Priorities

My head is spinning. I'm trying to put things together in my mind before the State of the Union address President Obama will give tonight.

Here's a fragment of an interview I heard on NPR: "Education is everything.. but the white flight to suburban schools has left urban public schools mostly to Latino and African American students without political or financial clout."

Here's a comment our trainer made when we applied for jobs as K-12 substitute teachers in the Oakland Unified School District last week: "A substitute teacher saved my child's life. That's the truth."

Here's a comment made by a full time teacher in a public school: "I can't actually support my family on a starting teacher's salary in this district."

Here's a comment made by a young man I passed in a high school corridor: "I'd go crazy if I had to come to school every day."

Here's a comment overheard in a job line: "We're spending billions every day on the war in Afghanistan, right?"

Here are two headlines: "Job growth Shows Economic Upturn" and "Obama will propose spending freeze."

Here's a how de do, to quote from Gilbert and Sullivan, whose ironic insights in the late 1800-s seem oddly current, in a world where opposites are equally true and where priorities clash with our values.

I appreciate that we have a few people willing to enter politics, given the painful challenges. I dread hearing from our President and our Governors about cuts to education and social services. I hate that we tell our community and state college students how important their education is one moment, but that we don't have the funding to offer the classes they need the next My head spins.

The sun shines today. Students remain intelligent and hopeful. President Obama will offer us some good ideas tonight. I will continue to embrace ambiguity.

Shootings

On April 4, 1968, I was in Chicago on my spring break from college. Staying with friends on the Southside near the University. It was already dark as I walked that night from the train to m my friends' apartment. The streets buzzed with groups of people shouting, cars full of people driving around and around. "What's going on?" I asked someone. "Martin Luther King Jr has been assassinated," the man said.

At that moment, I felt the same stabbing pain in the chest and dizziness I had felt only a few years before, on hearing of the Kennedy assassination. Someone told me that news on November 22, 1963 in an elevator and I almost fainted then, too.

Thankfully assassinations are still not commonplace; the word itself feels alien in my mouth. One dictionary definition reads, "to murder (a prominent person) by surprise attack, as for political reasons." JFK, Martin, Robert. Those of us who lived through these horrible shootings remember exactly where we were when we heard the news.

But are assassinations as rare as we think? We don't call drive-by shootings assassinations. We tally our homicides here in Oakland and compare them to the tallies in comparable large cities. The recent shooting of Representative Giffords reminded us how easy it is to get a gun and of the travesty of the "background check." My own high school students have scoffed at the idea. "Anyone can get a gun any time," they said. In fact, some schools have metal detectors at the front door and now we have body scans to detect plastic guns or explosives at airports. We don't use the word assassination for these murders - the aspects of prominence and politics, are missing. But in a way homicides on our streets are political, and shouldn't we view each human life as "prominently" valuable? Street shootings and violent crimes link to poverty and social injustice, which are political. Altars of flowers and teddy bears on street corners testify to the prominence of another young person gunned down.

When I first started teaching high school drama, I was shocked to learn of the frequency of gun violence in students' lives. We were playing a warm up exercise I called "the community game," in which we stepped into the center of our circle to identify common ground. Towards the end of the warm up I asked, "Step to the center if you've ever lost a friend or relative through gun violence," ALL OF US stepped into the circle. Slowly over the years I became accustomed to my students' need to talk about neighborhood violence, to write skits about it, to mourn.

Martin Luther King Jr, who exemplified peace making and was aware of the threats against his life, showed us the way we should live. I am grateful he has his own holiday for us to reflect on his dream and his reality. May both come to pass.

Invisible

We don't see a lot, in spite of social networking and instant Internet news. Sometimes a documentary or magazine article will reveal an invisible world, like say, rodeos, coin collecting or dog shows. The people and things within these worlds are a kind of closed circuit, revolving around outside our "trending now" everydayness.

The tragedy in Arizona suddenly brings to light one of these invisible worlds: mental illness. Clearly, the "suspect" shooter needed treatment years before the preventable disaster, but instead ended up isolated like so many in this mostly misunderstood world. We hide people with brain disorders in prisons, under freeway overpasses, residential hotels, a relative's spare room, or homes for the aging with dementia.

I spend most of my time in another invisible world: the arts. Sure, a few shining members of this world grace the front pages (of the Entertainment Section). But artists generally cycle unseen on two paths: 1) Create or perform work; 2) Work a "regular" job to pay off debts incurred in #1.

As an artist without a "regular" job, I've been keeping myself sane by engaging in various creative projects like radio drama with KPFA- Berkeley, writing poems and short stories, dancing, singing and actng. None of these activities pay even close to a living wage. Job listings in performing arts are - yes - invisible.

Seeking to become less invisible, I posted my performing artist resume on a popular online job site. Presto! I received three emails from various highly positioned employers. "I am impressed by your skills and think you're a perfect fit for our organization. Please contact me for an interview." Great! They saw on my resume that I can act, sing, direct plays and write poetry and will pay me to do these things! Or they want me full time as a drama professor at a college!

WRONG. The job openings for which I was asked to interview? An insurance company, a bank, a realty firm, full time data entry. Like Superman, we artists work undercover in such jobs. That man or woman in the cubicle next to you might even be one.

January

Happy New Year! New Year, new month, new beginnings. Resolved: meditate daily and be kind. I've already broken both resolutions. Add to version 4 of "final" New Year list: confront failure with grace.

The typical school year differs from the calendar year. In school, January is mid year; over five more months of getting up early, attending classes, studying for exams, writing papers, forgetting to bring an umbrella to school when it rains. "In the bleak mid winter, frosty wind made moan/ Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone," the carol goes. After the hype and anticipation of the holiday season, a bit of depression arrives, otherwise known as "seasonal affective disorder." Gone are the excuses to eat Grandma's fudge and Aunt Lucy's pecan pie (the fudge and pie are gone already anyway because we ate them all up). We're advised to exercise, lose weight, buy full spectrum light bulbs, volunteer at our local charities.

These ideas indeed work well. But sometimes I prefer the animal kingdom's solution: hibernate. In January I find taking naps and going to bed at 7 pm helps. Being someone who doesn't dream much (or remember my dreams), I'm amazed lately by the creativity of my unconscious world. I'm also more appreciative than ever before of the brilliant visions no doubt hiding behind the eyelids of my sleeping students in class.

Ah, well. It's California, and in another month the fluffy pink plum blossoms will come out on our block. Global warming will bring early spring, the days will get longer and I'll have to stay awake at work. I think I'll just.. yawn.. put my head down.. here.. a ... second... l..ong.....er... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz