Somethings I learned about Oregon and Snow and Snow In Oregon:

Oregon has many different road lines. There are standard dashes, single lines, double lines, double lines embedded with bumps, double lines with dashes in the middle, double lines with dots in the middle, and on some stretches of road, no line at all. Lines do not matter when the road is covered with snow.

Snow is very beautiful and fun until it covers the roads. Then it becomes a bit stressful and difficult. Snow is preferable to ice.

An entire car encased in ice looks pretty cool, but takes about half an hour, a lot of heat, and an ice scraper to de-ice. I say "ice pick" instead of "ice scraper" pretty much every time I have to use the term. Which is almost never, but was quite often last weekend.

When driving around on snowy, ice roads in a city that doesn't get snowy on a regular basis (like once every 40 years) and when everyone else also doesn't really know how to drive in snow, it gets very surreal. Lanes are completely irrelevant. Cars float around and often slip and slide until they can get traction again. And the cars behind are not bothered, they just peacefully wait until everything is settled and straightened out and then get going again. On the freeway. It's like a huge ice rink for cars.

Snow storms in not-snowy places brings out all the Mid-Westerners and their snow shovels. It also brings out a few perplexing and grumpy folks who mutter things like "hrrmph, can't you drive in snow?" But all the temperate-climate-dwellers who can't drive in snow and all the Mid-Westerners-turned-heroes for owning snow shovels and imparting wisdoms like "turn into the spin" are full of good feelings toward their neighbors.

Thank you, awesome guy working at the nursery (i think?) in North-Eastern Portland who helped us dig our car out of the snowdrift that we had idiotically parked in. It was really quite an experience for us Californians.

The best place to go when everything is snowy is a bookstore. The most awesome bookstore ever is Powell's. We had to drive into Portland to get there, and the car got stuck in an intersection a couple of blocks away (stupid snowplow) but it was so worth it. And now my sister gets a Family Circus book for Christmas, which is her absolute favorite. (Not a completely true statement.)

Oh my gosh snow is cold. And make my nose run. Hot, spicy apple cider is delicious, and also makes my nose run. Thank you family of friend that we were visiting. You are awesome and make delicious foodstuffs. Amazing lentil soup. I always focus on the edibles, but the conversation and the company was fantastic as well.

Vodka doesn't make my nose run, but it makes me warm and drunk. Thank you former teacher who, despite having been prepared, really amazed all the people I dragged with me. They were pretty surprised that your toast involved the words "fuck" and "your mother." The herring was delicious, although I suspect you have to have a genetic predisposition in order to enjoy it. My grandfather once ate fish for every meal while we were in Germany during herring season. I have good genes. Or at least fishy ones.

And it was fantastic to just be stranded in Tigard with a bunch of nice folks. I like hanging out with people who still think it's cool to give everyone nicknames. Co-Ho, you totally snore, I can't believe you ever tried to insist otherwise. Actually, we all snore, but the rest of us don't try to lie about it.

rapping my intentions

Augh, this is so difficult! I said. How do I describe this in one sentence? Listen to some rap, said my housemate. They can usually describe things in brief.

Here's the rap version of my graduate school statement of intent. Yes, it's as bad as it sounds.

I wrote an analysis
about the school reformists
who been hanging in the town
since afore y'all been around

i sat reading in the library
learned bout the lack of integrity
got deep into the history
how to get out was a myst'ry

i went to work for the district
figured i'd been a'tricked
everything was all confused
folks thought they were being used

i learned about geography
and how it married sociology
and then was borned ethnicity
without a lot of specificity

all sorts of folks came by migration
then faced some major segregation
due to some cool litigation
there began school integration

they landed in the bay
and came from across the way
folks rode in on the train
and flew over by plane

i've learned and i've taught
and i think i've found what i sought
so i'd like to go to your school
and not be any kind of fool.

And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead.

I've had a rather difficult week or so. My shower leaks into my room, the washing machine leaks into the shower, and my roommate's cat insists on sleeping with me in rather uncomfortable positions (on my chest! on my knees! on my hips!). We can't reach the landlord, a plumber would probably charge up the wazoo to show up over the holiday weekend, and I am broke. So fuck.

But something unprecedented happened to me this week. I had a good moment at work. Not even a moment, a good forty-five minutes. And it was with fifth graders, who are really just young middle schoolers.

Anyway.

So I recently got this book, Hip Hop Speaks to Children: A Celebration of Poetry with a Beat, edited by Nikki Giovanni, and I was super excited about it. It's got all sorts of poetry, from

Laurence Dunbar

We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,--
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.

and Langston Hughes

Playboy of the dawn
Solid gone!
Out all night
Until 12 - 1 - 2 a.m. Next day
When he should be gone
To work -
Dog-gone!
He ain't gone.

to Maya Angelou

There are some millionaires
With money they can't use
Their wives run round like banshees
Their children sing the blues

and Queen Latifah

There's a dream in the future
There's a struggle that we have yet to win
And there's pride in my heart
'cause I know where I'm going, yes I do
And I know where I've been, yeah

and loads of other fun stuff. So I had some free time at the end of the lesson plan, and these kids had been bugging me all day to put on 94.9 (one of the local rap stations that plays the same crap over and over), and kept accusing me of not liking rap or Li'l Wayne (I know, right?) and so several of them got real excited (and surprised) when I mentioned I'd studies some hip hop in college. I mean, not doing it, but using it to look at history and contemporary landscapes and whatnot. I cannot beat or box but I do know a little something about hippity hopping. At least enough to teach a fifth grade class on it. And so, while some of the younger students did their homework, my very resistant, noisiest, and most distractable students were talking about hip hop.

And so i played them some Sugarhill Gang, and some Queen Latifah (they'd forgotten she was a rapper), and some Langston Hughes, and a few other things, and we talked a little bit about where the music came from, and then I let them mess around with the CD player and the book.

And those were all good moments; it was super fun to teach these kids something they could relate to and got excited about. But then came the best good moment.

They'd been looking through the list of selections on the CD, listening to all the music and skipping over the spoken word, but finally they'd found something to really get excited about. They asked the entire class to be quiet, and then started playing one of the final tracks on the disk.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s I Have a Dream speech.

For real.

These 9 and 10 year old elementary school students, and primarily the ones that'd been fighting the work all day and talking too much and asking me to turn the radio on were mad crazy about Dr. King.

A good moment.

How to Accept Unusual Gifts - Part 1: Badgers

Individuality is a large part of youth culture today, the result of which extends far beyond individuality of thought, into the social realm in which one is represented by the choices he or she makes; including gifts. With the constant increase in eccentricity of gifts given, it is only a matter of time before you receive something that you have not expected. However, the manner in which a gift is received plays an important role in the way society views you. In part 1 of How to Accept Unusual Gifts you will learn how to receive a Medium Sized Wild Animal cordially, using the example of a Badger. Please note that this article only applies to gifts given in person, as a thank you note is an acceptable response to all other manners of delivery.

The first step of course is the exchange that takes place before the gift is opened. There are two basic ways in which a wild animal might be given (given by hand or left on the floor.) The detail may seem small but the significance of the gesture speaks volumes. The gift, if given by hand, is very personal; the giver will want to see your reaction clearly, and will be excited by your sense of surprise. If the gift is given by hand the following actions should be taken. When accepting the gift smile and say, “thank you,” when you have a firm hold of the item. This establishes gratitude and will let the giver know that he or she can let go. Try your best not to look horrified when you notice that something is moving inside it as this will injure the giver’s feelings. If the gift is left on the floor, under a Christmas tree for example, it is not inappropriate to wait until the gift has been opened to say, “thank you.” In this case as well, you should try not to look horrified, but you can turn your back to the giver or hide your face if necessary. Under no circumstances should you shake the box.

When opening the gift, do so gingerly. Start by putting the box on the floor gently. Remove the tape without ripping the wrapping paper if at all possible. If the giver asks what you are doing and tells you it is all right to rip the wrapping, then you may proceed to do so. However, it is important to remember not to jostle the box too much as you may upset the badger within; with dire consequences. If once the wrapper is removed you find a brown paper box with scratch or bite marks in it, or a cage with something furry inside it, you may want to move the box outside to an enclosed yard, or otherwise fenced in area before opening it.

Opening the cage or box to release the badger is the most dangerous part of receiving the badger. If possible try to avoid opening the container and call animal control. The following instructions should only be used if the giver insists and you are exceptionally polite. The likelihood that it will be complacent will be low if it is still alive, and badgers are a fierce opponent when angered. Ensure that you are in an enclosed area with hard ground beneath you or the badger may escape. If at all possible, wear gardening gloves or open the container from a distance. At this point do not approach the badger. Do not hug the badger. Do not poke or otherwise make contact with the badger. At this time call animal control. You may enjoy the badger’s presence by staying back and watching it until animal control arrives. After animal control has taken the badger away, thank the giver for the exciting gift and ask them politely to never give you something like that again. Ever.

Whether you are receiving a gift at a birthday, religious holiday, life event, or for no reason at all, the same response will placate the giver. With time and practice these steps will become second nature and you will be an excellent gift receiver, which will encourage generosity in those around you.

We will host, must be discreet.

We're looking for a new housemate, so we posted a rather bland, basic ad on craigslist. Being craigslist, well, we were expecting some odd respondents, but nothing like this:

I am looking for a home in the east bay, somewhere to live for multiple years, some where to put down roots.

Ideally I would live with witches (or witch friendly folks), there would be a garden, some shared meals, a fireplace, heat in the winter, a room with good light and possibly furniture, in a good neighborhood, with great accesses to public transit, bike storage, space for crafting herbal medicine and cats.

Even better A mother in law unit or cottage in the garden of a house full of witches.

There will be much laughter, music and support. We will communicate directly with compassionate truth. There will be alters all over the house. You may catch me doing odd sounding vocal warm ups. I will also be doing ritual, having friends over for meals or meetings. There will be still quiet moments as well as revelry, community, and indulgence.

I am looking to pay less than $600 for rent and utilities.


So if you know of somewhere or someone for this fey urban dryad to live please let me know.

Blessed Be!
[name]
--
feyness
adj.
Having or displaying an otherworldly, magical, or fairylike aspect or quality
Having visionary power; clairvoyant.
Appearing touched or crazy, as if under a spell.

We also got a fellow claiming to be a "professional gay male." As my housemate put it, "sounds like a sweet job. hard working stable boy. i say yes."

Memo From God

The following was written in response to a remedial english class that my co-workers and I have been submitted to because some folks in Manchester are incapable of writing coherent sentences. The assignment was essentially to write a memo.

TO: Kronos Titanes, Supreme King of the Cosmos

FROM: Zeus, Neglected Son

DATE: November 20th, 2008 [Note; I’ve included a contemporary date as instructed by the assignment]

SUBJECT: Proposal for Change in Management Style

It has been determined that the current system by which the cosmos is governed is unsatisfactory and a redistribution of power may be required.

To that end we submitted a random survey amongst the gods to evaluate possible solutions; the results of which were most disappointing. It would seem that Mother and my brother and sister gods are quite upset with your current leadership. Your opinion that you are entitled to cannibalize whomever you please does not sit well with your progeny and we request that you desist. If you do not reconsider your method, drastic action will be taken against you. While many of us would like to chastise you for your actions to date, our anger can be assuaged by your compliance.

Please note that this will be our last request regarding this issue. We would like to be able to resolve this conflict peaceably. This appears to be the only acceptable solution. Consider that this may be the only way to truly reconcile our differences. Thank you.

I am vastly unimpressed with the class, but at least I can keep my sanity by turning in the assignments half a day late and writing about random subjects that amuse me despite the annoyance of having to write in a certain format. I will have to rewrite this at another time to see if I can make it more humorous.

career path

I (somewhat) regularly correspond with my (now retired) high school biology teacher; a living legend and a rather alcoholic, crass, perverted gent. In response to my current occupation, he wrote the following, each paragraph from a different email. In the order they were received:

'I have a shy, young personal doctor at Kaiser who reminds me of you more than a little. In consideration of which I am considerate of her feelings. Maybe you should go to med school.Then you too can work with disgusting old people rather than young ones.'

'I think you should aim a touch above the classroom. Counseling maybe,or administration. You'd probably make a good principal.'

'I think you would make a great school administrator. Like an academic Julius Caesar.'

'AND as an academic caesar you could chop off the right hands of all male students,at one stroke getting rid of graffiti and masturbation.'

'You gotta get out of substituting.Your role in life is to lead. If a black lawyer can be president,so can a woman. Aim for the top.'


So I imagine that the overarching message is 'quit your job' but I like the progression of 'school counselor' to 'president of the United States' in just a few exchanges.

The med school thing, that's just crazy though.

baking powder and bacon fat

I've been looking everywhere for my baking powder the past day or two, and after searching through the communal shelves and my housemates' shelves, and other places where it isn't supposed to be, I found it behind the corn starch and the masa flour, about three inches from where it usually is. Oops, my bad.

But it got me thinking about my strange habit of hiding ingredients, particularly those often in high demand (olive oil, milk, butter, chocolate). It started in my first house in college, when I had 8 or 9 other housemates (plus significant others, plus couch-hoppers, plus the occasional rasta) and hiding certain foods meant that maybe I could eat it before it all disappeared. It wasn't a horrendously huge lets-call-a-house-meeting issue, it was just a little more thrifty to put your eggs at the bottom of the pile, and place the olive oil behind the hot sauce, where it wouldn't catch anyone's eye.
Certain housemates were bigger offenders than others; I didn't take issue with the occasional borrowing of milk to make white russians, or the tomatoes that went into the pasta sauce that was served for a house meal. But there are always those people who never find the time to go grocery shopping and have never bothered to buy basic essentials, because they're readily available elsewhere in the house. And really, borrowing a little butter isn't a big deal until it's 5 or 6 people doing it every day.
So it was rather gratifying when, one day, one of my less particular roomies came pounding frantically up the stairs, asking me what it was that I had in the little honey jar on my shelf. I had made some ghee (clarified butter) earlier in the month, and it keeps well outside of the fridge, so I had put it in an empty jar and placed it on my shelf. My housemate and several friends had made some tea, and, assuming that honey jars containe honey, had placed a large dollop in the pot. But honey is not usually greasy, and being vegetarians, they freaked out and assumed that they had just defiled their tea with bacon fat.
It was a good laugh, all around.

In my current household the only fatality is chocolate chips, which vanish with astonishing regularity when one certain dude is home.

abomination

Trying to sleep after an emotional night, lying in bed, exhausted, euphoric, anxious, and a whole mess of other feelings, the conversation on a bit of a roller coaster, we wonder whether Obama is the messiah (I'm jewish, so he'd be the first coming for me) and if he is, how would we know, and most importantly, what name would we give the new religion? Well, if you accept that Christ is a last name (which it isn't really, but it was late and we were incoherent) then it would be Obamatian- which is awkward and difficult to say. But, if you continue on that verbal roller coaster, and try to describe where we live now, you get Obamanation. Which, in the middle of the night after too much television, sounds a lot like a word with very different connotations, unless you are a member of the fanatic, psychotic, and conspiracy-heavy right.

Anyway, it made me laugh.

Hallowed Halloween

Working on Halloween is like secretly spitting on a dead Grandmother before closing the casket. It doesn't matter to her, or to nature, or anyone else but it makes you feel sick inside and anxious. If you do it overtly so everyone can see however...
Wait, what was I saying? Oh yeah, working on Halloween sucks. But it's not because Halloween is particularly a bad day to work. It's because work sucks. And there's not much more to it than that.

In an attempt to carve a likeness of Senator Barack Obama into a pumpkin I think I've carved the image of a generic white man. I guess he's half, but he's far from generic; so to you Senator, I apologize.

Exploratory Exposition

After putting a great deal of thought into what exactly I should write about on this particular blog, I've come up with nothing. However, as it is a joint-blog, I cannot refrain from posting so long as my join-ee is still pestering me about it so I have to post something. So here I am.

It's 12:40pm PST and I am jubilant because I did not receive a phone call at 12:29 which would cause me to continue working into my lunch hour. Working in IT is not my dream, but it pays the bills (and then some) and in harsh economic times it may be appropriate to sacrifice one's dreams for soul crushing- repetitious-inanity that is helping people fix their computers over the phone while they yell at you (hurray!) Hopefully this will not be a terminal sacrifice so later I might be able to pick up the fluffy-goo remains of my dreams toss them in the sky where they will become saturated with oxygen and be poofy-fat and pink as ever.
All the same, I am grateful that I have a job and -circumstances as they are- can afford to live and consume and save just a little.

Cross your Teas

AROMATIC FLAVOUR CLEAR INFUSION HOMELY REFRESMER IDEAL GIFT
So says each tea bag that i pull from the 100-pack of jasmine tea that i buy in china town to sate my tea habit. All true, provided you allow for some lax spelling. Tea in a bag rarely has the quality found in loose leaf, nor does it really allow the tea leaves quite enough room to swirl and flavo(u)r each drop of hot water. But tea is often needed during stressful, time constrained moments when the ritual of loose leaf cannot be accommodated. I keep tea bags in my purse, to use during prep periods at school or in a strange kitchen or at any moment away from my own cupboard when I can scrounge up some hot water. Lately, I've been keeping a mug in there too (purses are a lot like treasure chests, even to their owners).
My friends rarely come to me with a problem without being instructed to drink a cup of tea. Eye-rolling often follows, but many have adopted it as their own refrain, and it certainly doesn't originate from me. Tea is a healing drink in every part of the world, even including the bits without native tea leaves. It's one of the silver linings of colonization. When the British expanded their empire, they brought tea with them and a new group of people learned the quiet, fantastical properties of the drink. Like small pox, without the genocidal aspect.
The best tea comes in a pot, loose leaf, served with food. What food is irrelevant; I'm a fan of dim sum, but the important part is the sharing, the ritual, and the constant refreshing of hot water. As a child, I would wake up to the sound of a spoon stirring sugar into strong black tea; my parents always had two cups before heading off to work in the morning. When I went off to school, I began starting the day with tea and company as well; the dining hall was woefully short of good food but offered a selection of tea bags that was sufficiently removed from Lipton's. When I worked in an office for the first time, I had a regular affair with the water cooler, which had a lever for hot water (technology!). Now that I'm working in schools, one of the first things I scout out is the heating mechanisms in the staff lounge (the second thing is the bathroom). It's a topic that my friends and I can converse regularly about, because it isn't just tea, each cup is a different experience. And, of course, for friends going through a rough time, or whom you haven't seen in awhile, or would like to do something nice for, it makes an ideal gift. Just as the tea bag says.
So, I suppose what I mean by all this nonsense, is to tell you that it's a good time to go make yourself a cup of tea.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with Blog and the Word was Blog.

substitution: hey!
irreverent: hi
substitution: we should start our blog
substitution: !!!
irreverent: okay
irreverent: start it
substitution: you don't want to do anything special to start it?
substitution: like...party hats?
substitution: confetti?
irreverent: haha
irreverent: we could
substitution: how would that translate to internet world?
substitution: oh, i got it. here you go: http://highfalutinlego.blogspot.com/2008/10/in-beginning-was-word-and-word-was-with.html