Sunday October 12th

So, class is going great and we are having a blast. I can’t wait to post some of the projects to show you how well everyone is doing. The pieces are coming out fantastic. We wrap up tomorrow and I know that I had a great time. It is always a rather bittersweet time. Here are these people that you spend several days with and they are in your home all day and once they know where the glasses are and it’s like they belong and then suddenly, poof, they go back home. It is a fascinating transition actually.

Yesterday evening after class we went to my favorite restaurant for dinner and we went early enough so we could actually talk, hear each other and just spend time getting to know each other out of a classroom setting. I love the shift that I can take from teacher to diner companion. Later that evening then there was a “Club Crawl” down on 4th street with all of the bars and clubs hosting local bands. We went to The Hut to hear a friend of mine in the band Ghost Cow. They put on an excellent show and the crowd watching was an education for sure.

I have been thinking about and singing all of the old SchoolHouse Rock educational segments that I grew up with. Then that naturally led me to my FAVORITE cartoons in my adult life. I do not know how many of you know of the Animaniacs…They are brilliant and I do mean brilliant. This is a long cartoon but worthy of the 9½ minutes. Watch adult brilliance, there will be more to follow as I decide which of my favorite ones I will share with you.


I continue to watch the political gamesmanship and I am ready for people to actually do their own research and to really find the truth. The woman who thought Obama was an Arab because she got a letter in the mail informing her of that scares the hell out of me. I mean no offence to any Arab, I swear. But what scares me is that this woman thinks that an Arab, anyone of Arab descent is bad. I thought that this country was founded on the freedom from persecution, freedom of religion and so many more. This woman wants to take all of these away because of her ignorance and misplaced fear.

Can anyone tell me where and when we lost our way? At what point in time did we allow ourselves to become a nation of scaredy-cats. People that think they are Americans and others are not? There was a time when their families was the immigrants, how may generations does it take to become an American?

Erin gave me a book of Pablo Neruda Poems
and I tore through them this evening.

Love

What's wrong with you, with us,
what's happening to us?
Ah our love is a harsh cord
that binds us wounding us
and if we want
to leave our wound,
to separate,
it makes a new knot for us and condemns us
to drain our blood and burn together.

What's wrong with you? I look at you
and I find nothing in you but two eyes
like all eyes, a mouth
lost among a thousand mouths that I have kissed, more beautiful,
a body just like those that have slipped
beneath my body without leaving any memory.

And how empty you went through the world
like a wheat-colored jar
without air, without sound, without substance!
I vainly sought in you
depth for my arms
that dig, without cease, beneath the earth:
beneath your skin, beneath your eyes,
nothing,
beneath your double breast scarcely
raised
a current of crystalline order
that does not know why it flows singing.
Why, why, why,
my love, why?