Christmas bounty

New Lens

school bipolar

Some days it is so low and hard. Yesterday, we had an assembly for a dead 8th grader... stabbed during a gang fight on Friday. My kids were bad all day, my room a disaster.

Today, we got supplies donated by very enthusiastic big wigs at a fortune 500 and my 8th grade girls were so excited by the knitting they learned they sat through a basketball game crowded around me knitting.... then they took it home for "homework".


I can barely keep up. My head is spinning.

Room's and paint

My Art room:




....it's true love.

Artsonia

http://www.artsonia.com/schools/school.asp?id=38800

Check it out! My kids have worked pretty hard so far and I am proud of their efforts.

of course, we can take 6th grade out of that particular remark.....

What's this?

new work? Can it be?

School Daze

It is probably the most challenging thing I have ever done....this teaching in D.C. I knew going in, of course, that it would be difficult, that D.C. is the 2nd worst district in the US but somehow that did not percolate. Now, however, I am faced daily with groups of children who have been trained to 'get by' not to ' do their best', trained to believe ( 8th grade told me this straight out) that to get their respect I must shout at them like animals, trained to react in anger and violence and give in to fits of rage.

Daily, I hold myself together and ask for their attention, daily I wait and wait and wait until they begin to yell at eachother for quiet. It is progress but it is so slow that I fear the time I have with them will be over before we get any art done.

8th grade, however, has really produced some excellent examples of fine drawing. I am proud of them and the work they are begining to do. Once they realized that getting by isn't enough for me, they buckled down. Now, I sitll hear " this is too hard" at least 20-30 times a day but they are doing it and redoing it when I ask.

Progress.

Slow....slow progress.

Still A Beautiful Life

Art teacher?

I am cleaning and sorting and painting and trying not to lose my mind in the SEA of trash and plaster that is my classroom and a contractor pokes his head through my door shouting," Art Teacher?" I look up all blown out and say "yes??"
"yea, How do you make black?"


I smile.
" It's all colors"

He shakes his head." oh i thought it was purple and green."

So then i explain that that IS mixing all colors and he grins and runs out shouting like a ten year old, " I KNEW IT!"

Beautiful Life

Now...

My morning and day is this: cereal and coffee and endless lesson planning. I forgot all the BS that is involved in a lesson plan, you must justify everything you are doing in minutia. You must plan out your every minute of a class period and explain why you are using it that way. This is good for the students, it's just a total P.I.T.A. for me.

oh well, I wont' lie, i love it. I get a thrill out of imagining the kids doing these lessons.

AND, i reconnected with a dear friend from college and serendipitously she passed a neat website my way. This.It's a connection between two women who have never met and they post an image a day and the image blend together into this awesome record of their twin paths. I am SOO teaching that to my 7th graders. oh yea.

WOOOOO

An ARTICLE on me!!

Sunday Morning

It's sunday, we are laying about in a state of total lethargy, feeling as though this is our right after weeks of travel, work and other busy time away from each other. Yes, it may be one in the afternoon but damnit, if we want to be laying around naked reading Cat Fancy and Twilight....so be it.

Suddenly at the door comes knocking and doorbell ringing. Insistent doorbell ringing. I am scrambling around trying to find clothing as the bell rings and rings and rings, in my panic I start to run downstairs in a t shirt and underwear, to which ( over her laughter) HH hollers "NO! Keziah! you're still half naked!"

When I finally get to the door dressed, sweaty and fully blown out, who do I find but Mary. Now, Mary lives next door. She is an elderly lady and apparently the sister of the man next door, the mentally challenged with a very confusing lisp sister. I kid you not with the lisp, I thought her name was Millie. There she stands, in her house dress with her traditional vacant smile and earnest expression.
" HI!"

I am bedumbed, " Hi Mary....."

She has stopped by to inform me that there are deer in my back yard and I should go look at them BUT to be VERY VERY quiet. VEWY VEWY QUIET!

She repeats this at least 5 times.

The upside to it being Mary at the door is that she seems to have not noticed my bedraggled appearance, anyone else and they surely would have wondered why, at 1 pm, I am still looking this sad.


The deer were very cute. and I was vewy quiet.

Daily Commute

It's not very green of me, I know, I burn easily a tank a week, if not more. It's only for two more weeks and then I'll be into a MUCH more reasonable 1/2 a tank a week or less but really it's just gratuitous. Not to mention the actual horror of commuting an hour each way through D.C. rushhour traffic, I can feel my blood pressure rising. I actually let loose a curse this morning of such virility that i somewhat shocked myself. I also think I must be upping my odds of potential car wreck, spending this much time on the road. That's how it works, right? I do know that i very nearly killed a pedestrian yesterday as he bolted across a four lane highway, highly unadvised behavior on his part. I also watched a truck sideswipe the car behind me this morning, good times on the beltway.

The upside to all this is that I'm thoroughly enjoying my book on CD, The Witches of Chiswick. It's bizarre and satirical and hilarious sometimes, narrated by the author it is full of dry humor and a truly ridiculous plotline. I find myself looking forward to my drive and bummed when i arrive home because i am hoping for the next chapter.

Good Morning

Let me just say how much I LOVE my shower in the morning. On days when I get the chance to shower during daylight, that is. It is flooded with warm yellow light and so bright that despite my exhaustion I cannot help but to feel as though the world is the most wonderful place and my day will glorious. The feeling doesn't last much further than the bathroom but it is EUPHORIC.

I am almost a week into HH being away in the UK and aside from a few sobfests, I'm doing ok. I do wish so much that I could be there, we conferenced this morning and since she has a laptop she took it to the window and showed me the view....beautiful of course. I love modern technology by the way. Conferencing makes me happy and terribly sad at the same time. I am so happy to see her face and hear her voice at the same time but also it just makes me feel the empty air around me that much more.

This weekend, I am a Domestic Dorothy. I have to :

1. stain the new bed frame
2. pull the weeds on the front walk
3. plant herbs in the backyard
4. lesson plan
5. knit the orange scarf
6. get birdseed
7. get window frosting stuff


Yep. Domestic Dorothy

You Said

One night as we were stumbling home in our heels and gucci boots, you said to me, " What will happen when we are too old to dance away our sorrow?" and I said to you, "Never. We will never be too old".

Now, you still do and I sit here feeling nostalgic and wondering, what do I do now? Because of course, I know it can't last forever and its time is gone but now what?

Because honestly, some nights, I want to put on my 4 inch red heels and my trashy and tight black shirts and dance until 6 am to whatever pop star is about to fall embarrassingly in the next six months until I can't remember why I am dancing. Until all I know is that sweat is running down my face and the back of my knees and I feel pure and burned out.

I miss that and I miss you.

Many others

are doing so you know...I'm a follower. A daily self portrait for 6 months to a year.

Winds of Change

Yes, my life is a tornado of rapid change and while it is very overwhelming some days, it also just feels right. I am moving tomorrow, into a lovely cape cod that I ADORE with neighbors named 'butterworth' and lovely rose bushes in need of pruning. I am starting a new position in about a month and a half and my brain is FULL of a storm of ideas, but it looks like they will have to be executed in paper and pencil since we have no budget and no supplies. Time to look into grants!

I am just so ready for this shift. I have spent 4 lovely years with the babies and learned a lot about myself and about running a household. I have slowed down emotionally and leveled out considerably. I have my time as a nanny/housewife to thank for that. I am grateful for the quiet suburban life I've led for the last 4 years. I am ready now to take on the challenge of the city and its poverty and grime and hopefully make a difference. I cannot wait to get into my new room and set it up for kids!!

I heart change!!

Some People

Really are that dumb.

It staggers me to realize that some people don't WANT to know, they are happily, stubbornly ignorant and insist on staying that way to the point of viewing your efforts to inform them or expose them as an attack on their person.

I cannot believe it. and yet there it is, right in front of me. Walking, talking and babbling on at the mouth with a stream of nonsense.


ridiculous.

and by the way. even wild animals know that meat rots if you leave it around.

Learning

Slowly I learn more and more about Phtoshop. The potential of what you can accomplish is spectacualr. The amount I understand and can employ reliably is minimal.

On Stage

A few weeks ago, I was driving home from work and heard a radio announce for a singer/songwriter to perform in my town. This particular artist is a fav of HH and we have listened to her soulful tunes many a car ride. I quickly hurried home and snapped up tickets and then proceeded to work desperately at keeping this a secret from HH. I made it, Those who know me well will be shocked at this since i generally cannot keep a secret this well and if pressed will immediately spill the beans. THere are reasons I am not an international spy.

We arrived at the venue last night, in our weeknight finest, and she says "OH i know what we're doing". Now, I am a little sad but of course how long can you keep the secret? Till the artist walks on stage? probably not. We go in, get our 'real' tickets and stand around killing time until they open the doors. HH picks up a brochure on upcoming shows at the venue and lets out a squeal quickly followed by a frustrated " oh we missed it". I say...what? " Ayo is playing here..." and i say, "No Shit" since that is who we are there to see and she told me she had it figured out.

Yes, she hadn't figured it out and was thrilled to discover that we were in fact seeing Ayo together that very night.

and it was spectacular. What a talent and a true pleasure to watch perform. Such a fun personality and a real charm and wit.

Overall.... just a lovely concert.

sweaty toes

Some days are made for laying about and talking about silly things and walking on the ceiling, usually these days are a sunday. I think perhaps, those Sundays are the days to live for. The days that wash away the other days, the days that are long and lazy and lovely.

and so...

I am employed!
Just like that. I will be starting at a new elementary in the fall.


How do you like that?

Portraiture in the Grass

The heat has finally broken and so we spent a delicious mornign in the grass working on self portraits.

Laurens work pre teaching:


and post teaching:




As we can see a much more proportional image!!

she rules.

In personal news....not a lot really since I've been working since 6:30 Monday morning. When both my husbands go on travel my life just shrivels down into a singleparenthood mime. I did get a lovely night in with HH and that offset the isolation of motherhood for a few hours.

I am still waiting on schools to ring back, the good/bad news is that according to the several teachers I have consulted this is normal and it may even be another week or so before i might hear. I am going to another placement fair this weekend so we will see.

to eat or not to eat

So,

my health is not good, and has not been good in a long time. This is largely due to my diet as a vegetarian. I know this, we all know this and yet i mantain my status for no particular reason. Perhaps, I am thinking, it is time to give up the ghost and move into a different chapter of my life. A meat eating chapter.

i gave up meat 7 years ago on my return from Italy. I remember the last piece of meat I ate. I can still almost taste it. I love the flavor of meat and have been drooling over others meals for years. I have no moral misgivings about meat consumption, there is a food chain, and we are part of it and as far as the meat industry goes, I have no intention of eating meat that comes out of it.

I'm looking at CSA's.

I might just eat some chicken next week.

More of the Same

After being asked again yesterday if I had noticed that I was white, I came home in a bit of a funk, to say the least. The woman who asked was very polite about it but nonetheless informed me that I would have trouble in the classroom and was I afraid of african american children?

I am irritated.
I am saddened.
I am frustrated.
I am questioning myself.

This is not what I want out of a teaching experience, I don't want to be questioned not on my abilities as a teacher or as an artist but on my skin color. This is ridiculous.

I've spent my entire work history and training working with urban, diverse populations. I've read a bazillion books on the subject, lectured on the subject and am all around well informed. A principal I interviewed with yesterday was african american. This was her first year in an urban school. I can garuntee you she did not sit through this kind of questioning. I have more urban experience than she does.

Part of me is angry and proud and saying, F this. Part of me is worried for our future and saying, I'll show you.

I don't know which part is winning right now. I think the worried part because that's the part that always wins.



I just don't know.
My optimism is faltering.

The City

I went on my first interview yesterday, I have two more this afternoon. It was overall an unique experience, in that some of the questions I was prepared for and some totally caught me off gaurd and a few were the classic interview questions that somehow still surprised me. The most unsettling question was this: "Some of our students have never had a white teacher before and it will be an issue in the classroom, how will you respond when the children start to call you names?"

Now, having gone to Buff State and lived in Porter hall where I got called names every day for being white, that part is not the unsettling part to me. Nor is any real classroom management issue because I'm a hardass and I'm fine with that. I'm not sure exactly why I was surprised by the question but I realized that it had never occured to me that some children never have white teachers. Why this hasn't made it into my brain...who knows... but it just was a totally foreign concept. So I sat there like a stump for a few seconds, reeling at the new info before pulling myself together and giving out a good teacher answer. Then the principal asked me if I understood the question, at which point I faltered because I thought I had but now I wasn't sure. He rephrased and added a translation of what the VP had said since he assumed I hadn't understood the slang she used in her original question. I smiled and then without thinking said, " Listen, I know I'm pale but I still know what's going on". This caused the entire room to laugh and relax and that was that.

I haven't been reminded of my whiteness in a long time, not since school #3, where the kids assured me that I wasn't white, I was pale. This was a critical difference to them and I learned slowly what they meant by it. Now, it seems I must start again with children who have no experience with white people, this is a scary thought. Am I up to this task? Am I a good ambassador? Can I relate and teach them well?

This is a really intense experience for me and I am filled with qualms but also excitement because I do think I can handle this. HH is very unhappy about the situation and actually threaten to get 3 jobs when i told her I went through a metal detector to get into school. I tried to tell her that this will be true of all the schools but she is having none of it. She has also threaten to make me wear a flack jacket to work. I think she is exagerating.....maybe.

Goober and Rainbow

The other night HH and I drag our beleaguered selves to blockbuster to rent what should be a mindless adventure in film. Instead, we find ourselves, despite a self imposed 10 minute limit, stuck in "the line from hell" with two of the oddest clerks ever. Now this is including the girl who informed me that I didn't want to rent Southland Tales because "it bashes republicans". Here is clerk #1; a soft, doughy man of about 40-55 with a shapeless haircut to match his body and face. He is painfully slow at every process a clerk must engage in. Here is clerk #2; a short, sturdy man of about 20-28, with long ratty hair in a pony, a hair clip attached to his ear and many a rainbow bracelet circling his meaty arms. He also has a heavy, if unidentifiable accent.

Now, HH lets out a loud and terribly rude giggle and the appearance of clerk #2 and then I am forced to pretend as tho i have said something very witty and act all casual and not as tho my companion is laughing in clerks face. While we are controlling ourselves, clerk #1 seems to be having difficulty finishing the transaction he started back in the bronze age.

Clerk #1: hmmmmmmmmm this isn't working.....
he pauses to check behind him and then makes a great and slow show of staring up into the completely blackened night sky
Clerk #1: weeeell, it isn't raining out....
more sky searching
Clerk #1: it's not snowing either.....


Mind you, its June. Nice deductive reasoning goober, now move it along!!


Either way, the end result was thanks to the weather/ lack of weather/lack of wits the system failed to allow me to rent anything so we went home and watched the strangely compelling dog groomer reality show hosted by Jai of the Fab five. What has happened to his career, btw?

Papertrail

I am buried underneath piles and piles of my own paperwork. Resumes, applications, packets and portfolios. Transcripts, letters of recommendation and files of photographs and artwork to be clipped.

I am so very tired of this and at the same time I am functioning in a state of heightened panic because i have deadlines and I am perhaps already too late.

Hire me. Interview me at least.

please.

Green

Sometimes I listen to my friends and close ones fly off the pan handle about various things and think...yea I feel that but my you're worked up! Sometimes I get worked up too.

Yesterday was one of those days where everything just kept getting me worked up. It all started with the new issue of Mothering that has Ms. DiFranco on the cover with her partner and their child. We picked up the issue at our local whole foods while we were conscientiously buying organic dairy products and grass fed beef. While HH was making lunch, I perused the issue, starting of course with the article on Ani and backtracking to the open letters section. Here I find a letter by a woman who is enraged by the number of coupons she is receiving for formula and in fact went so far as to collect them in garbage bags and shred them This, in turn, enrages me. What kind of a socially conscious individual would shred hundreds of dollars worth of coupons? Is this individual unaware of the hundreds, perhaps thousands of women who are either unable to breast feed or not raising children they bore? Is she unaware of the thousands of children in the foster system who are in desperate need of formula and the foster parents who are given 200 a month to feed and clothe these children? A sum of money which barely covers a few onesies and a pair of shoes much less enough formula and diapers for an entire month. Is she so isolated that she does not understand that while SHE may be lucky enough to both breast feed and pump ( because she has the luxury of working part time) many women are not so lucky and NEED formula. WHAT A SELFISH BITCH. She couldn't have seen her way to donating those coupons? She couldn't have managed to find a way to give those free cans of formula to children that actually need it? No, because she is the only person on the planet and how dare a formula company assume she might need their services?

So after I finished my rant about the intensely self-absorbed green housewives of america, my roommate wandered into the kitchen and announced that she was not going to vote for Hil because "the world isn't ready for a female leader" and " other countries won't take us seriously if we have a female president". At which point a bomb of shocked silence exploded over the kitchen. Before I could close my mouth and swallow, HH had launched into a list of current female leaders and historical ones, their locations in the world and how most of the world in fact, does take a woman as a leader quite seriously, more seriously in fact, than America does. I seconded and added to the list of names and countries as my unsuspecting roommate failed to comprehend what we were saying. She literally could not process the information, or comprehend that women were in power somewhere else...where?... in the world. I followed this discussion with a printed list of female world leaders, which I casually slipped under her door.

And of course, after these there is one more. We are driving along talking about our mutual soapbox-drama and what is in the lane next to us but a PRIUS. A vehicle that makes HH simply detonate. and what is happening in the prius? A teenager is chewing chunks of his styrofoam cup and spitting them out of the window onto the ground. Yup. That about sums it up folks.

I only tapped you!

So I am driving along the other day, on my way hoe from work and as is sometimes the case the main drag back to my house is stuffed with vehicles. We are bumper to bumper as tho we live in NYC and not in the sleepy nook of Annapolis. Admittedly, I am tired and distracted and not paying attention really...since we are not moving I feel fairly safe in this state of being. FOOLISHLY. So as I'm sitting there the car in front of me suddenly shifts into park and the woman driving gets out looking furious and starts stomping towards my car. I blink and start to wonder... what is she doing? Loudly she begins to yell as she stomps along " YOU HIT MY CAR!!" I look at her in wonder. I look at her car. I look to the car next to me, the man nods while trying unsuccessfully to keep the smirk from his face. I look back to the now very close and irate face out my window and smile. The woman must actually wipe DUST from her bumper in order to inspect the 'damage' I have inflicted upon her at .5 mph. Now I offer her my insurance information as it becomes clear that even tho there is not a mark on her CHEVY IMPALA she is going to throw a full blown temper tantrum. She refuses my information and insists on calling the cops. I would take a moment to point out that all this is happening in the driving lane since she is also refusing to pull off into the parking lot that is right next to us as though her vehicle has been totalled by my massive collision with her.

By the time we do get pulled over, I have now officially had the raddish with this woman is alternately lecturing me on driving and flying off the pan handle about various car related delusions. I make a show of taking out my logic problems book and setting to work as though I can wait all day for her dramatic little ass, this serves only to further infuriate her as I was hoping it would. The police show up and are thoroughly confounded by the incident as no damage has occured and they don't know why they are there. I smile and return to my logic problems. She launches into a fresh tantrum on crazy white girls.

In the end the police filed a report to make her happy, waited for her to leave and then laughed their asses off and told me not worry about it. Overall 40 minutes of my life I may never get back but were very entertaining.

Other work and Rain

It's raining and the sound is lovely against the roof of the love nest, I almost forget the sound of rain and how peaceful it can be until I lay in my warm bed, underneath several lovely layers of blankets and cuddle up with my furry Artemesia and listen to just the sound of the rain.

The love nest makes me happy. It is a lovely room and I am grateful for it. If only the rest of the house fell in line. One does grow quite tired of pulling hair out of a drain that doesn't belong to them or to their sig. other or to even the roommate. I dislike the owner of the hair and I dislike her perpetual presence in my home. The slimy, clotted coils of her hair in my drain are only a reminder of her being. Drain-o is NOT enough to rid my of this. Neither is a hairpin poking around in the drain and apparently neither is a hair trap over the drain. Because you see, somehow it is not obvious to this shedding lady what the purpose of a hair trap is and so she simply removes the trap ( full of hair) and sets it on the side of the drain and then showers away letting new, copious amounts of her hateful hair fall down our drain.

Yes. I dislike this girl.

on the upside:

Abandoned

Ok...I didn't exactly abandon this blog, more like to an extended break from it. You see a few things came up and then a few more and then to my complete surprise one very big thing came up and then lasted ... well... indefinately. So. Here I am many months later with more than I am able to really cover in an update having happened. The shortest possible version is I have been working on my photography aggressively and now sell to a stock agency as well as shoot as regularly as I could want, I visited my buddy Dave in Hawaii and had multiple life revelations and yes I started something with someone and its BIG and I'm actually quite quite pleased with myself.

Overall the last ...6?... months have just been chugging right along and it's funny because some decisions just get made for me because things happen and the time is right and then WAPOW decision made! Other things jus become too obvious for words and then no decision at all is really being made, its just the thing that is coming next.

I have decided that now is the time to move forward with my life and as vaguely as I can, I'll say that changes are a'coming and I am thrilled about them. Now perhaps, I should be more frightened than I am ( which is not really at all) but I'm not, and I've just decided that really it's time to leap over the edge and enoy the fall.



The work: