My old lawyer and I, Chris Tritico, went to a meeting together with the dumbest principal in the history of Houston Public Education. She came to her employment after a stint at a downtown charter school that was shuttered because of falsified records, including entire classes that students had no knowledge of ever taking. She worked as a "pretend" English teacher, as many people do now, in this environment of fake classes and forged records.

    Months before her arrival to the district, the school support officer hired me after I modeled a lesson on Lucille Clifton's poem, Sorrows, to a group of tough, urban, high school kids. Soon after, this amazing leader left the district with the promise that I, and other staff members, would be granted an experienced and competent principal. Instead, we ended up with this fake English teacher that was only 28-years old and had zero knowledge of anything. We all recognized this immediately, and I thought back on my choice of poems and what an ironic warning it was. I think of how these Sorrows continue and what they mean for our society and our children.

    She wanted to fire me because I implemented ten minutes of silent reading time at the beginning of class, and this activity contradicted what she was reading in Doug Lemov's book, Teach Like a Champion. I've met Lemov, and I believe his book has some great ideas in it, but his important book is not that one, but Reading Reconsidered instead. In the latter book, he studies and researches 300 experienced English teachers of merit. But she wanted me doing test prep as a daily warmup. At our meeting, Tritico slides the stack of research across the conference table to her, the research that shows that sustained silent reading improves fluency, vocabulary, stamina, and a host of other good things. She angrily shoves it back to him. He asked her, "Don't you even want to look at this?" She responded with a firm no.

    At that time, most decent school systems already implemented some sustained silent reading at the beginning of class. This idea was not a new innovation, and it was not my sole idea. In fact, my mentor taught me the importance of this and why I should do it. The standards didn't change to include this requirement until much later in 2017. I like to think that me and my powerful lawyer contributed to these needed changes in state standards. I had students in my classes that had never owned a book, had never read a book, thought reading was an uncool waste of time, and, in some cases, wanted to read but didn't know how. In my classes they started to argue over the books. I heard them talk excitably and passionately about plots and writers for the first time. Because of the excitement, my donor and I packed my classroom full of books and Scholastic Magazines, and I tried to continue with the silent reading. The principal would strut into the classroom with her squad and denigrate me in front of my students. I received frivolous write-ups and hateful emails. The students would ask me why the principal didn't like me. Thirty-percent of the campus population received special education services, and the evils of poverty crept into everything. My students came to school with trauma, hunger, and homelessness. Many of my kids suffered from illnesses that are now connected to a nearby toxic dump in their neighborhood.

    My program worked, and my scores climbed, but the problems with poverty and trauma manifested in all classrooms. The squad tried to tweak my benchmark exam results, but the explanation failed during the meeting. My kids told me "we tried for you." I wanted them to try for their community, for themselves. The students asked me again and again why she didn't like me. The fact that my students worried about this is a testament to her incompetence. No responsibility like that belongs on a student's mind. She owes me an apology, especially after the standards were rewritten in 2017 to include silent reading. She owes those children a debt. But, of course, she was later discontinued for her continued incompetence. My lawyer and I lost our small battle in the beginning, but we can enjoy this victory for students and teachers. It is, at least, a massive, "I told you so."

    The issue in public education is a lack of real expertise. Now that the English major has been hollowed out and watered down, now that the emphasis is on skills that are rapidly replaced by AI and other technologies, we face a new crisis: friends of friends, and friends of those friends, and friends of relative's friends, climb eagerly into administrative positions with the speed of lightning. They might have a few English credits, so they might teach a few years, enroll into a master of education in curriculum or leadership, and then fly away like little bugs. They know so little about the subject of English, they aren't even cognizant of their own learning gaps. Because they have no knowledge of what they don't know, they teach for years and years and still learn nothing new. They sit comfortably spewing dummied down nonsense while making a big check off the taxpayer. The whole thing is absurd.

    For example, if a high schooler knows nothing of irony, satire, and ambiguity in texts, then how in the world do they comprehend anything complex? But I was told the other day that they need not know because they can tell it's there. It's like they have a sixth sense of these technical text attributes. That is one of the dumbest things I ever heard. And the source of this comment is making more money than I am and sits around in a powerful campus position. This is like the time I sat in a meeting and was told by my department chair that "we aren't cramming this crap down our kids' throats" in regards to whole class novels. If you aren't consistently and repetitively taught the parts of a text, then how are you to write with style and voice yourself? When people sit around unaccountable, all this means is that the ignorance rolls around like jeans in a dryer, making noise while slowly drying up.

    When someone like me comes around that truly loves their subject, the posers instantly recognize their own inadequacies and begin to take offense to any suggestions no matter how mildly put. This is a form of imposter syndrome, this willingness to attack someone for their accomplishments. I don't know if anyone understands the problem, but the whittling away of the English major presents with some truly horrifying social problems. Even mainstream publications are beginning to write about incoming college students and how they cannot read nor write. These publications, such as The Atlantic, point out that professors actively dumb down the curriculum to accommodate these new learners that are in some cases nearly illiterate. Meanwhile, real English teachers get pushed aside because of their intensity and love for the subject. This crisis isn't just an inconvenience, nor a disservice to our students, but it also magnifies a truly dangerous outcome: a country full of people that cannot distinguish between reality and conspiracy. After decades of neoliberal austerity, our society is under attack because people cannot differentiate between fact and fiction.

    I climbed down from a nice paying position into one that I believed would accommodate my new health concerns only to discover that the problems with expertise exist in unexpected spaces and would continue to cause me Sorrows. I am now an older teacher, but unable to retire. And if I retire this year or next, does this mean I failed or gave up? Maybe not if I keep sharing these stories. Parents understand that something is wrong with public education but placing inexperienced, under-qualified people in high schools is not a solution. If the public took the English major seriously, like they do the math major, then maybe some issues with literacy would resolve.

Let English Teachers Teach: the audacity of non-experts

Sadly, sometimes, micro-managers will try to control, even minimize, what figurative devices and literary tropes students learn. This urge to undermine faculty and micro-manage instruction leads to comprehension gaps. Imagine that I’m deep into a discussion about a text, and my students have no knowledge of the writer’s tone. No matter how hard I work the text, no matter the many times students test and write to learn, the subtle meanings, the inferences that lead to an understanding of what lurks between the lines, or even an understanding of author’s message, will become unattainable for my class. Tone is essential to understanding, yet I have been ordered to withhold instruction for this skill and others. I don’t see how an understanding of tone, a thorough and chronic teaching of this, could lead to anything negative.

This type of disturbing micro-management reveals a lack of trust in the classroom educator. Why would any senior educator ask teachers to delay badly needed concepts or insist on a lock step pedagogical approach when each teacher and each class will present with widely different gaps and interests?

It seems like sabotage.

I wonder why school districts move regular teachers without subject area degrees into executive positions when they really need expertise and experience in combination. No matter how many years you’ve been teaching a subject, if you think that withholding skills that aid comprehension supports any retainment of information, or an understanding beyond the surface, then you are completely wrong. Tone, irony, diction, metaphor, parallelism, and so forth, are all skills that require more than one or two mini-lessons to conquer. These literary devices, tropes, and motifs, require constant and chronic re-visits.

Secondary schools face two extreme challenges: the talent drain and a lack of content area specialists. Content area specialists typically earn a terminal degree in their subjects, not in education or some other off market degree that isn’t specific. A master of education is nice to have, but it isn’t the same as a subject area degree. You can teach a subject at the secondary level for decades and still not know much about what you convey to students if you refuse to invest in your own advanced education in a thorough and dedicated way.

What if you tried to teach Swift without first teaching irony and satire? Your students would think that people in 1725 were actually dining on fresh babies to avert the famine. This example, while it may seem a bit odd, is not that original and encapsulates this problem. Without a full and rigorous understanding of an author’s technique, students are left in the dark and become bored with challenging materials. You might wonder why I care, but this is my last act; I am older and becoming impatient with public school antics. Reforming education isn’t about the classroom as much as it is about the leadership.

When leaders resort to toxic and non-productive mandates, no matter the subject, students suffer and fall behind.

Dear Gentle Reader,

What? Oh wait! Yes, I did watch the ending of Bridgerton, and I am overjoyed that the script focused on the blurry space and often fraught relationship between audience and writer, a communal, quiet and thoughtful void that stresses importance on the humanities and our fundamental rights as thinkers and readers. But I work in the real world of education, and it is here that pedagogical change must happen. I am so tired of the lurid and chronic sing-song voices of incompetence meddling around in my students' writings. Academic work is creative work. If I'm writing a poem, I am sending a rhetorical message. Yes, it qualifies as something creative. If I am writing a paper that questions how nonfiction texts are truly high literary art, I am doing creative work again. In all writings, poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, I am making an argument. If I am making an argument, then I must use the tools of the trade. If I use the tools of the trade, I am using creativity. In fact, the whole process of writing is creative work.

Today I overheard someone new to the art of teaching talk about how one must never use personal pronouns when writing to the state standardized test. This nonsense must stop. The state exemplars are full of plural personal pronouns and singular personal pronouns (I and we). The idea that someone in authority would demand that students write from some abstract and distant voice is completely ridiculous. You can't read an effective argument that positions itself above and beyond its readers to convey its message, no matter how convoluted or abstract the base material or evidence. These types of papers are usually written by scientists for scientific audiences, and we in the world of English composition sometimes pull those out and dust them off just to get a good laugh at the sheer pretentious style in that kind of composing. Pretense fails to adequately communicate anything except attitude and maybe some boring facts.

I am equally sick of fake grammar rules. And I really mean this. People new to the art of teaching and writing will argue all day that you can't start a sentence with the word "because." I hate to bust their bubbles, but "because" is perhaps the most important word in all of rhetoric. If you use the word "because" at the beginning of your well constructed and arguable thesis statement, then you automatically set up a cause and effect pattern of arrangement. In times of stress, especially during an exam, a "because" statement can help you arrange an argument that will win the reader over to your train of thought while demonstrating your ability to write and think. Because so many new English teachers lack basic composition theory classwork, students experience extreme bouts of writer's block, struggle with grammatical construction, and almost never write beyond standard sentence constructions.

Peter Elbow, and other prominent scholars, argue that these fake grammar rules, that spread like fire and gossip, pose a severe problem for beginner writers. Students read stories and essays that are written by professionals. Professionals know these grammar rules are fake. When you read something one way, and then you are forbidden to do it yourself, a confusion lurks under the surface of your consciousness. This confusion becomes a barricade to good writing. Students dawdle around and worry more about breaking silly rules than cranking out good content. They start to write, and then suddenly, they start to think: "Oh Wow, I don't think I can start a sentence with a coordinating conjunction. A coordinating conjunction is only for sentence combining." Dear Gentle Reader, that is bogus rule numero uno. And I know this for a fact...so do you, under the surface of your consciousness.

Splitting an infinitive? Please do. Kicking adjectives for action verbs? Do it every time!

The problem with teaching is that too many spoons are in the soup, and many of these spoons are bent or full of holes. You want a spoon that incorporates all of the good things into one big blob. What you don't want is an essay full of cheesy and superficial, thin transitions. I read papers that are emblazoned with firstly's, and secondly's, and thirdly's. First of all, don't. I see a ton of in-conclusions, to conclude, to sum up, and sometimes, and this really upsets me, I will see a student completely rewrite the thesis statement because they've been told year after year to restate it at the beginning of their conclusion. Restating your thesis in your conclusion is so silly, especially in a short paper. In the kinds of papers that kids are writing, you can usually look up and reread the thesis without even turning the page. Why in the world would you need to restate for your reader? If you're writing a dissertation, well maybe you should restate your thesis, especially if your dissertation is full of fake grammar rules and bores your reader to death. They might have forgotten what they're reading by the end of the 256th page.

The year is just getting started. I know I have a ton of work to do. I hope my writers will believe me when I tell them to use the word "because." Last year I had to make a whole presentation to convince my kids that the word "because" was a widely accepted word that had not done significant jail time. Those coordinating conjunctions suffer the same fate, a misinterpretation of their portability and usage. To boldly go where no man has gone before. Or to go boldly? You decide. I'm going to split.

Happy new academic year! Go Yard Birds!!!!

Everyone loves a good cat story and my friendly writer from Norman, Oklahoma, likes to publish her feline companion tales wherever they are needed. Her stories are little bright spots in my world of climate change, disruptive people problems, and political faux pas, and her kind and gentle nature is a contrast to my often misinterpreted academic style, an issue I am too adrift to work on.

She is no slob behind the pen, so I am including her thoughts on what it means to become a fully invested and devoted writer. First, lighten up with her little cat musings. It's a hot Sunday afternoon on a summer day. It's a day for the porch, iced tea, and cool chicken salad sandwiches on white bread.

Why not read something?

...

Who ever sent me the book about the naughty cats that are trying to bump off their owners, this story is for you. Since the book's arrival, You-You, the cat, has arisen from his deathbed inspired with new ideas. As you know, he delights in tormenting me, but has slacked off due to infirmity. Now, he simply contents himself with lying on the kitchen floor wherever I need to be. For example, if I am cooking, he sleeps in front of the stove. If I'm washing dishes, he camps underneath the sink. So far, I haven't stepped on him.

Yesterday, I set down piddle pads on the floor for him to use. (He is in the pee-off-the porch-level of old-cat-man decrepitude.) Suspicious that he would be complying with any idea about using piddle pads, I followed him and watched in horror as he lunged toward a cell phone that had somehow fallen on top of the pads. I only managed to whisk the phone away before the great cat deluge began.

To my horror, I discovered that it was my phone that he had nearly deactivated by drowning. I was so angry that I cursed, especially, when You-You stood on the pads but aimed his stream at the carpet. Over my shouting, I could hear Lee, my husband, calling from the other room, telling me to calm down before I had a heart attack.

Yes, the book worked. It gave You-You a new reason to live. He is outside now, happily lounging on the porch, revived by my near brush with death of his own creating. Bless his evil cat heart. I love him so. ~Jennie

 

Writing, In a State of Flux

A few days ago, acclaimed Native American mystery novelist, Sara Sue Hoklotubbe, shared a great meme with fellow writers. It said, to wit: “To write something, you have to risk making a fool of yourself. At the end of the day, every single thing that you, the rhetorical you, put down on paper is a risk. You risk making a fool of yourself, you risk rejection, and you risk failure.” The former is valuable wisdom, as stated by the late, great Ann Rice, noted Vampire lady, and her warning resonates--with me at least. My family is distantly related to Edgar Allan Poe, and I was warned by my own mother to never put anything down on paper. Looking back on Poe’s private life, I’ve often wondered what in particular prompted her to say that—but then, as an artist, Poe had a lot of baggage to work with. However, as Poe is relevant to this day. It seems that all the very best artists have had issues! We see that working through one’s issues through the written word may lighten the burden for others who are overwhelmed by their journey.

As for myself, I plan to just keep on writing. I figure that, since I make a fool of my own self at least nine or ten times a day anyway, all without really trying, I might as well make a career of it. Indeed, Anne Rice’s insights into both human and vampire nature warns that I will probably indeed make an ass of myself. Therefore, I will giddily take my MILWAUKEE INKZALL, ultrafine, black, red pen to hand, and throw caution to the winds. (One wonders, is that popular term a repeatable idiom or verboten cliché?) I will defy my parent’s attempt to shield me from ridicule and prove Rice’s theory correct. In retrospect, I’ve made a fool of myself many times before. But I have always survived the humiliation, and, so, will you.

We bravely say that writers write to encourage others on, however, why would any relatively sane individual offer up their private thoughts on paper and open themself up to public derision? In short, just why do writers write? We write because we love to write, and, because, I fear, that we have a compulsion—a creative compulsion—that’s almost bipolar in nature. The sheer act of creating is a joy—giving character’s being and words and a destiny is heady stuff. Sadly, this high is followed by the “drop”, where you release these creations upon the world. It is probably called the drop, because your insides fall to the floor and turn flipflops like a fish out of water, while you are waiting for validation or lack of it. (Again, I love me some good cliches, can I use fish out of water as a metaphor?)    (Oh, wait, I already did.)

Believe me, I’ve asked some trusted sources and the drop provides the same traumatic experience for successful authors and unpublished writers alike. So, here we are angsting, after releasing our child of the mind into the void. We experience the dark night of the soul as our characters did, while we breathlessly wait to find out, as in the words of songwriter Celldweller, “Am I in Sync?” Here, the artist anxiously questions if anyone else out there will “get” him? In Celldweller’s case, many do. Celldweller’s personal voyage through pain and despair gives others courage to pull the stake out of their own heart and place it firmly through their tormentor’s. Celldweller’s words take away his abuser’s power to harm him. If you read the comment lines on his releases, there are many people who appreciate the singer-songwriter giving their personal trauma validation—yes, they’ve been unfairly victimized and they’ve been through something. No, it wasn’t easy surviving. However, these victims are slathering lotion on scars, they haven’t been silenced, they are still here, their feelings’ matter, it is not a pity party to embrace personal pain, and damn all the condescension from those compassionless judgers, who have never suffered, straight to hell.

But, now you say, “So, catharsis is well and good, but, why should I bother to write at all, when the world is literally and figuratively melting around me?” Just like in Run The Jewels’s musical offerings, Indie-musician Blue Stahli’s anthem, “ULTRAnumb,” or Miyazaki’s movie, “Nausica,” the atmosphere quivers with fury. Everything is polarized and vice versa: right is angry with left, left is angry with progressives, this religion is angry at that other religion, vegetarians despise omnivores, mask objectors hate mask wearers, yin is yang, and, etc.

However, humanity is self-aware. We anticipate that the end is coming. We are threatened by the existential doom of our way of life that so many politicians and business people happily destroying along with the resulting wild ride to destruction. Writing can help you make sense of your OWN life and not be at the mercy of every nutjob that comes along touting a baseless conspiracy designed to hold you sway. Behold, the great and powerful Oz! But, pay no mind to that man lurking in the shadows behind the curtain!”

Now, back to that end of the world thingee that I mentioned before. Let it bring out the best in you; we are a mortal species that have always lived under the specter of death. It’s a given that nothing lives forever, and even our sun will go nova one day. Nothing is different, except for the rate of change, which has sped up to an astronomical mind-bending rate, on our self-inflicted pathway to extinction. Perhaps, this is what the song of the whales’ mean—death is coming for you and me, lets pause and enjoy our cool blue sea, let us celebrate our mutual beautiful company. Existential threats serves to make everything, somehow, more poignant, more meaningful, more bittersweet than ever before, and writing provides a sea anchor to slow us down on our way over the abyss’ edge and into the unknown, much as the blue whale stands on tail and pours his heart out to his lovers in the sea—“Whales Weep Not”.

So, by now you are pouring yourself a good stiff drink or something of that nature. Fine, the relaxation might provide you some unique insight to put into your project. Strange times call for even stranger measures, so, I will call upon the notorious legacy of actor, author, and screen writer Ed Wood Jr. for inspiration. Ed Wood, tortured creator of “Plan 9 from Outer Space”, admonishes new writers to “Just keep writing.” He says that your story may not get any better but you will. It is reported that Ed Wood’s death mask expression looked as if he had seen into the pits of hell.

Sadly, Wood led a tortured existence and I guess that he wasn’t quite through wrestling with his private demons before he jumped onto the next phase of his karmic wheel. However, we are still on this mortal plane, where writing is the preferred method of demonic wrestling. I would recommend it to the real thing--having done that in a dream, I must warn you that those little devils can inflict a lot of physical pain on your way to the truth. Sadly, you most likely will need to wrestle your demon, in order to get at the truth of what you are trying to say and a writer should always tell the truth--no matter what.

At this point, you are saying, “but, I’ve got nothing important to say; I personally don’t care to wrestle with demons, and, everything is going to hell anyway, so what’s the point?” Before you give up writing to take up drinking on a full-time basis—remember, that the “truth will set you free.” Consider this nugget of advice offered up by poet Sarah Webb.  Out of an outpouring of compassion, Webb has declared that a writer should keep on going, because there may be someone out there who needs to hear just exactly what you have to say.

Dr. Webb is an author who walks her talk (Oh, oh is that slang, an idiom, or a cliché?). She reaches out to fellow victims, by publishing a poetry book, that describes how she finally found the strength to walk away from the man, whom should have cherished and protected she and her child and did anything but. Sarah’s confessions are some of the bravest things that I’ve ever read, and I admire her sacrifice completely. She put the complete truth out there for the entire world to benefit from her experience.

You might ask yourself, why would anyone deliberately put themselves through all that emotional pain again just to tell their truth? Certainly, purging oneself of haunting memories is healing. However, the poet could have just as easily journaled her experiences and then burned the papers that they were written upon and experienced catharsis just the same. I believe, the poet shared her pain, because, of her unique gift—the ability to weave a story that lifted others above their own trauma and allowed readers to also heal. We writers can explain that there are many who have suffered, and when their readers learn that they are not the only one to be degraded, then, perhaps, they can rise above the shame that their abuser has used to control them, and spring others out of their eternal hell, too.

Writing is a paradox; by showing ourselves at our most vulnerable, we can achieve Maat. The willingness to go on in the face of adversity, the nobility of sacrificing ourselves for others is strengthening. The bravery to spit non-existence in the face and say that though we are winding down the path of entropy, though, the moon is full of grief, and the birds no longer sing, though, the sun who gave us life will mean our death, the human condition is sacred. We are meta. We acknowledge and value our beautiful place in the universe. Our souls are full of love for our fellow man. When we overcome our differences and hatred, we will mirror and pour our beauty out until the end of our time. My friends, take hold of that universe and wrestle it into being.

~ Jennie

Trump Trial Cliffhanger and the Consequences

Everyone makes a mistake now and then, but usually these mistakes don’t include six-figure payouts to porn stars while campaigning for president. Americans that care and understand the consequences sit in anticipation of the hush money trial verdict, a decision that could impact American democracy and cast a cloud of immorality and unethical compromise on our standards for leadership and politics. In other words this decision can dramatically hurt or dramatically improve the future of our country. Americans will begin to view leaders through this lens of compromise because the barriers and norms, the moral and ethical expectations for political leadership collapsed with Trump’s cruel, under-educated rhetoric and illegal, authoritarian mandates.

If the jury decides not to convict, autocrats like Trump will rejoice. The standards for leadership, fractured and in steady decline, will ultimately collapse. Our future governance will offer opportunities for profit and power to the exact wrong personality type: more Marjorie Taylor Greenes, more Lauren Bobarts, more strong men icons; a future of chaos and cruelty will become the new norm during a now unavoidable climate crisis. Some argue that this condition of cruelty and chaos, this collapse into civil unrest is a consequence of 9/11 and the political mistakes that followed the misguided war in Iraq. Others argue that this turn in society is non existent because the United States never provided a beacon of hope, that it has always, since slavery, been nothing but a cruel sham.

When I first started to analyze Trump’s speaking style, I considered him a buffoon, a simple minded, blathering idiot, that spewed nonsense and superficial vulgarities. But now I see him differently; I see him as a tool, most likely a Russian tool. The autocratic oppressive mind believes in Trump, whether it be a MAGA follower, an insurrectionist fool, or a power seeking greedy governor. Trump is a destructive, yet perfect, fun way to indulge in your lowest hateful tendencies. Fictionalizing threats, pretending pizza places are porn hubs, denying the death and murder of dozens of school children, and demonizing public sector workers, makes the meaningless mindless every day cycle of work and taxes more palatable for the ordinary, low income adult. Low income adults, people making less than a hundred k in our inflationary, capitalistic society, under a Trump tax plan will carry the debt burden.

Just as it was in the floundering decades of the Roman empire when dictatorships suppressed forensic and deliberative rhetoric, when discourse slipped into frivolities, and democratic ideals became misty memories, the era of Trump performs the same autocratic function, to stifle civil harmony and promote chaos and unrest. Violence is escalating and our civic values of honesty and fairness, compassion and empathy, flounder amidst the negativity. Each citizen must take a new oath, the oath of truth and freedom for all. No matter the outcome of the hush money porn trial, whether Trump steps forward as a presidential candidate, we all must maintain our humanity and continue to fight for equality. Only truth and equality will support civil stability in the new apocalyptic future.

    Today a Porsche SUV parked in the way of my garage on a street where parking is forbidden, and I asked the lady to move. Wait! I write at least one lousy essay everyday, so now I should just try to back up and provide context. This is really a story about a man-child, and the people that own the place next door are even lousier parents than I am. Their son, hereafter referred to as man-child, got them into this financial mess, an unaffordable town home, and no one wants to buy it because they are asking way too much for the place. They need somebody to blame. Instead of looking at their son for the answer, they are over here today doing work to fix the place and took out time from that to threaten me because  "[I] scared their buyer off"! Okay, so the over privileged piece of fluff buyer in the SUV felt insulted because I pointed out that she blocked my driveway. The realtor, another unwitting victim of the parents in crisis, parks in front of another neighbor's driveway. I pointed out that they were blocking the drive and kindly added the additional information that they could get towed. I suggested, quite nicely, that the parking lot is a brief fifty feet away, an easy walk. I am so confused. The realtors were driving a Tesla. Weren't they green thinking people?

    I guess since the parent threatened me, he became paranoid and called the Sheriff's Department. First, they sent the mental health people, and then the real sheriff came because I told the mental health people about the threat. In the meantime, this other gossipy guy that lives on this street allowed his cleaning crew to park in the way of my garage. I don't know why he did that, but he's moving away--Thank God! At one time this afternoon they had four cars parked on the street, all up and down because people are too lazy to walk fifty feet from the lot. Okay, that's fine. Laziness is whatever. But I've been tolerating a lot of garage blocking.

    This retired CTE teacher threatened me today with the words "be careful with what you say" attempting to mark her territory (she's big on proclamations), and show me that she knows I was rude enough to tell people not to park behind my garage. She never shuts up when you talk to her anyway, which is one reason why I avoid her. It's always "I taught school for 31 years" and "I'm a teacher." How is this productive, threatening a fellow teacher? I don't even talk to her, but she spends most evenings sitting around with that guy that is moving away. I guess I'm the bad person because I want people to follow the parking rules. And a few times she used a micro-aggression on me, but I'll save that for my next lousy essay.

    The situation is truly ironic because when the HOA started to enforce the parking rules, I resisted and complained. Then the board president made a good point about emergency vehicles. Some days you could barely drive a sedan down the streets because cars were parked on both sides of our skinny road. No meat wagon or fire truck getting through there. I saw the light, especially when I couldn't get out of my own garage safely, or return back to my garage at night. I couldn't do it because of the parent's man-child. His women were allowed to park behind my garage. I was asked to wait. Time and again, believe it or not, I was made to wait in my car while he socialized. While he swapped out kids and all that.

    I tried for two long years to be nice. I really did. As you can see from the photo, I really tried. But when I'm tired after working all day, I am told, "they will leave soon." I'm told this in different ways by different people from that house, continuously. I was so happy when they moved, but now I'm dealing with the man-child parents, their misguided and misdirected anger. They try to rationalize rather than call to account. That's on them.

Click the image :)

My big sister, 13 years my senior, provided little in the way of soft and fuzzy physical enchantments. Certainly, in those many moments of family grief, she probably wished I hadn't been born. My brother became one of our biggest contentions, but as the years following his death slipped away, I could see that she became closer to my way of thinking, especially as it concerned his mental health and substance abuse issues. It's impossible to understand any of us if you know nothing about our brother and our father, men that failed to completely recover from different wars: World War II and Vietnam. None of the men in our family shrank from civic duty, and their legendary courage and military successes were a matter of family pride.

The stressful incidents became routine, first with Dad, and then later with our brother. My sister tried to shield me from the ongoing chaos, but ultimately she left home for a different life. I felt compensated watching her move forward, first with a career in cosmetology that supplemented college, and later as a certified public accountant. Her resilience made me feel inadequate and underachieving. I read everything anyone handed me, and I listened to my brother's long rants about politics and the military industrial complex, his ideas on philosophy and history. While only a dilettante, my brother's insight still caused all of us to become skeptics and critics, especially myself as I studied his state of mind. I knew the war caused him to come back changed. For me, the loss felt horrendous and unacceptable. During that time, we didn't have a name. Now the name is PTSD. My father suffered from PTSD. My brother died after a lifetime of trying to self manage something he had no way to understand, something that no one knew to help him with--PTSD.

Watching my big sister evolve out of the chaos of our home made me a better person. Over time, I took on adult responsibilities and tried to become independent and skilled. My work took me out of Oklahoma and the world opened up for me. Because of my fractured childhood, I managed to learn more out on the road than in a classroom. Finally, after a couple of decades of living life like a vagabond, I felt the urge to return to school. My sister encouraged and supported me, even if my choices were not perfect. Her own achievements were something I could aspire to, her years attending college, the obtainment of a professional license, and the way she managed her life.

The pain we grew up with caused us to feel incredibly sensitive around each other. Spending time together meant facing reality, the reality of our shared trauma and pain, the disappointments we shared, and the inconvenient, and often terrifying, memories. The differing points of view interfered in our ability to communicate effectively, silencing both of us. We disagreed on points about our mother, our brother, and especially our father. When he left the country for the last time, she was twenty and on her way into a better life, and I was only 7 and terrified. This contributed to our differences. I became isolated at home with our mother, an angry person that rightfully felt abandoned and disappointed, a single, older mother struggling financially and emotionally. I can barely remember those years.

My sister recently died. Her death was sudden and inexplicable, a pain unlike any other. Her death was completely preventable. She left behind beautiful grandchildren, a successful son and devoted husband, and most importantly, at least in my mind, she left me at my most vulnerable, when I really needed her. Like two points of star light from opposite sides of the universe finally conjoining after trillions of years in space, my sister's beliefs about my father, brother, and mother aligned with mine. We became friends. We made plans. And now she is in the spirit world.

Big sisters challenge our beliefs, make us better people, and watch over us. We don't need to live in their pockets to feel their presence, to feel their disapproval, or to access their wisdom. My sister was a gift. I will always miss her.

My sister and me (1962).

Last night I watched President Biden's persuasive address to the nation, and it's clear to me that the Republican Party came out of the night looking foolish and out of touch. If people are sick of inflation, then look to corporate greed for a solution. Obviously, Biden is in a power struggle of sorts with big pharma and big corporations. If they can point to his policies as problematic, they can later line up to Trump's trough and slurp up lavish tax cuts at the expense of the working class and middle America. Big oil and other polluters like them will once again be allowed to operate without those pesky regulations that strive to protect ordinary citizens. They will once again start disregarding the rights of minority and immigrant communities. 

What Trump and the Republicans aim to do is unethical, immoral, and anti-democratic. Republican Party personalities always lie to their constituents and claim that interfering in the personal lives of citizens is not their goal, but one only need to look at the mess after the overturning of Roe v Wade to uncover the false narratives around their ridiculous claims. 

Marjorie Taylor Green, Lauren Boebert, and disgraced US Representative George Santos clearly represent the level of low intelligence and obnoxious personality types that populate the Republican Party. Their refusal to send aid to Ukraine, while people die and a democratic European country is destroyed by Russian aggression, is only one example of poor judgement laced with hate and bigotry. 

Hate is an indulgence, and members of the Republican Party are morally irresponsible and unable to do what is right for our country and for the world. The fixation on hate and isolationism destroyed their sense of duty and justice. 

And last night's "kitchen rebuttal" looked and sounded completely ridiculous. Katie Britt snarled out a hateful, fear-mongering, rebuke that lacked any evidence, but capitalized on her hateful nature. As a woman, I felt embarrassed by her look and her sound. Every Republican bends over for Trump, a man that steals, lies, and sexually assaults women. Trump, the con-man, will destroy American progress.

I teach my students George Orwell's classic essay Politics and the English Language because he attacks lousy, pretentious prose with comedic indirect satire that is largely dead in modern writing. The writing of today typically dips into sarcasm, an easy below the belt tactic that contributes to the death of civil discourse in professional life. No manager or supervisor should confuse poorly toned writing for professionalism or leadership. Typing out a poorly constructed directive in all caps and sending it out to team members at an inopportune time illuminates nothing in the workplace except the sender's lack of expertise. Poorly timed, poorly toned messages disappoint dedicated people and destroy emerging relationships.

One year during the pandemic on Thanksgiving day, I sat across an old friend in a dilapidated easy chair, and while watching television, the email on my phone dinged. A smart person might have ignored the dinging, but it was Thanksgiving day. I assumed an emergency happened at my work, maybe to a fellow colleague. Instead, this message asked me to verify someone's classroom attendance. This kind of thing can't be fixed during a holiday break. It is the sort of message that scheduled for a Monday morning delivery, might have been more digestible. All writers and professionals should know that the timing of your message is almost as important as the tone and content.

I love the way Orwell addresses the issue with tacked on phraseology. Right now I have a 'hen house' phrase that I am sick and tired of hearing: "That being said."

Anywhere you go, in any setting, you will hear or read some pretentious attempt at professionalism, but the aforementioned phrase above reduces whatever the writer or speaker is trying to say into a pile of meaningless rubble. Orwell, if he were here beside me today, would likely wish he was back in India working as a cop again rather than listen to the lousy prose present in 21st century mass media. He lists out "operator, or verbal false limbs" in his characteristic indirect satirical style without mercy or embellishment. Phrases such as, with respect to, the fact that, in the interests of, with respect to, and so on, exemplify what he means by "tacked on phrases" that convey nothing to an audience.

Many times my students try to write with pretentious diction. Sometimes the results are funny and charming, but overall this kind of writing will not assist the student in any academic or business venture. And people posing as professionals ought to write clearly and with empathy, timing messages with care, rather than trying to dictate to others as if they exist on a royal pedestal when, clearly, in today's society, anyone is replaceable.

I made a major mistake last year when I bought the Super Note A6X because the screen is not quite big enough for serious writing and thinking. Last month I chanced upon an opportunity to buy the A5X open box, which meant that I could somewhat afford to invest again. Now I am unsure of what to do with my A6X, but I might give it to my son to write his music on and make drawings of his projects. 

Now that I have the A5X, I am totally in love with the way it works. It is the size of a piece of paper without margins...it's wonderful. I downloaded my teacher planning portfolio onto it, and I also geared it up with a bullet journal, which I am using to record personal plans and activities. I created another folder to write in for random thoughts and content ideas. The teacher planning kit and the bullet journal are both Etsy purchases from a guy named Brendan, and I couldn't be happier. I had a download issue, and Brendan responded within the hour with the solution even though the problem was not related to his product. Now I don't know what to do with the tons of notebooks and planners that I have at home that now seem so juvenile and wasteful, but I don't want to throw them away because they are full of writing ideas, especially from all of those boring meetings and useless trainings that I've had to endure over the years. While other people are trying to get me to work in an uncomfortable and awkward situation, my thoughts wander off in compelling ways, often forking over into banality and sometimes forking over into comedy. You just can't put a value on observations like that--they are priceless. 

If you feel serious about writing and you want the freedom to create content on a luxury device that is more intriguing than a paper notebook, splurge on the A5X. If you feel as if you want to write occasionally, and you aren't super serious about your output, just do the A6X Super Note. It will fit in a bag or in the palm of your hand like a greeting card. You will love both of them for different reasons. You will especially love the feel of the device, the way it writes. And it does come loaded down with an array of templates that you can use to create wonderful pages and documents. 

SuperNote Link