What is the worst way to combine these horrible sentences?

The more I think about it, the more I am angered by the state of writing instruction in this country.

In TX, in fourth and seventh grades, students are tested on their ability to proofread "sample student essays" that contain errors. They are asked to identify and correct the errors. Some questions are spelling, some are grammar, and some are style/inferences ("what is the best way to combine sentences 12 and 13?").

Because this is The Test, and because The Test is very important to a child's opportunity to pass the grade (and, incidentally, the teacher's bonus pay), we spend a lot of time on sample tests. This means, a great deal of instructional time is spent asking students to read BAD WRITING and to "fix it."

In my class, we talked about revising. It took me many months to convince them that sometimes revising means getting rid of entire paragraphs and sentences; that sometimes you have to write a lot of crap to get to the heart of the matter. The challenge in teaching revising is teaching kids NOT to proofread, not to pay attention to the mechanics until they are happy with the story, the message. Otherwise you get a kid who changes "their" to "they're" on the first draft and proclaims a story "done."

To accomplish this, we read good writing. We read "House on Mango Street" and "The Falling Girl" and personal essays and poems and short fiction. We read brilliant sentence construction and "showing" details and stories and words that make the story come right off the page and into your head.

We only read "Suddenly, we heard a raspy voice say, 'Hello people.' When we looked around, there was no one their. Then we heard the same words again." when it was abso-effing-lutely necessary to teach them how to take a multiple choice test.

I worry that limited English students in our country are spending too much time reading bad fiction. I worry that teachers are sacrificing authentic writing experiences in favor of exercises that would make any reasonable person hate the English language. I remember trying to explain why "it's" and "its" don't follow standard grammatical patterns and feeling guilty, terribly guilty, because I read a truckload of books when I was a child and I just *recognize* how they work without even trying.

I'd like to tell Wordsmith Publishing Company to shove it.

A. "Sliding into the hole anyway and being scared, Edward went down."
B. "Change second to secund"
C. "Change 'James Long' to 'james long'
D. We are too smart for this test; we haven't the time. We're reading the Canon and Shakespeare and you and your multiple choice ridiculousness can take a hike. Do you really want to know about a time in my life when something changed? It changes today. It changed when my grandparents sacrificed everything to move me to this country and give me a decent shot at a decent education. I'm learning all the right lessons in all the wrong ways. I'm going to take these lessons and violate your schemas and blow the lid off of public education. One day, I might be a teacher. One day, I might teach this differently.
E. Make no change.

Is it not true that people of above-average intelligence are not good with money?

If I fail the Mensa admission test, and I can't be a voting participant like the rest of my family in Phoenix next month, it will not be because I cannot look at pictures of a mouth, a blender, and a (knife?) and identify them immediately as objects for masticating food. It will not be because I don't get within seconds that tree is to rocking chair as cow is to cheese, or that I'm not good at taking tests.

Oh, no.

It will be because I can't make change.

It's true. My mother took me out of 2nd grade during a school renovation project and because of this, I cannot add nor subtract simple numbers.

So what is featured prominently during my recent Mensa IQ test: making change.

Look, I worked in retail; you have to deal with grumpy people with no patience for finger counting and that is why they use computers.

And that's my 1 half dollar, 2 dimes, 3 nickels, and 2 pennies. How much does that equal? 50 plus 20 plus 15 plus 2 equals... wait, HOW many minutes left??

"Take This Stinking Boat"

For real, I wish that's how the lyrics went.

p.s. I have listened to this song today approximately 4,528,345 times.

Cars and Parties

Happy birthday to me.

Hey, Alicia

This is a long overdue reunion.

For years I've scoured my poetry bookshelf, trying to find that damn poem about the UFOs and getting married. I tried google, too, but you try "wedding poem ufo" and see what happens.

I found your book at Half Price--it looked oddly familiar, like one I'd scoured through years before. And then I remembered reading it, copying it, forsaking other library duties (I have always been a horrible library employee) in order to soak it all in.

Today I was looking through, trying to find a love poem, and I found one I think I was asked to memorize and recite to my class. It was about teaching. At that point, I knew what I was doing for the next two years: I was prepared for "The Class," I was ready to be "grateful for whatever comes," I suspected I'd be facing 30 faces all frowning at Emily.

And frown they did.

So here it is: are you ready? I hope this isn't breaking any copyright laws. I just want everyone to read this damn poem that haunted me for upwards of five years.

...

Extraterrestrial: A Wedding Poem for Nina and John, January 2, 1989

Do the angels really
reabsorb only the radiance that steamed out from themselves, or
sometimes, as if by an oversight, is there a trace
of our essence in it as well?

Rilke, Second Duino Elegy

Nina and John: there are spaceships circling above us
This afternoon in the raw of winter, the early
Dawn of a new year.

There are extraterrestrial visitors thoughtfully watching
Our cerulean globe spin through its void. As they monitor
Our minor destinies,

If they are able to shiver they do so, hugging
their bodies, if they have bodies. To them we seem
Perfectly lovely,

A blue-green marble such as a boy would be happy
To keep in his pocket. They watch us pursue our orderly
Orbit around the

Local star upon which our lives completely
Depend, they enjoy the cooling and warming, they clap
Their hands to see it

If they have hands--or perhaps they clap their feelers
Or wave their antennae--they find us a charming spectacle,
Comic and tragic.

At times, too, with their expanded senses,
More powerful than our own, with a subtlety able
To register fainter

Signals, but also different sorts of signals,
Not only melodious optic, thundering ultraviolet,
Stridulous X-rays--

Their receptors can pick up what William Blake
Used to call "beams of love": those emanations
Emitted by lovers

That lift from the planet, like particles lighter than air,
Or rather, zap from it, waves more potent than lasers
Pulsing their message:

We have formed a unit, people, we're loving each other,
We are doing it now, can you read us, it's
What we were born for.

To our visitors, such signals are like fireflies
On a summer evening, so pretty, and they like to
Sense the gradations.

Pure sex is the basic beat, a fast percussion.
Sex-plus-love a more eloquent flashing, through a richer
Combination of wavelengths.

The most splendid signal of course is that transmitted
By married lovers, for this one is perfect art
Wedded to nature.

It says: We're loving, we're working at it, it's like
Ascending Everest, we're playing, it's
Really sensational.

Different from everything else, it overwhelms us,
Seems to be making us stronger, more alive,
But also weaker--

Difficult, dangerous life, we are up to our eyeballs
In it, we'll never stop. And the visitors look at each other--
Nina and John, are you paying close attention--

Smiling, applauding, the way we do when children
Learning a skill perform some feat that is difficult,
Since learning to love is something

Like learning to walk, or swim, or ride a bicycle,
It's like writing poems, and maybe like writing history,
--Hard, but rewarding.

Go, say the visitors, mentally egging them on.
You're getting it, yes, you've got it, you can do it,
Congratulations.

They add their wishes to ours. Young man, young woman,
All of us wish you joy, in sex, in love,
And tonight in marriage.

I'm calling them visitors, picturing them in spaceships...
Who are they really? Maybe Rilke was right,
Maybe they're angels.

-Alicia Striker Ostriker
from The Crack in Everything

Passive-Agressive Hour

The scene: Maria Selma's, which has awesome tortilla chips, a good priced happy hour margarita, and once welcomed me on my birthday. Otherwise overpriced, overzealous valet parking, and a bit snobby.

Waitress: "Can I get you anything else right now?"
Me: "I kind of want a kid's quesadilla. Just something really simple. Is that possible?"
W: "...You can order a regular quesadilla."
M: "The $8 one? No thanks."
W: Ok.

(Later)

W: "Are you ladies ready to order?"
M: "We're just having drinks. Thanks."

(Later)

M: "I am hungry though. Do you want queso? You like queso. We could split a small."
M: "We pissed her off. She is not coming back."
C: "Look, you can order cheese for $1 and tortillas for $1.50. I dare you to fold them up and ask her to microwave it for you."

The "Ah-roo" Heard Round The World

Many winners this weekend.

"Uno celebrated by chewing on the microphones of reporters who tried to interview his winning crew."

"Warshington" Does Good

Margaret Spellings

I am a little in love with her.

And, and, this was pretty much the coolest thing ever.

I'm Fine; Everything's Great

It is obscene how often I use the word "great" in work e-mails.

So much so that I read through sent emails, in which I go off about how great that meeting was, or that event is going to be, etc. etc., and I'm thinking--girl, you are terrified and covering for it and it is OBVIOUS.

"No really, it's going to be great!"

Someone give that lady a kick in the pants, a shot of confidence and a thesaurus.

Primaries

Will someone please explain:

1. caucuses
2. primaries
3. delegates
4. superdelegates

?

And,

5. Whether my vote matters in TX primaries such that I should pursue an absentee ballot?

Thanks!

EDIT: Ok, ABC explained a bunch of this. And, Facebook wants to know what it will take to get my (under 30) vote--maybe an iPod? YES, YES it will take an iPod. You should give me one. Do it for democracy.

Happy Mardi Gras

King cake for breakfast, king cake for lunch.

We Say Hello in the Night

Watch It Now

If you are not a Netflix subscriber, you can rent these great movies and watch them later. If you are a subscriber, you can bypass all that and totally WATCH THEM NOW.

Ok, not right now, this second, but maybe later, after work. Look, you can pick up these great TV-watching glasses and you don't even need to lift your head. Amazing.

In no particular order, goodies from a recent watchitnow binge:

1. Street Fight


2. Primer


3. Gideon's Daughter


(Apparantly you can watchitnow on youtube if you have the patience.)

4. Broadway: The American Musical

5. Conversations with Other Women


6. Palindromes


You can also watchitnow some not very good documentaries, including 80 wasted minutes about Helvetica the font, and Netflix will kick you off after 24 hours or so with a gentle reminder that your minutes are up, your life is passing you by, and you should really take a shower because you are starting to smell.

We Say Hello in the Night

My recent road trips have been soundtracked by a variety of talk shows, interviews, concerts & albums loaded onto the pod and broadcast to my car radio. I have found one radio station that picks up a good signal consistently from Houston to Dallas. If you don't know what it is, I'm not going to tell you.

Occasionally, I will pass a car and the signal goes momentarily to static. My theory is that other people are playing pirate radio in their cars with the same station, and for a moment our radios pick up both signals and cannot comprehend. In a ten mile stretch, it is not unusual to pass, be passed by, pass again the same car--each time the same interruption cementing my hypothesis.

In these moments there is a joyous recognition, like when you pass someone driving the same type of car as you--make, model, color--or displaying the same bumper sticker of a band you both like. I am always tempted to wave or honk: I Validate You! You are doing terrific! Keep it up!

It's a nice moment, but the truth is that our radio broadcast is a bubble that once popped, makes Ira Glass go wonky, or the Magnetic Fields sound even more distorted than intended. This cannot be a sustained conversation. You are fantastic, but please just pass me and go on your way.