wealth and poverty

You must learn day by day, year by year to broaden your horizon. The more things you love, the more you are interested in, the more you enjoy, the more you are indignant about—the more you have left when anything happens.
--Ethel Barrymore

in the middle of screaming at my students the other day, i had the weirdest little fugue - i suddenly had a vision of no particular place but a mix of places i have been - iran, turkey, morocco - mostly iran because it's recent - dust and heat and sun and wide wide sky...

...with somewhere a whiff of roses and mint, the sound of water, all those pleasures that are all the more delightful for being found in the middle of the desert...

all this washed over me with incredible vividness. in my memory of the classroom scene, i clearly recall myself sitting on the back table, with a couple of students trying to do something at the board and chaos all around, with my mouth open shouting something at them - and just as clearly it seems that the dusty, scented wind lifted my hair for a moment, as i struggled there indoors in snowbound chicago...

it was so clear and overpowering that i was disoriented and lost my train of thought... i told them i had lost my train of thought, and started to open my mouth to tell them where i had been, but closed it again.

the all-powerful, live-or-die-by-it No-Child-Left-Behind-mandated standardized test is in 13 days: there is no time for wind that smells of roses and the preciousness of the sound of water in the desert.

how i became a marine; funny condolence

I posted on my teaching blog about some recent events and frustrations with my teaching... I have concluded that being a teacher is like being a marine... there's a lot of hazing and only the strong survive... i decided to survive. Why not? I am not weak. And I will prove it.

As for my old malaise, to my surprise, i did seem to overcome it this past week... i worked very hard and quite efficiently... put in some 14-hour-days... came home and worked more at night... got a huge amount done to improve my room. did not see much evidence of the part of me that i've come to call 'thirteen,' who whines and resists everything like a 13-year-old. cautious about drawing any conclusions from this, but pleased.

as a bonus result of my hard work, when i was raked over the coals friday, i felt quite confident that i had done nothing wrong. i didn't cry. that was a first. the crying (as i keep explaining to them) is just frustration with myself.

In other news, this is the most hilarious mistranslation/intercultural miscommunication ever.... from a Japanese friend sending condolences to my mother....

Dear Mrs. ____

I wan very sorry to know that _____ was passed. Your last message of _____ was very much touched in my heart how he hehaved in the bed with you. I hope you will accept my sincere condolences.

Regards,

[x]

My mother commented wryly that she thought the writer must have meant my mother's comments on how Dad was kind and gentle and cooperative to the end, even when he was weak and bedridden....because, she wrote, "I do not remember writing about me & my husband in bed in normal sense of the word."

lmao!