Unfencing

School Answering Machine

2009-10-01T15:35:48Z

LOVE THIS!

The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver

2009-09-28T16:59:37Z

I just finished reading The Poisonwood Bible.

Amazing book. Superb book. Unspeakably sad book I don't think I will ever be able to read again. Had me sobbing helplessly for hours at more than one point, and one night in the middle of the book I ended up reversing childhood roles, going into my daughter's room, gathering her up in my arms, and taking her back to bed with me so I could sleep with my arms around her and feel safe.

And yet...while stretches of the book could not hold my interest (the entire novel is told in alternating first person accounts by a missionary's wife and her four daughters, dragged into the Congo in 1959...I only actually liked three of the daughters and only loved two, so while I listened well when my friends spoke I had trouble focusing on the other(s)...), there were these shining moments of acute truth and beauty throughout...Kingsolver understands a mother's heart, good and bad.

It's also a book that's gotten under my skin and into my gut, changing and affecting the way I look at the world I live in, and my own world's relationship (a fairly abusive one, at that) with the rest of the world, with the poor, with the earth...

A beautiful book. Read at your own risk.

I'm having a happy blog day!

2009-09-24T15:05:30Z

A big part of the reason I haven't been posting much here lately is that a few months ago I shifted over to another blogsite, greenmomintheburbs.wordpress.com, to do most of my green/crafty/food kind of blogging. (It's been going well over there, with a small but at least regular readership, and I've even had my first troll!) (whom I did not feed, so he went away.) So now this journal is more just about my life, and I don't have all that much to say, I guess, because I don't really have much of a life. :-)

But...just wanted to post a small squee that I was invited to be a monthly guest-poster on my favorite green blog, The Green Phone Booth. They are very cool women, and among the group they cover a lot of topics--I have enjoyed reading them for months, and now I get to write there as well. So come and visit!
--J

Peter and Paul, without Mommy...

2009-09-17T14:50:12Z

Sad news.

Mary Travers of Peter, Paul and Mary Dies at 72

By WILLIAM GRIMES

Published: September 16, 2009

Mary Travers, whose ringing, earnest vocals with the folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary made songs like “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “If I Had a Hammer” and “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” enduring anthems of the 1960s protest movement, died on Wednesday at Danbury Hospital in Connecticut. She was 72 and lived in Redding, Conn.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/17/arts/music/17travers.html?partner=rss

Wiser words never spoken

2009-09-15T15:56:39Z

From my friend Alan Hommerding's article in the autumn issue of AIM Magazine--

"There is an emerging scuffle...that some have referred to as re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. But when the deck chairs are skittering around, it's likely a sign that something is seriously wrong with the ship, so let's not ignore them."

--J

It took me a few days to actually READ Obama's education speech...

2009-09-14T18:25:27Z

But wow.

". Recently, 87 percent of Colorado teachers said that testing was crowding out subjects like music and art. But we need to look no further than MESA [Mapleton Expeditionary School of the Arts] to see that accountability does not need to come at the expense of a well-rounded education. It can help complete it — and it should. "...

"It begins with the understanding that from the moment our children step into a classroom, the single most important factor in determining their achievement is not the color of their skin or where they come from. It's not who their parents are or how much money they have.

"It's who their teacher is."...

..."And I will make this pledge as president to all who sign up: If you commit your life to teaching, America will commit to paying for your college education. "

***************

Okay, I think I love this man. Hell, even if only a tenth of the things he talked about in there actually happen, he's at least saying the right stuff. He gets it.

A G.I. Bill for teachers?? Huzzah, is all I can say.
(full text here http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_9405199)

FASCINATING article on race and children

2009-09-10T03:00:36Z

http://community.livejournal.com/blackfolk/7656648.html

This is really intriguing.

ZZZzzzz

2009-09-10T02:43:00Z

I'm so tired.

That's all.

I hate September.
--J

Writer's Block: I May Be Crazy

2009-08-31T00:44:37Z

What does this Rorschach blot look like to you?

View 538 Answers

A pair of Chihuahua/hummingbird hybrids sucking on a bellflower.

Deep Thoughts on travel and public restrooms

2009-08-31T00:25:16Z

So...do the women who go into public toilets and somehow feel the need to squat and contort and assume really bizarre positions in order to not sully their pristine thighs on the toilet seat realize that maybe if they didn't contort and twist like that and actually sat on the toilet, they would be less likely to miss and the seats would be a lot less gross for everyone else?

--J

Nonlinear thought

2009-08-29T21:35:46Z

A genuine conversation I had with the Peanut today:

She: Mommy, someday I will grow up to be as big as that tree.

Me: Wow, I hope not! Then you wouldn’t fit in the house any more! We’d have to rip out the floors and ceilings to make room for you!

She: (excited) Then we can build a new house! We can make the walls and ceilings and floors out of tissues.

Me: ???

She:…so then if someone comes in and has a cold, they can blow their nose on the walls! And then eat apples.

My daughter is so cool. :-)

When to be the pushy parent?

2009-08-29T21:28:36Z

Okay, so there have now been three days of first grade. His homework over the weekend was to work on "sight words." I heard this and groaned, because he was drilling sight words last fall, and effectively hasn't had to look at them since, because he's been, like, reading instead.

So we pull out the list of sight words (for the non-grade-schooled among us, those are words they're supposed to memorize without sounding out, just recognize at a glance), and Bear zooms through them at an alarming speed. Stuff like and, it, was, the, and so forth. The first page we have him read in order. The second page we start pointing at words in sequence trying to make silly sentences. ("We like to make with the first we can...er...okay, try again...you can be..." etc.) The third page, we grinned at him (knowing what was coming) and pointed to the page heading. He reads, without missing a beat, "Kindergarten Frequency Words." Then we turn over to the parent letter on the front, and he reads through that too with no difficulty, and it has words like "appropriate" and "comfortable" in it.

It also says that they will spend the next few weeks working on the kindergarten level sight words. I am slightly alarmed. The novelty of first grade is keeping his behavior good for the moment, but unless he has some challenging stuff to work on, he's gonna get bored really fast. And the teacher also mentioned on parent night that they wouldn't start doing real "math problems" (as in writing down figures and such) until after winter break.

I'm not sure what to do...do I wait and see what happens? Or do I make an appointment with the teacher now, before things go bad, and just try to have a talk with her? I mean, no teacher wants to talk to that parent who comes sweeping in and saying, "oh my goodness, my child is so gifted you know, we must challenge his intellect, and I'm afraid he won't be working to his full potential" and all that crap. But now as the parent, with the possible exception of the "gifted" part (I hate that word in its academic context; it's so loaded. Bear's very bright. And he's had good schooling up to now, that didn't hold him to someone else's idea of what level he should be learning on. Gifted? Yup. More gifted than the other kids in his class? Likely not so much.), it's sort of exactly what I"m feeling.

Any suggestions? Anyone been there?
peace,
J

First Grade...

2009-08-26T18:20:28Z

I love where we live.

I love that my son, starting first grade, won't be in a class full of Matthews and Caitlins and Jacobs--his classmates have names like Aziri, Samir, Rohan, Jose, and Asia. He'll get to grow up in an environment where white isn't necessarily normative, where people with different colored skin and accents different from his aren't aliens and "other" than he's used to. I know he still has the white male privilege thing and we'll work with that, but we're finally out of an "all white people" environment, and I'm so glad.

I can't believe, though, that I have to put him on a bus every day and send him off to other grownups...just so weird. It was different when I drove him and put him directly into the care of those grownups, now he gets on a bus.

Weird.
--J

A good article on "aversive racism"

2009-08-24T12:24:23Z

This is a good article:

John F. Dovidio and Samuel L. Gaertner, Color Blind or Just Plain Blind?: The Pernicious Nature of Contemporary Racism
academic.udayton.edu/race/01race/racism10.htm

(So sue me...one of the things that makes it helpful to me is that it is scholarly and straightforward, and not...angry.)

--J

Goin' Fishin'

2009-08-09T03:24:01Z

It's a figure of speech. We probably won't fish. Although we will go out in boats, and we will eat fish. But I'm going on vacation with the fambly, to lovely downeast Maine (Jealous, Reg? :-)) and then to Ocean City, Maryland. The wireless internet up there isn't so good, and besides, I need a little Away From LJ time anyhow...my friendslist is mostly fun, but things in some of the anti-oppression communities are getting so generally ugly and hateful that I just need to go away from them for a while. Not everybody in them, of course. But enough that the toxicity is wearing me out.

So I'm going away for a bit. That's the nice thing about LJ communities, or any internet community, for that matter: anyone, at any time, can choose to leave.

So I'm goin' fishin'.
--J

The rare forward that makes me think

2009-08-07T15:55:20Z

My folks sent me this; they are prone to sending the "Someone special sent me this and wanted me to send it to you, so if you don't send it to twelve special people in the next five minutes you're a loser" forwards, but this one was really interesting...

******

..something to think about...

Washington, DC Metro Station on a cold January morning in 2007. The man with a violin played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time approx. 2 thousand people went through the station, most of them on their way to work. After 3 minutes a middle aged man noticed there was a musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried to meet his schedule.
4 minutes later:
the violinist received his first dollar: a woman threw the money in the hat and, without stopping, continued to walk.
6 minutes:
A young man leaned against the wall to listen to him, then looked at his watch and started to walk again.

10 minutes:
A 3-year old boy stopped but his mother tugged him along hurriedly. The kid stopped to look at the violinist again, but the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk, turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. Every parent, without exception, forced their children to move on quickly.
45 minutes:
The musician played continuously. Only 6 people stopped and listened for a short while. About 20 gave money but continued to walk at their normal pace. The man collected a total of $32.
1 hour:
He finished playing and silence took over. No one noticed. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.

No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the greatest musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written, with a violin worth $3.5 million dollars. Two days before Joshua Bell sold out a theater in Boston where the seats averaged $100.

This is a true story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of a social experiment about perception, taste and people's priorities. The questions raised: in a common place environment at an inappropriate hour, do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize talent in an unexpected context?

(EDIT: Here's a link to a much more comprehensive Washington Post article about the experiment:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html )

Who am I?

2009-08-03T19:06:49Z

My husband remembers something one of his teachers told him in high school. Considering he barely paid attention in high school, this is saying something. Also that it has stuck in my brain so hard. It's this:

When I talk with you,
I am not who I think I am.
I am not who you think I am.
I am who I think you think I am.

On the one hand, utter bullshit. I choose to be who I am.

But the difference between the second and third statements, and the almost overwhelming tendency to yield to the third, hits home with appalling squirge.

The resurgence of lj conversations about race relations has also made me think of these three sentences a lot.

But no way could I explain why.
--J

Doh

2009-07-31T15:43:53Z

So I'm working on my Flemish costume, making my first t-smock using Drea Leed's authentically pieced pattern (http://www.elizabethancostume.net/smockpat/index.html) . It's actually fairly delightful--I'm getting a smock AND a lined partlet out of only 3 yards of material.

So last night I'm stitching away, and it's nearly done, and I try it on, and the biceps are too tight. As in, way ridiculously too tight. And I can't figure out why. So I put it aside, figuring I now have to make some extra gussets (which would look weird since it already has gussets), and I'll finish it tomorrow.

This morning the alarm goes off at 6:15am, much earlier than usual. My first two thoughts, both fairly irrelevant to waking up:

1. You need to remember your drum this morning.
2. Ya stupid moron, you sewed the sleeves on upside-down, with the bicep part where your wrists should be, and vice versa.

So now I have to disassemble pretty much the whole thing, re-gusset the sleeves at the correct end, re-sew the sleeves on, and try again. This is what happens when you save trees by not printing the directions and run back and forth from the sewing room to the computer, deciding sometimes that you don't need to do that because you know what you're doing. And when you don't plug your brain in. Doh. (But the nice flared sleeves were working so nicely... :-) The good news is that I will have nicely-fitting smock when this is all done.

peace,
J
at least I did remember my drum.

I like the Franciscans.

2009-07-31T15:34:19Z

I know a lot of Franciscans. They tend to be fairly appalling liturgists (with one notable exception), but they are invariably kinda sweet guys.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/28/AR2009072803220.html

Flemish common woman's dress...

2009-07-28T18:42:49Z

Okay, long story short, I'm probably going to re-vamp my front-lacing gown from the Faire into a Flemish common woman's overdress. I had some problems with the grommets, and the bodice is a little too big, and a couple of other things make me not so happy with it. I'm very happy with the back, though, so I don't want to deconstruct it completely. So I'll re-shape the front to be Flemish. (And make myself a new smock, and possibly an underskirt but more likely just a stomacher...)

So now I'm looking at everyone's research about the Flemish dress. There's www.elizabethancostume.net/lowerclass/flemish-dress.html, which also has directions, and there's http://www.festiveattyre.com/research/working.html, which I think also has directions but also has really good research, and then there's Kass McGann's Reconstructing History pattern (which I think is right on target--she theorizes that the common woman's partlet was not just about keeping her chest out of the sun, it actually functioned as a bra and was a real support garment. Going back and looking at paintings, I suspect she may be right.)

So I'm looking at pictures like these:

And I can't help but wonder...WHY are all these men grabbing at the Flemish common women's boobs? What is up with that?

--J
who actually could use a little boob-grabbing lately; things have been a little slow at home...maybe this dress wouldn't be such a bad idea?

Wedding fun

2009-07-24T15:31:01Z

Okay, this made me smile. Maybe I should have been scandalized, but I smiled instead.

Go Jimmy

2009-07-21T03:43:26Z

I love this.

http://www.politicsdaily.com/2009/07/20/jimmy-carter-leaves-church-over-treatment-of-women/

Excerpted:
"The truth is that male religious leaders have had -- and still have -- an option to interpret holy teachings either to exalt or subjugate women. They have, for their own selfish ends, overwhelmingly chosen the latter. Their continuing choice provides the foundation or justification for much of the pervasive persecution and abuse of women throughout the world. "

Go Jimmy.

So what the hell am I still doing here?
--J

Dance photos!

2009-07-16T14:28:47Z

Under the cut, a few for anyone who's interested...

Summer vacation?

2009-07-16T14:23:11Z

it's 9:10 on a Thursday morning. My kids are at day camp till 4, I am not expected at work today.

It's the first day of "summer break" for me.

First there was the convention, which sucked up most of June with busy-ness and extra work and hours and sweat and tears (95% gratis, by the way, which still sort of busts my buttons, mostly because when I said "yes" to the conducting part I didn't realize I was also saying yes to giving up the entire month of June), and then there was the convention itself the second week in July, and then there was the massive unending marathon staff meeting that was all day Tuesday and Wednesday of this week...and now it's just sort of Summer. Now I get to start doing what I usually do during the summer (usually during June!), calmly getting my office re-organized, looking at what we did last year, looking at what we want to do this year, ordering music, composing music, getting together with other musicians and talking about all of the above (okay, yeah, it's fun, but it's also an indispensible part of doing my job, the hanging out with other folks who do what I do. Cross-pollination, as it were. Creative and procreative intercourse. So to speak. :-) Also things like reading books, listening to music, just sitting and thinking, letting my brain do its underground work to recharge and rejuvenate for the ten month forced march that begins in August.

For the past 4 nights, I have slept well. Unmedicated, even un-herbed--I lie down, take my usual half hour or so (I hate that it takes me that long on a good night) to ruminate and quiet down my brain, and fall asleep till morning, wake up sleepy but rested. This is the hugest gift in the world for a chronic insomniac who never quite seems to get enough. (I'm thinking a nap later this morning might be a good idea too.)

Part of me wants to burst into activity, make sure I don't "waste" this free day. Fortunately, most of the other parts of me are stronger and are beating that part up with pillows and nerf balls till it shuts up and agrees to several hours of reading, dozing, tv-watching, and possibly sewing if I feel like it but probably not. (Our family costumes are done and ready to go, so why bother?) (Okay, I know why, because I just got my package from www.fabrics-store.com yesterday and there are about 11 yards of linen ready to be made into yet another chemise and gown. Yes, I cracked again; the doggy bag portion of that site is addictive, and when 4 or 5 yard pieces show up there, I tend to snatch them up, because I know I can make a gown out of that. But we will most likely only get to the Faire once; I'd hate to have to choose between gowns. I'd like to wear this one once at least, before I tear it apart and do something else with it--which I almost definitely will because YIPPEE I've lost enough weight that it's already a little big in the bodice and I need to either take it in or more likely cut it up into a Flemish overdress, which would solve the problem...) (But I digress...)

So I will stay home, lie around, maybe take the dogs for a nice long walk later but mostly just Enjoy Laziness for a whole day.

Bliss.
--J

I taught a class. I honestly did. OMG.

2009-07-13T23:03:59Z

I've officially completed my first professional engagement as a tribal belly dance teacher. And people had fun, and I think people felt good about themselves, and no one seemed to think I was a total idiot, and I didn't fall on my ass, and neither did any of my students.

In about an hour and a half we did a little slow work (taxeem and floreo mostly) and some fast work (egyptian, choo choo, hip bump, and shimmy), and by the end of the class we actually did a whole exchange of leadership thing and everyone tried it. (I didn't make them--I said that if you get the leadership spot and you don't want to do anything, you can always just keep going on around, but they all took it on!) And they looked pleased with themselves afterwards. And I had brought in a bunch of coin scarves, so most of the folks got to wear one and add a little jingle to things...

It was really fun. I want to do it again.

Wheeee!
--J