Ca Va

I have been studying the french language for a total of eight weeks now; I think I've got the hang of it. Here goes-
Bonjour! Je suis une americienne dynamique. Je suis troh gross et belle. Ou est ma vie? Je habite a Tulsa avec ma famille. Mon activites de tous les jours c'est formidable. Il y a fais le lit, et fais la vaisselle, et fais les devoirs bien sur. Je suis tres heuruese. Je ne parti pas du tout. Aussi, je dine parfois le chien. A bientot!

Back to School

Today is the first day of the Fall semester and my stomach is killing me. I always get nervous before a new class begins; there have been nightmares-I dream about arriving late to my own class. I wonder about what the new crop of students will be like and imagine dead eyed Zombies sitting beside the note taking Fact Gestapo and there I am down in front acting like Baptiste Debureau in drag. Where are my Chatty Cathys? My Brooders and my Scholars? Romeo and Juliette? I think about who will love me and who will hate me, who will learn from me and what I will learn from the class?
Concentrate! My material is good. My lectures are good. I am capable. Om mani padme hum.

Let's Explode, Ya'll

My brain, at this moment, is a labyrinth of information. What do you need to know? Is is pertinent, or useful, or exciting? I'm afraid that I can't help you with that, but if you are interested in something, say, centuries old, with a certain musty/elitist/je ce c est quoi about it than I'm your girl. Ok, I'm just going to get this off of my shoulders.
1. Art is not math. I can, and will, have a different opinion about what makes a masterpiece and what makes something that will really please Grandma. I will be as correct as you will be, albeit less refined. I am young!
2. Art is hard. Have you tried to stand up in front of people for many, many hours while they are looking at you with that strange student expression that lies between ignorance and knowledge and try, for the life of you-try to make them understand why they should know the differences between Late Baroque and the Rococo? Because you know it, and you care, you stand there like a cartoon espousing Germain Boffrand's contribution to the world and they don't care.
3. Art is going to make me fat. How long have I sat here, working on this class? I am, for the first time in my life, engaging in emotional eating. My ass shall soon engulf this little office. I miss my family. I miss going on walks. I miss T.V.
Maybe I am not cut out for this line of work after all. But what else can I do? I am a rare bird.
Perhaps I will take some comfort in Rembrandt: Practise what you know, and it will help to make clear what now you do not know.

Lazy Bones Jones

I'm enjoying my break from work. I have lots and lots of free time now. What have I done with myself? Nothing. I've enjoyed this immensely. The views are impeccable. But as time wears on, I find that my surplus of extracurricular activity grows small and I need to get back to work. Dammit.

Art. Do you like art? To me, art is the definitive human expression. I know that this could be debated until doomsday, but in me you'll find a capable defender. So why am I lagging? Maybe because I won't have time like this until a year from now, or 20 years from now; it's hard to tell. I just want to eat Doritos, watch foreign movies, and drink those yummy lime flavored beers.
Strength. I need to be strong. Go back to art. Think...renaissance. Think....Cimabue. Think....Kagemusha!

My Objective is Exhilarating!

The other day in class I showed my students a documentary called "The Art and Sport of Fashion", which was made somewhere around 1987. Did you see the Brenda Dickson "Welcome to my Home" video circulating the internet about four months ago? This fashion documentary is better (or worse if you are not inclined toward FANTASY and GLAMOR). The costume designer from Dynasty is featured as well as the costume head from Miami Vice. Models catwalk to Huey Lewis and the News. Eurotrash accessory designers preen in their own creations made from preserved turkey feet and scorpions. Sequins and chiffons are everywhere. There was one point in the documentary that every student burst out laughing it was so absurd and over the top. The art vocabulary for the day was Kitsch. I kid you not. Most seemed to have fun with it but there were some (boys) who couldn't deal with "fags or fashion".

Occasionally I feel like both an educator and an entertainer. Their education is not deprived nor is money misspent. Students walk away from my classes thinking about art in new or different ways than before they enrolled. They begin to see art everywhere as I do, which is what I really teach. If I choose to illustrate Kitsch by showing a vulgar, pretentious documentary 21 years old, I do so because it is fun and memorable as well as a valid learning experience. These students of mine believe, as I used to believe, that the forces of style and beauty are not just contemporary and youthful but eternal. After watching this trashy bit of dated fashion who also modeled itself as being contemporary, young and eternal, maybe they will gain a new perspective. As for the students who did not like the documentary they will nevertheless always remember the word kitsch.


This is my goal in any case. I find that I must pick up on as much knowledge as they must in order to successfully complete the course. It is strange and ironic that as I grade their competency, they evaluate mine.

Vitamin D

I'm kinda bored. I feel like something is missing, or astray, or that I need to run for a moment or two and not look around to see if everyone is keeping up. Or how far behind I've become from everyone else. I don't regret my decision to stay home with my children. Also, I can see the light at the end of this very long, life transforming process by which I raise my children and they raise me. I'm so very behind my ex-contemporaries, I don't know where to begin. How do I leave here and regain my foothold? How can I make any sort of income? I used to have a plan, and that plan was going accordingly, but then came two kids who needed me. I like that they need me. It's adorable. I need them too. But the light is there, and I'm here, this close to decision time and goodbye time. Maybe I need to exercise more.

Expression is hard!

Ok, I am not the best person around tech stuff. I am more likely to look at the person who is good with the tech stuff and say "Please....I don't know what I am doing?" and that person is most likely my husband or the tech guy from the college (Hi Wayne!) and I am in full supplicant mode. Not full learning or taking notes for the future mode. Why, then, do I sign myself up to learn how to build a website? It is hard to build a website! All I've got after hours of staring at the training video, clicking buttons and then the undo button a million times, and whining is a website that sorta looks
like this. Not good.
I will say that this program seems to have brighter possibilities than the free one I took a class for, Nvu. It was literally tables, and repeating graphics or solid background color, and HTML wasn't even lurking in the corners it was staring me down. The instructor for the class was very nice, and a good teacher, but he looked bored as shit; heavy sighs and dead eyes except when he looked at the monitor. He's a professional web designer (from what I gathered) whose vocabulary was limited to computer jargon, and the words cool and geek. He was a portly man with a ponytail who wildly gesticulated his fancy opinon in front of a class of women, save one old man. Needless to say I was a little put off by the aesthetics of the setting, but I thought I was doing a good job retaining information until I got home and then gone....all of it gone. I remember the exact pinkness of the instructor's shirt (salmon),how the old man sitting next to me would not stop talking about the stock market of all things, that it was a windy day and I had chicken soup for lunch, but every pertinent bit of knowledge about web design has fled. Hmm.
Nevertheless I shall persevere. I will have my husband look at it.

Dulce Et Decorum Est Pro Patria Mori

YEA I AM DONE WITH LECTURES FOR 30 DAYS!!!!!
I made with through my sophomore semester as The Person From the Other Side of the Desk! Without a doubt this was one of the most challenging goals I've ever achieved. To give you some sort of perspective, my first class was only a handful of kids who were very nice, came to class, and didn't complain. This semester I taught two different classes and couldn't have had a more difficult time (OK, this is an exaggeration). To wit:
The Banshees.
These girls were in my morning class. If they were flavors of ice cream, they'd be Bitter, Fat, and Ugly with Sarcasm sauce. Ugh, these girls.
My Wardrobe.
Inexplicably my clothing failed me on several occasions throughout the semester. Once, my wrap dress became unwrapped. Wow.
The Text
I composed the body of information for my Art class, so understandably I'm quite fond of it. However, I did not have that luxury with my Humanities class. The text for this class is, in my opinion, out of date and embarrassingly offensive. Africans are primitive animists, Mesoamericans are bloodthirsty, the Christians have never made a false step. I spent two weeks on the Greeks and only half of that time on the Romans because the Romans were thieves, and the Chinese and Japanese haven't changed at all in the history of time. Oh, and humans are not related to apes. On and on and on this list goes.

But it's all over now. My students have their presentations to give (I'm big on the presentation, if only to get people unafraid to speak up), I've got a couple of study guides to make up, and then the finals. Still, next semester I shall return a changed bee.