Nearly twenty years ago Wendell Berry wrote, "Eaters must understand that eating takes place inescapably in the world, that it is inescapably an agricultural act, and that how we eat determines, to a considerable extent, how the world is used." I agree with this wholeheartedly. In fact, it's precisely what I meant a few months ago when I dramatically announced to Chris that "food is perhaps THE most important issue of our time," although I hadn't yet read Mr. Berry's essay. Given my adoration of Wendell Berry, it should come as no surprise that he was quietly and articulately giving voice to my thoughts ten years before I even knew I'd once have them.
I've cared about how the world is used for almost as long as I can remember. It's why my favorite book as a child was Be Nice to Spiders and why my dad spent our pre-curbside pickup years shuttling me and a bunch of overflowing brown bags to the recycling center. It's why I started walking to work and why I stopped eating meat. It's also why -- after devouring a little yellow tome called Plenty and learning that each ingredient of our meals travels an average of 1500 miles from farm to table -- I abandoned organic and eagerly embraced local, and why I've been frequenting the farmers market ever since.
Oh, and it helps to explain why yesterday I woke up even before Chris, like a kid on Christmas morning, and shortly thereafter dragged him an hour south to to attend the Shetler Family Dairy's Open Barn. "You get to meet the cows!" I gushed excitedly.
And we did meet the cows who have been supplying our milk all summer, but more importantly, we got to see how the Shetler family treats its cows and to determine whether we're comfortable with that. We saw where and how the cows are milked, took a hayride through the cow pastures, and toured the bottling room. We were able to walk freely through the barn, meeting and feeding and petting the cows, one of whom liked me so much she licked me. And I tell you what, if I were a cow I'd want to live with the Shetlers.
I like knowing this; I like being connected to my food. I suspect that if most Americans had to actually witness their food being produced rather than dropping a pretty package into a shiny grocery cart, the world would be used much differently.
I haven't read the newspaper in days. It's not that I don't think it's important to be informed. I do. It's just that some days I can't take it. Like many citizens of humanity, I often find myself feeling depressed and hopeless about the state of the world. But I am routinely reminded that this sense of despair exists only because my attention is focused on the wrong things. Like newspapers instead of people.
Newspapers provide valuable information about what's going on in the world around us, but they rarely tell us much at all about the tiny slivers of the world we each inhabit. It is from these little patches of the world -- OUR patches -- that we can draw inspiration, because it is here that we're most likely to encounter everyday people doing small things with great love.
Take the man I met with this afternoon, for example. He's an organic farmer who runs a small Community Supported Agriculture program. He is also, as he told me, "committed to being a force of education in this world," which is why he's willing not only to come talk to my city kids about farming but also to allow them to visit him en masse and tromp around on his farm for a day.
Farmer John is as committed to organic agriculture as he is to education, and his CSA program is small simply because his farm is; in his second year of business he has a waiting list 200 families-long. That's not just cool for Farmer John, it also means there are at least 200 other everyday people out there who care about supporting family farmers, preserving our environment, and making the world a better place.
Wendell Berry would be ecstatic. And because I was reminded of Mr. Berry as I talked with Farmer John about farming and sustainability and peak oil and voting with your wallet, I give you this, one of my (and everyone else's) favorite Wendell Berry poems:
Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front by Wendell Berry, 1973
Love the quick profit, the annual raise, vacation with pay. Want more of everything ready-made. Be afraid to know your neighbors and to die. And you will have a window in your head. Not even your future will be a mystery any more. Your mind will be punched in a card and shut away in a little drawer. When they want you to buy something they will call you. When they want you to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something that won't compute. Love the Lord. Love the world. Work for nothing. Take all that you have and be poor. Love someone who does not deserve it. Denounce the government and embrace the flag. Hope to live in that free republic for which it stands. Give your approval to all you cannot understand. Praise ignorance, for what man has not encountered he has not destroyed.
Ask the questions that have no answers. Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias. Say that your main crop is the forest that you did not plant, that you will not live to harvest. Say that the leaves are harvested when they have rotted into the mold. Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus that will build under the trees every thousand years. Listen to carrion -- put your ear close, and hear the faint chattering of the songs that are to come. Expect the end of the world. Laugh. Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful though you have considered all the facts. So long as women do not go cheap for power, please women more than men. Ask yourself: Will this satisfy a woman satisfied to bear a child? Will this disturb the sleep of a woman near to giving birth?
Go with your love to the fields. Lie down in the shade. Rest your head in her lap. Swear allegiance to what is nighest your thoughts. As soon as the generals and the politicos can predict the motions of your mind, lose it. Leave it as a sign to mark the false trail, the way you didn't go. Be like the fox who makes more tracks than necessary, some in the wrong direction. Practice resurrection.
*another poetry reference: "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower" by William Carlos Williams, 1955
I am a teacher. I'm aware that regular readers already know this, but I just like saying it. I almost always find a way to work this bit of information into conversations with strangers, not in the hopes that they'll nominate me for sainthood or marvel at my dedication or leer at me and make suggestive comments about what they would have done if I'd been THEIR teacher but simply because it's who I am.
And although it may not always seem like it, I LOVE being a teacher. Not every minute of every day and certainly not when there's a mountain of papers to be graded, but ultimately teaching rocks. And on the good days I wouldn't trade it for anything.
I mention all this because Dave asked me last week if working with today's teenagers makes me worry about the America those teenagers will create for us in the future. His comment got me thinking, and I realized that most of the school stories I tell do not paint a particularly flattering picture of America's youth. But it's not because there are no flattering pictures to be painted, it's because those stories aren't funny.
They are, however, important. And I have lots of them.
Just this week alone I've been approached by seven kids looking to start various clubs or campaigns to improve the world around them:
One of my girls from last year stopped by between classes on Monday to tell me about Turn Beauty Inside Out and to ask me if I would help her create a schoolwide campaign. She was so excited about the possibilities that she could barely put a sentence together. And PS, this same student brought me a bagel last Friday morning for no reason other than that she's just an all-around awesome kid.
At the beginning of 5th period on Monday one of my students -- a kid whose main hobbies seem to be skipping class and smoking weed, not necessarily in that order -- asked me if I knew about the Invisible Children movie and announced that we should learn about it. I called him over to the computer later to look at the website and he said, "Yeah, we should really do something. I mean, I was thinking about doing something. Like maybe a project? For your class? We could get the whole school involved." And then he was off and running about film screenings and awareness bracelets and fundraisers. Oh, and extra credit.
Tuesday morning brought me two little blonde field hockey players who I've been teaching since September and STILL have trouble telling apart. They're fired up about Sudan. "You know how we watched that movie about the lost boys?," they asked, "well we wanna start a club to help them." Their pitch was interrupted by another girl who'd asked me in October to sponsor her Human Connection Project, a fundraising club she created after we watched Sarah McLachlan's "World on Fire" video (administrative approval STILL pending, by the way).
On Tuesday afternoon two of my favorite girls took a break from coloring their maps to whisper excitedly to me about their plans for an environmental club. "We want to recycle," one girl said. "And plant trees!" the other added gleefully. I explained that the Young Greens, an existing club that I co-sponsor, has just recently begun talking about an extensive schoolwide recycling program. A potential partnership was born.
And yesterday, when my first period class unexpectedly lasted an hour longer than the normal 90 minutes and I popped in the monkey chant to keep my kids occupied, even the coolest of the too-cool-for-schoolers sat enthralled. At the end of the monkey chant one of my problem students, a perpetually unenthused boy, shouted, "Whoa! Cool! Can we watch it again?" So we did.
I try, I really do, but some days it's damn near impossible. Take today, for example. My students were watching the film Osama as part of our study of religious fundamentalism. Osama is not -- as you might think -- about bin Laden, but about a young girl living in Afghanistan under the Taliban. Because she has no male relatives and is therefore not allowed to leave her house, her widowed mother disguises her as a boy and sends her out to get a job so the two of them don't starve to death.
It's not the world's most exciting movie -- I mean, there aren't any explosions -- but I thought it gave a pretty good feel for what it might have been like to live under the Taliban: how far-reaching and oppressive their rule was. And I've been at this teaching thing for a while -- I know teenagers generally can't get themselves too terribly worked up over irrelevant things like oppression. (I'm not being sarcastic here. It annoys the hell out of me, but I get it.) But we're talking SERIOUS injustice here, and the film is pretty powerful, so I thought my kids might actually give a shit.
Wrong.
Late in the film there's a scene where a woman is accused of advocating profanity and, after what I guess is supposed to pass for a trial -- an observer at the so-called trial even notes the absence of a witness, sentenced to death by stoning. In the next scene you see a hole being dug, and then you see the woman in the hole with only her head and shoulders visible.
"What's going on?" asked my kids. Which. . . okay. . .fine, we're Americans, we're not all that familiar with stoning procedures. "They're getting ready to stone her," I explained, deliberately being blunt. "They bury you up to your shoulders and then throw rocks at your head until you die."
"Big rocks?" wondered a kid.
And I get that they're teenagers, I get that developmentally they don't have the whole empathy thing down yet, I get that having never experienced anything particularly awful themselves the horror of being stoned to death is probably tough to fully grasp, but COME ON. Does it really fucking matter how big the fucking rocks are?! Can we please focus on the fact that a woman -- who, oh, by the way, can't show her TOES let alone her face in public -- was just charged with a completely made up crime, was neither allowed to defend herself against the charge nor confront even a single witness against her, was sentenced in a matters of seconds, and now people -- like for FUN -- are gonna throw ROCKS, whatever their size, at her head until she DIES?
Oh, but my day gets worse.
The stoning scene ends with people swarming around the woman in her hole, all -- I presume -- eager to throw rocks at her for her horrible transgression of advocating profanity. As the next scene began, one of my kids said, "Wait. We don't even get to SEE her get stoned?" "You want to watch a woman get stoned to death?" I asked angrily. "Well, not in real life," he answered nodding, "but yeah."
What is this, like, Jackass: The Class?
Toward the very end of the film, we see an old mullah locking his newly acquired (against her will, of course) young bride in a room with his other wives. She weeps as the other wives tell her how cruel he is, while he makes preparations for their wedding night. In one of the very last scenes, the mullah holds an array of padlocks out to his new wife, as if he's giving her a gift, and encourages her to choose one. "What's he doing?" asked a kid. "He's letting her choose the lock for her door," explained another kid. "Awwww, that's really sweet," said a girl. "She's gonna spend the rest of her life locked in that room unless he says she can come out," I ranted, "what's SWEET about that?" "Well, if she has to be locked up, at least he's letting her choose the lock she likes," answered my student.
Seriously. What do you even DO with that as a teacher?
*thanks to my pal Jay for reminding me of this lil' gem of a Bushism
I finally figured out why I've been grumpy for the past few days: I'm not in Florida anymore. I had a great time visiting my best friend, but it's always hard to leave her. Maybe I'll just move to Jacksonville.
Anyway, that's not the point of this post and if I tried to tell you about the weekend A) you'd probably be bored and B) I'd probably start to cry.
So.
Although I've been feeling grumpy since I returned to school yesterday, the depth of my grumpiness didn't really register with me until this afternoon at our Young Greens meeting. (In retrospect, it probably should have registered yesterday afternoon when I told my friend Steve I was about to punch him in the face over something as trivial as a flyer.) Steve and I co-sponsor both the Young Democrats and the Young Greens. Neither organization did much last year -- the Greens got together fairly frequently to watch movies (Outfoxed, Fahrenheit 9-11, The Corporation, The End of Suburbia, etc.) and the Dems held a lot of meetings about getting t-shirts.
This year though, the kids at least have a lot of ideas about what they want to do. The Greens, in addition to wanting to get t-shirts, want to start their own Food not Bombs chapter, which is incredibly ambitious and admirable and impressive. But as I sat there listening to them talk about it, I found myself whispering to Steve about how crazy they were. "How 'bout volunteering with organizations who are already feeding the hungry, like the Union Mission or the Food Bank, so you can get a sense of what that's like before you take on something as time-consuming and complicated as Food not Bombs?" I suggested. "That's a good idea," the kids said. By which I'm pretty sure they meant, "Way to rain on our idealism parade, you naysaying bitch."
And I'm usually not a naysaying bitch. I'm usually pretty idealistic myself. Food not Bombs is, in fact, right up my fucking alley. So I tried to rally my old idealistic self for the inevitable t-shirt discussion.
"What did we decide about t-shirts?" some kid asked. "We're gonna get white t-shirts and tie-dye them green," the Vice President answered. "With eco-friendly dye!" the President added happily. "Are you gonna get sweatshop-free t-shirts?" my idealistic, non-naysaying self asked, mostly because I am madly in love with a little sweatshop-free t-shirt company in LA and will take advantage of any opportunity to plug them (see? I just did it again.). "Yes! We are not going to be selective liberals," the President announced proudly.
And good for them. But shit. Unless you are prepared to get all Thoreau on everbody's asses,* selective liberalism is where it's at. You can't go to work every day in sweatshop-free eco-friendly clothes made entirely of organic hemp. Believe me, I've tried. So, for the sake of practicality, we compromise some values while holding fast to others. I won't set foot in a Wal-Mart, but I'm no stranger to J. Crew and Anthropologie, neither of which are particulary ethical (nor particularly UNethical). However, you will not find a single cleaning product in my house that's not completely biodegradable, phosphate-free, and therefore eco-friendly. I may be a selective liberal, but I'm a prioritizing liberal. What else can you do really, aside from selling all your worldy possessions and moving to the woods to tend your bean patch?
*This is what teachers do, by the way. We start saying certain things to make fun of how our students talk and before you know it those things have crept into our vernacular.
In case you haven't heard, tomorrow is the five year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
Social Studies teachers in my school district are required to highlight this anniversary in our Monday classes, which we were told on Thursday. A reasonable expectation, but one that turns out to be not nearly as easy as it sounds (and one of which we would have appreciated a bit more advance notice).
Like most people, I find it difficult to think or talk about 9/11 without thinking and talking about all the shit that's come after 9/11 -- specifically the way BushCo has used 9/11 to its own political ends, doggedly promoting the damaging mentality that "either you are with us or you are with the terrorists," dismantling our constitutional rights, and leading us into a quaqmire of a war that has absolutely nothing to do with 9/11 and that is certainly not making us safer from terrorism.
I've spent lots of classroom time over the last five years addressing issues related to 9/11. It's never easy -- and always controversial -- to discuss 9/11 with high school students whose opinions often mirror those of their parents and who tend to think that asking them examine their existing beliefs (whatever they may be) is an attempt to impose your beliefs on them. Despite this difficulty, I think I have a pretty good handle on how to deal with 9/11 in the classroom.
That being said, I'm at a complete loss as to how to deal with 9/11 in the classroom ON 9/11. In the first few years after the attacks, I used to have a class discussion about heroes, which worked well. But we're way too far gone for that innocent discussion and our collective perception of 9/11 is far too clouded by BushCo's successful attempt to neatly divide us into freedom-lovers and terrorist-lovers.
My initial plan for this year had been to show clips from a PBS documentary called The Road to 9/11, which traces the roots of terrorism and religious fanaticism in the Middle East. And I definitely WILL do that at some point during the year (like maybe during my unit on religious fundamentalism, wherein I also discuss Pat Robertson and Warren Jeffs), but not tomorrow. Because I'm not sure that exploring the mentalities of those who murdered 3000 people five years ago is a particulary good way of honoring the memories of those 3000 people.
Should we really be doing anything tomorrow except remembering -- in some non-political way -- those who died in the 9/11 attacks? And why, after only five years, is it so hard for us (myself included) to put politics aside for one day and find a meaningful way of remembering?
I really don't have that much against Starbucks. Well, okay, ordinarily I make a concerted effort to stop for pedestrians in crosswalks (since I'm often a pedestrian myself), but I refuse to stop for people waiting to cross the street to Starbucks, and my Starbucks-going friends wisely use the euphemism "coffee shop" around me when discussing experiences they've had at their friendly neighborhood Starbucks. Or their OTHER friendly neighborhood Starbucks. Or their OTHER friendly neigh -- okay, fine. I think we can all agree there are a lot of fucking Starbucks. Which is sort of my problem with them. Holy ubiquitous, batman.
I know it's really cool and hip and edgy to wear a lot of black eyeliner and hate things like Starbucks these days, but I'm not that kind of cool and I don't look good in eyeliner. So it's not that. You won't find me at the next IMF protest (because, you know, people throw stuff at those), but if there's a local option you definitely won't find me at a chain.
Never have I been more glad of this policy than I was this morning. There are two coffee shops within a block of my house. I can see Fair Grounds, my local indie, from my bedroom window, and Starbucks is across the street from that. I go to Fair Gounds. Obviously. But I usually don't go to work as early as I have been this week so I've never concerned myself with what time they open.
They open at 7:00, which I discovered at 6:45 this morning when I opened the door and found the coffee shop girl (I think her name is Kirsten) just a few steps ahead of me on the darkened stairs. "Uh, I guess you're not open yet," I said glancing across the street at the brightly-lit Starbucks and contemplating selling out. "We open around 7, but what can I get you?" Kirsten asked as she flipped on lights. "Well I wanted some coffee, but. . ." (PS, of COURSE I wanted some coffee, I was AT a fucking coffee shop, right? But that's the best I can function without caffeine.) "It'll take me three minutes to make coffee. Are you coming up?" Kirsten asked while I stood in the doorway wondering whether it would be worse to go to Starbucks or to go without coffee or to disturb Kirsten before she was even open. "Uhhhhh. . .are you sure that's okay?" I asked. "What size do you want, sweetie?" said Kirsten.
See, I bet they don't call you "sweetie" at Starbucks. And when I asked for a medium, Kirsten didn't make me repeat myself in some stupid elitist yuppie code. She just gave me a medium coffee. Kirsten ROCKS! I can tell you this: nobody's even allowed to talk to me for the first 20 minutes or so that I'm at work. I even have a sign on my classroom door indicating that I am not to be bothered until 7:15 at the earliest. And here's Kirsten happily brewing me coffee and calling me sweetie a mere three minutes after she's walked in the door, before she's even OPEN. You gotta love that girl.
And it's not just Kirsten and Fair Grounds. According to the Andersonville study, local businesses reinvest THREE TIMES as much money in their communities as corporate chains do. Why why WHY would anyone go to Starbucks when Fair Grounds is right across the street?! Is the carmel macchiato really that good? Is the fate of your soul really that trivial?
I've spent the weekend pondering my annual back-to school resolutions (get to school on time, grade papers in a much more timely manner, make writing a more integral part of my course, attend at least one game per sport per season, not to mention the orchestra concerts and plays. . . do all of this while somehow still having a life). I've made all my necessary copies, although that will not prevent me from having dreams throughout tonight's fitful sleep that I've actually forgotten to do so. I've picked out my back to school outfit, which sadly involves neither flip-flops nor tank-tops nor skirts made out of t-shirts. I've completed the first powerpoint presentation of the year which contains a mere 19 slides, including one of this guy
as a segue into a required lesson about the school's rules, two of which are no hats and (duh) no weapons.
And despite the fact that a guy with a coyote on his head is FUNNY, I guaran-damn-tee you not one of those kids will laugh.
Which is why I hate the first day of school. My whole m.o. as a teacher is based on the relationship I've built with my students. On the first day of school -- for the first couple weeks, really -- you don't have that. What you have is a room full of kids who haven't quite figured out whether their teacher will punish them for laughing at her, whether it's cool to think their teacher is funny, or whether this will be the kind of classroom where the cool kids are allowed to make fun of the uncool kids. (For the record it's no, yes, and no.)
So while I'm not exactly looking forward to the first DAY of school, I am looking forward to a new school year and to building those relationships with a new group of students.
And since posting poems seems to be alltherage among the blogging teacher set, I give you this poem by the wonderful Taylor Mali as my back-to-school prayer (for lack of a better word).
Undivided Attention
A grand piano wrapped in quilted pads by movers, tied up with canvas straps - like classical music's birthday gift to the insane - is gently nudged without its legs out an eighth-floor window on 62nd street.
It dangles in April air from the neck of the movers' crane, Chopin-shiny black lacquer squares and dirty white crisscross patterns hanging like the second-to-last note of a concerto played on the edge of the seat, the edge of tears, the edge of eight stories up going over, and I'm trying to teach math in the building across the street.
Who can teach when there are such lessons to be learned? All the greatest common factors are delivered by long-necked cranes and flatbed trucks or come through everything, even air. Like snow.
See, snow falls for the first time every year, and every year my students rush to the window as if snow were more interesting than math, which, of course, it is.
So please.
Let me teach like a Steinway, spinning slowly in April air, so almost-falling, so hinderingly dangling from the neck of the movers' crane. So on the edge of losing everything.
You know, the only thing worse than random uninformed citizens who think teaching is easy and that teachers are well-paid is power-tripping administrators who think teaching is merely a matter of crowd control and data analysis and that teachers are idiots who need to be reminded to push in their chairs at the end of workshops on such tricky topics as how to take attendance.
I may have mentioned ten or twelve or a hundred times before that I love my job. What I meant was that I love the TEACHING part of my job: I love the hanging out with kids part, and I love the doing good part. I also love the advocacy part of my job; you can't be a good teacher without being the kind of person who reflects on what works and then advocates for policies that support or facilitate good teaching. You might be effective in your own classroom, but the title teacher -- at least to my way of thinking -- implies an investment in and passion for the overall process, regardless of whose classroom you're talking about.
It's the advocacy part, more than anything else, that kicks my ass. It's fairly easy -- although not in the way people who say teaching is easy mean it -- to walk into your classroom, close your door, and teach the children well (I'm simplifying. Some days just trying to do THAT makes me cry). But eventually you come out of your classroom and you hear other teachers talking about how they don't need to cover the Harlem Renaissance because it's not on the state test, or administators assuring teachers that their problem students will eventually drop out, and you feel compelled to remind people that that's not why we're here -- that teaching is about helping kids make meaning and instilling a love of learning, and that you do that with whatever fucking topic you can (bitches!) regardless of whether or not the state has deemed it important, that instead of crossing your fingers and hoping that problem students will drop out you should be trying to determine what the problem student's problem is and FIXING it, or at the very least fucking emphathizing with it.
I've been back at school for a mere three days now and I've attended a total of seven meetings. In my notes for each of those seven meetings, I've written somewhere "think about getting out of teaching." The first couple times I wrote it as sort of a silent sardonic response to something discussed in the meeting -- my oh-so-important obligation to confiscate cellphones, IPods, hats, COATS, and do' rags despite the fact that they almost never interfere with my ability to teach, or the likelihood that the assessments I've created for my class will soon be replaced with standardized assessments provided by central administration (and, incidentally, that those assessments will SUCK). But I'm up to seven "think about getting out of teaching"s in just 60 hours because. . .you know what? Things are FUCKED UP.
My department is short two teachers at the moment. (And, oh, by the way, school starts in five days. TOTALLY snuck up on us again.) We've hired nice, motivated, focused -- but unqualified -- long-term substitutes to temporarily fill these positions. From an administrative perspective, these are warm bodies. End of story. From a teacher/advocate/mentor perspective, these are warm bodies with potential who are going to be teaching kids and who need LOTS of help. And when I wasn't in a meeting, helping was pretty much how I spent my day. It's how my friend Steve spent his day, and how our friend Jess spent her day, and how our friend Mike spent half his day (the other half he had stupid football practice). Which means that none of us got anything done for US today, although we did attend a shit-ton of pointless meetings.
And this is how the advocacy thing kicks my ass. Because although you can't be a good teacher without being an advocate, if you spend all your time advocating you'll have very little time left for actually being a good teacher. And then you start getting crazy. Hell, Steve and I have already resolved to skip lunch tomorrow in an effort to catch up.
I needed to drop a few pounds anyway.
Plus I plan to make up all those calories (and more!) in Hoegaarden tomorrow. It's Cogan's Thursday! Which basically means that it's Thursday and I drag all my friends to my favorite bar (Cogan's) for some serious drinking. Cogan's Thursday is such an institution that when Jess registered for a Thursday night grad class, her husband looked at her schedule and said, "You're taking a class on Cogan's Thursday?" and Jess said, "Shit" and then promptly dropped the class.
That's how I ROLL, bitches!
Also how I roll is that my bulletin boards aren't done and I'm not quite sure what I'm doing on the first day of school. If you have thoughts on either feel free to stop by Cogan's after 6PM. If I'm not relaxing on the patio with a pitcher of Hoegaarden, I'll be in the back laughing while Steve totally kicks my ass at air hockey. On his quarters, hopefully. I need mine for laundry.
When I ask you if you want a bag for that, you're supposed to say no. You're supposed to pause for a moment and ponder the small ways in which we're all destroying the planet. I'm only asking if you want a bag because I've already determined you don't need one. If you did, I would just place your purchase in a bag without asking.
I mean, when you reach into a purse the size of a small country to pay for your one postcard, it seems you would also notice that there's plenty of room for the new postcard in there. Imagine how silly you look walking around carrying a gigantic purse while holding a bag full of one postcard.
Likewise, if you're only buying one book, you don't need a bag. You can just carry the book around. You'll look cool, hip, literary. People will think you're smart. Unless, of course, you just bought a Nicholas Sparks book. In which case I would've given you a bag, no questions asked.
And while we're on the subject, if you're buying a book for each of your twelve children, all of whom want their own bag, it's time to have those big talks about sharing and karma. You get one bag. Your kids can take turns holding it or -- better idea -- go bagless. Let each kid carry his/her book, and explain to them how environmentally unconscionable it is to place each item you purchase in a separate plastic bag. That will also afford you a perfect opportunity to talk to them about peak oil and to start planning your vegetable garden.
Mother Teresa told us that "we can do no great things, only small things with great love." This is a concept I've been thinking a lot about lately and a statement I've been repeating to myself like a mantra: small things with great love, small things with great love, small things with great love, small things with great love, small things with great love. It's what I focus on when I'm near the edge.
Because, you know, the world needs saving and I'm just a regular old person. In the last ten days alone I have been urged, via email, to:
call for a Congressional debate on Iraq,
save the Chesapeake Bay,
sound the alarm on fake women's "clinics,"
tell Fila to support the rights of workers in its factories,
speak up for the oceans,
save NPR and PBS,
save internet freedom from AT&T,
resolve the crisis: don't shut down the UN,
stop global warming,
stop the Arctic refuge drilling.
Obviously there's a lot of stuff that needs to be saved or stopped. And these are just the alerts from the organizations I've asked to hear from. Who knows what other calamities are befalling the world as I sit at home sipping my cabernet? It gets overwhelming.
This is where "small things with great love" comes in.
I can't end the war in Iraq, but I can call for that Congressional debate. I can't ensure equality for women the world over, but I can treat everyone I encounter fairly and equally while donating to Planned Parenthood. Acting alone, I can't save the Chesapeake Bay or the world's oceans, but I can pick up trash whenever I'm on the beach and refrain from pouring toxic chemicals down the storm drains. I can't guarantee that Fila or any other company pay its workers a living wage, but I can refuse to buy their products if they don't. I certainly can't single-handedly stop global warming, but I can do my part by walking to most places (unless there's a tropical storm blowing through like there was today) and by scowling at anyone with the audacity to drive a Hummer.
Lately I have found the "small things with great love" mantra most helpful at school. I am (in case you hadn't picked up on this) pretty passionate about what I do for a living. A big part of the reason I became a teacher is because I want to make the world a better place and because I want to inspire others to want to make the world a better place. I am an incredibly idealistic person, and there are occasions on which I actually begin the school day thinking, "This is it, this is the day I change the world. Because this is Lorax day, this is the day my kids find out that 'UNLESS someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not.'" But that's not the way things work. Lorax day doesn't change the world, but it's a small thing I do with great love.
So I keep reminding myself that, as a teacher, I "can do no great things, only small things with great love." Sometimes my kids inadvertently remind me of this too. It would be a great thing if I could completely eradicate racism and bigotry, but I can't. However, one of my students recently told me that, as a result of my class, “a lot of people became more accepting, or less willing to laugh at other cultures’ traditions or rituals" and cited as an example "the chant with those men."
The chant with those men is the Ramayana Monkey Chant, native to Bali, that my students watched in the film Baraka. When they first saw the monkey chant, they laughed and thought it was "weird". . . in a cultural-superiority kind of way. Then I made them watch it again (and, um, maybe again) and they ventured that it was "sorta cool." Over the course of the year, the monkey chant became cooler and cooler as my kids grew more and more tolerant. If we finished class a few minutes early, I could count on someone asking, "Hey, can we watch the monkey chant?" and the rest of the class responding, "Yeah! Monkey Chant!" Right before any test. . .monkey chant. Somebody's birthday. . .monkey chant. Minutes before their AP exam. . .monkey chant. Last day of school. . .monkey chant. One of my kids even downloaded the chant and set it as the background music on her MySpace page. Dude, the monkey chant ROCKS!
Here's the thing about the monkey chant: it's a small thing. It's certainly not a thing I ever anticipated being a vehicle of tolerance and acceptance. But here's the thing about great love: you can't underestimate it. Teacher who really really wants you to appreciate and respect other cultures + heartfelt cultural ritual that happens to be pretty cool + curious students = great love. It's powerful, that great love, no matter how small the thing.
If you haven't read any David James Duncan, you're really missing out. An excerpt from the chapter "What Fundamentalists Need For Their Salvation," in his most recent book, God Laughs & Plays:
To allow televangelists or pulpit neocons to claim exclusive ownership of Jesus is to hand that incomparable lover of enemies, prostitutes, foreigners, children, and fishermen over to those who evince no such love. And to cede the word "Christian" to earth-trashing literalists who say "the End is nigh" feels rather like ceding my backyard henhouse to weasels.
In addition to his intelligent and spiritual nonfiction, Duncan also writes beautiful and spiritual fiction. His novel The River Why is one of my all-time favorites, as I may have mentioned once or twice before. If you find yourself wandering around wishing you had an uplifting, enlightening, thought-provoking, funny book to read, grab anything by David James Duncan and you won't be disappointed.
Another Monday night, another exciting episode of 24. I know, everyone loves this show. Steve spends each Monday sternly reminding everyone he encounters that it's Jack Bauer Appreciation Day. I spend a small portion of my class time (my instructional time) on Mondays trying to get my students to stop talking about what's going to happen on 24, and a much larger chunk of that class time on Tuesdays trying to get the kids to shut up about what did happen on 24. Every Monday they ask me, "Are you gonna watch 24 tonight?" and every Monday I tell them, "A) I don't own a television and B) I want no part of 24." Every Tuesday they ask me, "Did you see 24 last night?" and every Tuesday some kid who actually pays attention in class says, "Dude, she doesn't have a TV!" and some other kid adds, "Yeah, and she doesn't even like that show."
The thing is, I used to. Like everyone else, I used to love 24. I was a devoted fan throughout seasons 1-3. I've spent more than a few Tuesday mornings at the proverbial water cooler animatedly discussing the events of the previous night's episode of 24 as if it bore some resemblance to real life and the characters were actually my close personal friends. I've even attended a season finale party or two. I see the appeal: the gripping suspense, those bad guys you love to hate, the fate of the world hanging in the balance, that hottie Keifer Sutherland. But in season 4 something changed for me. . .24 began to seem irresponsible.
I became more and more concerned about how expendable people are on 24, not just bad guys but good guys too. I started to keep a running body count. A lot of people died in each episode, most of them not-so-nicely. And we're talking episodes that are only supposed to represent an hour of real-life time.
Then there's the torture thing. The good guys frequently torture the bad guys to get information out of them, which I guess is supposed to be okay because the good guys need that information in order to save everyone from the bad guys. This is a serious moral question that deserves serious attention and contemplation. Instead, 24 portrays each instance of torture as if it's some sort of Machiavellian necessity not worth dwelling on.
And there's, of course, the stereotyping. Almost all the terrorists on 24 (at least in seasons 1-4) are Muslims who hate America simply because they are crazy Muslims. Nothing new here. Likewise, those who don't hate the terrorists must by definition hate America and therefore be on the side of the enemies. Hell, in season 4 the Secretary of State had his own son tortured because he had maybe gone home with some chick who knew some guy who had maybe been involved with planning season 4's attack.
I know it's only a TV show, but is this sort of thing really constructive? Do we really need to glorify such callous disregard for human life and fan the flames of bigotry and intolerance? See, there's no gray area on 24. There's good guys and there's bad guys and it's us against them. You are, as our simpleton of a president once said, "either with us, or you are with the terrorists." This is an incredibly dangerous mentality, which is why I've sworn off 24 and why I attempt to convince anyone who will listen (which, frankly, isn't a very large group) that 24 is perhaps more harmful than all of Rupert Murdoch's other enterprises combined.
To be honest, I haven't made much headway, but I'm hoping I'll win a few converts now that Tom Tomorrow's come out in support of me:
A few weekends ago my brother and I had talked about going up to NYC. UFPJ had organized a protest against the current war on Iraq, the impending war on Iran, and the war-mongering Bush administration in general. My brother and I both felt a sort of moral obligation to add our voices to the protest, but we also didn't feel like going to New York, and we doubted that any amount of protesting would change BushCo's approach to foreign policy.
I firmly believe that every single American citizen could be in the streets protesting and Dubya would merely pause to shake his head in condescending pity for our stupidity, and would then return to the business of fucking everything up. This is because the man actually believes that God talks to him:
2000: "I've heard the call. I believe God wants me to run for president. . . .I can't explain it, but I sense my country is going to need me. Something is going to happen... I know it won't be easy on me or my family, but God wants me to do it."
2003: "God told me to strike at al Qaeda and I struck them, and then He instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East." (By striking somebody, probably. Or maybe smiting.)
2004: "I trust God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn’t do my job."
Bush and his administration have demonstrated repeatedly that they don't really give a shit what the American people think. Why should they when they're doing God's work? 55% of Americans think BushCo deliberately misled the public into war and 60% of Americans believe that war has not been worth fighting. Big deal. 100% of Supreme Beings (of which there is, of course, only one) think Bush is doing a bang-up job.
This, however, is no reason not to protest, and I've felt guilty ever since I skipped the NYC protest. I felt especially guilty this morning when I read Melissa's lovely post, which reminded me that it's important to stand up for what you believe in, even when it seems that doing so is unlikely to change anything. Despite the fact that BushCo is impervious to dissent, there are lots of good reasons to protest, namely that it is the right thing to do regardless of the outcome. As Martin Luther King, Jr. said, "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter," and as Ghandi said, "Whatever you do may seem insignificant to you, but it is most important that you do it." And as Elle Woods said in Legally Blonde 2, "One honest voice can be louder than a crowd's."
This is (or used to be) essentially my whole m.o. as a person, and especially as a teacher. If my students learned nothing else, I hoped they would leave my class believing that they could make the world a better place. When the hell did I stop believing we could make the world a better place? I didn't go to a protest because it wouldn't do any good and New York was too far?! Yikes. When's the next protest? I'm so there.
