“Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — Goddamn it, you’ve got to be kind.”
(God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. p. 129.)
Everybody’s always preaching on about what the world is coming to and how everything’s changed and children aren’t being raised right anymore, and perhaps that’s so in more cases than it used to be, but, when I am with my kidlet and her friends or I’m in the classroom teaching and interacting with children, I don’t generally find these bell-ringing end-of-days declamations of “oh-kids-these-days!” too be true at all.
If “kids” seem as a group to behave in a way that runs counter to previous societal standards, that is not reflective of their motivations, but of their parents’ lack. If they act out in a way they did not do twenty years ago, it’s because they’re being allowed to be fed bullshit from the television and other media by people too lazy to lift a finger to defend their minds from rot.
Children are still people, and as long as we continue to try to teach them to be compassionate and to love, they will have the same things in common with the people of history (who were never any of them that great to begin with, don’t be fooled) that every other generation has done: love, sex, passion, greed, honor, and the whole scope of personal emotions. Kids cannot be cut off from the birthright that is human feelings by technology — only we, and our attitudes, can cut them off from that.
A few weeks ago, one of my kids tossed off some Simpsons line, and I made some similar quote in reply, and the students asked, “You know The Simpsons?” incredulously. I said, “Pfft! I’ve been doing the Bartman since before you jive turkeys’ parents even kissed at their eighth grade dance.”
But I can’t feel too cool because I said “jive turkey.” And it was indicated to me by my dearest friendoh who is my barometer of hip that only old people say that anymore. Thanks, Miss D!
cetera
(dreaming,
et
cetera, of
Your smile
eyes knees and of your Etcetera)
(E.E. Cummings. “My sweet old etcetera.” is 5. New York: Liveright, 1926.)
is 5 was a collection of satirical and anti-war poems which Cummings wrote during his time as an ambulance driver in France during the Great War. That’s when he also began working on his novel The Enormous Room.
The above letter of August 15, 1918, is transcribed:
“My Darling little sweetheart,
Just a few lines hoping that my letter finds you in the best of health, I’m very well at present and my family the same, Well loving, you see I’m faithfully thinking of you,
You know I love you very well my little heart, I am never loving anyone else,
If you are killed I will stay with you all the time and with my little baby if you give me one, I hope to see you very soon,
So will leave you now with my best remembrances from all my family,
Best love, from your loving little sweetheart, wife very soon.”
The beautiful and painstakingly artistic letter has recently become part of the Love and War exhibit at the Australian War Memorial, who are asking anyone who recognizes the couple, a Martha Gybert of Saint Sulpice, France, and the Australian soldier to whom she writes, to notify them as to what became of the two. They believe the letter may have made its way to Australia because it had either come over from France with the bride, or was returned with the soldier’s body and other effects. Obviously, the hope is that it is the former explanation. More info here.
Yesterday, in lieu of my previous service plan for the 100th birthday of Mother Teresa, I was called in to substitute for my ill colleague again. So, during the time the children write in their journals, I had them instead follow a basic form letter and write thank you notes, with drawings, to soldiers who will be serving in Afghanistan. The Cappy (he has been promoted now but calling him the Commie seems … “off”) is hooking it up because he knows the unit and the chaplain to whom I’ll be sending the letters, for which I’m so thankful. It was a spur-of-the-moment idea that ended up working out much better than I could have imagined; I initially thought it was hackneyed but I hadn’t counted on the children’s reaction to the letter-writing. The kids were genuinely fascinated by the project, and we traced over the world map in the classroom to demonstrate the countries their letters would cross before they arrived in their recipients’ hands.
I was surprised by how engrossed they were in the idea and how the details of why there are U.N. forces in Afghanistan at all seemed so revelatory to them. (I stuck mainly with the line that there are bad people there who are keeping the good people in the country from having the resources they need to succeed, so we and other forces are trying to help the good people get their country back from the bad; like, how do you explain the complexities of involvement in Afghanistan to fourth graders? Even explaining it to ourselves is problematic.)
When a girl told me, “My grandfather is a vet. He lives with us now,” and I said, “Oh, was he in World War II, or Korea?” and she replied, with a look at me like I was deranged, “Vietnam. My uncle was in the first war in Iraq,” I realized that these nine-year-old American children have grown up with the Towers down and all manner of skirmishes and action in the Middle East as a matter of course. They were so “in to” the project because the idea of a military presence in the Middle East, with attendant nightly television news reports of suicide bombers and attacks on bases, is so completely de rigeur to them as to be almost meaningless; unless someone in their life has been personally touched by the violence, it is just another part of the buzzing adult world that surrounds them.
For most, this was the first time it occurred to them to put a physically human face on stories that are a regular — and regularly ignored — part of their daily lives. This was a first time of actual connection, emphathetic thought and prayer for people serving around the globe in wartorn places that are just names on television for the kids.
For my part, I’d been concerned, because it is a parochial school, about taking care not to conflate patriotism with a love of God because that can lead down such dangerous behavioral and judgemental alleyways, as well as being always wary of the wavering line between informed support and general jingoism. But I was surprised that, beyond drawing war planes and helicopters or crosses and flags, the kids wanted to know more about the actual lives of the people who would be receiving their letters: I learned something, too, from this project, and that was that I can be as guilty of stereotyping an abundantly adamant yellow-ribbon-sporting, SUV-driving fellow citizen as I suppose they might be of me, who approaches an understanding of conflicts in what I thought was a less black-and-white way. I don’t know it all and neither do they. These kids drew their symbols and wrote out their dutifully trite declarations of support, but it was from a place of real love, and curiosity, and empathy. They are the next generation who will decide how to successfully negotiate international conflicts, and they are not a lost nor entirely manipulable cause. It was a very sobering and educational experience for us all. Probably more so for me than them, but I am glad that they seemed to have derived a real pleasure from the project.
I’m hustling to get things together to substitute tomorrow for an ill colleague (some might call her the illest of my fellow staff) and the Madness song “Baggy Trousers” came on. Reminded me of this Liberated Negative Space which originally appeared on Nov 27, 2009 at 8:48 am.
“So, what kind of music do you listen to?”
“Mm. Sometimes reggae, but mainly ska. … Mainly ska.”
end original post
And, for the heck of it, here for your Music Moment playing pleasure is Madness, “Baggy Trousers” (Absolutely, Stiff Records, 1980).
Madness — Baggy Trousers
Madness were a 2 Tone second-wave ska band associated with the ska-and-reggae-infused-pop sound of the 1970’s and 80’s, a movement which lay lower and extended its roots more deeply than its little cousin, the more moshin’ third-wave ska-punk sound of the 1980’s and 90’s. I’m suggesting that the second-wave may not have charted as long or as widely and noisily as the later third-wave movement, but it was arguably of greater influence and import musically. Ya hear that, Mighty Mighty Bosstones? Kidding, dudes (they have been around since the early 80’s). To true ska fans, it has never and will never go out of fashion as a genre, so the question of waves becomes one entirely of preference, whether you are in to Mad Caddies or Mighty Bosstones; Pauline Black’s original work with The Selecter or inspired acts like early No Doubt. ‘Scuse me while I go throw on my checkered chucks and filch me some smokes down at the skate park. Catch you on the flip!
I don’t know how the weather is faring in your town but in my neck of the woods, I’m hot. Once I’ve finished cooking up preliminary materials for an orientation I’m putting on for the Scamps this week, I’m sliding down to C-town to swim with Paolo, Miss D, Gorgeous George and Corinnette — and to wish Corinnette all the best as she goes away for college. Catch you on the flip!
I think there was a board game called “Girl Talk” when I was young but if it was ever played at a party I was either not invited or in some other room reading Bunnicula. Probably both. I think there was a game called that, at least … shoot. Now that’s bugging me … I’m giving it a googly-moogly.
Girl Talk was one of a rash of “teenage girl-themed games” that appeared on the market in the 80s and 90s based around boys, talking on the phone, dancing, having parties and sleepovers, and other “girl-ish” themes.
It was similar to Truth-or-Dare. … Each action (or question) is worth a certain amount of points. If you did not perform the action or answer the question, you had to wear a zit sticker. Some people actually thought the zit stickers were fun as well.[citation needed]
“Citation needed.” I should fucking well say so! None of that sounds fun even at all: it just sounds like junior high gym class.
Guess who likes you in this talking telephone game. I’m guessing that boy who threw the music stand at me and keeps riding his bike by my house wearing black socks with teva sandals. I always attract the sanest, winningest dudes on the planet.
All that is missing from that game description being my eighth grade P.E. period is me trying to grab my clothes and get them on as quickly as possible before Jamie Sawyer [not her actual name but in case she has turned her life around I do not want her to feel persecuted] gets done in the bathroom (having no need to change clothes, as she refused to dress for gym class, she would merely use the changing time to reapply her layers upon layers of black under-eye liner) and starts roaming the locker room looking for things to steal and people to punch.
This is strikingly close to Jamie’s middle school “look,” including the hickey from specious older sources, only she also teased her hair up very high in the front.
The first several weeks that my old friendoh Tweaky Lawn was at our school, she had transferred from Texas as a pre-established rather badass bully and all-around riot grrl and needed to establish herself in the ladies’-prison-yard-style pecking order of the middle school ne’er-do-wells, so she had winning scuffles with some scattered pretenders to the crown of All Time Baddestass Girl.
I heard a rumor one Friday morning on the bus that Tweaks was going to fight aforementioned thief, boxer and brigand Jamie Sawyer (basically a girl pirate in Doc Martens) but found that too incredible to be true. She had only just got here, and who would invite flannel-fist enclosed, painful death by pummeling like that? To voluntarily choose for that half-inch of eyeliner and, I shit you not, nearly-foot-high mound of teased bangs to be the last thing I ever saw?
Like this only shitty and too much so that you look tired and cheap.
No, thank you. I told the person who told me they’d heard from reliable sources about Tweaky Lawn’s intention to fight Jamie that Tweaks was smarter than that and it couldn’t be so. Jamie was more than a bully or tough girl, she was heading toward being a full on junior psychopath who regularly terrorized people she considered weaker than she with more than normal relish, like, picking on the special kids and working herself in to a froth cussing out teachers who were like 100 years old. She also liked to set fires. (I know, right? Aileen Wuornos much??) I figured Tweaky wouldn’t get herself tangled up with that, even if she had mentioned that “that bitch” needed “her attitude adjusted.”
Shortly after lunch the news came down through gossip channels that both girls had been suspended, and I wondered over the weekend what the outcome had been. I really liked Tweaky by then and I hoped she hadn’t been hurt too badly and wouldn’t be embarassed.
I found out those fears were in vain when Jamie came in to our first period gym class that following Monday. She haughtily refused to look at anyone but actually went to her locker and pulled out sweatpants and a properly labeled “‘J. Sawyer,’ S__ Tigers” shirt that I did not even know she had and started putting them on like it was something she always intended to do. Two of her fingers were taped together with a splint. For once she wore no makeup, because not only was one eye black, but the other was nearly so and was also entirely red from the outer corner to her pupil — Tweaky had broken the blood vessels. I’ve always viewed her as a kind of lady Hercules since then.
The story has to do with this.
The story of how Tweaky and I met, when I gave her a bloody nose and shockingly lived to tell the tale, I will save for another day. I told it to my eighth graders when subbing last February and it apparently made the rounds of the small private Catholic school at which I substitute teach — where you have a conference with your teacher and the principal if you have below a B in a subject — and was such a popularly horrific tale of the gritty public school world that when I subbed in the seventh grade a few weeks later, I was scarcely done with attendance before they demanded to hear the story firsthand.
Wow. All donesies. This has been your Girl Talk edition of the Daily Batman.
The lovely and talented Elaine Morton was Miss June 1970.
Photographed by William and Mel Figge. You have seen Bill’s billing on here before, but usually partnered with Ed DeLong. This time he worked with his wife, whose full name is Melba.
Ms. Morton got in a little late on the original Summer of Love action (barely missed it), but she was still feeling the reverbations of the first flower children and was all for being a free spirit.
People would profit from a bit more “live-and-let-live” logic, says blonde Elaine Morton, who wishes that “everybody would just butt out of everybody else’s business — as long as that business isn’t harming anyone.” Following her own recommendation, our June Playmate recently abandoned the comfortable confines of the family home in Burbank, California, and moved into her own bachelorette apartment across town.
(“Tuned-in Dropout.” Playboy, June 1970.)
Just a year ago, she was working part time as a salesgirl in a Glendale flower shop and full time as a home-economics major at Orange Coast College in Costa Mesa. “I was all hung up in establishment modes of living,” she says. “Then I decided to stop striving for those goals and find my own.”
(Ibid.)
Totally the best shot. Holy geez, what brain-asplodin’ cuteness.
Since that decision, Miss June has dropped out of Southern California’s “straight” life and, with her boyfriend’s help, converted a milk truck into a mobile pad and made the west coast of Baja California her home away from home. Traveling on her savings, she simply drives onto any unoccupied stretch of Baja beach facing the Pacific Ocean and camps there until the scenery gets “predictable,” then drives on to a new location.
(Ibid.)
That sounds pretty all right to me. I was just telling the infinitely great Mr. Salisbury last week in the comments that I would quit the rat race but they don’t let you camp on the beach anymore. I also love the idea that she was in a converted milk truck. It’s cool because by the 70’s milk delivery was archaic in the wake of supermarkets, so it was kind of a renaissance for the vehicle itself. I like the idea of a thing outliving one sort of usefulness and being repurposed in a fun way.
TURN-ONS: Crazy-looking clothes, things that are different.
IN MY SPARE TIME: I study, shop, swim — anything at all but be bored.
AMBITIONS: To work as an airline stewardess, and have a happy and interesting life.
According to Marxz on the vintage erotica forums, who I consider an infallible authority on Playmates past, Ms. Morton did not become an air hostess but rather returned to college and pursued a baccalaureate, followed by a teaching credential. She became an educator right here in California, which we all know is the noblest, sexiest, most thoughtful career anyone can ever take up, and that only the most very attractive and magnetic people choose this great state for it. Well done, Ms. M! Such a head on this one’s sweet shoulders!
Dig that grooving cover. Such great hip art, all slick with a smoky black backdrop and purple neon, etc, yes? Love it. The PMOY for 1970 was my beloved, super-duper-darlingest-dearest-departed Claudia Jennings, so now I’m bummed just thinking about her and all that.
Final much more upbeat note. Elaine’s cousin Karen Elaine Morton (not pictured above, that is still Elaine herself) was Miss July 1978, and, like the lovely and talented baseball wife and present-day reality star Jeana Tomasino Keough (Miss November 1980), Karen played a Vestal Virgin in Mel Brooks’ History of the World, Part I. Pretty cool, yes?
New job starting today: tutoring one of the Scamps on the reg for the Summer. According to her absolute battleaxe of a mother — who if you ask me is the sole author of all her daughter’s insecurities in academics and anywhere else as, if my conversations with this mother have been any indicator, the poor girl is never able to get a word in edgewise and the mother decides every detail of her life down to making her write it on a calendar, and I empathize with her 1000% — other Scamps’ parents’ calls will be coming in soon. Also, in mid-August, I agreed to put on a 2-day workshop for them to help them prepare for sixth grade vis a vis setting up notebooks, discussing notes and organizational skills, and hopefully developing some strong test-taking strategies.
Though they will still be at the same K-8 school as they have always been, beginning in the sixth grade they will switch classes for different subjects. Not only will their homeroom guy, my old buddy from That Day, J–V–, be their first male advisor, but he will also teach them math. And the science teacher is a man, too.
I wish. Neither J–V– nor Mr. N. looks a thing like Dr. Jones. Maybe Mr. N., a little. But only a little.
So, for a class that is predominantly girls, most of whom have declared openly how unprepared they feel they are for middle school math after their fifth grade experience, there is the concern that they will follow statistical patterns and slip behind in those subjects through a combination of lack of confidence in their own skills, societal conditioning, and intimidation about talking to a male instructor.
The lovely and talented Mrs. Edna Krabappel.
The Scamps are mainly marvelous geniuses and neither they nor their folks need to worry at all about their academic prospects in my estimation, but if those anxious parochial school parents want to pay me to hang out with their kid and prepare them for pre-algebra or read Harriet the Spy with them all Summer, I am totally for it!
Tomorrow I have an interview for a position teaching in the third grade at this same school, it is actually the position my dear Sarah-fina recently abdicated in favor of staying home full-time with my favorite Baby Ginger, and though I don’t hold out much hope that I’ll get it because I know one of the other candidates is far more qualified than I am and has spent the last seven months as the temporary instructor filling in for S-f at that grade level, my application and interview are at least I hope a demonstration to the administrators that I am passionate about pursuing education for my life’s work and that I am committed specifically to the kids at this school. So wish me luck with all my edu-ma-cating and I will catch you on the flip!
The Thought Experiment 