Trip to Topeka

     So my father, who is a history buff, took me to Topeka to see the capitol building today. It's extremely ornate--22 carat gold embellishments, hand-carved oak, imported marble and so on. Impressive, yes! Necessary? That's the question that kept circling in my head as we took the tour. Why is all this opulence necessary for senators and congressmen? Perhaps looking in the mirror-like marble floor helps politicians reflect wisely on public policy? Hard to say.
     My children (13 and 18 years old) came along for the ride and my daughter commented on the John Curry paintings of John Brown. She's artistic so she could appreciate the effort that went into creating murals of the size that adorn the walls there. I enjoyed the larger-than-life statues of Amelia Earhart and William Allen White, two of my personal "hometown" heroes.
     I've got to remember to play tourist more often. I've lived in this town 18 years and there is so much I still haven't seen. Just this last year I ventured out to 18th and Vine to the Blue Room. It's so easy to get stuck in our day-to-day routine that it often takes the prodding of someone outside of our comfort zone to get us to change.

Playlist Poem

I've used this prompt with my poetry club and (full disclosure) I got this from a great website but I didn't save the name. Anyway, this is how to create a "playlist poem"

1. Pull up your playlist
2. Put on shuffle
3. Take first five titles and use word-for-word in your poem
4. Order of the titles doesn't matter

EXAMPLE:
My I-pod pulled up these five songs:
Nobody Home
Whiskey Lullabye
A Change Would Do You Good
Not Myself
Early in the Morning

Nobody home at my house
The floor is creaking,
Wind blowing
Each curtain flap makes me wince
Thinking it might be you.

I comfort myself with a whiskey lullabye,
Liquid gold going down hot and rough
Like your hands on me
Like your eyes on me
Wishing it was you.

My mama says,
A change would do you good,
But why would I want change
When I love loving you so much.
Though you’re not here to love.

The smell of you in the house
The print of your head on the pillow
The remembered touch of your flesh
On my flesh. I wish it was
Just not myself.

Early in the morning,
I wake and look and there
You are—smiling from the pillow
Next to me and our smiles
Join to form a new love.

Discovering Kansas City

Last month, I attended the first annual pre-writing conference for Louder Than a Bomb, Kansas City. My small learning group from GKCWP planned this during the summer and then actually carried it through. It was a little scary and honestly, Paul Richardson from Washington HS did most of the work, but I did my part. We had 32 kids from all over the metro show up to talk about social justice. Primarily the racial divide in KC, MO engineered by developer J.C. Nichols that included restricted convenants designed to keep his new developments white.  We took a bus tour of those areas of development and the differences were reflected in architecture, upkeep and businesses offered. It was striking to see. After we returned from the bus tour, students (and adults) were given time to write in reaction to what they'd seen and read about (an excerpt from Tanner Colby's book Some of My Best Friends are Black). The following is what I came up with:

My white world was buried in potatoes

Rocky Mountain high and Wonder Bread

in all the glorious shades of white;

ecru, beige, ivory and milk.

Wonder Bread peanut butter sandwiches with no crusts

because my mother cut them off for us

as we ate around the table

at six p.m. every night; my father saying grace.

My white world was religion if you count

Nazarine and Mormon.

Missionary pairs striding streets with purpose

in stiff new suits on shiny new bicycles.

Glossy blond and brunette heads leaning together

to share with you the WORD so they could go to

heaven with their seven wives

who’d be pregnant forever.

Northwest Nazarine College, where I walked the

graduation stage and knew nothing more about

them except that they were all white like me.

My white world was high school football on a Friday night,

homecoming dances with a live band

wood shop, home ec, drama, jazz band, art club

All of us bouncing off each other like billiard balls,

making short, sharp connections and

returning quickly to our assigned corners

where we waited for instruction and gossiped

with each other about each other and

all the gossip sounded the same.

My white world was a microcosm of snowflakes.

No two alike, but all from the same sky on the same night

and up in the mountains the neo-Nazis shaved their

heads and howled at the moon and did whatever they did

and we did not hear them. Or pretended not to.

They were not part of my white-bread world.

They were the crusts my mother cut off

of the peanut butter sandwiches we ate around

the dinner table at exactly six pm.

My white world was moved 500 miles and suddenly

shaded with off-white, tan, chocolate, almond, mocha

which at first were sipped, slowly and carefully.

Fear and wonder mixed at all that had been missed.

I had not realized that Wonder Bread was not the

ONLY bread and that sometimes the best part

is the crusts my mother used to cut off.

22 is half of 44

I turned 44 this year. They don't make fancy balloons or party decorations for the 44th birthday. It's not anyone's milestone but mine. This birthday means that I have spent exactly half of my life married and half as a single person. This feels deeply significant to me in ways I can't yet explain.

I tried to think back to when I lived alone and discovered that I never really did--unless you count the one semester I had my own room in college. I got married while I was still in college and I went right from my parent's house to college. During summers I had roommates or stayed with some family or other. Even when I went overseas, I went with my best friend from high school and then later with my husband.

Never have I been truly alone in the world. This is a good thing. Right? I've had plenty of experiences that have been uniquely mine within my family--going to Mexico and later to Germany, teaching, taking a scuba diving class. But I've never really been alone, even when I was doing unique and wonderful things. Always with my family of one type or another.

There's nothing inherently bad about never having lived unaccompanied, but I have a longing for being alone that can't always be satisfied with an hour or two at home. It seems silly to wish for anything when I am so blessed in my life--husband, kids, home, car. Indulgent, even. I feel guilty even writing about it--like the guilt I feel when I take a bath sometimes, only magnified. I would, of course, never want to leave what I have--it's absolutely not about that. I've only been reflecting on my life so far and have found it lacking in little ways. Things I should have/could have/would have done had circumstances been different.

Sometimes reflection just shows your own face, looking back at you. Not always a good thing.

Cigarettes

This poem was written in response to a spoken word poem I used in class the other day. It's called "The Gun" by a poet named Diego. Below what I wrote as a sample to my students.

Watch me, watch me get pulled deep into lungs
and breathed out in wreaths of smoke.

Watch me get sold to minors across the counter.

Watch me light up like the devil’s eye
as a 12 year old pulls me in for the first time.

Can you see me? Can you see me in the ad with the legless man,
victim or freak?

Can you see me in your daddy’s pocket as he reaches for another puff?

Can you hear my cellophane crinkle
as my momma opens a new pack?

Inhaled en masse at an AA meeting, multiple red eyes winking.

The crispy crackle of a dying man’s lungs.

The wheeze of the stoma that replaced my mother-in-law’s larynx

The hacking morning cough of every long-time smoker

Can you feel me? Cheap paper wrapped around too many chemicals to count.

Can you feel me? Yellowing teeth and fingers and skin.

Clothes heavy with smoke because I am inhaled death.

I am a cartoon apocalypse on a cowboy horse,

come to take your daddies, mommies, aunts and uncles.

Can you feel me deep in the spirits and souls of every city, every state, every nation?

Can you stop me?

Can you stop me?

A crisp snap of the breaking cylinder,

Pinkness returning to the lung,

A cough silenced, a world of scents returning.

Can you stop me now?

Vacuuming Makes Me Angry!

Dear vacuum-designing engineers,

When I first got married 20 some-odd years ago, we purchased a Hoover vacuum from the Salvation Army store for $15.00. It worked tolerably well, which is to say that it sucked up dirt. The noise it made was tremendous, but maintaining it was simply a matter of changing the bag and replacing the belt. I never put any thought into the vacuum cleaner. I just vacuumed.

Present time: me vs. the vacuum cleaner. The cord (of the newly purchased, guaranteed no-loss-of-suction machine) has apparently been engineered to twist and kink with increasing fervor after every use. There are no hooks to attach it to the vacuum cleaner body after use, so I am forced to wind it awkwardly around the handle where it invariably falls off sometime before I vacuum again. Instead of simple-to-use dust bags, I now have to take the guts of the vacuum out (granted--this part is easy) and take it to a trash can and empty it without re-introducing the dust I just vacuumed up into the air.

Confession: I have a dog. She has hair. She sheds. So, on top of dust, we have dog hair lurking in every corner that must be eliminated if we don't want it to appear as if we are living in a cave. As I suck it up in the vacuum, it becomes trapped in the inner workings of the the guts of the vacuum. This necessitates a vacuum gut-ectomy wherein I have to unscrew various parts to shake the offending dog hair out, trying to aim for the trash can so I don't have to repeat the process.

If that weren't enough to anger the average American house-person (who also works full-time as a teacher, let it be known), I also have to periodically wash the guts of said vacuum as they become encrusted with the very dust they are supposed to be cleaning out of my house. Now the machine that is supposed to make my life easier has become its own chore.

In short, dear engineers, please go to your own house, let a dog and two or three children run around for a week, then vacuum. Do that every week (or twice a week as is your standard) for 20 years. Then design me a vacuum that I could be happy about. With a cord that doesn't tangle, with a belt that's easy to change, with a non-dirty, truly easy-emptying dust canister or bag or something. Oh, and it still needs to suck up dirt. This is exactly the kind of challenge that our schools should be training you for--so go out and conquer!

Thanks.

Thinking About School. . .

Teaching is a strange career. I came to it later in life after having spent 20 years denying I was going to employ my (super-useful) English degree to become a teacher. So here I am, going into my eighth year of teaching and realizing that I never cared this much about any of my other jobs. I would liken teaching to pastoring in that teachers and pastors both spend inordinate amounts of time thinking about the people they work with/for. Both professions (this may apply to nursing/doctors too--I'm not close enough to either of those to say for sure) are singularly concerned with the well-being of others. One educational, one spiritual.

My father was a pastor for nearly three decades and although he is still working to serve people, he doesn't fulfill that role as a pastor. Why? Well, I think for the same reasons that so many teachers leave the profession within the first 10 years. It wasn't the needs of the congregants per se, but the politics behind the scenes and the overwhelming worry of not doing enough good for enough people.

I know when I reflect over the year that has passed, I look with sorrow at the students that I know have slipped through the cracks. Maybe they were the ones who were middle of the road and didn't improve their writing/reading skills the way I know they could. Some were the highly intelligent kids who did the work, sat quietly and were never challenged (ie: bored). I hate that students would pass through my classroom and be bored but I don't know how to overcome the constant behavioral issues and political demands that sucked time away from these awesome kids.

When good professionals leave the field that they've chosen and trained for and invested so much time in, there should be a riot. There should be a public outcry. People should stand on the streets with signs and chant loudly from the Bible or from the works of Dickens. Instead there's only the question--what more could they have done?

For me, eight years has slipped by so fast it hardly seems real. I imagine I'll look back after my 25-30 years of educational service and have many happy memories of my professional career. I can't let those who give up, are worn down or run out dictate my choices. I intend to stay.