Read It Right: Peace on Earth to Men of Good Will
Mamacita says: I am starting to look at my house with holiday eyes, and it has made me pensive. I used to look at my young students every day, every year, and wonder what they went home to every night. Sometimes, I knew, and my heart broke for them daily. With others, I had no idea. When a child comes to school in rags, shoes held together with tape and rubber bands, hair all shaggy, and skin obviously not quite clean, it’s pretty much a done deal that there’s trouble at home. Usually, these children were ravenous because the only ‘decent’ meal they ever got was at school, so Monday mornings, so they RAN from the bus to the cafeteria for that free breakfast that was sometimes the first food they’d had since Friday lunch.
Most of the time, THOSE parents never darkened the door of the school for any reason. Occasionally, one of them would actually show up for a conference, and I would sit there on the other side of the table gritting my teeth and gripping a pencil so tightly that sometimes it broke, because nine times out of ten, the parent of my raggedy little starveling was dressed pretty darn well, and it was rare that he/she didn’t reek of cigarette smoke. In other words, money WAS being spent, but not on the child.
Cigarettes in the purse, no socks on the child. Beer in the refrigerator, no decent shoes for the child. Nice clothes on the adult, rags on the child. And where was the warm coat we gave the child only a few days ago?
I can feel my blood pressure rising as I remember it.
Why, why, WHY, when these poor kids are constantly removed from these ‘homes,’ are they just as constantly put right back in to be mistreated just like before? Sometimes, in fact most times, ‘keeping the family together’ is NOT important. Sometimes, splitting a family apart is the best thing that could ever happen to it. When parents do not behave like adults, they have no business inflicting it on innocent children. Get the kids out of that house, and put them where they’ll be fed and clothed and loved. Any adult who would buy cigarettes when his/her child has no socks, is a monster, not fit to raise a child. Addictions? Cry me a river. The needs of children always come before any needs of an adult. And especially before an adult’s hobby, toy, or habit. Oh, and does anyone really think these children will ever again “tell” what’s going on at “home?”
I like to think that most days I am reflective and wise, but sometimes it really gets to me and I am just angry and far from wise. Oh, so very, very far.
This one time in band camp in one of my college classes, we were discussing “It’s A Wonderful Life,” in relation to our own lives. I asked my students to think about how life might have been for their loved ones had they never been born.
That was when we all learned that one of my lovely students, who was only nineteen, has been the ‘mother’ of her seven siblings for eight years, ever since her mother sensed a better deal down the road and ‘left.’ If she had never been born, those siblings would probably have been sectioned out to foster homes. Her brothers might have gotten in trouble with the law, with nobody at home to supervise them. Her sisters might have sought ‘relationships’ in an attempt to get affection. Her father might have succumbed to his depression if he had to work four jobs knowing nobody was watching over his children. She told us that her youngest sibling was only two when their mother ‘left,’ and that he started calling her ‘mom’ within a few days of her leaving. She talked about cooking, buying clothing, budgeting, potty-training. . . . when all the other girls her age were playing with their dolls, skating, watching Sponge Bob, and later dating, hanging out, and staying after school for ball games and club meetings. Was she sorry? No, she would not have done it any other way, but it would have been nice to have been a child when she was a child, and a teenager during her teens, instead of having to be an adult because an actual adult wasn’t done acting like a teen.
My students tell me these stories all the time.
I think one (of many millions) reason so many kids loved Harry Potter was that he, too, lived a life of horror with abusive,, neglectful, unloving people, and was RESCUED! Rescued, and removed, and sent to live with nice people who loved him. Even the yearly returning to the Dursleys was endurable once he knew he would not have to live there forever. How many of our children stay sane mainly because of the hope of rescue?
So they’re rescued. And then they’re sent right back because some adult says he/she’s sorry.
Abusive adults aren’t sorry for how they treated a child. They’re only sorry because while the child wasn’t living with them, they didn’t have welfare money for cigarettes, booze, meth, and cable.
Look around. Every person has a story to tell. Sometimes you can tell by their outsides, and sometimes you can’t. Usually, we can’t. Marilla Cuthbert told Anne Shirley this, and it is true.
Most of the time, that story has something to do with their home, and who was there, and who WASN’T there, and who did his/her job, and who didn’t, all of which are choices. Free will choices..
Some people are parents via biology or adoption, and others are parents via fate. There is no guarantee which kind will be the best kind.
I would bet money, though, if I had any money, that an adult who would put his/her own selfish wants and addictions over and above the needs of a little child, is not even going to be in the running. Shame on them. Shame, and more shame. Hell is too good for an adult who puts his/her own wants and even needs above the needs of a child. If you have gloves and your child has no socks, you’re a beast.
I do not understand many things in this world, and one of them is this: when “everybody” knows a home is not a fit place for a child, why does “everybody” talk about that fact, yet allow the child to remain in the home?
“What a shame, those poor kids, alcohol, drugs, prostitution, gambling, live-in lovers, possible molestation. . . . .” and then we watch them get on the bus, knowing they’re going “home” to hell house.
I know that mistakes are made all the time, in removing children from so-called ‘homes,’ but I think even more mistakes are made all the time in NOT removing children. Why should their worthless parents have all the rights, and the children have none?
I am so down tonight. I wish I could gather up all these kids and wash them, and feed them, and put clean socks on their feet, and intact shoes, and pretty clothes. I wish I could fill Christmas stockings for them, and hug them, and give each one a doll or toy of some kind that would be their very own and nobody else’s. And if their worthless deadbeat parent tried to take it and sell it for drugs or booze or a manicure or anything whatsoever, I hope a sensor in it would explode and wipe that bum off the face of the earth. Peace on earth, yes.
Read it right: “Peace on earth to men of good will.”
The other kind can bite me.
Veterans’ Day 2013
Mamacita says: This day used to be known as Armistice Day, in honor of the armistice that was signed on the “eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month”. This year, 2013, marks the 96th anniversary of Armistice Day.
(This term also refers to the fact that back in ancient times, a worker who was hired at the eleventh hour of a twelve-hour workday was paid the same as those who had worked all twelve hours.)
After World War II, Armistice Day was changed to Veterans’ Day. Many people do not realize that this is an international holiday, observed by many other nations as well as by the United States.
Perhaps you have wondered why veterans often wear a poppy in their lapel on this day? Let me introduce you to Flanders Fields:
Schools do not teach students much about World War I, and I have never really understood why. Most social studies classes, unless it’s a specialized elective, study the Civil War (Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn) and then make a giant leap over everything else so they can briefly mention World War II (Hitler was bad) and then leap again and remind students that JFK was assassinated (“I am the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris”) (“I am a jelly doughnut!”) all just in time for summer vacation. I learned most of what I know about World War I from reading L.M. Montgomery’s Rilla of Ingleside, and yes, it’s another Anne book; this one is mostly about Anne and Gilbert’s daughter Rilla. I cry every time I read it, even though I know what’s going to happen. You’ll cry, too.
i wonder how many of YOU realized that Anne of Green Gables is the first of a series? Run, don’t walk, to the library THIS MINUTE. Or click and go to Amazon. You need these books in your home.
Ahem.
Monday, November 11, 2013. On this day, let us honor the men and women 
who keep us safe, both past and present.
There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America. — Bill Clinton
The issues of the world must be met and met squarely. The forces of evil do not disdain preparation, they are always prepared and always preparing… The welfare of America, the cause of civilization will forever require the contribution, of some part of the life, of all our citizens, to the natural, the necessary, and the inevitable demand for the defense of the right and the truth. — Calvin Coolidge
This nation will remain the land of the free only so long as it is the home of the brave. — Elmer Davis
When our perils are past, shall our gratitude sleep? –George Canning
How important it is for us to recognize and celebrate our heroes and she-roes! —Maya Angelou
And I’ll end this post with this one, by FDR: “When you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until he has struck before you crush him.”
God bless America.
Quotation Saturday: Imagination
Mamacita says: A lot of Saturdays have come and gone lately without Quotation Saturday. How have we managed to cope, I ask you all. . . .
Since I stand firmly with Albert Einstein’s “Imagination is more important than knowledge,” this Saturday’s theme is “imagination.”
Take the word apart. Do you see it? IMAGE. People with imagination can take their whims, dreams, and fancies and turn them into images. I know that there are people who have no imagination. I used to pity them, and I still do to some extent, but really, such people are an awful inconvenience, and are responsible for a lot of injustice, and these days, when I consider unimaginative people, I’m mostly just disgusted.
Unimaginative people are the ones who tell a daydreaming child to stop wasting time, thus interrupting the cure for cancer and rocket fuel made of sewage.
I know people who wouldn’t care if they never learned another new thing. I pity them, because when learning stops, stagnation begins. Those stinky little ponds all over southern Indiana, covered with scum and mosquitoes? They stopped moving, and now they are dead and dead things stink. When people stop learning, they might as well be buried and get it over with, for they are as good as dead. I consider a person who is content to allow his/her head to be stuffed full of other people’s opinions as good as dead, also. Echoes have no imagination.
Thinking can be hard. Some people just aren’t willing to put forth the effort. Besides, thinking sometimes makes us question our choices, values, and beliefs. Can’t have that. Many so-called “religions” encourage people to stifle their imaginations. I find this horrific beyond words. Then again, genuinely imaginative, creative, and intelligent people aren’t easy to stifle. Sheep are easy to boss around, but imaginative people aren’t so easily led. Even as a small child, I assumed a lot of churchy people were dumb as a sheep, because so many of them accepted whatever the preacher or rule book said, without a single comment, question, or raised eyebrow.
Harsh? Sure. But it’s how I roll. One of the many things I despise about most of our public schools is the fact that they pretty much beat the curiosity and imagination out of our children. Often, children are punished for wanting to know MORE and refusing to stop once ONE answer or solution is reached. Of course, as Professor Umbridge says, the important thing about school is taking tests, and tests are concerned only with predetermined answers, not curiosity. “Next year, Billy,” a teacher might promise. But when next year comes, Billy soon learns that the new year is just like the old year: day after day of sitting and waiting for other kids to catch up, with never anything for the kids who already know, and detention or worse for the child who dared experiment with his lunch or the ink in his pen or the clay or a poem or story or the paints in the art room. Sigh.
Curiosity. Imagination. Dreams. Let’s encourage them in our children, for the curious thinkers and scientists and writers and dreamers are the hope of the universe.
As for unimaginative and uncurious adults. . . . I should be a lot sorrier for them than I am, but it’s their own fault. Life is full of choices, and there’s more than one kind of Easy Street.
1. Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere. — Albert Einstein
2. The key to life is imagination. If you don’t have that, no mater what you have, it’s meaningless. If you do have imagination… you can make feast of straw. — Jane Stanton Hitchcock
3. A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral. — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
4. They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. — Edgar Allan Poe
5. Trust that little voice in your head that says “Wouldn’t it be interesting if…” And then do it. — Duane Michals,
6. Perhaps imagination is only intelligence having fun. — George Scialabba
7. The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom the emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause and stand wrapped in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed. — Albert Einstein
8. Anyone who can be replaced by a machine deserves to be. — Dennis Gunton
9. I remembered a story of how Bach was approached by a young admirer one day and asked, “But Papa Bach, how do you manage to think of all these new tunes?” “My dear fellow,” Bach is said to have answered, according to my version, “I have no need to think of them. I have the greatest difficulty not to step on them when I get out of bed in the morning and start moving around my room.” — Laurens Van der Post
10. Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought. — Albert Szent-Györgyi
11. I doubt that the imagination can be suppressed. If you truly eradicated it in a child, he would grow up to be an eggplant. — Ursula K. Le Guin
12. If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking. — George S. Patton
13. So you see, imagination needs moodling – long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling and puttering. — Brenda Ueland
14. Most technological achievements were preceded by people writing and imagining them. I’m rather proud of the fact that I know several astronauts who became astronauts through reading my books. — Arthur C. Clarke
15. He who has imagination without learning has wings and no feet. — Joseph Joubert
16. As great scientists have said and as all children know, it is above all by the imagination that we achieve perception, and compassion, and hope. — Ursula K. Le Guin
17. We especially need imagination in science. It is not all mathematics, nor all logic, but it is somewhat beauty and poetry. — Maria Mitchell
18. One of the virtues of the very young is that you don’t let facts get in the way of your imagination. — Sam Levinson
19. The soul without imagination is what an observatory would be without a telescope.– Henry Ward Beecher
20. When in doubt, make a fool of yourself. There is a microspically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth. So what the hell, leap.– Cynthia Heimel
21. There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds. — Gilbert Keith Chesterton
22. It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see. — Henry Thoreau
23. I like nonsense — it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living. It’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope… and that enables you to laugh at all of life’s realities. — Dr. Seuss
24. If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder without any such gift from the fairies, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement, and mystery of the world we live in. — Rachel Carson
25. Anyone who thinks the sky is the limit, has limited imagination. — Unknown
26. The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination. — Albert Einstein
27. A man, as a general rule, owes very little to what he is born with – a man is what he makes of himself. — Alexander Graham Bell
28. Reality can be beaten with enough imagination. — Unknown
29. Let your mind alone, and see what happens. — Virgil Thomson
30. Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up. — Pablo Picasso
31. Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination. — John Dewey
32. It is possible to store the mind with a million facts and still be entirely uneducated. –Alec Bourne
33. Reporting facts is the refuge of those who have no imagination. -–Marquis de Vauvenargues
34. No course of life is so weak and foolish as that which is carried out according to rules and discipline. -–Montaigne
35. Why not go out on a limb? Isn’t that where the fruit is? -–Frank Scully
36. Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten. -–G.K. Chesterton
37. The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed. -–Albert Einstein
38. What we need is more people who specialize in the impossible. -–Theodore Roethke
39. There are many ways of breaking a heart. Stories were full of hearts being broken by love, but what really broke a heart was taking away its dream – whatever that dream might be. -– Pearl S. Buck
40. Nobody succeeds beyond his or her wildest expectations unless he or she begins with some wild expectations. -– Ralph Charell
41. I learned that there were two ways I could live my life: following my dreams or doing something else. Dreams aren’t a matter of chance, but a matter of choice. When I dream, I believe I am rehearsing my future. -– David Copperfield
42. In dreams and in love there are no impossibilities. -–Janos Arany
43. Dreams come in a size too big so that we may grow into them. -–Josie Bisset
44. Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning. -–Gloria Steinem
45. Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world. -– Harriet Tubman
46. Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails Explore. Dream. Discover. -– Mark Twain
47. It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. — Einstein
48. Curiosity is the very basis of education and if you tell me that curiosity killed the cat, I say only the cat died nobly. — Arnold Edinborough
49. I think, at a child’s birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift should be curiosity. — Eleanor Roosevelt
50. Children are remarkable for their intelligence and ardor, for their curiosity, their intolerance of shams, the clarity and ruthlessness of their vision. — Aldous Huxley
Imagination should be encouraged, not discouraged. Everything in the universe is fodder for the imagination, and any teacher who doesn’t know this, and doesn’t try like mad to make sure he/she encourages dreaming in all students, is a. . . well, you know. Paging Auntie Em. Of course, there are, sadly, always people who aren’t interested and whose life goal seems to be to prevent everyone else from dreaming and reaping gold from any lesson. More sadly still, our schools often cater to this lowest common denominator instead of showering the imaginative and eager learners with opportunities. sigh.
“Every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings” has become “Every time a bell rings, a child has to force himself/herself NOT to think about yet another subject that should rightly be fascinating but which has been edited and censored and otherwise beaten down to fit inside that little box lest it inspire someone to greatness.” (Whilst trying to ignore and dodge the antics, bullying, disruptions, hands, tantrums, etc, of the uninspired kid in the next seat over. . . .) (and likewise trying not to draw attention to himself lest he be told to take Butch and Woim out in the hall to help them with their spelling.)
Because we can’t have any individual greatness, you know; it’s not fair to the OTHER students who wouldn’t recognize greatness if it bit them on the ass and called them by name.
I might dare to remind whoever crosses my path – and aren’t y’all LUCKY – that, in the words of Madeleine L’Engle (see, you’re getting your famous quotation after all – “Like” and “equal” are not the same thing!!!!!
I might also dare to remind you that the entire universe is a big game of “Six Degrees of Separation” and that those who don’t know enough to make any connections are losing.
The answer isn’t really “Kevin Bacon,” you know.
The answer is “42.” And if you don’t know why, be afraid. Be very afraid
