Musings

Wrapping up this last week of school and enjoying the rush of beginnings and ends, I feel I need to reflect upon a couple of things. I watch so many young men and women move through classes like cattle, I often wonder whether my presence in their lives is even making an impact on them. I do believe that what I do is not only valid but vital, but there are those times when I do wonder whether that 92 percent should really be a 93 or whether anyone in just seventy-two hours will give a crap. Many colleagues and friends are transferring high schools to the new one opening up on the other side of town. Partly I envy them, as I would like to be a part of a team that feels valuable, and partly I wouldn't be them for all the money in the world. The Titanic had big dreams and looked to a long life as a good thing, one thought. Regardless, I will be missing a lot of people as they move and while that's life, sometimes change isn't easy. Many leaving will be my lunch group with whom I spend three out of five days with. I wish them the best.
I had an amazing night with my son. Mommy was at a work-related dinner (she's just pulling in now and it's 10:20), so we played, he ate, we talked with the neighbors and then after a bath, it was bedtime. My son's favorite song is a Muppet song and I sing it to him to calm him down. It works like clockwork and tonight was no different. After he went down and I cleaned up, it's been a great Newsweek on Deep Throat and this week's New Yorker.

While I was feeding my son I caught a clip of the news about a Christian Phone Company. I wish I remember the name, but the company's initials are AET. Anyway, this company's telemarketers attack their competition, the big companies, as sinful, evil, tools of Satan, promoting pornography and homosexuality and unGodly. The CEO of the company, in the interview, sat in front of a large bulletin board picture (like one we'd see in a church bulletin or above the door of Sunday School) of a newly-signed customer, the owner of the business, and Jesus, all together in this three way group-grope that signified the bringing about of the rapture through the success of this phone company. I'm changing topics before I resort to profanity, but c'mon...

Oh, but that's not all! There's a "born again Christian" who's been reading his OT (that's the Old Testament for you sons o' bitches mother-loving cd pirating speeding pornographing sinning cussing cheating lying coveting non-fucking Democrats out there) and believes that God has shown him where to dig for oil in Israel. He's backed by Christian groups and believes that God won't fail him. I'm not making this up; NPR this morning and a story in Newsweek this week has this dude, who, in all fairness honestly believes that God is pointing him the way to ungodly amounts of oil which will do nothing but make him rich in the eyes of the world even though Jesus says that the root of all evil is money and that pride was the downfall of Satan. I said this months before, but where are the people who believe that God has called them to lay their lives down to feed the hungry, help Africa, teach our children, stop "nucular" proliferation, promote acceptance and love and peace? I know what's happened to many of them, they've been killed. When people try protecting nature because it's what God wants them to do, they're labeled as granola-eating Birkenstock-wearing hippie freaks. Any time a southerner with a plan to exploit the working class and make riches for him does it in the name of either capitalism or Christianity (which are synonymous in the Texas versions of Webster's), they're considered good Americans?

God bless you, please, Mrs. Robinson. Now you've joined Joltin' Joe. You seduced me, too. I just hope that Mel will be okay.