Snow, Sue and Stuff

It’s snowing … again. More. However, they have not shut down the schools. I think they should. Not because the snow is unmanageable; we’ll make it through that. Noooo I think that all NYC Board of Education schools should be closed because last night, at parent-teacher conferences at N’s school, we got to see …

N’s report card!

Oh yesssss … see, they get graded in numbers 1-4. 1 is not meeting standards … 2 is approaching standards … 3 is well meeting standards … 4 is exceeding standards. N’s report card was an ocean of 3s with a liberal sprinkling (nine; E counted) of 4s! If you had seen his report card in the fall, you might appreciate our awe and joy at the sight of this!
Of course, in the tradition of Cruel Parents Through the Centuries, we still signed him up for math extended days, which he will start attending at 7:30 a.m. this coming Monday. See, he’s brilliant at math … but he refuses to give a record of how he came to his answers; he just goes ahead and answers from some math center in his brain that produces the answers, or something. However, the test they need to take in it in a month or two is graded heavily on “showing your work” … if you don’t show it, you won’t pass, no matter how correct all your answers might be. So my brilliant boy needs to get himself in there early in the morning to practice showing how he gets to where he’s going.

Sue

My coworker/manager of our department in any real sense/quite remarkable person had a novel published last year of the science fiction sort but better, and it has been nominated for an award! Go Sue! So I can’t actually brag about her (she is my age, and wouldn’t appreciate me taking maternal pride in her achievements), but I figure I can bask vicariously in the glow of her success. My job is infinitely more doable because she makes things run so well in our tiny department already, so basking is a bonus! Her book is:

and the award for which she has been nominated is the Gaylactic Spectrum Award for a novel in science fiction, fantasy and horror “which include(s) positive explorations of gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered characters, themes, or issues.” How cool is that? And you can find out even more about this book by checking out its website.

Okie dokie, back to the mom bragging bit:
N is also apparently charming teachers in staff development workshops around the city now as his teacher uses a video shot with him and his friend P (a girl) when she goes out to lead these things.
E goes back to the maxiwhosiwhatsit doctor today for what may be yet another surgery as he has a thing on the other side of his tongue. He told me yesterday evening that the one they removed last Friday is “growing back” but I told him that it could just be irritated, and we should see what the doctor says before we go nuts.
Okay, that’s my bragging for this morning; I will now quickly type in some stuff from yesterday and brace us for going out into this white stuff and wind.

The down side

Funny how in the wake of too much
elucidation
information
once again it rises
the one irrefutable fact
I know nothing

Wiped clean
the slate awaits the day’s notation
we clamor to squeeze our presences
some of the smells
simply rude in public
go away from here

Closed sky above snow ghost branches
no light
no enlightenment imaginable
against the ongoing onslaught
there’s not enough lace in the world
to make this place beautiful

Take it if you want it
I know nothing
least of all why I manoeuver through
these slick and dirty concrete slabs
leading nowhere
I might want to go

~~~~~~~~~~

Husky shadow voice that settles and quiets the leaping frantic wilderness, it is the sound of surfeit and certainty. Through it the tasks of days become whispered epiphanies, because there is so much behind this sturdily maintained simplicity.

Freedom. It is a human right; an imperative. Ideally it is allowed, fostered, encouraged within the bounds of no harm done. It is not to be treated lightly. The number of lives lost on behalf of its cause is incomprehensible, never to be counted save in heaven or the afterworld, wherever souls are taken into account.

Such rightness in the sharing that the world looks infinitely more interesting in every moment of life, now become something cryystalline and doubled in intensity and meaning.

A nation created through a people’s cry for liberty took other people’s freedom away, ostensibly building itself; erecting a country on the backs of people who were not conquered enemies; they were stripped of who they were and given names without meaning to them, names that signified their newfound nothingness.

Dear voice of dusk, whisper the way to sleep. It overcomes all thought now. Whisper and everything is just fine.