Sunday, April 27, 2008

Sunday Morning Off-Topic

This morning is it cool and gray out, after a night of furious thunderstorms; I kept losing the network as I worked here at the kitchen table during the storm. The kitty is crouched on the windowsill hoping to eat a bird, her ears are perked up, she sits motionless, wide-eyed, a natural predator reacting to something she sees, unable to quite account for the complicating fact that there is a sheet of glass between her and the sparrows that dance around our bird-feeders. She has a second reason for sitting there, too -- she can taunt the dog safely from that position. He's a little Cairn, he can see her on the sill but he's too small to reach her. She'll turn to face him and wave a paw at him, sometimes boxing him in the face. If he's really noisy about it, she'll leap off the sill and onto the back of the chair, where she'll find the most precarious way to balance, reaching through the slats of the open back of the chair so she can punch him if he gets near, but making it as complicated as she can, just for the challenge of it.

The dog chases the cats, but it is obvious to anyone that they own the place. He makes noise, he can provoke them to run at times, but ... they eat his food, they drink his water, when Mama makes sandwiches the cats go to the front row in case a piece of meat "accidentally" falls to the floor (she's too nice to them), while puppy waits sadly behind them.

It's an odd kind of hierarchy of predators. He loves making their lives miserable -- there are two cats -- and in their way they enjoy the game, too. Salem is the queen of the place, she walks past the dog slowly, sits where he can see, looking him calmly in the eye as he comes yapping, hopping like an idiot. Her favorite moment is when we bring him into the house on his leash. She always happens to be strolling casually just inside the door as we come in -- he lunges, yip-yipping, yanking on the leash, and he can't reach her. She has it timed perfectly, she moseys across the room toward the cat-door to the basement, which he can't fit through. It drives him crazy, she disappears just as we unsnap the leash and he is released to go eat the kitty-cat. Salem loves having somebody to despise, it seems to make her life complete.

We hang the bird-feeders where we can see them from the kitchen and dining room. This last week a squirrel got up there and knocked the whole sunflower-bell down, we don't usually mind if the squirrels have some, but that was not nice. We have nuthatches, downy woodpeckers, flickers, wrens, goldfinches, mourning doves on the ground where the seed falls, plus the usual ones, starlings, sparrows. Did you know that starlings can learn to talk? They are related to minahs. When I was a paperboy, a lady on my route had a minah that would say "Hello?" when I knocked on the door. I would stand out there a long time, expecting to collect my money when in fact there was nobody home, no human anyway. I recently read a news story from England where a parrot taught the other parrots at the pet shop to cuss. They said English things like "Bollocks" and "Bloody this-and-that." Wouldn't it be funny if there was a flock of foul-mouthed starlings?

I kind of don't like the starlings. They're big and they tend to chase the other birds away. We have a birdhouse over by the driveway, like an apartment, there are six units in it, and sparrows try to nest there but the starlings go in and do something, I don't know if they eat the sparrows' eggs or the chicks or what, but you can tell it's an ugly scene. The sparrows have chewed the openings to the apartment units so they're wider, and then last year they stuffed grass and paper into the openings so you can't get in on one side. I have no idea what they think they're doing, but they have some big idea there, and they work very hard at it -- yesterday I saw a sparrow perched on the wire with a piece of cloth in his mouth that was almost as big as him.

I doubt you would call a starling a "predator," really, I'm sure the kitten here (she's a couple of years old, still young) thinks of the starling as "prey." I suppose it's relative, to the sparrow the starling is bad news. This cat, Evie, is a good one -- by which I mean to say, she is a pain in the butt. She loves people and she also loves to break things, tear things up, she likes to sit on the toilet seat and splash the water all over the floor. Lampshades have no future with her in the house. Plants that hang down, macrame, forget it. Something sitting on a table, forget it. Something like a salt shaker is just waiting to be knocked over, she can't resist. She plays cat and mouse with the dog, where she's the cat. It doesn't speak that well for the dog, does it? He's sure he's chasing her, she's seeing if she can balance with each foot on a different surface, with her head upside down, reaching through the chair-slats to bat at him, it's a game for her but he's pretty sure he's going to be eating the cat in a few minutes, he's going to get her this time. But, you know, dogs are intelligent. Cats are too dumb to learn tricks, a dog can learn to do what you tell it to do. There is a moral to that story.

Well, that's my house this quiet Sunday morning. WPFW just played part of a speech by Barbara Jordan in 1974, now they're playing a gospel song, they're singing "This ground is holy ground." The DJ is explaining now, these singers are church elders from different ethnic backgrounds. Wow, they're from all over the world. I see, it was the Annual Prayer Vigil for the Earth, their web site is HERE. Pretty cool, I guess.

I'm up a little bit early this morning, I don't know why. "My" show comes on at nine, it's a few hours of guitar music mostly, and other stringed instruments. Most of the day they play good stuff, blues, old-school, jazz, on this station. I don't mind the top-forty format but it doesn't hold my attention very long. I'd rather be surprised.

This has been a great week for my seventeen-year-old. He's with his friend in Daytona Beach. The friend has an old Volkswagen bus that he's fixed up a little bit, and they drove it down there. They planned ahead, you know, got a case of ramen and a case of Krispy Kremes. Well, you have to eat, you know. They were going to go to Myrtle Beach, but the night before they were going to leave the third kid, a girl, got in some trouble with her parents and they wouldn't let her go -- you go from splitting expenses three ways to two ways and everybody gets hit pretty hard. So they threw out their plans and decided to go somewhere else. They went to Google Earth, closed their eyes and moved the cursor around, and it ended up on Port Orange, Florida. So that's where they are, it's right next to Daytona. He said "It could have been Kansas." Tell me, does that make you a little bit jealous? To be seventeen, cruising down the highway in a VW bus, going someplace you don't know? Man, I think I could handle that! He calls, sends cell-phone pictures, it sounds like an excellent time. They drove straight down there without stopping, but they decided to come back slower, along the coast, spending the night halfway.

When I was twenty or so I hitch-hiked all over the country. It's hard to explain, but let's say I ended up with three hundred dollars from a bail fund after a riot, never mind I'm not going to go into that but the charges of remaining at the scene were thrown out and there was nobody to give the bail money back to. We had three hundred bucks, stuck out our thumbs, went from Phoenix to Steamboat Springs, Boulder, Boston, New York City, Long Island, New Hampshire. I got a job in New Hampshire for a couple of months, working on the highways in Swanzey, got enough money to go around to Niagara and back to Arizona. Shortly after that I read Kerouac's On The Road and was completely unimpressed -- isn't everybody's life just like that?

You don't hitch-hike any more. Recently somebody asked me why that is. All I could think of was Charles Manson. Is there a reason you can't stick out your thumb and accept a ride from a stranger? Is there a reason you can't stop and let somebody ride with you, to share a little conversation and help them out? Everybody's just afraid of everybody any more. When I was in high school, my girlfriend lived all the way across town, and I'd go out after school and stick out my thumb and I'd be there as fast as if I'd driven myself.

It sounds like the Day of Silence went well. You might have seen, one teacher who comments here said that 250 students at his school participated in it. Tomorrow the anti-gay groups want to do something, wear t-shirts that put down gay people of something. I don't expect it to be any big deal, I suppose we'll hear about it. You understand that I am comparing people like the Citizens for a Responsible Whatever to my dog, who thinks he's the big predator chasing the cats.

26 Comments:

Anonymous Andrew B. said...

Jim,
I came across this piece from across the pond: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article3827964.ece

Pretty interesting, and I think she's absolutely right.

April 27, 2008 5:20 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Andrea- not anon
Two topics
When I was 20, I hitch hiked around England and during college in Philly.Today I would be scared to offer someone a ride. I feel bad sometimes when I am driving and see an older person or a woman with a child waiting for a bus. I am not thinking they will kill me or rob me(I do think that about some hitchhikers I see) but I do think- lawsuit - over something.

Don't compare your dog to the Showerheads. The dog finds it insulting.

April 27, 2008 5:27 PM  
Blogger Emproph said...

"Did you know that starlings can learn to talk?"

No I did not, but this is fascinating...

YouTube darling starling:
Talking Bird WeeWoo the Talking Starling

I wasn’t sure if it was real at first, but a couple minutes into it, the guy starts talking back to the bird, and then the bird’s looking right up at the camera, and so then you can see his throat feathers moving in exact time to the words being spoken. Too much!

April 27, 2008 8:07 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"It sounds like the Day of Silence went well. You might have seen, one teacher who comments here said that 250 students at his school participated in it."

Oh, brother. 250 students were quiet about all that persecution they are having in schools when the school admonishes other students to "respect" their protest. Protests are supposed to be against "the man". Gay advocates are "the man" in MCPS.

When I was in college, the gay groups would sponsor "blue jean" day. Everyone was supposed to wear blue jeans on a certain day to support gay rights. Then the loonies would make statements like "I thought I was going to cry. Everywhere you looked people were wearing blue jeans and supporting us." Of course, that's what most college students wore every day anyway. Similarly, there are probably 250 quiet students in most schools every day.

Use your thinkin' mind!

April 27, 2008 9:16 PM  
Anonymous Derrick said...

AnonFreak said, "Protests are supposed to be against "the man". Gay advocates are "the man" in MCPS."

So, with that thought process, people with physical disabilities are also "the man" in MCPS because they are included in our non-discrimination clause. Stop whining, it's pathetic.

April 27, 2008 10:45 PM  
Blogger Emproph said...

"Protests are supposed to be against "the man". Gay advocates are "the man" in MCPS."

Indeed. As I posted earlier at Soulforce:

I think it’s just like with the hate crimes legislation. It’s a hatred that's easy to exploit because anything that portrays homosexuality as the victim, portrays “sin” as the victim.

And since “sin” is the be-all end-all of human oppression,
And since homosexuality is the purest form of the manifestation of sin in nature (ie; the most unatural nature),
And since they derive their identity, not by their love of love, but by their love of hating evil (the absence of love),

Then DOS represents the message that Satan itself is the victim.

-or that “sin” is being portrayed as the victim
-or that the source of human oppression is being portrayed as the victim.

They’re seeing this in the exact same infuriating way that we do as far as unfairness goes.

Furthermore, they see this message as being translated to an audience that is MOST receptive to it, captive adolescent-students, and the “very least among us.”

But they can’t wrap their brains around how to condemn it. Political-perception-wise speaking, it’s not only not ill-intentioned, it’s in the name of helping to prevent ill-intention.

So they have literally been relegated to claiming that silence itself is disruptive -- despite the fact that students are indeed required to verbally respond in class when necessary.

And by claiming that the most definitively peaceful form of drawing attention to significant unnecessary violence, is somehow in actuality, significant violence against them, they expose themselves for the intellectually challenged perverts that they are.

Either they really believe the stuff they’re saying, or they are blindly believing in someone who does - or both.

April 27, 2008 11:22 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"The kitty is crouched on the windowsill hoping to eat a bird,"

Do you have any scientific data to support this ludicrous statement? Cats should not be subjected to your stereotyping everytime they look at another animal.

"So, with that thought process, people with physical disabilities are also "the man" in MCPS because they are included in our non-discrimination clause."

But you see, Drick, people with disabilities aren't whining. Gays are. And they are bringing their greivances where the authority supports them. If they had any guts, they'd go protest where they actually have a grievance. Go to Afghanistan and refuse to speak to the Taliban.

Before you say it, I realize we're overlapping groups here. Gays do have a mental disability.

April 28, 2008 8:28 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Andrea-not anon
MN Anon knows nothing- and proves it again and again. Protests are frequently to support some cause or the rights of others- not against the "man". MN anon writing from his little computer makes fun of what I do but I am proud to have stood up for Burma, Darfur, Israel, students with disabilities and gay people among others.

Hey, I hear pretty soon everyone who wants to move to MC will have to be gay. I am also looking at the extremely strong showing Republicans are going to make in MC elections against Praisner on the Council and Donna Edwards in Congress-

April 28, 2008 8:36 AM  
Anonymous Derrick said...

It's obvious that AnonFreak has a mental disability since she ignores science.

April 28, 2008 9:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"Anonymous"
Perhaps you should follow your own suggestion and move to Afghanistan yourself. There you will not have to deal with gays who are out and I am sure you would ardently support the policies of imprisoning, torturing, and killing GLBT people. It would be an Edenic, blissful place to live for people like you, especially since you have such a problem with living here in MOntgomery County. And...you need to consult with a psychotherapist about your own "mental disability." Your sickness overwhelms any scintilla of humanity you might have within you.
Diogenes

April 28, 2008 10:35 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Andrea

Getting together in a friendly environment is not protest. There's no risk involved and the party being appealed to can easily avoid notice. Making a statement when all your hearers are likely to laud you is basically performance art.

The rain thing is a nice touch though.

Now let's all wear blue jeans until our brothers in sexual freedom are free! It's taking a chance but someone's gotta do it.

Not exactly Ghandi sitting before the British troops. Not exactly MLK facing the police dogs of Brimingham. Not exactly Abbie Hoffman yelling at Mayor Daley's police. Not exactly the anonymous Chinese guy standing in front of the tank.

Not exactly much of anything!

April 28, 2008 10:44 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"especially since you have such a problem with living here in MOntgomery County"

I was born here and lived here most of my life. Never had a problem. TTFers with their backing from national lunatic fringe groups are the ones that are always whining about how unfair the local atmosphere is to "sexual minorities". If you want to live in a decaying society, move to France. You should have a few decades before the Muslims take over and the tolerance of the U.S. starts to look pretty good to you.

April 28, 2008 10:50 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Andrea- not anon
I certainly am not the people you mention - I don't have the same sense of self-importance that you and your sad little Showerhead friends do- but I have faced riot police and police horses. People like you- who mostly hate and scoff- have opinions and ideas which people like me disregard. I have no idea why some people here bother to address the actual nonsense you write.

April 28, 2008 11:34 AM  
Anonymous Derrick said...

Just a note... Not one person is celebrating the pro-hate and pro-discrimination "Day of Truth (lies)" at my school in MCPS today.

However, I am getting a lot of emails from teachers and parents of students at my school telling me how much they appreciate me promoting tolerance in our community.

April 28, 2008 11:59 AM  
Anonymous Robert said...

Students who participate in the DOS and declare to their peers their support for lgbt people are risking being targeted by bullies in their schools (even in liberal MoCo). On the DOS, I've seen deliberate harassment in such cases. Students in less tolerant communities are displaying a great deal of courage, risking harassment, bullying, and ostracism.

I know many teachers in our local school districts (including MCPS) who are not "out", who are in fact deliberately deceitful about their sexual orientation or gender identity/expression, specifically because they fear harassment from students (even teachers fear student bullies).

To be honest, Anonymous, Theresa and Regina, I think you foster this fear-filled environment. The Day of Silence encourages tolerance and ending harassment and bullying, and it takes courage for students to participate. You contemnation and despite of these youth paints you in a terrible light.

Robert

April 28, 2008 12:19 PM  
Anonymous Derrick said...

I agree with you, Robert.

Even though we have sexual orientation in our non-discrimination clause, I do in fact fear being bullied by students (as well as workplace bullies). However, I take those moments to teach that tolerance should be practiced by everyone.

It's quite sad how Theresa Rickman, et. al. want to keep minorities repressed and silent. That just isn't very nice.

April 28, 2008 1:54 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

you are entitled to your free speech Derrick.

you are not entitled to hijack the school agenda which should be about reading writing and arithmetic for a social experiment.

obviously this turns the school into a social battlefield. the school should try to avoid this and concentrate on what they have been assigned to do... educate kids. they have not been given the approval of parents to try to indoctrinate them, though I realize that is clearly a goal of yours and Roberts.

when kids SAT scores are plummeting, I would suggest we focus on the basic and stay out of subjects that belong at home.

theresa

April 28, 2008 5:55 PM  
Anonymous Derrick said...

Theresa-

I don't teach sexual education. I stick to my subject matter, thanks.

However, the Sex Ed. curriculum can teach children much more than their parents may want/can/feel comfortable teaching them (for various reasons).

Our students need tolerance training, Theresa. There isn't a day I walk down the hall way that I don't head the HORRIBLE words of kids calling each other, "nigger", "faggot", "chink". You have the right to keep your children out of public schools, but I, for one, believe in public education.

And with SAT scores dropping...do you seriously believe that these tests are a true way to measure a student's full potential? Nope- not at all.

However, colleges most certainly want to see that the students they accept into their programs ARE mature, open and informed individuals about the world around them.

April 28, 2008 6:19 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"There isn't a day I walk down the hall way that I don't head the HORRIBLE words of kids calling each other, "nigger", "faggot", "chink"."

Wasn't it Tommy Lee suggesting a mandatory MANNERS class ?

Words like that (overheard by any teacher) in a private schools get kids suspended.

perhaps the public schools should do the same.

thanks for reinforcing my decision to keep my kids out of public schools was the right one, Derrick.

You don't hear that sort of language in private schools. Perhaps the public schools should start enforcing discipline.

April 28, 2008 7:45 PM  
Anonymous Derrick said...

AnonFreak said:

"You don't hear that sort of language in private schools. Perhaps the public schools should start enforcing discipline."

Having taught in a private school, I completely disagree wit you, AnonFreak. It's actually worse because some private schools whole-heartedly promote discriminatory words, especially if they use the Bible as their fire.

Oh, we do enforce discipline, thanks.

However, when we do, it's people like you that think that we are violating a student's First Amdt. Right to free speech. Sad indeed!

April 28, 2008 7:56 PM  
Anonymous grantdale said...

reading writing and arithmetic

aaah, yes... and how very useful those 3-Rs often prove to be.

* for reading the filthy lies from PFOX et al

* for writing letters to local papers full of, well, more filthy lies

* for counting the number of times you can pull off a faked stunt at Rio...

It's very difficult to learn anything at school if you're dead. Certain subjects do indeed "belong at home" where they will be more appreciated. Such as, disrespect and dishonesty.

April 28, 2008 8:12 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

What a vision for educating our children you have, Theresa! Reading, writing, and arithmetic. As we live in such an uncomplicated world, no doubt your private school, which apparently teaches only reading, writing, and arithmetic is more than adequately preparing your children and the other children who have the misfortune to attend one of these Rote Learning Academies to face the complexities of the adult world they will be facing as they approach adulthood.
Sounds like you would be a wonderful, and contributing,inhabitant of that quaint little Mormon town in Eldorado,Texas - where the children are not "indoctrinated". Somewhow I feel you will be much more at peace there than in "decaying" Montgomery County. Life in La-la land is sweet, non-threatening, and simple for sociopathic people like you.
Diogenes



































































inhabitant of that quaint little Mormon town in Texas: Eldorado. Somewhow I feel you will be much more at peace there than in "decaying" Montgomery County. Life in La-la land is great for sociopathic people like you.

April 28, 2008 9:47 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"It's actually worse because some private schools whole-heartedly promote discriminatory words, especially if they use the Bible as their fire.

Oh, we do enforce discipline, thanks."

By your definition of "discrimination", any "enforced discipline" would be discriminatory since it would be biased against behavioral minorities. You can't say concepts only apply to sexual behaviors and not other behaviors. If your looney ideas ever caught on, civilization would be set back for quite some time.

April 29, 2008 12:37 AM  
Blogger Emproph said...

Stunning said...
"By your definition of "discrimination", any "enforced discipline" would be discriminatory since it would be biased against behavioral minorities. You can't say concepts only apply to sexual behaviors and not other behaviors. If your looney ideas ever caught on, civilization would be set back for quite some time."
--
Exactly. Which is why there should be absolutely no legal distinction between consensual behavior, and behavior that is intended to harm others.

April 29, 2008 10:48 PM  
Blogger Emproph said...

Theresa Rickman said...
"you are entitled to your free speech Derrick.

you are not entitled to hijack the school agenda which should be about reading writing and arithmetic for a social experiment.

obviously this turns the school into a social battlefield. the school should try to avoid this and concentrate on what they have been assigned to do... educate kids. they have not been given the approval of parents to try to indoctrinate them, though I realize that is clearly a goal of yours and Roberts.

when kids SAT scores are plummeting, I would suggest we focus on the basic and stay out of subjects that belong at home."

--
Rickman went on to think to herself that she would eventually like to teach classes on how to recognize hypocrisy, especially as it relates to the nature of psychological projection.

April 30, 2008 4:36 AM  
Anonymous Robert said...

I agree, Theresa, we should have classes (not lengthy ones, but still spend some time on it) on manners. I teach manners all day long. I will point out that people who complain about "polical correctness" are in fact asserting their right (as Americans) to be rude to other people and say things to them that they tell you they find offensive.

My goal, of course, is to teach a love of Latin and classical culture, with some admixture of English vocabulary and grammar.

What you call indoctrination is in fact an effort to make all my students feel safe in my classroom. I've been very clear that that means every single student, even students with whom I disagree, even students who are rude to me, even students who just can't stand me or my subject.

That effort does not extend to you. You have called me a murderer for being supportive of lgbt youth, now it's indoctrination that you accuse me of.

You've published my mental health history on your website (based on what I thought was a private communication with your friend Regina).

Regina has called me a hypocrite in the local press.

So you and your coterie, what kind of world are you looking for? Regina says it's an end to discrimantion against "ex-gays". You say it's privacy in showers.

I don't think so. Used to be, I thought it was exaggeration when people here spoke of bigotry and hatred; but you've convinced me. I think you absolutely loather queer people, and will do whatever you can to retain your rights to put us down. I bet it makes you feel a little better about yourself. Theresa, there aren't many people I don't like, but I don't like you. You are imo an archtypal bigot.

Robert

April 30, 2008 11:44 AM  

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