Monday, July 27, 2009

Sometimes love comes around and it knocks you down

So, while I was in Arizona, and developing since I returned here, my youngest sister is in the process of making herself largely vegetarian. This is a decision she has come to all on her own, based on research and predictions about the damage that raising animals to eat is doing to our environment. While I don't see myself joining her ASAP, I've agreed to some solidarity with her by no longer buying beef and pork products, limiting my meat intake to poultry and fish, at this point. And I'm impressed with little Deborah. She's really taken what she's learned from her classes, her reading, and her experiences, and turned it into action.

I'm sort of wondering when I stopped caring about things like that, again. While I was in school, social justice, environmental issues, political and economic debates mattered to me! I would actively look for ways to learn more and/or do what I could to make things right. You don't get to be co-leader of Justice Matters for nothing! :) But then I graduated, started working, and essentially lost a large part of it.

There are moments when I feel that familiar swelling of desire and hope for tomorrow - talking to Deborah about being involved in a community garden at Calvin, seeing my students begin to understand and take ownership of the concept of recycling, reading the stories of friends who are offering valuable services to people in far away lands, listening to the black grandmothers at church give tearful thanks for the graduation of their grandchildren from high school, making a meal from locally grown foods - some out of my backyard.

I realize that, as a middle school teacher, I am (or have the potential to be) an instrumental and valuable part of the network of people around the world who are actively seeking to make it a better place. I went through this over a year ago, but I feel I need to keep reminding myself that teaching children, not to mention underprivileged children in a rough part of Chicago, is no less cosmically important than digging wells in Africa or immunizing children in South America or rescuing slaves in Bangladesh. Maybe the problem is that it is, by and large, so very thankless. But then I get frustrated with myself for needing thanks. Why do I feel like I need a pat on the back, or a thoughtful gift, or a good word put in to my superiors?

I'm here because this is where the action is. At the risk of sounding hackneyed, these kids are on the front lines of an all-out war being fought in their city and in their culture. Ironically, fighting on these lines with them, I have become deeply embedded in a culture that could care less about things like becoming a vegetarian because meat's bad for the environment, or whether or not these peaches were grown organically and locally. Maybe that's the real tension here.

Maybe I'm not revisiting my post-college identity crisis, maybe I'm just coming to terms with the fact that I am trying to be equally a part of two different cultures: the culture of my students, with its hyper-sexual beat-based music, intimate family values, and love for Flamin' Hot Cheetos, and the culture of my sister and much of my college experience, with its organic/local/homespun emphases and global vision for change. In reality, both of these cultures want to see the world become a better place. Absolutely, right at the core, I believe that my students and my sister have the same vision.

I'll keep you posted on my mission to become one of the first hip-hop hippie chicks. I sort of ignored it last year, but I think it might be my destiny. :)

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

I've got toooooo much *clap clap* time on my hands

Another classic rock title, this one a little bit more obscure. No cheating this time. I'll write you a tribute in my next blog entry if you can get this one, simply from your outstanding knowledge of early 80's music (hint).

But for real, I haven't done much since I got back. I'm becoming way more into CSI and its offspring than I would like to admit. I've done a little bit of cooking/baking, but hardly enough to say I'm using my time well. I'd tend my garden, but I've only got one monster tomato plant and a kind of piddly pepper plant, so watering those takes about 45 seconds. I spend a lot of time blog surfing. Not even anything good. So I am resolved to use the rest of this summer in a much more productive and cosmically beneficial way. Keep me accountable to perform the following:

- Get some exercise. I've got a wedding in a month and a half that I have to look smokin' for. I'm thinking muscle toning five times a week, plus a few good walks a couple times a week, which can be facilitated by...
- Getting downtown. I'm a quarter mile from a train that takes me into the heart of downtown Chicago, one of the primo downtowns in the country. I've got free access to pretty much any and all museums with my teacher ID, and Katy has informed me that I need to spend some quality time in the public library. Check and mate.
- Find somewhere to live. As of my understanding right now, I have no roommates and nowhere that's planning on me to stay as of the end of August. I need to amend one, if not both of those situations...
- Expand my culinary repertoire. Right now I'm decent at making about six things. I'd like to improve upon the quality and quantity of my recipes. Creative suggestions?
- Read, damn it. I haven't really pulled out a book for pleasure since high school, and now I've got all this time. Katy suggested some Barbara Kingsolver, which I am in the process of obtaining, but I'd be happy to receive other recommendations for books to tantalize my medula oblongata. (I don't think that's right at all, but fortunately no one else took Human Anatomy and Physiology who reads this...?)
- Simplify. I have quite a bit of stuff, which is typical for a teacher. We tend to regard anything and everything as a potential teaching tool. But I've got loads of crap that I'm sure I could get rid of. I also need to review my expenses and figure out why I've stopped being able to save any money. Both of these actions will make it easier for me to move, when the time comes.
- Prepare for this coming school year. I made it through my first year, which is about 3/4 of the battle, I'm told. But I have a lot of planning, praying, and self-evaluating to do in order to help myself be an all-around better teacher than I was last year. Readysetgo!

So, there it is. I think part of my being able to accomplish this will mean avoiding the television. I think I will only watch ESPN for the rest of the summer. That will inspire fitness and provide some athletic entertainment, right? Right.