On the inside:

• Excuses (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...

Once upon a time...

...or maybe it was twice.  Come to think of it, it was definitely much more often than that.

It was, after all, all about the time.  Then again, it was also about the place and the people who were there and the things that happened.  So maybe I need to restart.

Once upon a spacetime, I was there.  I have been an observer.  Somehow I adopted the notion that it was important for me to observe and record.  If not me, who?

It all started with a vision, although it may have started before the vision and elsewhere.  That's the trouble with spacetime.  One wherewhen's herenow is another wherewhen's therethen.  But for the life of us we keep counting the time.  Sometimes it becomes all too apparent that it is a dwindling resource.

But I've kept recording.  It is my nature.

On the inside:

• Contacting the Past (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...

On Tuesday I received a letter from a former student at the University of Central Arkansas, where I transitioned from 1992 until 1994 and where I taught for six more years after that.  From time to time, people from that spacetime contact me.  There are other people at Daily Kos who have been faculty or students at UCA.  The memories of there/then are bittersweet.

It took several days for me to formulate a response.  I'd like to say that I was just too busy to write back immediately since it was Finals Week here at Bloomfield.  

The truth is rather that it was too difficult to come up with any quick response...and that the letter deserved a more thoughtful response than what I could immediately come up with.

I'm not even sure if the response I finally came up with is appropriate or sufficient.  But it is what I have.

On the inside:

• The Microcosm (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...

One night in the FarAway/LongAgo, I had trouble getting to sleep, so I sat up for several hours thinking about some things and felt like writing a bit about them.  It was a bit of a ramble.

I had not really been sharing much of my writing at the time because I came to a point where I thought that other people in the gender community needed to find themselves more than they needed to listen to what I had to say.  Someone questioned that stance and I thought it through and realized that I had perhaps been too hasty.

The following is a rewrite of that ramble, with some new words hung like ornaments here and there.  It was originally written as an address to my community.  Ultimately, however, circumstances did warrant continuation of that withdrawal.  There are limitations on how thin one can spread oneself and still be able to delve deeply.  Decisions made about which is more important have consequences.

On the inside:

• Reprising Exhaustion (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...

Last year I posted a diary on World AIDS Day asking people if there was interest in Sharing our AIDS Stories.  I started that off telling about my therapist and (I hope) my friend, Kurt Wilhelm (link goes to my nearly abandoned personal blog...there aren't enough hours in a day).

Then I invited people to tell their own stories.  The response was nearly overwhelming.  I endeavored then, as I will today, to read and answer ever post, until I got some helpers towards the end.  At first the majority of comments were by people who talked about their friends or family who had died or who were living with AIDS, but as the day went on, more and more people living with AIDS started telling their stories.

I'm hoping to hear some updates...

Maybe I was born this way.  Maybe it's a genetic mutation.

Maybe it happened when I was sitting on the dock of the bay in my hippie youth.

Maybe it happened because once upon a time it became clear that my life and my needs didn't matter to the progress of this thing we call human society and its relationship with and survival on this planet.

Which means maybe Poul Anderson is to blame.

Maybe it happened because I've lived so close to the edge of death by my own hand so many times.  That could have singed away any real motivation for the self-interest that I have been told recently is at the heart of every human being's motivation and that virtue is only enlightened self-interest.

On the inside:

• A Willing Ear and an Active Protector (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 gave myself an assignment on Tuesday.  I decided I needed to write about one of those topics I have the hardest time with.  I assigned myself the the topic of Hate.  I've also had difficulty writing about Love.

Go figure.

Once upon a time I appeared in an anti-hate commercial, part of the the Hate Free Zones campaign sponsored by the Arkansas Progressive Network back in the  late 90s.

My partner (at the time) and were seen walking along the riverfront in Little Rock, an interracial lesbian couple, one of us transsexual and the other bisexual.  The commercial displayed all sorts of human targets of hate, set to the music of INXS' Mediate.  The final video scenes showed the burned out station wagon at the scene of slaying of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner.

On the inside:

• On the Measurement of Teachers (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...

It has been a difficult time lately for some of us.  Not only have we discovered that political symbolism trumps equal protection under the law and the importance of coalition building, at least when it comes to protections for people like us, we get told in the back pages that we really need to shut up about our concerns, that speaking up for ourselves is the crassest form of selfishness.

It comes at a bad time of year.  It's a time of year when we remember those who have fallen, and invite other people to remember them with us.  On Tuesday, November 20, is the 9th Annual Transgender Day of Remembrance.  Special props to Gwendolyn Ann Smith, who started this. Some people know Gwen as a columnist for the Bay Area Reporter, whereas I know her as someone who transitioned at the same time I did.  Thank you, Gwen.

Originally posted at Docudharma

On the inside:

• Is it all a waste of time? (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...

In the past few days my mind has been on the Mental Wayback Machine a few times.  I seem to always end up in the same places.

When I made the conscious decision to not end my life, I had to find a purpose in life beyond just existing.  I latched on to a statement I heard from my boss when I refused to resign For the Good of the Team™.

How does one respond to that?  What was I supposed to say?  Was I supposed to point out that no openly gay or lesbian faculty member at the University of Central Arkansas had ever been granted tenure?  Or was I just supposed to accept that assertion that being gay would be an improvement in my life?

On the inside:

• Gifted and Talented
• 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...

Sometimes, in order to stretch the boundaries of who I am, I give myself a mission.  I force myself to write a poem about some subject in order to see what I really think about it.  Or I try to write an essay.

Several weeks back, I assigned myself such a task.  Having written about death and fear, pain and struggle, I needed to write something about love...no matter how much it hurts me to do so.

It is not an easy subject for me.  I have experience to draw upon.  Love hurts.  Or can do so.

Maybe I think I know love when I see it.  Or maybe I'm just full of it.

Each time I seek to grasp for the words I wish to say, memories of times past, fears of rejection and its actuality, push them out of my reach.  Pain is remembered.  Mental scabs are picked at.

They came from different places . . . different as much in how they lived their lives as in where they lived them.

Debbie's cousin, Laurie, cancer survivor, came from Hesperia, CA.  Better here than in fire country.  And Debbie's twin brother Jim, a lawyer, and his new bride Nooshin came from near the La Brea tar pits.  So there was some tension about back home.

Robyn was supremely thrilled that people came from Oregon.  Her sister Jan, a cardiologist from Corvallis, and Jan's son Ian, newly graduated from Santa Clara and embarking on an internship in PR with the University of Washington athletic department, and Robyn would see each other for the first time since 1993.  They were all younger back then.  We were pretty much different people on that occasion.