Pride

In August, 2005, the citizens of New Orleans were hit by a hurricane. It was made all the more devastating because they had actually thought that it was going to pass them by right up to the last day, when the path of the hurricane pointed itself right for New Orleans. The devastation was also worse because of New Orleans' failed levee systems. (My sister pointed me to a book about that.)

Citizens had begun the day as normal. Some had actually left the city for cover, but many had not. It had been a year of close calls and false promises on the part of the weather, and many people didn't think that anything of any magnitude would occur.

We were wrong.

Today, more than five years after the disaster area that Katrina and New Orleans' failed levee systems left behind, people are still struggling to survive in a city that has been mostly forgotten by FEMA and our ADD media in favor of Haiti, Japan, Iraq, Iran, Libya, and the many protests occurring in our world.

But people are helping. My sister went to New Orleans as part of her school even before the hurricane hit, and worked with Catholic Charities.

Time passed. My English and Journalism major sister graduated and went to work at Bernstein Global Financial in Chicago, a wealth management company.

And for a while my family didn't hear anything about New Orleans. Until the hurricane hit in 2005.

Two years ago, my sister moved to New Orleans to continue what she had done in school; helping people rebuild their homes, their lives, and their communities. She still worked with Catholic Charities. And in time she became the volunteer coordinator in Operation Helping Hands.
And even though I'd be proud of my siblings no matter what they did or where they went, I think that made me the proudest.

I visited her last year for spring break for a week; my parents had visited her for Mardi Gras, just a week or two earlier. They left work boots from my dad's company (Link!) and took with them the knowledge that my sister was happy and safe. When I went, I worked for a day or so. I learned how to prime a house and how to paint windows. I also learned a lot about my sister.

See, when I was a kid, I used to think she was perfect. She got good grades, didn't stay out too late, and I never saw her get into a fight with my parents. But last year I learned something even better. My sister isn't perfect. Like me, she has a tendency of wearing very nice clothes to paint houses or sets and getting them covered in dust and paint and wood glue. But she is pretty damn awesome.

Operation Helping Hands was only supposed to last for four more years, but they've instead decided to close in two years. The reason? When the initial surge of donations and volunteer work began, a lot of drywall was donated from China. And that drywall had unsafe levels of sulfur in it. The sulfuric acid that it eventually exudes corrodes metal. Operation Helping Hands has decided to replace all of the unsafe drywall that they used then with safe drywall, and that's going to use up the rest of the grants.

So that leaves quite a few volunteers in that program wondering "Where do we go from here?" The end of that time limit is coming up faster than you'd think.

And so my sister is returning to Chicago.

And after two years, her handprint is joining the handprints of other volunteers who have come to work with the great people at Operation Helping Hands.
And just like my sister, it's pretty damn awesome.



(Edit: A few hours after I posted, my sister emailed me with a few details I got wrong. So here's to the edit button on the blog. :) Hopefully this satisfies both of us.)

And here's a shout out to the many volunteer programs that are still fighting Hurricane Katrina's devastating aftereffects: Project Homecoming, Lowernine, United Saints Recovery Project, Beacon of Hope, Habitat for Humanity and Phoenix of New Orleans. You guys are great! :)

Minor Disagreement

"And I'm sorry, but I don't want to have this argument anymore. I might feel..." Searching for the words to say how I feel, what I feel. Right now the only thing I can think of, honestly, is tense and uncomfortable. Why do you have to talk about this now? Why did you have to spoil this now? I can't eat - I look down at my half-eaten pepperoni pizza slice on my plate, next to it the grapes. It had made me so happy when I'd realized that the dining center had had them.
I can't eat.
"badly for the fact that you had to wake up, but we have rules in our room now." I'm still fumbling for words. Words - spoken words - are never your problem. And when I'm talking in front of three people, one of whom are angry, two of whom are, I know, judging, weighing, measuring in that way that our gender has...the words stick in my throat along with the partially digested grape.
You say something to the judge, say it again, there's a question. I know these things but they're already fading in my head.
At this moment I can think only of escape. It's always been my habit to run from these things, these conflicts that make up our lives. But I'm serving no good here but to repeat myself.
"See, we have these commandments in our room. And we've been asking people to stop leaving garbage in our room for a while now, because we have to clean it up..."
"But there were *5* other people in that room, and *I* had to wake up..."
"And I don't want to argue about it anymore. I'm not going to apologize for it."
Awkward tense silence to match the tenseness in my stomach. I'm not done with my plate but I'm done with my food.
I get up, walk to the dish area, put my dishes down. I can't even pause long enough to put them on the conveyor belt, and then I'm walking - not running- walking briskly down the stairs, through the tunnels.
In the elevator I can put a hand to my stomach, a fist to mirror the fist in my gut and my head and knotted around my feelings. It's hard to disagree with a friend - I have gone from having none to having many in what feels like a very short time, and I'm still terrified of losing the ones I have.
I will mourn this, angst over this, and finally write it down, trying to work out the tenseness in my stomach.
You won't remember this.

Weird Dream from when I was a kid.

Well, kid meaning younger than I am now. But still.


When I was a kid, I had this dream that I was hanging out with this six foot tall Aryan (His hair was brown. His eyes were brown. He had really cool eyebrows. I don't know why I assigned him as "Aryan," I just did.), discussing the comical merits of Robin Williams in front of a huge poster of his movies.

Technically, the werewolf was an assassin who was hired to kill me, so while we were hanging out discussing Robin Williams, his decrepit boss starts hissing at him to do his job already. But I had come prepared.

For earlier, (Yes, my dreams have plot and flashbacks) I had been running through some tunnels when I was tackled by this net that forced me to only tell the truth, and the leader of the people with the net gave me these crazy colorful beads that I stuck in my pocket.

So I had these beads, and as the old guy's freaking out at me, I start chucking them at him. And they burn like fire. Presumably he died.

My subconscious has some serious issues.

Musette

A girl walks through a deep forest, humming a song that her mother taught her.
In the distance, birds trill. Closer still, the sounds of young animal footsteps echo merrily against the caverns of dark growing green. The sunlight casts green dappled light onto the girl's freckled skin as she walks easily through these woods. Her step is light and sure and crunches the leaves and branches underfoot.
Everything is as it should be, as it has been, as it will be.
And then it changes.
A cloud passes overhead, and the light that was green becomes dark and brooding and full of mystery.
The girl is frightened, but still hums, even as the birds begin to quiet and the animals seek out shelter against what they sense as a coming storm. The song that the girl hums is like a bulwark against the fear and mistrust of the mystery inherent in the darkness that begins to stretch underfoot. Shadows lengthen. Branches become claws. A hollow wind begins, chilling the air as the darkness chills the light, turns innocent mystery to something darker still.
The song dies.

The tale of the swim trunks.

I might draw pictures, but right now I'm too busy. And my drawing style's changing, but I have to figure out how to draw everything again.

So.

The tale of the swim trunks.
*Dum Dum Dum*

One day I woke up and looked outside on a cool morning near the end of summer to find a pair of wet navy blue swim trunks tossed casually by my window.

I don't know whose they are. Or where they came from.

Frankly, I don't want to know, because all the stories in my head about it sound much better than the real story could ever be. Most of them involve a streaker. In the dead of night.

But they were by my window, and by my window they remained. For about a week they were the subject of quite a few facebook posts, but then I got distracted by something shiny and forgot about them.

Summer changed into Fall and then snow covered up the snow trunks abandoned outside my window.

And I forgot about them entirely for several freezing months of pain and despair and wind and flat (except for that lovely week when I went to visit my sister in New Orleans...) and...okay, I ran out of adjectives.

Anyway, I forgot about them until there was a sudden thaw. I looked out my window, and lo and behold! The trunks were partially uncovered...still lying outside my window.

And they became my main griping subject for the next week or so, until one lovely (rather stressful) false spring day. I walked into my room to see two young gentlemen outside my window.

They picked up the swim trunks, laughed a bit, and then PUT THEM BACK outside my window. Like I needed them for some bizarre type of EXTERIOR DECORATING.

"Oh yes, move the trunks just a little to the left...now to the right...yes that's perfect. Now your room's positive energy will stay in, and the negative energy will flow out, thanks to these navy blue swim trunks crumpled delicately outside your main energy portal..."

So my mind may or may not have broken. Just a little. So I made a sign (misspelling "swim" once and "please" twice)

PLEAS PLESE PLEASE TAKE THE
SMIW SWIM TRUNKS
I DON’T WANT THEM

And then I waited. Two days.

And then they disappeared.

I did a little dance, and removed the sign from my window, confident that the drama of the swim trunks was over.

A day later:

My neighbor walks into my room.

"You're a bitch."

I jolt upright. While insults and commentary like this are actually fairly common in our friendship, I'm reasonably sure I haven't done anything to warrant this. I say (quite cleverly,) "What?"

"The fucking swim trunks are outside my window now!"

"WHAT?"

Totally wasn't my fault. :D

I have no idea how - or if - she got rid of the swim trunks.

Personally, I think that they just gained a type of sentience over the winter, and seeing that they weren't wanted, simply started lurching on.

If you see them on the road, be nice to them.

Pick Up the Pieces

Osama Bin Ladin is dead.

So yay and everything. A man who probably wouldn't have been able to become so powerful without our original military/weapon help is now dead.

The war's not over. None of the wars are over. Iraq, Libya back-up, revolutions in Middle East, the War on Terrorism (Thanks, Bush, for declaring war on a concept.) Soldiers are still everywhere, still fighting so we can live in our suburban houses with our two door garage and our 2.7 children and don't have to get touched by anything that isn't "clean," isn't "right" for our kids. I bet their families are celebrating. They can come home, right? Nope.

We still have a national debt that our *children* won't be able to pay off - and it's rising.

And did you know New Orleans is *still* rebuilding? Yeah, six years later. Thanks, FEMA.

Plus, you know, the 857 tornadoes last month kind of screwed our "great nation" over in a big way. Whole towns have been destroyed. Wiped off the map. People were killed, are dead. Yeah, I bet their families are celebrating. While they're trying to salvage what they can from the wreckage of their lives. Because, hey, rains are coming...which will destroy whatever they have left out.

That's just the US. Just a small part of what's wrong.

And the thing that's right is that we're celebrating a man's death?

Because he became what we probably made him to be?

National Holiday? What will we call it? Yay It's Over Day? Yes He's Dead Day? How about War Win? Except the war isn't over, is it? And we haven't won it yet, I don't care what the press releases say.

So yay. He's dead. See me waving my tiny little American flag in the parade as they march with a funeral procession.

See me cheering.

Can we pick up the pieces *now*?

So. Uhm. Yeah.

Right, so I know I said I was going to do a few posts of real political import.
But I'm a college student. I can do politics for only a few hours at a stretch, and I had an intense debate (series of intense debates) about Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game earlier today. And I have a Religions quiz for tomorrow that I should be studying for anyhow.

So I'm not.

This is what's new with me in college.
Hrm.
I'm taking a Creative Writing Class...and we have fiction workshops tomorrow...on my story, so I'm properly worried now. Also, there's the Inquiry to Religions quiz, which I've only half-assedly studied for. And then there's ISP.
And then I need to find the Housing offices because I did something stupid when recontracting for next year that I'm not talking about anymore.

But after that I get to talk to my mommy on facebook, which is infinitely yay.

So, good hand, bad hand.

Also, we just had a curling bonspiel and my team won! Go my team!

Hm. I also kind of have a stalker. Ish. It seems like a strong word, but he's totally a closet stalker. Like, he reads *all* of my wall posts. Who does that? Well, me, but I don't talk to people about this two days later. It's...creepy, honestly.

And I've told him I am *not* seeking a relationship, really. And he's like, yeah, okay, I'm not either, but then he texts me or FB chats me and it's making me uncomfortable. Not, like, OMG call the cops if you see this man uncomfortable... but I'm not on the best of terms with most of humanity anyway, especially the male side.

So. Stalker, bonspiel, mommy, recontracting, ISP, quiz, workshop (shudder)...
What else?
Oh yes.

My roommate has taken up snoring. I've taken up smothering myself with a pillow and going to sleep with Black Sabbath on my MP3. I haven't done this in a while, so maybe that's why I woke up at 3am, 5:30 am, 7 am, and 8:30 am...and finally at nine when my alarm rang this morning. So that's exciting.



So I drew that two days ago.
I also have an entertaining story about a pair of swim trunks, which I'll tell you as soon as I doodle out the pictures. Or not.

Something not Political.

I'll do the posts I talked about tonight or something. I just remembered that I never put this up.





The computer game I am playing is DXBall. I like it.







THAT. Is a bus.

Free Speech is Not a Suggestion

So. Let's play a game of pretend.
*

You're a teacher, regular public school. You get paid an average wage for doing an incredible job - you teach children. You have gone to school for a certain number of years expressly to do this job. You enjoy teaching - since you sure as hell can't enjoy the money that you get out of it.

But the problem is some kids don't enjoy learning. Or don't think it's important. Or are too damn lazy to do the work.

Admittedly, in a lot of cases, it falls to you, the teacher, to make class more interesting for these kids. But maybe the kids don't care. Maybe the only way to get your kids to pay attention is to come in dressed as a giant clown.
Maybe you don't own a clown costume.

More seriously, what if the parents don't care? What if the kid comes to your class, sits in the back, slouches, scribbles odd things all over the desk, (oh yes, you know this kid. You might have been this kid.) gets into fights, refuses to turn in the homework. What if the kid, yeah, sits up front... but only does that to be closer to the exit? What if the kid paints her - or his - nails, and you are *sick* and *tired* of getting a migraine from the smell everyday?

And this kid comes to your classes, listens (or doesn't) to this talk about how education is important... and then goes home and listens to how it isn't.

Or turns on the TV to find out that Our Government obviously doesn't think it's all that important.

And that's just the classes. Afterwards, you get to go through the homework. Check the answers. Figure out the grading system - which gets more complex every year.

In the cases of a lot of teachers that I have had, this will take you until at least 6 pm every weekday.

So you're a teacher. Got a tough, nearly impossible job for half the year on abysmal pay. How do you work out frustrations? You could rant to people.
*

I rant to people. My friends rant to people. I think it's one of the healthiest ways of dealing with frustration, stress, and anger ever. But apparently the school district of Central Bucks East High School doesn't believe in this... or free speech.

For a state that gave birth to John Dickinson, 1765 author of The Declaration of Rights and Grievances, and the first two Continental Congresses, Pennsylvania is remarkably torn on the issue of Natalie Munroe, a high school teacher who was escorted out of the school after a parent posted on Facebook a blog post that Munroe had written about her job.

"Of my 84 blogs, 60 of them had absolutely nothing to do with school or work. Of the 24 that mentioned it, only some of them were actually focused on it--others may have mentioned it in passing, like if I was listing things that annoyed me that day and wrote without any elaboration that students were annoying that day." Where are we going & why are we in this handbasket: Bloggate

In a country that has a multitude of IP addresses, emails, blogs, computer systems, surely it isn't a surprise to find out that a few teachers have blogs...and, god forbid, have blogged about their students?

One need only look at my facebook page to find comments much more sarcastic...and much more profane than the comments Munroe posted on her blog. (No, I won't give you the link. Check your own facebook.) In addition, I will freely name places, people, and events, and I'll probably post links to things that piss me off.

Natalie Munroe blogged under the name "Natalie M", mentioned no students by name, didn't mention her school...but remains suspended from teaching as the Internet debates rage on.

I'm coming back to teaching issues later this...week...(Jeez, it's already Thursday) because in Wisconsin, there's another issue that's even nearer and dearer to my heart. And eventually I'll comment on how not only are we making war on two fronts at once, but one of those fronts is a concept. And how this takes money away from making your children almost bearable.

Hi world.

So hi!
Yes, I'm alive.
November hit me like a brick wall, and then december happened.
Christmas.
Aargh.
Potentially, I could go into a rant about how commercializing christmas is detracting from the real meaning of the holiday...but I made a new year's resolution to stop trolling for conflicting opinions.
(No I didn't, I'm just lazy.)
And I like getting presents.
If I could rant about this without it affecting my safely commercialized lifestyle, then I probably would.
As it is, I have the sneaking suspicion that I spent *way* too much money on other people and not enough on me. My id is feeling depressed.

And then new years hit - which pretty much consisted of my family and me watching irritating people at the new york disco ball drop thingy.
I fell asleep.
Fail.
So 2011 still hasn't quite sunk in yet.