The Bully

I watched a disturbing video from March 3rd that was making its rounds on the internet.  Somewhere in Great Briton a group passing out leaflets against hate crimes is bullied by members of the BNP, an ultra nationalist group.  I don’t pretend to know anything about either group beyond what can be found on wikipedia, but I found the body language and word use of the bullies interesting and disturbing.

The aggressor was clearly intimidating the man with the leaflets, getting up in his face, telling him to leave.  His voice was loud and threatening.  But the words the aggressor chose were the words of a victim: 

‘No one is getting violent here are they?’ he says getting up into the leafleter’s face ‘You’re heightening the situation so you take a step back and stop threatening me!’ he steps forward again forcing the leafleter to step back. ‘No one is threatening you are they?’ he says as his comrades shout profanities over his shoulder at the leafleter, ‘You’re not welcome here.’

Eventually the leafleters return to their car and leave, coming back later to pass out their fliers.  The bully acts like a bully, moves like a bully, sounds like a bully, but uses words to paint himself a victim.

On the car ride home this afternoon I heard North Korea behaving in the same way as the BNP bully.  They swing around weapons, then declare themselves threatened when their neighbors react.

At school some of the teachers have been working through Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to help students think about people's actions.  I’m trying to find where this interactions sits, if it sits there at all.  Why do we humans feel the need to frame ourselves as victims before lashing out? Why this dance and mincing of words?

Sometimes Good, Sometimes Bad

Day 7 Slice of Life

The March Slice of Life Challenge-hosted by Ruth and Stacey,

Two Writing Teachers,

Great Stuff!

Tweet at #Slice2013 

It is a day of small steps forward, 
small steps back

A day when I go from one thing to the next, sure I’m forgetting something

forward

I plan a chemistry magic show, 

bring a student to meet with a sci-fi author

back

a student frustrated with algebra

forward

two students want to study the middle ages

we will go to the cathedral and the art museum

back

a student with missing assignments who’d rather not see me

I can’t get the swordfighting instructor to call me back

math placements for next year - nothing is neat or easy

I sit to talk with a young student as she works out what it is she wants to learn next.  She knows what it is but can’t quite say it: 

‘Good and bad.’ 

‘What is good and what is bad?’ I ask.

‘Yes... No... Feeling good and feeling bad, why we do that.’

‘What happens in the brain?’ 

‘No, well, kind of.’

I watch her struggle to say the thing she cannot quite pin down. 

‘Why is it we are the way we are?’ she finally asks. ‘Why do we feel the way we feel?  Sometimes good, sometimes bad?’

I come home and my husband has shaved off his beard.  
I kiss his smooth cheek.

‘Your skin is red.’

‘It must not be used to being out in the world,’ he says

My son puts on a tape of lullabies to go to sleep.  My friend Sarah recorded the songs as a baby gift when he was born.  She left us last fall. Cancer.  Her sweet high voice floats across the hall as I write.  I write the way I feel, sometimes good, sometimes bad.

Frank Armbruster

As field trip teachers we are contacting interesting and passionate people every day and asking them to give time to our students who share their passions.  So many people give so much to us that, though we try, we could never thank them enough for what they do to inspire and encourage our students.  One person in particular has given his time and his talent over and over again.  

Frank Armbruster is one of those that always say yes when we call.  He is an eccentric, enthusiastic inventor, a passionate ‘out-of-the-box’ thinker.  His infectious energy never failed to engage students who met with him, and to inspire deep and creative thinking.  He would appear at our office door with a ready smile and a twinkle in his eye.  He would excitedly tell of his latest creation and shower us with samples of his inventions.  Our office is filled with all these little bits of Frank’s bubbling, creative mind.  We hear today that he had a serious set-back to his health.  The field trip teachers spent an hour this morning making a video, showing how we use what he has given us, telling how we treasure the time he has shared with us and our students.  I am reminded again that time is a precious gift, meant to be shared.  Thank you Frank.  We all wish you the very best!

Neanderthal Mondays Part I

This March I’m taking a class on neanderthals on Monday nights.

The first thing was saw was a review of how neanderthals have been drawn over the ages.  Mostly the artists have portrayed a dominant societies projection of a contemporary alien ‘other.’

We really wanted to make sure we didn't look too related!

Skulls were this night’s view

Erectus, Heidelbergensis

Neanderthal too

brow ridge and occipital bun

zygomatic arch flat as my thumb

Large nasal chamber  to warm ice age air

Light eyes, red hair!

Then me and you

We have a chin now

But what does it do?

Adjustments

I’ll get up early, write then swim

I sleep in

I get up later and write 

I’ll write till 7, then take my son and go swim

I write till 8

I'll take my son and swim, we’ll get home at 9 and I’ll take my daughter to the writer’s workshop

We swim till 10

I’ll take my daughter to the writer’s workshop and meet husband and boys downtown at 1

We aren’t ready to leave till 11

I say to my husband “We’ll meet you downtown at 2”

My youngest son throws up

“Never mind,” I say. “We’ll come back home at 2:30”

My daughter and I write till 3

We make it home by 3:30

I take my older son to the branch library for his research project at 4, the library closes at 5

“That’s an interesting topic,” says the helpful librarian.  “I’ve never looked for information on the space programs of monsoon Asian countries before.  Perhaps upstairs in the college library?”

At 4:45 my son and I are sitting on the floor in the stacks looking in the indexes of a dozen books on Asia and space.  They blink the lights.  The library is closing.

We make it home with a pile of books - what to make for dinner?

Husband and older son will leave at 6:30 to go juggling

Dinner is on the table at 7

They leave at 7:30

Sick son feeling a little better.  I tuck him in.

I’ll just write a quick slice.  I’ll be done by 9

It’s 10

On Watching the Spring Come In

When the children were small we went on nature walks every week from January to May deep in the Connecticut woods.  
Our friendly neighborhood naturalist, Ronnie Kamphausen, would help us find vernal ponds filled with tadpoles, turn over logs to find salamanders and peek in the speckled red spathes of skunk cabbage, the secret hiding places of bees caught out on a cold spring night.  We moved to Colorado and reveled in the prairie and the mountains but somehow got too busy to just watch each week to see the spring creep in, until now.  

Today we took the first of what I hope will be weekly spring walks near our house to watch for the change of the season.  We saw ducks on the pond, a kestrel in a tree and prairie dogs chirping alarms. We threw snow at each other and covered our boots in mud.  It was glorious.  

Each of us brought some small thing home to sketch as well.  We were inspired to do this by my friend Ruth Ann Olson, who writes a blog about her small farm (http://www.lillabondgard.blogspot.com/).  When she was a young schoolgirl in England they would go for a walk each day and every student was expected to bring back some small thing to draw.

So here is to spring as it slowly comes in and seeing the magic as it happens!

Today a List of Stories

The alarm

Tea - don’t forget to get the tea going before you get in the shower

Find something clean in the dryer

Start the shower

Wake the kiddos

A little light, a little kiss

Same for hubby

Water’s hot

brush teeth

“Are you ready? Are you out of bed? We have ten minutes!”

The tea, remember the tea

Drive teen daughter to high school

She talks about the story of Moses and

Slavery in the antebellum south

I think how everything, everything I know 

is knit into my memory as a story

At work I tell stories

About people who spoke Latin

About the invention of Algebra

I listen to stories

About why he wonders about stars

About how Tock, the new puppy, came home

About her love of bees and magic

We work on telling together

on how to say Eyjafjallajökull

and other fancy words

Drive home

Listen to stories about budgets and cardinals

both sequestered on the same day

In the grocery store we tell knock knock jokes

Buy a dizzy chicken - spinning while it cooks

Stories round the table

Stories before bed

Write a story for Slice of Life

Set the alarm

Bed and I tell myself the surreal stories of dreams.