I shouldn’t be tired.  But I am.  What am I tired of? Funny you ask . . Here’s my list.  Enjoy.

Or don’t.  I don’t really care anymore.  Sad but true. My sunny optimism (or something like that) has been fading lately.

I’m tired of . . .

1.  Arrogant Undergraduates- they are everywhere, especially at a university as big as MSU.  Here’s my beef. SHUT UP.  I REALLY DON’T WANT TO HEAR YOUR VOICE ANYMORE.  I DON’T CARE ABOUT YOUR OPINIONS OR WHAT A GREAT DAY YOU HAD.  I’M SURE YOU HAD A GREAT DAY.  YOU ARE LIVING OFF OF MOMMY AND DADDY’S DIME AND DON’T HAVE A CARE IN THE WORLD.  bite me.  i’m tired of it.

2.  Arrogant University Professors- if you have enough money to have your own villa you should not be teaching at a university- you should be shot so I can inherit your villa.  But seriously, why teach if you have no desire to, and your total lack of interest is infused in EVERYTHING YOU DO.

3.  Yuppie parents-  Your child will be just fine if they don’t have the hippest water bottle in the whole school.  I swear!  Please don’t despair!  I know you don’t have to work, so don’t act like you do, and like picking up your child from school is a hassle.  If you don’t want to do it, pay the maid to do it.  She’d be more than happy to have the money and you’d have more time to get your nails done and design things and buy overpriced designer jewelry.

4.  Kids without parents- there were these kids today, i’m walking down the street, in front of a cvs just sitting there, in the 40 degree or so weather, without coats on, laughing and playing on cell phones.  They must’ve been 12 at the most.  Four girls.  Who is watching them?  Why do I feel, that as a passerby they somehow become MY RESPONSIBILITY.  it’s bullshit.  i’m tired of it.

5. People getting sick- as if life isn’t busy enough my mom has to take care of my poppy like he’s a patient at her hospital and he has to have his brain drained and we don’t even know if that is going to help him or not, it’s like a joke,

6.  people finding ways to hate- this woman was talking to me the other day and she tells me that Obama doesn’t salute the flag and refuses to have a flag on his desk.  What?  First of all, if that’s so, it’s not my business, and secondly, wtf?  where did she get that info?  The We’re Prejudiced Publisher’s Monthly?  Ridiculous.  Get over it.  He’s Black.  Calm the F down people.  He’s a handsome, educated, motivated Black man.  Just calm down.

7.  Expectation- I’m not a maid, nor am I a working woman (although i ahve a part time job and go to grad school and do in school observations) However, since I am a woman, there are certain expectations still made of me.  My fiancee would tell you otherwise, but seriously, i’m sick of it.  if i’m out all day and i’m busy, do the damn dishes, pick up a couple pieces of clothing , if i said i couldn’t do the laundry then you do it, marriages are built on many things, but reliance on your spouse to get it all done isn’t one of them

8.  being scolded- hey newsflash, i’m not a schoolchild, so don’t scold me, we’re in bed and you whine because i took too much blanket, get over it, be a man and take the blanket back, don’t moan and tell me i should go sleep downstairs, get over it, it’s ludicrous and grow up

9.of being hungry- i am hungry all the damn time and nothing can ever satiate it, i feel like my life is one big eating disorder and i never get a break i’m tired of feeling so hungry

i’m tired

period

“so somewhere in my youth or childhood, I must have done something good” . . .

I just came home from a long and tiring (a bit) rehearsal for the production of “The Sound of Music” that I am in. It’s really nice to be in a show. For the first time in a really long time I am just really content with being in a show and enjoying myself. I used to worry about the b.s. that a lot of performers worry about, does the director like me, am I popular among the cast? Stuff like that. In the end, it is not what matters. What matters is that I have the honor of being able to be part of a production of this beautiful and classic musical and in whatever capacity I can I am going to make it lovely.

That is what I truly feel.

Otherwise what do I feel?

I ‘m sorry for neglecting you, blog. I have not written in awhile, (not that I have any readers), but if I did, I apologize for neglecting you.

So, for those who don’t know “The Sound of Music” that well, here is a youtube clip to remind you of what I am talking about.

The song that they are singing in the youtube clip is “Edelweiss”.  I remember my brother doing this show in high school and singing such a moving rendition of it that it brought his friend’s father to tears.  Mind you, Andrew is not a great singer, perhaps this guy was just very sentimental.  Who knows.  Anyway, it is a beautiful show.  I will write more later regarding what I have been up to, but let me do a brief summary for those who care, or just for my own edification.

Why My Week Has Felt Like The Longest Week of the Year

10.  I went to a thanksgiving feast and it is not thanksgiving yet.

9.  Yet another bomb threat occured at MSU.

8.  It was Pierre’s birthday but I couldn’t spend the day with him because I was too busy.  Sad.

7.  I now know lots of back roads in Essex county.

6.  I’ve decided that frozen ww meals are really convenient.

5.  I’ve been waking up before 7:30 a.m. every morning, which is not usually a sign that i’ll be functional for me.

4.  I have a brazilian aristocrat for a professor (i just discovered that)

3.  I realized i’m not as tech savvy as I thought I was (and that scares me when it comes to projects and such)

2.  I found yet another way to get stuck in MSU traffic.

1.  I have looked forward to sitting and crocheting and spending time with my fiancee this whole week.  Seriously, like one looks forward to Christmas, or the New Year.

more to come.  ..

A Little Inspiration from Yusuf

There was this concert on Rave HD which is a tv channel that plays concerts and shows like “Jools Holland” from the BBC which have live music on them.  This particular concert was called “Yusuf’s Cafe”.  For anyone who was curious, the man now known as Yusuf used to be known as Cat Stevens.  I have heard his newest album and despite the name change and persona change, he is still the beuatiful, music making, peaceful spirit that he has always seemed to be.  You watch this man play guitar wit his long shaggy gray beard and soulful eyes and smile, and you know he really has an emotional stake in his music.  It’s quite beautiful.

He played one of his classic songs “Father and Son” and it made me think. The lyrics and melody are haunting, and tell such a poignant story.  He dedicates this version to his granddaughter who is sitting in the audience.  She is an infant.  “How can I try to explain cause when I do he turns away again, it’s always been the same, same old story , from the moment i could talk, i was ordered to listen.”

Wow.  I mean think about that, this man just says it like it is, and scarily enough, it is like this for many young people in the world, and it has been like this for a long time. The minute they find their voice they are told to stifle it, and quiet down because it’s not “appropriate” or the right “etiquette”.  It makes me sad when I see beautiful, vibrant children who are silenced because of society’s constraints in all of our damn institutions.  I know that being an educator, I am part of one, but I always had this faith, I don’t know why, that schools could be a place of change.  A place where you could take risks, and be rewarded.  That’s what I thought as a student.  Sadly enough, now I realize, that many schools are not like this at all.  It’s all about the environment, it’s all about being told that you can use your voice, that you can express yourself.  It’s not the idea that you should let a child run free, but rather that you should let them express themselves with creativity.  There is nothing more heartbreaking to me than squashing a child’s creativity with one severe blow.  No one deserves that and I don’t think teachers should have that kind of power.  But they do.  And no one questions it.  A teacher can be one of the most influential people in your life, but no one ever says thank you.

Well, since this is a blog, I can.

Thanks Mrs. Becken for helping my creativity grow and always believing in me.

Thanks Mr. Wilhelm for supporting me when I took risks in my writing.

Thanks, Mr. Richins for showing me what to NEVER do to BEAUTIFUL, CREATIVE, children who just want to be themselves.

There are a lot more thank yous I could make, but my journey isn’t over quite yet.

Books

“Books interested me so much because they were my only friends.  I don’t know if I was happy then, but I do know that as I turned those dearly beloved pages I forgot my hunger and misery, and that saved me from resentment and fear.  As I learned to read, I forgot my tremendous loneliness.”(Fernando Baez)

I was happily surprised when I got started on a reading assignment for class today.  This professor doesn’t usually give thought provoking essays to us, but the intro to this piece “a universal history of the destruction of books” is really powerful.  It was really comforting to hear the story of someone else who lived in books, to know that as a bookwormy child I was truly not alone.  Often, in adolescence we feel alone, like no one has ever experienced the horrors that we have.  Somehow we have suffered most.  It is comforting to see, in a scholarly essay, no less, that we are all just nerdy bookworms underneath, that in our loneliness we are never, necessarily alone.

Isn’t that nice?

I suppose .  ..

deconstructing jessie

So I have to do this mid term paper for class of mine. I’m not usually intimidated by papers, just normal deadline anxiety and fear of failure. Heheh. But seriously, I’m not afraid of doing this paper, as much as I’m afraid of my professor’s response.

I know that it’s really sad to think that a professor that I pay tuition to go to see should invoke the fear of God in me, but he does. Why, you ask?

Because he’s a hater.

Let me give you a definition that might explain a few things . . .

Urban dictionary

	hater	144 up, 36 down
	A person who pretends to act happy for your successes than trash talks you behind your back. Someone who most likely dosen’t have shit to work with and has to hate on people who move up in the world. This term could be used to describe anyone who hates on another person for ‘good reasons. They will turn your good qualities around and make it look like something bad because they just arent happy with themselves and can’t achieve anywhere near what you have. Man, that Vitale is such a hater. He needs to stop drinkin that haterade and move on up in the world.

I know this is a bit of an odd definition, but stay with me anyway

This man is not only unresponsive in class, rude to students, obvious in his English higher ed snobbery, and much more.

Needless to say, the man gives me a bad feeling and I don’t like writing papers for people who make me feel bad by looking at me.  My mom has always said that no one can MAKE you feel bad.

I don’t know if I actually buy that.

But she’s a sweetie for trying.

So why do I actually care about what this professor says?

Probably because he’s a professor and I would like to be one, and i guess he can’t be all bad to have gotten where he is today?  Naw, even I don’t buy that.  If he was all that amazing he would probably be teaching somewhere else.  Sad but true.

On other notes, I’ve had this horrible cold that has made me a complete wreck for like two weeks now.  It’s quite horrible, and luckily is ending, but still, I hate when I feel so sick that I feel useless.  I think feeling useless and bored are two of the worst feelings a person can have.  Perhaps also worthless, oh and suicidal.

Nevermind.

In any case, I better get to that paper, so I can have enough time to worry myself into a huge panic attack about what my professor will think of it.

Oy.

A Brand New You

I am really happy that this video is on you tube. Because I am really happy that these kids have the opportunity to learn and perform on Broadway! They are given this awesome opportunity by a phenomenal composer, Jason Robert Brown, who has written a musical called, “13″ which is premiering on broadway. I’m not writing this blog entry to promote a random show, but to promote the message that it sends. JRB, as he is called by some has a teenage orchestra pit, and teenage cast. He is doing something that many teachers have yet to really do- PUT FAITH IN HIS KIDS. And the thing is that THEY ARE REALLY THAT GOOD! You watch these kids on stage and you never doubt for a second how much work they have done, and how courageous they are.

I think we, as educators, can learn a lot from what this man has done. He has taken a bunch of kids, who had the talent all along, and worked with them, and advocated for them, and created something new and exciting! This is what the classroom can be, if we make it so, if we come to teaching with that exciting, creative, determined energy that JRB started his project with.

I am also so ecstatic that he wrote it, because it will be a wonderful performance piece to bring to schools, where kids get to tell THEIR story and it’s not some poor 13 year old boy having to play Tevye in “Fiddler on the Roof” again, with a fake beard. How can that 13 year old relate to Tevye? He can’t, and as much as the school director will try, he can’t really perform the role authentically. But if this same boy is playing the principal role in “13″ he can most definitely relate to the character’s dilemmas,including, friend issues, parental divorce, changing schools, having a bar mitzvah, and much more. This is a musical that speaks to and for kids. JRB has done something amazing, in creating a piece FOR KIDS TO SHINE IN. These kids all look so happy on stage, because THEY ARE GENUINELY THRILLED TO BE THERE.

We, as teachers, compete with a lot of things in a kid’s life. Students have their social lives, family lives, personal problems, cell phones, nintendo ds systems and much more. Why should they be interested in school? What do we have to offer them? Perhaps the ultimate thing to offer them is the genuine desire to be there and to shine. Maybe they need to know that school is a place, a community, where talents and gifts will be nurtured. I know when I came into drama class in high school, my teacher was scary. He told us stories about “the horrors of public speaking” and about his old scary teachers. He didn’t make me want to perform, or even speak in class. He made me want to curl up in a ball in a corner.

Then, a year later, we got a new drama teacher/director. He was laid back and kind, and when I had a study hall, but couldn’t focus, and just needed to relax,I could go down to the performing arts center, and he would get on the piano,and we would just jam, singing showtunes and laughing. He was an advisor, a mentor,a counselor,and a great teacher. And it had nothing to do with instilling fear, or insisting on limitations, it all had to do with expanding, learning and becoming a better version of me.

I hope these kids on the Broadway stage realize how lucky they are to have someone like JRB, who believes in them,their worth,and their shine power. I hope one day to inspire kids to do great things as well.

Let’s go on with the show!

Blogging . .. Live from My Couch on the VP debate

Sarah Palin makes me want to vomit.

My fiancee keeps making these joking, sexual comments about her.

Truth of the matter if you take off the lipstick, she’s just a pig.

And an ugly one at that. She is fake, with all of her beauty queen wipe away charm.

I mean Biden may not be the youngest sprout in the bunch, but he’s genuine and has wrinkles.

Palin is picture perfect plastic and I don’t know how anyone can take her drawl talkin, dumb eyelash flirtin, Wasilla faluttin fanny seriously.

She just winked. Who is she winking at? Who is ACTUALLY ON HER SIDE? The only people who want to be on her side are the men who want to be on her front! She’s a pretty face ,a set of nice legs, some pumps and a big pair of lips that men love to think about.

“say it ain’t so, Joe, doggone it!”- she could not be a bigger moron.

Um, I wish I had something nice to say.

I probably shouldn’t say anything at all.

“I can see Russia from my house”

It has come to the point where we are T-1 days to the vp debate. Sarah Palin is beyond dumb. I’m not just blatantly insulting her, I am merely making an observation, and a painful one at that.

I watched Sarah Palin being interviewed by Katie Couric. I watched Tina Fey impersonate her. It’s kind of funny, because I think maybe Tina would be a better candidate for vp.

It’s sad when Elizabeth Hasselback on “The View” can’t think of three solid reasons why Sarah Palin should be VP.

The moment when I went from just thinking she was dumb to really despising her, was when I found out that she had attempted to ban books at the Wassila public library. My fiancee, and some other websites say it is not at all true, but why would a librarian make this kind of a nightmare situation up? No educator wants to be told to ban books. No one who wants to help children and the world should ever encourage banning books. I cannot support a candidate who would tell a kid not to read “Gatsby”. I wonder what she would want to replace it with, “The Wassila Moose Manual”? “Moose Stew For Dummies”?

She can see Russia from her house. I was watching Cnn and that’s actually false. There is only one place in Alaska, where you can see Russia and that’s on this one small island that has 150 inhabitants, that Palin has never been to. And as if that would give her foreign policy credentials. How are we even considering this woman?

I don’t wish it upon anyone, but what if McCain croaks? She is one breath away from the Presidency and although it seems impossible, I’m sure she would screw up the country even more than Bush already has.

My fiancee says that it’s ok to like Sarah Palin, and that we shouldn’t be afraid to like her.

But he’s not a woman.

I’m a woman, and the fact that this woman is representing us makes me angry, because I don’t like her. Because any intelligent, educated woman with common sense would know that Palin is obsessed with emasculating herself, and all she really wants, is to be part of the “Boy’s Club”. She hunts, fishes,all these things that make her acceptable to men. But to women,she’s a joke, a flake, and a total ruination of the name of woman in the political sphere.

Obama, please educate America!

I’m watching the debate.

I love Obama.

Is it wrong for me to be political in a blog?

Don’t care, yay, he just mentioned education,

YES, COLLEGE BEING AFFORDABLE!!!

Yay, Obama increasing early childhood education!

“in order to make those decisions, we need to know what our values are!”- Obama

Yes, sir!

McCain, could you stop talking about the Veterans? Please?

Thanks.

“i have not been elected miss congeniality in the senate”-McCain

Hmm- he has said that twice. That’s some heavy stuff.

and that was a “strategic” -head turn at mccain-”mistake”

I heart this man.

It’s amazing, McCain keeps looking back, and talking about his past war experiences etc., I do not care! We are looking towards the future! This man doesn’t even look like he’s going to live to see the day he’s elected.

Oy, he’s now referring to the war he was in . .. we know . . .we know . .. same old story.

“we will prevail in Afghanistan”-wow McCain, that’s so comforting, i totally believe you. um. sure.

It’s funny- whatever McCain says it just seems like army infested fluff. If he drops one more “david petreas” reference it may drive me to drink.

Yes, I want to elect a man who can’t pronounce a foreign leader’s name, what a dumbo.

McCain is really spewing the bull. Wow.

So it’s over . . .at least for now.

I’m happy Obama mentioned education at least three times. I don’t really care who won, because I know who my candidate of choice is. And the way Obama handled himself in the debate makes me even more sure of my faith in him, as our leader. He is dignified, intelligent, respectful, thoughtful and passionate, and McCain really pales in comparison to his brilliance.

the way is clear, the light is good

My life has done a bit of a 180. I was always doing theatre things and considering myself avant-garde and all of that artsy fartsy jargon. The truth is that I never really knew where I belonged. The world of the stage is a beautiful world, but it is not for everyone, and certainly was not for me. It is a vain profession, to be an actor. All day, every day, all you are thinking about is how to market yourself so someone buys your services. There are other professions like it, but you probably know what they are. The point is, that although theatre is a beautiful thing, I needed to do something more, than just exist for myself. I needed to be in a giving profession, one where I could use my passion, knowledge and enthusiasm for good, and to help others. So here I am, finishing my Master’s in Teaching for Secondary English Ed, and I love it. I learn new things every day from everyone around me, fellow teachers, students, administrators, preachy middle aged men in Starbucks . .. the point is that I am growing. It is important that we keep growing, kind of like “Jack and the Beanstalk” in the sense that we, (I think) as people, will always discover and will always be discovering more things to know.

So onwards with my journey into the world of education I go . . . (although I’ll be using theatre references because that’s a part of me too)

“and to get what you wish . . only just for a moment . .. these are dangerous woods . .

let the moment go, don’t forget it for a moment though . ..

just remembering you had an ‘and’ when you’re back to ‘or’

makes the ‘or’ mean more than it did before. . . “

-stephen sondheim “Into the Woods”