SATURDAY MORNING RAMBLE

Pre-Script:  If all you're interested in reading is John's Weekend Assignment, scroll down to the end of the post, paragraph six.  The rest is truly stream of semi-conscious ramble.  Of course, it's totally fascinating, but......

So, I've become a once-a-week journaler, it would seem.  Though I have made a couple of posts in The BiblioPhiles over the past week.  I thought once the election was over, I'd have more time in my life - but this proves not to be the case.  I'm instead devoting more time and attention to my Real Jobs, and that's a good thing.  Hard to believe the semester is almost at an end, but it is, with a truncated week for Thanksgiving, then only two full weeks after that.  Crunch time, trying to cram in everything that needs doing before I have to enter those grades into the system. 

And, my work with the after-school kids could easily take up any time I'm willing to devote to it.  They need so much, are eager for so much - so open, interested, interesting.  Yesterday we continued learning about Indians, Native Americans, with a film about young Indian PowWow dancers, a story about a historical young Indian's manhood ceremonies (most of these kids are boys), and pictures from a Dover coloring book of famous historical Indians.  I was a little worried about coloring as an activity, thinking they might feel themselves too old - but these are extremely sophisticated pictures, challenging to color, with biographical information included.  They were totally enthusiastic, wanting more than one apiece, wanting to take the book to the Post Office and make more copies.  Imagine that.  I made them more copies on the agency's machine, and they all ended up with three or four of them.  No one wanted to leave on the early bus, the whole group stayed 45 more minutes to finish what they were doing.  This is a wonderful age group (9 to 12), old enough to be interested in learning everything, young enough to be read to, to color, to not yet be jaded (or have to appear so).  When I was much younger and first teaching, I was interested in the Alternative School Movement:  John Holt, Spring Hill, etc.  I still think it was the right direction for schools, and some of it did filter in. Fridays will be our Alternative School days.  My next move is to ask the kids what they themselves would like to do with our Fridays.  After they finish telling me: "eat pizza, watch cartoons, go outside and play," they'll get down to the real business of letting me know some stuff they're really interested in.  And, goddamn it, we've got to get some money for field trips.  This is ridiculous.

Speaking of older kids (or, alluding to them), every so often during the week some kids from Sussex Tech High School show up to volunteer to work with us on homework help.  These are some fine examples of young people, let me say right now.  It's so good for the children to have them working with them, then after the work is done, playing with them.  I am a firm believer in learning through play - and have brought in math games, word games, card games, to occupy them in groups when homework is finished.  To have a cool big guy play sentence cubes with you is a joy and a treat.  Also an incentive to finish your homework and get it checked over.  Last week when we had two of these volunteers with us we ended up with a giant two-team Uno game.  Is this education?  Of course it is.  Strategy, planning, thinking skills, team work, getting along with others.  All important parts of education. 

Rambling.  Stream of semi-conscious drifting.  I can't talk about politics.  My main feeling about politics is nausea.  I begin each morning reading news: mainstream, alternative stream, beyond-the-fringe stream, and all of it makes me want to hurl.  Dude, where's my country?  Please, let me wake up from this nightmare soon. Our group that began last spring as Sussex County for Kerry is getting together after T'giving to discuss What Now?  Do we want to continue?  If so As what?  To what purpose?  etc.   My sister in D.C. is hosting a house party tomorrow for MoveOn.org to ask the same questions.  Delaware is a "blue state" only in the two counties north of us.  Here in Sussex county we might as well be living in, oh, I don't know - Arkansas?  Alabama?  The vote here went to Bush, and to all the other conservative, Republican, candidates.  Not one of the candidates we worked for locally won.  Not district candidates to the State leg, not the governor (though she did win in the state, thank goddess), not county council candidates.  Okay, no, two county council candidates did win, both of them entrenched Democratic GOB's (if you live in one of those elitist states, you may not know the acronym:  Good Old Boy).  So, yeah, now what?  Where do we go from here?  For me personally, where I go from here is to work within my own sphere, with those I can reach.  The immigrant community, the children of the immigrant community.  The group that formed here earlier this year over the incredible Christian intolerance that has manifested itself toward Jewish and Muslim children in our local school systems. I have not attended meetings of this group during the fall, and have lost touch.  But I intend to remedy that quickly. 

I watched Bill Moyers last night, as always - can he truly intend to retire the end of next month?  He was as spittingly angry over the events of the past week as I am.  See me not talking about politics?  Not talking about appointments and resignations, and House ethics rule changes, and Tom Delay and Condoleeza Rice and blowing up mosques and killing civilian Iraqui families and Donald Rumsfeld is still there and now we have AG as the AG?   No, I'm going to go read other people's blogs, and see them talking about politics.  See if anyone has had a stroke yet.

And while I'm rambling, I'm going to do John Scalzi's weekend assignment.  The topic is to discuss something for which you're actually grateful - but it's not one of those usual things, like family, health, a paycheck every now and then, food on the table, gas in the car.  And I do have one of those.  It's one that's so unusual it may sound unfilial, uncaring, callous.  At the time it happened I was anything but grateful; I was in fact devastated, ruined, my world torn to shreds.  It took me years to recover and fully function.  Now, however, I can feel a strange sort of thankfulness to my parents for dying when I was so young.  My parents were quite a bit older than most, they married older, had children older, and died when we were young, that is - young to lose one's parents.  I was 38, my youngest sister only 28.   My parents were really too young to die, and I hope to defeat my inherited genes and live a lot longer than they did.  My father, who died first, was not much older than I am now.  So, grateful?  you ask.  Yes, as I now see, and have seen for some time, my coeval friends struggling to take care of aged and ailing parents while coping with their own changing lives at the same time, I realize what a huge problem I was spared. That is what I am grateful for:  not their deaths - there is not a day of my life that I don't in some way think of and mourn my mother - but the chance they gave me to have this time in my life to move into my own aging, to enjoy grandchildren, senior discounts, take trips, etc., with selfishness and what grace I can muster.  One of our dear friends, who is ten years older than I am, has only this year been released from the tyranny of caring for a 97 year old father who in mind and personality had long since ceased to be the father she had known and loved.  Caring for him entailed leaving her job, partner, life, in New England to live with him in Florida for extended periods of time.   Other friends have parents with Alzheimer's, I see their lives now consumed with worry, grief, anguish.  I have been given a great gift, by those who gave me life to begin with - time in the later years to enjoy my own interests, activities and other people I love.  Even if I am currently still spending this time working, it is work I love, and to which I am happy to be able to devote myself.   So, Kathleen and Bill, wherever you are - I hope it's a better place in every way than this one, but thanks for what I have here now.