Shannon Writes...

Goodbye, 2009.

2009 wasn't a great year for me, but it didn't suck nearly as badly as 2008 did. 2008 was a year of true tragedy. 2009 was just kind of annoying at times, a year in which someone spilled water on my phone at the gym, and my hearing broke (also at the gym), and my incompetent boss dragged out his firing for months, and I'm now part of the effort to clean up his mess, and so on. We dodged the really big Scary -- my dad walked away from a brutal car accident (I just saw the photos of the car and him, and my goodness, he is LUCKY). My Godson survived open heart surgery, under 6 months old. My mom's cancer hasn't reappeared. I haven't had to teach any kids from hell. My friend Gretel was inches away from being in a head-on collusion on Monday, and missed it. Big Scary, I saw you coming, but you swerved at the last minute. So, thank you, 2009, for that.

2010 is going to be a big year, I can tell. I know changes are afoot. I can feel them coming. I'm bored with some things in my life, and tired of others. A list of resolutions is one thing. An upwardly swirling zeitgeist is something else, and that's what I feel is happening to me, currently. There are so many things I'm tired of dealing with in my life, so many people who wear me down, and yet, so much that I have that's worth my time, energy and love. I want to recreate my life to put those people and things front and center, and lost sight of what was so compellingly intriguing about the bores, snores, whiners, liars, cheats, lazy and jealous. Especially when I'm the boring, snoring, whiney, lying, cheating, lazy, jealous one. :)

This year, I've seen my loved ones walk right up to the cliff, even off, and then get caught by at upward draft of the winds of grace, hope and luck, to be placed safely back on safe ground. I realize now in a way that I never did before: life is short. Why work so hard to get what I don't even want?

Adieu, 2009. Welcome, 2010. And God bless us all, everyone.

Pennsylvania Joy.

Is everyone having a good holiday break? I sure hope so! I have been in Pennsylvania (Western Pennsylvania, thankyouverymuch) for the last five days and it is doing me a world of good. I knew I was tired when I arrived, but I was unaware that I was so tired that I would require twice daily naps of more than a half-hour each (I notoriously usually take only a 20-minute nap, described by my friend Jane as follows: "You closed your eyes, your breathing slowed, you sighed and you woke back up. HOW DID YOU DO THAT??"). I certainly hope no one in my family expected crazy, rollickin' times with me. They did not get them.

Anyway, I have participated in the following Westsylvania activities: Eating of Fried Foods; Watching of Sleet Change to Snow and Then to Rain and Back; Wandering Around a Mall In Which Many Stores are Closed But Not the Deer Processing Store; Cheering on the Steelers (We won!); Sneaking Onto the Back Porch Where the Christmas Cookies are Kept to Eat Said Cookies; Trying to Figure Out How I Could Buy a Home Here; Letting My Mom Take Care of Me.

It's been good. I hope you are too.

Swoon.

I want to go to there. (I've only been to the Trinity College Library in Dublin, but I would seriously have moved in there if I could have.)

20 Most Beautiful Libraries in the World

Oh, hi there!

I haven't forgotten about you, little blog. It's just been a killer two weeks since Thanksgiving. Not only were grades due for the end of the marking period (always a laborious process, not made easier by my decision to assign one last Regents essay to the kids for their final), but I also took on a huge problem that needs fixin' at the school. I don't want to go into too great a detail, firstly to protect my students' privacy, and secondly, because this blog posting could then become a huge rant of justified (COMPLETELY JUSTIFIED) anger against the previous administration of our school. So suffice it to say that this problem isn't easy to solve, nor is it especially fun to address, as we are all too aware that if we don't fix it correctly, dozens of our kids' futures may be in peril. However, I, along with others have suspected/known that this problem existed for a long time, and while it was disheartening to see the full scope and extent of it, it also felt wonderful to actually do something to try to address it. Thus, I spent about 9 hours this week holed up with a colleague whom I've really come to admire, huddled in my principal's office, trying to make things right. And you know what? The purity of that desire really can power one through difficult work. 

Anyhoodle, that seems to be at a stopping point for now (we'll pick up with Round 2 after Christmas) and my grades are done. (Plus, as I just pointed out to Roo, if I don't assign anything else that needs to be graded, I don't have any more grades to do until after Christmas... kidding...kidding...). So hopefully, I'll be able to swing back around here more often. Today brings decorating my little tree and the commencement of what I like to call Operation Bring in Da Cookies, Bring in Da Crafts. Whee! 

Thank you.

Thank you, Mom. Thank you, Dad. Thank you, Justin. Thank you, Mum-mum. Thank you, Aunt Nedra. Thank you, Gladys. Thank you, Grand-mum. Thank you, Pap-pap. Thank you, Kate. Thank you, Roo. Thank you, Corey. Thank you, Teenie. Thank you, Paul. Thank you, Avery. Thank you, Melarina. Thank you, Robert. Thank you, Susan Faith. Thank you, David. Thank you, Sue. Thank you, Kevin. Thank you, Jim. Thank you, Tim. Thank you, Amy. Thank you, Lesly. Thank you, Emily. Thank you, Max. Thank you, Jackie. Thank you, Clarence. Thank you, Steve. Thank you, Duck. Thank you, Gordon. Thank you, Vic. Thank you, Jen. Thank you, Kiri. Thank you, Mara. Thank you, Dave. Thank you, Odin. Thank you, Rachel. Thank you, Magda. Thank you, Danielle. Thank you, Erica. Thank you, Sheila. Thank you, Ed. Thank you, Kelli. Thank you, Josh. Thank you, JM. Thank you, Esra. Thank you, Nance. Thank you, Maya. Thank you, Ledonna. Thank you, Kathy. Thank you, Liz. Thank you, Eddine. Thank you, Audrey. Thank you, Roxanne. Thank you, Michelle. Thank you, Isaiah. Thank you, Jim. Thank you, Melissa. Thank you, Jeff. Thank you, Rob. Thank you, Ed. Thank you, Martha. Thank you, Faith. Thank you, John. Thank you, Crystal. Thank you, Mike. Thank you, Gretel. Thank you, Matt. Thank you, Aaron. Thank you, Matt. Thank you, Angie. Thank you, Neisha. Thank you, Monica. Thank you, Janelle. Thank you, Gina. Thank you, Lisa. Thank you, Mark. Thank you, people I may have left off inadvertently, but who will forgive me. Thank you, everyone who reads this blog. Thank you, everyone who reads my VT column. Thank you, everyone who's gone to, produced or been a part of one of my plays. Thank you, students. Thank you, people whose names I don't know, but who work to make my life safer, smoother, kinder or lovelier everyday (the subway conductors, the bus drivers, the sanitation workers, the cops, the waiters, the airline people, the museum curators, the janitors...) Thank you, people who grow and make the food I eat, the clothes I wear, the books I love and the other things I have. Thank you, doctors who have fixed up my dad and my godson so they're still here with us. Thank you, nurses who watched over Mum-mum as she passed from this life. Thank you, people who have prayed for me without ever knowing me. I am waving this Thanksgiving, and saying thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Writing. Falling.

I miss writing. I haven't had much time to do it, except for the rare blog post and deadlined article, since school began this year. Not only have I not had time to work on my book proposal, nor write new plays, but I have even found myself struggling to find the time to compose the kind of nice, long, newsy emails I like to send to friends and family. My life feels deficient because of this. I'm carrying around many unexpressed emotions, and many opportunities for connection are being lost. It makes me sad, and out of sorts. 

I like my job, at its core. I don't like some of the people I work with (although I try to be polite and find that usually that is sufficient to a harmonious workplace). I don't like some of the things I'm asked to do, and I don't like the way I am spoken to/treated some of the time (by adults and students). But I like words, reading and writing, and I like my students, for the most part, this year. I like my principal and respect his work for our school, and I like the handful of adults who I actually see daily or weekly in my classroom. I also have the consolation of knowing the work I do, while difficult, is very important, and that, every so often, I do occasionally change lives. 

Yesterday, I had a really difficult conversation with my principal, about a boy who's been bouncing around the system for a few years. The boy has serious issues and needs to be in a special school. People at our school have tried to secure this for him, but unsustained good will rarely gets things done in a step-by-step process, nor can it make up for a deficiency in home care, nor for what appears to be a horrific childhood incident. To make a long story short, combined pressure from my principal and me seems like it might finally move this child into a school in which he might be able to learn something, anything. "Child" I write, but he's 17. As my we looked, aghast, through his paperwork, I said, "He almost fell through the cracks." And my principal said, sadly, "He did fall through the cracks." 

I'd like to say he's wrong, but he's not. 

Maybe that's what I do -- try to keep shoving grout in the cracks of my students' lives, so they can slip through. In any case, when I see need like that every day, it's difficult to focus on my writing. But I want to, and moreover, I need to. I hope I can, more, in the future. I feel better just having written this. 

Spilt milk.

So, last Saturday I woke up with intestinal distress and a sore back, yet I still forced myself up to the farmers' market at Grand Army Plaza to buy milk from Thistle Farms. It is so good, and so pure, and so yummy. I started trying to buy local dairy this summer, and eggs, too. Good stuff. 

Today I went to the library, highly anticipating bringing home four books that I had on reserve. I almost always go to the library on Saturday mornings. It's a treat I look forward to all week. Today, however, the library was saturated with Park Slope parents and kids. A Sesame Street exhibit was opening today, which everyone in the neighborhood must have heard about, except me, and the place was just jammed to the rafters with people. Crowds make me edgy and crowds with lots of people saying their childrens' names over and over make me even more edgy. Still, I managed to politely return my books. Then I saw the line to check out. Over 50 people in it. Most Saturdays, I join a line of one or two other people. Needless to say, I was not happy. I saw no choice but to just leave. I knew that not only would it take forever to check out, but I'd probably go slowly insane listening to people ineffectually remonstrating their children. 

I left, really annoyed, when I remembered I still could buy the milk and eggs I wanted. Well, the egg guy was sold out for the second week in a row (good for him, bad for me). But I bought my milk. I trundled it all home, picking up a stack of mail (which did not include the freelance checks I'm owed, nor the pair of books I bought, but had lots of magazines...) and set it all down on my counter. 

And then... the bottle of milk tumbled off the counter and split into 20,000 glass shards and a lot of really expensive milk in a puddle. 

I was so upset, I did not even find it mildly amusing that there was no use crying over spilt milk. I mean, at one point, I was apologizing to the cow. 

So, crying, cursing and really, really annoyed, I cleaned it all up. (Did I mention my back still hurts, so the bending and lifting process took forever?). As I was doing this, I was thinking about the book I'm reading to review, by the Dahli Lama. (I'm not going to go into details as it's not published yet). I don't have space here to really go into the philosophy he is describing as a path to human happiness, but suffice it to say that he feels that if we think about the larger situation surrounding our particular annoyance, we may feel more equanamity about bad things happening (this applies to little annoyances, not tragedies). He gives the example of a man whose tire bursts but who pulls over and changes it calmly. His passenger can't understand why the man is calm, but the man explains that statistically, tires blow about 3x a lifetime for any driver. He's already had two happen, so this must be his last one. 

In other words, a little information helps. I like this way of thinking about things, and I also think it's helpful to turn my annoyance into a recognition of my blessings. So --

Statistically, it's unlikely I will drop a bottle of milk on my floor again for a long time.

I have enough money to buy expensive milk. I also have enough money to buy less expensive milk to make up for the lost milk. 

I have the ability to digest milk. 

I can go back to the library at my leisure. 

I didn't cut myself on the glass.

I don't have a child at home dependent on getting that milk for survival. 

I don't have to endure the crowds I was in out of sense of obligation to my child or spouse. 

I also bought chocolate milk and it didn't break.

The cow never needs to know. 

Not dead yet.

I just finished watching Monty Python's Almost the Truth on the IFC Channel (this channel seems to be doing amazing things, by the way. The last time I watched it, it was because Bono and the Edge were on a talk show on there, and the channel was pimping its upcoming broadcast of "Arrested Development." Some seriously cool people must work at IFC.), and it was so well-done. I got into Monty Python in high school -- mostly, I think, because I hung out with a large pack of nerdy boys -- and have enjoyed the subsequent work, especially  Michael Palin's. (Truth be told, I would have liked to marry Michael Palin, and have some what of an obsession about his work -- I have seen ALL of his films, rented You've Got Mail [a movie I hated] on DVD just to see his deleted scenes, and even especially purchased and read his novel while in the UK). 

But this was delightful in another way. The material presented was a mixture of interviews with the members of group (all delightfully dry-witted and cheerful, with the exception of Terry Gilliam, who's not as crazy as you might expect, but still crazy, and Eric Idle who is still settling old scores with his boarding school headmaster, which is, in itself, weirdly delightful) and sketches from the show and movies. Yes, this meant that I had to sit through the cringe-inducing Mr. Creosete sketch from The Meaning of Life (a sketch that the aforementioned high school boys adored but made me physically ill), but I got to see "The Dead Parrot" sketch and "The Lumberjack Song" and many more. Of course, I really wanted to watch the entire series and all three movies again. 

I also thought about how different it was to watch their work now, at 35. So many of the people interviewed were comedians (including the really frighteningly off-putting Russell Brand) and talked about how Python shaped and influenced them. I wasn't an artist or writer when I watched Monty Python, but I think that their work influence me too. I can see it in how my plays veer off in directions unexpected, or stay focused on a narrow frame to dig down deep. I can see it my word play and my interest in capturing what's true and funny about regular life. And I can certainly see it my long and firmly held belief that everything's funnier when set to a jaunty show tune. 

It was great to see the Python guys again. I won't let it go so long without doing so in the future. 

Church.

It's Sunday  morning, and I'm not going to church. I usually do. I'm one of the, what? 15% of people in my demographic who genuinely enjoys going to church, for the most part. And I used to be sure to go every single Sunday unless very ill or very, very tired. But I've stopped that over the last year or so. The reasons are complex, but one of them is that I've realized there's a world of Sunday doings that I've missed out on for years -- people are going to brunch, sleeping in and reading the paper over bagels. Shocking! And kind of nice, every once in a while (for me). Today, for example, my friend JM is having a brunch/playreading in the afternoon, and if I want to get papers graded (e.g. keep my job), I've got to get to them this morning before I head over to it.

I've also realized that I think about the purpose and meaning of church, and what I derive from it, more when I don't go than when I do. When I do go, most weeks, I'm on auto-pilot: up by 8:30, out the door by 10, in a pew by 11, back out again by 12:30 (hopefully) and then my day is spent getting ready for the next week at school. When I don't go, I feel the gap. It's so quiet in Park Slope on a Sunday morning, and especially in my apartment, and especially when I don't get dressed, padding around in my pajamas and not wearing my hearing aid. I swear I can feel God tugging on me more at this time. So I pull out my "old green hymnal" (Shout out to Lutherans who don't like the new red hymnal! That Spanish Liturgy is awful, right??) and settled down in my big comfy chair. I read the Bible, I pray and I sing -- badly and not too loudly, but always my favorite hymns, which my church only gets around to singing about once a year. But "Lift Every Voice" is on the menu EVERY Sunday I spend at home.  

I wouldn't want to do this every Sunday. For one thing, it goes against my basic belief that faith practiced completely internally and alone is not sustainable, and for another, I miss the community of my church. Also, I think that mass itself is beautiful, holy and special. But I love these quiet times too. 

Totally awesome.

Many of you know that I am a big fan of Epic Theatre Company... well, Michelle Obama is, too! She announced today that they are winners of the Coming Up Taller Award, and they are celebrating big time today. Coming Up Taller is a national initiative that recognizes and supports outstanding out-of-school and after-school arts and humanities programs for children, especially those with great potential, but limited outlets for creative expression. You know, I was at school today until nearly 5 pm, launching a computer-based credit recovery program for my students. I won't lie, I am TIRED now, especially since I foolishly promised to bring in "treats" for one class today (they all passed a test, a first) and had to bake them. But Epic's winning this award made me proud of them, of the work they do, of the work I do, of the work my colleagues do, and the work of every single one of us who enjoy the process of helping kids find themselves so they can be who they want to be. 

Ok, I have some issues with the grammar of the title of the award, but hey, it's good news. Enjoy the adorable video of Epic's reaction to the news -- I'm not sure which makes me happier, the shot of Epic's tiny office, packed with its staff, reacting, or the fact that YouTube suggests that if you like that video, you'd also like the video for the Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again." Um. K. 

Go, Team Humanity!