flying accessories for small supernaturals

special thanks to the models- pumpkin head and star wars drone lamp.

the new supernatural nephew called me up the other day. "boy, that snow sure is cold!" he gushed. thinking about the snow we'd been enjoying up in the catskills, i agreed. but the child lives in missouri and they've been having sixty degree days lately. i'm pretty sure he's not seen snow unless it was in the first weeks of his life, a time even he won't remember. but he continued chirping on about the snow, how cold it was, how his fingers got red from touching it. but i was having none of it. the original supernatural nephew had been much easier. this one is to all outward appearances a happy, cooing angel, but to those of us dealing with his "specialness" he's becoming quite the little imp. he will solemnly promise that he won't summon dragons from the center of the earth and then five minutes later there are dragons pouring out of every mole hole in the yard. so i knew he was up to something.

"where did you see snow?" i asked as levelly as i could. he stammered around a bit, tossed out the names of a few local towns, none of which were covered in snow, then fell silent. "i knew it!" i yelled into the phone. "you're not supposed to be flying by yourself!" i don't know why i say these things. it's not like he doesn't know. he could break his neck. he's not yet a year old and he has no finesse to his flying. he flies the way thirteen year olds drive. "where?" i demand again. he talks breathlessly about a trip to antarctica. "antaractica? what? you couldn't find colorado?" giggles on the other end. this child really is impossible. his words are apologetic but it is pretty clear that he is now in love with penguins. emperor penguins. those i know. but also something called adelie penguins. "they can do anything!" he whispers. i have lost this battle before it started. i can't really compete with penguins. he raves about the ocean. icebergs. snow. snow. snow. his only lament is how cold his little ears and fingers get when he flies.

this is why he called. he wants me to help him. he's discovering new skills every day and i suggest he try to get fire to come out of his ears. that would keep them warm. he giggles. everything is funny to this child. he already has a solution. he wants a hat and mittens. but not just any kind. fancy ones. fine i say. whatever. i'm in way over my head. he is learning from his older cousin about persistence. "they might be the difference between life and death!" he tries. dramatic. i suggest staying home in his crib like a good baby instead of flying off to antarctica with half-developed flying skills might also be the difference. more giggles.

he begins describing. the hat should be soft and light. it can't fall down over his eyes but should keep his ears warm. he wants some mechanism to keep the thing from falling off while he flies. "if it falls off in the ocean," he says, "it's gone for good. sharkfood." i try to ignore the image of sharkfood and listen about the hat. something to let the penguins know he's freindly. a tassel or pompom on top would be good. i am pretty sure i can do this. "and the mittens," he continues. "the mittens need to be entirely for flying. aerodynamic. no thumbs. i laugh to myself because thumbless mittens are what people get for babies. i don't tell him. he likes to think he's not a baby. "they need to be long like the gloves knights wore." and again with the loss issue. "a cord with some sort of fastener." i think to myself about the cords on mittens for babies, the kind that attach to a mitten, run through the sleeves of a coat and then attach to the other mitten. i don't mention this. no problem, i say. "but i don't want to look strange," he says. "can you make snap on thumbs i can put on when i land so i'll look normal and blend in? i don't want people knowing they're flying mittens." i think about it. his thumbs are pretty small. i could probably attach a button to a bit of i-cord. i tell him i'll try.

i figure he'll want something to match some ridiculous costume he's working up so i ask. some bright hideous color combination that will blind me as i knit. his name stitched across the front. "oh, no!" he says, "nothing like that. can you make it look like the ocean and the sky? i want to blend in a bit." i am pretty sure i know a yarn that will work and i say so. i'm expecting one of those amelie penguins to be waiting for me under the christmas tree. it better be cute and it better be compatible with dachshunds.

heavy metals (and a gas)

for proof i'm not making this up, visit:
www.vanderkrogt.net/elements/origin_index.html
webelements.com

okay, first of all, this is probably news to exactly nobody but me. i am showing my own ignorance. whatever.

when i was in seventh grade or maybe eighth my science teacher, mr. fred a. pitts, expected us to memorize the periodic table of elements. or at the very least he expected us to be acquainted enough with the table to be able to balance a chemical equation. i loved this stuff. little puzzles that, when properly solved, created the world out of single elements. it was very helpful to know that Na, when added properly to Cl, would produce the salt sitting in salt shakers all over the world, while the Cl in gas form was used as a weapon in the first world war. descriptions of the gas include the word "suffocating". ah, science. i liked being in on the secret that hydrogen, that terrible gas keeping the sun hot and bright, when slammed together with the surprisingly flammable oxygen in the right proportions, would make fresh water every time. all these elements hung out in predictable groups, little clusters of friends. my friends. i knew right where they were.

so you can imagine my surprise when i saw a large, brightly colored periodic table of elements in a science classroom in my school recently. i went over to visit a bit with the elements. unchanging, in neat, pretty rows. good old hydrogen and helium, up at the edges alone, staring at each other across a great chasm. and that miracle lithium, the element i rely on for my own continued existence, so named because it was first found in a rock. i'm not kidding. the creativity of our greatest minds is never spent naming. actinoids set apart, named for fermi and einstein and nobel. weren't they called actinides before? then iron and cobalt. tin and xenon. and lead, Pb. i have always wondered why Pb. turns out lead used to be plumbium. oh. but under lead, i noticed something awful. something new. elements 112 to 118. all beginning with Uu. what? where did those come from? no, seriously. i'd never seen them before. new elements? when did this happen? it's been quite some time since seventh or eighth grade. it was the late seventies. i suppose anything could have happened. and here's what did.

ununbium- Uub was discovered february 9, 1996. it seems it was created by fusing zinc and lead. by fusing, i mean nuclear fusing. let's revise "discovered". let's call it "accidentally created during a nuclear experiment".

ununtrium- Uut was created in february of 2004. this one is iffy. not yet isolated. only four atoms ever made. can we really afford to use a whole tile on the periodic table for four atoms?

ununquadium- Uuq is evidence scientists are losing it when it comes to naming new elements. informal reports of this adorable heavy metal showed up as early as january of 1999. the site says "currently, the identification of element 114 (that's ununquadium to you and me) is yet to be confirmed". the same guys who brought you all four atoms of ununtrium have managed to cobble together three of ununquadium. nice job, kids.

ununpentium- Uup, just like its sibling ununquadium, has yet to be "discovered", although folks seem to have started talking seriously about it as of february 2004.

ununhexium- Uuh claims to have burst on the scene december 6, 2000. it is a very heavy metal. atomic number 116. un un hex. at this point, naming it caitlynn dylan would have been more original.

ununseptium- Uus has not yet been discovered. oddly enough, we can presume that it is a solid at 298 k and that it is probably dark in appearance. this is even more funny when you consider that on the perodic table of elements, it's the only element tile with no color at all. blank. white.

ununoctium- Uuo was first produced as a single molecule in 2002. in 2005, two more were made. this is probably a good thing as it is very, very heavy. atomic weight 294. yeah.

they are all heavy metals. well, excpt ununoctium. it's a noble gas. still, heavy enough. they are all related, come from the same lab. we could probably put all we have of all instances of all these metals on the head of a pin without disturbing any of the angels dancing there. dance, you heavy elements.

one of the websites mentioned above has periodic tables for sale. generally, i like the standard ones with their color coded groups all neat and tidy. it makes my eyes feel good to look at all those elements right there where they should be. but this fancy one caught my eye. it is a little unsettling to look at at first. the boxes are still outlined in the familiar colors, but inside the boxes are beautiful color photos of the elements against a black background. cobalt is a ghostly bubbling rock. iodine is magnificent. the actinoids are black and white images of the men they're named after. gasses like xenon and neon are glowing tubes shaped for their symbols. the whole thing taken together looks like a printer's tray full of jewels, a glittering menagerie. but the new boxes are empty. there is nothing in them but darkness. night. we do not know what they look like but we have given them names and places in this most basic representation of our world. the blank spaces are beautiful. they are waiting. and now, i am also waiting.

side note. i clicked on a link somewhere and ended up here: www.theodoregray.com/PeriodicTable/
i don't know who this guy is but he built a wooden periodic table table and under each element, there's a little cubby with a sample of the element inside. the guy says it was inspired by something oliver sacks wrote and oliver sacks came to see the table once, along with theodore gray. there are lovely photos of the two men poring over elements at his website. go see them. go see the table. pretty pretty pretty.

open letter to my neighbor

hello. although we've been living next door to one another for just over a year now, we haven't really met. this wasn't what i had planned, but we take what opportunities we see, i suppose. i feel at least partly to blame for the fact that we don't really know each other. i live in two different places, so i'm not really next door to you all the time. i've seen you out in the yard plenty of times and intended to say hello, but each time you're out there you're screaming. at the dog. at your kids. at the neighbors behind you. at some guy who might have been anyone- boyfriend, delivery guy, lawn service. i learned long ago never interrupt a screaming woman, especially one i don't know, so i've always just gone back into the house, left you to your screaming.

but i've talked to your dog. a girl, i think, older. golden retriever. she seems sweet and i've said hi a few times when she was out in the yard alone. and then a few weeks ago when i was raking leaves i noticed you were putting together a dog kennel. concrete slab, chain link fence, wooden dog house. wait. now that i look, the dog house is on the outside. there's no place in that pen for a dog to get warm. you chose a nice spot, though, right next to the bedraggled swingset and the scattered yard junk- milk crates, broken grill, etc. it seemed odd you'd put such an old dog, an indoor dog, into a kennel like that. maybe you got a new job that requires you to be out longer and your dog can't stay in the house so long. but then i saw the puppy. you seem to like him. i haven't heard you yell at him at all. he certainly is cute and very playful. did you build the kennel for him? i'm not sure why you would. he seems like a house dog, too.

it's not that i don't like kennels. i know some hunting dogs and they live in kennels because they are working dogs. but working dogs are very expensive and are generally checked on and kept healthy. they have dog houses inside the pen, you know, so they can get inside them and keep warm. you don't treat your dogs like they're expensive. little pets don't fare so well in impromptu kennels in catskill winters. bare concrete. frozen water dish. do you know how cold the concrete feels on their feet when the air is 22 degrees?

that's what brings me to the writing of this letter. i hadn't seen the dogs in the kennel and i figured maybe it was something you wanted to get set up now but wouldn't use until spring. and then i took our own little dogs outside. they're not fans of the cold and are able to pee and be back inside in mere seconds when the thermometer dips. it was hovering around 22, so i thought they'd be extremely fast but guthrie went right toward the fence, barking. i figured maybe he saw a squirrel or some sort of yeti (it's very cold today) so i let him lead me toward the fence, toward your yard. when we came round the fence i saw what he was barking at. your dogs. standing on the concrete slab, huddled together. they didn't even bark. they just looked over at us. it was 22 degrees and that was the warm spot of the day. guthrie kept barking. i took my own dogs back inside and tried to think. i wondered if maybe i might go over and knock on your door, let you know your dogs were freezing. i thought maybe you forgot them. i'm not making fun of you. when i was in fourth grade, my dad sent me to my room as punishment for something i did and then went off to play a golf game. he forgot me completely. mom let me come out when she realized what happened, but when we heard dad drive up, i went back to my room and we pretended i'd stayed in there all day. he felt pretty bad. i didn't want you to feel bad. i just wanted your dogs to be warm.

i looked out the window and saw you come out. i guess guthrie's barking maybe reminded you that your own dogs were outside. you brought them back in and i didn't come over to talk to you. there didn't seem to be any point. but i want to tell you something. i come from a fairly long line of dog liberators. next time i see your dogs outside, i will come to let you know. if you're not there, i'll bring them to my house and warm them up. i'll keep them safe and when you come to get them, we'll talk. i'm sure we'll be able to come to some sort of understanding. but if it happens a second time don't come to my house looking for your dogs. they won't be yours anymore.

panties

when i first started teaching, boys did not wear their pants down low. or maybe my boys, a cluster of strange, disturbed, angry little fifth and sixth graders simply hadn't grown up enough for that. but over the years i've spent more time than i care to contemplate saying, "i don't want to look at your panties!" to a generation of preteen and teenage boys.

here's what i know. boys do not refer to their undergarments as "panties". i do because it amuses me and it tends to elicit all sorts of defense of boy panty exhibition, which also amuses me. boys who wear their pants down low wear boxers. generally, they're pretty boxers, fashionably matched up to sneakers, jackets, belts, t-shirts or bandannas. boys spend a lot of time trying to look fierce, the way girls spend time trying to look pretty, only more so. i have had boys tell me they can't get out a sheet of paper until they finish brushing their timberlands. i'm not making this up. boys have pretty little brushes like shoeshine guys have and they spend copious time brushing their boots. boots intended to go hiking, logging, onto construction sites. rugged boots. brushed and brushed and brushed. soft. pretty.

but we should get back to the boy panties. we don't have all day and i'm not writing a book here. when i started working with the high school children the low hanging pants were certainly the way to go in harlem. more than anything they just look silly. boys staggering around unable to walk with a normal gait because the crotch of their pants sits just below the knee. a big puddle of denim slouches over those pretty boots and shoes, all but obscuring them. side note. being all but obscured does not in any way diminish the amount of time and money spent on the foot gear. boys who wear their pants like this, especially the skinny ones, look like pulled teeth lurching around. those tiny root legs don't seem sturdy enough to carry around the wedge of bulk sitting on top of them.

it has always been more a source of bafflement than annoyance. i wonder why people would look in the mirror wearing their pants halfway down and actually decide to leave the house the same way i wonder how anyone can talk seriously about the music of, say, michael bolton or the jonas brothers. but it's not just a harmless fashion faux pas. there are dangers. very real dangers. a few years ago i was sitting at my desk between classes. a very exuberant child came leaping into the class and stood in front of me, raving passionately about something. his skinny legs and generally buttless self riccocheted like a pinball. and as he spoke and leapt around his pants rebelled and i found myself staring smack into the face of mickey mouse, as represented on a pair of long, shiny boxers. the child's pants had fallen clear off. without missing a beat he grabbed them by the belt, which was circling his very finely brushed boots, and whipped them back up to a level somewhere between hips and knees. it was immediately evident this sort of thing happened to him often enough for him to be good at swooping his pants back up.

and over the last ten or fifteen years i've managed to learn to live with the constant, oppressive inundation of boy panties. they fit snugly up at the waistline and because they're boxers, the legs tend to cover all the things i don't want to see on children i'm trying to teach. as long as they don't fall off. but today i saw something that changed everything. i hopped off the train and was walking the twelve or so blocks to home. a teenage boy walked in front of me, chatting on a cell phone. he looked like my own little babies, decked out in a cotton hoodie that couldn't possibly be keeping him warm. but it was purple and black striped. and purple is what the boys are wearing these days. who knew? the hood was up and partially covered a gray and black striped knit cap. the child's jeans were low, held to his body by a deep purple belt and hope, i suspect. his sneakers were three colors of purple, matched neatly to the belt, the hoodie and... his boy panties. but here's the thing. here's the problem. this dear child didn't get the memo about how boy panties for lowrider jeans have to be boxers. or even boxer briefs. this boy was trying to rock the whole low pants scene with tighty whities. except in purple. beautifully matched to the shoes, hoodie, etc. but in no way capable of covering everything that might hang out when the pants hang low.

as a result, each time the child (maybe 17, maybe 18 years old) took a step, the leg stepping forward flashed a slice of skin, and not at all a small slice. i should mention here that today i walked home in 36 degree weather. as did purple panty boy. which means he had to know his lower butt/ upper leg was flashing each time he walked. this, of course, means one of two things. thing one: he didn't know how to fix his pants/panty debacle in public and hoped nobody would walk behind him and mock him. if this is the case, i didn't mock him out loud at the time, at least. then there's thing two: he genuinely thinks his lower butt/upper leg region is so fantastically desirable that he needs to bare it in 36 degree weather when outside and completely alone. i cannot imagine that this is the case. having walked behind these flashing parts of him for five blocks i can say that although i found the whole thing pretty amusing, it certainly wasn't pretty. in fact, i'm pretty confident that even teenage girls would giggle if they saw him. but he strutted on, chatting overly noisily on his phone, his pants slipping lower with each step. he'll be pretty cold when they finally fall off.

elms of fury

for those of you who don't know, our little yard upstate has five tall, sassy spruce trees and an ancient but prolific apple tree and all along the back fence and then one side of the yard are nine hundred seventy three horrible rock elms. i suspect that at one time they were scattered all around the yard and the larger trees drove them back to the edges of the yard and banished them there, crowding each other, an ugly line of mangy dogs.

they are horrible trees. that's not something you're likely to hear me say often. it's difficult for a tree to be horrible or ugly. their very nature is all sorts of life affirming and reaching toward the sun and all that. but not rock elms. their horrible lower branches droop over as if they're trying to claw their way back into the earth. if a long line of them stand together, it is difficult to tell when a branch falls off or when a tree is dead. they are garbage trees. these were likely planted as a fencerow by someone who didn't realize or didn't care that they'd grow well beyond forty feet up while their lower branches would reach outward and downward, slapping at each other like sullen children.

they shed these lower branches like baby teeth so we are never surprised when we drive up on a friday night to find the yard littered with two and three foot long sections of tree filth. but we'd been gone two weeks, gallivanting around delaware and then brooklyn, so we missed what must have been a very large storm that slammed into our little yard. the majestic spruces stood their ground, swayed and likely dropped a few needles and cones, but didn't budge. the gnarled little apple tree gave up all but three or four apples, shed every single leaf, but kept its arthritic limbs right where they belong. but those horrible rock elms lost their minds. and quite a bit else.

we arrived friday night around ten pm. dark. rainy. ridiculously warm at 58 degrees. the headlights rested on three fairly substantial treetops lying in the driveway. i got out of the car and dragged the carcasses up onto the yard so the sweetie could pull up to the house. as the sweetie turned the car toward the garage, the lights lit up the back yard, home to even more of the stupid elms. we got out and, aided by a flashlight, gazed on a scene of tree carnage. secretly, i was pleased that the storm had done what we didn't have the heart to do- wiped out several of the more horrible trees. it is not in our nature, the sweetie's or mine, to deliberately destroy a healthy tree that's doing nothing wrong other than being ugly. but it is beginning to look like it might be the nature of these trees to fall down onto things- in this case, my precious apple tree and also one of the spruces that was already assaulted over summer by another of the awful beasts as it fell to its death.

they are now on the list. right next to crabgrass and squirrels and cedar-apple rust. and earwigs. it is not like they're doing their job, anyway. they don't exactly provide shade with their scraggly canopies and i have no idea how anyone ever thought they'd screen off the sight of that abandoned factory sitting up next to the back yard. but rock elms are some of the best firewood you can get. and the sweetie has been begging nearly a year for a chainsaw. and christmas most certainly is coming. the rapture of the rock elms is close at hand. i'm pretty sure of it.

bulletin board queen vs. the stomach tornado

all week the ninth graders have been sick. when ninth graders have swirly insides their parents send them to school. STOP DOING THAT!!! sick is sick. they lie on desks, moaning, faces pinched, creating a smell it takes days to recover from. they are too sick to do work yet they refuse to go to the nurse because their parents are at work and will not come get them. so on wednesday when i became violently ill at school, i shouldn't have been thinking food poisoning. it came on so fast and was so violent that food poisoning seemed likely, though. thursday i still felt wobbly and awful but figured that's just what happens when a person recovers from attack and near death by food. i silently swore a the corn chowder i'd eaten wednesday for lunch. i considered the cruelty of the chocolate bar with hazelnuts that had promised me happiness for dessert. lies, all of it. and even last night when the couch began to swirl and it felt like dinner was trying to escape, i figured it was the medication i take every day that quite often causes nausea if i don't shove a big pile of food down on top of it to shut it up. i got up, got a cup of lemon yogurt, and waited for peace. i'm still waiting.

you know how early mornings when you wake up you always feel more awful than you know you will feel later? so i trudged to the train with a body inhabited by hundreds of tiny tornados. everything was spinning. shaking. scrunching up. i don't know why i thought the bus would be better, but that second leg of the journey was endless. i had no idea how many potholes lurk on bay parkway. by the time i got to school i was pretty confident whatever had possessed my internal organs was fully in control and i was in some sort of awful trouble. a brief conversation with fellow teachers convinced me i wasn't fit to be in school. everybody's got it, they gasped, hands covering mouths, protecting themselves from my filth tornado germs. i did what they told me. i made plans to go back home.

this is where the control freak steps up. i can't help it. subs were lined up for the two classes i don't share with someone and i lurched up to the fourth floor to set up class for the day. kids filed in and started reading. i let them know i'd be going soon and all the usual questions followed. who would be watching them? why was i leaving? they offered kindnesses and suggested i stay home several days. this is because, even after all we've been through together, they still expect days off if i'm home. not a chance. a big slice of chart paper proclaimed the three part plan for the two hour class. i went over it with them twice, shaking as i pointed to books and charts to fill out. the sub waited patiently for me to shut up and go. one of my little angels asked why i kept telling them, not the sub, what they were to do. smile. because your grade will crash and burn if you don't do this. he already finished ninth grade. oh. ohhhh.

there are a hundred things i need to say and do before i go. my 6th period class, a class that doesn't meet fridays, is expecting to pick up a take home test from me. i show it to every person i see. the sub. the kids in my first period class. two kids from 6th period who stop by to ask about the test. i know, in spite of all this preparation, those two kids are the only ones who will leave school with the test. i show the kids one of handmade boxes for the bulletin board and explain how their poems will go in. i am blathering at this point, feverish, sick, unable to believe this world will continue if i walk out the door. one of my guys asks how to make the box. i tell him i'll show them monday. i am raving about butcher paper and how to tear it for their poems. i toss the black construction paper box on the table by the door. "i'll leave it here if you want to look at it. you can figure it out." they look at me like i'm out of my mind. they see me sweating and watch my shaking hands and assume it is sickness making me howl on as if they are capable. it does not occur to me until the cab i've taken home turns onto my very own street that they might not understand how to make two dimensions into three. but on monday, fever gone and sanity restored, i will still forget to consider this. i will pick up the paper, make a box and expect the first child who figures it out to show the others. and that will happen. children are heartbreakingly beautiful when they are teaching something. their faces change. their words come from somewhere else. on monday they will write and assemble and teach. and the control freak will sit down and shut up.

bulletin board

today i walked home in the dark. well, not really the dark dark. here's what happened. i am bad. i know i am bad because i got a letter in my mailbox today (the teacher mailbox i have at school) saying i'd neglected to put up my monthly bulletin board. now, i hadn't neglected it at all. i had no intention of putting it up. i work in a high school and the idea of being forced to put student work up on the walls and act all excited about it nauseates me. bulletin boards at my school are shared between two teachers and a schedule is set down for the teachers to follow, alternating monthly so each teacher puts up a new display every two months. i know what you're thinking, but even if you only got your period six times a year, you'd still resent the cramps and bloating. you would.

every year i drag my heels and pretend to be doing work and i scrape by generally with one bulletin board. it's usually a good one and it's usually in the spring. then i go back to doing nothing. but this year the bulletin board police have nabbed me and although the teacher i share the space with was more than happy to put up work she'd been wanting to display, the space was left blank for me to stare at. the problem here is that by some miracle of complete idiocy my bulletin board is nowhere near my class. i live on the fourth floor at the back of the building. my board is on the second floor, near the front where i am able to ingore it with dignity and grace.

until today. it always works like this. i've bragged about how i'm not about to do the stupid bulletin board (yes, this is how i spend my time), how it will sit there empty like an old parking lot. barren. ugly. a menace inviting grafitti and shame. this is where the ninth graders came in. today we're working on memoirs and every year there's a lesson on writing a memory chain that i hate and the kids hate and as a result it's always a big, fat failure. this year i chucked it and made them write poems. they hate poems. let me rephrase that. they HATE poems. whatever. they always say that and they're always confused about what "poem" means. because to ninth graders poem means a pile of syrupy rhyming words about love written by a dead guy.

but we do this assignment where they have to write about a place from their childhoods (we're working on setting). they do not have places. they do not have memories. i tell them about my own memories, show them a poem i wrote and tell them it's easy. i will never understand why this works. it is not easy at all to write a good poem but i act like it is and force them to make these image lists, which they hold up for scrutiny. then they are encouraged to "flesh things out" and make the images into sentences. the transformation that happens is fantastic.

one boy brings me his poem couplet by couplet to admire. it is about a trip to six flags. another writes about playing ball with his siblings at evening, catching good food smells coming out the open back door of the house. one mentions the slight breeze in late afternoon. he actually uses the word "slight". these are suddenly children who notice things. i want everyone to see these poems. i want them hanging on the wall outside my door so i can look at them and be proud of them and protect them from idiot vandals. i am resentful of my second floor bulletin board but i want it to be perfect, so perfect other kids will be sad they don't have poems to put up there. in a matter of seconds i have become a monster, drooling, obsessing over black bulletin board border.

which brings us back to the beginning. i am leaving school late (3:45- not that late) and wandering through a world the color of slate, being pelted by a nasty, sharp rain. i walk along bay parkway hoping to find a paper store that's open, that has black bulletin board border. there is no such place. as i walk toward the f train and the cemetery, the sky lowers and darkens. not quite night but not something you can see in. this part of my walk is never pleasant as it is some sort of long haul trucker parking and also where the sheriff brings towed vehicles. i don't know why. but as often as not i'm able to see, if i'm so inclined, one of the truck drivers having a bathroom break on the sidewalk. today is my lucky day. evidently i startle the grown man peeing on a city sidewalk at 4:30 on a weekday and he swings around, nearly peeing on a passing car as he stumbles out into traffic. i want to think that things like this happen to everyone but nobody else seems to see guys like this one.

i am only mildly aware of anything that is not black bulletin board border and want to tell him, let him know i wasn't paying attention to him, but it is getting very dark and having a conversation on a dark sidewalk by a cemetery in the rain with a man whose pants are unfastened seems like poor judgment and i trudge on. there is no black border to be had. none. i will not be defeated. i have black tissue paper in the classroom. we will fashion our own border. we will create boxes fastened with buttons and when a brave soul walks up to the bulletin board and opens one of these boxes he or she will be rewarded with the gift of one of these wonderful poems.

even if the only people opening the boxes are the authors, that's just fine. i want my kids to see how beautiful their words are. i want them to see total strangers standing in front of their work, reading it, nodding, smiling. they should feel that. and if i have to put up a stupid bulletin board to get what i want, i'll do it.

vote

yesterday i voted. i have voted before and generally feel pretty good about the whole event. i work in a community where most people don't vote the way i do and are also, evidently, incredibly susceptible to mind control and brainwashing. i have been listening the last few months to some of the most ridiculous claims made by my coworkers about my president. things the daily news wouldn't print. and they print just about anything. i have heard in my school that our new president is the antichrist. now, for those of you who don't remember, my seventh grade year was consumed with the fear that ronald wilson reagan was the antichrist. it was a serious concern. as serious as it gets for a seventh grader. and we had all the proof we needed in the man's name. ronald (6 letters) wilson (6 letters) reagan (6 letters) was a sure sign. my friends and i were pretty deep into the bible then, deep into the revelation of st. john the divine and the absolute wildness it promised. we were ready. but i'm not in seventh grade anymore and i'm not so much looking to see if folks are the antichrist. although a boy in college told me he was the real deal. he wasn't. how do people spend time on this?

so at 5:30 yesterday morning when the alarm went off the dogs and i hit the floor, possible antichrist or no. "it's time to vote!" i yelled toward the sleeping sweetie who was burrowing himself further under the covers. he is no different at christmas, so you shouldn't be too hard on him. we were ready and out the door a few minutes past six. we walked the few blocks down to the middle school where we vote, a new location replacing the elementary school two blocks away. we passed another polling place, a preschool, as it was opening. a woman was yelling instructions and folks were cheering. cheering the instructions. we got to the middle school and the line was long but moved quickly. once inside the line turned sharply right and into a gym. there were two doors leading from this hallway into and out of the gym but only one was being used. let me explain. the line to go in snaked from the hallway where i was standing through a single door and into the floor of the gym where a few folks at a table looked up addresses and sent us to the right booth lines. as voters finished, they squeezed past this initial line, through the same single door, then had to leap through the waiting line to get out the doors onto the sidewalk. poorly planned? sure. but the sweetie and i knew our addresses and then went to our line. there were hundreds of people in the gym. as a mildly claustrophobic person i tend to notice things like this, but i was focused on the task at hand and once i noticed all the possible exits, i set my mind on my task. voting.

i started to think about the conversation in the teachers' room yesterday. if he gets elected, they'll come out of the woodwork! who? they will. all of them. who? who? i didn't get it at all until they started talking about farrakhan being on the supreme court. and oprah. so at first i thought they were joking but the tone was scary. and scared. i am ashamed that people who say these things teach children. the white folks i work with are afraid black folks are going to take over. not all of the white folks, but enough that i have to say it out loud. most of them. but the unstated fear they have is that black folks will make them feel the way they've been making black folks feel for a very long time. they carry that guilt and it makes them awfully afraid. they'll come out of the woodwork... i suppose then that my vote is like some sort of big fat welcome mat. come on out!

there were two booths for our district and only one was open. the other had a big sheet of white paper with something completely illegible written on it. turns out that when you're at the actual booth you can tell it says m-z. but a nice woman yelled at us to get in two lines. a-f and m-z. i don't know where the g-l folks go. nowhere. the sweetie and i get in separate lines. we have separate names. one man has trouble understanding the alphabet and goes completely through both lines. a woman asks my name. it is easy, a color, but still she has trouble with it. i worry she'll never get my first name. she spells it wrong on the card but i just want to stop spelling with her so i let it go.

an older man holds the booth flap open for me and smiles. i realize at this point i have been grinning like an idiot. i check to be sure i don't have tears running down my face and walk in. this is a small booth among many in a crowded gym. there is no empty space on the floor. my entire community is out there and we are all together but i can hear nothing but my breathing. i push the big lever to the right and touch the small lever next to the name of the man i hope will be president. i turn the lever and watch the X appear next to his name. i stare at it for a long time. breathe in. breathe out. i put the rest of the Xs where they should be, read a paragraph on the side about veterans, which i also X where i think i should.

so today i walked into the school with a jubilant heart. i honestly believe that we have, as a country, finally taken a step or two toward being not so ugly. i think there was a time when we were beautiful as a people, all of us, all the different clumps of us, and maybe we can inch back that way a little, live our lives moving toward something rather than away, rather than being motivated by fear. and so with my jubilant heart i pranced into the building and wished the three security guards at the front desk a happy new president day. they laughed and wished me the same. all three guards are black. normally, this wouldn't matter, but today it does. because when i went into the office and offered the same greeting to white coworkers, i was met with, "great. another obama supporter." yeah. jubilant. i went to the teachers' room and ate my breakfast next to a teacher who leaned back and loudly proclaimed to nobody in particular, "yeah, i better get me a copy of the communist manifesto." i ignored him so he attempted an explanation of his joke, "because, you know, obama is a communist. he's gonna turn the whole country communist." if you have to explain a joke that simple, you just shouldn't tell it. most days it's difficult to believe this man is an adult, but today he's beyond. he continues to rant about a variety of ways the new president will turn us all communist. i had no idea there were so many ways. i begin to think we must all already be communists. i listen as long as i can. he'll take all our money and give it to people on welfare. he'll socialize medicine. he'll let dogs and cats live together. finally, i say to him quietly, "you sure do believe some crazy shit, you know that?" "well," he says. well. the day continues with comments on the obama family's choice of republican red clothing. it's disrespectful, they say. only republicans can wear red. the sweetie says i should remind them it's a favorite color with the communists, too.

during the morning announcements the kids find out (some didn't know) that we have a new president. they begin stomping their feet and clapping their hands and attempting "we will rock you" which i think is cute and i tell them so. but there's still a split along race lines. one white boy announces gleefully that the new president will be assassinated soon enough. where does he hear this? a white girl asks the president's middle name. "hussein," i tell her. "my middle name is diane and i didn't choose it just like he didn't choose his." i am surprised that this is enough to make her happy. children parrot what they hear at home. they say the same hate, but with less force. they don't mean it quite as much and it's easier to talk to them logically than it is adults. they can actually recognize when they're saying something that doesn't make sense. the black children in class are quieter than usual, quieter than i expect. overwhelmed. happy in a warm milk sort of way, i think. like they have looked at the face of god and don't know how to tell people what they see. one child brings in the post's 32 page bio on obama and when i allow him to read it during reading time (we are working on biography, autobiography and memoir) he smiles quietly and falls into the pages. at the end of class, he waits until everyone else is gone and offers me the paper to use in my next class. i thank him and he says he'll come by at the end of the day to pick it up. this newspaper is priceless to him. i buy an extra in case his gets messed up.

but this is not what i was expecting. i knew the adults would be miserable and ugly but i was surprised to see it in the children, even a little. they are people i love, so i did the only thing i knew to do. i did the thing we're not supposed to do in a classroom. when the kids asked who i voted for i told them. i voted for the president. they knew this but they wanted to hear it, i think. some words are so strong when you say them out loud. more real. when they asked why i said what i think is true. because i think he is a good man with a good heart who can listen more than he speaks. i think all that time he spent organizing will help him go out into the world and bring us all a little closer together. i want to tell them how it felt to vote for someone i really and truly believe isn't lying to me. i want them to know there are people out there who do what they do simply to make the way smoother for those who come after. some leaders are real leaders, i want to say. but i can feel the stupid tears scratching in my throat and in my eyes and i don't say anything. but the children nod, most of them, so i think maybe they know.

and i will try to tell them what it felt like to be a part of what happened today.

punkin chunkin

when two friends you haven't seen in a long time invite you to visit them in delaware the same weekend strange folks are sending pumpkins into near orbit with medieval war machines in pretty much the same neighborhood you hop in the car and head toward delaware. the drive to delaware is long but the drive from the home of your friends to the place where the pumpkins fly is nearly as long, due to the creative directions on the website. all four of you in the car on dusty late fall roads agree that someone wrote directions, cut all the sentences up word by word and then tossed the words in the air. they wrote things down in whatever order the words fell. all good words. absolutely no sense. but you get there. you drive forty miles and the first sign you see, PUNKIN CHUNKIN THIS WAY is a quarter mile from the parking. not so helpful.

when you first arrive, you're surprised to see how many folks decided to camp in a parking lot which was a few weeks ago a field of corn or soybeans or maybe sorghum. but there are all sorts of rv type things stretching out row after row after row. as you turn toward where you're parking, you notice a rebel flag flying near a cluster of port-a-johns. there must be folks in rvs of some sort who put it up and you wonder if they realize it looks like the flag is flying over a tiny community of three green, stinking, outdoor toilets. you think about how folks at coney island always put their beach towels down right next to the trash baskets and guess this happens a lot to people who aren't much aware of their surroundings.

you walk across a stubble field, corn cobs and fat, dry stalks smashed down in neat rows, toward the gate. at the gate, between two posts, you see two boards nailed up like shelves. each is loaded down with bottles and cans of lite beer of every imaginable sort. you have arrived right in the middle of everything, the second of three days, early afternoon. you can see the tops of massive trebuchets looming over kiddie carnival rides. you didn't really know what you were getting into, did you? you weren't even thinking about a midway. ferris wheel. carousel. you wander in and over to the fence that keeps you from wandering out into the monstrous machines and the field beyond where the pumpkins all splatter. you hear a voice on a loudspeaker talking about a pumpkin flying wild and possibly heading the wrong direction. he does not sound at all worried. on the contrary, he reports this in a surprisingly gleeful tone. it is excitement and excitement is good. as a paranoid person you were already prepared for this. you have spent several days reminding yourself how these machines are made by brilliant crews who work very carefully to keep pumpkins from flying wild and taking off the head of some poor, unsuspecting fool wandering around the midway with a mouth full of cotton candy. and thirty seconds into the event you find out you wasted your time. the pumpkins most certainly might break loose and kill you today. you are surprised how easy it is to accept this and move on.

you watch a few pumpkins fly from the old fashioned monsters and begin to eye the tents smelling of fried happiness. you pass by the skoal tent. you certainly weren't expecting a skoal tent. the skoal tent proudly displays an american flag. it also proudly displays the rebel flag. this is a flag for a country that no longer exists and hasn't for quite some time. you're not sure why they still have a flag. you make a mental note to see what other defunct countries still have flag bearing contingents. later in the day you will see skoal girl, a very sassy young woman in what looks like a blue neoprene cheerleading outfit, walk toward one of the green portable toilets near the fence keeping you off the cannons. a few seconds after she walks in you see a guy who looks like what would happen if santa did a brief stint with zz top and then joined the military in world war one rather drunkenly steering an atv on the other side of the fence. his hat is askew and he barrels straight toward the green toilet. skoal girl is taking a long time in there, which is unusual for a woman in a toilet of that sort. santa slams into the toilet at low speed and bumps it slightly. however, from the inside, you figure it must be more than a little upsetting. you imagine sloshing. splashing. skoal girl does not come screaming out. santa backs up and nearly bumps the toilet again, but instead brings his vehicle up beside toilet and waits. slowly, skoal girl comes out stomping, rounds the corner and has a surprisingly calm conversation with santa. you decide that nothing will make you feel better about a rebel flag flying over the skoal tent but this certainly moves you somewhere toward better.

but back to the food. as you head toward the tents the sweetie mentions nazis and when you realize he's not saying nachos you turn to look. they are gone but the two friends you are with saw them too, one man with a swastika on his shirt, the other two with equally unsettling exteriors. your stomach hurts. you feel your skin getting tighter. maybe your body is battening down. you are now afraid you will see more like when you see a spider and then start thinking about how many spiders are out there and how many of them are probably in your house. your people keep navigating toward the food. you know you'll feel better with chili cheese fries in your belly and the giant paper cup of them settles you a bit. later there will be funnel cakes. you wonder who gets cream of crab soup in the middle of a soybean field next to a tent with a mechanical bull in it but there are quite a few folks in line. none of them are nazis.

the cannons are the last to fire. they are massive and all in a line. you are behind the fence and you can tell the sweetie wants to be out there, hauling around tanks of compressed air or fuel or whatever, dragging up a good supply of pumpkins, using heavy tools to move the barrel of the cannon up. you want to be out there, too and it is difficult to stand there behind drunk college boys trying to pick up girls when you want to see pumpkin carnage and help cause it. you want to light fuses, load ammunition. the first one fires more quietly than you expect. some of them go nearly a mile and although you can't really see that far you tell yourself you can and you watch the fat orange projectiles spin stem over belly in wild arcs across a perfectly clear sky. they don't all sound the same but the sounds are all hissing and thumping and deep. low. bass. it is the kind of sound you feel in your chest more than in your ears and the smoke that curls from the cannon barrels is the only way you can tell when some of them fire. they are so fast your eyes just can't catch up.

the cannons finish and you turn with your friends to leave. you bought a straw cowboy hat for six bucks to keep the sun from your eyes. your friend bought herself a baseball cap with a pumpkin tearing across it. the two men in your group were not lured by souvenirs. the field with the cannons and midway was soybeans and you put a dried pod in your pocket. you think about what you loved here- the explosiveness, pumpkins screaming out of cannons taller than your house, the opportunity to purchase any food in its fried form, the cleverness and beauty of the machines. you think about the nazis and how they love the same things. this makes you feel sick for a bit. you walk back by one or two rebel flags, drunk clusters of people in trucks made mostly of stereo and speakers. you think about how you've spent your life thinking about what you don't have in common with nazis and people who live with their sort of fear. you want the world to be different and you've always thought this was the way to go about it, showing who you are. showing who they are. now you're thinking about how you love funnel cakes and nazis love them, too. and perhaps this is where that different world starts, finding where your lives intersect, where your vocabulary overlaps. catapults. motorcycles. carnival rides. trebuchets. funnel cakes.