Remember, if you don’t take the trouble to find out what’s going on and what people are saying about it, you won’t KNOW what’s going on.  Not to keep updated is to choose ignorance.  Choosing ignorance is one of the most horrible things a person can do, no matter what the topic.  Education is what separates the sheep from the goats, because not to understand that everything is connected to everything else, and that nothing exists in isolation, and how to connect these dots to form ideas and understanding, is to actively choose ignorance.  We can’t help being ignorant about things we’ve never been exposed to, but to choose non-exposure is to choose ignorance.  Oh, and those people who take great pride in refusing to learn?  They are ignorance, personified.  Harsh?  I don’t really think so.  In fact, I have not even begun to express my disgust for people who are able, yet actively choose to be ignorant.  We are all ignorant of many things, but if we continue to learn, to be less ignorant daily, we’re on our way.

Oh, and please don’t forget that ignorance and stupidity are not the same thing.  Not the same thing at all, at all.

Parents, professional educators, and all inhabitants of the planet, simply must keep learning.  If we stop learning, “they” might as well bury us, because such people are as good as dead. Worse, even, because dead people don’t bring others down.  Ignorant people do.

CONSTANT VIGILANCE, as Alastair Moody would say.  To choose ignorance is to choose a kind of death.

P.S.  When I took my beautiful daughter to her college dorm and went back home without her, itself a traumatic thing, “Less ignorant every day” became our rallying cry for her college education.  We still quote it, laughing, when we learn new things and share them.  Why don’t y’all use it, too?

Less ignorant daily.  Bring it on, universe.

School will be starting soon – or maybe it already has – for most kids, and each year at about this time I like to re-run this post about an issue that really, really makes me want to kill somebody and put his/her head on a post in the WalMart parking lot bothers me a lot: community supplies in the classroom.

When I was a little kid, one of my favorite days of the year (besides Christmas Day) was the day the newspaper posted the list of required school supplies, and Mom took us to Crowder’s Drug Store to buy them.

I loved looking at that list, and Mom always let me be the one who got to put the little checkmark beside the items as we put them in our basket.

Prang paints. Check. Paint pan. Check. Rectangular eraser. Check. Blunt-tipped scissors. Check. Etc. Check.

On the first day of school, I loved bringing my beautiful shiny school supplies into my new classroom, and I loved arranging them all inside my desk. I loved to look inside my desk and just savor the sight: all those cool things I could draw with and paint with and write with. . . and they were mine, all mine, and nobody else could touch my things unless I gave them permission. Me. I was the boss of my desk things. I took such pride in my school supplies, and mine were usually still looking pretty good even at the end of the year. They were mine, you see, and I had a vested interest in them; therefore, I took pains to take care of them. Back then, down in lower elementary, the school supplied only the special fat pencils and the weird orange pens.

When my own children were little,  I looked forward to Buying School Supplies Day with just as much delight as I did when I was a little kid. New binders. New pencils. And the most fun of all, choosing the new lunchbox. My own children loved the new school supplies, too. I think it is of vital importance that all children have their own school supplies; it is the beginning of them learning the pride of possession and the importance of caring for one’s own things in order to keep them for any length of time.

It’s not like that in many schools nowadays. I learned, to my horror and dismay, that many teachers do not allow their students to have their own supplies now; the little sack of a child’s very own things is taken from the child on that first day, and dumped into the community pot for all the kids to dip into and out of. There are no “my scissors,” there is only a rack or box of scissors for everyone. “Look, there are the scissors I picked out at Walmart; my name is engraved on them; I wish I could use them but they’re so cool, other kids grab them first every time. . . .”  There are no more personalized pencils or a child’s favorite cartoon character pencils to use and handle carefully; there is only a big on chewed-on germ-covered pencils grabbed at and used by everybody in the room.

And since nothing belongs to anybody, who cares about taking good care of them?

I fully understand that the community pot of supplies is much easier for a teacher to control. I wasn’t, however, aware of the fact that teacher convenience was any kind of issue here. I taught in the public schools for 26 years and I never expected things to happen for the convenience of me; that wasn’t why I was there.

I fully understand, too, that some children’s little sack of supplies won’t be as individualized or cool as another child’s sack of supplies.  I know for a sad fact that some children will never have their own little sack of supplies, at least, not one brought from home.  That’s life; that should not even be an issue. Some children’s shoes aren’t as cool, either; do we throw shoes in a box and let the kids take pot luck with those, too? I understand that in some classrooms, a child’s packed lunch is sometimes taken apart and certain things confiscated or distributed, lest some child have a treat that another child doesn’t have.   When my kids were in grade school, my mother would occasionally stop by at lunch time with a Happy Meal for them – and for me! – and I was told this had to stop because other children didn’t have that option.  Well, you know what, my children were often envious of another child’s dress or shoes or lunch or cool pen, but I would never have tried to ensure that other children would never be able to have anything my own kids couldn’t have.  Good grief.  Such insanity!

Teachers should keep an eye out for those kids who don’t have supplies, and the school should supply them, but after that point, they become the child’s own and he/she should be required to take good care of them, just as any and every kid should be required to take care of his/her things. Children who take good care of their things should not be required to supply children who had their own things but didn’t take care of them properly. As a little child, I was horrified at the thought, and as a parent, I’m even more horrified.  It was like a reward for being negligent! Every year, I donate tons of school supplies to my neighbor’s children’s school; I’m delighted to do this,  and I recommend this to all of you.  Perhaps, if schools have enough donated supplies, our little children will be allowed to keep their very own supplies once again.

When I was a child, I had very little that was my very own. Everything that was supposedly mine was expected to be shared with anybody else in the house that wanted it at any given moment. But at school? In my desk, in my very own desk, were things that were inviolably mine, and I can not even describe for you the sensations that went through me when I looked at those things that my teacher had ruled were mine and only mine. Kids who violated another kid’s desk were quite properly labeled ‘thieves,’ and they soon learned what happens when a person put his hands on property that was not rightfully theirs.

Things are very different now. I hate it. The rare teacher who takes the time and trouble to allow his/her students to have their own things is often castigated by the other teachers who are taking the easy ‘community property’ route. Kids are sharing more than gluesticks and pencils, too; I don’t even want to THINK about the incredible pot-o-germs they’re dipping into daily. Gross. My child using a pencil some other child gnawed? I guess so, because teachers who don’t want to bother with a child’s private property are forcing the kids to dump it all in the pot for everybody to use. “Don’t be selfish.” “Share.” Well, you know what? I don’t like that kind of forced sharing. I had to share everything, EVERYTHING, and that little pile of school supplies was my only private stash of anything. I do not feel it was selfish, or is selfish, to want to keep school supplies that were carefully chosen, to oneself.  Children who have their own things learn to respect the property of other children.  Children with no concept of personal property tend to view the world as a buffet of delights awaiting their grasping, grabbing hands.  Both tend to grow into adults with the same concepts learned as children.

This business of everything being community property in the classroom causes problems in the upper levels, too. Junior high, high school, even college students, are expecting things to be available for them without any effort on their part. Upper level students come to class without pencils, erasers, paper, etc, because they’re used to having those things always available in some community bin somewhere in the room. They have never been required, or allowed, to maintain their own things, and now they don’t know how to. The stuff was always just THERE, for a student to help himself to. And now that they are supposed to maintain their own, they really don’t know how. Plus, why should they? HEY, I need a pencil, Teach, gimme one. No, not that one, that other one there.       Indeed,

Well, it worked down in the lower grades, with community property. You just get up and help yourself; everything in this room is for me, ain’t it? Gimme that pretty one, I want it.

But guess what, kids, it’s evil enough down in the lower grades, but it doesn’t, or shouldn’t, work at all when you hit the upper grades. I’d like to have a penny for every hand that tried to help itself to things on my desk, because, well, they were there. I’ve even had students who opened my desk drawers, looking for supplies. Not poor kids who didn’t have any; just a kid who didn’t bring any and expected everything to be supplied because, well, down in the elementary, everything WAS.

Oh good grief, teachers, let the little kids keep their own things, put their names on them, and learn how to be responsible for them. Secondary teachers and future employers will greatly appreciate it.

I know that in some cases, it’s not the individual teacher’s decision – it’s a corporate mandate.  This is even more evil.  It’s like a national plot to make future generations needy and dependent and reliant on others to fulfill all their needs. And don’t we already have more than enough of THOSE people?

Let me sum up, as Inigo Montoya would say:  Community school supplies are wrong on every possible level.  Period.

Parents, if I were you – and I am one of you – I’d buy the community bin stuff at the Dollar Tree instead of the overpriced educational supplies store in the strip mall that the school supplies newsletter instructs you to patronize.  Send them to school and let them be dumped into the bins for mass consumption and germ sharing.  Then you and your children go shopping and pick out the good stuff.  If your school informs you that it’s against their policy for any of the children to have their own supplies, you inform the school that you don’t give a rat’s ass about such a policy; you did your chipping in and now you’re seeing to it that your children have their very own stuff and that you expect your children’s very own stuff to harbor no germs except your own children’s germs, which will be considerable, but that’s another topic.  What’s more, if your children come home and tell you that their very own supplies are not being respected and are in fact being accessed by others without permission of their rightful owners, you should high-tail it to that classroom and raise bloody hell.

I am happy to see to it that all of the children in the room have adequate supplies, but I can’t stress strongly enough that each child needs and deserves to have his/her very own personal private stash of supplies that nobody else can ever touch.

Do I seem overly obsessed about this topic?  Darn right.  The very concept of community school supplies makes me so furious I become incoherent.  Which is apparently happening right now so. . . .

Mamacita says:  Sunday is Independence Day! And, if you do not believe in that, then, Sunday is the Fourth of July.

Deny it if you will, but you will be wrong. You have a fourth of July. Everybody has a fourth of July. It’s right there between the third and the fifth, so none of your lip now. If you live here, this country’s history is now your history, too.

When our kids were younger, we used to use our deck as a launching pad for bottle rockets. Well, the actual launching pad was a pop bottle, but who can find those any more? Now, we just jam the rocket between the cracks in the deck boards, light it, and stand back. Our deck is covered with black burn marks, but I kind of like that. It makes me remember happy summers with small children.

Oh, hush. We watched them carefully.

When the kids were older, we used to set off the big stuff in the back yard while the children sat safely on that same deck, watching. But I won’t go there in case there are any of those prissy types reading.

Our sidewalk is covered with black spots, too. That’s where we set off the coiling snakes. I’m still kind of partial to those. I like to look at the sidewalk spots, too, because they make me remember those giggling little kids, watching the coiling black snakes with big laughing eyes. The kids, not the snakes.

Nothing perfect can be truly beautiful. I’d rather have my spotty sidewalks and the memories than a pristine landscaped lawn. Good thing, too, since our grass is over a foot high in places the regular mower can’t go. The tractor’s in the shop.

I’ve always liked that quotation. I also believe it is absolutely true. I think about it whenever I’m feeling particularly cowardly. It helps me overcome it. Words help me overcome it.

I’ve always stood in awe before the power of words.

With words, simple words, we can delve into the past and the future, and all the various time blends that scientists must use big words to explain, but which writers can explain simply by using one or two of the helping verbs Ol’ Miz Roberts made us memorize back in seventh grade.

Time machines in stories show the blending of times with numerals and fast-motion, whipping past the window of the machine, or by numbers going backwards or forwards on a dial.

Writers just use a helping verb or two.

Scientists discuss the concept of time, past time, present time, future time, using diagrams and equations and big, big words.  Writers just stick a “have” or “had” or a “will” in front of a plain old verb to show the same thing.

Past and future are the easiest to measure. They are also the easiest to understand, or comprehend.  “Already happened” and “not happened yet” are no biggie.

It’s the present that’s the most difficult to comprehend and measure, because even with all of our scientific knowledge, inventions, devices, equations, whatever, the present is too fleeting to measure. The actual ‘present’ is so fleeting, we can’t even realize it ourselves. By the time we do, it’s already gone. Blink, and it’s past. Breathe, and it’s past. Sit still; each beat of your heart is in the past, because by the time you are aware, it’s too late, it’s gone.

Look at your children. They’re in the present, sure, if you want to call it that. Watch them sleeping. Each rise and fall of the covers is already part of the past. History. It’s already happened, and it will never happen again. Not that particular breathe. Not that particular heartbeat. Watch them play; this moment will never come again.  Look at the pictures you took only a few seconds ago.  Those moments are gone.  The expression on your child’s face, the way his hair falls over his eyes when he’s played outside for a while, the Kool-aid smiles, that particular shirt. . . Gone.

So often we say that we can’t WAIT for a particular phase or week or school year, etc, to be over with. Be careful what you wish, my dears. . . . When it’s gone, it’s gone.  My mom used to tell me – usually in the midst of a particularly awful phase – not to wish my children’s lives away, but I didn’t understand what she meant then.  I do now.

The actual present can’t be measured, not by us, not yet. Use it carefully, for once you’re aware of it, it’s already part of your history.

And your history, and mine, are, of course, part of the history of mankind.

Ah, the power of words, that we can so clearly express the elements of time with just a few simple helping verbs.  Scientists can’t do it yet.  Only writers can do it, with our magic wands called pens.  The typing fingers of a writer can make the past come alive again, and the present seem permanent, and the future? A time of hope and joy, which I hope is true for all of us.

I wondered about it. (simple past: one-shot deal, it’s over.)

For many years, I have wondered about it. (present perfect: I was wondering in the past and I’m STILL wondering. Two times are represented here, one in the past and one in the present.)

I had wondered about it before I said something. (past perfect: both actions are in the past, but one is more recent than the other. Two times are represented; both past.)

I have always enjoyed teaching this concept, and with adult students, it’s even more awesome. I’ve had students weep, during this lesson.

Words are powerful. A pen in the hand is power. Use words carefully, and properly. Choose them wisely.

Remember, there’s a big difference between a wise man and a wise guy. And which would you prefer: a day off or an off day?

I love the power, magic, and majesty of words.  Maybe this is one reason I hate texting and  cutesy codes so thoroughly

U dig?

*Annie Dillard

“No two people are alike, and both of them are damn glad of it.”

That’s a quotation; that’s not me saying “damn,” although I frequently occasionally do. I am, to my shame, greatly afflicted with “potty mouth,” and although I managed to control it somewhat while my children were tiny, thanks to what I think of as my “Shit Epiphany,” it’s back, in full force. Honestly? I need help.

But I digress. No two people are alike, but both of them are expected to progress at the same rate by our public schools.

Our children are expected to learn to read and write by a certain age lest they be labeled “special education” and given an IEP and pulled from the classroom to be tutored in the Reading Room. Most of them are little boys.

Old hippies like me sometimes have a hard time admitting that there really are gender differences that no amount of “environment” is going to change. One of those differences is this: a lot of little boys need a few more years than a lot of little girls need, to mature enough so that their bodies and brains can sit still, together, long enough to learn how to read and write. Whether we like it or not, it is a fact that while a lot of little girls are reading “Gone with the Wind,” many of the little boys sitting next to them are still struggling to recognize letter combinations. It is also a fact that some of these little boys who still can’t do it in the third grade, or the fourth, somehow have their own “epiphany” in the middle grades; something in their brain becomes aware of symbols and their meanings and how to translate them to Harry Potter. It wasn’t that these little boys didn’t TRY down in the lower grades; it was that their bodies and brains weren’t THERE yet.

I saw this miracle happen over and over again. With my own eyes I saw it. Sometimes, when I tried to tell other teachers, especially elementary teachers, about this awakening, they did not believe me. “I had that boy in third grade and I’m telling you, Jane, that he just doesn’t have what it takes to be a reader, a good student. He just can’t do it.”

And I’m telling you, Madeline, that I don’t give a rat’s ass* what the child did in your class. I am trying to tell you that in my class, the boy can read. One week he couldn’t, and the next week, he could. And he’s ecstatic.

Heidi learned to read overnight. It does happen. At age eight, Heidi learned to read overnight. And then she went home and taught her friend Peter how to read, and he was in his teens. The “learning how to read when convinced one would never be able to learn because it was just too hard” theme is a big one in this book.

My point? Do I have to have one? I guess I could drag one in by the hind legs if you must have a point. How about this one:

Hold off on the IEP’s and the labeling until the kid is in middle school. Tutor, yes. Give special help, yes. Hang a label on his forehead and put it in his permanent record? Not so fast there, Teach. Don’t do it Not yet. Not just for reading. Save the labeling for the children who genuinely need the help; don’t fill up the room with little boys who just need a few more years to mature.

Same-sex classrooms in the lower grades? Why not? It might work. It would certainly be better for the little girls who, most of them, just naturally catch on to the reading faster; they could move on! It would be better for the little boys, too; they wouldn’t feel pressured and might get comfortable enough to relax and blossom, too.

Many of our most highly esteemed scientists, inventors, etc, were late bloomers. Edison wasn’t even allowed to continue at his school; he was so slow, he held the others back!

Let’s give our little boys a break, what say, people?

And by the way, taking away a child’s recess because he couldn’t finish his vocabulary words quickly is cruel and unusual punishment. I suppose the boy would then be punished because he was extra wiggly since his ‘outlet’ was taken from him? Energetic little children NEED to be let loose on the playground several times a day!!! Taking away recesses for punishment or to make more room for standardized test review is the action of a halfwit who knows nothing about either education OR children and probably hasn’t been in a classroom since 1972 politician, superintendent, or some other administrator who falls into the ‘nimrod’ category of typical la la land unawareness of real people and how we live. Probably people who do that don’t know how to access their email, either, or use a computer. But then, that’s what secretaries are for.

I put up with this for 26 years. No wonder I had a potty mouth.

Back in the olden days, there were plenty of outlets for restless boys to work off their excess energy. Families sent their  boys out to chop wood, plow, herd cows, walk miles to a neighbor or a store, etc. Our boys fell into bed exhausted from genuine labor every night. Now, few boys have any safe or easily obtainable or legitimate outlets, other than sports, for their physical energy and it gets kind of balled up (sorry) in them and then they explode, sometimes for no conceivable reason other than that the kid simply needs an outlet. I’m a huge proponent of self control, but self control can only do so much. Any teacher can tell you that a middle-of-the-day segment devoted to intense physical activity is of vital importance for our students. Girls need it, too, but I’m focusing on the boys in this post. Afternoon classes full of boys who have had absolutely no physical outlet are a nightmare.

Organized games are not enough. Not every kid will get to play; plus, once the adults take charge, it’s no longer free play; it’s business. Let the kids run wild for a half hour or so and let the teachers stand there and try to keep them from getting hurt. Tim’s elementary school had a hill to slide down and a piney grove to play in. I taught in that same school for years and by then, the piney grove, the hill, and most of the coolest playground equipment had been removed because a kid fell down. Go figure. Our kids don’t even know HOW to fall down these days. When they are on ice or trip and really DO fall down, they get hurt because they’ve had no falling-down experience. Kids fall down. Live with it. Sheesh.

And by the way, this guv’ment standard of requiring our tiny first and second graders to sit still for NINETY MINUTES and read without interruption is ignorance in action on the part of whoever thought that one up. Tell me, Mr. Standards: Can YOU sit absolutely still for ninety minutes and read without interruption? I thought not.

*Dammit **, there I go again.

** Crap.

She told him she did it that way, because her mother always did it that way.

So the young husband asked his mother-in-law why she had always cut the beef roast in half before she put it in the pan. Her reply? She did it that way because HER mother had always done it that way.

At the next family dinner, the husband asked his wife’s grandmother why she had always cut the beef roast in half before putting it in the pan. Her reply? Because her mother had always done it that way.

His wife’s great-grandmother was still alive, so he went to the nursing home and asked her why she always cut the beef roast in half before putting it in the pan. Her reply?

“I only had the one small pan, and the only way a roast would fit in it was if it was first cut into two pieces.”

When my children visit, I often think of this story. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but it might as well be, because so many of the things we do make no sense except in the context of the past.

First of all, both of my children love grilled cheese sandwiches. I mean, who doesn’t? Secondly, neither of my children will touch a grilled cheese sandwich unless it was made with Velveeta.**

Thirdly, and most importantly, I can grant these wishes because A. I won’t eat a grilled cheese sandwich unless it was made with Velveeta, either, and B. Velveeta is a name brand food I can actually AFFORD!

My son comes down to visit me frequently (Yay)  and the minute he enters the house, he requests grilled cheese sandwiches. When he was a little boy, the only way he could eat a grilled cheese sandwich was if I mashed it down flat with the spatula after the Velveeta had melted. THEN his little mouth could close around it, and he could eat the sandwich “like a man.”

He is 24*** years old now, but he still wants his grilled cheese flattened with the spatula. Because that’s how his mother always made them.

When he gets married****, I can’t wait to hear his wife’s reaction when he asks her to mash a perfectly good sandwich flat. Will she question it, or just do it?

Sometimes, family traditions have serious beginnings and funny middles. As for the endings, there aren’t any, not really.

*beef roast vs. roast beef: is it regional or are these two different cuts?

**No, I got no money or Velveeta from Kraft for saying this.  It’s just, well, true.

*** He’s 29 now, but who’s counting?

**** Mommy is still waiting.

Once upon a time, we were just sisters and wives and daughters when we got together, sharing a mom and having first names.  Now, we’re all Mom, Mommy, Grandma, Mamaw, Aunt, Great-aunt, mother-in-law . . . . I can remember days when I couldn’t remember the last time someone called me by my actual name.

I also remember, clear as a bell, the first time my child said my new name.  Mama.  That moment is etched on my heart, in beautiful calligraphy, and decorated with fresh flowers.  I still love to hear my children say “Mom.”  These women whose children refer to them by their first names, instead of some variation of mother?  I pity both woman and child.  Somethin’ WRONG wit dat.  Somebody gots her priorities all messed up.

Contrary to popular belief, mothers are not omnicient, we don’t have eyes in the backs of our heads, and we can’t read your mind.  The only exception to that would be MY mother.

And speaking of my mother. . . Mom, I have tried to emulate you in many ways, all of my life.  You read to us.  You sat down on the floor and played with us.  You used the power of Parenthood and created Special Days, all throughout the year.  Christmas is a holiday, sure, but it was YOU who created OUR Christmas.  I have tried to “do” holidays just as you did, all my married life.

I’m looking forward to Sunday, dear sisters and nieces and daughters and all of the other wonderful descriptions that come with all of you.  I might be the weirdo of the bunch – oh, it’s not like I don’t KNOW that!!!! -but I might also be the most sentimental of the bunch.

1.The phrase “working mother” is redundant. ~Jane Sellman

2. The moment a child is born, the mother is also born. She never existed before. The woman existed, but the mother, never. A mother is something absolutely new. ~Rajneesh

3. I remember my mother’s prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life. ~Abraham Lincoln

4. A mother is a person who, seeing there are only four pieces of pie for five people, promptly announces she never did care for pie. ~Tenneva Jordan

5. The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness. ~Honoré de Balzac

6. He is a poor son whose sonship does not make him desire to serve all men’s mothers. ~Harry Emerson Fosdick

7. An ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy. ~Spanish Proverb

8. My mom is a neverending song in my heart of comfort, happiness, and being. I may sometimes forget the words but I always remember the tune. ~Graycie Harmon

9. Any mother could perform the jobs of several air traffic controllers with ease. ~Lisa Alther

10. Grown don’t mean nothing to a mother. A child is a child. They get bigger, older, but grown? What’s that suppose to mean? In my heart it don’t mean a thing. ~Toni Morrison, Beloved

11. The only mothers it is safe to forget on Mother’s Day are the good ones. ~Mignon McLaughlin

12. A mom forgives us all our faults, not to mention one or two we don’t even have. ~Robert Brault

13. One good mother is worth a hundred schoolmasters. ~George Herbert

14. Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children. ~William Makepeace Thackeray

15. Every beetle is a gazelle in the eyes of its mother. ~Moorish Proverb

16. All that I am or ever hope to be, I owe to my angel Mother. ~Abraham Lincoln

17. No one in the world can take the place of your mother. Right or wrong, from her viewpoint you are always right. She may scold you for little things, but never for the big ones. ~Harry Truman

18. God could not be everywhere, so He created mothers. ~Jewish Proverb

19. Biology is the least of what makes someone a mother. ~Oprah Winfrey

20. I regard no man as poor who has a godly mother. ~ Abraham Lincoln

21. The mother loves her child most divinely not when she surrounds him with comforts and anticipates his wants, but when she resolutely holds him to the highest standards and is content with nothing less than his best. ~ Hamilton Wright Mabie

22. The hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world. ~ William Ross Wallace

23. There never was a woman like her. She was gentle as a dove and brave as a lioness… The memory of my mother and her teachings were, after all, the only capital I had to start life with, and on that capital I have made my way. ~ Andrew Jackson

24. Who is getting more pleasure from this rocking, the baby or me? ~ Nancy Thayer

25. No matter how old a mother is, she watches her middle-aged children for signs of improvement. ~ Florida Scott-Maxwell

26. Sometimes when I look at all my children, I say to myself, ‘Lillian, you should have stayed a virgin.’” ~ Lillian Carter

27. And so our mothers and grandmothers have, more often than not anonymously, handed on the creative spark, the seed of the flower they themselves never hoped to see — or like a sealed letter they could not plainly read. ~ Alice Walker

28. Women do not have to sacrifice personhood if they are mothers. They do not have to sacrifice motherhood in order to be persons. Liberation was meant to expand women’s opportunities, not to limit them. The self-esteem that has been found in new pursuits can also be found in mothering. ~ Elaine Heffner

29. If you bungle raising your children, I don’t think whatever else you do well matters very much. ~ Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

30. I looked on child rearing not only as a work of love and duty but as a profession that was fully as interesting and challenging as any honorable profession in the world and one that demanded the best I could bring to it. ~ Rose Kennedy

31. A mother is not a person to lean on, but a person to make leaning unnecessary. ~ Dorothy Canfield Fisher

32. She was the archetypal selfless mother: living only for her children, sheltering them from the consequences of their actions — and in the end doing them irreparable harm. ~ Marcia Muller

33. Spend at least one Mother’s Day with your respective mothers before you decide on marriage. If a man gives his mother a gift certificate for a flu shot, dump him. ~ Erma Bombeck

34. No one ever died from sleeping in an unmade bed. I have known mothers who remake the bed after their children do it because there’s a wrinkle in the spread or the blanket is on crooked. This is sick. ~ Erma Bombeck

35. Becoming a mother makes you the mother of all children. From now on each wounded, abandoned, frightened child is yours. You live in the suffering mothers of every race and creed and weep with them. You long to comfort all who are desolate. ~ Charlotte Gray

36. Giving kids clothes and food is one of thing, but it’s much more important to teach them that other people besides themselves are important and that the best thing they can do with their lives is to use them in the service of other people. ~ Dolores Huerta

37. Blaming mother is just a negative way of clinging to her still. ~ Nancy Friday

38. I love people. I love my family, my children . . . but inside myself is a place where I live all alone and that’s where you renew your springs that never dry up. ~ Pearl S. Buck

39. The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother. ~ Father Theodore Hesburgh

40. When, however, one reads of a witch being ducked, of a woman possessed by devils, of a wise woman selling herbs, or even a very remarkable man who had a mother, then I think we are on the track of a lost novelist, a suppressed poet. . . indeed, I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman. ~ Virginia Woolf

41. A mother’s love for her child is like nothing else in the world. It knows no law, no pity, it dares all things and crushes down remorselessly all that stands in its path. ~ Agatha Christie

42. You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother. ~ Albert Einstein

43. If there were no schools to take the children away from home part of the time, the insane asylum would be filled with mothers. ~ Edgar Watson Howe

44. What the mother sings to the cradle goes all the way down to the coffin. ~ Henry Ward Beecher

45. My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it. ~ Mark Twain

46. Over the years I have learned that motherhood is much like an austere religious order, the joining of which obligates one to relinquish all claims to personal possessions. ~ Nancy Stahl

47. There never was a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him asleep ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

48. At work, you think of the children you have left at home. At home, you think of the work you’ve left unfinished. Such a struggle is unleashed within yourself. Your heart is rent. ~ Golda Meir

49. A mother is she who can take the place of all others but whose place no one else can take. ~ Cardinal Mermilod

50. A mother’s yearning feels the presence of the cherished child even in the degraded man. ~ George Eliot

51. There are lots of things that you can brush under the carpet about yourself until you’re faced with somebody whose needs won’t be put off. ~ Angela Carter

52. Isidor Isaac Rabi’s mother used to ask him, upon his return from school each day, “Did you ask any good questions today, Isaac?” ~ Steve Chandler

53. Sometimes the poorest woman leaves her children the richest inheritance. ~ Ruth E. Renkel

54. Mother love is the fuel that enables a normal human being to do the impossible. ~ Marion C. Garretty

55. A mother is never cocky or proud, because she knows the school principal may call at any minute to report that her child has just driven a motorcycle through the gymnasium. ~ Mary Kay Blakeley

56. It would seem that something which means poverty, disorder and violence every single day should be avoided entirely, but the desire to beget children is a natural urge. ~ Phyllis Diller

57. Parents often talk about the younger generation as if they didn’t have anything to do with it. ~ Haim Ginott

58. If you want your children to turn out well, spend twice as much time with them, and half as much money. ~ Abigail Van Buren

59. Making a decision to have a child–it’s momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body. ~ Elizabeth Stone

60. If you want your child to be brilliant, tell them fairy tales. If you want your child to be very brilliant, tell them even more fairy tales. ~ Albert Einstein

P.S.  What’s that she’s saying?  She needs to FIND HERSELF?  “Find herself” my Aunt Fanny.  Grow a pair, and be a parent to your child.  He’ll have pals his own age.  YOU can “find yourself” after your job is done.

P.P.S.  Does anybody else love it when, out in public, a child says “Mama?” and forty women instinctively turn their heads?

When most of us first started putting bits and pieces of ourselves “out there” for “strangers” to see, we didn’t use our real names.  We made up fake or cute names for ourselves, and for our spouses and children, too.  After all, the internet is huge and strange and full of dark, creepy neighborhoods and “iffy” people, and if nobody knew who we really were, we felt safer.  Well, I did.  Now, most of us don’t bother with the original fake names; we use our real names because everybody knows anyway.  Heck, pole dancers are coming out of the woodwork these days, trying to buy “Mamacita” from me, but they can’t have it.  Not officially, anyway.    They can sign their posts that way but they can’t have the url’s or the Twitter name.

But, most of you know who I am now.  I don’t mind.  I like it.  Some of you know where I live because you’ve been here, and that makes me happy, too.

Fake internet names.  It’s almost funny now.

Then something happened.

Those internet strangers. . . they turned into real people.  Then the real people turned into real people with actual names and locations.  And then, well, then. . . a lot of them turned into real and actual friends.

Not just people with whom we exchanged advice and ideas and conversation, but friends.

I know there are those who do not believe an internet friend is the same thing as a real-life friend, but they are wrong.  In fact, I think we sometimes end up knowing more about an internet friend – assuming (and we have to assume this) – that we’re all telling the truth about ourselves – and I think we are.  Oh, there’s the occasional scam.  I’ve been scammed that way myself twice, BIG TIME.

This made me perhaps a bit more wary, but ultimately, I trust people because that’s how people become trustworthy, and I know that 99.99% of the blogosphere- at least the neighbors I’m familiar with – is populated with awesome people, and I’m proud to know them.

Proud to know them, both online and off.  Yes, I’ve met many of my online friends for realz, as the kids say, and it’s bloody awesome when that happens.

Conventions, conferences, meetings, Tweet-ups. . . . these are safe and convenient ways to meet online acquaintances and friends, but let me tell you something.  When someone you have come to know well and like and love to talk to invites you out to visit, that’s a happening one never forgets.  It’s a blind friendship date, and mine turned out wonderfully.  You know who you are, you wonderful, beautiful, fabulous people you.

But I digress.

Blogging has changed me.  It has encouraged me to be retrospective, to look inward and find ideas I didn’t even know I had.  It has helped me understand myself and other people.  It has forced me to look at things I’ve done, or that other people did, with fresh eyes.  It has helped me forgive.  It has made me look closely and from afar, because both microscope and telescope are equally important.  It has helped me deal with various situations.  It has renewed my trust in people.  It has helped me find myself, and others.

Part of these changes came naturally, as a result of this new way of looking at and expressing myself.  However, some of the changes came in another way.

Comments.

Total strangers who had something to say about what I had said.  People who were kind, and unkind, and full of wonderful advice.  People who came back to this blog again and again, like people with something in common who meet for lunch.  Occasionally someone told me off, which I occasionally needed.  People made accusations, and yelled at me with capital letters.  Sometimes my daughter and sister commented, telling me that my personal view of a situation or occurrence wasn’t necessarily the only one.  We all need to be reminded of THAT, you know.  It helped.  All of it helped.

In other words, after six years of blogging, I think I know myself better.  I think I understand other people a little better.  I think I’m able to look back at certain situations with a more understanding eye.  I’ve “met” people who were hurting much more than I was, people who were much more talented than I am, people who were WAY nicer than I am, people who were mean and hateful and dishonest, people who were kind and loving and genuine, people whose creative talent made me stand up in awe, people I’ve actually really met, people I can’t wait to meet, people who banded together and raised money for someone in need who they’d never actually met, people who were hurting, people who were helping, people who were living in the Blogosphere as if it were an actual neighborhood (which it IS),  people I’m now working for, people I’d love to work for, people I like so much there simply are no words. . . . .

Before I moved to the Blogosphere, my world was pretty limited.  I taught in the same room in the same building all day and then I went home.  Sometimes, after school, I waited tables all night and cooked in a deli all weekend.  We never had much money.  Every day was pretty much the same, and I’d been working with the same people for years and years.  It’s not just online that people are fooled about other people.

Once I moved into the blogosphere, though, my entire life was different.  I had a different job, different schedule, different EVERYTHING, including a different outlook on life.  It took a little while to let my guard down and trust people, but once I did, it was liberating.  It was like one of those corny commercials that show a woman running along the beach, arms uplifted, living the moment.  It seriously was.  And we all know that most corny things are also true things.

Anyway, now that Scheiss Weekly is six years old, I wanted to thank you all for freeing me from the cage in which I was apparently living, even though I didn’t realize it at the time.  A public school teacher is a slave, and I’m not kidding, and most of them don’t even know it until they leave and start doing something else.  But that’s another post, isn’t it.

I am free, and doing work I LOVE, and meeting all kinds of people and finding them awesome.  Nobody will ever cage me again.  And if I want to show my students that all things are in some way connected, I damn well will and nobody can stop me.

I love my blog.  I love the Blogosphere.  I love the people I’ve met through this blog and through people I met through this blog.  They are real.  We are all real  The Blogosphere is real.  It is here, and it is now, and it is here to stay.  Twitter and Facebook, etc, are all wonderful and I like them and I use them but ultimately, somehow, it always comes back to the blog.  Some things need more than 140 characters to be said properly.

This is a long post.  If you’ve made it this far, I thank you.  Corny, sentimental mush?  Oh, sure.  I’m good at that; just ask my kids.

But just so you know it’s really me. . . . . BEHAVE YOURSELVES!

My husband still speaks wistfully of the day he and the kids visited his step-grandmother Margaret (she whom John Dillinger once tried to carjack. . . .) and she shared with them her unbelievable and, naturally, SECRET, morel mushroom patch.

Remember now, Hoosiers do not share this kind of secret with ANYBODY. People who will show a stranger their genital surgery scars will not share a morel mushroom location with their own mothers. Margaret took Tim and the kids across her fields and invited them to help themselves to the mushrooms.

They were everywhere. It was like a planted crop. You couldn’t take a step without stepping on morel mushrooms. They were all afraid to move, because around these parts, folks, you just don’t STEP on morel mushrooms if you can help it at all. They’re too valuable!!

How valuable are they? Well, if you can bear to part with yours, you can easily sell them for fifty bucks a pound. But it’s rare to find anyone who would part with them.

They came home fully loaded.

We once went to dinner at a friend’s home, and when we got there, she was preparing morel mushrooms as a last-minute addition to the meal. It seems that the night before, her husband had gone to their secret mushroom patch and had dumped two huge buckets of morels into their kitchen sink. All the guests were flabbergasted; usually, people don’t share their found mushrooms with others, either. To this day, none of us can remember what the main dish was at that meal. All anybody can remember is the mushrooms.

Except for me. Naturally, except for me. I am a freak, for I do not care all that much for morel mushrooms. I enjoy preparing them, but as for eating them. . . . well, let’s just say that everybody wants to sit by me, because I don’t eat mine and am happy to share.

And speaking of preparing them. . . . don’t let anybody tell you to use crushed saltines!!!

The proper Hoosier method is to mix together a little flour and a little cornmeal and a dash of salt, coat each mushroom, and fry in butter for just a few minutes. Remember to turn them.

Let them cool just enough to tolerate, and turn your crowd loose on them. There will never be enough.

Back in the middle school, my students used to bring breadsacks full of morel mushrooms and sell them to the teachers for twenty dollars apiece. The teachers got morel mushrooms for bargain rates, and the students got cash. It worked out pretty well for both parties concerned. I never bought any from a student; it wasn’t that I didn’t trust them, it was just that, well, I’d seen these same kids try to tell the difference between a noun and a verb all year, and pick wrong every time. There was something about believing that they could tell the difference between a mushroom and a toadstool and pick correctly every time, that just didn’t hit me quite right. I’m sure they knew; outdoor kids know these things. It was just a feeling I had.

As for the finding of them, I am probably the only Hoosier in the history of the state who not only doesn’t like to eat morel mushrooms, but also can’t find them even if they’re right there by the toe of my shoe. I can’t SEE them. I also tend to step on them, which makes me the kid who is picked last for anybody’s mushroom team. Usually, I just stay home and get ready to cook them when they’re brought home, whether I end up with a bowlful or a handful.

But if you live around these parts, around this time of year, around now, anywhere you might go, you won’t be able to escape the morel mushroom stories. In southern Indiana, we’d rather hear about the morel that got away, than about your boring old six-feet-long fish that got away.

And since I don’t care for them myself, that would be the “Queen’s We” that I’m using here.

I love to say that. It sounds so borderline.

However, I have to add that she might want to hire new publicity people as her current ones seem to have a one-track mind.

Last night at the pub, right in the middle of beer pong fine family restaurant in which my daughter and I were having a late-night snack, in the middle of a group participation stunt, the DJ stopped everything and announced that Lady Gaga was dead.

Again.

I was just wondering if she’d ever read “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” as a child.