beanblog

whoa

2005-06-08T00:26:00.000-07:00

Haven't posted since late April. I got a digital camera and went wild, taking between fifty and three hundred photos a day, this while teaching full-time, plus night classes, plus a hundred other things. I stated posting more and more photos on flickr.com, and hope you take a look here.

So instead of communicating with words, I've been saying it with photos. Today I had enough leftover to both write and photograph, because I needed to face something very sad and empty.

Today one of my former students died, the results of ingesting meth amphetamine. He was a tough nut to crack, too smart for his own good. He wore his brilliant potential like armor and dared us all to draw it out of him, while he seemed to do everything in his power to stall for time. He was going to be great, we all saw it, it was just a matter of growing out of his angst and attitude. He hung out with the best and brightest. Not the academic kids, but the edgy writers and artists and poets. He could write, that's for sure. And play the sax. And he was funny, a brilliant wordster. He'd hang back on the edges, quiet and self-contained, unless he could make a sarcastic remark, or crack a small smile at something one of his friends added.

I kicked him out of my class because after trying and trying to accommodate and draw out his potential, letting him do independent projects, anything so long as it was creative, he tried to placate me with a little animation he said he had made. I watched it. No, no way. I clicked on 'get info' and saw it had last been modified three years previously. Even after that he used to show me his writing from time to time. I still have a folder of it.

He and his friends graduated a couple of years ago, and they're all out in the world, designing, writing, making music, but he never got a grip. No school, no job, nothing beyond the good intentions stage. I think he was just too damn burdened by that damn potential everyone kept mentioning, too scared to try. And it's a damn shame, because it's nothing now. Before he had a chance to give it back to the world with his own stamp on it.

What a damn waste.

Art among the rubble

2005-04-23T01:10:00.000-07:00

I was supposed to drive to Berkeley today, two hours away, to see my friend Matt, a former student who I think the world of. I wanted to show him the amazing, wonderful art show out in the marshlands, atop a landfill. A group of people named SNIFF have been making art with found objects out there for a long time. It's not cutsey, it's gritty and bawdy, but it IS art in a big sense of the word. It's inspired.

So anyway, I slept badly because once again, in defiance of the nature spirits, I have insisted on walking in the land of poison oak with my dogs, and as punishment, I am covered in itches in the most nasty places, like my eyelids, behind my knees and the undersides of my arms. My face. My everywhere. And so I slept fitfully and was tormented mightily by demons of itchiness.

I got up and took benadryl and then I felt like I imagine chemotherapy feels; all hollow and fried and on edge. Didn't want to do anything, least of all drive and drive, but finally I made myself leave.

The plan had two other components; to walk the dogs while exploring said art, and to photograph the art, because it is out in the open, and won't last forever, so I want to document it to share with others, because it's so amazing. I went one other time, but the light was terrible, glaring right into my camera, the nerve! and I didn't have a good camera then, and then the battery died.

I set out and traffic was just horrendous, and then it started to rain, and then it started to pour. And the traffic went from horrendous to 'parking lot.' I got drowsy and had to pull over and get coffee, and the only coffee was in a cigarette store and it came in a styrofoam cup and was just gross and I was a miserable wretch and I ITCHED. Yes, without being really life-threatening my day was managing to feel like its own special hell, the kind that happens to middle class white girls in consumer-oriented democracies, not the real hell that leads to maiming or loss of life, not like that.

Got to Berkeley in almost twice the time it usually takes, almost four hours, and it was still pouring. Managed to find Matt and his girlfriend, Kara, stuff them into my VW bug with three dogs, and make our way through Friday afternoon rush-hour traffic to this special place called the Berkeley Bulb.

And suddenly everything changed, as if I had passed some magical test and it was time for my reward. The rain stopped. We started our walk out to the point along the water, and the air smelled like fennel because it grows wild there, along with wild mustard and phlox. Matt and Kara were instantly enthralled, and sharing a special place with friends who 'get it' really amplified the pleasure and magic of it.

We walked and the dogs romped and cavorted. Mrs. Beasley walked about the same amount as we humans, Bunny ran back and forth, going about double the distance we did, and Bosco dashed madly everywhere all at once, and must have covered ten miles for every one we walked.

We found a whole sculpture area I had never seen before, full of amazing sights, especially a magnificent bigger-than life-size figure of a winged man about to take flight. Icarus? Gabriel?

We visited the paintings and the other sculpture area, and Matt found a small clubhouse right on the edge of the water, overlooking the whole Bay. Now I'll stop writing and let the photos speak.

Needless to say, I drove home in much better spirits.

I'm not ready with the photos of the SNIFF paintings yet, but here are some from our outing, including some of the sculpture, and later interlude in Berkeley late at night.

Birthday Beast

2005-04-16T23:53:00.000-07:00

It's my fifty-third birthday today. I'm one of those people who love their birthday, and will tell anyone how old I am. I've earned it.

Tomorrow night a friend is cooking for me, and including a few close friends ranging from eighteen to fifty-eight, so today was a pretty quiet day, with a few calls and emails, and my friend Thor's annual birthday ode arriving with the mail, which is always hilarious and full of teasing references to various quirks of mine.

Boyfriend came by and took me to breakfast and out for a dog walk. By the time I got back there was a call from Bosco's little schnauzer friend, or at least his social secretary, asking if they could have a play date, so I had two puppies wrestling and tumbling all over each other continuously for a couple of hours, a combination of comedy show and tornado.

Even after all that, when six o'clock rolled around it became clear that the dogs still expected their afternoon romp, so we drove over to the deserted army lands where we go for rambles. It's quite beautiful these days, walking by fields of tall grass laced with purple lupin and live oak dripping with spanish moss.

As we came to the last field before getting to the road where we park, Bunny spotted a large coyote and took off after it. Mrs. Beasley sprinted fifty yards or so half-heartedly before giving up, and the puppy, who had been busy elsewhere, came along too late to join in.

Bunny re-appeared, WITH the coyote, loping along side-by-side! Maybe she told him about the life of luxury she leads and he wanted a piece of the action. He saw me and stopped. I took his photo. He finally took off.

As we walked to the car several coyotes began howling and doing that high-pitched yipping they do, and it was close-by and eerie. Maybe they were singing happy birthday?

The coyote photos came out very blurred and strange, but I like them a lot. I didn't do anything but crop them and intensify the color a bit. The second one looks almost like a person in a wolf suit.

Folly on a theme of Dogs

2005-04-12T22:12:00.000-07:00

Dashed home from school and did some last minute cleaning because a friend wanted to bring her husband over to see the house. I really like these friends, and they're both fantastic artists, so I wanted the house to look especially nice, because I'm vain about it, and also because I knew they'd appreciate my own particular aesthetic more than most people.

I was determined not to fall into my usual pre-visit frenzy, where I try to clean and fix everything to such a ridiculous degree that I use up all the time set aside for our daily long dog romp, and the dogs are stuck with no outing or exercise that day.

The time came. I had an hour and a half before my friends arrived, and I made myself stop bustling and get in the car. We headed out to where we hike, and ten minutes into the walk, Bosco charged into the tall grass barking. She usually doesn't bark unless she's scared of something, but I couldn't see anything through the grass except my small dog jumping straight up in the air like she was on a pogo stick.

Mrs. Beasley joined the fray, and so did Bunny. I still couldn't see anything, but I called them and kept walking, and eventually they broke away from whatever it was and caught up with me. And so did the smell. Yes. Skunk.

Of all the days to get skunked! We headed back, and a few minutes later I turned to see Mrs. Beasley on her back, flipping and flopping, rolling in manure. Yes, the dog girls were certainly going all out to get ready for our guests.

I stuffed them in the small car and rolled down the windows. As I drove home, an overture from a Rossini opera came on the radio, full of energy and frenetic dashing, pompous flourishes, and clownish folly, and it suddenly came to me that it perfectly illustrated the absurdity of my life at that exact moment. I began to laugh out loud.

They got baths outside with the hose and lots of Wood's Oil Soap, which made them fairly bearable, and me soaking wet and covered with fur. My guests were due in five minutes.

This is why I don't have to watch reality TV. My own life is a sitcom, complete with a musical score and guest stars.

my glamorous life, if you don't count the itching

2005-04-10T23:30:00.000-07:00

I was so busy feeling sorry for myself on account of the ITCHING (see previous post) that I forgot about the glam part of my weekend. For the first time in the five years since I've taught at this particular school, I actually went to the student fashion show. I had NO idea...

Dashed out on Saturday night to walk dogs, and then, mud-spattered and funky, I showed up at school fifteen minutes before the show. The parking lot was mobbed, and each and every person in it was dressed to the hilt, except yours truly. I was in my usual NYC black urban uniform; black jeans, black tee shirt, black clogs, black leather jacket, black ironically nerdy glasses and shaved head, all coated with the usual layer of mud and dog hair. Charming. Really.

I got out of the car and was being swept along with the crowd, when I heard my name shouted. Thank goodness. Two of my very favorite arty students, Ashley and Will, appeared and let me tag along with them.

Ashley had designed the logo and program for this year's show, so she had free tickets. We brushed past the hoi-palloi waiting in line and sashayed right up to the front, smack dab under the catwalk, just like we were Mick Jagger or something. There were tables for the fancy folk, and folding chairs for everyone else. Our table had a bowl with gardenias and candles floating in it, and the cloth itself was dusted with red rose petals and a metallic star that caught the light and glowed in the dimness. There were cookies and pastries in fancy wrapping donated by a local bakery. Not too shabby for us poseurs.

It's late, so I'll skip the details, but it was a very glam, very slick production. Local stores had lent clothes, the wife of a teacher who had been a model coached the kids on how to walk, the lighting was done by a professional, as was the music. It was choreographed. It was the real deal.

I liked that many of the models were boys, many football players. I liked that proceeds went to charity. And I took over 200 photos, even though I hadn't planned on it. It asuaged my guilt about sneaking into the front. Here are a couple.

heaven and hell

2005-04-10T21:32:00.000-07:00

Woke up with horrendous poison oak yet again. I get it because I can't stay away from the beautiful place where I walk with the dog girls, and even though I stay on the paths, they dart in and out, tearing through underbrush, springing through fields. And then I pet them. And then I pay.

One of my eyes is almost closed with it, so I look like popeye once again. My arms are red and blotchy. I have great lotions that take care of the worst of it, herbal magic recommended by a friend. But not on the eyelid. I'll just have to suffer the itching and temporary disfigurement philosophically. I sometimes break down and get cortisone shots, but they don't seem to work all that well, and they're creepy, so I avoid them as long as possible.

The heaven part is that wildflowers are carpeting the fields, and this old former army land is such a balm for whatever inner life I can scrape together. The exquisite softness of the grasses that no camera can adequately capture, the wind playing on it, the colors, the quiet, and the constant vaudeville show that is Bosco-the-wonder-dog, hopping and scampering like a little bunny rabbit, digging for gophers, charging hither and thither hoping to catch something, anything.

The two older dogs trot along, sniffing, taking it all in. Mrs. Beasley constantly lags behind, because she sniffs ever-so-carefully and doesn't want to be hurried. And because she's a stubborn old queen-of-a-dog who likes to maintain her dignity. Occasionally she disappears for a while, and when she comes back, she's smeared some disgusting thing on herself, and she has her guilty sly look, and blinks a lot, and tries to act casual so I won't notice.

I saw a coyote today, but fortunately the dogs didn't spot it and it was smart enough to flee. They picked up its scent later, and searched the field furiously, rushing back and forth, but it was long gone.

Time to lotion up. The itching demons have overtaken me. Here are today's photos.

Just as I finished typing this I heard a noise outside and went to investigate. Great, another exciting Sunday night in the 'hood. Things like this are just the reason I need the nature walks so badly. It was a false alarm.

pixel power

2005-04-09T08:06:00.000-07:00

My experiment worked, and I can now post photos here. The hard part will be showing restraint so I don't drown my small cadre of readers in a torrent of images. I'm going to put a whole bunch up today, and maybe after this I'll just put pick o' the day. I can stop any time I want. Really. It's not a problem...

photo test

2005-04-09T06:40:00.000-07:00

I used to be obsessed with photography, starting in my teens. I took workshops with Ansel Adams, Paul Caponigro, Aaron Siskind, Minor White, all while still in high school. I lived and breathed large-format black and white photography, majored in it in college, taught it, and after about a dozen years, burnt out. The muse just said, "This has been a great party 'n' all, but I gotta go."

Suddenly, on a trip to Vancouver last December, with a small, junky digital camera borrowed as an afterthought at the last minute, it all came back. The passion of the hunter. So after thirty-five years, I bought myself a new camera and joined the ranks of the digital, shooting color, which I have a tenuous relationship to. My new routine is to grab the camera as I go out the door in the late afternoon to take the dog girls for our romp in the fields of a deserted army base nearby.

The last few nights I've been taking photos while driving home, too. The roads are so little-traveled that I can stop and snap for several minutes without any cars behind me. The dogs think I'm nuts, but what else is new.

The we go home, they get their daily egg, and I spend the rest of the evening unwrapping presents, or at least that's what it feels like. I download the photos and start playing with them, sometimes doing little but saving for the web, sometimes experimenting wildly for hours to bring out forms or colors in different ways.

Let's see if I can post them here using a Mac. I have some on flickr, but I want to drop them where I can write.

Pop Tart

2005-04-06T22:55:00.000-07:00

In the middle of a busy class, as my students clumped into various pairs and groups to work on the student paper, two very blond girls appeared in my room. The leader looked like a short Paris Hilton wannabe, and she had brought her little friend, who had to come with her to keep her company. I could tell they wanted a favor, and even though I didn't know them, one girl held a clue, in the form of a video camera, so I had a pretty good idea what the favor was about.

It turned out to be one of those times when, looking back, I bitterly regretted not having my own reality TV crew on hand to cover what happened next. It wasn't a big dramatic moment, it was just so funny in so many small, detailed ways, that now, many hours and many students later, I can't remember the fine points and subtleties that made it such a rich comedic experience. I'll just deliver some highlights and let your imagination fill in the rest as best you can.

It started when the main girl held out the camera like a burnt offering and asked me if I could fix it, because she had a super important tape in it that she had to finish and send off to a college as part of her entrance requirement, and it was due by Friday. Seems it was working just moments before, but now all it would do was play the tape looking all weird.

I looked at it, and she was right, the picture was just blurry fuzz. I started probing around and as I did I began asking questions, like, "did you do anything to it that might have caused it to break?" She got a sheepish look on her face and mentioned that she might possibly have dripped popsicle juice inside it. " Hmmm. I see. What color? Something like the color on that little thing inside there?" "Yeah. That exact color." Hmmmm. OK then.

It emerged that it was a tape of cheerleaders doing their routine, and suddenly things made more sense. And it also came to light that this was for UCSB, one of the most notorious party schools this side of the rockies. She had another tape, and we tried that with the same results, but after I fast-forwarded the entire tape, rewound tape it and tried to play it again, it began to work. Guess the popsicle juice got spread around enough to stop interfering with the transport controls.

I was drawn into watching her tape. It seemed there was a drawing of a deer with no antlers, and a teenage boy was standing by the drawing, but he did have antlers. He. Was. Wearing. Antlers.

While I fiddled with the camera Miss Cheerleader was on her cell phone. When the camera was fixed she squealed with delighted relief, and she and her little friend left. A while later they were back. She had lost her phone. Nope, not in my room, and she was off for good this time, groaning about what an awful day she was having. Ah youth.

on a brighter note

2005-04-04T00:26:00.000-07:00

After that last post I needed something more positive to report. I went to a little traveling carnival that landed here for a few days. I was wary of being asked to leave, but I was so wrong. The carnies were wonderful and eager to talk about their new ferris wheel, which they had just recently bought used.

I asked them where they found a used ferris wheel. Online. Silly me.

I took lots of photos with my new camera, which I've just posted on Flickr, here.

The good, the bad and the ugly

2005-04-03T19:05:00.000-07:00

What an intense week. The April Fool's edition of our school paper came out, complete with a photo of the principal on the cover, washing dishes in the cafeteria, a photo I have saved for over six months for just this purpose. We wrote an article saying the school board had decided to shuffle staff assignments randomly to be more equitable, and went on to pick the most unlikely staffers for several positions, including a photo of a rather stout male teacher doing a pirouette, wearing a tutu, courtesy of photoshop, whom we pegged as the new dance teacher.

It was great fun, and the principal got his revenge in kind, announcing during his morning broadcast that we had outdone ourselves, and that they would miss me, since it was my last day. One student from Costa Rica came in almost in tears, because she didn't understand about April Fool's day and thought I was really leaving.

Friday was Bosco-the-puppy's first birthday, and I decided to have a little celebration at the dog park where we go several times a week. I wanted to thank all her doggie friends and their owners for their part in getting her really well socialized these last several months. She plays well with others, which is such a big deal.

I filled bags with dog treats for people to take home and Boyfriend baked cupcakes for the humans.

The atmosphere was festive until suddenly a very large dog, part mastiff, part bloodhound, named Duke, who has come there several times, grabbed a Chihuahua puppy in his maw and wouldn't let go. Duke is usually really placid and slow, but prey drive must have kicked in. It wasn't a fight between two dogs. It was hunting.

People began screaming, several men tried to pry his jaws apart, another hit Duke on the head, but he just sat there. Finally someone stepped on his tail, and they were able to get the small dog out. No puncture wounds, but he was crushed, and died on the way to the vet's.

People reacted in different ways. Some were maudlin, some angry, some dramatic and others, like me, just sad. I get a bit detached, knowing my reactions won't help or change anything. It's my way of coping. Others needed to talk of vengeance, baseball bats, police, law suits, never coming to dog park again. Realistically, we can't protect ourselves or our loved ones or pets from things like this. Duke had never seemed particularly threatening or aggressive. In fact, he seemed like a sleepy giant. No one saw it coming, except in hindsight.

The little dog had been obnoxious, bothering other dogs, trying to hump them, and not taking no for an answer even after they snarled at him. Just last week a Daschund had attacked him after he repeatedly bothered him and got in his face. There was something about him that didn't get the social rules. Still, it was very sad.

I went back yesterday and talked with some of the others about making something positive out of the tragedy, creating a separate area for the small dogs, laminating some emergency info and park guidelines to put by the entrance. That's my impulse, to go on, to make things better, but then again, my puppy is still here.

A Gigolo's Tale

2005-03-26T12:01:00.000-08:00

In my previous post, about the fake names used to spam me, I mentioned liking the name Tad Bacon, and thinking it sounded like the name of a gigolo, or a character from a John Water's movie. Imagine my surprise then, when I got an email from a real Tad Bacon, a scientist, not the hoped-for gigolo, but that's probably just as well.

There is a back-story to my affection for the name Tad, and since it's Saturday, and I'm avoiding the inevitable school work, I don't mind spinning a tale.

Several years ago I moved back to California after years spent on the East coast. While essentially rebuilding my life from the ground up, I went through a series of mishaps and tragedies that would have made me an excellent candidate for that old '50s TV show, Queen for a Day, where the woman with the most compelling sob story wins a washing machine, and is wrapped in an ermine-lined red robe with trailing train, seated on a throne and crowned with a lopsided tiara, sobbing all the while.

There was cancer in the family, a hellish control-freak boss who re-named me to his liking on my first day at work, breaking up with a sweet-but-hopelessly-prodigal boyfriend, renting a room from a pathologically needy, soul-sucking egotist I dubbed 'Worm-Woman', plus many, many other pranks on the part of what seemed like my personal demon, culminating in my car, on long-term loan from a step-sister, being stolen, then found driven into a telephone pole and inexplicably filled with thousands of used golf balls.

All through this series of plagues, I was emailing my best friend in Boston, and when she got news of the stolen car, she sent me back something roughly like this:

"OK, I get it now. You're sitting under a palm tree, nightingales singing in the branches, soft tropical breezes wafting by. A scantily-clad, painfully buff waiter appears, to offer you, oh so solicitously, on a silver tray, a capsule of ecstasy. You brush him away. You have no time for this now. You need to write another chapter in the story of your life, 'CAUSE YOU MUST BE MAKING THIS SHIT UP! GIRL, NO ONE GETS THEIR CAR STOLEN AND THEN GETS THE F***ER BACK BEFORE THEY BURN IT AND YOU COLLECT THE INSURANCE MONEY!"

Taken with the imagery, I quickly wrote back:

"You clever thing. You've seen through my little ruse. (Oh Tad, dear, bring me a little drinkie, there's a good boy.) Such a dear. I don't know what I'd do without him. He used to be one of my bearers, right front position, but the sedan chair was terribly heavy, and he was such a sensitive boy, so when he developed that horrible allergy to nightingales, I thought he'd be so much more useful around the house anyway. He's now my social secretary and I've come to rely on him for so many little details of everyday life, you see. "

Thus Tad the gigolo was born. Email mentions of him and my enviable lifestyle got more and more elaborate, and began to spread, as my sister and other friends were brought into the collective fantasy. One family friend, a very stylish, dandified gay man who makes his living as a society jeweler, began inviting Tad to visit him, and got so insistent, even after I protested that I simply couldn't spare him, that he actually broke off communication with me. I felt bad, but as I had explained to him, Tad was just so busy closing up the house for the season, wrapping linens in tissue, polishing silver, putting the dust covers over all the furniture and chandeliers, leaving instructions for the groundsmen and grooms, and similar tasks that just must be seen to. You'd think he would have been more understanding under the circumstances. Oh well, que sera, sera, as they say.

Eventually my friends tired of hearing about my little domestic arrangements, and who can blame them? I think there may have been a hint of envy, but I like to keep a positive outlook so I don't dwell on such unpleasant thoughts, preferring an attitude of noblesse obligee. (Tad, be a darling and fetch me my riding crop, would you? And have the chair brought to the front gate. I'm going to pay some morning visits. Thank you dear, dear boy.)

URGENT ASSISTANCE

2005-03-20T23:25:00.000-08:00

I'm getting a new strain of spam every few hours now, with a decidedly different flavor from the usual afrospam, which reads like that game called 'Ad-libs' that we used to play at parties back in the day. One person asks you to think of adjectives, nouns or other parts of speech, fills your answers into a paragraph you can't see, then reads the whole thing out loud including your answers, to create a completed story that makes everyone howl with laughter.

Dear (affectionate salutatory name). I am writing to you personally on behalf of my (type of relative), formerly head of (name of military or government branch) in (name of African country). Just before the unfortunate (name of some tragedy or upheaval) that took his life, he entrusted me with (large amount of money) which I now must deposit into an American bank. I ask your assistance in this urgent matter, because our mutual friends have confided in me that you are totally trustworthy. Once the money has been deposited in your account, I will give you (percentage) which comes to (amount of money over 1 million dollars) cash as your fee for this noble assistance...

You get the idea.

I used to collect afrospams, but I've gotten so many hundreds, or maybe thousands, that I just hit delete and go about my business. But now there's a new spam scam whose chief amusement factor is the wildly improbable name of the sender, obviously generated at random. At least they make me laugh while I'm hitting the delete button. I've started a running list of these fine names, in case one of you out there is with child and needs a monniker for the new tyke. Those baby name books are all alike, but here, HERE are some NAMES:

Shriveling Q. Opportunism
Penny V. Spartan
Goatee K. Marat
Nutritionist P. Christ
Adult D. Spore
Malevolence S. Weatherizing
Holly Apologia
Tad Bacon
Outbursting S. Overdressed
Sunburning D. Minx
Breeziest L. Fawn
Redid U. Lodged
Solidifying O. Boardroom
Hereby L. Skivvied
Oppressed T. McDonnell
Leathernecks B. Funicular
Walloped B. Clot
Junkyard I. Hubbub
Elvis Eckert
Phoebe Salinas
Minnie Finch
Wrongdoer B. Conks
Bora Storey
Ruby Tulip

Oddly, Ruby Tulip turned out to be email from a friend. Oops. My favorite, and it was a tough choice, is Tad Bacon. I think this would be an excellent name for a gigolo or a character in a John Waters movie. Maybe he could date Breeziest Fawn, but quickly drop her for Sunburning Minx. Perhaps he'd get mixed up with Junkyard 'Junky' Hubbub and do some hard time, only to find salvation through the gentle ministrations of Minnie Finch. The possibilities, like spam, are endless.

Merci, Monsieur!

2005-03-13T14:13:00.000-08:00

Like most sullen middle school students, my biggest inner whine was that I was wasting my time studying subjects I was never going to use and had no interest in. So it was with great disgust that I discovered I was required to take a foreign language. My choices were French or Spanish, and I chose French because it seemed arty.

My first teacher was from Texas, and spoke English with a drawl so thick it made the class an exercise in futility. I do remember her telling us about some big-deal bicycle race, but since this was forty years before Lance Armstrong came on the scene, we had very little interest. I don't remember a thing about my second French teacher, except that she was not from Texas.

Then I got to high school, and once again French was on my schedule. I slumped in the door. A very tall, very thin, elegant man with mocha-brown skin dressed in an immaculately tailored suit stood at a podium at the front of the room.

He had two little puffs of hair, one on each side of his head, which met in the middle in a widow's peak. Everything about him gave the impression of length, his high forehead, long face and body, long fingers. We could tell his French accent was the real thing, and his English was strangely inflected. There were all sorts of rumors about him; a Creole mother, a previous career as a concert pianist, someone who had heard him speaking perfect English... One impertinent boy asked him if he was married. His reply: "Sometimes kids, sometimes"... accompanied by a radient smile and arched eyebrows."Sometimes."

His mannerisms were supremely dignified, formal and totally effeminate, a strange combination. He looked out at us and smiled his special smile, his beaming, heartbreakingly vulnerable and innocent smile bubble that no one, not even the most nasty, cynical rebellious boy had the nerve to burst. This smile was his weapon, a trusting expression that only puppies or children under the age of two could pull off, that miraculously, he had, and wielded like a laser beam.

Another facet of his stage persona was that it was completely asexual, despite his obviously queenishness. He could, and did, do outrageous things, and yet there was never the slightest taint of impropriety.

He had a huge poster of Bridgette Bardot, then a reigning French sex goddess, leather-clad astride a motorcycle. Occasionally, while quizzing us on verb tenses, he would dust Bridgette's body, all the while smiling at us with the most innocent look imaginable, and if his hands were not attached to him at all.

The smile was part of a very complex persona, full of odd mannerisms, expressions and peculiarities, and every day he combined them to give us a new show, all the while being a very rigorous teacher, and keeping a tight reign on the class without breaking character. He used this persona as the fourth wall, that invisible wall created by unspoken agreement between actor and audience, that says, "I act—you watch."

He had us sit alphabetically, and began to call role, saying each name and peering over his reading glasses, fixing each student with his smile and bobbing his head a bit in recognition.

Each and every name was mangled in an absurd, and often pointedly funny way. If a student had an older sibling Monsieur would manage to reference them in the name. My own name, spelled Bein, pronounced Bine, he proclaimed, "Beentz!" and the smile he flashed while saying it precluded any correction. I spent two whole years in his class without knowing the names of my fellow students, only the weird nicknames he had dubbed them. Some names evolved as the semester went on and he got to know us better.

Directly facing me across the aisle sat identical twin boys, the type who were athletic and got all A's. Monsieur immediately took a shine to them, and when it came time to call their names, he indicated one and said "Bob." The boy looked startled, but it was obvious he was being called on, so he said, 'Here.' Monsieur turned to his brother, "Bob deux" and the equally confused brother said, "Here." Thus he dubbed them the Bobsey Twins. To this day I have no idea what their real names were.

He varied their names each and every time he called on them, which was often, and he usually called on the second brother right after the first, with a variation on the name he had just used, saying, "My Boy," then, " My Other Boy" or, "Bobsey", "Bobsey Deux." The variations were endless, but I only remember a few;

Bop-sie, Mopsey
My Bob, Bobsey Boy,
My Un, My Deux, ,
Boy Un, Boy Deux,
Bop-sie Boy, Boob-sie Boy,
Boobs Un, Boobs Deux,
Babs, Babs Deux,
Bobbert, Robbert,
Rob's Bob, Bob's Rob
My favorite, My other favorite
Mon Préféré, Mon autre Préféré,

And all the while, as we silently convulsed with laughter, Monsieur beamed his innocent, "I know nothing about this and don't have the faintest idea what you're talking about." smile and did his quick little head bobs and raised his eyebrows, making him look even more cartoonishly naif.

My neighbor was called Bree-zay, which morphed into Breezy, and Breezy Boy and Windy. My own name was fairly stable at Beentz or Beentzie, but one day, perhaps in honor of my well-endowed chest, I was called 'Beentzie boobs.' I'm amazed he could do any of this with a straight face. I only once saw him come close to losing it, but more of that later.

The seats were arranged in two sections which faced each other, separated by a central aisle. At one end of the aisle was his podium, at the other was a blackboard with a door on either side of it, leading outside to the hall. He would take his pointing stick which was three or four feet long and slowly twirl it in one hand, using his elegant fingers, each in succession, which is ridiculously difficult and ackward to do, but which he did effortlessly.

As he twirled his pointer he paced back and forth from his podium to the blackboard, quizzing and drilling the class about grammar. He would pose a question in French, then pause, and POOMPH, his twirling stick would dramatically land point-first on someone's shoulder. This was not a class where students dozed. He would fix his victim with an expectant smile, his face open and trusting, and at that moment, even the most testy student would want to please him. If the answer was correct, our reward was a bobbing head and pleased expression. But if the answer was wrong, there would be a horrible pause, and his entire face would crumble. Even slacker students like myself would feel terrible for letting him down, and vow to be prepared the next time.

Sometimes, after a particularly bad answer, he would blurt, "Well, you've made a complete salad of it, kid." Except he pronounced kid with a 't' instead of a 'd', calling us kits. Later, when he spoke only French to us, he would simply say, "Quelle salade!" We never quite got the reference, but we figured it was a mix-up.

Continuing his verbal quiz, he wanted to use an example of two girls going to a pool, and the sentence was acted out in pantomime. As he said, "Bridgette," one hand rose to his chest, his long fingers squeezing an imaginary breast, " et Sophia," (an obvious reference to Sophia Loren, a very busty actress) the second hand rose to make the same outrageous gesture at a second breast, "vont a la piscine." And he walked around repeating the sentence, long fingers fluttering in front of his imaginarry breasts, bobbing his head slightly, beaming, while we intoned, "Brigette et Sophia vont à la piscine." and tried not to laugh in shocked disbelief.

One day he was doing his usual verbal grammar drill, pacing back and forth. He called on one student, smiled expectantly, and received the wrong answer. His face fell. After a dramatic pause, he turned to another. His face lifted into a beatific smile, and he said, "Babs knows, kits!" Babs didn't know. His face fell. He went on like this all around the room, fixing each of us in turn with his 'all innocence' face, getting the wrong answer, face collapsing like a brick wall turning to rubble. Not one student knew the answer. Even the Bobs let him down.

There was a terrible silence. He let our a sigh and walked to the podium. He looked out at us and picked up a book, raising it in both hands without opening it. SLAM! It fell to the podium. Again. SLAM. pause. SLAM. He was slowly, methodically dropping it onto the podium. What the..? Then he took his lovely long hand and SLAM, brought it down onto the podium, knuckle-side-down. SLAM. Pause. SLAM. We now felt horrible. Suddenly he blurted out "Well, kits, I'm going to pump gaz!"

HUH?!

Then, so fast we could hardly catch it, "I'm going to pump gaz. Maybe I'll be good at pumping gaz since I'm obviously not good at teaching French!" The picture of this refined prince-of-a man pumping gas was so ridiculous we almost burst trying not to laugh, and blessedly, the bell rang.

Occasionally, when students were talking out of place he would say loudly, "Don't be foolish virgins, kits!" Just the fear of hearing that silenced many. Every once in a while, when the occasion called for an enthusiastic response, he would blurt out the word 'Oui,' in such a loud, visceral manner it sounded like a huge belching WUP! Boys tried to imitate it, but no one could come close.

He told us stories about France, and French provinces, and one memorable time, about the author Rablais. He used his long body to mime various points, and between his words and actions, we understood him so well we often forgot he was speaking French.

He began his lecture on Rablais,
"Quand Rablais était un petit garçon, (his hand makes a gesture at his side, showing us the height of a small boy) il était très religieux (crossing himself frantically and very dramatically) TRÈS religieux (Putting his long hands together in prayer, closing his eyes, sighing, shuddering, crossing himself again. Dramatic pause to let it sink in)

Mais....quand Rablais était un jeune homme (his hand makes a gesture, showing us the height of a larger boy), il était très religieux (again with the praying hands), mais ... il aimait des filles (his hands slowly outline the sinuous curves of a female body, his little eyebrows arched), du vin, (he mimes drinking down a glass of wine with obvious relish) MAIS, TRÈS religieux! (He again crosses himself frantically). The story was so vivid that thirty-five years later I still remember his exact words and gestures.

He had other tricks for making us learn. He used to write on the board in very swishy handwriting, making elaborate tails on some letters, and just when he got to a word or phrase that we were supposed to have looked up, his writing would become illegible. He would say, "It's simple (pronounced 'sample') kits, it's sample. Just like math; X plus 4Y equals 3Z! " And he would beam at us, his smile saying, "Look it up yourselves, you lazy little shits."

One day he was writing furiously on the board, which was between two doors leading into the hall. He came to the end of one word ending in 'y' and continued the flourish on the tail of the 'y' along the board, onto the wall, out the door, back into the room via the other door and dotted an 'i'. We spontaneously burst into applause and he bobbed his head and smiled in rare acknowledgment.

Sometimes, during one of his demanding written tests, as he moved around the room, he would reach down and without looking, or making any change of expression that might acknowledge what he was doing, take the pen from one of the Bobs, tucking it neatly in the breast pocket of his suit jacket. The flustered Bob would raise his hand and ask for his pen back. Mr. Johnson would feign ignorance. "Ce stylo, c'est à toi? Non!" "Yes. Could I please have it back, Monsieur? "Vraiment, c'est à toi? Tu es sûr?" He knew very well that Bob would ace the test, even with this little diversion.

He did something else to tweak the perfect Bobs. They both had large metal clips on the cover of their notebooks, holding loose papers in place inside. As Monsieur paced back and forth in his daily grammar quiz mode, pointing his stick and firing questions at us, his hand would reach down and take the clip off a Bob notebook. Usually he would clip the lapels of his suit together with it, which looked totally ridiculous as he continued to pace and turn, this highly proper man with a clip sticking out of the middle of his chest. Sometimes he would clip it onto his pointing stick and wave it around, making the stick even more ominous. He would never acknowledge any of this, naturally.

The Bobs finally decided to get revenge. One day, as we sat as usual, trying to remember French verb tenses, hoping the pointing stick would mercifully skip us when we didn't know the answer, Monsieur was up to his usual tricks. We watched as he went for the clip. He did so without even a glance in the direction of his hands, and clipped his suit together. Bob was doing something though. He had tied almost-invisible mono-filament thread, used for fishing lines, onto the clip, and he was reeling it out as Monsieur continued to pace back and forth, oblivious to the addition. We watched in mute fascination as Monsieur became more and more tangled up in fishing line with each turn, back and forth, back and forth. We were dying to laugh. We were bursting.

Finally, Monsieur went to turn, but he had reached the end of the line, and only got half-way through his turn when he was stopped by a tug. He looked slowly down. He was completely wrapped in fishing line. He turned his back to us and put his hands to his face. We could see he was vibrating with laughter, struggling mightily not break up. We lost it. Kids were actually falling out of their seats onto the floor laughing, howling. Finally, after considerable time had passed, he turned to us, and with every ounce of self-control he could muster, made an incredible pun in French about how it wasn't nice to keep your teachers tied up. The bell rang. We poured out of the class in hysterics. We had almost seen him crack. He never messed with Bob's clip again.

Even though I was a lousy student, I adored Monsieur and was in awe of him. My friend and I had heard him talk about opera, and how he loved Wagner. When we heard the Metropolitan Opera was coming to town, and was performing Wagner, we saved up and got him two of the best tickets we could. He was very pleased, and when he came back after the performance, he said, in typical fashion, "Oh kits, I just died."

I've had a few inspiring teachers since, but he did something none of the others did; he made me love something I was prepared to hate. Eight years after his class, with no additional preparation, I went to France and could get around and be understood. My grammar is horrible, because I never studied, but I have a feel for the sound and rhythm of the language that most French majors envy. I'm imitating him. He managed, single-handedly to imbue me with a love of a language and country. And what a show he put on. Merci, Monsieur. Merci bien!

From Among my Memories

2005-03-06T15:14:00.000-08:00

In the small Vermont town where I went to college, there were several characters, people who made the little picture postcard come to life, but none as memorable as the proprietor of the local Texaco Station, George Boardman.

Imagine, if you are of an age to remember, the actor Robert Mitchum. Strong, straight Roman nose, eyes that seemed to see everything at a glance and could stare the truth right out of you, a tangible sensuality, and the feeling that things could turn violent just like that. On less of a man the cleft chin would have been weak and slightly receding, but by some inner force his gave the impression of jutting out, like a dare.

George Boardman had these same looks, alright, although most who knew him then would have laughed long and hard at the comparison. He was grizzled and bear-like with a barrel chest and a gut from the beer that often accompanied him. His face was dark with the grease of a thousand cars, giving him the look of a coal miner, and contrasting starkly with light blue eyes that crinkled in the corners, broadcasting his roguishness.

The closest thing to the sound of his broad Vermont speech was a cockney accent. In fact, in the unlikely event that the town ever staged a production of My Fair Lady, he would have made an excellent Alfred Doolittle, father of Eliza, retired dustman and scamp extraordinaire.

His Texaco was the only gas station in town and was always full of cars in various stages of being worked on by him and 'the boys.' The building itself was generally what one would expect of a structure inhabited by car guys: filthy in the extreme, and if I remember correctly, Texaco eventually got wind of this and took away its patronage, which made absolutely no difference whatsoever to George or anyone else. George kept a couple of German Shepherds hanging around in the back, which was another time-honored gas station custom, before gas stations lost their individuality and became sterilized convenience stores with gas pumps out front owned by faceless corporations.

George's grown son worked at the station too. Feature-for-feature he looked just like him, but where George radiated a manly presence his son seemed a product of the unlikely mating between his father and Ray Bolger, the scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz, with George's Roman nose, but a weak chin that held back where George's provoked you to poke it, and a taller, thinner, hunched body which gave the impression that it would clinch back into a fetal position at the smallest provocation. Perhaps because of this, perhaps because of a million other things we will never be privy to, he carried a perennial sourness about him which contrasted greatly with George's robust self-confidence.

Heavy arctic Winters lasted six months in this Vermont hamlet, followed by mud season, which is six weeks of just what it sounds like. Spring was the blink of an eye, then black fly season, hot and buzzing and lazy, then a magnificent Fall where every view was a page torn from a calendar. Three weeks or a month into it, the tourists left, silence engulfed the town and Winter seemed to say, 'it was all a dream. I am the only real season you will ever know. I am the real Vermont. Get your boots on and start shoveling.'

It was during just such an unrelenting winter in 1970 that this daughter of Los Angeles drove her small black 1965 MGB sports car into town. It was only a matter of time before I met George Boardman. I don't remember the exact circumstances, but I do remember the steamy gray morning that I stood shivering outside his shop as he took a cursory glance under the hood and said, 'Bring ol' 'enrietta in 'ere, Sus'n, an' let's take a look at 'ah.' My car was thus christened, Ol'Henrietta, and from that day forth I was one of the faithful who came to beg and tithe at George's greasy altar. He and the boys usually worked late into the night, especially if some desperate and savvy customer thought to bring a few six packs. Passing by you could see lights burning and steam and exhaust outlining the silhouettes of noisy men, dogs and cars within. They always seemed to be having one hell of a time.

On nights when it was especially cold, implying temperatures under thirty below, George would stop by my apartment, announcing his presence the same way everyone did in those parts, by stamping the snow off their boots outside the door. Walking right in with my car battery gripped under one arm he would deposit it on the radiator. Early the next morning, on his way into town, he would stomp in, heft the battery back out to my car and hook it up again. I'm not sure why I didn't have an engine block heater, but it wouldn't have been nearly as entertaining.

My last year in Vermont, a college girl started working for George, sitting in the cramped office, writing up invoices and taking care of the paperwork. She was taller than him, with short hair and a tomboyish look to her. Occasionally I would see her riding shotgun with him in the wrecker. She seemed to fit right in. Some time after I left, I heard that George had stopped drinking, trimmed down, cleaned himself up, divorced the wife no one ever saw and married this girl.

I never heard more than that, but in my own private movie of his life, that is the happy ending, the one we all know isn't really an ending, but will just have to do, because it's all we're going to get. In the snow-globe in my mind, George will forever be working with the boys, hammering out bent frames, fixing fuel pumps, covered in grease, smelling of beer, laughing and cursing in his thick Vermont twang, looking, I don't care what anyone says, just like Robert Mitchum, while the snow falls silently outside.

Ah, the quiet times

2005-03-06T15:04:00.000-08:00

I've been quiet here only because I've been reassessing my entire job situation, going through the anger phase (their position is simply draconian!), the self-pity phase (When I think of all I've done for them…), the depressed phase (oops, there went the weekend and all I did was mope, eat and do crosswords) and finally coming into the creative solution phase (I'm going to swoop in with a totally new job description, completely eliminating everything I hate doing, and create my own new position)

Today the very man I wanted to pitch my new idea to, the Techno-Tzar for the entire school district, asked me for a ride, yes, stuck his thumb out, hitched up his pants to show a bit of ankle and wiggled his derriere. I sensed the time was ripe, despite the fact that my car smelled like a wet dog and the seat was so far forward that he had to scrunch himself in half to get in.

Once he was trapped inside my fetid pupmobile, I blurted out my pitch, offering to teach three design classes and spend the rest of my time training teachers, writing grants and coordinating websites for the district, instead of teaching night classes and goddamn video and going to inane meetings. He was so taken with the idea, he gushed that just training teachers would probably be enough. So, first hurdle cleared despite the fact that he was covered in musty dog hair by the time I dropped him off.

It didn't hurt that I had been in a meeting with him all day, formulating a new district technology plan so that we can go to the school board and ask for tons more money. I was assigned to work with two others drafting a new mission statement, and in addition to the usual lofty fluff, I had produced a pithy alternative, expressing what we really wanted to say, which I recited while suddenly, inexplicably seized with a Jamaican accent:

(XUSD= my school district)

We gots a new plan for da XUSD
It's a great big plan fo' da tec-no-lo-gee
It's gonna help de kids, and we know you like-a dat,
So you betta pull some mo-nay from you' big fat...hat.

It was well-received by my fellow meeting sufferers, who then accepted our 'real' mission statement without a change.

Meanwhile, back at school, a stranger with no computer skills or design knowledge was substituting in all my classes. I got back to a note telling me that one newly-blonde vixen had been caught visiting 'Lives of strippers' websites and regaling her fellow students with all-too-vivid snippets. She had been sassy and defiant when confronted. It seems she was impressed with their earning potential, because next day, when I asked this candidate-for-future-hootchie-mama about the incident, she said, "Oh, you mean my research project for Economics?"

They had been extremely busy, my little designers, cutting paper snowflakes, strings of hearts and paper dolls out of the pink scrap paper, festooning the room, strapping several to my desk with yards of tape bearing silly messages, like 'we love you miss bean, get well soon', "We want to have your children,' 'I love lamps' (huh?) decorated with little pictures. Oh yes, so glad I wrote elaborate instructions about what they were supposed to accomplish.

During office hours a sweet freshman boy came in to ask a favor. I hadn't met him, but I quickly connected his name with an email his proud father had recently sent, telling me about this son who was already making animated games and knew more programming than I will in three lifetimes. The boy had made a video for science class about the lives of a cell, and was having trouble with a technical glitch.

We put it in the DVD player and began to watch. It was like an elaborate Saturday Night Live skit, with costumes, characters, and props, shot against a green screen he had rigged up, so that he could superimpose people in front of different photos he had gotten off the internet. One part of the cell was personified as a club bouncer who wouldn't let salt past the membrane, but let sugar in. Another was a Godfather, stroking a lapdog as he gave orders to eliminate an intruder. It had a soundtrack. It was funny. It was better than any video any of my students has made all year. He is fourteen years old. Later, in the last period of the day, we went to a concert given by the school jazz ensemble, and there he was, doing a solo violin riff that brought down the house. This kid is going places.

During my 25-boy free-for-all video class, a terse note came from the vice principal, telling me to keep all my students inside. Campus guards herded in several whining boys who had been out filming, and suddenly several more had to go to the bathroom or get drinks or go to their lockers. I felt like I was trying to keep restless cattle in a corral without a gate, but I stood as tall as a five-foot-two person could and held them back. I had a funny feeling.

A counselor came around to all the classes with a message from the principal to be read aloud. A troubled freshman boy had brought a gun to school with several rounds of ammunition. One of his friends ratted him out and he was quickly carted away to the hospital to be 'evaluated.' He won't be back. The vice-principal later told me he was a drug baby raised by grandparents, and there were some synapses not firing. Kids told me he had taken money for sex with other boys in the bathroom and sold drugs, which might or might not be true. Tragic that his life trajectory could be so off-course by the age of fourteen.

But the drama wasn't over. The vice principal suddenly appeared in my room, with a burly man holding a black labrador on a leash. The drug sniffing dog had arrived to search the room for drugs and/or traces of gunpowder. Twenty-five boys were herded into the hallway while their backpacks stayed inside to be sniffed. Much to my surprise, he didn't turn up anything, and while my boys made jokes about that, drug dog and company moved on to the next class.

Another note arrived, this time summoning a model student to the office. A model student with a quirky wardrobe, he of the PJs and Homer Simpson bedroom slipper incident, the boy who once wore a sarong to school, not to be confused with the boy who wore a skirt. He was wearing his pajamas to school yet again because he had been up most of the night finishing a project, and there were snide remarks about the fashion police, but he didn't return. During my prep time he was escorted in by the guard to get his things. The drug dog had found something in his car, which turned out to be incense, but meanwhile they had found a small pocket knife in his glove compartment, so he was being suspended for having a weapon at school. Even the guard was livid about this. After pressure from parents, the administration came to their senses, and he returned to school, wearing a tight, bright yellow woman's pantsuit from the '70s and matching yellow sunglasses. He too did a solo turn at the jazz concert, on electric guitar, looking like a deranged rock star in a banana suit.

In my ongoing dispute with the administration over my schedule, my supervisor sincerely apologized to me for having addressed me as 'missy,' as in 'You're full time here, Missy," which took that thorn out of my side, but left me still determined to redefine my job, and find a way to change the principal's mind. And so ended my week at school in this sleepy little tourist community. We have a week off, in which I will attempt to recover, or perhaps regenerate would be a better word, so I can go back for more.

odd bits from a Sunday

2005-02-13T15:47:00.000-08:00

It's Sunday afternoon. Poison oak, my constant companion, because I insist on walking my dogs in beautiful wooded places and am violently allergic to it, has once again raised red welts on my wrists and hands. This time there is a special bonus, and it's appeared on my right eyelid, causing it to squint shut, making me look like Popeye the Sailor, without the cute little corn cob pipe. My head being already shaved, the effect is really quite terrifying. Too bad it's Valentine's day instead of Halloween. Pity my poor, long-suffering boyfriend.

I'm in the midst of an ugly fight with school administrators, and it's engulfing me in anger and frustration. I had a dream I was trying to get to my class, but was caught in a crazy mall-from-hell full of glitz and style and couldn't find it. I was begging vain salesgirls to stop looking in the mirror long enough to show me how to get to my class. I kept taking escalators that led nowhere, and asking more people, and I was in tears because class had started without me.

Someone has left a comment on one of my blog entries twice now that are nothing but links to porn websites. My brother has sent an email to his friends, mentioning my blog, and inviting them to feel free to harass me, in return for years of disfunctional babysitting. He was kidding, of course. HE WAS KIDDING! No, I'm sure those two things aren't related.

It's true I did babysit my younger siblings a lot. They were six and seven years younger, and I was a very responsible child. The only time I really remember was the night they got in a fight, as usual, and brother hit sister in the nose, or the ironing board fell on her nose, depending on who is telling the story. It swelled up and blurred across her face. I put an impromptu ice pack on her and called my uncle, the doctor for a consultation. Meanwhile, in the other room, my remorseful brother had gone in to apologize, they had quickly gotten into another fight, and he hit her in the nose...

It's time to walk the dogs in the wooded area and no doubt invoke the poison oak demons once again.

kvetching + a cartoon

2005-02-09T21:07:00.000-08:00

Random, unrelated things are conspiring to make me very very grumpy:

Yesterday, as I headed off to work, driving by a house a few doors down from mine, I noticed that their garage door was open. Now usually this doesn't signify anything special, but on my street, I'm the only person who actually keeps their car in the garage. The rest are rented out to desperate souls or used as attics.

This particular garage has great significance. It's the office of a drug dealer who has been in jail for several months, and the fact that it was open...Yup, there he was, FAT KENNY, unmistakably. A four-hundred-pound black man holding court, surrounded by his homies. Their version of a welcome-home-from-the-big-house party, no doubt. Oh hell, here we go again.

Worked a 15-hour day, getting home at 10:30 pm, and just as I was falling asleep at midnight, POP POP POP POP POP POP!!! No, not a gunfight. Chinese New Year. I guess it's traditional to start the new year by waking and angering the whole neighborhood. Year of the cock. Yeah, well that's fitting. They too strut around waking people up at god-awful hours, caring not a whit, and have brains the size of peas.

Today, standing talking to the school secretary, I felt a tug and suddenly I was being sucked downwards. Oh ho! The paper shredder had decided to grab the hem of my favorite garment and pull it into its merciless metal maw. Tatters.

OK, if you've gotten this far, I owe you something besides complaints. Hmmm, let's see. Imagine a bulldog puppy playing with a wolf, and you pretty much have a picture of my puppy playing with her best friend at dog park. She teases him into chasing her around and around a segment of old baseball bleachers that act as benches, and just as he's about to catch her fat little rump she takes a shortcut underneath and comes out on the other side, and they start all over again. If people happen to be sitting on the benches, she uses the place between their calves and the bench as a tunnel to run through.

After they finish with the benches they run over to lay down and wrestle in the dirt or sometimes on the grass, where the wolf picks up grass stains on his light fur and gets a greenish tinge to him.

The other day they were doing the bench run, as I sat on it with a friend. An absolutely massive new dog by the name of Duke, part mastiff, part bloodhound, easily weighing 150 pounds, was standing on the sidelines, watching the chase, drooling slightly. Suddenly my friend and I found ourselves flung backwards, legs in the air, shrieking in surprise and laughing as Duke decided to join in the merriment, and pushed his way through our leg tunnel to lumber after them. It would have made a great Looneytoons feature cartoon, ending with my porky little dog saying, " Th' th' that's all folks!"

My life is on 'fast forward'

2005-02-03T07:23:00.000-08:00

Five minutes before it's time to launch myself out of here into my day. It's 7:25 am. First on the docket is an excruciating once-a-week hour-and-a-half class with twenty-five teenage boys, the fabulous video production. At the new semester on Monday, a girl transferred in. Tuesday she brought me the little 'I'm outta here' paper to sign so she could flee to study hall. Don't blame her a bit. A friend of mine described this class like being caught in a stable of race horses, but I corrected her. It's like being in a stable of race horses and clydesdales, and someone has let all the horses out of their stalls, but locked the door to the outside.

Then it's off to community college, where I have a new class of 25 adult students. I love these classes. Grown up people with volume controls and manners, who are there to learn. Such a nice contrast.

Then a quick dash home to collect dogs, fling them at dog park, and home to dish out kibble.

Time to leave for night class, where more kind adults await, and blam, it's after 9 pm and I'm too tired to do much except crawl home and collapse. Is it June yet?

OK, deep breath. Here we go...

ouch

2005-01-27T23:30:00.000-08:00

It's half-way through the school year, and I am burnt to a crisp. Charcoal. I've got three days to get my grades done and rise from the ashes anew. Unfortunately, I'm not feeling all that phoenix-like at the moment.

I still have the cold from hell, and I'm still reeling from the nasty and mean-spirited comments one of my students wrote to me about journalism class. I like constructive criticism, and some of the things he didn't like are things I totally agree with, but many others are just wrong, like his indignation and anger over the fact that I won't let them use photos from the internet in the school paper unless they get permission from the photographer. Even then, I strongly discourage it because they aren't print quality, and because it doesn't encourage the same creativity as taking our own photos does.

He was in journalism last year with a different teacher, and he wants it to be like his old class. Only problem is that the paper has been just totally awful in almost every way for the last several years. It did come out more often, but that's about all that can be said of it. The students thought it was horrendous and made fun of it, and the staff felt it was an embarrassment. It was because of this that I was allowed to take over the class.

All this nastiness came from a student I've had in other classes, liked and been nice to, so it felt like a real kick in the teeth. I know the class needs more structure and stricter deadlines, and I'm still in the first stages of learning how to teach it, but man, that smarts!

Day four, in which we emerge from the fog

2005-01-25T06:39:00.000-08:00

At approximately two-thirty in the morning, as I was finally deep in slumber, a demon rose from the bowels of hell and, taking the form of a dog, began to bark somewhere out there in the darkness. After about twenty minutes, just enough time to make sure I was thoroughly awake, he slunk back into the night and all was silent.

This morning I put feet on the floor, hefted my bulk to an upright position and staggered through a drugged haze to feed the dogs and get ready to face school where I must give two final exams. The song I found going through my head was an old classic, but unfortunately, I only remembered the first three lines, so the loop was short.

"Great green globs of greasy grimy gopher guts,
mutilated monkey meat,
french-fried flamingo feet..."

It was time to take a bath. As I relaxed into warm bubbly water and felt the crusted gunk start to melt away…the puppy whined to be let in. She had finished digging in the dirt and she really, really needed to come in just at that very moment. And when the whining didn't work, she tried out her new grown-up dog bark. BARK BARK BARK. Oh, hey, that was fun!

Time to get out of the bath.

It's almost seven a.m. and I have assumed human form, or as close as I'm going to get this morning. Pity my students.

the yuck report

2005-01-24T15:49:00.000-08:00

Update from the land of gunk. My head feels like an ache-soaked sponge, there are huge cosmic thumbs pressing on my eyes and my face is pinched into a sour pucker of self pity. I'm fighting a strong urge to snarl and whine simultaneously. My bed looks like it is covered in flower petals, but on closer inspection sodden kleenexes have been flung randomly around the room. Extra-Strength Wretchedness has descended upon me. Strong drugs have been taken with no discernible results. This is the Superbowl Champion of colds.

Just now, in the middle of writing this, the phone rang. It was a tele-marketer mangling my name. My usual response is a terse-yet-polite request to put me on their do-not-call list. But today I paused—then let out a terrifying snot-inflected shriek and hung up.

And then I realized it was probably my doctor's office, calling to remind me that I have an appointment tomorrow...

germs uber alles

2005-01-23T11:41:00.000-08:00

Those icky germs I mentioned in a previous entry, the one where the student showed up in my class in his pajamas and slippers, carrying kleenex, and his GERMS? Yup, got 'em. Thanks kid, thanks very very much you little &*%$#. Can you tell I'm in the 'mucous 'n' misery stage? It's a chest thing at the moment, with the cough option thrown in at no extra charge. And did I mention CRANKY?

Mrs. Beasley seems to understand. She did something she rarely does: curled up with me and took a nap. She prefers to be completely under the covers, and with her rhythmic breathing and warmth, it was like having a stuffed animal/hot water bottle combo to sleep with.

Unfortunately, puppy does NOT understand, and kept waking me up to be let out. In. Out. In. And then she needed to play. Really, really play play play play play. I called her little schnauzer friend, Oscar, but got his machine. It's a sad day indeed when you get a dog's answering machine.

I should be thinking about the finals I'm supposed to be giving. No, I should be doing more than thinking about them. All I want is fresh orange juice and sleep. Is that too much to ask? Apparently. Woof.

basic training

2005-01-22T13:30:00.000-08:00

Bosco, the nine-month-old bulldog/boxer/pitbull/who-the-hell-knows puppy has a new game. It's compulsory. It's not enough now to give her a rawhide bone. No, I have to torment her with it, pass it right under her nose, dangle it just out of reach, tickle her whiskers with it, tuck it under her collar so that she has to gyrate like Houdini to shake it loose, drum on her fat little rump with it, pretend to eat it myself with great relish, and finally, throw it out the window so that she has to run through the house and garage, out into the yard to get it. Every day she adds another step in the tantalization process.

My punishment for not doing at least this much is that she puts it down, looks at me with those imploring puppy eyes and whines. My training is going quite well.

never a dull...

2005-01-20T11:10:00.000-08:00

Internally cringing as I rushed to my Thursday morning office hours, I knew that in a mere half an hour I would face the class I've come to think of as the primate house at the zoo. What else would you call being locked in a room for an hour-and-a-half with twenty-five high octane boys between the ages of sixteen and eighteen? Squirrel cage describes the energy, but doesn't take into account the hormonal ozone or the sheer body mass involved. And did you fully grasp the fact that there is not one girl in this class?

Just as I got to my room, one of my little monkeys arrived, and something seemed to be going on with his feet, which had become huge and yellow, like giant marshmallow chickens, but no...they were slippers...in the form of.... Homer Simpson's head. And immediately after this revelation, came another equally alarming one. He was still in his pajamas. He was wearing the requisite backpack, which looked thoroughly ridiculous over his pajamas, and carrying a kleenex box decorated in moons and stars. Seems he's sick, you see, but he arose from his sick bed to rush in and finish the video project due tomorrow, and to pass along his icky little germs to all of us so that we can all come to school wearing PJs and Homer Simpson slippers.

More monkeys flooded into the room, flinging backpacks hither and thither, scratching themselves and making noises. With their usual foresight and planning, they had all figured on being able to use one of our three cameras today, because certainly the other twenty-one boys would have finished their videos by now. So naturally, since every last one of them had waited until the very last minute, a certain amount of squabbling and squalking had to happen, followed by whining and other variations on audible self-pity.

Mr. PJs seemed to be making a video starring several stuffed animals, behaving in ways I didn't want to imagine. I'm hoping he edits those parts out so I don't have to deal with it.

One student announced triumphantly that he had finished his video, and I went to have a look. He had managed to create a video totally lacking in plot, people and premise, the three required elements. It was just shots of a pool table, and some unseen person playing rather badly. The end. We had a gentle little talk about story-telling.

I'm not good at this. To paraphrase Scotty from a long-ago Star Trek, 'Dammit, Jim, I'm a doctor, not a zoo keeper!'