Tamarika

Quizzically

I got up extra early today. Things to do and extra time to do it: Watering plants, cleaning out the litter room, laundry, making and drinking coffee, playing a Scrabble move with Shimon, checking blogs, reading newspaper headlines, thinking about stuff ...

Mainly I want to be ready to prepare a quiz for my classes tomorrow. A trick or treat quiz. Exciting day. My how the students hate quizzes and exams! They never know what trick or treat we will pull out of our hats for them. Will it be multiple choice or short essays? Will it be oral, written, take home, with books, without? Will it be easy or difficult? Some even ask me: "What will be in the quiz?" Poor sweet, dear souls. I remember those days of taking quizzes and writing exams. My stomach would ache, palms sweat and then headaches over and under, behind the eyes, on top of the eyebrows, eyes blurring so that suddenly I was unable to understand one word written on the paper.

I wonder why on earth we give these quizzes. After all, there is so much angst and fear that once it is all over, everyone breathes a sigh of relief and forgets all they read. Or do they? Could there be some feeling of achievement that stuff has been learned, lives are changed, minds expanded? Sometimes, that is all students are able to focus on: the quiz ... the exam ... and lose track of everything else.

And so, my challenge today is to work out a trick or, perhaps, a treat for everyone tomorrow, whereby they might collaborate and share what they have learned from reading endless chapters of a sometimes boring (to them) text. Turning the head and stomach aches into breathing space so that minds might expand to discover a tidbit of knowledge that changes ideas or, at the very least, allows people to focus on the topic at hand.

With respect and without offending practitioners of Wicca, I try to be a good old witch.

I'm bringing the chips.

Students will hopefully remember the candy.

Perhaps the crunching, munching and chewing will ease the pain and open the brain.

Happy Halloween, if you choose to celebrate it!

Talk about a mensch ... (Update)

I have read a number of people but the only one I feel any affinity with and who helps me in my angst, rage and disgust with this administration today is:

Marc Cooper:

Compare the two men: Dick Cheney. Patrick Fitzgerald. No further comment.

There seems to be some confusion about the gravity of the Libby indictment. You know, "it’s only perjury, obstruction of justice…and not the underlying charge." 

Libbygate will continue to percolate because the real underlying cause isn’t the outting of Plame, but rather the deception of the American people.

Update:

Could someone explain this to me as if I were a six year old: how can a person declare themselves to be "pro-life" and then agree to send thousands of young men and women into a war we did not need to wage? The hypocrisy is too great for me to bear. Why is one type of death more glorious or worthy than another?

Why aren't we storming Washington DC?

Why oh why oh why?

Is it fear, ignorance, fear, ignorance ... fear?

Worth or worth less

 

How could I resist this picture? I found it at Old Horsetail Snake and at the same time realized that my weblog is only worth: $18,629.82 

Ho hum, and I thought I could get rich with this ...

Quote of the day

There is no defeat in the fight against injustice.

Ahmed Kathrada (heard yesterday on Radio Times)

Rescue remedy (Update)

Sue and I talked on the phone this morning. She told me, "Take Bach Flowers Rescue Remedy. I have two bottles of it! Just put two drops on the tip of your tongue and you'll be as calm as anything."

I laughed and laughed. I don't take stuff unless I absolutely have to - like for Lyme Disease or something.

I was telling her how the Chair is going to observe and evaluate me today when I teach my class. In all the past 17 years as a university instructor, although students evaluated me through writing out comments on forms, I was never once observed for my teaching. I have made over 200 presentations and taught college for many years, and yet the thought of this observation and evaluation today makes my tummy ache, neck stiffen and headache cloud my eyes. Where I am now, teaching is regarded as high priority. In fact, I am observed three times per semester by three different colleagues and peers. Come to think of it, I would prefer if they just dropped by, popped in to see me unannounced. The waiting and preparing for it is the worst for me. I go in and out of confidence from moment to moment. Am sure that I will be discovered, uncovered, exposed, found out just as when I go to the dentist I fear him finding that hole, decay, badness in my tooth that I've been trying to hide for years. Each time the dentist gives me a clean bill of health I feel relief wash over my body - safe from exposure once again.

What might be discovered when they observe my teaching? That I don't know enough; I'm a fraud; boring; stupid; ugly; fat; outrageous; worthless ...

Oh, for goodness sake!

Isn't it strange that just writing about Rescue Remedy seems to be helping already? Imagine if they do find out all that stuff about me. So what. I remember a session with Bob the therapist a few years ago. "What are you afraid of?" he asked one time. "Of falling into the abyss," I replied. "Hm ... It might be good to just allow yourself to fall into it then," he wondered quietly. I take a deep breath and feel a softening of the neck muscles.

This too shall pass ...

... Until the next time ...

Update:

Hey, Frank. I found out about imposter syndrome: Here and here.

There is even a Self-Quiz about it.

Doing nothing was the doing (Update)

Rosa

How she sat there,

the time right inside a place

so wrong it was ready.

That trim name with

its dream of a bench

to rest on. Her sensible coat.

Doing nothing was the doing:

the clean flame of her gaze

carved by a camera flash.

How she stood up

when they bent down to retrieve

her purse. That courtesy. 

Rita Dove, from On the Bus With Rosa Parks

Danny writes a wonderful piece about Rosa Parks here.

When the darkness rolls away

Quote of the day:

Find ways to allow people to exprience you. Will Craig from Huw's Weblog

I love songs that have something in them about emerging out of the dark to light, from night to day. Here's a line by Kate Wolf. I close my eyes when I sing it to experience the feeling, meaning of the words as they penetrate my soul:

The finest hour that I have seen, is one that comes between the edge of night and the break of day. That's when the darkness rolls away.

Lately I have been listening to Shalom Chanoch as I drive to and from work. In one of his songs about a lonely man walking in the dark and rainy night, he sings about emerging from night into the morning. Each time I hear one line, I choke up with tears:

My love, have no fear. Don't you know it is the most dark just before the [rising of the] dawn? (freely translated from the Hebrew here by me)

As I opened the door to let Molly and Ada out on this dark and cold morning, I realized that next week at this time it will be one hour earlier. The clocks are falling back. Bringing me closer to the edge of dawn. There is something mysterious, magical, and mystical for me about the edge of night, break of day, twilight or just before the dawn. I think I feel the same way about spring and autumn. It's the transition, moving between, changing to, emerging from, that excites and touches something deep inside me.

I am not sure why I am moved by this. Perhaps there is something hopeful about these times. However, I tend to think it is more about the tension between changing, emerging and unknown with repetition and the predictable. The flow between darkness to light and back again. Last night I described to Sally how it felt to hold Mar-Mar in my arms whispering to her that everything was going to be all right as she gave her last gasp of life. It occurred to me that I was not afraid in the face of death. Not when I was present at my father's bedside 25 years ago, nor with Charlie in 2001. In fact, each time I experienced similar feelings as when I am in the presence of twilight, edge of dawn or at the transitions between summer and winter. Death feels to me just like another one of those emerging, changing, predictable and yet, unknown transitions.

I want to befriend, and get to know more intimately, observe, prod, pry, explore the nature, characteristics and feelings attached with death and dying. There is something wondrous, beautiful, mysterious, real, and oh so meaningful for me about grief. For example, lately I have been thinking a lot about working with Hospice.

Yes, I know it is autumn right now as I write this. Leaves are changing and falling, squirrels and chipmunks are running around storing and eating the acorns that clunk down from our huge old oak tree outside the window. Pumpkins are everywhere, days are shorter, and Halloween is in the air. Oooooooh.

It is not the season that's affecting me - that's a coincidence.

It's the evolving me inside me.

Jack is back

Thanks for this, Jack ... I think

My friend, Sally

The last time I saw Sally, she was helping us pack plants and cats into a u-haul and car last December as we set out for Philadelphia early one morning.

Sally and I are old friends. We shared our children's adolescence together. Sally was my Buffalo family for those first, fragile and new cultural experience years when I first arrived on this fair continent. We spent many a Thanksgiving at her table and swam in her pool in the summers. On my birthday, Sally would make my favorite meal and when scuds were flying into Israel, she brought by a pot of chicken soup as I worried about my family far away. Sally picked us up and moved us from Williamsville to Clarence and then again from Clarence into the city, and when all was lost and I was so down, down, down, she arrived at my door step with money for me to buy a car and a coat.

Sally shared words of wisdom that helped me through some dark and uncertain hours. One of the things she said I have carried with me all these years: "Tammy, it will all be different by April." She calls me Tammy. Sally always made me play games. Card and board games. She made me draw and sing, write and play. She made me laugh and laugh until tears rolled down our cheeks. Once we had a fight in Clarence Town Park. We yelled at each other like two sisters. She took care of my son and I her daughter.

We live on either sides of Pennsylvania now. But, today, Sally is coming to visit. And I can't wait.

Sands of Time

We bloggers love to blog and then we love to meet. Gee I would have loved to have been there!

Quotes of the day:

It's not quite a blog, but it's pretty good for government work. Sandhill Trek

My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends -
It gives a lovely light! (Edna St. Vincent Millay's poem, First Fig - from Time Goes By)