6/22/09

I’m in this now. I’d be insane denying fear of the future I’ve launched. I’m in evening summer school classes with a group of thoughtful, attentive, smart people. My fear is that I’m in over my head, my classmates somehow already look like teachers. I’m one of two in the entire class that has no, or very little, teaching experience. I’ve begun quizzing classmates on how they secured teaching gigs without credentials. But my point isn’t how they got the gig it’s more of an opening to find why, after teaching a little why do you want to make it permanent. They all seem to be old hands at navigating classrooms from the helm whereas my main position for over two decades has been at the oar’s.
Ahaaaa fear and feelings of inadequacy are with me always and a comfort in days of despair – with them I’m never truly alone. So it was last night as I rode my bike home from school.
The last forty-five minutes of class we watched a video on the lack of funding due to Proposition 13 with as its consequences the horrible, dare I say sinful, disrepair of the California public school system. Other than a brief portion of the tape that had accidently been recorded over showing elk swimming across a river, the video held no good news. I looked at a classmate, Math and Sciences, and asked, “So, what are we doing?” He replied with shock, “I don’t know.”
I know what all of us are thinking, at least I think I know. I know what I’m thinking, I won’t end up in a poor school without parental involvement. I won’t be reduced to baby sitter in a space without classrooms or chairs or even books. The hope is that by the time our class of hopefuls get our credentials and into the classroom we’ll all be saved by Uncle Barak. Somehow. We have to have hope. We have to. We prospective teachers have to hope against hope that some sanity will come to Sacramento in a form yet undiscovered in California politics. We hope. We have to have the blind faith and luck that sustains survivors ranging from layoffs to Auschwitz. Some of my classmates might want the challenge, they might be itching for the fight but I imagine that the Quixotic among us as with the population at large are few. We idealists have signed on for a crazy-making job that even in the most halcyon of settings is rife with challenge. My classmates and I are buying into a system that from what we saw on the screen is almost beyond resuscitation. We’re like those wrinkled brown desert people in the casino of Searchlight, Nevada, dully plunking rent money in the slot hoping for the payoff. Not the big payoff, the million dollar, end of work payoff but the, I’ll be able to pay the rent and have a little left over payoff. And maybe the other kind of payoff, the thing that makes you feel good about yourself and the world in which you live. One of the things that I’ve seen from my teacher friends that have stayed in the profession is that they seem content. They are tired but at peace with themselves. A teachers peace, I have to believe, is the result of right thought and right actions, they know, although few say this often, that they are helping the human condition if only a little.
So my fear is the same as yesterday, and the day before and the day before that, it’s a fear of the thing that hasn’t happened yet; my automatic default position trips to this, “My future is going to be hell.” But, maybe right thoughts might follow right actions and with the action taken, with the credential process in motion, maybe just maybe my fear could be nothing but smoke.

Blog post. 6/14/09


A spectre is haunting San Francisco – the spectre of Waveinism. None of the powers of old America have entered into any kind of alliance to exorcise this spectre; Pope or Czar, President or Mayor.
Where is the party in opposition to Waveinism? Where is the outcry?
Two things result from this fact:
I. Waveinism is already ensconced in the motoring fabric of San Francisco.
II. It is high time that Waveinists should publish their views their aims their tendencies and meet this nursery tale of the Spectre of Waveinism with a Manifesto of its self.
It’s origin I believe, came from the ancient misplaced Californian activity of waving the opposing driver through the intersection, ostensibly in an attempt to show how neighborly the waving driver is. This activity usually has no relevance to the simple rules of conduct as laid out in the licensing permit driving manual. In an attempt to cover lack of established traffic pattern knowledge the opposing driver would just ‘wing it’ and wave a motorist into some life threatening mishap. As a pedestrian, I’ve had numerous drivers attempt to wave me into oncoming traffic. I wave back, a polite, “Screw you dummy.”
Recently, within the last year, I’ve noticed a new slant on the wave. Now the drivers wave as they continue to motor through a stop sign, thus combining the Hollywood stop (non-stop) with the San Francisco (I don’t know whose turn it is) wave . Occupied with waving drivers abandon the break pedal and completely ignore the turn signal lever thus setting up a new exciting paradigm in surface travel.
So in the spirit of, gulp, fairness, a portion of the sales of the Waveists Manifesto should fund either through financial aid or grants, those of us who venture through the city on foot or on bike with course work in telepathy and mind reading. When a driver leans over his steering wheel and opens his cell phone as he ploughs through a stop sign, does that cell phone beam signal a warning or does this mean something else such as he’s spilled his latte while driving while talking on the phone? If I’m in the middle of an intersection, within the protective white lines of the crosswalk and a driver swings a turn through the stop sign scaring the Bejesus from me does she wave the hold-your-horses, wave to warn me away or is she trying to snake charm a potential target. God forbid the driver take the time to signal an intention to turn or to push down gently on that large horizontal pedal directly beneath the steering wheel.
I can pretend the waving salute is an intended restraint on horn blowing, and though delusional at times not even I really believe this true. But what is the truth? With so may questions about the nature, cause, and intent of drivers waving from behind the protection of crash bumpers, steel impact panels, and air bags, I request the explanation of Waveinists. I wait for your answer in the middle of an intersection, I’ll be the one standing in that provisionally sacred space, unarmed, confused, and terribly afraid for my life.