Morning Ruth, I think of you as one of the family here, it’s me I don’t think fits in much. I let my inner nag out of the barn too much. I just started “Social Intelligence” by Daniel Goleman. He details a myriad of ways we connect to each other, much of it unawares, occurring in in parts of our brains automatically. I think it would be helpful for young children to know about.

Good morning.

Celebrating Jim Henson’s Birthday;
http://www.huliq.com/10178/google-doodles-puppets-jim-hensons-birthday

You can have your own muppet experience.

Thanks, you’re reminding me that we used to ‘go out and play’, something I don’t think kids do enough now.

My first grade teacher demanded that I write with my right hand instead of my left, which wasn’t necessarily “good” but it did make me ambidextrous. My ninth grade science teacher turned me on to science in a way that none of the others before her did. I don’t know why most of the other students hated her!

Good morning.

Wish I were any dextrous. My sister blames much of her antisocial behavior on being made to write right handed. But I can’t say she is or isn’t right/correct.

Dunno if I’m ready to blame that for anti social behavior. Since it was a Catholic nun who made me write with my right hand, I’d rather blame her and her kind for it. :)

I was born and raised in a small town. Even though I have not really lived there for nearly 40 years, it is still the one place I can go in the world and say of others “yer not from around here are ya?”

Of course, it also meant that all my teachers knew my folks so we never could really get away with anything. When I went into 1st grade, my father proclaimed that if I got a spanking in school, I would get another one at home. I got 2 in school in 1st grade and 2 in 3rd grade but he didn’t find out about the 2nd from 1st grade until I was in 3rd grade when he caught up.

I do have a vague recollection of there being an Orthodox Jewish family whose son was in my class in 2nd and/or 3rd grade. I remember his mother being very concerned about the holiday season but I also remember the teacher working with them to assure that all perspectives were welcomed and accommodated.

Good morning Ruth and Margaret and Joelmael and the pups who are just rubbing the sleep out of their eyes.

Ruth, can you tell us a little more about your upcoming trip?

My fourth grade teacher turned my view of school around. I disliked my teachers until then — I barely remember them now. I started school mid-year, which was what they did in those days with kids whose birthdays didn’t meet the cutoff date. I could read (not just kiddy books, but the newspaper and a fat book of Grimm’s Fairy Tales) when I was four, so I was bored. They eliminated mid-year when I was in third grade, and moved the mid-year students either back or forward a semester (we had to test!). And my new fourth grade teacher was pretty and kind and I suddenly loved school. Not that my experience is remotely like yours, Ruth, but it’s a similar experience in that I had to assimilate, in a way, with the other students.

To engage in a shameless act of diary pimping, I stayed up late last night writing, (with both hands), my little entry into the current discussion about the social safety net.

Lovely to have that home feeling. I wish we all could. And what a nice person to make everyone a place.

I had a great teacher named Ms. Scott too. She was my seventh grade history teacher and was already towered over by almost all of her students. I never saw her so much as give a detention. She believed in keeping kids interested in her subject in lieu of heavy discipline. Of course that’s when they taught subjects rather than tests in school.

Hi, that sounds like an incredibly hard way to start school, at mid year. Glad they ditched it.

Trip: first visiting Avedon in London, then Croatia where there are some archaeological remains on islands off the coast I’m going to be taken to by a local explorer/guide who is a friend of a friend. Then a few days in Spain, and a cruise home, again with some friends.

I remember those students born between September first and January first. In my district they were all held up because you had to be six to attend first grade so they were always the “older kids” peppered through the class.

Wow Ruth! That sounds like an incredible trip. I’m envious!

Ruth, that sounds marvelous. I hope you’ll post a few diaries when you get back to let us know all about it.

I think the real scandal of schools even today is that there are a number of students who have difficulty either intellectually or socially or both who get up in the morning hoping they can get through another school day without being humiliated. No wonder those kids quit as soon as they can. Society wants to look away from their experience.

My son was a February baby and had to wait a year to start school. Then it was apparent immediately that he was misplaced. He used to come home from kindergarten and complain that “we haven’t learned to read yet” (he could already read). In those days they hadn’t yet devised mechanisms to accommodate advanced kids (or those who needed extra help) so the solution was to move them around. After some agonizing, we allowed him to go into first grade, figuring if we didn’t they’d want him to skip first grade, and not wanting him to be bored as I was. So he was always academically right up there with his older classmates, but physically and socially a little behind. That didn’t entirely go away until he got to college.

On edit: my daughter is a teacher, and nowadays they have all sorts of ways to accommodate different levels, from special classes for reading or math, to enrichment in the classroom, to “challenge” students who are kept at grade level but are grouped with similar students and learn at a faster rate or are given more advanced work. They also mainstream a lot of children who are challenged in some way, such as Down Syndrome or Autism, so the kids learn to accept “different” students more readily.

I remember my mom always pushing us out of the house. But I’m 58 and we kids were never afraid (or made to fear)going across the city on our own, even when I was eight. On Saturdays I would go to the bus stop and sell my mom’s weekly bus pass for the price of a fare. Then I would buy my mom’s pass for the next week , which was good on Saturdays. I then had a whole weekend to ride the bus downtown or just take my chances and go somewhere at random.

I had great teachers in the fourth grade who assigned me special projects and took me aside to learn what could be seen under a microscope. Unfortunately, I was advanced a grade and sent to a school for the “gifted”, where I no longer went to school with my neighborhood friends. It was the difference in social class that I noticed first, though I couldn’t describe it then. I guess I felt better among my own “kind” — poor kids. The majority of my new classmates were upper class and I clearly didn’t fit in. I will end this ramble now. Great topic, Ruth.

Incidentally, I recommend Margaret’s diary.

Here, I could easily walk into town. Funny, I had to sneak down a ways to play with the hispanics, who were in my class at school. They kept an eye out and warned me to duck if my mom drove by.

Yep. Those kids have it tough. I always felt a bit sorry for them because a lot of social development happens around that time and the arbitrary schedule that says when you can and can’t go to school screws that all up. Of course I didn’t think about it in those terms back then but I still felt bad for them.

Thanks Ruth.

My affection for teachers, commenced in the Third Grade, and of all places, Sidney, Nebraska. And within my family of migrant workers, a la Cesar Chavez, it was in the third grade that I learned English. Consequently, my primer was the book titled, “Little House on the Prairie” and as such, my ongoing love affair for “reading” with English being a supplemental fact or life, given that there are no “reading” books written in either Yaqui or Apache.

And in support of “languages” the new Tribal Chairman of the Dineh Society or the Navajo Nation, was sent to an off-rez school that was determined to strip him of his history, language, and culture. In his latest speech, he announced that he was determined that all students on and off the Rez would be provided with the tools to maintain and perputuate the history, language and culture, despite Arizona’s maintenance for eliminating all languages, other than English and via the companion piece that is HB 2281 and to SB 1070.

In contrast, my brothers and sisters, the Pima, have a vastly different approach to “teaching.” They have taken a vastly differing approach to America’s Shame, and which consists of taking their casino profits and have for many years now, invested these profits in research and development for attacking Type Two Diabetis. Today, the Pima are in the forefront for conducting this research in order for the majority of this society to live beyond the traditioal life span of the mid-fifties. And given that we are all, for the most part, “light weights” relative to American history, this behavior commenced over 100 years ago and with the inception of the Coolidge Dam and which eliminated the water rights and led to the delivery of Food Commodity Program by the military. Thusly, today, the “value” of history continues unabated with regard to “one corn tortilla is equivalent to one dozen white flour tortillas.” And no, there is no subliminal message being “preached” here. :-)

Jaango

I’ll be in and out. It’s such a gorgeous morning that I’m going to get started on my chores early. :)

Did you tell your new first-grader friends all about your big military transport boat ride on the
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_General_J._C._Breckinridge_(AP-176)?

I took it to Okinawa from San Diego but not in the much nicer dependent’s quarters. I also saw those flying fish.

There’s also a belief I heard for many years, that boys don’t develop socially as soon as girls do. I don’t know if that’s true, but my bro didn’t have real friends in early school years, so my mom got busy cultivating parents of boys, and hosted a boy scout troop, to get them over to play.

It’s a testament to your teachers, your community and yourself that your command of English is so superior, even though it’s your second language. I can’t claim anywhere near that command with my Spanish or Japanese.

Do you know, here the Choctaw and Chickasaw casino profits are plowed into community development, and a big emphasis right now is on keeping our water resources pure. A very proud achievement, that, too.

Good Morning, Ruth and Other Smarty Dogs
I don’t have a rememberance of a specific teacher in elementary school that really singled me out for special help. What I do remember about those early school years was the longing to be liked. I was always the last picked to be on a team when we played outside. I thought it was because I wasn’t well liked, but looking back it was probably because I was not athletically inclined. It was also a big deal who got the most valentines day cards and like that.
I was also one of those students who was born in the spring, and we had midterm classes also. You were either in A or B semester of each year, but the whole class was the same so there weren’t any problems in that. But, we graduated in January, which was a little tiny bit weird. Not that big a deal though.
In high school, I lucked out to have an especially fabulous English teacher who had come from England to teach at UCLA and wasn’t starting there until the next semester. She was a beautiful, tall Black woman who would tuck her long legs under her body and sit on the desk. And, the accent was stunningly romantic. I think I developed a crush on her.

Actually, I have picture in an album, of the U.S.S. General John Pope, the ship I took over.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_General_John_Pope_%28AP-110%29

The sailors and soldiers on board were sweet to us kids.

I suspect you didn’t get picked out because you didn’t have great difficulties, but we all feel like everyone else is better liked or has it easier than we do, until we get close to some one who really isn’t.

I was always a whole year younger than the rest. The kindergarten was at the public school two blocks and a busy street away but my older brother who had taught me to read, could take me with him to the catholic school, so I started first grade instead. So the hellfire and damnation terrorization began for me a year earlier than usual. I can’t tell you how much I despise that church for their abuse of children.

Safe travels, Ruth.

The catholic school was next to my elementary (and still is) so we felt sorry for the kids, going into church when we were out playing.

My first school was named St. Francis Cabrini so I feel your pain. What they do and try to do to children is nothing short of abusive. I think they did more to turn me off from “god” than anybody else. I never could reconcile the expected adoration of a creature who the Catholics kept insisting was such a dick to everybody.

So far, so good. And thanks.

You’re right, of course. I’ve talked before about going to school with Greg Palast. When he was in LA for his first book tour, we hooked up. I drove him around to events and we had a chance to talk about the “old days”. I mentioned how all the boys liked me. I told him, Oh, that wasn’t true, I wasn’t anything special. He was amazed that the way I remembered myself was so different from his memory.
Funny thing that. And, not in a ha ha way. I guess that’s one neato thing about having long term friends. The mirror factor.

One of my favorite teachers was Sister Alice. She caught me reading in math class, and instead of punishing me, she gave me and two other guys blue books and told us we needed to figure out how to add, subtract, multiply and divide fractions by following the examples in the book.

We all learned math at lightening speed as a result. One of the guys is a scientist, and one is a computer guru. I’m the failure: a lawyer, but I did major in math in college.

Margaret @ 27

Perhaps, Margaret, that you have forgotten that when I first arrived here at the FDL, you suggested that I should write more, and thusly, I have followed your advice. Consequently, you have yourself to “blame” for my participation here at the FDL. Of course, this post is meant in good fun, since you’re no slouch yourself. Thus, my tip of the hat to you.

Jaango

Glad to know that wasn’t totally wrongheaded. I have never gotten to know anyone really well without finding out that they thought just about everyone else was better liked, better able to cope, than they were.

I read a lot of horror stories from firedogs here about growing up in the Catholic church and school, and I have not doubt about those experiences. On the other hand, my husband went that route as a child, being from a Irish Catholic family. When I’ve talked to him about his experiences, he really doesn’t have any complaints, but he grew up in Claremont which is a fairly liberal and intellectual community, with all the colleges out there. For example, his priest was the one who counseled young men on being conscientious objectors. But, on the other hand, he stopped going to church when he graduated from HS.

What a treasure. You see, I had a sister in law who was an ex-nun who taught in the city schools of Chicago, and had great affection from the students as I hear it.

My comment was wrong. HE told me I was well liked. I thought I wasn’t.
Coffee’s just kicking in.
I was just reading in a book about the character telling about a dream, like everyone did, she asserted, of walking to school naked. I think that’s about insecurity, one that I guess a lot of people experience.

Good morning, Ruth and fellow pups. I remember having a crush on my 2nd grade teacher, Mrs. Phillips. Can’t remember any detailed specifics about 2nd grade, but recall she was very kind and patient, and pretty.

Our 11th grade American History teacher, Mr. Johnson, who was rather unconventional, brought a record album to class one day and introduced the class to Bob Dylan playing three or four songs from the album, notably Like a rolling Stone, and Positively 4th Street. It was early spring of 1965, but it’s like it was yesterday. We had a lively class discussion afterward. I was immediately drawn to Dylan’s music, especially the content and his unique expression of those stories. That was the beginning of a lifelong love affair with folk music, one that grew to include many other artists from that era, as well as other traditional appalachian music and folk ballads. We had had a coupe of school concerts in high school called hootenannies (does anyone here remember that word?), but the Dylan music Mr. Johnson introduced that day opened my eyes to an entire new genre; I have him to thank for that. Thank you, Mr. Johnson.

Demi, that’s how I remember the early mid-semester group, too. You were in Grade 1A or 1B. When they dropped that, we had to do a year’s work in a semester, and then test, to be assigned to the next grade. By the time my son was in that situation, they simply skipped the more gifted kids forward a grade. Looking back, I’m sure he must have felt like a fish out of water sometimes. And he was a swimmer, and a pretty good one, but as a freshman in high school he was a skinny kid up on the starting blocks next to big hairy seniors.

There are a lot of forces that can combine to make kids feel “different,” aren’t there? It’s a wonder any of them succeed.

Well I don’t remember every comment I make but I’m glad I was able to assist you. Very glad. But you have to give yourself the lion’s share of credit.

I’m very torn about my Catholic school experience. The doctrine and the dogma were overwhelming but there is no doubt they were outstanding educators in other areas. It’s sort of like the way I felt about the Navy: I loved my job more than any other job I’ve done but I hated the navy itself for many reasons.

Oh, yes, hootenanies, we did that, and coffee houses where aspiring folk singers entertained, then got us to join in for one. I was introduced to folk music by the Kingston Trio, does anyone remember when they started showing up on regular rock radio stations? Quite nice.

I had a Civics teacher in about 8th grade who used to get up on his desk and do a tap dance to illustrate a point. I forget what the point WAS all these years later, but he was one of my favorite teachers. He made the subjects interesting, and that’s the mark of a good one.

Ah, nostalgia. I did a report for his class on freeways (which were in their infancy then) and the cover was a drawing of one of those cloverleaf interchanges.

Hmmm, because ‘them’ is us, maybe?

Jaango, you are an excellent writer! I always enjoy your comments.

I should say that my first year of school was 1940. The nuns certainly have liberated themselves and done a lot of good since then. Can’t say that for the men ie the pederasts and their all male ennablers.

I think so, yes. And I’m not sure any of us as parents realize how much our children struggle, unless they are failing badly. For example, my daughter has been diagnosed with ADD (she’s 42), and her recounting of her struggles in high school and college is heartbreaking. She was always an average student and we never suspected (she was not hyperactive). I felt so badly when she described her struggles — we probably could have helped or gotten her some help (I’m not sure they were prescribing meds in those days for ADD).

It’s so very much like you to be able to distinguish between what works and doesn’t about a situation. Many people throw the baby out with the bathwater. One thing bad seems to color the whole experience.

My HS chemistry teacher used to do a walk across the lab working surface, to use his pointer to make us notice things, but still, I didn’t get much interested in the subject. He, on the other hand, was a friend.

That’s so heavy. ‘Cause, it’s so true.

My kids are hyperactive, but fortunately I had a very good pediatrician who disapproved of drugs, and counseled me about natural diet. To this day, I thank him for that.

It better be!

15 years of Catholic education. The downside: exorcising the demons. The upside: I was better prepared for college than 99% of my peers.

On balance: Still trying to assess that. LOL

The ever-present ‘critique’ of religious indoctrination, makes for some good humor. In the days leading up to the birth of baby Jesus, and in which the various inns of shelter, is a notable Aztec Artifact. Take, for example, if you visit Nogales, Arizona during the Christmas Holidays, you always encounter a religious procession visiting the Inns titled, California, Nevada, Arizona, and even Texas, and etcetera.

Now, history has an espousal that can make fun of us all, if one “transforms” the Old and New Testaments, from this normative Patriarchy and to a “new” Matriarchy. Thus, Big Mama Good becomes the Great Matriarch of Universal Totality. And she’s refuses to remain as an Undocumented Immigrant. As such, the Medicine Women are a testament to Her Anthropology.

Jaango

Do you remember Sister Corita and her artwork from the 60′s and 70′s?

Buzz! Now it’s a party!

Margaret!

G’Morning, jaango.
This past Wednesday, because it was the autumnal equinox, I went down to the local Southwest Bookstore where in the past they had a big pow wow to celebrate the new season, to find out what time it was going to be. Dang it all but they had done it on Monday. I was sorely disappointed that I hadn’t checked into the schedule. The ones I attended in the past were awesome.

Probably always will be working that out. In HS, we debated the catholic debate team, they were awesome. By then, I envied them their discipline.

It’s the ironies of life that stick with me. The man who saved my life, literally plucked me out of a sea of whirling epithets, was quite the opposite of what my mind might have imagined. I was the new girl in a small town of 500 or so. Having moved from the inner city, it was city mouse meet country cousins. Both the worst and best of my life happened in the very town where lady Gaga, shot her last video. To this day, tiny midwestern towns both draw and repel me. Such a mixture of wild and tame, hostility and generosity, good will and bad.

As the new girl in this tiny town, the outsider, 12 years old, with long blond hair, and a desire to out run the fastest boy, one of my greatest life challenges occurred. It wasn’t a soft spoken female, or a caring social worker type that saved me. It wasn’t the parents of my friends, no they scorned me. It was the football coach. He, with his red faced yelling; his style was anything but gentle as he would throw an eraser if someone was caught sleeping in his class.

My cries for help, went out in journals, where I told my story. There would be sweet notes back from some of the teachers imploring me to keep talking about it. While others ignored me, and still others looked for predatory opportunities. The football coach didn’t play this game. It was as if he swam out to me, in the stormy ocean as I was drowning and handed me the life preserver. He was relentless about calling on me in class. Even as I looked stoned. He made sure to talk to me, every day. He told me over and over again, how smart I was. Told my mom, that I was perhaps the smartest girl in the class. And when I began to slip under, told my parents, and me, in no uncertain terms the importance of the loss of me.

In a town of 500, when the new girl comes to town and is gang raped by a group of older boys, there is no adult that does not know. And it seemed there was no adult who knew what to do, including my parents, years later when they found out. The rumor spreads like wild fire. It surrounds you, and drowns you like an ocean of disapproval. The stares, the whispers, the isolation. “My mom wouldn’t let me invite you, she said we don’t want girls like you at our house”.

But this man, the football coach, history teacher, and perhaps one of the most powerful men in my little town, put his hand out and pulled me up. He said; “No, these words they say, these horrible events are not you”.

Years of therapy, later, I have forgotten the sick ones. But I cannot forget that man, and how he changed the course of my life, simply by taking the time, to treat me as a person of potential and intelligence instead of a sex object, crazy girl, or some other label. He knew what to do, and he did it, and it changed my life. The fact that it was the football coach was all the more important. I knew he heard those stories, I knew he had heard the worst, and yet, he still reached out to me, and treated me like a person of potential. The way he looked at me, was not like a peice of meat, or some weird anomoly. He looked at me, the way a father might look at his daughter. I could feel the caring in his eyes. I could feel that it was not sick, just as I could feel the sickness in the glares behind some of the other eyes.

I remember when it clicked. It was after a parent teacher conference. He told my mom how smart and how concerned he was about me. He went on and on to my parents about my potential, and his concerns about the path I was going down. I kept thinking “How does he know I am drowing?”, “how does he know that I want to die?”.

After that, I became determined to turn the bus that had become my life around. It was my 9th grade year. I quit letting people tease me, stopped laughing at their jokes and insinuations. I stopped acting like a sex object and instead starting acting like a girl who was going somewhere. I was inducted into national honor society the next year, president of my class, then president of the student council. I turned down the cheerleading gig and focused on my leadership skills. I left that small town, having risen from the rubble, with scholarships and accolades in hand. With my gang rape a distant memory.

Today I am a counselor, and hopefully am reliving this gift over and over again, in my work. The way his kindness has multiplied is a miracle of life and astounding to me. His attitude, his kindness, his recognition of me, taught me about my own stereotypes, and was the perfect irony for me to remember about all men. Miracles happen every day, and he was my miracle.

Morning Pups,

I had several very important teachers, but all through school I despised the segregated groups that kids always formed to exclude others,(or maybe to protect themselves and foster their own feelings of self-worth) and create their own behavioral norms and rules for joining them. Less than two months into high school I gave up worrying about it, got myself involved in a wide range of school activities where an adult was usually present and wove myself through widely varied involvement into valuable learning and growth experiences, but was always conscious of having no special group of dedicated to each other, close friends, as I understood it then.

Today I might have been labeled by the school personnel as having had some sort of pervasive developmental disorder with social anxieties or whatever. Maybe some autistic spectrum disorder, with a very high IQ, I flourished in many ways never-the-less.

Very nice. I enjoy the mingling of natural life with religious totems in the New Mexico pueblos.

My daughter was never hyperactive. Even then, I think that was recognized as something that needed attention. She simply struggles to focus on anything that takes concentrated attention. As an adult, she probably needs therapy to unlearn some of the behaviors developed over the years, and to develop coping mechanisms, but I don’t think they can afford it. So she’s now trying her second medication and hoping it will help. Meanwhile she juggles a job, two small children, a big dog, a house, and a husband who has a two hour (each way) commute. I don’t know how she manages!

And the rating game goes on and on. We are all on this squirrel cage. Kids get the brunt of it and they don’t have the power to change it, or even know how much they are being emotionally manipulated.

And actually the equinox was Friday, demi!! At least that’s what I learned on the toobz earlier in the week.

Was watching an old Ron White standup routine last night. He said he got thrown off the debate team when he responded to an awesome foe with:

Well, fu-u-u-ck YOU!

Said he thought he won. The other guy was speechless. Said he thought that was the point.

Thank you so much, wavpeac. So glad to hear about this kind of nobility, which I felt in a much milder, but just as important way.

Wavpeac
What a great story. You many have read that DWBartoo is encouraging people to write “their stories” as diaries.
You could cut and past that comment without any changes or additions to a diary and the whole blogosphere would benefit from reading it.
Really wonderful job, wavpeac.

x2

Ah, Ruth, the ocean! I do hope it will be where you can stroll away from crowds. I think we are somewhat similar (though not the same :) ) in that I too began life in an island country never far from the sea and now dwell inland. And also, like Margaret and others, I have had Catholic schooling, though neither I nor my family were ever Catholic. It was just that coming to this country as a teenager I was used to being ‘segregated’ in school, males separate from females, so I was placed in a very different environment, with the nuns of a small community, which was nothing if not traumatic for me.

Perhaps it was that I was older than Margaret, but those same discipline/classical- somewhat- severely-spiritually- oriented ladies in very strange attire rather focussed my learning abilities than otherwise. I did have to attend religious classes; I did have to attend monthly mass; I did not convert, even though I felt like a fish out of water.

Now I am absolutely grateful to have had such an unique experience. It was certainly reinforcement for me becoming a solitary, and if that is not a good thing it was not a good thing. But it also taught me that even very different folk living by very different rules are human beings, and when the nuns could give glimpses of their humanity, which they did as they taught (we went through a moderate earthquake together) – those were memorable moments. And they did tolerate me as I scrambled to find my place. In fact my senior homeroom teacher brought me a small catalogue for the college which would be the very best place for me for the next four years. I hugely owe them all a debt of gratitude.

And now I think, salutary as my experience was, that in some ways it was unique. So, how to answer Margaret? She had a very different lifechanging experience when she was young and vulnerable. And now, I cannot counter except to quote my own, which is singular. So it goes. And on to another interesting diary!

Fortunate for you that you had those opportunities. It’s really distressing that those are the activities kids are losing, along with the usual ones – like classrooms of a reasonable size.

Maybe teachers didn’t always think in terms of sociological/medical diagnoses, then, I don’t know. I like to think they were concerned anyway.

G’Morning NQ
Ah ha! Getting to know you better and better.
PS – On a totally personal note, do you have any special plans for the evening?

Dunno how it is now but in my day poor students could not get into the catholic high school unless you had an older sibling there. Of course having an older sibling who was a good student meant that you were likely also to be one.

Pretty easy to provide a quality education when you don’t let the riff raff in. It would be a surprise if they didn’t do a good job academically.

This definitely needs to be a MyFDL diary, wavpeac! Please consider it.

Morning Ruth, all. Love being at PUAC, it’s been a while. Sat am I do the farmers mkt, but the season is ending and its raining:-(

I was a mid-year class student too. We moved to another town over a summer when I was mid-grade (completed 5A). I was consulted about where I should be placed and believed I made the decision. I was reading way above grade level but my math was wretched (remains unchanged to this day). I never really regretted repeating all of fifth grade, though I was way ahead of my class entering puberty.

Didn’t much matter to me since I spent my grade school career “reading ahead” in the book, a cardinal sin it seemed. I just hated reading circles where we had to sit quietly and observe our fellow students struggle though pages aloud. Never could figure out what they intended for us to do with that time, other than reading ahead.

And I debated a team that won when one of the boys sarcastically indicted my argument; “Pity.”

Turned out his brother was the judge, though.

No doubt, and I find out how similar we are here, and how different, every visit.

Thanks so much for telling your story. Inspiring in so many ways.

thanks for all the support…it is posted…what a wonderful place to share this is!! Love you all!

The “pity” was that he was rewarded for that. I wouldn’t be surprised if he grew up to be a Republican politician.
(Sorry for the political comment.)

The most lasting impact of Catholic education on me occurred in 1st grade. Seems someone had crapped in his or her pants and a hard little ball was found on the floor by the nun who was teaching the class.

She said either the one who did it must fess up or she was taking everyone in the cloak room — remember cloak rooms? — and check their pants. I know: sick pup.

So I was in the second row, first seat. She got through the first row and I.WAS.NEXT! TERROR! Just in time the kid behind me screamed out, it was me, it was me, crying.

That night I said my prayers thanking god that I did not have my junk checked out by Sister Scatologica.

Made me the man I am today.

Here’s the link: http://my.firedoglake.com/wavpeac/2011/09/24/football-coach-saves-drowing-girl/

Welcome back, but sorry about the market. We’re in drought so bad that there isn’t much to farm.

Another PUAC success story. Thank you.

Phoenix Woman has a post, above.

What a compelling story, wavpeac, and inspirational. And cudos to you for taking that life experience and paying it forward as a counselor. You are building a great treasure of Good Karma.

Scary stuff.

No problem, it’s after hours, anyway! But I agree, the beginnings of a lifetime cheat.

Even though I have obviously already read your comment, I just went there to recommend it. May I suggest that everyone does that. I think it’s the recommends that push a diary up to the Recommended Diaries list.

Absolutely.

I have to be off for a bit, now, will check back later so no one is left out.

I do agree that the melding of faiths present in native communities is a fascinating element of creative spirituality. In Alaska, my Russian Orthodox priest would remark, the days on which house blessings took place, they would cover their house totems with a veil. I don’t know if that is still the practice.

On the question of patriarchy vs. matriarchy, I can’t help pointing out that Luke the gospel writer had something pretty important to say in the first story of his gospel. He begins not with the Nativity as we would commonly suppose, but with the birth of John the Baptist, whose priestly father is struck dumb by the same angel Gabriel who visits Mary later, in a very parallel description. I haven’t seen anybody bring this up in discussion, but I have always been struck by this as clearly Luke is transferring “sovereignty” from the priestly class to the mothers in this juxtaposition, and it is right there in the Gospel. At the very beginning.

I don’t think Christianity in its essence is inherently patriarchal.

Thanks for another well written and thoughtful piece. And, also for being the hostess with the mostest.

Great diary Peg recommended. I think more people should share their stories. I know it was difficult for me my first one. I think once you get rid of the fear of rejection it becomes easier. Good job.

After 62 years my high school class is still keeping up and those living in Tulsa lunch once a month.

In third grade I moved from small dusty town into one of the most progressive public schools for its time. Most of my classmates were oil children and had already lived in 2-3 other countries. They were so sophisticated and worldly. It was to say the least quite a culture shock for all of us. But surviving it proved terrific for me as I grew up listening to the Saturday Opera and caring about the doings of the New York literati as well as the geography of the world just entering into war at that time.

I am just grateful for, with some special memories, all those teachers who respected the best in us and expected it to flourish. The content of the material taught was amazing. My senior English class was architecture, the great religions, world literature and writing.

Nice that you had that exposure, and I do wish more could. Of course, it’s a little surprising to folks to find out we came from flyover country, sometimes. The oil boom hit here too, but the result was mostly that people took the money and moved into Dallas or farther away.

Yes. I was blessed. They were certainly successful in helping us bond as so many still stay in contact.

At that time Tulsa was the home of many of those who developed as well as the engineers and upper management. Tulsa had the headquarters of many of the Oil companies as well as transportation such as American Airlines. Most had moved to Houston by the time I left. It is hard right wing and parochial now. I hardly know it when I visit.