... are synonymous.
Every year on the first day of spring, I buy lightbulbs. I also do this ritual on the first day of fall. I buy every kind of lightbulb in my house ... which isn't as short a list as one might think. I have the regular 60 watters for lamps all over the house; the 40 watters for the chandolier over the kitchen table and sink (and a few lamps); the dining room chandolier - which is also the same 25 or 40 watters that are in the fan lights, the bathrooms, the hall fixtures; outdoor bulbs, indoor specialty bulbs for small lamps, the microwave, and the hutch illuminator. It's about $50+/- worth of bulbs. Twice a year.
I guess because it's daylight savings time in the spring I feel this need to ensure that I have the right lighting for the right task. I used to have these cool outside lights in the back yard, but they don't work right now and I don't why. Likewise, in the fall, I have the same need to illuminate my world with a certain ambiance. I have always loved lighting.
Since I've lived on my own for more than 35 years now, I get to control which lights are on or off. I love the holidays, for example, and usually keep the window candles on all night long.
I'm still not used to daylight savings time yet - and I personally find it offensive that the whole free world has to change their clocks because someone somewhere with some infinite wisdom decided this was a good thing to do. Personally, I hate it, but I have to comply during workdays.
Oh well. It is what it is. But in the meantime, I can do whatever I want whenever I want because I can turn on or off the lights and just do it.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
Friday, March 11, 2011
I want my life back
And this is the week it will happen.
Tonight, we finished YB11. Done. Shipped. Gone. It is there, awaiting retrieval from Pam's ftp site, and then she will process and send page proofs. In the meantime, we have, oh, 150 pages of proofs to return, and that will happen this week.
I have a newspaper to finish, a teaching certificate to renew, and classes to plan and teach. It sounds so simple by comparison to finishing a 304-page yearbook. The history of 2011 at Deep Run High School.
If you've never done a yearbook, you have no idea what is involved in the planning and the doing. Even my editors don't know what all is involved in the doing, though they have conceived and designed, written and edited, stayed long and worked hard, they have no clue what is necessary to make it possible for them to orchestrate an award-winning product.
Sometimes I wonder if I even know - and I've done seven of them now.
Today, for example, I hand-delivered two ads (tributes of students who died this year) to adults who will be the couriers ... messengers, to the grandmother of one child, to the parents of another. These pages may be the last time their child will be memorialized, remembered in print - with pictures taken of them and/or words they spoke or wrote before they died. These young men who died way before their time have become my responsibility now, and I needed to ensure that these tributes were worthy.
This morning during my planning time I cleaned up and made meaningful these tributes. I didn't know either of the boys personally, but I have processed what others have told me about them - researched, studied the words and the pictures, talked to the people at my school who loved them, who were their friends, their teachers and aides, friends of their parents or just people at my school who felt compassion for these boys.
Robert was a Nascar fan. I know Nascar from my time with Linwood, a Nascar fan (and former fiance of mine), so I know what they like. They like black and white checkered flags, and that needed to be in Robert's tribute. He died in a hospital from a body that could not withstand the disabilities he had been given, but he went to RIR and met his favorite Nascar driver, and that needed to be conveyed.
Luigi died of a drug overdose, a senior who became an integral part of the Deep Run's class of 2011 - when 508 seniors (plus or minus) stood together on Feb. 7, 2011 in the senior courtyard and raised their hands in the shape of a heart to the heavens two days after Luigi died. That tribute in the yearbook needed to be clear: an azure-blue sky with clouds needed to be that background - which occurred to me driving home last night after reviewing Luigi's "senior ad." It is there now.
These tasks are necessary for a good yearbook adviser to follow through with. I did that today. I found Luigi's best friend and showed him the ad. I delivered the proof to our attendance secretary who will take it to Luigi's parents this weekend. I delivered Robert's ad to his teachers and instructional aides who loved him and made his life better in those last few months that he spent in the children's hospital. These adults and students loved the ads/tributes. They were moved and so was I.
When all is said and done with each yearbook, I know how it happened. How the history of that year was reflected in that book - from the staff and their leadership team's conception of the theme and how it was implemented; the events and people who inspired and brought the theme to life. From the trials and tribulations along the way - the successes and the failures, the proverbial towel thrown in the air when I gave up trying to motivate the staff and move the book along on the course I knew it needed to take it to an award-winning level.
There comes a time that a good adviser must remove herself from the creation and let it take it's course. That is really hard to do when you know it can be so much better than it is, but it is NOT yours. It belongs to them. To the staff. To the school. They are all responsible for the content of their own history. Some of the details must be managed with kid gloves, others must be left to the staff to fly or flounder. They own it.
Then we wait with patient expectation and pray that the work we've done was enough.
And when that happens, the adviser gets her life back.
Tonight, we finished YB11. Done. Shipped. Gone. It is there, awaiting retrieval from Pam's ftp site, and then she will process and send page proofs. In the meantime, we have, oh, 150 pages of proofs to return, and that will happen this week.
I have a newspaper to finish, a teaching certificate to renew, and classes to plan and teach. It sounds so simple by comparison to finishing a 304-page yearbook. The history of 2011 at Deep Run High School.
If you've never done a yearbook, you have no idea what is involved in the planning and the doing. Even my editors don't know what all is involved in the doing, though they have conceived and designed, written and edited, stayed long and worked hard, they have no clue what is necessary to make it possible for them to orchestrate an award-winning product.
Sometimes I wonder if I even know - and I've done seven of them now.
Today, for example, I hand-delivered two ads (tributes of students who died this year) to adults who will be the couriers ... messengers, to the grandmother of one child, to the parents of another. These pages may be the last time their child will be memorialized, remembered in print - with pictures taken of them and/or words they spoke or wrote before they died. These young men who died way before their time have become my responsibility now, and I needed to ensure that these tributes were worthy.
This morning during my planning time I cleaned up and made meaningful these tributes. I didn't know either of the boys personally, but I have processed what others have told me about them - researched, studied the words and the pictures, talked to the people at my school who loved them, who were their friends, their teachers and aides, friends of their parents or just people at my school who felt compassion for these boys.
Robert was a Nascar fan. I know Nascar from my time with Linwood, a Nascar fan (and former fiance of mine), so I know what they like. They like black and white checkered flags, and that needed to be in Robert's tribute. He died in a hospital from a body that could not withstand the disabilities he had been given, but he went to RIR and met his favorite Nascar driver, and that needed to be conveyed.
Luigi died of a drug overdose, a senior who became an integral part of the Deep Run's class of 2011 - when 508 seniors (plus or minus) stood together on Feb. 7, 2011 in the senior courtyard and raised their hands in the shape of a heart to the heavens two days after Luigi died. That tribute in the yearbook needed to be clear: an azure-blue sky with clouds needed to be that background - which occurred to me driving home last night after reviewing Luigi's "senior ad." It is there now.
These tasks are necessary for a good yearbook adviser to follow through with. I did that today. I found Luigi's best friend and showed him the ad. I delivered the proof to our attendance secretary who will take it to Luigi's parents this weekend. I delivered Robert's ad to his teachers and instructional aides who loved him and made his life better in those last few months that he spent in the children's hospital. These adults and students loved the ads/tributes. They were moved and so was I.
When all is said and done with each yearbook, I know how it happened. How the history of that year was reflected in that book - from the staff and their leadership team's conception of the theme and how it was implemented; the events and people who inspired and brought the theme to life. From the trials and tribulations along the way - the successes and the failures, the proverbial towel thrown in the air when I gave up trying to motivate the staff and move the book along on the course I knew it needed to take it to an award-winning level.
There comes a time that a good adviser must remove herself from the creation and let it take it's course. That is really hard to do when you know it can be so much better than it is, but it is NOT yours. It belongs to them. To the staff. To the school. They are all responsible for the content of their own history. Some of the details must be managed with kid gloves, others must be left to the staff to fly or flounder. They own it.
Then we wait with patient expectation and pray that the work we've done was enough.
And when that happens, the adviser gets her life back.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Obladi, Oblada, LIfe goes on...
lalalala, life goes on.
Such a relevant song, even 30+ years later. I don't know Desmond and Molly Jones, but I know that song has gotten me through a number of days, hours, moments when I could/would rather have chewed up and spit out some major crap going on in my world.
Today I spewed out some choice profanities at lunch and was asked the rhetorical question "So, how do you really feel?"
I just can't get over how some people who are hired to do a job ask stupid questions after the fact. "Did you...(enter the thing they know they didn't tell you, but expected you to do here)?" That would be a no. You didn't tell me you needed me to do that. If you told me, I would have done it. A failure on your part does not make a failure on my part. It is/was your failure, and yours to own. Not only did you NOT tell me, but you make me sign a paper that says I will do everything you tell me and fail to tell me, no matter what. And you make me sign another paper saying you gave me this many tests, and you pull kids out of my room with theirs tests, and at the end of the test, you make me sign that I am returning everything (no mention that I sent the kid with their paper with somebody else to another location). So, if anybody else doesn't do their job, I am screwed.
A real obladi oblada moment. A series of them actually. Somebody else gets to CYA and I get to be screwed. And I'm the one who is trapped in a room with 25 (plus a new one who arrived today for the first time: "Welcome to my room. You get to take the most important test of the year today and I don't even know you. Your name isn't even in my grade book yet, but here you go. Take this test and pass it so I don't have to give you an exam on the last day of the year. And oh, by the way, you need to pass this in order to graduate.")
Yep. Obladi. And life does go on. There was a time when I would hold my breath, wait for the other shoe to drop, somebody to come and tell me about my failures. Today, I just pour another glass of wine and sing like nobody's listening. "In a couple of years..."
That's my favorite part, and it's not even in the song.
Such a relevant song, even 30+ years later. I don't know Desmond and Molly Jones, but I know that song has gotten me through a number of days, hours, moments when I could/would rather have chewed up and spit out some major crap going on in my world.
Today I spewed out some choice profanities at lunch and was asked the rhetorical question "So, how do you really feel?"
I just can't get over how some people who are hired to do a job ask stupid questions after the fact. "Did you...(enter the thing they know they didn't tell you, but expected you to do here)?" That would be a no. You didn't tell me you needed me to do that. If you told me, I would have done it. A failure on your part does not make a failure on my part. It is/was your failure, and yours to own. Not only did you NOT tell me, but you make me sign a paper that says I will do everything you tell me and fail to tell me, no matter what. And you make me sign another paper saying you gave me this many tests, and you pull kids out of my room with theirs tests, and at the end of the test, you make me sign that I am returning everything (no mention that I sent the kid with their paper with somebody else to another location). So, if anybody else doesn't do their job, I am screwed.
A real obladi oblada moment. A series of them actually. Somebody else gets to CYA and I get to be screwed. And I'm the one who is trapped in a room with 25 (plus a new one who arrived today for the first time: "Welcome to my room. You get to take the most important test of the year today and I don't even know you. Your name isn't even in my grade book yet, but here you go. Take this test and pass it so I don't have to give you an exam on the last day of the year. And oh, by the way, you need to pass this in order to graduate.")
Yep. Obladi. And life does go on. There was a time when I would hold my breath, wait for the other shoe to drop, somebody to come and tell me about my failures. Today, I just pour another glass of wine and sing like nobody's listening. "In a couple of years..."
That's my favorite part, and it's not even in the song.
Monday, March 7, 2011
Harry's Law
I love this show.
There was a time I wanted to be an attorney, and if I had ever really pursued that fleeting passion, I hope I might have been an attorney like Harry (Harriett Kohn) on "Harry's Law." She accepts cases that are morally necessary for her to defend. She doesn't make very much money at what she does, but she pursues justice with vigor and righteousness. I love that about her character. She surrounds herself with diversified people who have personalities out the yingyang, and as the show unfolds, each personality contributes nuggets of their own forms of justice, so very cleverly intertwined into each plot segment.
Tonight's show evolved around a drive-by shooting in which a young, poor black boy is victim, and his ghetto life wasn't good enough for the hospital to willingly help save him. Harry to the rescue as spokesperson for victim's rights, as well as another young black witness whose efforts to save his friend paid off - and who also identified a cop shooter. Ironically, the cop shooter becomes the organ donor whose liver saves the younger victim's life. The liver recipient lives; the cop shooter is arrested/served within moments of awakening, still flat on his back after his good deed.
Ironies surround this show and weave themselves throughout the plot twists. My favorite part was the use of the song "In the Ghetto" - especially at the end as Harry and her office mates leave the downtown hospital and walk past a gang hanging out across the street from the hospital. And in the show's final frames, the gang members are clearly no less likely to have been victims themselves of a society that has left them out to dry, given up on their ability to rise above their poverty, and have taken matters into their own hands for survival in an incredibly cruel and unjust world. I wondered if any of them realized what Harry had just done in the previous 24 hours: stood up for the original victim, gone after and convinced the hospital to save his life by performing the transplant knowing they would not be paid for saving another gang-banger wannabe by using a body part of yet another older gang member/cop killer.
This is one of those outstanding shows that makes me think I need to go back to law school. I wouldn't be in the "Legally Blonde" category of smart sistahs who pursue passions - but I'd like to think I could be just as successful as Harry. I certainly look the part, anyway.
There was a time I wanted to be an attorney, and if I had ever really pursued that fleeting passion, I hope I might have been an attorney like Harry (Harriett Kohn) on "Harry's Law." She accepts cases that are morally necessary for her to defend. She doesn't make very much money at what she does, but she pursues justice with vigor and righteousness. I love that about her character. She surrounds herself with diversified people who have personalities out the yingyang, and as the show unfolds, each personality contributes nuggets of their own forms of justice, so very cleverly intertwined into each plot segment.
Tonight's show evolved around a drive-by shooting in which a young, poor black boy is victim, and his ghetto life wasn't good enough for the hospital to willingly help save him. Harry to the rescue as spokesperson for victim's rights, as well as another young black witness whose efforts to save his friend paid off - and who also identified a cop shooter. Ironically, the cop shooter becomes the organ donor whose liver saves the younger victim's life. The liver recipient lives; the cop shooter is arrested/served within moments of awakening, still flat on his back after his good deed.
Ironies surround this show and weave themselves throughout the plot twists. My favorite part was the use of the song "In the Ghetto" - especially at the end as Harry and her office mates leave the downtown hospital and walk past a gang hanging out across the street from the hospital. And in the show's final frames, the gang members are clearly no less likely to have been victims themselves of a society that has left them out to dry, given up on their ability to rise above their poverty, and have taken matters into their own hands for survival in an incredibly cruel and unjust world. I wondered if any of them realized what Harry had just done in the previous 24 hours: stood up for the original victim, gone after and convinced the hospital to save his life by performing the transplant knowing they would not be paid for saving another gang-banger wannabe by using a body part of yet another older gang member/cop killer.
This is one of those outstanding shows that makes me think I need to go back to law school. I wouldn't be in the "Legally Blonde" category of smart sistahs who pursue passions - but I'd like to think I could be just as successful as Harry. I certainly look the part, anyway.
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Spring
It's in the air.
And all the promises that it brings. Warmth. Love. Light. The renewal of green lawns, trees, shrubs, bulbs, flowers, leaves. Days of living larger and longer. More time to be alert and awake in daylight. Sun. Rain. Heat. Electric bills. Pollen. Chirping birds, bees, bugs. Grilling out and living outdoors.
Could it be significant that "daylight savings time" creates hours of productivity? Could the extra light signify more life to be lived? I wonder.
I want to do more, be more, have more time to give, get and do. Will that be the reward of this change in all things? The sacrifice is sleep.
Is it worth it? The proverbial rhetorical question looms large over the next few weeks. We have no choice in the matter. It's already been decided that the world will usurp the hour and require us to adapt to the new time and space. How will we cope?
I've accepted that I cannot take kids to NYC that week, that I will not give up the hour, the days, the freedom that I need to adapt to the new time. Honestly, I've been forcing myself to awaken earlier this past week - just to get used to the idea of the time change. A week early. Perhaps a gift to myself - to see if I can do it successfully and not be mad when I have to wake up at 5:30 instead of 6:30 a.m. I've always hated daylight saving time. At least the change that is forced upon me.
How do others feel about this forced change?
I wonder.
And all the promises that it brings. Warmth. Love. Light. The renewal of green lawns, trees, shrubs, bulbs, flowers, leaves. Days of living larger and longer. More time to be alert and awake in daylight. Sun. Rain. Heat. Electric bills. Pollen. Chirping birds, bees, bugs. Grilling out and living outdoors.
Could it be significant that "daylight savings time" creates hours of productivity? Could the extra light signify more life to be lived? I wonder.
I want to do more, be more, have more time to give, get and do. Will that be the reward of this change in all things? The sacrifice is sleep.
Is it worth it? The proverbial rhetorical question looms large over the next few weeks. We have no choice in the matter. It's already been decided that the world will usurp the hour and require us to adapt to the new time and space. How will we cope?
I've accepted that I cannot take kids to NYC that week, that I will not give up the hour, the days, the freedom that I need to adapt to the new time. Honestly, I've been forcing myself to awaken earlier this past week - just to get used to the idea of the time change. A week early. Perhaps a gift to myself - to see if I can do it successfully and not be mad when I have to wake up at 5:30 instead of 6:30 a.m. I've always hated daylight saving time. At least the change that is forced upon me.
How do others feel about this forced change?
I wonder.
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