Vantage Point

Society and people ( who really are the society) have become self-absorbed. I guess I am just as guilty as I type here and tell you about my day. I would like to think that I just don’t think about how I can steer the conversation back to I. I know I am not that way professionally. For me its all about my kids, and helping other people.

In my daily life I encounter people who feel as if they are center of the universe. I say this not to be rude or politically incorrect. Its not even that I’m saying there is an elitist attitude. I’m saying that people automatically think that everything in life somehow either centers on them or affects them. Sometimes the light just doesn’t turn green. This has nothing to do with ruining your day.

I see this in how people care for their kids and it starts in  the womb. We make children to be the most important thing in this society. Before I have ten emails chastising me on this, I’m not saying that they shouldn’t be important. I am saying that I think we have a civil duty to teach children about their place in life and how life is intricately woven. There are thousands of connections and sometimes life just happens and it has nothing to do with you.

When the kidnappers are out…. I have to believe that for the most part that they don’t target specific children. But we protect our children with a frevor that leads me to believe that we must think that they are after your specific child.

In the womb… there are doctors’s appointments, baby showers, people telling you this is the most important time of your life. Every time the paramecium splits itself in two, I highly doubt there’s a party going on.

From my vantage point… people are way to absorb with themselves and their kids. I see parents on top of their kids at all time and I see people that only care about stuff if it has a direct impact on their lives.

It starts from the time of conception.

CSPAN Afternoon

Ok I am going to up my dork quotient here by talking about something I saw Saturday afternoon on CSpan.  Senators ( Spector, and Leahy) were interviewing the gas moguls ( the guys in suits who make 12 million of year) from their gasoline companies.  These guys were sharks in suits. They didn’t want to answer questions and they feel as if the price of a barrel of oil should be at least $130 a barrel, when one honest guy from the company Rising Sun thought that because there are old oil reserves that they could get by with selling it to the American public for $60 – 65 a barrel.

After seeing this lovely display…. I have come to one conclusion. I need to research more and decide who not to buy gasoline from.  There is no reason for gas to be $4.00 a gallon. They know we’ll pay it so they keep jacking up the price while they put the money in their pockets. They know that we are dependent on gas for our livelihood.

Biodiesel is not helping matters.  Its just as bad for the environment and the amount of crop space it takes to grow the corn to fill the gas tank could be used to feed starving people.

We need to seriously take a stand and I’m not sure how.

We’ve Got Crabs

Now that I got your attention…..

Bear with me because I’m tired but was too excited not to share the experience.

The past two days have been so much fun and gosh I can’t remember when we last had such a good time. We headed off to Smyrna Delaware to count horseshoe crabs. More specifically to an area on the Delaware Bay in which the horseshoe crabs participate in their yearly orgy and begin spawning.

The story is so complex:

1. Horseshoe Crabs rely on the moon and the tides to let them know when it is time to breed.

2. They come in on high tide

3. Females Let off a perfume and Males cling to her. Sometimes if the female is particularly hot five or six will gang up on her.

4. Female will then bury herself in sand and release about 80,000 eggs in two weeks. ( Green Eggs and Sand)

5. Millions of shorebirds come to eat the eggs ( welcome them all the way from South America)

6. They eat and eat and eat until they get fat and then they head off to the arctic.

7. People have been overfishing these horseshoe crabs, and we have been using them in medical research.

With that said we participated in a count of the horseshoe crabs. We counted them yesterday and then this morning at 2 a.m. When we weren’t counting horseshoe crabs, we stayed with about five other families at a park service housing. It was dormitory style. We all had so much fun and James and I felt like we really connected with other people. Max ran around with like 9 boys and he was having such a good time he didn’t want to leave. He also was petrified of the crabs and then by the end he was picking them up, digging for their eggs ( we brought some home to see if we can raise them and release them), and just hanging with the boys. Here are some pictures to show. We are going to do this next year and welcome anyone to join us. It was such a good time. So if your reading this and want something to do next year, this is the place to be!

Still A Vegetarian

Still hard at work at this.  James has found there to be no potholes in his transition.  I wax and wane a bit, especially with hamburgers. I crave them at times and this probably will end up in myself falling off the wagon, but not yet. He likes indian food. I’m only a little crazy about that.

We have found some really great meat substitutes but this is not for anyone that has a wheat or gluten allergy.  Most of all the substitutes that are fantastic contain those items.

Its been six weeks.

Weekend

Hoping to have a story to tell on Monday. Hoping to share with you some pictures.  About a month ago I met an individual from the Parks service who told me about going out to count horseshoe crabs.  Thought this would be really fun and a good thing for Max to see. So we are off, all three of us.  I can’t believe I have a husband that puts up with it , but the weird thing is I think he enjoys it almost as much as I do.

Anyway this person from the parks service was incredibly enthusiastic and just talking to her got me excited about life.  Its weird I had someone else say that exact same thing to me a couple of days ago. I guess it because we do interesting stuff.

In the summer we are also going to be doing some stuff with the terrapins out in the field. James is anxiously volunteering for that too.  I am working at a festival next week telling people about the terrapins.

Stay tuned.. I can’t wait to see what the weekend brings.

Harbor

It seems silly to harbor the anger

But I wear your words like camp numbers

It is these words that hold me hostage even as I try to forget them

Replace them with new experiences, new sounds, new smells.

The wounds are just scars and they burn in the sun.

They’ve been replaced by fresher ones that are ripped open by thoughtless people

Have you thought about ……

No I’d rather not.

I can feel it take over sometime and I feel a blinding pain in my eye

I want it to stop so I can love life again

I used to

I’d like to think here is about letting go

Here is what I want to remember

But its not easy to forget

Freedom

Today there was a man who seemed to think that most Americans today seem to take their freedoms for granted and that Memorial Day is all about barbeque and the beginning of summer. In his opinion we don’t thank our soldiers enough or think about them when we are firing up the grill.

I think I partly agree with this.  I don’t think about the people who have sacrificed their lives in some battle so that I can enjoy certain freedoms.

The other part of me really wonders ….am I really free?

I don’t think I have freedom of speech.  No one in this country has freedom of speech because people are always recounting what they have said, apologizing for what they have said, being fired for what they have said, resigning for what they have said, or being sued for what they have said.

Even as I write this I don’t think I am free. People say I can write whatever I want here.  But if I did would I still be your friend? Would you still respect me?  Or would I offend you?

Is there someone at word press looking over and censoring what I type here.  If I wrote the f word, would you let your kids read it. It really is just a word, and no I don’t want Max saying it either. But I have to wonder why so much emphasize is placed on different words, and what do they mean.

Is the government looking this over to see if I type something that may be a threat to national security?

This week I told my kids that the written word is the most powerful thing. Especially now that you can self publish.  But really is this true?  I guess it is if you don’t care about alienation.  I guarantee you that I could offend every single one of you in some slight way, and you would think twice about sending me email. My kids can write whatever they want, but they put themselves at risk. Risk of getting kicked out of school, risk of a bad grade, risk of social alienation.

Maybe I should rewrite the constitution to say the I have the right to be politically correct.

Happy Memorial Day to You

I have a lot swirling in my head so bear with me. It may branch to a couple of different tangents and I suppose that really is what this blog is and that each passage doesn’t necessarily have to have a cohesive theme.

1.  4 Million Motorists on the road this weekend:

A. No one has told these people that we are in a gas crisis or that gas is going up to $4.00 a gallon this weekend.  I am really not sure to be honest what is up at the gas pump or how to even avoid it.  We have become a really gas hogging country. I can’t say that I am doing my part for the environment by avoiding the pump.  To be honest I work 30 miles away from my home. If I could would I get a job at the neighborhood school? Yes of course. Yes I would walk if I could, but I really can’t.  No one in that district has decided they want to hire me and to be honest I’m not sure I could teach outside of inner city at this point. I love the inner city kids that I work with now, I feel there is more I can do for them and more that they appreciate.  So the only other option would be to move to where I teach. This really isn’t working for us either because of the school district that we want to keep Max in.  So it seems like a no win situation there.  Max would be forced to go to the school district of Philadelphia if we moved. He can’t attend mine because its private and he doesn’t qualify ( namely because he has two parents). We all know the school district of Philly is nothing really to brag about. I know I was in a charter school last year in which I said everyday that I was now leaving hell.  I am just as guilty as the next American when it comes to the gas tank. I feel a little bit better by the fact that I carpool with James, we take public transportation when we can, and we don’t drive a hummer.

2. I’m not really sure why we are having a gas crisis. Though I do know that out of every 200 gallon barrel of oil ( which lately has been going for about $100 a barrel) we only get about 32 gallons of gas out of this.  That isn’t a whole lot of oil. For those of you who are not sure why we are drilling for oil, etc, it is a fossil fuel and it obviously takes fossils.  Are we running out of dead fossilized things?

3.  Who is in control? This I’m not sure either.

4.  I believe we shouldn’t really be tapping into new places for oil.  There is a big push to break Alaska. I want at least have one sacred place and I fully believe in sacrificing to preserve the natural beauty.

5.  So maybe I should say that I am one of these 4 million motorists.  I have no intention to stay home this weekend. We are off counting horseshoe crabs and participating in a scientific count.  In return we are hoping to enjoy the natural beauty ( if any still exist near smyrna delaware)  Am I denial about the gas crisis?  Nope …just that I can’t wait until the price of gas comes down to experience once in a lifetime opportunities.   Who knows how long the horseshoe crabs will still come on the beach to spawn.  Who knows if there will be a beach ten years from now.  Maybe it will be flooded by this global warming crisis that everyone is preoccupying themselves with, or maybe we’ll just pave over it and make it a parking lot for a new factory outlet. I consider the latter more probable.  Maybe in writing about this I really am just trying to feel better about the fact that I don’t live in a place where natural beauty exists any longer. Maybe I don’t have a porch swing, a glass of lemonade, and the smell of the fresh forest in my backyard and maybe for this I am truly sad.

The Willy Wonka

Maybe it is because I just don’t think I’m hot enough to wear these. I seem to be in the midst of people in their late twenties and early thirties who think they rule the fashion kingdom.   Its kind of interesting how people who say nothing at all but somehow we just know they think they are hot. Today I ran across a person who was sporting what I call the latest in fashion trends ” The Willy Wonka”   The  Willy Wonka is usually a woman in her late twenties  or early thirties who is wearing a very tight bob haircut ( so tight if you were far away you might think it was a shiny brunette football helmet), plaid pants, open shoes ( with a manicure) and what makes the outfit complete is the willy wonka sunglasses.  They wear these sunglasses no matter if it is sunny , cloudy, or 4 a.m. ( probably nursing  a hangover).  What is so ridiculous is that I really think people think they look hot.

After seeing this displayed animal behavior … I have to wonder:

1. Are they really hot?

2. Do I really look like an oompah loompah in comparison to these hot people?

3. Are we really being attacked by harmful gamma rays that we have to wear these huge sunglasses to protect our eyes from cataracts?

History

I was thinking about history the other day. I was toying around the idea of why history is even important. When I was in grade school the common answer was so we can learn from our mistakes. That doesn’t seem to be happening.  Is history really something that is important?  Someone suggested a nice passive summer thing for me to do. They suggested that I learn about my roots and my family history.  I mulled this idea for about a nanosecond and realized that even if I did know the history I’m not sure I would really care.  So I could have a penpal in russia who may share some secret ancestral territory? Is it to foster some sort of connection that people see on hallmark commercials. Am I supposed to want this connection?

Getting back to history I am at a loss. The only profound affect history has had on me is learning about the holocaust and to be honest I have only learned about this third person. I’ve read the accounts, watched Schindler’s List.  But I haven’t experienced the terror or the hatred. Probably why I am so fascinated by this whole heinous act is because I cannot even fathom how human beings can treat other human beings this way.

But for me the rest of history is battles, buildings, and pages in a textbook. It doesn’t really hold much value for me. I guess sometimes its interesting but really what is it paving for me now or in the future.

Ironically history was my favorite class in all of grade school and most of high school.  It was my favorite because of the the teacher.  The teacher made us part of history. Suddenly it wasn’t about textbooks because here we were acting as senators debating bills.  I remembered I didn’t know how to debate a particular bill and remembered I fillibustered it reading the textbook for the entire period.
Perhaps I should leave this topic alone for now. Its a battle brewing in my head because I think I’m steering toward the educational reform topic and that is going to take a whole lot of writing and reading on your part.