PeaceBang

The Oldest Profession, In A Modern Twist

Right ON, Ms. Palfrey!!

Why should you be punished and impoverished for your “sins” while the Washington moralists and hypocrites sit smugly in their offices, confident in the knowledge that you’re just a woman and can’t touch them?

If she has to go down, let her take her entire clientele down with her. Brava, I say.

Preacher’s Bullpen

So I’m watching the Yankees-Red Sox game last night when really, I should be working on my sermon, and I’m thinking hey, how come we don’t have a preacher’s bullpen we can go to when we’re at the seventh inning of the church year?

This could be a great job for talented retirees. It could be like, “Weinstein has given twenty-five decent sermons this year but her arm is obviously giving out — she’s thrown a few real bad ones in the past weeks, let’s see who’s warming up in the bullpen.”

And then there would be this shot of two ministers out back in the memorial garden, dressed in vestments, walking around talking and gesticulating.

Then God would come up to the pulpit, put His arm around me and lead me down while the next preacher steps up. I’d get to sit in the back of the sanctuary and drink a cup of coffee and watch the rest of the service.

Anyway, it’s hard to see those Yankee pitchers just suck through a straw and know that they’re being paid more per minute than most of us make in a year. LORD, thou mockest me!

Friday Cat Blogging

There is something so truly sweet about this.
You’re going to love the very cinematic fade-outs, and I think you’ll agree with me that this cat plays some music that’s better than some of the bad jazz you’ve heard in piano bars in your lifetime.

I’m loving this little gray girl. She is a serious hep cat.

Don’t watch it anywhere where you can’t laugh out loud, and scream with joy, and go “BWOH!”

Lena Horne Does Miracles

I went for a walk today and listened to Lena Horne sing, “That’s What Miracles Are All About” several times in a row.

For three minutes and fifty-eight seconds of pure bliss, you can get it from i-Tunes for .99.

“The very fact
there’s you and me,
that’s what miracles are all about.”

I can’t tell you how much the entire album, “Lena Horne: The Lady And Her Music” has meant to me since I first heard it in 1982.
Get it, you hear?

Ermengarde Earns Her Keep

Ermengarde Earns Her Keep
Originally uploaded by Peacebang.

I came home today and Erm, who has been very squirrelly in the bedroom lately, had THIS to show me.

GA Blogger’s Dinner

So… who wants to organize the great Blogger’s Dinner at GA in Portland this year?

(I did it last year)

Is This How We Talk To Women Now?

Just having endured Don Imus’ dismissal of talented young female athletes as “nappy-headed hos,” I was particularly depressed by Alec Baldwin’s rant against his 11-year old daughter in which he called her a “thoughtless little pig.”

It all seems of one piece to me.

I was talking with my sister yesterday about a friend of ours whose husband is controlling, insulting and hyper-critical. Our friend is considering separation or even divorce. My sister and I were talking about the fact that times have changed a lot, and women no longer feel that they have to be married for social acceptance or for financial survival. Therefore, they are less likely these days to tolerate verbal abuse and constant harping on their imperfections. They want a supportive partner, but here’s the thing… they also want to be treated as a cherished woman, in that specifically romantic hetero-fantasy mode that we’ve all grown up with.

I’m not sure the hetero male world has figured this out yet. But let me explain it. Fellas, it’s not either/or proposition where either you get to be the big macho lug who treats your “little lady” like a fragile, dependent flower OR you get to have an equal partner in life who doesn’t need all that old-fashioned girlie stuff, and with whom you can be sloppy and coarse as you wanna be. The fact is, women — even feminists — still appreciate good manners, and even — I’m giving away a big secret here! — a tiny bit of the princess-on-the-pedestal stuff.

But at the very least, we don’t want to be called pigs, bitches and whores.

Could you all talk amongst yourself about this? Thank you, PB.

More from ABC Carpet and Home, NYC

Spring NYC 2007 064
Originally uploaded by Peacebang.

Those gray things sticking out of the wall behind me are crystals!

Spring Has Sprung

Spring NYC 2007 043
Originally uploaded by Peacebang.

Union Square in New York City was all abloom with flower stalls and produce stands.

It was almost miraculous to finally be out in the sunshine.
Here are some hydrangeas. I wanted you to see the bigger size, it’s just an explosion of color:

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/169/469069465_004eb81cf5.jpg

Amazing to get such vibrant colors from my little digital camera!

The Sanctity of the Classroom

The Sanctity of the Classroom
Originally uploaded by Peacebang.

I remember when Chris, a tall, shy, arrogant, pimply blonde high school junior in my creative writing class, submitted obscenity-filled blood-fests in lieu of assignments.

In each case, I told him his work was garbage and insisted that he re-write the paper.

He came to see me after class one day, red in the face and coldy furious. You can’t make me rewrite this. This is creative writing class. I’m being creative,” he told me, his face seething with adolescent tension and hatred.

I had had a lot of experience at that point with the testosterone poisoning that can come in the teen years, and I knew Chris to be a generally good kid but with some mood swings — probably exacerbated by his geekiness and shyness. He was most definitely not one of the popular kids, but he did have a buddy, Justin, with whom he spent the class snorting and snuffling around over their superior wit and intelligence. Justin was a “fat kid” in a school full of preppy clones, and genuinely funny. He could be disrespectful and disruptive, but had none of Chris’s hostile edge.

I told Chris that he could be creative all he wanted, but within the parameters of the assignment. He was there to learn, I told him, not to just spew his violent fantasies onto the paper and then expect me to take them seriously as academic work. I told him I was disturbed by the content of his paper and that I felt it was a violation of appropriate student-teacher boundaries. Furthermore, he knew it.
I told him to straighten up and fly right or I’d send this paper home and see what his parents had to say about his”creative” writing.

Chris muttered some inarticulate complaint under his breath, grabbed his paper from my hand and left. He resubmitted a new paper the next day. He was, above all, a competitive student and his desire to get into a good college overrode his need to rebel against the tyrannies of Miss W.

If my memory is correct, we went back and forth with this nonsense a few times before he finally decided to behave himself and take the assignments seriously.

This was before Columbine. It never occurred to me that this kid would ever harm anybody; that sort of thing was beyond our teacherly imagination in 1990. I had gone to suburban Minnesota from Proviso East High School in Maywood, Illinois — a school that was truly dangerous and where violence was a daily fact of life. I was concerned for Chris, but I trusted that he’d outgrow whatever demons were plaguing him.

English teachers are privy to some of our student’s deepest wishes and most secret fears. I still treasure some of the confidences shared with me by my students. I remember M., who was in love with her step-brother and who included that plot detail in a marvelous short story she wrote for my class. When I called her in after class to ask her if her story was based in truth, she dissolved in tears. She was a painfully lovely young lady and I loved her. I still think of her.
I remember J., whose parents were so caught up in their careers they almost never saw their daughter, who mourned their neglect terribly and begged for their time. I remember B., who “thought” she might have been raped at a school party one weekend but who refused to report her assailant, also one of my students. I could get her to say no more. She never sought counseling or reported it.
I remember T., who was gay and felt he couldn’t tell anyone. I hope T. has come out by now, and that he’s happy.
I remember J., who had been beaten so badly as a child that his back was a mess of raised scars. After I saw his back and heard the stories of his childhood, I understood why reading and writing — and even speaking — was so hard for him. I think of him often, too.
I remember N. — so sweet, so ambitious, who came to school early to run track and whose breath was so bad from malnutrition that her track coach brought her breakfast every day. It may have been her only meal.

I remember T. and S., handsome twins whose parents so badly wanted them to get out of Bellwood that they hired me to tutor them. They were absolute gentlemen even in their teens. I wish them well.

I remember so many of them.

I remember the classroom as a sacred place. I was blessed to be there with them.

Our classrooms should be sanctuaries. If it takes total gun control to assure that this can be the case, then I’m for total gun control.

Whatever it takes.