Juggling Life

Would you follow through this time? Please?

I spent most of last week watching coverage of the impending budget shutdown and all of its attendant political posturing. I came this close to sticking my head in the oven. I’m so frustrated.

If you’re reading this President Obama, let me just say I loved everything you had to say in your speech. It is all pretty much the reason you got elected. I’d like to just ask for one thing, if that’s okay. HANG TOUGH. Okay, maybe I want to say GROW A PAIR, too.

My friend Julie always tries to reassure me by saying that she’s sure Barack Obama has a secret plan and once he reveals it we’re all going to say, “Oh! That’s why he did those things (you know the ones—giving up on universal healthcare, extending the Bush tax cuts)!” And then we’ll think he’s a total genius and rejoice in the streets.

If I have any Republican readers—or really, any reader that might explain this to me, why is anybody (cough*Paul Ryan*cough) still convinced that if we can just cut taxes on millionaire and billionaires even MORE that will solve our budget crisis and revive our economy. I’m just a layperson, but W gave us all sorts of tax-cuts and it really didn’t seem to help the economy at all. Anybody? Anybody? Bueller?

Really, Conventional Media?

      Cell Phone photo of the crowd at the We Are One Labor Rally  in San Diego Monday night

As promised, I attended this event Monday night. It was inspiring, though I think they could benefit from the help of someone that really knows how to work up a crowd with a big screen—I’m thinking of the way things work in a mega-church. Then again, I wasn’t there for a show—I was there because I don’t want to see my children struggling to stay in the middle-class 10 years from now and think I was complicit in letting it (the degradation of the middle class) happen.

I’m not generally a conspiracy theorist, so I am SHOCKED that the only media to cover this event was a small, alternative newspaper called the OB Rag (they estimate a crowd of 400-500). NO MAINSTREAM MEDIA COVERAGE AT ALL. This is scary s**t, people.

Below is the letter I wrote to our local paper. We’ll see if it gets printed. I am becoming afraid. Very afraid.

I am an enthusiastic newspaper reader. I have subscribed to some form of the San Diego Union-Tribune since I took the afternoon paper at my first apartment. Even though I can, and do, read the New York Times online daily I have continued to subscribe to the U-T because I want to support journalism at the local level. For the first time ever, I am considering cancelling my subscription.

I attended the “We Are One” labor rally at the Civic Center Monday night. I was anxious to read the U-T write- up because I know how hard it is to estimate crowds and I didn’t want to rely on my friends and my estimate of 250-300 people. I am shocked and dismayed that the U-T chose not to cover this important local event at all. Labor issues are in the forefront of national, state and local politics; this is news.

I am doubly chagrined because if 20 people hold a Tea Party Rally that event receives media coverage. My political viewpoint is that the middle-class is in a fight for its very existence and that unions are an important part of that fight. Even if you don’t agree with my viewpoint though, there is no question that Monday night’s rally was news and that the U-T should have covered the event. Why didn’t it?

Standing Up/Taking Action

Monday night I am attending a union-sponsored candlelight vigil with some friends. I have decided that it’s not enough for me to decry this country’s move to plutocracy—I need to do something about it before it’s too late.

All of us need to do something.

This recent Vanity Fair article on the way wealth has been redistributed in this country explains my position succinctly. The middle-class in this country is disappearing—and I’m truly afraid for the America my children are inheriting.

My hope is that the arrogant actions the Republicans have taken lately will turn the tide and reveal all these union-busting measures for what they are—a war on the middle and lower classes—a war whose sole purpose is to make the wealthy wealthier.

I also hope that Barack Obama and the rest of the Democrats have learned from their HUGE mistake in giving away universal healthcare by trying so hard to compromise when Republicans never compromise on anything. Yes, I’m bitter.

To my mind, universal healthcare would solve so many problems; our refusal to join other industrialized nations in this sensible and cost-saving way of providing healthcare because a segment of our population has a knee-jerk reaction to anything “socialist” is nothing short of bizarre—and counter-productive.

Hindsight is 20-20, but even at the time I really wanted Obama to go eyeball to eyeball and NOT BLINK when the Republicans demanded tax-cut extensions for millionaires before they would agree to extending unemployment benefits. True colors who?

If anyone knows a millionaire that decided to hire new employees or not do layoffs because he/she had their personal income taxes not raised I’d love to hear about it. ‘Cause it sure doesn’t look like it worked that way. And why would it? It’s the most ineffective jobs growth tool out there.

The only thing that keeps me halfway sane these days is Jon Stewart*—and really, I’m not sure that’s going to work forever! So tonight I march.

What about you? Are you mad as hell or do you think we’re headed in the right direction? If you totally disagree with me, I’d love to hear why—you probably won’t change my mind, but I’m still interested!

 

 

*You really do need to watch this if you haven’t seen his riff on teachers and bankers and the news shows. It’s genius. But sad . . . very sad.

Bully/Victim Mentality

Like many of you I’m quite distraught over things that are happening in this country. I don’t remember every feeling quite so hopeless and worried about the world my children will inherit. Are inheriting. Have inherited.

This is how I see it, as plainly as I can explain it.

Unfettered corporate greed (aided and abetted by politicians and uninformed voters) led to the reduction of benefits and wages, and the outsourcing of jobs, in the private sector.

In short, corporate America bullied the private sector.

Now the private sector, reacting as many victims of bullying do, has decided to bully the public sector. “Why should you have a pension and health care if I don’t have it?! If I don’t get it, nobody gets it!”

I wish the response instead, for all of us middle-class Americans, private and public sector employees alike, was to demand equitable treatment from corporate America. To rebuild the quality of life for everyone instead of bring it down for everyone.

To stand up to the bullies.

What Price Learning?

Most of my substitute teaching is done at two schools—an extremely high-achieving middle school in an affluent area and a low-performing high school in a lower-class neighborhood. I’m in the position to make a lot of comparisons. There are multiple areas of contrast, but one stands out to me.

Copies.

Copies are a big deal to teachers—and to students. With the budget crunch the school district is in, copies paid for by the district are extremely limited. A class set of something is the most a teacher can afford to copy—this means 150 students over the course of a day share the same 30 copies. So no marking up at all and by Period 6 things are looking pretty damn ratty.

Unless you get money for copies from somewhere else.

In the school in the wealthier neighborhood the parents supplement the copy budget and donate paper. There is no limit to the copies a teacher can make at high-achieving middle school. In an English class this means a copy of an article for each student with two pages of questions attached (no time wasted by copying from the overheard). This enables the teacher to use the oh-so-useful technique of highlighting.

In the advanced class I was in on Friday the sixth-grade students all read their expository article, highlighting the thesis statement in yellow, arguments in red, counterarguments in blue and refutations in orange. They deconstructed the piece in a way that I don’t often see among ninth-graders at low-performing high school.

The copy budget isn’t the whole story, but it is a piece of it.

Things I Just Don’t Understand

I wrote this post when I was in Erie—before I knew my husband was laid—off. So sentence one is not technically true, but I’m going with it anyway. Also, if I had any chance of getting the assistant to the news producer at our local Fox station job that I applied for this probably won’t help—but it’s a long-shot anyway!

I have been all about the light-hearted, slice-of-life post of late, but not today. It has probably been for the best that I’ve had Danger Boy’s college visits and my desire to get out and explore rather than be inside glued to a computer for a few days. Because the news I am catching is making me quite discouraged.

I think my cred as a bleeding heart liberal is solid—and I own my views. I live my life in a way that I describe as personally conservative, but socially liberal. That is if you looked at my day-to-day life some of the terms you would use to describe me would be “family values,” “hard-working,” “personal responsibility,” “no excuses,” “fiscally conservative.”

I am also nothing if not pragmatic.

To me the best way to support family values is to support the average citizen. Pay a fair wage, provide health care, access to quality education. Therefore, I consider any programs that value corporations over people—Wall Street over Main Street—to be anti-family.

Threatening to cut off unemployment benefits if tax-cuts for the very wealthiest Americans (proven to do nothing to stimulate the overall economy)? Anti-family.

Cuts to Medic-Aid? Very anti-family. It is not a family value to let people lose family members because of access to healthcare.

Gutting financial aid for college students? I’m not seeing how that benefits families in any way.

I’m as pro-choice a woman as you will find anywhere. But nobody “likes” abortion. How best to prevent a woman from needing an abortion? Access to family planning services. Like the services that an organization like Planned Parenthood provides. How does cutting their funding make any sense whatsoever if your end game is fewer abortions?

The union-busting business? Look, I don’t think unions are perfect—but life before unions was even less perfect. Do we need change? I think so. But to throw out the baby with the bathwater makes no sense whatsoever. I’m going to say that being completely anti-union is pretty un-American. And strong arm tactics that pit the government against it’s own citizens? Totally un-American. Yes, Tea Partiers, I’m calling you unpatriotic.

The rising divide in this country between the rich and the poor (helped along, it seems to me, by the poor themselves) is a terrible thing for America. It’s a terrible thing for families.

I’m also open about not being religious—but when I hear some of the self-appointed, conservative, right-wing, “real” Americans morality & family values police espousing policies that seem very anti-family to me, I wonder if they ever ask themselves, “What would Jesus do?” Because the answer to me seems quite clear; he wouldn’t do what they’re doing.

Stating the Obvious

I spent the first school day after vacation substituting at my kids’ former middle school. I was in 8th grade—regular and advanced English classes. The students had an essay due the following day; they were either reading or finishing the essays. I introduced myself, gave them their instructions and they sat in almost absolute silence doing the work I’d asked of them (I rewarded them by letting them have the last 10 minutes to switch seats and catch up with each other).

All day I looked out on a sea of healthy bodies, clear eyes and straight (or being straightened teeth). I handed out passes to the kids that had made the academic decathlon team. I eavesdropped on conversations about basketball games, snowboard trips and band concerts. At least four or five kids in each class sported All-Star sweatshirts from softball, lacrosse, baseball, soccer or basketball; I know those sweatshirts well. There were also a few decidedly non-mainstream kids (the Kurt-lookalike reading Nicholas Sparks) who seemed to fit in just fine.

This school is not my usual milieu and the contrast has been weighing on my mind. Physical attributions of affluence aside, what was most striking to me was the way almost every single student (there were two exceptions out of about 150 kids) took out a book and read or wrote for 40 minutes straight.

This just DOES NOT happen in the lower socioeconomic schools in which I’ve been working. Asking the students I work with most to read for 40 minutes straight is like asking them to poke ice picks into their eyeballs. It’s not going to happen. They just can’t. With isolated exceptions they have no stamina for reading and they don’t enjoy it. I know many smart kids that you could lock in a room with a stack of books for eight hours and they would prefer staring into space to reading.

The thought that has plagued me is that we are expecting these diverse populations to perform the same tasks and we are measuring them with the same yardstick. All you need to do is Google “achievement gap” to know that what we’re doing is not working.

I’ve got some ideas, but no power to implement them—I will say that this feels like a societal crisis to me. I know I’ve said much the same before, but every day it just becomes more glaring to me.

Discouraged

I know I’m not the only one who feels this way—what the heck is going on in our government?!

Certain people care about the deficit too much to extend unemployment benefits (even though NOT doing so would be disastrous for the economy), but they don’t care about the deficit so much that they would let tax cuts for those making over a million dollars a year expire?

In the immortal words of Scooby Doo, “Huh?!”

And certain other people have me just as perplexed about why they didn’t seize the day back when they had the votes to “get ‘er done. “

Sigh.

Is there anybody that can explain this to me? Suburban Correspondent you know I’m talking to you.

Good Times at the DMV

In other exciting news this week, Social Butterfly took and passed her driver’s license test on Monday morning. I know, you’re thinking “What? She waited until four whole days after her birthday to take the test—WHY?!” Her birthday is a federal holiday, California DMV has furloughs on Fridays (the budget crisis hitting her where it hurts) and then there was the weekend. So Monday it was. Of course we had an appointment. I’m not foolish enough to go to the DMV without one.

I thought the non-appointment line was unusually long, but we did get there right after the DMV opened at 8, so I chalked it up to that. We did our window 30 paperwork thing, she took the test, she passed (only marked down for turning her signal off too soon after she made a lane change) and she presented her paperwork back to window 30.

Mr. Window 30 asked her to take a seat and then disappeared. For a very long time. Being the chatty Cathy I am I had befriended the mom of the boy taking the test after SB—he was from her high school and we gabbed merrily until at least 20 minutes had passed. I began to wonder what exactly we were waiting for. SB scanned the inner bowels of the DMV cubicle yard and finally spied Mr. Window 30 hanging out with some other DMV  workers.

We kept our eyes fixed on Mr. W30 and when he alighted at window 32 I saw my opening.

“Excuse me, my daughter passed her license test and you told her to sit down and wait. Might I ask what we’re waiting for?”

“The computers are down. You’re waiting for them to come back up.”

“I see. Do you have an estimated time for that?”

“No.”

“Okay. So plan A is that we wait here for an indeterminate number of hours waiting for the system to come back up. Is there a plan B?”

“Well, I could write all her information down in this book, make a copy of her score sheet and the license would come in the mail. I can give her a temporary license now.”

“Thank you. That’s the option we pick.”

This is where things take a turn for the crazy. Mr. W30 says to me and my new friend (who was no fool and wanted Plan B, too), “Computers are down all over the state. This is no accident.”

“Who?” Silent, but meaningful, shrug from Mr. W30.

“Arnold?!”

“But why?! What would his motivation be?!”

“Google it. The information is out there. The truth is on the internet. I don’t even watch TV news anymore. MSNBC, CNN . . . they all lie—you can’t trust them.”

“I should Google it?!”

“Google it.”

True story. Every word. I did Google it. There were 60 DMVs in California down on Monday. It’s the 5th time since August this has happened. They’re trying to pin it on a system upgrade. I still can’t figure out what’s in it for Arnold.

Why am I so tired and other thoughts . . .

I spent Friday and Saturday at a water polo tournament out of town and Sunday recovering. Now this recovery time would make sense if I had been playing, but since I was merely a spectator, cheerleader and chauffeur . . .

 

One of the most important things I’ve learned from my Weight Watcher’s leader (besides the fact that the meeting leader has a tremendous impact on the program working—which surprised me) is about reasonable goal-setting. Therefore, my goal from now until the new year is not to gain weight. I’ve lost 30 lbs. and I want to be reasonable about what I can expect during the holidays—especially since I am a baker and making and giving seasonal treats is important to me and to my family. I set the same goal on vacation this summer and actually ended up losing, but even if I hadn’t I wouldn’t have felt badly.

 

I cannot wait until Wednesday morning—whether my candidates and issues win or lose at least the incessant phone calls and junk mailers will stop. Since I voted by mail three weeks ago, I am particularly uninterested in what anyone has to say.

 

I am way behind on PhotoShopping the tremendous number of water polo pics I am taking—fingers crossed I get caught up this week. The thing with sports photography is that you are so far away from the action that you need to, at minimum, enlarge and crop the shots for them to be worth anything. This is truly a labor of love for me though and I cannot tell you how happy it makes me to get a message from Facebook that, “X has made your photo his profile picture.”

Also, I was pretty thrilled the other day when somebody’s grandma told me she’s always stealing my photos of her grandson and posting them on her Facebook. I was even more thrilled to find this shot of her dear grandson, affectionately known as “Polar Bear,” in my recent batch—as you can see, he (blue cap) was more surprised than the goalie that the shot went in; I immediately sent it Grandma’s way.

What do you do that is a labor of love?