How My Never Mastering Spanish Helps ENLs

I guess when you live in Metropolis, USA, things happen. Nine million people squashed onto little islands, we jostle around a bit more than other places. It's the biggest city because it is a living city, not some office buildings clustered inside of business extensions to the highways. People come and go, and in my borough, they mostly come, come, come, and I, for one, welcome them. Queens has not much in the way of attractions, but if you travel for the people, then you can skip Times Square. My students speak Tagalog, Polish, Urdu, Ki'iche, Fulani, Cebuano, Albanian, Russian, Tibetan, Serbo-Croatian, Ilocano, Arabic, Mandarin, Bengali, Kreyòl, Ukrainian, Hindi...I'm forgetting something...

Oh, yeah. Spanish. I have lots of Spanish speaking kids. I know a few words in almost all the languages that my students speak. Some of them, such as the Urdu word for "factor", pronounced "ansi", is the result of modeling factoring for 2 twin boys who spoke no English, and no one else in the class spoke Urdu. Others, because I have friends and neighbors who teach me a few phrases. I've always been fascinated by languages. I'm where I should be here in Queens. But, of those languages, I only can

La Uniesfera

passably "speak" in Spanish. 

I took two years of high school Spanish, and still cannot conjugate a verb beyond the present tense, and sometimes not that, if it's irregular. But, I am fluent in French, and between my nouns and verbs and specific math and teaching terms (tarea, mochilla, cuaderno) I can be understood, if only by committee. It gets the kids talking, even if only for a moment, about what I actually meant, which they all have an opinion about, because I'm all over the place with Spanish. Kind of like they are with English. And math.

This, I find, is engaging for the kids, and models how they should attack the problem of math: headlong. I mean, hit a ratio problem with the circumference formula kind of gusto! Get people talking. Someone's going to throw up their hand and call out, "NO!". Disregard, as I do, the certainty that a small-minded admin will "ding" me, on the "rubric" for this, as not having set up classroom expectations. I will then ask why, and, rather than the child answering, I'll thank him or her for starting the conversation, and, as I see others who are also indicating "no", I'll ask one of them why they agree. And so on. 

In other words, I can really teach. I know my kids. I am teaching my kids. Not all, because no one can get them all. I'm dealing with kids with many, many issues, not the least of which is puberty. They don't make great choices. The love of my life, Tootie Pie, is the exact age as my students. Sometimes she has moments of brilliance, and other times I think she has hummus for brains. When you throw in language and poverty, food instability, and COVID...

I love teaching, because I have to put on an interactive show. In the "precedented" times, I would perform 12 shows a week. It's hard enough to get a crowd going at 8:12 a.m., especially middle schoolers who have the natural biorhythms of Dracula. Try doing it to a bunch of blocked video feeds! It can be done. It will take monumental effort and a LOT OF TIME! If the small-minded powers-that-be have their way, they will push an unrealistic timeline for curriculum to be given, when students don't have access to reliable internet. Inexperienced teachers will follow the dictum to the tee, until everyone finds out, in the end, that it didn't work for exactly the reasons we said. I'm a bit salty. Yeah.

But NYC can really take a punch! And even though my kids lived in the ironically named epicenter of CoVid, Corona, they will, and I will, and we will model for the country how it's done. Because we have been knocked down time and again, and we're at so many disadvantages here, but that only makes us stronger. 

My Sparkly Custom Art

I have a specific vision. It is untrained, unless you consider poring over every design magazine (but not actually buying them) and checking out every design book the library has as training. I had the good fortune of making friends with a young man, when I was a young woman, who worked in a design firm, and he went through the magazines, too, but with an eye to recreate what he saw on the cheap. I was hooked. At first, I scoured resale shops, and in my town of Grand Rapids, nicknamed "Furniture City", a lot of people who worked for Herman Miller were offloading some midcentury modern things back in the early 90s, before it was cool again. But, I knew it was cool! Sadly, my move to NYC did not recreate the low prices of Grand Rapids, but it had something even better! Cast offs FOUND IN THE TRASH! Now, really, what could be better? The Grand Rapidians didn't know what they had; the New Yorkers didn't have space and just wanted it gone. Tootie Pie hates it when I see something and pull over, but, I do it anyhow. Aside from my custom bed, some emergency lighting, and some of Tootie Pie's furniture (from Ikea, natch), I haven't bought one thing new.

Table was red wood, repainted grey. Lamp from
my former roommate, also repainted. Fuzzy leaves will eventually
patch the wall where Macie, the visiting stray cat,
decided he needed to use to sharpen his claws.
Lampshade from Marvel Studios warehouse
sale (SCORE!!)

All that being said, I am not artistic. I remember throwing together my "pieces" in elementary art without thought or care. If I was to draw a person, like Dorothy Hamill or Kareem Abdul Jabber (don't ask), the finished product was an insult. I fell in love with Chagall, but I know my limits, and fine art just isn't in my repetoire.

When my living room was peach, I repainted a found canvas using a hand cut stencil. The stencil was cut from a transparency (teacher stash) and an X-acto knife. Since my stupid ex used the couch, and my Jonathan Adler pillows as bed linens, I needed a new, less bacteria-filled look. And then I saw this.

Okay, first of all, take your eyes off of that gorgeous bubble butt and perfect eyebrows, and look at this fierce costume. His pants were a midnight blue velvet, and the top...OMG. The music, the beauty, OH! Love, love, love. So, out came the craft paints and I emulated the feathery branching. I guess I didn't have navy, and I think it would have looked better if I did, but, still, it matched and it was free. But then, I missed the sparkle of Adam's top. And so, I went to Michaels, looking for round stones in teals and blue. Would you believe that I found peacock shaped bling?!?! I did.

This isn't a terribly exciting post, but it does make me happy. I may not be naturally artistic, but I can copy people who do. Fly on.

DIY Scalloped Rug Tutorial - Cut a Rug!

Finished product. I feel like the 5x7 became
4x6 after cutting. Rainbow effect curtesy
of salvaged crystal hanging doodad in window.

Someone was throwing out
a chandelier, so I pulled off
the crystals. I tried to jazz up
the only roller shade left
in home.

Rectangles are out! Also, Macie, our stray kitty visitor, peed on Tootie Pie's rug, very intentionally. He was looking at her when he did it. I tried giving her rug a bath, and, wow, that was a lot of work. It's amazing how a 5x7 shag rug holds water! Plus, the size was just a touch too big for her floor and it needed to go under furniture. It was time to customize. I've been lusting after the latest rugs with not a right angle to be found.

For this project, you will need:

Not that you care, but when
I put in a bathroom downstairs,
those pink iridescent tiles are
going in.

Rug

Carpet knife

Frying pan or other round object

Band-aids

This would be difficult ($$$)
 to DIY, but maybe a carpet
store has long remnants?

Flip the rug over and trace around the circular object. I tried internet templates, but sizing was an issue, so I just eyeballed it. I would recommend leaving the rug binding OUT of the design, because cutting through it was unnecessarily difficult. The tutorials I read said to cut on a surface that you don't mind cutting, which I ignored. The floor has a few gouges, but Tootie Pie's floor was never redone, so that goes on the to-do list. Then, get cutting. I started with the blade in the knife, which was brutal. I switched the blade it was like cutting through butter (almost). So, keep a stash of fresh blades handy. And band-aids. You don't want to bleed on your handiwork.

Trying to cut through the binding is not advised

I considered putting fray check on the edges, but, being lazy, I'll see how it holds up without it. 

Pretty easy. I should have done this a long time ago.

What is Love? Mike Cafferty

To have and to hold, in sickness and in health, for richer, for poorer.  That part I like.  But isn't there a bit missing in the traditional wedding vows? Like:

• To celebrate all your little accomplishments, whether it's getting more reward points on a new credit card, fixing the garage door opener, organizing the sock drawer, or surviving another day with that idiot boss.
• To not take each other for granted. Thank them for their small kindnesses and forgive them their little irritating habits. 
• ...

I started this post a long time back and only wrote the part above. At the time, as now, I was 4.5 years into my $$$$$ divorce, and I still didn't know what I wanted from marriage or love or men or even friends. Now, I do. And I want to tell you an inspiring tale to tell you how this happened.

It's about a young man growing up on the South Side of Chicago, still getting his head on straight and the value of hard work. He could and did do anything. Six foot three, athletic, he held his school's swim record for over 18 years.

This golden child was a bit adrift but heading in the right direction when, after a night of drinking, his 18-year-old friend crashed the car in which he was a passenger.

I met him 18 years later, a lawyer with a condo in the newly fashionable West Loop of Chicago, when he started dating my sister. I had just had Tootie Pie, and was crazy with anxiety, and so I didn't learn that much about him aside from the first impressions. Just over a year later, I was a bridesmaid at their wedding, after just having had a stroke. I can tell you that I looked craaaaaaazy on the dance floor with my new hemichoreaic involuntary movement disorder, but, I mean, c'mon, they played Don't Stop Believing.

They had my niece and nephew and they were in love. They were everything I wanted in a marriage: a person that would make me better and I would be better because of it.

Did I mention that he is a quadripelgic? No? Oh, yeah. I forgot. I was busy having post-partum depression and an ischemic neurological event. He had no problem letting me know what he needed from me, which made it easy for me, because I just followed his lead, and I told him what I needed from him (mostly, don't fuck with my sister). He knew what he wanted and communicated and made everything very comfortable and normal. He had years to perfect these things.

My family, minus Tootie Pie, who stayed behind in NYC,
 and of course, Karen and Mike's kids, who came later.

Still, in all the years knowing him, I only had so much curiosity, or, I guess I should say that I didn't know if curiosity would be appreciated. I mean, how many times did he have to go through the story, the one that was catastrophic to him? So, I let my mother be the conduit of information, and so I had only the foggiest idea of what he had gone through.

He had surgeries, bed sores, reduced lung capacity and increased phlegm, been dropped on the floor (numerous times), had a metal halo bolted to his head, catheters in his penis, God-knows-what was going on in the backyard, strangers thinking he was a vegetable, and all other sorts indignities and tortures. All of this medical side of him, which was a huge part, was conducted very secretively; partly, I guess, because he was private, and mostly, I'd assume, to spare people from disturbing situations.

I now know of these things because he realized one more dream: he became a published author of his autobiography. That left one dream, walking. It wasn't to be, because two days after the book was available on amazon.com, he left his earthly body, but he had years of practice with that, too.

The funeral was inspiring, but of course it was. The amount of people that knew him and the love was unbelieveable. The priest had know him since his first days in college. Bagpipes, Irish singers, and a poignant eulogy from my fiercely private sister, who spoke to her young children and somehow, didn't break everyone's heart. He passed way too young, with not enough time. But, the world is appreciably better because of him. And that is the only legacy worth leaving.

Too Much To Ask?

I have been a resident of the Glendale/Middle Village neighborhoods for 13 years, eleven of which  I was a home owner. I am also a bleeding heart liberal who, quite unknowingly, ended up in one of the few remaining Republican bastions in NYC. I was looking for this neighborhood for the first 10 years that I lived in New York: someplace quiet, safe, tidy and civilized, and, above all, a place that prioritized education.

We can deflect, too, but that doesn't create honest dialogue,
now, does it?

Lately, there have been some decisions from well beyond our villages of glens and dales that we were never asked about, or even warned of. What's worse, since those decisions have been made, and we voiced our concerns, we were dismissed. We, the residents of Middle Village and Glendale, as well as Maspeth and Ridgewood, even though we may not have voted for you, have been paying property, income, sales, state, city and federal taxes, been paying tolls and fare hikes, and been dealing with congestion, service cuts, corruption and scandal, with only one request in return: Keep us safe. In our homes with our families here in Queens, NYC.

Is it too much to ask? Yes? Can you address our concerns then, at least? We are angry, and rightfully so. Hear us. Work with us. Give us time. Go slower. You know what I'm talking about.

I don't agree with my neighbors politically on a great number of things, but there is great overlap in our ideals and values. Conservatives want things to remain the same. Change is resisted. When it is forced upon them, nay, us, without our say, we forge together in protesting its lack of patriotism. There may well be some spilling of tea, and, although I don't condone unlawfulness, it wouldn't surprise me, nor would it be completely unjustified in my view.

Thank you.