October Light

It's a Friday in October, and I'm sitting in my car.  I just got home, but as is usually the case, I need just a minute to transition from "work responsibilities" to "home responsibilities." 

The light is this special shade of gold that only ever happens in October.  I don't know why it should be so, but October afternoon light has captivated me since childhood.  It makes me feel like I should be getting ready to go to a carnival or something.  Just seeing it shimmering through the leaves lifts my tired heart.

This gold light is the color of the sky in the dreams I remember, the dreams that speak to me.  Maybe it's the color of the sky in some other world altogether that is only revealed on October afternoons and behind closed eyes.

Or maybe I just need to get out of the car and go in now....

That Moment When....

...this wonderfully odd little song comes up in my Spotify playlist, and my very first thought is, "Gotta share that with ____."  Only we don't do that anymore, so I can't.

Bit of crap, that......

The End of Week 1

My first week as a teacher at my new/old school is done.  It fairly flew by.  I'm tired, but not the bone-weary exhaustion I have felt, not the "and-I-have-to-do-this-again-how-long?" that I've known before.  My co-workers are so tremendously helpful and welcoming, the students are well-behaved (for the most part), and constant little drops of happiness (treats in the lounge, a free shirt, jeans on Friday, a goodie bag from a student organization) keep coming along.

The little details, in fact, keep blowing me away.  The food in the cafeteria is genuinely good, and there is always enough of it.  There are several choices for entrees, lovely vegetables all the time, ice cream and ice-cold bottled water in a cooler at the register.  Nobody winds up with quickly-reheated chicken patties and corn.  I heard a student in line say, in fact, "Yeah, my mom always packs me a lunch, but sometimes that's not so good, so I always get a tray."  It's quiet enough to have a normal conversation in the cafeteria.  My head doesn't pound because of the noise.

I'm starting to stop looking for the other shoe, but I can't quite let go of the fear that it is going to drop at some point.  I don't know how long I will keep subconsciously waiting for that thud that means some hidden cray-cray is coming out of the closet.  I know I can't keep living like that, though, always looking over my shoulder, so deliberately, I'm trying to focus on all the good.

Part of me misses my old home for so long, too.  I sort of miss the view out of my second-floor windows and those long, comforting, red-brick halls.  I wonder how my newspaper staff is getting on.  I worry about my teacher friends left behind there.  I hope that things are somehow managing to change for the better for them, too.

For the most part, though, the relief of not having to be in that environment of stress is nearly overwhelming.  I get up in the morning, and I don't dread the day. When I reach my planning period, I get things done or visit with one of my fellow teachers.  I don't have to just sit behind my desk for awhile and try to get myself together for the rest of the day.   And while I have mostly kept my rule about school work being done at school and home being about home, I will admit that I sat here the past two nights slicing open tennis balls that someone donated to me so I could put them on the bottoms of my desk legs next week to silence the noise of desk movement.  I felt good about doing it, too.

I also had enough time and energy to find a new lesson plan template and beat it into submission.  It was enjoyable to do stuff like that again in a way that the vast majority of things related to education had not been for me in longer than I care to contemplate.  I actually did it before they were due instead of putting it off needlessly as a form of avoidance of something that was frustrating and that I could not change. This time, I didn't feel angry when I worked on the lesson plans because they didn't have to be filled with random glittery bits of edutrendiness that had been culled from some seminar someone had been to or had seen online.  They're set up my way for my classes, are easily adaptable, are actually legitimately reusable since they're in Excel (not my favorite thing, but very good for this sort of document as it turns out).  I'm going to be able to print them off and use all of them, not just have pages and pages of stuff I have to shuffle through to get to the useful bits.  It's deeply satisfying to have my plans be a tool to run my class again and not something hijacked for another purpose.

Next week will be a much more accurate sample of what everything is actually going to be like.  All the new will be worn off, and everyone will be settling in to their regular behaviors.  That hovering shoe might be about to make its appearance known.  Or not.  I'm going to try to be so busy being happy and making things good for my students that I don't notice one way or the other.  

The Edge of Something

Tomorrow, I'll go to school for the first of the obligatory teacher days, something that happens at the beginning of every new school year.  It won't, however, be just another year.  It's the start of the first year at a new school.

Usually at this time, I have acid in my stomach and a headache on the horizon, worried about whatever new challenges and assignments were going to be waiting on me, dreading the hours of meetings that served little purpose.  This time, though, I'm actually looking forward to all of it.

That feeling of optimism has been missing for longer than I care to consider.  I have always been ready to see the students again, but to be honest, for about the last three years, the other parts of going back ground me down a little more each time.

This year, something is different.  Someone asked me the other day if I were ready to go back, and, with a big silly grin on my face, I said, "Actually, yes."  I may be the only teacher in the history of time who has said that, and at the end of the day tomorrow, I may feel like I have been run over by a bus, but for now, here on the edge of something, I am hopeful.

And that's everything.

Insomnia and Facebook Hate

(Strong language is contained herein.  If that bothers you, go elsewhere.)

I wasn't going to write anything anywhere about recent events. It didn't seem that there was anything I could add to the discussion that hadn't been said better by other people.  My Facebook feed is largely split into two camps of people, neither of which seems to be able to understand the other at all.  One camp posts nothing but "strike down all cops" and "all white people are evil" while the other is nothing but "it's mostly your fault."  Both are wearing me slam-damn out, to be honest.  Today, I have started to see a new variation saying, "If you don't post anything (about the shootings by the police), then you must be a racist, and we know it, and we're going to unfriend you now."

Imma call bullshit on all of this.

I haven't written anything because I am numb.  For three days, I have been walking around in a daze wondering what happened to this country.  Last night, I was struggling to get my mind to calm down enough to get some rest when the BBC and CNN apps on my phone started notifying me about Dallas.  After that, I just cried.  There didn't seem to be anything else left possible to do.  Around 1:30, I took some Zzzquil and fell into a nightmare-haunted sleep that made me sicker than no sleep at all would have done.

No matter what might have been going on behind the scenes, I don't think it is possible to say that the deaths of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling were in any conceivable way legitimate responses to the situations.  Did the two men behave absolutely textbook perfectly when the police showed up?  I don't know.  I haven't watched the videos and will not because I can't carry that around in my head without it destroying me.  I doubt it.  I doubt it was possible.  It sure as hell wouldn't have been for me.  I got stopped for a traffic violation and was shaking like a leaf when the patrolman came up to the car with his hand on his sidearm.  Even though I am a white woman (the opposite demographic from those slain recently), I kept worrying that I wasn't being still enough, that I would do the wrong thing.  When we get scared, we sometimes don't remember the drills we were taught, the advice to keep our hands on the steering wheel, fingers spread.  I will say this, though.  Unless those men took out a gun and pointed it at one of the officers, I cannot see that the officer response was the right one. There had to have been some other path.

My social media feed is filled with posts from former students who are angry and scared.  I think that feeling is totally legitimate.  Every time I think about that little girl watching her father be shot and killed, I want to scream.  That my students have to worry about this, have to read posts on social media, have to listen to elitists who diminish their concerns and say, in essence, the modern version of "well,  you know how it is with *those* people" as if someone's skin color diminishes their value as a human being or their protections under American law, breaks my heart.  One of my precious formers posted simply, "My life matters.  My life matters.  My life matters."  That anyone as bright, capable, charming, and full of potential to do great good things as he is has to say this to himself should break everybody's heart.

This is not my country.  This cannot be my country.  We have to be better than this.

And then there are the police.  Most of the people I know who are a part of law enforcement genuinely want to make people safe and protect them from harm.  Their job is increasingly terrifying.  Heavy weaponry is everywhere.  The most fundamental concept of civilization, an agreement to abide by certain concepts for the safety of everyone, is crumbling as everybody focuses on whatever they can grab for themselves instead.  I can't imagine being police or highway patrol and knowing that I was going to be putting my life in danger every day.  I deeply respect their dedication to protecting us.

That being said, not everybody who is behind a badge is flawless, and we are going to have to accept that and deal with it somehow before all the wheels come off this thing altogether. I have grown up personally acquainted with the idea that law enforcement can be quite a mixed bag of things due to issues of corruption locally.  Every profession has those in it who fail to live up to its demands.  There are teachers who are terminated for varying kinds of misconduct all the time, doctors who lose licenses for addiction or malpractice. Becoming a member of law enforcement does not magically confer perfection any more than becoming a member of any other profession, and while I support them and am grateful beyond belief for the sacrifices they make, I really think we are all going to have to realize that there are problems that must be resolved before the entire system collapses.

And maybe this is the thing that both of these camps on social media are missing.  They are lumping huge swaths of humanity into big, stereotypical groups.  That which is Other is by definition both Wrong and Evil when it is approached this way.  When we start dealing with people on the macro level, we lose the detail that allows us to appreciate each other. It becomes easy to pick up that first stone and fling it at a mass of anonymous faces instead of having to step up to that one individual separately, look him or her in the eye, and take aim. Stop saying "all you people" whether you are pointing a finger at the cops or those who have been shot.  In fact, any time you find yourself thinking something like, "Well, *they're* all...(WHATEVER)," some kind of mental alarm needs to go off.  No group is universally any one thing or another.

Instead, why don't we try, just as an experiment maybe, to say, "If I were in that situation, how would I feel?  What would my reaction be?"  Don't get up on your high-horse saying, "Oh, but that would *never* be me."  Instead, do the cliche and see if you can't walk in those shoes in some degree even for the smallest amount of time. Recover the basic human quality of empathy for another.

Is power being abused?  By some in many places.  Is fear slowly killing us all?  Every damn day.  Certain media outlets stir it up to get ratings.  Politicians use it as a sharpened goad to drive us hither, thither, and yon.   I don't know what the answer is.  People far wiser than I have pondered this for longer than I have been alive, and you see the state we're in. These are upsetting times.  It's okay to be afraid.  It's natural to be upset.  That being said, we cannot keep letting it make us savage toward each other. Appreciate the value of the fragile and irreplaceable humanity around you.  Quit being sure you know what's what.  For the love of the tiny baby Jesus, quit making blanket statements about entire sections of the nation, be it a profession or an ethnicity.

I guess I am going to fall back on an old personal axiom, then.  I've had it up in my classroom for a long time, "Be Nice or Leave."  I'm not going to throw stones or post hostile statuses.  I'm just going to sit over here, grieve for our hurting nation, and pray for some change.  Anyone who might want to join in with that is always welcome.

Istanbul

Three summers ago, I had the chance of a lifetime to go to Turkey for three weeks.  We were studying the Ottoman Empire, and we traveled all over the country looking at historically significant buildings, cities, and tombs.  We explored traditions that still exist and things that had passed on since the Ottoman Empire dissolved.  It was a truly amazing trip.

While the whole thing was unforgettable, parts of it stand out to me in perfect detail.  One was eating at this truck stop on the side of a highway.  The entire place was surrounded by a seemingly endless field of sunflowers in full bloom.  It was like something out of a fairy tale.  I wanted to just run out into the middle of it and take in the wonder of it.  I settled for a ton of photos instead.

The second was standing under the dome of Selimiye in Edirne.  We also saw Suleymaniye in Istanbul, and it was indeed lovely, but its older sister took my breath away.  Sinan was a genius, and when left to his own devices, a creator of perfect grace and symmetry.

The most unforgettable place was much, much older.  I had wanted to see Hagia Sophia for as long as I can remember knowing about it. I have loved the name since I learned what it means, Holy Wisdom.  When I stood under that golden dome on floors over a thousand years old, it completely stole not my breath but my heart.  I went back again on my own when we had a free day just so I could sit down on the cool stone and stare up into that glory.  The beauty of that place, its sense of sacredness, was like a physical thing.  I have only ever been one other place that came close, the Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi.

Even though we were on the road for a solid week, the rest of our time was spent based in the Sultanahmet district near the Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque, the Hippodrome, Topkapi, the Grand Bazaar, and the Basilica Cistern.  We learned, we met people, we explored, and I came to love that city.  We never met anyone who wasn't willing to help us.  Everywhere people were kind and friendly.  Part of me very much wanted to stay there and know it better.

So now, when I see that the rabid violence of suicide bombing has attacked it again, has blown up the very airport we came into and out of, I grieve for the lost and the injured, but I also grieve for Istanbul.  That city, that ancient lovely place, deserves to be cherished and protected. It is a unique thing that spans centuries, cultures, empires, languages, even continents.  The true goal of the terrorists is, of course, to make people afraid.  Afraid to go to places like Istanbul or Paris, these important places where it's possible to see both the ancient past and maybe the future side by side.  Afraid to go to places away from home.  Afraid of "others."

I've had the "it's not safe to go" conversation already today.  I'll hear it increasingly.  I've thought it myself.  I have to keep telling myself, though, that it's not safe anywhere.  Psychopaths walk into our schools and universities, our night clubs, our office buildings, every day with evil intent and heavy weaponry.  Even here in this tiny rural place I live, child abductions are attempted, homes are invaded when predators think those inside are elderly or weak.  Whatever safety we used to think we had has somehow disappeared, and national borders don't seem to have a lot to do with it. Why then should we allow them to cage us in a corner?

Hamlet tells us that "the readiness is all."  We cannot know when our time is coming.  We cannot live our whole lives looking for the shadow to fall, listening for Death's soft footfalls coming up behind us.  I think we live in a world where it is easy to be afraid all the time, where we certainly have cause for fear.  If we give in to it, though, all those horrible, rabid, twisted bastards win.  I think we have to keep going places, embracing each other, learning about each other.  If this plague of hate is ever going to be defeated, it has to come from its opposite, unity instead of isolation.

Reasons Why I Love Marvel Films

(an open letter of appreciation to everyone involved with the MCU that will never get read but that I want to write anyway)

I've been on a major Marvel movie kick lately, and I've been thinking about why they are so enjoyable.  Here's what I've come up with so far.

1)  A legitimate effort at fun has been made - Every day, it seems like the news is full of new horrors. People are killing each other for no legitimate reason.  Things are disappearing or being used up. Both America and the world seem to be increasingly divided.  People are just plain hateful to each other based on differences which make no difference.  Our political landscape is filled with a wide array of non-choices we'll have to pick from in a few month.

One of the greatest uses of entertainment is being able to escape all that, even for 120 minutes, and Marvel films do that so well.  The interplay between the characters is always a delight.  The snark between Hawkeye and Quicksilver in Age of Ultron. Tony Stark bating...pick a character.  Anyone.  Everyone, really.  Ant Man in Iron Man's wiring or in Sam's Falcon suit. Ant Man getting punched in the face by Hope.  Happy getting taken down by the Widow.  Spiderman and Bucky.  (Spiderman and everybody.) The entire Bucky/Sam dynamic.  One of my favorite scenes of all time was in Civil War when all those huge, ridiculously powerful guys are crammed into that old Volkswagen and Bucky asks Falcon to move his seat but Sam refuses.  It was short, little compared to the huge drama going on, but it was perfect.  My immediate thought was, "Actual Crap Guys Do."  I still snicker thinking about it.

And don't even get me started on Deadpool.  That entire film is just a gift.

2)  A legitimate effort at more than just escapism has also been made - Because they're not just fluff.  Even when we laugh at the one-liners, we can come away from the films thinking seriously about important concepts.  Loyalty (and who deserves it), purpose, self-definition, coping with situations that we can't control, the need for second chances, who gets to write history and tell stories, the effects of conflict and violence on the macro and micro level, it's all in there.  If you don't believe me, go to Tumblr for about five minutes and look at the way that talking about Marvel films is allowing people to talk about the very same real-world issues they help people escape for a minute, too.

It's a little like Shakespeare to me.  (I'm going somewhere with this.  I promise.  Don't throw things or pass out.)  He used these fabulous characters and riveting stories to present important ideas.  Mercutio is fabulous, so sparkly he almost steals the entire play from that other moody teen, but what we need to learn from him is that his excess destroys him and that friends can get caught up in our drama whether we intend them to or not.  Hamlet, with all his intelligence and sublime skill with language, teaches us it is possible to wait too long and that everybody suffers from it.  Macbeth shows us what happens when ambition subsumes loyalty and character.  And on and on.  This is a whole separate blog post from me, so I'll stop here.  What I'm saying is that the MCU films do a lot of this same kind of thing.  There's something deeper at the core of them that makes them more than blockbuster entertainment.

3) Even though it can't be easy to be an actor for these films, they always look like they like each other and like what they do - I know that being a part of something like the MCU has got to be a big choice for an actor for a lot of reasons.  I assume they are physically rigorous films, especially since many of the actors seem to be doing as many of their own stunts as they can.  They also seem to require long commitments to the franchise.  I don't know if that's a bad thing or not, but I'm assuming it limits what actors are allowed to do otherwise even though most of the MCU films do well at the box office.

I also figure that being a part of something like MCU denies those actors a great deal of the pleasure of being an anonymous person.  I'm just a lowly school teacher, nothing so public and glorified as a film actor, but I actually love to go hang out with my friends who live in other cities just for the sheer pleasure of not having to worry about who I'm going to see that might know me. I'll never forget the time I got one of my ear piercings redone and came to school the next day to be told, "We saw you getting your ears done."  I hadn't seen them, and the entire thing was paranoia-inducing.  Where were they?  Why did they care?  Was I floating around out there in a Snapchat getting my ears repierced?  Jesus....  If it's like that for me as a public school teacher, can you even imagine what it is like to be one of the actors in these films?  Is there anywhere they can enjoy being just them and not Cap or Nat, Bucky or Tony Stark?  I hope so.  Everybody deserves a place to be simply themselves.

The biggest thing I guess I'm talking about is the apparently endless parade of interviews and convention panels.  Because I have a board on Pinterest called Geekery that I add stuff to from Doctor Who, Star Wars, MCU films, etc., I see a bajillion interview pins (again, probably mostly assembled from things from Tumblr, that frothing bastion of fandom, God bless it).  It has to get old.  I wonder how many thousand times they get asked the same questions.  Some of the things I see they've been asked are things I wouldn't be able to respond to well, but they always seem to stay classy (reasons they're actors and I'm not, probably).

In spite of all these things that would be drawbacks to me, they also always look like they like each other and are having a lot of fun. They support each other, defend each other from the really brainless, tactless, and crass questions.  I really hope that's true.  I hope that they look forward to making these movies and mess around on set and during those ridiculous interviews and are basically just happy.  Maybe they don't all hang out at one of the hundred-and-eighty-seven-guys-named-Chris's houses on the weekend, but while they're there, it seems like they're having a blast. It increases the enjoyment of the films to me to think that it's in some way an effort of friends.

4) The female characters kick ass - The women are as interesting and strong as the men and nobody acts like that's anything other than the way it should be.  I have loved Wonder Woman since I was a little girl small enough to fit into Underoos, and I have always, always wanted to see a film in which she was not a cameo or just done wrong.  Marvel doesn't seem to have that issue. They aren't afraid of women who can hold their own. I can't wait to see Hope Pym as the Wasp.  When the Scarlet Witch blasted Vision through the floor in Civil War, I (silently) cheered.  Kick that ass, girl.  I'm still catching up on the Daredevil series, but Electra is so very well done, deadly and complicated.  And yes.  Like the rest of America, I do want an entire Black Widow movie.  She deserves it. (And throw some Red Room Bucky up in that, too.)

5) They are not afraid of brokenness - All of the MCU heroes have big, huge faultlines running right up the middle of them.  Serious things have happened to them, things they couldn't control.  They've made choices the best they could or had all their choices taken from them.  Accidents have happened.  They lost things.  They lost people they loved.  They've lost part or all of themselves.

Bucky is the poster boy for this and one of my very favorite characters in the entire MCU. Each time we see him in the films, he is picking the pieces of his life up and sorting through them. Even though he has been as destroyed as a person can be, with the help of his friends, he is trying to put those pieces back in place. Sebastian Stan does an amazing job showing this process.  Bucky can't be easy to play.

This is what real life does.  All that ugliness I mentioned at the top that surrounds us every day is doing this stuff to us, and we have to pick ourselves up and deal with whatever remains.  I think the MCU heroes do an excellent job of giving hope that it is possible to stand up and keep trying.  Sure, we're never going to be kidnapped by HYDRA, twisted by the Red Room, recreated by the mind stone, but we are going to get knocked down, hurt in hearts, minds, and bodies, and there's a lot to be said for seeing survival of the worst in fiction.  It's important to have stories that show us people can overcome.

6) The villains are complicated - As a million little Loki fangirls will attest, even Marvel's bad guys aren't simple.  Maybe it's the richness of the decades of source material and all the incarnations they've gone through as different writers shaped the characters, but instead of just big powerful evil, there's always a reason. There's always a backstory.  They aren't Iagos; they're Claudiuses. (And I promise, that's my last Shakey reference.) The Marvel villains are the flip side of the hero's brokenness.  They show us what happens when you choose NOT to get up.  When you choose to hold on the the darkness instead of finding some way to purge it or leave it behind.  They are as important in that dynamic as the heroes are.

My favorite of them is almost inevitably Wilson Fisk.  D'Onofrio always amazes me with the depth he brings to anything he plays, and his portrayal of the many, many layers behind Kingpin is one of the main reasons I like Daredevil so much.  The character is absolutely terrifying, utterly ruthless, but as the details of his becoming are revealed, it becomes possible to have compassion for him.  Then he decapitates somebody with a car door, and you are not quite sure how to feel.  That's the way a good villain is supposed to function.

7)  The characters grow and change - Captain America has undergone this beautiful and complex transformation, but all of them evolve.  The Tony Stark we saw in Civil War wasn't the same guy from Iron Man.  All the characters in Daredevil are shifting, and it's impressive to watch.  Even fairly newly-introduced characters like the Scarlet Witch and the Black Panther have changed dramatically from who they were when we first met them.  Others are poised on the edges of that kind of change, especially Bucky, and I hope we get to see it happen. Real life leaves marks.  When characters don't change due to what they encounter, they're allegories, and while allegories are interesting, I don't think we learn as much about survival from them as we do from more dynamic characters.

And I could probably go on, but I'll stop here.  It may seem kind of an odd thing for me to write about, but it's what was on my mind today.  Gotta go watch a movie.

Thoughts on the Day of Muhammad Ali's Funeral

When we registered yesterday, we were warned to take the Skyway (or, as I like to call it, the Habitrail) to and from the convention center today because of the crowds expected to be lining the street for Muhammad Ali's funeral.  Everyone standing in line everywhere was abuzz with the list of people who were going to be in attendance.

This morning, we left to go grade papers in the cool of the dawn, and there was nobody out yet.  By the time we went into the large open area outside the grading room for our morning break, streets had been blocked off and official vehicles could be seen over at the YUM! Center.  It had begun.

We couldn't see any of the actual procession, but we saw bunches of people standing around waiting for it.  Some of the readers looked up the live stream on their phones, and so groups of two or three stood there at the windows watching slow moving progress on the tiny screens and trying to figure out if it would get to our location before we had to go back inside again.

At lunch, I needed to get out and walk around a minute, and I took the opportunity to walk to a souvenir shop/information center right across the street from the convention center.  There was a huge line of people, and they were all clamoring to buy orange shirts commemorating the day.

After the day's grading, I went to grab a sandwich, and everywhere, there were things related to Ali, signs on the side of city buses, a big electric billboard showing images from this life, people walking by in shirts.  After I got my food, I walked back to the hotel.  When I got to the street the YUM! Center is on, it was lined with makeshift booths fabricated from crates, folding tables, tarps.  People were hawking $10 shirts for two city blocks' worth of space.  It was a little surreal.

The thought that kept coming to me over and over again was how his family felt about this, how he would have felt about this.  I guess to me grief is just such a private thing that I hate the thought of sharing it with anyone.  Maybe it is different for them since he was such a world-famous icon.  They'd been sharing him with everyone everywhere for so long that it has to be different, I suppose.

 It bothered me that people were lined up and selling shirts for the same reason. It always seems so unbearably crass and, to be honest, cruel when I see what looks like someone trying to make money of someone else's tragedy.  Maybe they were out there with them to honor a hero.  Maybe it was a tribute somehow.

Then there are those who were buying the shirts. Did the people who bought them do so to honor him?  Or was it sort of a "been there, done that" trophy?  We wound up being here by the greatest accident of timing.  Thousands of others made the journey specifically for this funeral.  Why did they come?  It's a question I would especially like to ask of the "dignitaries" who have kept the skies and the police force busy.  Some of them had meaningful ties to Ali and his family.  It made sense that they would come to honor that.  How many others showed up because it was the place where all the cameras were running right now?

None of it is really my business.  I just hope that it was all the way he would have wanted it, the way his family felt comfortable with.  In the end, that is the only thing that could possibly have mattered today.  No matter what he was to the rest of the world the rest of the time, he was their husband, father, family member, friend, and now he is gone.  Their grief deserves respect.  I hope they feel that it was given.

Laughter

Monday, I went to my slightly delayed six-month checkup with my neurologist.  The nurse took my blood pressure, and when she told me what it was, I felt myself grin.  I couldn't stop it.  I asked her what it had been the last time I came in, and she checked the chart, told me.

The grin got bigger.

In six months, I've gone from running numbers so high my doctors wanted to put me on blood pressure medicine and/or some kind of anti-anxiety medicine to textbook normal or better.  That's worth grinning over, I think.

When I'd gone to see them in January, I was having at least two debilitating (i.e. - medicine required to stop them, somebody had to come get me from school because I was too sick to stay, too sick to drive) migraines a week.  I felt horrible all the time.

In the last month, I have had only two migraines at all, and both of those were during that last horrible, horrible week at my old job when so many bad things happened.

Last time, the consultation I had with the neuro nurse took a long time.  It was fairly solemn as we discussed the possibility of daily maintenance medicine to stop the headaches again, all the old terrible things like Topamax - which steals my words and my personality - and newer variations - some that would spike blood pressure, some that might make me lose both weight and hair, others that would definitely increase my appetite.  This time, I spent more time laughing and chatting with the nurse practitioner than we did discussing my treatment options.

My God, what a difference a change can make.

I can even give you the date things started to change.  I have a picture taken that day.  I was in a new Shakespeare First Folio scarf that I'd bought for the 400th anniversary celebration.  That was the day I decided to go take a chance and talk to the administrators at what would become my new/old school.  That was the day I finally admitted to myself after that conversation that change was possible.  I remember driving home down familiar roads talking to my mother.  I can remember feeling the first tiny tendrils of hope stir.

It's grown since then. Once I made the official decision to leave my old school, I found the number of migraines I was having dropped off sharply.  Other alterations followed.

I laugh again now.  I noticed it the other day.  I was walking Stella around the yard on one of her many daily jaunts, and she did something ridiculous, clown that she is, and I started laughing.  It felt a little strange, and I realized why.  I am not sure when it stopped, but I haven't laughed at things in a long time.

Now, I snicker at Stella and Tybalt's semi-stealthy stalking of one another.  I chortle at stupid puns on FB.  I laugh sometimes until I cry at geeky pins on Pinterest.  I get amused with myself and the guys I play with on Sunday nights when I can't get my crap together with the bass.  There's humor in the world again, and it feels so good.

Before those of us who were leaving got out of  my old school, there were some hateful comments made regarding the fact that I'm changing schools.  Much of it was just the usual backstabbing crap that went on constantly, but some of them were bold enough to say it to our faces.  Certain people were quick to tell me and the others who left to go where I'm going that nothing good awaited us because "you know how they are out there."

I really don't.  Not anymore.  Even though I graduated from the school to which I am returning, I haven't had anything to do with it for more than twenty years, so, no.  I don't know how they are. That whole statement infuriated me.  Some of the very same people who were so fast to judge based on a stereotype would follow up in the same breath with some complaint about how our school received criticism based on stereotypes, too.

Nothing is ever what we think it is from the outside.  I am certain there are differences.  The population makeup is different in percentage of ethic group, in balance of socio-economics, in setting (rural v. urban), and most importantly, in size (my new school will be about half the size of my old one).  What I refuse to believe is that people who do not live there, who do not have children attending that school, who do not teach at that school or know anyone who does, who likely have never seen the campus except for the sporting fields, are reliable sources of information about it.  This holds true for every place in the world.  We don't know unless we go to see it for ourselves.  If humanity could just hold on to that one idea and practice it, I wonder just how much ridiculousness and cruelty we could end?

I am sure there are going to be challenges, sources of frustration, things I would want to change.  As I've told people before, though, "There is crap everywhere.  You just have to figure out what of it you can deal with and what of it you need to get away from."  I figured out the last bit the hard way.

And, to be honest, even if the naysayers turn out to be right (which I do not anticipate happening), I still needed to go through the process of making this change.  I feel better, more hopeful, more at peace with myself right now than I have in....longer than I can remember.  I sing with the radio.  I write stuff.  I take care of my house, my self.  I cook dinner for myself, for my family.

I laugh.

If nothing else is ever gained from this change, by God, I laugh again.  That is enough.

Changes

Set me free, why dontcha babe?
Get out my life, why dontcha babe?
Cause you don’t really need me
You just keep me hangin’ on

~ “Keep Me Hangin’ On” by the Supremes or Kim Wilde (depending on your personal preference)
_______________________________________________________________

This is a season of change for me. I finally found the strength to open my hands and let go of the shards of something in my professional life that was cutting me up. The transition has been hard, but it showed me some important things.

First it showed me that I had more people who cared about me than I ever imagined. I am going to hold tight to them, and I refuse to allow a change in location to result in losing them.

Second, the tremendous sense of relief that I feel now that first big change is complete has shown me that there is a time to cut losses when the person or place just keeps hurting me. Sometimes, no matter how hard I try or how much I want it, there is nothing I am going to be able to do to make a situation better. I need to apply the "Put up with it, and you will get more of it" measuring stick to many areas of my life. If I don't want more of the effect, I should stay away from the cause to start with.

That brings me to the third. Any relationship that is totally one-sided is probably one that should be trimmed away. If a person I consider a friend cannot bring him/herself to rejoice with me - even superficially - or extend sympathy - even in the form of a “sad” emoji -, then is there really a relationship at all? If they miss *all* the big stuff *all* the time, what even is this?

We all get busy. We all have time periods where we can’t be as connected to those we value as we would wish. I personally go through periods of social hibernation, time where the most I can manage is clicking like on a FB status. However, when it is important to another person I love, I really do try to make sure I try to make it important to me, too, even if all I can do is something small.

When there is no effort from the other side, I suspect that it’s time to call the time-of-death and go on. Currently, I have a relationship like this. I guess I was holding on because the relationship had been so important to me, at one time active and joyful and vital. Maybe it was because there was never a sense of ending, just a horrible uncertain drifting where I wondered if I should be the one to reach out again, if it were welcome, if it mattered at all, or if it were just another irritation.

For quite a long time now, I have been feeling like an inconvenience, a relic, or as Josh Ritter might have put it, “just one more rag he was dragging behind him,” and be straight damned if I’m going to put up with that. I’m nobody’s remnant.

That's the thought I'm going to keep in my mind as I try to lay this particular thing to rest. It's time to take the shears, clip what threads remain (if I can), and move away even if it hurts.

Cold

I've been cold all day.  I got up at the ungodly hour of 3 am to prepare for a field trip to the state journalism conference, and I was chilled when I woke up.  A hot shower helped, but then as we waited for our transportation to arrive at the school, the cool spring morning crept back.  The vehicle itself was cold, and by the time I'd ridden three hours in it to get to the college where our conference was, the chill had become an abiding part of me.

Cold auditorium.  Cold lobby where I waited for my students to go from session to session.  Cold, meager outdoor lunch under cold grey skies.  Cold auditorium again.  Cold vehicle.

I have goosebumps that I can't seem to get rid of.  It's not just temperature anymore.  I feel totally drained from having to push myself to be social all day, to extrovert.  I haven't slept well the past two nights, so I know that's part of it, too.

I think I am going to go take a hot shower and put on some fuzzy jammies, but it doesn't feel like it will be enough. I need someone to curl up with me and take care of me for a minute.  I'm going to admit to being tired enough and shaky enough that just now, I want it more than anything I can think of.

Vicksburg

I needed to get out of the house today.  I had wanted to go to Clarksdale, but it is simply too far away for a pleasant day trip.  I decided to go back to Vicksburg and go to the Military Park.

It has been two or three years since I was last there, and I always forget the size of the place.  Every time I think I am about to turn the last corner, a new segment of the park opens up instead.  It is huge.

It is also the oddest mixture of solemnity and celebration.  From the very first moment one passes through the entrance, memorials to the dead soldiers and leaders of the Union line the sides of the road.  Separate granite monuments honor the contributions of every state; one can find Ohio, Indiana, even tiny Rhode Island.  Blue and Red cast-iron markers show where the troops on both sides dug trenches, positioned cannon, mined to capture the enemy.  Preserved cannon perch on ridge tops.  Huge constructions of bronze and stone tower over the landscape in grandiose mourning and tribute.

At the same time, tourists are snapping selfies on the steps of the Illinois Monument.  Small children slide down the 47-step-a-step-for-every-day-of-the-siege staircase's banister and whistle and sing inside the Pantheon-imitating dome so they can hear the echoes bounce. Brave fit young things scurry down steep hills and fight their way back up again shouting insults and encouragement to one another. A motorcycle club picnics next to the remains of a restored ironclad ship.  A father and daughter look around and think they are unobserved, then suddenly race up the steps of Wisconsin's monument and do the Rocky bounce, arms held high and laughing, when they reach the top.  A little boy runs up to an array of cannon and immediately starts yelling, "Boom!"

I feel like I'm seeing double.  On the one hand, this is a place of sadness and mourning.  So many people died here.  So many lives changed or ended.  A city was brought to collapse and destruction after a blockade and siege of more than a month and a half.  Now, though, this is a tourist destination, a place where grandparents follow faster-moving grandchildren up grassy hills, a place where competition bicyclists push up the steep grades for training,  a place where families bring their dogs for exercise.

Could those serious men locked in battle so long ago have possibly ever dreamed of this place as it is now, green and verdant, spring blooming flowers and wisteria scenting the air?  Could they have imagined the steady stream of vehicles with tags from every state in the nation come to touch history for themselves?  What would they have thought?  Would a glimpse into a place that for them had to be full of grim determination, fear, and death instead 150 years in the future being a place of tranquility, recreation, and communion please them?

I was thinking all these things as I drove slowly through the park.  At the center of the spiral is the National Cemetery, rows and rows of graves for those who laid down their lives on one side or the other, small, tidy stones like grey teeth protruding from the early spring grass.  Families were hiking among them, pausing to look at something that caught their attention, perhaps a name, perhaps an identification of place of origin.  I hope that those people would all find something hopeful in what their resting place has become.  Something beautiful grew in that place of great loss and ugliness.

Mammogram

Phoebe: (About waxing) This happens to be a pain no man will ever experience.

Chandler: I don't think you can make that statement until you've been kicked in an area God only meant to be treated nicely.

~ Friends, "The One Where Ross and Rachel Take a Break"
_______________________________________

I had my very first mammogram today, and I can't stop laughing.

I realize this is quite likely not a normal reaction to this process, so I will try to explain.

When I visited my OB/GYN for my annual checkup in January, he looked at my chart and said, "You're turning 40 this year?  It's time for your first mammogram."

My immediate sarcastic mental reaction was, "Well, yay!  More fun for me! Forty keeps getting better and better. Whoo-hoo!" Outwardly, I just smiled the little Noh smile I use when I'm trying to keep that inner voice from coming out of my mouth and into situations where it isn't appropriate.

Since it was my very first appointment, my doctor's office booked it for me.  As with everything from kindergartens to hair dressers, there is a "right" place or doctor that everyone wants to belong to, and so getting in is tricky.  I was sent a time, I filled out my sub paperwork accordingly, and I showed up this morning.

I was a little nervous as I think most people are when they're having anything new done at a hospital.  I had talked about the experience with my mother, so I had some idea about what was coming.  I couldn't get too stressed out about it, however, because of all the other far more invasive and painful procedures I've endured.  I was pretty sure there would be no needle, speculum, or heavy pain medication involved in what was ahead of me this time.

My radiologist was wonderful.  She explained everything to me in advance and made me feel as comfortable as any person in a paper gown open up the back can feel.

Next, I was bestickered.  To make sure certain reference points were clear for the doctor who would read the results, small adhesive markers were applied to me.  I kept thinking, "These things could at least be sparkly or have a Wonder Woman insignia on them or something."   I stepped up to the large ecru machine and the fun began.

Adjustments had to be made to the machine itself.  For those of you who don't know me IRL, I am absurdly tall.  Most of the time, I don't notice this at all.  I've never been short, so it's just normal life for me.  Sometimes, though, the reality of my height sneaks up on me in unexpected ways.  Today was one of them.  To be on the right level to scan the area in question, the machine had to be raised probably 18" from where it was previously.  The radiologist was petite.  This meant that once the machine was in the right position, she had to stand on her toes to get everything arranged properly.

Getting all the angles to make sure a full scan was completed involved having to tilt the scanner and reach around it in different ways.The process of having a mammogram struck me a little like getting a mugshot always seems to be in police shows, "Turn to your right.  Turn to your left.  Face the front." While I wasn't holding a placard with my name and id number in front of me, I had to do a bit of moving to make sure a comprehensive baseline of my breast tissue could be established.    As I was standing there with my cheek pressed against the machine, my arm wrapped around the side, eyes focused on its Fuji logo and breath held to prevent movement that might spoil the exposure, I couldn't help but think to myself, "I bet there is no test any man has to go through where they repeatedly have to hug a piece of medical equipment and then have delicate portions of their anatomy mashed flat."

The whole thing was much less painful than I had feared and fairly brief, too, as medical moments go.  I was putting my t-shirt back on and walking through the labyrinthine corridors of the hospital's imaging center much more quickly that I had expected.  I thanked my radiologist for an experience that was, if not exactly something I want to do on a daily basis, actually as comforting and well done as any such moment in life can be.  Then it was out into the sunshine of a blooming spring morning and back into my car to drive home.

As I hit the interstate, I started laughing.  It hurt.  Portions of my body that were, as Chandler says above, only intended by God to be treated nicely had been squeezed and compressed between two hard layers, after all.  I came back to the thought I'd had earlier about the differences in health care issues for men and women.  I wonder if there is anything men go through every year that even compares.  I don't know who'd I'd ask, but I'm curious. Through the "compressions," the held breaths, the gentle whirring of the machine in its processes, all I had been able to think of was that this is what it means to be a mature woman.  We find ourselves in moments of vulnerability, discomfort, and absurdity.

It's not a complaint exactly.  I am fairly sure that the twin processes women go through to ensure the various portions of their reproductive system are not trying to kill them, as unfun as these examinations are, actually create in us a kind of perspective.  Whether our feet are up in stirrups or we're hugging the mammogram scanner, maybe these moments center us and strip away trivialities.  They make us own these physical incarnations of ourselves whether we are comfortable with them or not, whether we've been taking good care of them or not, whether we find them a source for rejoicing, a source of dread, or a curious mixture in between.  We have to be totally honest about ourselves and with whatever healthcare provided is present, at least until we can put our clothing back on, pass through the heavy doors that always seem to separate the land of the waiting room from the land of the procedure, and re-enter whatever our lives outside that place may be.

I guess I could be sad about being older, about being of an age where routine screenings become required.  Instead, I found laughter in that radiology room, a sense of gratitude that issues from my past were settled now, a sense of comfort that I have medical professionals looking after me who will help me take care of any new ones that arise.

The Price

I read an article from a teacher blogger I follow about how she was rediscovering all these things she loved to do now that she has moved from what she called a "low-performance, low-support school" to what is apparently its opposite.  She's about 3/4 of the way through her first year there, and it's like she's coming back to life again.  The particular thing she was talking about was cooking, specifically baking.

I had such a mixed reaction about that article.  Part of me was felt happy that she was able to recover.  Part of me was more than a little jealous that she could.  Part of me was absolutely and completely numb, so tired and stressed and dead that I don't think it ever will be able to come back to life at all.

That last part is growing.

It made me look at my own life.  There are lots of things I used to love to do.  I liked to go work out, to swim and go to the gym.  I loved to cook, to have friends over and make food for them, to bake and take those things to other people and places.  I loved to fool around with plants, to do calligraphy and stained glass, to write.  I loved to research things, go around and get in trouble taking photographs, travel, have silly conversations online with people who were interested in the same things I am.

I do so little of any of that anymore.  I go to school.  I teach.  I come home.  I sleep.  Rinse.  Repeat.

It's not that I don't love what I do.  It's just that I am coming to believe that the price for it is a lot higher than I ever realized.  I also don't know what to do about it.  I still feel that I am where I am supposed to be.  What do I do if it uses me all the way up?  Is there something I should be doing to stop it from using me up?  Is there really anything I can do to prevent that?

Is this what life is supposed to be?

I feel very confused.  Well, at least part of me does.  The other part, that part of me that has turned to stone and that is slowly, slowly getting larger, can't quite work up the energy one way or the other....

Another Galaxy

I have been waiting for years, literally years, to upgrade my phone.  I got a Galaxy S4 and made the great leap from iPhone to Android, and I loved it.  Loved, loved, loved it.  I could customize it the way I wanted.  It was friendly with my PC.  It was sleek and lovely, and it made me as happy as any electronic device is going to be able to do.

But time went by....

It started being a little insufficient to the demands I was making on it about a year ago, but Samsung was going through its "no SD card" phase.  Since that was the primary feature I had changed operating systems for, I decided to wait it out and see what was coming with the S7.

Rumors abounded.  I saw some really crazy ones, too.  Finally, as we got closer to the release, it looked like the card slot was back and the battery life was a priority.  Despite the fact that my own phone needed charging at least twice a day and I had stripped the apps on it down to the minimum so it had enough memory to function, I kept the hope for better things.

Friday was AT&T's release day, and despite the rain, I took myself to my local shop and had them hook me up with the new model.  Life, at least as far as it can be controlled by a cellphone, was instantly better.  Apps that haven't worked right in awhile because they needed the Marshmallow update my S4 was no longer eligible to receive  were smooth and quick again.  There is no annoying warning constantly forecasting the End of All Things because memory is running out.  I could take pictures of all my dogs every second of my life and not fill up the storage.

To my astonishment, my Asus ZenWatch2 started making noises after it got the update it needed to match the phone.  It is constantly doing things I didn't know it was capable of now.  It is almost like it became a totally different device, too, just from being connected to a different phone.  Good.  All things are good.

I also noticed that it synched faster and sounded better with my car stereo system.  I don't know if that's a product of stronger bluetooth or what, but apparently, it also sounds much better for people who call me, too.

In fact, the only things I don't quite like are incredibly minimal.  I miss a certain sound I used to have for text notifications.  I also wish I could make the screens scroll endlessly like they did on my S4.  Both of these things are almost certainly correctable with a download or a setting I haven't been able to locate yet.  They're both so minimal, too, that they are practically non-existent.

It's nice to have confidence in my device again.  Even though I had the irrational moment of sadness when I turned off the S4 for the last time (a part of me always feels like I should have some kind of formal funeral for things like that when their useful life is done), reliability is a comfort.  The S7, then, isn't a revolutionary change.  It's a stronger, faster, more stable, and better version of everything I loved from my S4.  Good job, Samsung.  Very good job.

Spectre

I saw Spectre last night, and I'm still processing it. Here are my thoughts after only one viewing.

 (spoilers follow, so consider yourself warned)

Bond movies have been a favorite of mine since childhood.  I remember watching marathons of them on early satellite TV with my cousins.  Even the campiest ones, Moonraker and Diamonds are Forever, are highly entertaining in their own way.

Somewhere along the way, though, the people in charge decided to sacrifice the humanity of the character for eye-catching spectacle.  The person of Bond was obscured by sharp suits, fast cars, faster women with lurid names, and semi-witty banter filled with double entendre.  During the films just prior to the Sony reboot, only Timothy Dalton had a few moments where the man who was pulling the trigger was allowed to show at all.  Of course, even those glimmers were then hastily covered up by Wayne Newton and ninjas....

I love the Daniel Craig Bond films.  Especially after I went on a kick and read several of the original Ian Fleming novels last year, I think Craig's Bond is closer to the original feeling of the works than almost any of the others since the first two Connery films.  In Casino Royale, we see the beginning of the transformation that is going to create him, and it is brutal in every possible way.  The scene where Bond has to kill a man to earn his 00 status is harsh, and I think it was the right way to start the series because we see the price of it graphically. Sure, he looks damn fine in a suit and is still suave with the ladies, but for the first time in any of the movies, we see the private moments and understand what is being laid down and given up for him to become 007.

The other films in the series have been a slow build, bringing in characters we know in a way that contextualizes them to a degree missing in the older films.  M (both of them) have flaws and personal agendas, backgrounds that reappear.  Moneypenny is fiesty, and we can finally understand why she feels the way she does about Bond; she's taken out of the 1950s adoring secretary mold.  The new Q is more than a deus-ex-machina, and his personal skills are on display more than an endless supply of improbable gadgets.  Even the villains have been getting more personal and complicated.  Thus, after the end of Skyfall, all of the players are on stage and we were finally ready for Spectre.

I have heard a lot of criticism for Spectre, and I guess I understand some of it after Skyfall, which as far as I am concerned stands as one of the top Bond films ever made, but I think people are missing the point.  Bond evolved during the run of the reboot films.  He suffered and matured.  Increasingly, even though he continued to be flawless in the performance of his duties, he was growing hollow inside.  That's where we meet him in Spectre, the cynical mask over something almost completely dead inside him, the man who is ready to take out one last enemy and die in the process.

Enter Blofeld, one of the archetypal Bond superfiends.  It isn't easy to do him well because he is utterly evil, mostly insane, filled with hatred, and backed by an army loyal to the point of fanaticism.  There's a reason why he's the model for Doctor Evil from Austin Powers.  With a poor portrayal, he's camp, and there are certainly examples of that in the earlier films.

Christopher Walk does one of the best supervillains I've ever seen.  He really sells the broken mind of Blofeld, the fact that everything he is doing seems utterly reasonable and important to him.  There is no camp in this Blofeld.  The scene in which Bond is put into the chair toward the end to be tortured is spare, and unlike so many of the Bond villain traps, it is not overly elaborate or too far beyond the range of what is possible in the real world.  The fact that Bond has past experience with him, that Blofeld has been destroying things in Bond's world for almost all his life, was a perfect touch to me.  It was something Bond knew subconsciously and was chasing, but the perfect symmetry of it, and the childish hate of Blofeld for the "cuckoo" who he perceives as having taken his father's affection made sense.

And I wish we had seen more of the backstory.  I keep feeling like lots of this movie wound up on a cutting room floor somewhere since it clocks in at 2.5 hrs anyway.  I wonder if they will release an extended version of some kind.  I kind of hope they do.  Parts of the film felt like we were only seeing moments that had to be kept.  Lots of the stuff with Blofeld felt that way.

Then there is Madeleine.  She's a little bit young, to be sure, but she's a good match.  I like that she outright rejects Bond at first, reminding him that there are some women who won't just leap into his bed because he's tasty.  I like that she shows him up with the gun on the train, forcing him to revisit his assumptions about what she is capable of.  I like that she is willing to walk away from him because she just can't watch him continue to do something that is destroying him.  She makes him think about what it is he's doing in a way he hadn't allowed himself to do since Casino Royale.  She's a little like what Vesper might have been for him if she hadn't been on Spectre's leash, only even more because of what she saw and experienced with her own father.

To me, then, in Spectre, all the pieces snapped into place.  When the film began, we saw the Bond car as a single piece of chassis up on blocks, destroyed almost beyond the point of reclamation.  It's a not-too-subtle metaphor for Bond himself.  Q has it in restoration, though, and when we end, through all the revelations and the confrontation with Blofeld and he relationship he builds with Madeleine, both Bond and the Aston-Martin have been made whole.

I am sure there will be more Bond films.  It's too profitable a franchise for the modern studios not to try to milk, but I would really be okay if there weren't any more for a long time, or if, Doctor-Who-like, the "Bond" who was in those films was not supposed to be the same man anymore.  I think Craig's Bond has earned his happiness the hard way, and I'd like to think that he gets to enjoy it indefinitely.

January Ends

I don't understand all of the mechanisms involved but it seems like I wind up in a bad place sometime between Christmas and the end of January every year.  I try to stave it off.  Sometimes, I am not even aware it's slipping up behind me until I'm already in the midst of trying to cope.  This year was particularly nasty, but I'm coming out of it now.

Week before last was manic, and Sunday night of that week, I had a nightmare which kept going when I woke up.  I think it was a panic attack.  I've never had one before, but my heart was pounding, I felt like I couldn't get enough air, my stomach hurt, and my head was starting the first flutters of what would turn into a full-fledged migraine later in the day.

That was when I decided I had to make some changes.  I moved some of the obligations that were making me panic.  I got some help with some of the others.

Those two small actions broke up the ice that had been building inside me.  I had reached a point of total paralysis.  Even small things weren't getting done.  I had a stack of papers on my desk that needed processing.  They weren't even big essays, just quizzes for the most part.  Suddenly, once some of the pressure was gone, I could get stuff done again other than just surviving.

Yesterday, I went to our country place and spent the day with the dogs.  Today, I slept for about twelve hours with purring cats, and even though I need to clean my house and get groceries, I feel better than I have in a long time.  January is over today, and I'm ready to face the new year at last.