Haters To The Left

Last night, because there was nothing good on tv and possibly because he likes to watch me yell at the screen, Jason decided to turn on Fox News for a little entertainment. Sean Hannity was hosting some sort of discussion panel on his show, and complaining about the Nuclear Arms treaty that was being signed yesterday. It took about 30 seconds before something was said that offended me. He said he would be disappointed in any Republican in Congress who would vote to adopt this new policy. So, to be clear, he wants congress to oppose a treaty that would decrease the number of nuclear weapons in the world, and was scoffing at the Ukrainian government for offering to dispose of any of their nuclear materials. Yes. This is what he was saying. Then he showed a clip of my very favorite idiot, Sarah Palin, talking about what a bad idea this was. This is ironic, considering she claims to be a HUGE fan of Ronald Reagan, who fought to dispose of all nuclear weaponry on a global scale during his presidency. Now she doesn't like it, because it's not Bush or McCain in office working for this cause. Then, when Hannity switched topics, he began talking about how Obama has single handedly destroyed the economy. I'm not entirely sure how things have looked from where Sean is sitting, but the economy has been pretty f*cked for several years now. Obama has been in office for one. I'm just going to go out on a limb here and say it wasn't all him. Call me crazy, but I think I might be right here.

This brings me to my point: Why are Republicans such sore freaking losers? The health care bill passing made way for what appears to me to be a bunch of political temper tantrums. Suddenly there will be "no cooperation from the Right" and they're going to fight to have it repealed etc. Whatever happened to doing what's best for the country? Is absolutely no bi-partisan cooperation really the best thing for your constituents and your country? It doesn't seem like it. It seems as if you lost, and now you're going to stand around and pout until something happens that gives you your way. I find it appalling. And what's more, I find it worrisome to think about what this sort of attitude is doing to the country as a whole. Suddenly we have people claiming to be "patriots" who are calling out to people to smash the windows of Democratic offices, and Democratic leaders in various roles are getting death threats. When did this become ok? Not getting your way in a bill vote gives you free reign to call for open vandalism? For being the party who likes to call everyone else Socialists and compare them to the likes of Hitler, you're sure ordering some very Hitleristic action. At the beginning of his regime, he told the people of Germany to break the windows of Jewish businesses in their towns. How is ordering conservatives to break the windows of Democratic offices any different? And now we have "Oath Keepers" within our own military who are stockpiling weapons in preparation to commit treason by rising up and literally fighting the President should they feel he's "taking over the country". Men who have taken an oath to serve their country, and to honor the President as Commander in Chief of their armed forces are now preparing to attack the very office they swore to honor. This is so upsetting and disturbing that I don't even have words for it. I am appalled at the behavior of some of the supposedly civilized citizens of this country.

In the wake of the Hutaree arrests, many people are beginning to dig up the images of Timothy McVeigh and his rebellion against the government when he bombed Oklahoma City, and I find myself wondering whether that event would still be as tragic in the minds of Americans if it was committed today. The fact is, he was a terrorist. No, he was not Arab, he did not hold a Koran as he committed his crime, and he did not do it in the name of religion. This just goes to show that terrorism is not something done only by Muslim extremists, though so many in our nation would have you believe otherwise, but can be committed by our own citizens in our own back yards. But my concern is that if a group like the Hutaree or some other extremest right wing group were to bomb a government building, I'm afraid that they would be cheered as heroes rebelling against the evil socialists holding political office. I'm afraid that the tragedy would somehow get turned into a cry of patriotism, and somehow those terrorists committing such a crime would be revered as true citizens of America. This is what frightens me the most about our nation as it is today. Extremists come in all forms, not simply Muslim (and for that matter, not all Muslims are extremist terrorists despite what some would have people believe), and extremism is dangerous no matter where its roots are planted, and yet our collective vision as a nation seems to be clouded because we cannot see the road we have begun to pave for ourselves.

And I am sure there are those who would say that I am a liberal, which means that if it were liberals doing these things I would not be sitting here writing this blog entry. I would like to think that if it was liberals committing vandalism and plotting domestic terrorism, I would not remain silent simply because I happen to share some of the beliefs held by that group. But, the fact of the matter is, liberals are not committing these sort of crimes. I would argue that there were liberals who hated George Bush as much as the conservatives currently hate Obama, but they were not calling anyone to arms, and they were not vandalizing buildings or mailing out death threats. That is not the way of the liberal. Perhaps it was in the 60's when it was largely liberals protesting and fighting against Vietnam, but somewhere along the line the liberals got behind gun control and well....that kind tends to quell violence. But if they were, I would not stand behind them either.

This is not to say that anyone, liberal or conservative should blindly accept what they are being fed from a government office without question. On the contrary. This nation was built on the ability to have a disagreement. I think everyone should question and consider and think about what goes on not just in this country, but globally. I'm just saying that there is a distinct difference between civil disobedience and lashing out violently for some sort of revenge.

We now live in a nation divided, not just along political lines but also along religious and socioeconomic lines that are carved so deeply that I'm not sure the scars will ever heal. What worries me most is that this division is not for any real reason, except that there are some who would prefer to gain political power rather than serve those who have elected them, and there are those who would prefer to see their nightly television ratings jump by spoon feeding people lies and propaganda simply to make a buck. I have said it before, and I will say it again. We worship no idol or diety more faithfully than we do the dollar. This may be our downfall.

Happy To Be Here

Now, I'm not normally one to romanticize the commonplace, or get poetic about what I consider to be "the ordinary" but tonight, as I sit here in my living room with the windows open, a breeze blowing through the house, I am struck by how happy to be where I am right now. Every year, I forget how much I enjoy springtime in Michigan. Admittedly, the state doesn't exactly get four seasons a year. Usually we get the world's longest winter, and then a few weeks of "spring" before it immediately jumps to 80+ degrees and summer descends on us, miserable and humid, which lasts until mid-October before we get the worlds shortest autumn and the snows start again. But, for those couple weeks of spring, I am content to be exactly where I am. This year is better than last, because we have a new neighborhood that seems to take landscaping pretty seriously. Our neighbors next door have bulbs planted and they all started blooming last week, and nearly everyone on the street has a flowering tree of some type, which are all in full bloom now. We spent the weekend working in the yard, pulling out some of the old, ugly landscaping stones and mowing the lawn, filling in holes and re-seeding some of the patchy areas of the grass. The progress has made me really want to tackle some of our other landscaping projects, though at this point we have to just do bit by bit as we have time to do it. There is a sense of accomplishment in working on something all day and being able to look at the results and think "That looks better". I've never been one for gardening in the past, but it might be something I find myself enjoying as the summer progresses. All I know is that tonight, as the sun was setting, and the smell of our neighbors cherry blossoms was blowing across my yard, I was really happy to be out in my yard, working on something I knew would end up looking better, and that I did it with my own two hands. I like it here.

Blasphemy From Your Lit Teacher

For the sake of the title on this post, we'll ignore the fact that I don't actually have a job teaching. I officially received my teaching certificate in the mail, so I'm a teacher dangit!

So here are some confessions about myself as a Literature scholar. I started college with this great intention of studying all kinds of different literature, but to be honest, I could only take the classes that would fit into my time schedule between working and going to school. That's a bit of a bummer, but what are you going to do right? There were a lot of classes I wanted to take, and maybe some day I will go back and take them just for the sake of taking them, but because of the way my schedule was structured, I ended up with a heavy emphasis on American Literature. This was surprising to me, since I hated American Literature in high school and much preferred the English Lit class I took. This could have something to do with us studying Paradise Lost, Macbeth and Wuthering Heights in the English Lit class. Interesting stuff, though I think I'm the only person I've ever met who lovedWuthering Heights, and it was somewhat foreign so there was something to sink our teeth into. When I took American Lit, we studied Whitman, Thoreau, Edith Wharton and Hawthorne. SNOOZE.

That brings me to my first real confession: I HATE WHITMAN AND THOREAU. Can you say that and still teach literature? I don't know. But I hate them. Like, hate hate hate them. I think I even made a joke about peeing in Walden Pond as we drove past it on our last trip to New England. I can't explain why I hate these guys so much, but I think some of it stems from my dislike of poetry in general, and the poetic lilt that their prose tends to have. Well, Whitman is outright poetry most of the time, but Thoreau is just kind of pretentious. The man wandered off into the woods to live in a cabin by himself and write. He's like ye olde Ted Kaczynski. And he's boring. And he wrote about removing himself from society, but felt it was still approrpriate to make commentary on that which he removed himself from in the first place. Snob.

Second confession: I made it all the way through college and I've never read any Faulkner, Melleville, Emerson, and I've never taken a thorough study in Shakespeare. Yeah. I know, I suck. But, I've read more Mark Twain than most people teaching American Literature have read. And I don't understand why we don't teach more Twain in high school.

And that brings me to another point, why do we teach REALLY boring stuff in high school? I mean, not everything I read was boring, and everyone's idea of boring is different, but Ethan Fromme was BORING. I read The Great Gatsby, which in another teacher's hands might not have been so boring, but that teacher has forever ruined the novel for me. I actually read it again in college for a class and still couldn't get past my ruined experience in high school. I had a hard time finishing the book. But, I will say, the college professor did make it a lot more bearable. In fact, I read a lot of really good American Lit in college, and not all of it was written in 17-something or 18-something. Some of it was written at the turn of the century and is far more relevent to the high school student today than Ethan Frome would be.

It wasn't until college that I discovered J.D. Salinger, and my question is WHY DIDN'T I DISCOVER THIS GUY UNTIL COLLEGE?! Seriously. Holden Caulfield is entirely relateable to teens, so why didn't I read it when I was a teen? In a way, I'm glad I didn't. I don't think I could have appreciated the book the same way as a 16 year old as I did as a 26 year old. Surprisingly, one of my colleagues at Borders was surprised that I could relate to the novel being both adult and female, but I loved it. I couldn't put it down. Many of my female classmates found it unrelateable, but I'm wondering if that's because they don't spend a lot of time with adolescent males, and I was working with a whole bunch of them in the drama department at the time. But, it was still relevent. I mean, if Holden were alive and real today, he'd be surrounded by the Paris Hilton's and Lindsay Lohan's of society, and he'd go stark raving mad, because as much as he postulates in the novel that everyone is a phoney, and we are asked to take pause and wonder if that's true, in today's society it absolutely is. I don't know, the commentary on society as a whole, as seen through the eyes of one very self centered young man, it just kind of made me smile because he wasn't wrong. Flawed in his character and his thinking? Absolutely, but not wrong necessarily.

So there are a couple of confessions. I hate Whitman and Thoreau, I've never read any Faulkner, I love Mark Twain, and I don't understand why Catcher in the Rye isn't taught in more high schools. Sure, there's that sex thing, but get over it. Why do we only pick the boring stuff? There's so much great stuff out there, why the hell aren't we using it?

Also, everyone should read Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides because it's fabulous.

Oh, and I've never read any Steinbeck either. Yes, I know that's bad.

Feeling Bloggy

Hope those of you who read my little manifesto on healthcare reform enjoyed it. That would be like....4 people, and none of them follow my blog regularly so....score to me I guess. Gaining followers one controversial topic at a time. Or maybe I'm just gaining one-time readers one controversial topic at a time. I'll take what I can get, I'm not picky. I've been trying to keep my blog relatively politics free, but to be honest, I'm a politically and socially minded person so it would be kind of like keeping part of my blog Becky-Free and well...being that I'm Becky and it's my blog, I sort of have to be here for this to work. So, I'll probably be adding more political and controversial posts here in my own little virtual soap box. Jason picked up some magazines yesterday with some pretty interesting and disturbing articles in them that I'm sure will give me bloggy fodder in the next few days, and since things are currently totally caught up here at work I find myself with time on my hands, and when I have time, you get blogs.

That's kind of a cop out. I have time to blog when I get home from work every night too, I just don't feel like it. I find that after sitting in front of a computer ALL DAY LONG, I don't necessarily want to be on the computer when I get home. Sure, I'll check my Facebook, but as far as writing e-mails and corresponding with people, I don't have the patience for it. I suck at life. It's not that I don't want to keep in touch, I do, I just don't want to type anything out when I could be just sitting on my sofa like a zombie. Incidentally, this job turns me into a zombie. It doesn't require me to think too much, so my brain is a perpetual jello-mold of brain tissue. It just sits there, feeling sluggish and sad. But, I need a paycheck, and I am getting a paycheck for working here so I'm happy to have at least that. But, the point is, I feel zombie-like, and I don't want to send e-mails. I actually think I might be getting a glimpse into what my life looks like when I don't have a million things to do at once. The exodus of my academic life coupled with my lack of ability to work with my drama kids, coupled with the job I'm currently doing seems to turn me into a slug. I think I'm that person who has to have a million things to do to be happy, but now I just have a job and that's it, and I'm a bit bored. And, oddly, I find I'm more tired at the end of the day now than I ever was when I was going to work and school and doing drama stuff. I tie it all back to the lack of brain activity. Must stimulate brain!
Side note: By stimulate brain I mean more than watching Life on Discovery Channel and Jeopardy while eating dinner every night.

So, speaking of jobs, update on the job situation is....there is no update. Nothing. I am actually getting really frustrated because I don't think that they're going to try to keep me on permanently here at my current job after June, which I knew going into this but I figured it wouldn't matter because that would give me 6 months to find a new job. Except that I haven't found a new job. I'm actually struggling to find jobs to post for when I do my daily search of EVERY JOB SITE IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD. So, that's frustrating and kind of nerve wracking. Jason's got a job subbing in a classroom until mid-April, although rumors are that they may keep him until the end of the school year, so that's some income we weren't expecting to have, but you can't be a sub in the summer when there is no school, so then it's back to the drawing board for him to find a job, and if I lose this job in June and he has no job starting in June well.....bad news bears. Needless to say, I'm worried. I'm hoping for the best though. I just hope I don't have to go be a cashier at Kroger just to pay my bills. People who are grocery shopping are cranky.

Other than giving myself ulcers worrying about job prospects, there isn't much going on in my world at the moment. Trying to find ways to not feel like a slug, but that's about it. Blah. I actually miss having to do grading and lesson planning from when I was student teaching because it made my brain work. Must reactivate brain! Must be productive!

Also, we bathed the pets this weekend. No pictures because I was too busy trying to keep my blood inside my body while bathing the cats, but they were not amused. Not at all. On the bright side, they all smell soooo nice.

The end.

To Your Health

It’s more important to save money than it is to save people.

$$ So I guess when your God said to worship no false idols, he was excluding the almighty dollar $$

The party of the Right, or should we say righteous? They fight to prevent sick children from being cared for.

I think their Christ would disagree.

Let’s fight reform to save the unborn babies, while the already born babies die of disease from lack of treatment.

Let’s knock out cancer, until it becomes too expensive, and it’s cheaper to let a person die than pay their premiums.

For the nation of progress, we become more regressive every day.

We cheer profit, because it can fit on a bank ledger, but we have no understanding of value or worth.

It is not socialism to take care of those who need it; it is called doing the right thing.

But not the Right thing, because that would mean fighting against progress to keep the dollars flowing in from the insurance companies who pay for your campaigns. You must worship the almighty reelection.

We spend a dollar to treat a disease but forget that we are treating a person, but it seems most would prefer we treat neither.

Pain and suffering are nothing to those who can pay to stem them, but for those who can’t, apparently they deserve that.

Perhaps Dickens wrote the first conservative, asking that people die and decrease the surplus population.

And some say they will move because we are doing the right thing, not the Right thing, because they are too blind to see that the greater good is more important than their money.

Please move, please leave, please pack your bags for the next 1st world industrialized nation that does not have healthcare for its people. Let us know when you find it.

But hey, if they leave, imagine how much money it will save when we don’t pay for their care.

We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal. Until they get sick. Then they’re a liability.

Some say it is unconstitutional to care for the people of a nation. More would argue that no one foresaw the greed this country would fall to. Our founders fought a war to fight oppression, and we wage a war to keep people oppressed.

So, to those who are out there, sick and suffering and without hope of any help, we can do the Right thing and just drink to your health. It’ll be aged Scotch, served in a crystal glass. You won’t mind.

So, I wrote this

And then I posted it.

I saw you today. Not the physical you, obviously, because that’s gone but I saw you just the same. It happened slowly, and then all at once, in one unexpected moment. You weren’t there, and then you were. You were in a smile I saw while in the checkout line at the grocery store, and then later in the laugh I heard from a baby being tickled, and then again later in the pile of clutter on my kitchen table that was both ordered and disordered at the same time. That’s where you were. You were in this habit I have of leaving pieces of myself all throughout the house, a trail of me to be followed so my path is unmistakable. You were in the way I yelled at the dog to stop barking out the window at the neighbors. And you were that nagging voice in the back of my head saying “If you learn to just leave things alone, you don’t stir up as much trouble”. Yes, I saw you. I didn’t think I would, but that’s how these things happen sometimes. Sometimes they only appear when you need them, or when you don’t even realize you need them. Sometimes they sneak up on you from inside a book, or from a page that slips from a photo album. And sometimes, sometimes they’re not there at all. Sometimes that’s ok. But today I saw you, and I’m glad I did. And, what’s more, today you helped me to see me.

Waxing Poetic

I'm not sure why, but every once in a while I get this intense urge to be creative. Usually it correlates with a change in the seasons, or it comes out of me working a lot and not having much time for other things. Usually I'm working with the plays at the high school, which pretty much curbs the desire for a creative outlet, but since I can't do that anymore I'm going a bit stir crazy lately. I feel like with things being a bit up in the air and chaotic when it comes to my work life, I really want to focus my home life and keep it as organized and un-chaotic as possible. This has, thus far, been an epic fail. Due to working 50+ hour work weeks at the temp job I hate, I haven't felt much like tackling my home life when I'm actually at home. We made some headway this weekend by hanging our cabinets in the laundry room and clearing some clutter out of the kitchen and living room, but life is far from un-chaotic. And once everything is organized and back to normal so that my house doesn't look like it exploded, I want to focus on doing something creative. I'm not sure what. At Christmas I did some DIY art projects around the house which turned out really well. In the spring I have big plans to do some photography stuff with the new niece and nephew as well as some nature photos I want to take to frame in the house (because why would I buy a black and white picture of a flower for $20 when I can take one and have it printed for $0.60?). I have some plans to build some things, because after my dad built me my bookcase and it turned out really well, I've decided I want to try to build something myself, so we'll see how that goes. I might have some talent for it! But, lately what's been sitting in the back of my mind is something that I used to do and haven't done in years. Did you know I can write? I don't mean like "Duh, obviously, you're writing this blog" but actually sit down and craft a story with plot and characters write. I used to be pretty good at it. I used to fill notebooks with little stories I made up, and I wrote my first play when I was 5. I didn't actaully write it down, I just forced my little sister to act out everything I told her and we performed it for my parents. It was a masterpiece. I don't remember what it was about but I remember I stuck clovers into Cindy's ears at some point. Genius.

Honestly though, I've been thinking about this writing thing. I don't want to make money from it, or sell anything, or even let anyone read it necessarily. I just sort of wonder if I still have any skill. It's disturbing to think you might have peaked at 17. *shudder* Sometimes I dig out one of my old notebooks (I didn't keep many, which might have been dumb in retrospect) and I'll be surprised that I actually wrote the stuff I'm reading. So, maybe I'll write something. Or maybe I won't. It's just something I've been thinking about.