomb. We hear laughter as a group of people leave a bar, and the man runs to a convertible and quickly tosses the bomb into the trunk just before the boisterous group rounds the corner, gets into the car and begins to wend their way through the city streets. They stop at several intersections, and all the while the bomb is in the trunk, and we viewers know it and keep waiting for it to go off. Will it go off now, just as a vendor crosses the street in front of them, with his cart? Now, just as a woman and child walk beside it? Now as a small herd of goats passes? (Now we know it's South America.)

They arrive at a border crossing. The camera has not yet blinked. This is all done in a very smooth, seamless three-minute shot with no edits and we are getting very tense waiting for the inevitable. There is a brief exchange of pleasantries at the guard house between the people in the car, the sentry and another couple on foot. In just a few sentences; "You'll have to call me MRS. now you know.: and "Hey, congratulations on catching so-and so (a criminal)." " Unfortunately, he's just one member of a big family.", we discover that the couple on foot are newlyweds, and the groom has just brought one member of a criminal family to justice.

Now the sentry can get back to business and let the car of revelers pass, and the newlyweds, discovering that they haven't kissed in over an hour, embrace tenderly. Just as they do—BLAM!—the unseen car finally explodes, and we have our first cut of the movie, to the fireball that now engulfs what we naturally (and correctly) assume to be the car. And that first cut, right in the middle of a kiss, lets us feel keenly that the sweetness of romance has been rent asunder by this event, and the smooth continuity of life as they knew it will also be interrupted. We pretty much know who blew up the car (the crime family) and who will now have to go out and get them (the groom). If the car had blown up before or after the kiss it would have had a totally different effect, but because it was during the kiss it set up the scene to be a complete microcosm of the movie, telling you what the hero needs to do, why, and what effect it will have on his marriage. With one edit. I can't wait to rent the movie and look at what other decisions Welles made in telling the story.

I only hope I can get my students a tenth as excited as I was about such revelations. It will take time, and I'm thinking it will be more effective if I use contemporary examples that they can relate to more directly, but if I teach video long enough, I'm hoping to really open some eyes to the cool, intelligent artistry and subtle manipulation possible in filmmaking, and then hope that they use this knowledge to promote the forces of light, not Pepsi Lite or Marlboro Lites.

Mongooses and self-pity, a deadly combination

2004-10-24T13:26:00.000-07:00

I was innocently doing the Times crossword puzzle. It's one of my addictions, and I do it when I'm trying to procrastinate or generally relax and get completely absorbed in something that shuts out the world. For several years I've done them online, and even though I don't like to use Google to find obscure answers, sometimes I have to admit defeat, and as a last resort, I'll look something up. I must have done just that some time in the past couple of weeks, because why else would I come across a PDF on my desktop with a mysterious name, click on it, and see the following title:

'Spatial dynamics of mongooses in the rain forest of Puerto Rico: implications for rabies transmission.'

I'm NOT making this up. I do remember a question about a rainforest mammal in a puzzle, and this is the only explanation I have for why this was on my desktop. Just glad I'm not dating the author! I can so picture some guy going on and on about this very subject over dinner at a fancy restaurant while his date tries to stay awake until the entree arrives.

My own boyfriend is obsessed with swimming, swim meets, the water temperature of the pool where he swims, which is a whopping two degrees too hot for his taste, and therefore a source of hours of discussion and indignation. I'm not sure what mutant gene it is that makes people think their obsessions are interesting to others past the thirty second mark, but there it is. When I called him at work last week to tell him I was going to the hospital for tests, I found myself listening to the details of a re-scheduled swim meet within fifteen seconds of saying hello. I tried again, to touch on the subject of BEING SICK AND GOING TO THE HOSPITAL, but it was no use. He just didn't get it. Sympathy was not happening. Maybe the mongoose guy would have stopped in his tracks and said,'Pooooor thiiiiing' but not Mr. Swim Meet.

I actually trained one erstwhile boyfriend, Thor (yes, really) to say it. POOOOOOooooor thiiiiiing. It was a joke at first. I'd tell him about something at work, or some unfairness, and instead of getting the requisite sympathy, he'd take the other side just to play devil's advocate, which made me even more upset.

I just came out and told him that he was getting it all wrong, that when a girlfriend told him something, his job, his absolute mandate at that moment, was to say, 'Pooor you. You're right and they're wrong. Stooooopid ol' them." or something to this effect. I pointed out that to do any less would be to court danger in the form of an angry girlfriend, not just me, but any and every girlfriend he would ever have. I had him repeat it a couple of times, until he could do it with a straight face. He began to do it totally in jest, but when he saw the amazing results, that we fell for it every time, no matter how insincere, he began to get it. Twenty-some years later we're still friends, and he has thanked me many times over for teaching him this important lesson.

And by the way, I pride myself on seeing the other person's side and admitting it when I'm wrong. It's just that psychological salve on the initial wound that I need. If someone else feels sorry for me I don't have to drown in my own self-pity, and I can then be rational and go about my business.

Well, sorted the huge pile of papers that had accumulated in my classroom, I've rambled from Mongooses to sympathy, and now I must go home and feed my poor neglected dogs, after which I will try to make sense of the latest school paper and try to get it patched together so we can get it published before Halloween. Or maybe I'll just do the Sunday puzzle...

Not for the squeemish

2004-10-23T03:43:00.000-07:00

Thanks to anonymous b... for the kind words that arrived at the perfect time. Very sweet.

And Dad, I know you read this occasionally, but you should definitely skip this entry. You know how squeemish you are. You really don't want to go any further.

It's almost four in the morning on Saturday, and the puppy has woken me from strange dreams to noises of peristalsis. She had the sense to jump off the bed and make it halfway to the door before throwing up some mysterious thing she had managed to wolf down on our evening walk in the wilds of the deserted army lands. Nothing out of the ordinary, and we both shrugged it off and went about our business, she back to sleep and I restless and blogging.

It's been a dramatic time here in land o' bean. It started innocently enough, a couple of weeks ago, with a yearly visit to the doctor for an 'OK, little pinch now....AAARRRGGG...." internal exam. Always surreal to lie there and WILL your body into submission while a relative stranger does what would usually be considered wildly intimate things while urging you to relax, and ninety percent of your entire being wants to clamp your knees shut like a bear trap even if someone's head happens to be in the way. But oh well, all part of being a girl.

The surreal theme continued when this same doctor called me at school, in the middle of my busiest class, surrounded by teenage boys, to tell me that my test results were fine, except, uh, "There were some cells present where we wouldn't expect to find them. Probably nothing, but I'd like to just be sure..."

And what does this surety involve? Oh, just a little biopsy of parts usually unreachable, and for good reason. "Be sure to take some ibuprofen." I call to make the appointment, and the nurse tells me to take a LOT of ibuprofen. "No, really, like 600 milligrams, honey." I ask around, and the best anyone can tell me is that at least it's over in about 30 seconds, OK, maybe a minute really. But pretty quick.

The day arrives but there are complications because it seems a previous adventure in malpractice has left me almost without a cervix, which I mention to my doctor. He doesn't seem all that impressed sitting at his desk, jotting it down, but when faced with the real thing he lets out a 'Holy smokes!" as he realizes I wasn't exaggerating. Holy smokes isn't something you want your doctor to say in relation to any part of your anatomy, ever. And naturally, this previous assault upon my being now makes it ultra difficult to do this latest procedure, and results in the thirty seconds of pain thing extending into many more minutes of "You're being very brave now....very brave...." and a motherly nurse offering her hand so I could grip it instead of putting the doctor into a headlock. Yep. VERY brave.

Feeling like a newly-cored apple, I rushed home, herded dogs into the car, rushed to a vet's appointment, then to their walk, and onwards to teach night class. I was feeling fine until about eleven, when suddenly I spiked a fever, which lasted all night and made sleep scarce at best. Got up, dragged myself to school and called the doctor who told me to get to the hospital for blood tests and then come see him.

Finished school and did as I was told, giving enough blood to fill a Worcester sauce bottle. I thought I was just going to have a chat with the doctor, but no, another exam, little pinch....AAARGGG. Blood test came back and my white count was up. Back to the hospital for more two more bottles of Worcester sauce, one from each arm, and a prescription for major antibiotics.

Rushed to take dogs to dog park so puppy could get her fix, then to my pharmacy, which was now closed. Went to a second pharmacy, but after a long and involved computer search, they found that they no longer took my insurance. It was now 8:30 p.m.. I paid cash, got my drugs and crawled home.

The next day I called in sick for the first time in two years. No, not because of the medical things so much, although that was part of it, but something much worse. An inane piece of paperwork due to the state which turned out to be 27 pages long, about how politically correct I can be when teaching English learners, of which I have none. Yes, for this I missed a day of teaching ACTUAL students.

Next week I will get test results, and until then I take bright blue capsules twice a day and carry on, a bit tired and tingly in places I would rather not think about, but unbent. Time to look at what passes for the student paper this month and tweak it before it goes to press next week. Time to clean the house, which means undoing all the little touches the puppy has added, like pieces of twigs all over the floor, half-chewed, toys in various stages of destruction, and good old-fashioned dirt that she has brought in after digging in her sand box, which was once a planter. Time to catch my breath and wait for the next chapter, and hope it doesn't involve any more adventures in medical hi-jinx.

burnout

2004-10-17T20:17:00.000-07:00

Yikes, for someone who likes to write, it's sure been a long time since I've posted.

I meant to write about the baby whale that washed up on the beach a couple of weeks ago. Nine months old, fifty feet long. She was a blue whale, and every part of her was a sculptural masterpiece. Seeing her made me really wistful and sad, and I couldn't really put my finger on why, but it just seemed very tragic. The ecological implications are pretty scary. Lots of death rolls onto that beach, sea lions, huge moonfish, pelicans and lesser birds, but this was the first time in about twenty years a whale has come ashore.

It's Sunday night, the last night of nine days of vacation, and I have to say, I'm still feeling burnt out.

I'm getting really tired and cranky trying to be a good teacher and getting stifled at every turn by inane paperwork and the need to raise money to furnish my lab with basic equipment. I would have to say those two things each take up about a third of all the time I spend working, leaving only a third of my energy to try and keep up with my field, which is changing like wildfire. That's obscene.

This week's paperwork is a portfolio the state wants of special lesson plans and case studies specifically designed to help non-native English speakers in my class. I have none. And they have to be detailed to a preposterous degree, cite chapter and verse about what state standards they address, yada yada yada. AND I HAVE NO STUDENTS TO APPLY THEM TO!!

Meanwhile, I desperately need to write tests for my real students and grade their work so they get feedback on how they're doing in my classes. But no, I have no time for that now. This is so typical.

And my lab computers are old and need replacing, and it's up to me to figure out how to fund this, and buy video equipment for a class of 26 kids who currently have three cameras. It's just too much. I'm going to start looking for other jobs. I want to teach.

Sorry, this isn't much fun to read. Like I said, I'm burnt toast. The comic relief is my funny little, OK, not-so-little anymore puppy, who now weighs in at over forty pounds. She is very obviously part bulldog of some sort, and she's looking more and more like a sumo wrestler. Her antics are just the antidote I need to the mountain of paperwork.

OK, more when I can be a bit more positive and upbeat, and find my sense of humor, wherever I put it.

Up to speed

2004-09-15T22:03:00.000-07:00

We're about a month into the new school year, and things are settling in, the names and faces are beginning to match up, students have stopped shuffling from one class to another, looking for the right balance of entertainment, percentage of friends in the class, not too much work, and hopefully near their locker.

Despite how cynical that last sentence was, I'm actually pleased with many of the students who have fallen to my lot. A good number seem to have brains, talent, curiosity, and show fair amounts of enthusiasm.

One student, a senior, has returned. He took my design class when he was a sophomore, and was very visually talented, but was such a little snot, always calling me over with a question, and managing to say something totally jerky just after I had helped him. He was about six-foot-three at the time, and I kept thinking he was a senior, and expecting him to act like a human being, but he was just incapable of it, despite his obvious intelligence. I liked him anyway, and in my usual blunt manner would frequently tease him about how awful he was, and how he couldn't even stop if he tried. He would just laugh and do or say something else jerky.

The next year, the first day of school, he waltzed into my classroom and announced, 'I'm in your class." I looked at him. "No you're not."
"Yeah I am. Really."
"No."
"Yeah I am."

He wasn't. He just needed to be jerky.

But he came in from time-to-time to use the scanner, the computer, the camera. And he was doing beautiful work. What an eye. And gradually, almost imperceptibly, he began to change. He didn't need to make the remark, or get that last annoying jab in every time. His maturity was catching up to his height. Finally one day he came in and forgot to be a jerk.

One of the final days of school last June I passed him in the hall. "I'm in your video class next year."
"You really are, aren't you?"
"Yeah."

He's doing exquisite camerawork. And he's helping with the school paper. Today he and the head sportswriter went out to take photos for the Baseball and football articles (I wouldn't let them use internet photos). He came back with the coolest photo of home plate, covered with dusty footprints, surrounded by the ghosts of dozens more in the dirt chronicling the efforts of countless anonymous players. Another photo showed a blaze of light glinting off the football goal posts, with silhouettes of trees and a streaked sky in the background. Less original, but well done and fresh.

A few other stars are starting to emerge. I have to resist the urge to try and teach them everything all at once. I have to resist the urge to do every job on the school paper myself and make all decisions unilaterally. So far, things are good. I'd like to write more, but I'm falling asleep and I must go join my snoring herd of dogs. Hope they're left me some room on the bed

Labor day update

2004-09-06T09:22:00.000-07:00

Haven't written anything here since school started, and we're already two weeks into the school year now. All the classes I took over the summer are paying off, and I've taught more in the first two weeks of Video Production than I taught all last year.

Other classes are going OK so far, but my Graphic design and Web classes are sparse. Journalism and Video are huge. I'm being pulled in new directions whether I like it or not. It seems that my lot is always to be teaching just out of my comfort zone, and I guess if I had to choose I'd opt for keeping it this way. Growth is not comfortable, and has to be forced on most of us, who would rather be revered sages dispensing knowledge securely pinned down and calcified years ago. Instead, my whole field, communication and design, makes a major technical and aesthetic sea change every year or so. New software and hardware, new possibilities, new trends and taste (or lack of). Exhausting yet exhilerating.

It's early in the year to tell if any students will emerge as big talents, and naturally if they appear it makes my job more interesting and fun, but some years are better than others, and I have to teach them all 'as if', because I've learned from past students that the most unlikely ones sometimes go on to do great things. Not for me to pass judgement, but I still hope to see that spark in some of them.

My first year of teaching Journalism here. The school paper will be coming out soonish and the pressure's on, and people will be watching closely. It's been called the Sandpiper, but my students and I want to re-name it. What the hell does a delicate shore bird signify to any of our MTV'd out students? They have voted on "Un_Folded", but the principal is hesitant, citing tradition, and as a compromise I've suggested, "Un_Folded, the paper formerly known as the Sandpiper".

It could be worse. I could have decided to question the clownish religious figure passing as our public school mascot. The Padre, as in Junipero Serra, the Catholic missionary. The kids sometimes refer to him as that little Indian killer... As a Jewish/Muslim female I just can't relate to being called a Padre. Padre, schmadre, I say. But I'll save that battle for another day. It would mean taking on the whole community, and I'm not that invested. After my martyrdom they would only replace him with some viscous animal anyway. Tigers, bears, cougars, panthers, WHATever....Or hey, how about a Sandpiper! The Mighty Sandpipers! Crush 'em, Sandpipers!

The game's afoot!

2004-08-24T23:05:00.000-07:00

Yes, survived the onslaught of students on our first day back to school after summer vacation, and I'm pretty excited about the year ahead. I think I have some good brains on board, who are curious and interested in things beyond the reach of their own body heat.

They all started blogs today, and reading them, I was struck again by the immediacy of the medium. I really love what the web has done to the world. In so many ways, it enables people to share with each other in such a profound mesh of interrelated threads.

Nightmare - Sleeping with the fishes

2004-08-13T02:06:00.000-07:00

My boyfriend is conveniently out of town. It's 1:30 am. I didn't stay up too late. I was sound asleep.

About half an hour ago, the new puppy, who is turning out to be about eighty percent bull dog, miss bowling ball body herself, woke me up. She had to go out. Fine.

I staggered to the door, opened it for her, and she trotted into the night so I figured she was going to uh, how do I put this delicately? Divest herself of some of the vast quantities of pork meat she had consumed yesterday as she ate bone after bone while I tried to get work done in my classroom.

I had given her one bone, but she soon figured out that if she stood on her stubby little hind legs, she could reach the table and drag the bag to where she could reach the remainder of the bones, and I let her because I was desperate to buy enough time to make serious headway before students arrive in less than two weeks. And now she was up in the middle of the night.

I went back to bed, figuring she would soon nudge me, wriggling her whole body with joy at her own wonderfulness and waiting for the indulgent lady elevator to drag her 30+ pounds of plumpitude back up onto the bed, because even though she's capable of jumping onto the bed herself, she prefers to be lifted.

I dozed off, and the oldest dog, Mrs. Beasley, came back from the living room where she had been sleeping and demanded to be let under the covers and into a space wholly taken up by Bunny Shmenkleman, the largest dog. I was in the middle of telling her how unreasonable she was when I remembered that Bosco the puppy hadn't returned, and it was now at least fifteen minutes later. Hmmmmmm.

I flung my tired self out of bed once again, into the garage and to the door. She was quietly sitting there. How odd. She was doing something, and I couldn't see what. I got the flashlight. Wait, what does she have in her mouth? Is it, OOOO NOOOOOOO. A dead.... fish? She's gotten the last one from the little pond? EEEWWWWWWW!!!

She must have sensed my complete inability to cope, because she put IT down and came when I called her. She climbed back into bed and it was then I realized that she STUNK of fish.

And so I'm here, in my office, wide awake, wondering if my boyfriend could possibly fly home and remove whatever it is from the yard and then go back to Savannah? No? Why not? If I go to sleep with miss fishbreath, I'll have to wake up and face the carrion in my back yard. And I don't think I can do that. Really.

So that's the latest from house of dog breath.

OK, I'm really tired, so I'm going to join the snoring one, the huntress who lies dreaming with blood on her snout. This is what I get for living the 'clan of the cave bear' lifestyle, sleeping wedged between three dogs stretched out all over the sandy, furry bed. So much for my inner priss. Goodnight.

at long last links!

2004-08-10T23:18:00.000-07:00

Haven't blogged in oh so long for reasons of obsession. Total driven focus on one thing, and one thing only. Not a man, not a dog, a website. Creating a web site. I know, I know, how mis-guided and pathetic.

But wait, the site is really just the manifestation of taking the time at long last, in year seven of teaching design, to take a deep breath and think it all out, plan, strategize, focus every molecule of creativity on coming up with the best ideas and projects and approaches I'm capable of imagining, and then getting it all down on, uh, not paper exactly. Pixels. It's down on pixels. Yeah.

Video production, web design, graphic design, advanced design, and my new class, journalism, aka the school paper.

Like most arty types, I'm good at going with the flow, winging it, being spontaneous. And that was fine for the few kids every year who had that special brand of self-direction and focus that meant they were going to work and do great things no matter what. But for the other ninety percent, I didn't have enough structure. Which meant I couldn't be very demanding of them, since expectations weren't clear, which resulted in a bunch of kids with too much time on their hands, not knowing what to do. But no more.

Without further ado, here it is. Be sure to check out Bean's elements of mastery, and the words page with word O' day. Fun, I hope.

themeanmissbean.com

That's the mean miss bean dot com, for those of you who can't read words when they're all squished together.

Grrrrrrrrrr!

2004-07-23T22:34:00.000-07:00

Six years ago when I moved to the Monterey Peninsula to take a job as a teacher, the realtor asked me what my salary would be, showed me the seven houses I could afford in the entire area, all of them in Seaside, and told me to pick one.

This is the neighborhood where teachers, janitors and drug dealers live. My neighbor is a bus boy. I needed to buy, not rent, because I had two dogs at the time, and no one wanted to rent to me.

And now, six years later, it's Friday night. Party night. I fell asleep sitting at my computer around 8:30 pm, but was awakened by loud barking. Really loud, non-stop barking. My own dogs slept innocently on the couch. I walked out the front door in my socks and followed the sound. A small, illegal motor scooter, one of the ones that sound like mosquitos on steroids, came buzzing by me going the wrong way around our one-way street. A child rode his bicycle in the wake of the scooter, shouting encouragement laced with obscenities.

I found the source of the barking almost a block away. A brown pitbull leaning halfway out a second-story apartment window, barking his fool head off at the kids playing in the street nearby. The kids told me they didn't know who owned him, but his name was Tyson. Charming. I should mention here that I now have three pitbull mutts, each one a total sweetie, and I'm not generally scared of the breed, but Tyson was a serious brute.

Even though the dog was almost 20 feet from the ground, I wasn't convinced that he wouldn't jump, I was really nervous walking by, but I did, and rang the doorbell. No one home, naturally, but I could hear the dog running down the stairs to the front door. I had visions of the door opening, and the dog leaping out at me, but he was soon back in his window, barking again.

I gave up and walked home. No sooner had I closed the door; BOOM, the sound of fireworks. Yes, almost three weeks after July fourth they're still going off almost nightly. My own sweet pit bull, Mrs. Beasley, is terrified of fireworks and immediately went into a panic mode, pacing and trembling. I called the police, knowing Tyson-the-dog would stop barking just before they arrived, which he did, an hour or so later.

Chatted with the very nice policeman for a while, and got the latest gossip about Fat Kenny, the neighborhood drug dealer. He told me Kenny was finally in jail, which explains why his cadillac hasn't been around lately. Hoorray! But that still leaves the guy on the next block, the one in the wheelchair who sits out in the street waiting for customers. The cop knew him too, and said he'd been there for years, and in fact had been crippled as a result of dealing, but obvioudly hadn't had any big epiphanies, because he was still at it.

Did some work since I was now wide awake. Just now two shots rang out, and Mrs. Beasley, who's also afraid of gunshots, began pacing and trembling again, tail tucked, miserable.

Now it's 11 pm and that Tyson dog's barking again. Non-stop. Everyone says how much better this neighborhood is getting, and it is, but not fast enough so my dogs and I can enjoy a relaxing evening at home, after six years. Grrrrrrrr!

Torture

2004-06-30T07:19:00.000-07:00

I have a really good excuse for neglecting this blog. I am currently taking a mandatory class that is as close to torture as the Geneva Convention will allow. Seven hours a day, for seven days, ostensibly to teach me and my twenty-four fellow captives how to properly teach students who are not native English speakers.

Many of us go years without having any such students, many of us have taught for over thirty years and have figured out very successful ways to teach almost anyone who shows up in our classroom, but noooo. That's not relevant. They have to TEACH us.

Like most inane schemes dreampt up by professional academics, there are acronyms. LOTS of acronyms. And buzz words. Oh how they love coining new words. For example, instead of the very servicable, 'visual aids' and 'props,' there is now the preferred term, 'realia.' and instead of 'conversational English' we now say BICS. And instead of academic language we now say, 'CULP.' And this is worth almost fifty hours of my life, to learn things like this, from a well-meaning woman who has been teaching elementary school for way too long, so that she has really, really cute terms for things, like 'popcorn' for when one person reads a paragraph, and then picks the next person to read, or 'carrousel' for some shared learning activity. Favorite obfuscation so far? Affective Domain, their hi-falutin' term for making a warm, safe, welcoming classroom. Yeah, welcome to my affective domain, kids.... Oops, gotta run so I won't be late to day six of torture-by-teaching. I already have two passive-agressive tardies, and I've been spoken to.

The puppy who ate my life

2004-06-14T21:39:00.000-07:00

OK, here (just click on the headline above) at last are photos of the all-consuming little black hole of adorableness who now has a name. Her name is Bruno, and her last name is being refined. At the moment it's Bierbaum, but that may change.

Eat a shoe, eat a book
Pee pee's everywhere I look.

Chew and pee, nip and play
bite the couch and run away.

Eat a snail, chase your tail
poop on the floor and maul the mail

Bark at cat, growl and whine
hey, what's that? Is it feeding time?

she's right here, snoring

2004-06-01T22:05:00.000-07:00

I have a theory that Some time ago, the big Head Honcho of Life looked down, saw I didn't have kids, wasn't likely to have them, and said, "Hey, wait just a minute. There's been a mistake here. You don't get off that easy! Thought you could sneak by me, eh? Well watch THIS!"

And poof, as quickly as you can say acne medicine, I had 65 teenagers as I suddenly found myself teaching high school.

But recently, apparently this same Grand Poobah of All decided that this just wasn't enough penance for trying to slip through the radar, because now, suddenly, through no volition on my part, I have a newborn. Puppy, that is. OK, well about two months old. It started innocently enough:

Last week I was walking my dogs on Monterey beach, when one of the other regular dog people came running up and said, 'You're just the person I'm looking for!' Seems his neighbors had a puppy, and it got Parvo, so they just left it out in their yard to die, and he finally couldn't stand it, so he took her from them and got her to the vet. Her chances of recovery were iffy.

She looked a lot like one of my dogs, so he wondered if I might give her foster care until she could be adopted. I kinda sorta said maybe. Turns out she was at my regular vet, and today I just happened to go by, just to see how she was coming along, and they just happened to have left a phone message on my machine telling me to come and get her. She's sleeping on my lap as I type this, her little pink spotted belly filled with food. No name yet. Zelda, and June Cleaver are possibilities, but so is Dweezle. Jury's still out and may be for some time. The inevitable puppy photos will follow soon.

can you say 'video fiasco' ten times really fast?

2004-06-01T07:14:00.000-07:00

The last two weeks of school nine teachers at last count have assigned video projects, all due next week. Unfortunately, most are not thought out at all as far as anyone can tell.

The librarians, computer lab teacher and I have all been beseiged with clueless students wanting to borrow equipment they have no idea how to use, to do they-don't-know-what. It's a fiasco of the first water.

As a result of our frustration, we're in the process of making a video to be shown at the faculty meeting next week, showing dozens of students asking to use the $3000 video production cameras they have no idea how to operate, lining up in the library around the building and out the door to borrow/use their equipment, and dozens more clamoring for editing help in the lab until the lab teacher goes berserk and has to be led out of the room by a colleague, while she mumbles and drools.

I fear that just as in the early days of Powerpoint, they will be too easily influenced by the bells and whistles, and not notice a distinct lack of content. Like the math video I watched two students working on last week. They did manage to incorporate a large red truck, a fatal accident, and lots of cool music, none of which had anything to do with math, and when they got to the math part, they just read the book out loud and showed one of the boys writing out the problems. Two weeks of video production class down the tubes.

One person suggested putting a notice in the daily staff bulletin, announcing that each teacher had to do a brief video project before picking up our June paychecks...

new pix just because

2004-05-23T09:49:00.000-07:00

new pix

For various reasons, I rarely do 'my own' creative design work. I'm usually pretty content to teach, which is just a different creative outlet, and demands every ounce of visual, verbal, analytical and psychological gumption I can muster, not to mention a dash of patience. And even when I occasionally stumble my way into making an image I like, I'm almost always immediately confronted with something one of my students has done that just blows it out of the water, and slaps me back to the reality that, yes, I'm somewhat artistic, but not terribly edgy compared to what's going on in the here and now. And oddly, this doesn't bother me, because I like seeing good work so much, I don't really care who produced it, it's just exciting and makes me feel more alive and teaches me new ways to look at the world. But recently I found myself playing, and came up with some new images that I like enough to post. I added some leaf photos from a couple of years ago, and voila.

50 years of swimming

2004-05-22T22:17:00.000-07:00

It's one of those family stories that gets retold so many times you start to think you remember it firsthand. I was two years old, and we were at my grandparent's house, at the huge pool. I announced that I could swim, marched to the end of the pool where there was a submerged flight of steps from the edge into the shallow end, and began to make my way into the water. My father took off his watch while someone yelled at me to stop. I took the next step, and my father took off his shoes. Another step, more clothing. They thought I would get scared and come out, but no, I walked right in over my head and Dad had to jump in and rescue me. I don't even want to ponder how perfect a psychological snapshot it was, so let's just say it was rather typical behavior on my part.

I learned to swim shortly thereafter, and spent most weekends in that pool playing with cousins, diving for pennies, trying to swim the whole 60' length underwater without a breath, emerging hours later, shriveled and waterlogged. We had races, and I beat my male cousins until we were well into our teens. It was one of the few areas where I felt any competitiveness, and I was proud of being fast.

Now, fifty years later, I swim laps for exercise, and I don't hate it, but it's a chore nonetheless. I'm always struggling against my natural tendency to want to just sit on the couch and eat bonbons, and swimming is part of my arsenal in the war to be healthy and lead a well-balanced life. I've been losing this war for months now, but this week I got back in the pool at the sports center and began dutifully plodding away.

Yesterday I shared a lane with an extremely pregnant woman wearing a two-piece suit, so that her immense belly jutted out into the water as if it were a new form of marine mammal attached to an otherwise normal swimmer. And the really discouraging thing was, that as we swam, Ms. Whale-belly passed me! One of those subtle, invisibly private events that signals yet again that time has passed and taken the glories of my youth, such as they were, with it.

I can still picture my grandmother, well into her eighties, swimming a steady breaststroke, sporting a shower cap on her head so she wouldn't ruin her hairdo. So maybe instead of speed, that can be my new benchmark; to bring things full circle by keeping it up long enough to be infamous once again for my sheer tenacity of spirit.

Fellini's Picnic

2004-05-18T13:26:00.000-07:00

At the high school where I teach, seniors are required to take Economics, and there is a tradition in the class. Students are divided into four groups, and each group forms a corporation, complete with logo and letterhead. Then, for two days, they compete to see who can make the most money, and for various reasons this comes down to selling food at lunch and break time. They produce TV ads aired on the daily bulletin and festoon the campus with banners advertising themselves. They often have hats and shirts printed with their logos, although this year one team just bought red T-shirts and used duct tape to spell out Mr. M on the back. Their name is Mr. Mediocre, and their logo looks suspiciously like the golden arches, only made out of duct tape.

The night before, whole families are mobilized to cook, pick up food from local restaurants, and transport huge amounts of equipment (Oh yeah, Mom, I forgot, we need five blenders to make smoothies tomorrow and I said we could get them..."). It's a massive undertaking, and I get the feeling that there will be some very grumpy parents out there by the end of the week.

So today and Friday are the big days. The bell for break just sounded, and now dozens of students are vying desperately for business, hawking food as if their very lives depended on it, like carnival barkers on speed. They're wearing corporate T-shirts and hats, shouting at and cajoling their fellow students, flinging food in all directions, grabbing fistfuls of cash. Huge barbeque pits have been rolled into place and the smell of roasting meat fills the air.

One team has chosen the name 'The Donner Party' and has such slogans as, 'Where all the people are sweet!', 'Finger food never tasted so good!' and 'Where it won't cost you an arm and a leg!' One student, Carmel High's answer to Robin Williams, is walking around with a clown hat on and a powered megaphone, urging people to eat there in his own inimitable fashion. One team has even rented a bounce house and scheduled local bands to play during lunch. Today's band looks about how you'd expect, pierced, hair dyed black, tight mismatched clothing. The lead singer has adopted a certain style of screaming directly into the mic that makes Bryan, the music teacher, cringe and roll his eyes as he walks by eating his mystery burrito purchased from a nearby team. The same team has talked an Indian restaurant into setting up a booth, and an older man in a turban is serving scantily-clad little teeny-boppers curry and probably wishing he was elsewhere. It's one part Dante's Inferno, one part Fellini movie, one part Beverly Hills 90210. Somehow I don't remember high school being like this back in the day.

3hive - sharing the sharing

2004-05-16T22:58:00.000-07:00

3hive: Experimental Archives

Just stumbled into this site via the blog of one of its creators, and got swept up listening. Try 'To Make Manifest' by Thavius Beck. Not for everyone, to be sure, but I'm quickly becoming obsessed, playing it over and over again. One of the great things about living alone is that I can indulge in my maddening propensity to listen to the same CD or even individual song exclusively for months on end without getting tired of it. Even my dogs start giving me looks after a while, or maybe it's just my imagination...

Live TV Sitcom

2004-05-13T21:38:00.000-07:00

Today was the big day. I schlepped seventeen overly-energetic teenagers to the local TV station and herded them through the basics of TV production. And despite massive amounts of chaos, when we emerged five hours later, we had a half-hour tape ready, with only a few nips and tucks, to be shown on local cable.

Once they saw the real studio and control room it didn't take much prodding or scolding to get them down to business. I showed them the basics and let them loose, more or less, with only occasional bursts of mother-hen behavior and bossiness, because I can't help it.

We had seven of our best student videos with us, and we showed them one at a time, interspersing them with live introductions and chatter. For each of the seven segments, the kids took turns doing different jobs, so by the end they had each tried several, if not all of the skills; in-front-of-camera talent, director, cameraman, sound, switching, lighting, floor director.

It was interesting to see which students gravitated towards which jobs. Some students really wanted to be talent, some really wanted to direct, some were much more interested in the technical aspects. One was tremendously reluctant to be a cameraman. His English isn't great, and I think he was scared he'd mess up, but he finally did it. Another was scared to do the sound board, but I had his friend help him, and they got through it. My favorite part was watching as students who had just done a job showed the next student how to do it.

I'm so tired now that I'm going to immerse myself in a hot bath and get to sleep. I wouldn't be surprised to suddenly wake up at two a.m. and find myself sitting in a tub full of tepid water. I'm that tired. (switch to the voice of Arnold Swartznegger) IMMENSELY tired. UBER tired. (it's an in-joke mimicking one of the student videos.)

I'm going to have to put a few on my website, but not tonight. No. Not tonight.zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

a quick glimpse

2004-05-11T23:43:00.000-07:00

It's like this: I just taught from 7:45 a.m. until 9:45 p.m. two days in a row, high school, then adult class, with about an hour break each day, and I'm a rumpled, stumbling disaster too tired to even stagger into bed, so I'm here at the big screen, indulging myself in a bit of reflection at the end of the marathon. But it's not over.

Thursday, two meager days hence, I'm scheduled to take eighteen teenagers, two girls and SIXTEEN BOYS to the local TV station to try to teach them to operate a TV studio and all the equipment in it.

My plan is to bumble through it and come out with a 30-minute segment ready for broadcast on our local cable channel. I have several short, hysterically funny videos they have made thus far in my class, so I'm hoping we can get a primitive set assembled and lit, manage to turn on the equipment in the control room, type some credits into the character generator and get a novice crew pointing some cameras and mics at a host who will introduce the videos. Then roll tape. Then back to the host for another intro, maybe a clownish interview with a fellow student director, roll another tape, and so on.

Might just pull it off. Despite my shortcomings as a first-year teacher of video, which are numerous, this batch of shorts is creative and funny enough to stand alone without apology. In fact, four are quite brilliant even to this urban sophisticate weaned on Fellini and Polanski and Kurosawa, and I wish I had done them.

walk on the wild side

2004-05-11T07:08:00.000-07:00

Back now from taking the dog girls (Mrs. Beasley and Bunny Shmenkleman) to Fort Ord, a local mostly-abandoned army base, for our nice relaxing walk. There is a road that has been closed off, flanked on both sides by softly rolling hills and live oaks. I stick to the road while the girls dart in and out of the scrub in a futile hunt for the pheasants, quail, wild turkeys and deer that never quite get caught but continue to tantalize. Once we ‘saw’ a skunk, but I’m really, really hoping that won’t be the case ever again.

Only moments into it, as we ambled along the deserted stretch of road barricaded with huge OFF LIMITS TO MOTOR VEHICLES BLAH BLAH BLAH signs, sirens began to wail, accompanied by urgent honking. And continued. And continued. My shoulders started to rise to meet my earlobes. More sirens. Three huge roaring, rude SUVs defied all roadblocks to tear past us. Finally, after ten minutes or so of screaming sirens, down the hill raced a bellowing, UNMARKED fire engine followed by three more rugged uber vehicles, spewing diesel fumes and testosterone in their wake. No, the pastoral euphoria thing was not unfolding as I had hoped.

Shortly after passing us the sirens faded into silence, allowing the subtle dancing and whispering of leaves and swaying of grasses to be heard once again, mixed with my percussive footfalls and the dainty tapping of dog toenails on asphalt. Soon we were miles down the road, far from the harshness of civilization. My tension level was almost back to barcalounger mode. My shoulders had left my ears and returned to join my back. Under my bald dome, pleasant thoughts were seriously considering a return.

Mrs. Beasley and I heard it at the same time. No... Yes. Machine gun fire. Ratatatatatatatatatat Ratatatatatata Ratatatata. They must be training. Mrs. Beasley is terrified of gunshots. Her ears went up, her tail tucked and she about-faced and broke into a run. Then the mortar fire began. Kabooooom. Kabooom. Ratatatat. How delightful, our own private war movie. It was time to turn back, very, very quickly. The sounds of battle followed us for another quarter of an hour. We made it back to the camp, er, car, exhausted and overwrought. And that concluded our healthful, tension-reducing constitutional for the evening. Next time I’ll just take the holodeck to Viet Nam and get it over with.

a blog is born

2004-05-10T15:07:00.000-07:00

i've been wanting to have a blog of my own for years, so naturally i'm starting this in the midst of a furiously busy time of the school year, when i have no time or more importantly, energy, or even more importantly, focus to indulge in such a thing. Typical.

I can already tell, a blog is a jealous mistress. The image comes to mind of the down-covered falcon chicks I saw last weekend, cheeping with all their might, beaks open and insisting to be filled, their non-stop noise demanding more and more and more...

But it's time to dash to night school, where I will teach until it's time to be taken up in front of this evening's school board meeting. Seems I'm Employee-of-the-Month, and I must go be praised, even if it means missing a big chunk of class time. One of those dubious distinctions, to be sure.

more worms later, kids, i promise...