This is what was great about POSTING and READING on Vox. (Sigh…)
I. The Politically Wise
“I wear (Captain Walter R. Schmidt Jr.’s) MIA bracelet all day, everyday. He was a Marine pilot who went down 09Jun68 in South Vietnam. I wear this bracelet until the day he or his remains come home. Happy Veteran’s Day Capt. Schmidt.”
“…the U.S. – politicians and people – would do well to remember Jefferson’s “wall of separation…” –
“…If you legislate morality, moral choices lose their value…”
II. The Politically Witty
“Reality TV Idea Number Two- Only in California- Each week, the Governor chooses who will be electrocuted, after a round where the prisoners are judged on various labour tasks that they may find out of the ordinary (e.g. baby photographer, maître d’hôtel) and attempts to escape are dealt with by immediate dismissal from the show, also by electrocution.
The show is best known for the Governor saying, ‘You’re fried.’”
“The College Opportunity and Affordability Act’ is a pretty name, like a crack whore might be pretty after you’ve had 5 martini’s, but before your doctor diagnoses you with a dozen STD’s that won’t be so bad if you would just stop scratching….”
III. The Acerbic, Yet Thought-Provoking Social Commentary
“America is Starsky & Hutch in the same way as OZ is Crocodile Dundee. Americans are not The Brady Bunch, and similarly, what we Aussies project into the world – what we strive to project – is just advertising. It is not who we are. In our art and advertising we encapsulate our aspirations. These are collective dreams reflected in a media looking-glass…..The real Australia is not a long stretch of golden beach, a tropical island paradise, or a dusty outback vista. In the main we are middle-class and suburban.”
“It just goes to show that no matter where you are, the naysayers will always have the loudest voice.”
“We are supposed to be a nation of tolerance. If you criticise someone for being gay, for being fat, for being black or being female you will (quite rightly) cop a severe tongue lashing for your lack of empathy. However apparently it’s quite okay to criticise people for being thin. The phrase ‘real women have curves’ springs to mind. A lot of people have been saying it in response to Jennifer Love Hewitt’s bikini photos. Initially it sounds great, after all real women are allowed to have curves and still be real women. Huzzah! What a great idea! But the problem is it doesn’t say real women can have curves. It decrees that real women and curves are inextricably linked. Real women have curves. If you have no curves, sorry, no amount of menstruation, ovulation, lactation or possession of a vagina is going to make up for it and bring you back to Real Woman Status. Too bad.”
http://evilwombatqueen.vox.com
“I am completely fed up with everyone lumping Christians together in one big box and painting them all with the same broad brush…..whether you are praising them or criticizing them, although its usually the latter when I hear people taking about Christians. Its akin to racism to lump all Christians together. You wouldn’t say that all blonde people are the same, would you? Or that all Indians are the same? Or that all Africans are the same? Or all Americans are the same? Or all Canadians are the same…”
“look. i write the way i speak. i am no grammar nazi, by any stretch of the imagination. but this stuff really bugs me. i don’t know why. it just DOES.
1. supposebly [it's SUPPOSEDLY. that's a "D." not a "B."]
2. i could care less [if you COULD care less, then please. by all means, DO. it's i COULDN'T CARE LESS]
3. irregardless [what's with the ir- in the beginning? it's just REGARDLESS]
4. respectfully, instead of respectively.
5. when people confuse “leery” with “weary” or vice versa. what’s that about? they’re two very different words.
6. and in one of mia’s books about a manta ray, they use the word “sleek.” but they spelled it “sleak.” and that is really annoying.
i know there are a LOT more. and i think i’ve written about this a few times (at least i did on my blogger blog) but it still bugs me. and it just surprises me to no end how someone who is relatively intelligent could use (or rather, MISuse) those words….”
IV. The Beautifully Introspective and Reflective
“Too much, too often, has happened to make me doubt that someone isn’t driving this bus.”
“The weight of the responsibilities I had then…real and imagined….broke me down to the bare minimal existence…almost reduced me Literally to Ashes. And few know that it’s really a miracle that I’ve made it on the other side Alive…and Kickin’….”
“I could do with a hug, and yet there’s no one at law school I’d even dream of turning to for that. Perfect opportunity for them to whip out a knife and stab me in the back…”
“Self-judgement, sometimes, can be cruel but so real.”
“…In this case here was a girl I barely knew and perhaps would have never met again. But her blog today made her alive for me…”
“Were we all meant to go down this garden path together? A collective fate sealed by the inner workings of a very small minority of people?”
“Today I forgive you.
You are my father that never knew me.
You are the drunk frat boy that raped me.
You are the husband that cheated on me.
You are the love that lied to me.
You are the friend that betrayed me.
You are the mother that turned her back on me.
You are the sister who critisizes me.
You are the boss that made my life hell for a year.
You are a gossiper.
You are the self-righteous.
You are me.
I forgive you.”
——–
“But just as a Buddhist monk is thankful to his poverty for reminding him of the true purpose of life, so must I be grateful for having had the opportunity to learn of life’s cruelly neutral nature at such a young age through strictly imposed violent sports…”
V. …And This Entire Post From a Whole Different Perspective:
http://paxblog.vox.com/library/post/our-place.html
There are also the artists who, with their vision, remind us how beautiful our earth is…
http://lezleevictoriah.vox.com
http://michelle-solange.vox.com
And after you spend some time strolling through these, remember that these neighbors are not even a tenth of my neighbourhood, nor even one percent of the whole of VOX. There are so many others whom you might meet, if you explore. So, do it. After all, as Peter (http://petermcc.vox.com) says:
“…These days I go on the rides rather than hold the bags and watch.”
Happy Holidays, Happy New Year
and
Peace on Earth
to All
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Look Harder
“Look harder.”
Gee…did I just hear you say that again? You’re an English teacher. Surely you must know that one can’t look “harder” at written words on a page.
One can look “longer,” delve more deeply into the meaning of those words, if one can read them, that is, but one can’t look “harder.”
Yet, at least once a week, with distaste and fury layered through your voice, you say it to one of your first-year (seventh grade) pupils.
A girl today, I see.
A twelve-year old girl, whose life is already a misery. On the edge of puberty, her breasts feel sore all the time and, much to her constant mortification, one is growing faster than the other. No matter what blouse she wears to school, this is noticeable. The boys in her class often point to her chest, whispering and laughing behind her back. She hears them and wants to die. She feels she has nothing to balance this physical “anomaly” because to her mind, the other girls in her class are so pretty and sophisticated compared to her. The other girls in her class know how to flirt, while she just gets tongue-tied. And while the other girls in her class still maintain that smooth, soft complexion of their baby years, her face is already always breaking out.
Apart from her uneven breasts and pimples, her feelings of social ineptitude, she’s “stupid,” she’s been told.
By her older brother, when she can’t read the ingredients on their box of breakfast cereal, or when, in a rush of shyness, she’s struck mute when his friends come over to visit. “Don’t pay any attention to my sister. She’s stupid,” is his way of explaining her silence to them.
Her mother agrees. Oh, not that her mother actually says the word out loud, she just looks at her daughter pityingly when shown her marks. “Well, honey,” mother sighs, “I guess not everybody can be good at school.”
But, this young girl is not “stupid.” She has dyslexia.
When you, her teacher, place this before her:
This is what she sees:
Yet, all throughout her seven years of schooling so far, not one person in her life has noticed. Her brother, being a child, couldn’t notice. Her mother, not having had much education herself, might not notice. But you – her teacher? Why didn’t you notice?
I know why. You really didn’t want to be a teacher, did you? You wanted to be…hmmm…let me guess…a writer? …An actor, maybe?
And because the agents didn’t knock down your door in their enthusiasm, because the studios didn’t shower you with movie contracts, you “fell back” on teaching, didn’t you? Someone, some career counsellor somewhere, or even another teacher perhaps, advised you, “You can use your M.A degree. You just need to take a few education courses. It has great benefits and you get your summers off,” didn’t they?
And you thought about it. You thought that the salary wasn’t too bad, especially for the amount of effort you were planning to put into it. Better than being a waiter, anyway. You also realised that the teaching day, ending at 3 p.m., would give you just enough time to play at your real interests. And on a subconscious level, you knew that if you didn’t succeed at them then, you could always blame it on the fact that you, “had no time, you had to teach.”
Then the years went by, faster than you could have believed. You never got that publishing contract and Johnny Depp got all your good roles. So your disgust with Johnny, with Random House and with yourself, grew.
Eventually that disgust manifested itself into an abiding revulsion for your pupils. In particular, this little girl in front of you now, who is flushed through with agonized humiliation because, on top of everything else she thinks she should be and isn’t, she can’t read Charles Dickens and she knows you loathe her for it.
In your loathing, you’ll go one step further. You will make sure all her classmates detest her for it, too:
“I can’t believe this. Are you just going to sit there? Read it. We’re all waiting for you to say something.”
I understand you believe you should be able to express what you feel, at the very least. At least, here – in a classroom full of twelve-year-olds, you are in charge. You can say whatever you want and no one can stop you, because you have tenure, another job perk of your insufferable ‘career.’ So the worst that can happen is that you’ll get a lecture from the headmaster if any one of your pupils, or their parents has the temerity to complain. Which they hardly ever do.
Last week, it was a boy. You really outdid yourself there. You managed to make him cry. In a room full of other boys his age, he cried, because of you.
And now his life at school is effectively over. He’d already been having trouble. He’s the smallest male in his class and he can’t hit, pitch, kick or dunk a ball. However, he was managing to get through with his wry sense of humour and his ability to run pretty damn fast. Now he’ll never fit in, thanks to your public, verbal flogging.
There’s good news, though. For you, anyway. You know how you so wanted to make a social impact with your literary and/or theatrical endeavours? You have. Your words and your performances will never be forgotten. You are immortalised in the minds of your pupils.
This little girl today, for instance. She’ll will always remember and be affected by you. The first time she meets someone who calls her “friend,” she’ll be so surprised and grateful, that she’ll probably be misused. Her first job promotion, she’ll feel a clenching in her stomach, as she wonders if she’s really capable of handling it. When a man tells her he loves her, there’ll always be doubt whispering in her mind, that he can’t possible mean it. And if she becomes a mother, she’ll worry far more than most, that she’s making a mess of it.
As for that boy, if he has a supportive family, he’ll make it through the next five years of school, though they’ll be hell for him. The girls will always roll their eyes when they see him coming and sidle away. He might come to hate women because of it and himself, too. And if he doesn’t have a loving family, he might decide life is not worth it and take himself out, along with some of his classmates and teachers, probably. Possibly you.
All because you and so many others like you, couldn’t respect yourself, or your pupils or the job you were hired to do. It’s a job you’ll always despise, yet one from which no one will ever be able to pull you away. And every day you’re in it, you make my job harder for me.
Haven’t you figured out who I am?
Well, maybe you should look harder, too.
I’m the English teacher across the hall. And I hear you every day.
——————————————
credits – excerpt from Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist, photo from ‘foversouls’ on Flickr- “First Day of School”
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