On the inside:

• Out of Habit (an essay)
• Links to other education-related stories.
• As always, the topics will be whatever you want to discuss and there will be good community.

It's not for teachers only.

Door's Open...

I got over being angry many years ago...around the time that I stopped being depressed, I would suppose, but if there is anything I have learned in this life it is that depression is really not totally evident until after it ends.  I've relied on the analyses of my therapists.

Ralph and Kurt, two gay men I will love forever, did not agree with the depression diagnosis, except as how it might be true that the act of transition creates an induced state of depression.  And my MMPI evaluation pronounced me entirely sane.  I have papers.

My own belief is that the difficulty lies in the fact that in order to acknowledge who I was required a different world view, one which was totally at odds with the world I encountered in my off-line life.

On the inside:

• The Long Month (an essay)
• Links to other education-related stories.
• As always, the topics will be whatever you want to discuss and there will be good community.

It's not for teachers only.

Door's Open...

[Excerpts are from translations of the Tao te Ching by Lin Yutang, Stephen Mitchell, and Ursula Le Guin.]

The words flow like water.

But sometimes it is a drip.  A splash here and there.  Sometimes a stagnating pool.  Sometimes a great river.

A life can flow or not, like the water.

Chapter 8

The best of us is like water;
Water benefits all things
And does not compete with them.
It dwells in the lowly places that all disdain -
Wherein it comes near to the Tao.

Muddy water becomes clear by lying still.  Disturbed water cannot be smoothed by a hand.  Lessons learned at great price.

On the inside:

• At the Polls (an essay)
• Links to other education-related stories.
• As always, the topics will be whatever you want to discuss and there will be good community.

It's not for teachers only.

Door's Open...

The fever burns.  Whether the fever of the head or the heart, it burns.  

Temperature rising,
it isn't surprising
she certainly can can-can

--Irving Berlin

Twenty-four hours being bathed in fire, spiked with the occasional five minutes of shaking from being chilled to the bone and frequent bouts of coughing which rendered breathing problematic have passed.  Memories linger and are recorded.  Ideas joust with each other for primacy.  Words erupt.

On the inside:

• The Calling of Names (an essay)
• Links to other education-related stories.
• As always, the topics will be whatever you want to discuss and there will be good community.

It's not for teachers only.

Door's Open...

Phase in.  Phase out.  Out of Phaze.

Phase shift.  

Some people shift paradigms.  I shift points of view.  Sometimes I have felt forced to do so.  Sometimes I choose to do so intentionally.  Sometimes I have taken a chance at shifting willingly.

I've come to the fork in the road, so to speak.  (Insert Slauson Cutoff joke here)  Do I step on the transporter or not?  Do I scatter my atoms across the universe?

Mitosis?  Cytokinesis?  Meiosis?  

Will these metaphors never cease?

I am an activist for my people.  I perform my activism with my words, which is the tool I have at hand.  Sometimes I am repetitive.  I am a teacher.  Some lessons are hard.  That's a clue to the fact that they are important.  Important lessons need to be taught, time and again, using different words, approaching the issue from different points of view.  That's what I do.  Some of you claim that I do it "ad nauseam".

Many of you know me as the transsexual woman (or whatever you call me...I'm sure that it is not favorable in many instances).  Some of you know me as a poet.  Some of you see the teacher in me.  Or the glbt activist and PFLAG parent.  I am all of these.  I am a human being.

I was born in a place and time.  I have absorbed the life lessons presented to me since then.  I am still learning.

I've tried to pass on what I have learned.  I continue to make that effort, in whatever new venues are available, wherever I can find an opened eye or ear.

On the inside:

• Challenges (an essay)
• Links to other education-related stories.
• As always, the topics will be whatever you want to discuss and there will be good community.

It's not for teachers only.

Door's Open...

People have different experiences than I have had...and many are much younger than me...and hardly anyone else here lived in Arkansas when I did...and most of those probably didn't meet Bill and/or Hillary as many times as I did...and I'm completely certain that none of the people who did those other things began gender reassignment during the Clinton campaign in 1992.

My vision of the era is tinted by the fact that I came out to the world, beginning my transition in September of 1992, precisely because I persuaded myself that Bill Clinton was going to win the election, that Bill and Hillary were going to be in the White House and I could do so with a lessened fear of being fired from my job, thrown out of my house and/or murdered.  

Of course, I lived in Arkansas so I had a different viewpoint than a lot of folks...people who were not standing in the freezing rain at the Capitol Building in Little Rock singing along to "Yesterday's Gone" and crying in joy about newfound freedom to be oneself.  I made one of my first public appearances as the new me as one of the crowd on election night.

On the inside:

• Fresh Starts (an essay)
• Links to other education-related stories.
• As always, the topics will be whatever you want to discuss and there will be good community.

It's not for teachers only.

Door's Open...

Did I ever mention that I have a small collection of kaleidoscopes?  I used to have more of them, but currently have three, I think.  Along the path of my life, others have been lost or discarded, I guess.  I have never put much value in stuff and each time I have moved, some of it has gone away.

I also have different lenses through which I view life.  I've not discarded any of those, even if I may forget some of them from time to time.

For the past week, I've remembered a lens from the past which intersects with my critical thinking lens.  It's all about fair play, about having a level playing field.  I don't expect that many people will view the world through those same lenses.

So I may be speaking to the wind.  That seems to be happening more often lately.  But I don't believe it is pointless.  I believe the wind sometimes listens.

On the inside:

• Refocusing (an essay)
• Links to other education-related stories.
• As always, the topics will be whatever you want to discuss and there will be good community.

It's not for teachers only.

Door's Open...

A new year can open new possibilities.  It can also provide impulse to past fears.

Some of you may know what's been going on the past few days.  

At the end of September my sister wrote me a comment:

I am just thinking now that you could contact a publisher in Corvallis that I know that historically publishes women's literature.  The publisher's name is Margarita Donnelly, and the magazine publication is Calyx. For what it's worth.

I've got to say that my initial thought was that she was insane.  Check that.  She's sane.  I'm the insane one.

I was already familiar with Calyx.  I had grave doubts about belonging among the women they have published.  I still do.  Ursula LeGuin...Paula Gunn Allen...Barbara Kingsolver...and me?  Give me a break.

We get older.  As we do, it sometimes seems regrettable that we may be running out of time to say what we have to say...need to say...and do what we have to do.  So much effort in life is spent trying to support having the time to do what we deem important, that it often seems that the important stuff doesn't get done.

There isn't enough time.

Then, of course, there is the fact that what we may deem important to do to improve the world around us is not something others will see the importance of.  We are each doomed to practice our own brand of insanity.  Or not.

My life has been full of Or not moments.  I may have chosen Or not too many times.  Or not.

In the last quarter of my life there were times when I did not choose Or not.  The Observer in me recorded the words.  I spent much of the past year sharing some of them.

On the inside:

• Commentary (an essay)
• Links to other education-related stories.
• As always, the topics will be whatever you want to discuss and there will be good community.

It's not for teachers only.

Door's Open...

What happens if you let your mind flow?  What words don't get written or spoken if you do?

Life is often about the words not written, about what a person chooses not to say.  Or maybe rather it might be about the words one has no time to say.

There is also a lot of meaning in the moments between the words.  But how does one capture it?  Certainly not with words.  

Sometimes there are images.  But even as the images are being created, there is a chatter.  Forever something is begging me for attention.  I imagine they are thoughts.  Given the world I was raised in, they are probably contending to be given voice rather than cooperating efficiently.  A jumble of ideas struggling to interact, analog in a digital age.