Holsters and Tanks

I was going to publish a little piece that fit Christmas, but involved a gun, and I didn't think it was appropriate just right now.
It's getting hot on friend face, so I'm just content to blog, because nobody pays much attention to that, anyway.
If my blogger buddy, Clif Martin, doesn't mind, I still remember his blog on "Friend Face is so Political", wherein he states, "People say they're so glad when they wake up, that Obama is President. I'm just glad to wake up."
So, I say, be glad when you wake up. Our bodies weren't made to last forever, and life is good.
I don't expect anyone to have a sense of humor inappropriately, but it is important to return to it. It's healing, and I've seen some glimmers of humor return to social media. I've also been considering joining (more seriously lately) the Healing Story Alliance, so that may be my response.
I do wish to address the idea that somehow, we don't have to reconsider sensible gun safety and limitations, because of the use of fertilizer, knives, box cutters, dynamite, etc. Most of the incidents involved guns lately. Ironically, I read that the mother of the perpetrator bought guns for target practice and to protect herself, and it was used on her and others.
I don't want to live in a society where I have to have a gun. And as Michael Moore says, "I'm not leaving."
When I worked in the school system, I wouldn't have liked it if the sub caller, as they had them in the days I was on call, would say, "Don't forget to put on your holster and gun. And by the way, pray first, because God hasn't been spotted in the schools." An omnipresent, omniscient God, not there? Oh...please. And the American society is Godless? This is one of the most religious countries in the world! In fact, many who have religion need to study more, so it doesn't become a gun culture, at least, more of one. Please stop preaching to us who have studied. So, you think teaching's a racket, an easy job, one to disrespect, when teachers and administrators lay down their lives for the protection of their students? You're willing to not pay them or give them benefits, but instead, arm them? Looks like the teachers are being treated like the military personnel. And it would be very unsettling to see an army tank on the school's front lawn or near the playground.
When you're in the elementary classroom, you're supposed to be discussing things like, what the weather's like today, the various jobs kids are assigned, the class agenda, and storybook time. This is all of which teacher and kids should be focused, not defense.
Then, there's the admonition to not watch the news. I haven't been, but the social media is crammed with news. It is good advice to not watch it, as what you focus on expands. But on the other hand, I do understand that it's good therapy to talk about things.
Speaking of therapy, the issue is not quite so simplistic as mere improvements on gun control. We've got to expand mental health facilities and workers. We also have to take away the stigma of having mental problems. The impression some have is that mentally ill people always do violence. Not so. But we can spot those prone to violence more readily, if we deal with mental health issues in this country. Perhaps the mother should have been advised that if she had a mentally ill child, she also should not have guns in the house. Also, the documentary on the guy who did use fertilizer showed that here was a guy who was obviously P.T.S.D. and should have been watched. In fact, he probably thought he was in a war, over here.
And some people think we should be like a state that wants to secede and disobeys the federal government. Go watch the movie, "Lincoln". We paid a heavy price for becoming the U.S. of A.
All these edicts are fear based. Return to Love, also everywhere present, and Peace.
There was just too much to respond to on friend face. So, I'll blog, because nobody pays much attention to it, anyway.

Troubled Waters (or work without union protection)

As the blender began to spin in the cartoon I copied off to post, at work, I stood transfixed.
The cartoon was a picture of a blender filled with water. A goldfish swam on its surface. The expression on its face was one of dread, eyes wide open, mouth curved downward. The caption said, "So, you think you've got stress!"
I blinked my eyes and shook my head several times, looked up at the cartoon, and saw it return to its original standstill humor.
The only thing that bothered me was the question, "Is this portending something terrible?"
Admittedly, the new superintendent's behavior was unsettling. She was making negative headlines, claiming corruption in high places. I'd also heard her yelling and screaming at length at someone, in the supply closet.
It was clear she thought Joe Clark and Jaime Esperante were heroes, and she wanted to be the next heroine.
Yet, she stood there at a community educators' meeting and lied, assuring us that we would continue in her employ and be able to "keep our homes and feed our families". This was followed by applause.
Yet someone must not have trusted her, as I received an application for unionizing community ed and began to fill it out.
Alas, it was too late! She and the then Republican Governor were getting cozy, and before we knew it, our hours were cut. Then, not much later, my own boss got fired. Generally, community education got cut across the board, and charter schools popped up all over the state. I'd heard that, after the governor did his hatchet job, he left the state. She too went back to her home state. And now, as things developed over time, the head guys in the capitol are making this school system into a charter school.
Personally, I had to spend my summers doing temp work, so I wasn't rolling in the dough. Due to in-station politics in broadcasting, another non-protected profession, my husband had gotten let go, after 20 years in the field.
So on my new supplementary adult ed teaching job, I got wind of a mother and daughter graduating the same year, interviewed then, and wrote it up for a local down-home newspaper. It was a powerful argument for community ed, but it wasn't something that the politicians would take note of at the state capitol.
I began to sense that what the poor fish had forebodings about finally happened. I returned to the break room at what was left of my main job, looked at the still-life cartoon once more, as the blender, once again, began to spin.

Requesting Older Models for Regular Occasions

Before I was even a student of Unity, I did something called, "Treasure Mapping". If I had a goal, say, to lose weight, which was most of the time, I'd put up a pic of some svelte model and try to become her. This lasted for as long as I could discipline myself into less weight.

Unity, later, advised I add another step: my own face plastered on top of the body.

That got a little difficult with age. But finally, I found an attractive senior model with a believable body on which to place on my face. This time, it wasn't for the purpose of losing weight, but of becoming what I now do, tell stories. But I couldn't find one for the longest time after that, and I thought, "Where did I find that? Oh yes, it was J.C. Penneys, I think." But even leafing through those catalogs each Sunday became a wild goose chase.

However, Penneys was true to their fairness ethic. On Mothers and Fathers Days, they began to show that, yes, there was another generation beyond the 29 year old parents with an 8 year old daughter and 6 year old son, or vice verse. Many lifestyles and types of children were exhibited as well, but that's another topic.

I had read up on a make-up artist with flowing gray locks, who was asked to become a model. That was after her decision to let the gray show. I thought, "Now that I've seen and heard her, in what magazine has she been lately?"

If aliens from outer space looked at our catalogs, they'd get the impression that we somehow grow to a certain age and are then, killed off, perhaps by our 6 to 8 year old children, once they turn 10.

Get real. Checking the obituaries, the ages as to which the grim reaper comes are shockingly democratic. It's true, the older you get, the more vulnerable you are to sailing over the horizon where nobody often sees you from this side of the Big Lake. But we have V.I.P.'s such as politicians, heads of state, journalists, talk show hosts, etc., who are still very much alive and running things.

It's not just for treasure mapping, but for a sense of, "Does anybody know we are still in this world?", I make this request. Treasure mapping just made me notice that something was clearly off.

How Did I End Up at a G.L.C.? or "How to Choose a Lutheran College, Traditional Method #1" (J.L. Anderson's Scandinavian Humor)

All this talk about student loans finally affected me. For I realized that in my early-confused years as a Bachelor-ette of Arts, I didn’t have the burden of having to pay a student loan.
So, I woke up this morning actually feeling grateful.

I would have been a problem for any creditor, as I wasn’t so sure of teaching English. So on the whim of shooting for acting, I bounced about with not much recollection of high school shorthand, and typing that hadn’t been practiced much since then, and I took clerical jobs, quite a number of them.
But I’d heard from other friends that they had a heavy loan to pay off.

In high school, it had been common knowledge that I was bound for the University of Wisconsin. I was already the type. My daughter, as a teen, once asked me, “Mom, were you a normal teenager?” as if to say, “I’ll bet you weren’t”, which was true. I was pre-Bohemian. But I got religion at the fundamental level of understanding in my at the end of my junior year, so the brochures came in, and I started succumbing.

I got a book on Scandinavian Humor by John Louis Anderson, (Nordbook publications) which covered the issue of how kids end up at a good Lutheran college (i.e. G.L.C.). The author mentions that, “during the four years, you spend the time agonizing over why you are there. But there were 25 factors that may have made that happen. I could choose three of them:
#1. Your parents think it is a good idea and will pay for it.
#7. It is more than 150 miles from home. (One hairdresser remarked, it was “kind of out in the boondocks”.)
#19. You are a PK. (i.e. preacher’s kid, and might I add, BINGO!) While everybody expects a PK to act a little crazy, they also expect you to go to a Lutheran college and get yourself straightened out.
And, #25. You believe what your mother told you about teaching being a respected and secure line of work. (Ha!)

I would say that, with #19, the PK, the author elaborates on this as one of the 10 Lutheran college types. It certainly was that:
“an elaborate form of house arrest for errant younger members of the Lutheran theocracy.” (I will add that if you, as a PK, go there, you can pretty well bet you will STAY there.)
There, ‘theatrical excesses’ and ‘splashy rebellions’ are dealt with.
And of course you can’t predict what PK’s will become, anywhere from ‘exotic’ dancer to Lutheran ministry.”

Of course, I went back to teaching when I married, as they never called me when I left off my resume for switchboard operator. The necessary extra credits for teaching were inevitable, but eventually, my husband and I went out to Colorado, and that state insisted I get the extra credits without even being allowed to sub in the process. So, I called in desperation, to both his parents and my mother that we needed money for the out-of-state tuition. I threw in drama courses, as one of the schools I’d also considered before the G.L.C. fliers was the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. And besides, I was paying a hefty amount of cash, so I should get all the credits I could. At last! : a normal college experience, where we both still looked young enough to party with the students. I got a scholarship for theater the following summer.

Upon returning home to the Midwest and having my daughter, there were still a few more credits to finish. So of course, I chose the practical route of theater, with the help of my mom (after a family meeting), who even voluntarily paid for theater improv cards. Another summer scholarship followed after I sponsored a practice teacher while teaching summer school speech.

All this was done without student loans, just nice people pitching in. Now, I wouldn’t recommend this way of doing things to others, any more than I would advise Hannity’s advocacy of rice, beef, and beans. It just fell that way.

Okay, so why was I at a G.L.C.? I think, because in high school, I admired an English teacher, a UW grad, who happened to be Jewish. Later at college, in a very deep crisis, I sought the help of a Lutheran Professor/Pastor, who I’ve figured out later, was very much like her. Perhaps, she taught me the “God Spell”, and he taught me the “Gospel”, in a whole new way…like “meeting Jesus AGAIN for the First Time”, and that “the Universe Bends toward Justice”. He was a friend/classmate of my brothers and also a UW grad.
And although my parents were conservatives, I got on the same Spiritual wavelength, and I’ve drawn on the metaphysical principles they taught, for a lifetime. My folks also kept working, so that I could continue going to school. And when my father passed, I became a "war orphan" and took a trip across the state to secure the tuition remainder from the Veterans Administration.

But I now know, you can appreciate your education, especially as a woman. My Aunt Nettie had wanted to go to school, but was needed at home on the farm. She’d only completed the sixth grade. She had a Zen wisdom about her, which later manifested in a grandchild, who invented a rare medical technique for repairing bones. My Aunt Selma was proud of her eighth grade diploma and put it up on her wall, while encouraging other family member that they MUST go to high school and college. (For more on this, see my link on "Crickets in the Field". Once there, access page 3.) My dad marveled at an elderly woman in our neighborhood, who’d completed college. He told me that in her era, it was highly unusual for a woman to do so.

I can’t say that being a kid’s drama teacher in fine arts schools made me a whole pile of money. Now that I’m a storyteller, who is a combo of volunteer and fly-by-night professional, that it does either.

But I’ve reconnected with good friends who were also at my G.L.C., and my life has been enriched. As a result of a liberal arts education and working in the public schools, I no longer think simplistically. It means as I’ve become politically aware, I’m not duped into thinking that racism, sexism, Tea-publicanism or any other kind of dangerous ism is acceptable.

Selma and Nettie would have been more than happy to go through high school (which I thought was a given) and even to proceed to a “cloister”, eventually to be introduced to the “world” in the form of big city theater, and later, regular state college theater education.

Realizing that, I no longer take my education for granted.

Plumber Phobia

There's a drip in the kitchen faucet, which Bill keeps trying to fix and re-fix. I can't say as I blame him. There's always the trauma of the plumber coming...
When I was a teen, the plumber came, whistling in our house as he worked, and then, gave me a sermon on being saved. I thought, as teens go, I was pretty saved.
The ones we got later, were political evangelists, one who was crestfallen that our candidate had won; the next "advised" me (with a smile) to vote for the guy who's now taxing teacher pensions. Update: 3/22/16, Ironically, on this governor's watch, a whole city's water and pipes became contaminated, which drew national attention.
Happens to others too. My in-law called his wife to warn he had a "Nazi" plumber in the house. Another friend, who's big on being saved, had a "Christian" plumber who eyed his "beverages" and told our friend he couldn't possibly be.
Apparently "plumbing school" also entails Bible school courses with equally simple politics.
But perhaps, it's just me who's traumatized.
Bill says he just wants to avoid paying the bill.

Garfield and Me

Although I've been more of a dog fancier, since I raised one from a pup, this cat is cool!

How I've spent my last three days, recovering.

How excited others are about my blog.

How Bill shouldn't tell me anything.

How the subbing part of my career was highly respected by students and others.

You see some cats evoke "MEMORIES"!