tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-60276490515354337882024-03-05T07:50:15.434-05:00the land of loloeducation as the practice of freedom. none of us is free until we are all free.lolositahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12767757034930712336noreply@blogger.comBlogger177125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6027649051535433788.post-88458579264036864122023-09-21T10:43:00.004-04:002023-09-21T10:44:27.809-04:00International Day of Peace<p>Back in college, I went through a particularly rough breakup and decided that the logical solution was to go and get a tattoo from my dear friend Tanya at Medusa Tattoo on St. Marks Place. Tanya asked me to write in her book about why this tattoo and why this day, and I wrote "Because it's the International Day of Lauren, celebrating in 75 countries worldwide!" Thus began a tradition of annual self-indulgence and self-care. </p><p>This year, it looks a lot different from when I was 19. Woke up with a migraine, tried to sleep a little bit more, took the kids to school and have been folding laundry and watching <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hzr7QPI_gyk">Gracie's Corner </a>with Pape, who just turned 1. We went for a walk in the park and moved our bodies, and have been trying to care for our space. Amazing how different seasons of life greet you, but anniversaries of something call you back to your former self. </p><p>I have been beating the drum of self-care for so many years, even pre-COVID, and now I feel like it's been co-opted by capitalism and become an industry. <i>How can you take care of yourself by buying something?</i> I consciously resist this, and am actually sorting and preparing to give things away: kids' boots, sports equipment, winter coats and sweaters that fit last year and will not this year. I take care of myself and our space by letting go, organizing, making space for ourselves. </p><p>About 10 years and 5 tattoos later, I learned that September 21st is also the International Day of Peace. It seems a fitting day that I chose to claim for myself; as I work in peacemaking and helping young people see the beauty of peace as a way to begin the healing process. We have difficult conversations with the intention of ending drama that stems from miscommunication. We aim to have a community where folks can be their true, authentic selves and co-exist across difference. </p><p>Even as I type this, I find myself on the slippery slope of talking parenting and talking job when I explore what's going on with myself. I wonder how 19 year old Lolo would feel about how decentralized I've become to myself, and how it's sometimes necessary; I can still love myself, love my life and what I've built, celebrate the song of myself, even as I make it daily practice to care for others and build community. </p><p>May you find peace in your heart today, and space to breathe. </p>lolositahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12767757034930712336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6027649051535433788.post-25221155558835549142023-03-11T17:23:00.001-05:002023-03-11T17:23:40.762-05:00trying to carve space<p> i led a writing workshop last weekend inspired by women writers of color, Gloria Anzaldúa in particular, and thinking about all of the ways in which women create magic from the ordinary. but i cannot find a small moment of exhale for myself, a crack in the surface to begin creating. maybe someday soon... until then, i'm breathing in inspiration: </p><p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWjDmbgtFKU">Mumu Fresh - Practice</a><br /></p><p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-gYa5dk-8M">Nas feat. Hit Boy/Shaka Senghor - Composure</a></p><p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ljSbN0Pg28">Chika - Crown</a></p><p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNsKFoigGj8">Joey Bada$$ - Make Me Feel</a></p><p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S46Sm7g4UnU">Kenyatta Rashon - I AM</a></p><p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WkPjA_0E6A">Formula 734 feat. Buff 1/Rod Wallace - Billfolds</a> </p><p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wycz17ayBsc">Che Noir - Fruits of My Labor</a></p><p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJDTd-UMSMk">Athletic Mic League - Hold My Hand</a></p><p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jw-iKMcWKLA">Koffee - Lonely</a></p><p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VW_UHYs3giU">Enny feat. Jorja Smith - Peng Black Girls Remix</a></p><p>the irony of this workshop was something I had to name: I too struggle, I am no expert at this, we are co-creating this space together. we came up with a list of strategies for finding space for writing, but even as I led the workshop, the baby squealed from the other room, the kids came to visit/interrupt and I struggled with the time and space to truly focus. </p><p>still, the dedication of 20 minutes to alliteration, rhyme and rhythm makes the difference, and I need to put it into practice. making dirty the pages of the journals that are too pretty to write in, just a few lines of a blog post is better than nothing at all. i know that I exist somewhere, under motherhood, beneath teaching and grant-writing and all that I do. i am not my production, and I am valuable even and because i choose to rest and enjoy life. </p><p>how many times do i have to say this out loud before i believe it? </p><p><br /></p>lolositahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12767757034930712336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6027649051535433788.post-68979964738057581522022-09-11T20:49:00.000-04:002022-09-11T20:49:16.140-04:0021 years <p> <span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">I was 21 when 9/11 happened, and on this anniversary my life is literally sliced into perfect symmetry -- I lived half before this day, and half my life afterward. In terms of pivotal moments, I can always pinpoint this day as a clear change in trajectory in my life. I was already on the path to becoming a teacher, a writer, an anti-racist thinker, an activist -- but this day propelled me into a passion for always learning more - about America's role in the world, about imperialism, capitalism and global power, about nationalism and its role in dividing and conquering people who have more in common than different from one another, across the world.</span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-7f828d2d-7fff-1928-28a1-a3b01db615aa"><span style="border: none; display: inline-block; height: 582px; overflow: hidden; width: 513px;"><img height="582" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/BAgmC4EBJTpepiUE285gVd-uPzWo_bZYArbfuvico2CjC9-TPV5vNEX2xIBEYV8GGaWtcM0j0rXlqiG0xW9Awgk6C-y5QWSQJNnuhFsywcrGk-bruLsXr9rKR8bXRj34yyV55ZFEFQRu-HuTFBM66XNNrIP9rtKlx3cbTiJ4VDI8ffDR8PBAFfzV" style="margin-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px;" width="513" /></span><br /><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Many people assume that I started learning about Islam when I married my husband, but it was in 2001 that I responded to the attacks in New York by wanting to learn more, wanting to understand why when classmates or family members said "they hate our way of life/our freedoms", who is the "they" and who is "us". I wanted/ to understand a faith vilified by American media before but especially after 9/11. I never knew then that I would be engaged in a mosque, be married to a Muslim man and raising 3 Muslim kids; so it wasn’t personal then, the way that it is now, 21 years later. I simply wanted to learn more so that I could teach more, about love and compassion, common humanity, as well as the geopolitical reasons why the U.S. is so hated across the world. </span></p><br /><span style="border: none; display: inline-block; height: 449px; overflow: hidden; width: 560px;"><img height="449" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/fNtlAluVtY6e3soZUoi5irJL21KnAbAEtAcNjHDxDtnphHuS3ZWHqXVgzV4OM8daqfno3LPIBfIHhlr8QLz8helcvLq1U7cNHeUB_4ktVdi4GmeEvgUoLp_1H0p7Y-spa0F58NBvE9q2IeSBDILVTiTb2qdXmNMjgWUiiiJr_QK8k-EJ58CHxDjw" style="margin-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px;" width="560" /></span><br /><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I still don’t always know what to do with my hands, often I write first, try to reflect and make a plan for action and then I try to act, to move, to help, to push toward justice. One of the hardest parts of the days after 9/11 is that everyone wanted to help, but we couldn’t find ways to be helpful, and we felt helpless, and hopeless. We tried donating blood, the lines were 7 hours long on the first day, but they didn’t pull people out alive, and ended up not needing extra blood like they anticipated, which was a terribly grim reality. We wanted to go downtown to volunteer somewhere, but the air was toxic and they wouldn’t let anyone unauthorized below Houston St. We flocked out to the streets, to Union Square Park, Washington Square, any public space we could find, to see what we could do, to organize, to connect, to write messages to loved ones, to mourn, to hope, to try and figure out how we could act, how we could be useful. </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="border: none; display: inline-block; height: 500px; overflow: hidden; width: 624px;"><img height="500" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-vpSzB5Ryveu2L86EXZsQMiq-my9UmZVF9La4s1bcFsKaeuXSkPHtFtRDsj12uIg0-A9DgHIEF__SZlFX8TomoASfGA4LtMGr2HVnKbKHEkvJKaEV6ESW3DnMv7MRWs2YPbi9K9mAzSayupuBw_JkisIKNJU3ihEBE7OFWPD3_fILITVcOCswgTV" style="margin-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px;" width="624" /></span></span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The first night, we took to the streets to chalk messages to our community. It was a tangible action that Louisa, Jennie, Nicole, Emily, Eli and Eleanor came up with that felt important, would be visible, encourage critical thinking about the media we were all consuming and the immediate message of nationalism and unquestioned patriotism that seemed to be all around us. In the face of the unknown in the morning, with tanks rolling down University Place outside my bedroom window, it felt like something we could control. We received a lot of supportive cheers and “right ons” and some haters, but it felt important and right. After that night, we turned to focus on anti-war protests, and more locally, a teach-in at our college about Islam, using the opportunity to organize on campus about the anti-Arab and Islamophobic sentiment that was already spreading like wildfire around the city, and the country. A woman in Hijab attacked in a grocery store parking lot in Queens. Sikh men mistaken for Muslim harassed on the train. The polarizing “us” (read: white, Christian, straight, male = “American” 🙄) vs. “them” (read: non-white or racially ambiguous, non-Christian, queer, female/marginalized genders = “unAmerican”) in a terrifying throwback to McCarthyism of the 1950s.</span></p><br /><span style="border: none; display: inline-block; height: 438px; overflow: hidden; width: 539px;"><img height="438" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/eQ7vp_V1rJw7EtCQ9X3Z_do51_VWolWmwN-kFJ2xZg6X70LGqm9ME1zIXB_U70nM_zLry5rE5SWPCazDFL92EHgxhrIx_bnlFfGu9DDwLDUupWoBWxg_2EJ_7LPvSEQb04XCLrgidUDqwhvWk9Xl10eKLHgvayHR2ji2eYQbCJ-lt0fW9qCAyC-f" style="margin-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px;" width="539" /></span><br /><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One detail I’ve failed to write about very often in 20 years is the missing posters. They still haunt my dreams to this day. Photos of loved ones, wedding photos, people with their children and their families, on vacations, professional headshots from work, what floor of the towers they worked on (99th floor, 102nd floor, 86th floor) and how to get in contact with their loved ones if they were found. Every available surface across the city was plastered with missing posters, starting Tuesday afternoon and multiplying throughout the week like viral . I would turn a corner and see a wall of scaffolding on a building covered in them, and immediately begin crying. I would stop and read them, look into their faces, trying to hold space for each of them, since I didn’t have anywhere to go or be that first week while classes were canceled. Each encounter a private memorial service, because I knew, as many of their families knew when creating them, that they were probably not alive. But there were miracles of escape and folks delayed on the trains who never made it to work that day, and we heard these stories as we escaped to the bars for a sense of normalcy, comfort and release from the stresses around us. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="border: none; display: inline-block; height: 480px; overflow: hidden; width: 624px;"><img height="480" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/EwJb6lG_xEWHzoa72_r42huQmm6pG2XSx6fYG3L9BPRbOe06SkUTkIIWVKciRhjqZI-cq9NzVaaiA5_w_vZC0ntyBEwP91TmIuCpbop9gcHdvIej6MKNnhvEHMIcA8MwG-RHabh2NLeUcHtLYlFD3sMsN6ONqoorIvS3okbUwV7xBPLa1rc2fisQ" style="margin-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px;" width="624" /></span></span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">All this time later, I am thinking about the ways that we took action, the ways that we held space for each other to process and grieve, and the ways that we forged new community in the face of tragedy. It is true that New Yorkers felt connected in a clear way, but we were not united under patriotism, as is often the narrative: rather many of us were united under the banner of being anti-war and NOT retaliating, though of course, this event led to a 20 year war beginning in Afghanistan and shifting to Iraq, where in response to the loss of nearly 3,000 lives, our military took over one million lives. We cannot call out terrorism, then perpetuate it with millions of times of the military power, and still call ourselves the Land of the Free. We cannot limit citizens’ freedoms with the Patriot Act, and insist that we are still the model of equality and human rights. Yet, this is America, and we are exactly this hypocrisy, as Frederick Douglass told us. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But we MUST face history to remember, we must look clearly at the past in order to make change in the present and NOT repeat what has been told to us as the truth. We must critically question the media, create our own media, share our stories, write our own histories, so that history is not only told from the winner’s perspective (Orwell, 1942), or tainted with red-white-and-blue colored glasses. </span></p></span>lolositahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12767757034930712336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6027649051535433788.post-65682468241794575432022-07-25T12:13:00.002-04:002022-07-29T19:12:35.737-04:00in avoidance of hard truths<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjc6701XJZUUmfKta6bvdLGA8Dy4Z0eo6Z-InOtq9dYlkr9Yx8Nak8wabYR6MTUC5cM_G3Vy7EJnbH7_8sa_JgvXDTSJuL5pIceglKSrTV9C5XABH9StYGlVMN0jrh1ev9Wf_CXL5TQu9ki14oG98cYCNLNAsfnm8lQIRTTkl94xmp_nBWiaDAwP83T/s2016/Room%2014,%20March%202022.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1124" data-original-width="2016" height="178" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjc6701XJZUUmfKta6bvdLGA8Dy4Z0eo6Z-InOtq9dYlkr9Yx8Nak8wabYR6MTUC5cM_G3Vy7EJnbH7_8sa_JgvXDTSJuL5pIceglKSrTV9C5XABH9StYGlVMN0jrh1ev9Wf_CXL5TQu9ki14oG98cYCNLNAsfnm8lQIRTTkl94xmp_nBWiaDAwP83T/s320/Room%2014,%20March%202022.png" width="320" /></a></div><p>i have been avoiding reading and writing all summer, and i'm a bit embarrassed about it. i have touted writing as my go-to in terms of how i process and heal, and in a summer of proclaimed healing and resting from the tough school year that ended in June... it seems like i'm avoiding something. i'm circumventing hard truths right now, i realized in therapy last week, and intentionally not-writing so that i do not look at myself in the mirror. </p><p>now seems like a good time to unpack that, and i'll start with this: there is going to be unprecedented school staff shortages in the fall/next month. programs will close, departments will shift, schools will shutter, lots of things will shift to virtual, which is a hierarchy in the quality and personal attention of public education. the institution of public schools is in the process of ending, and what it will become is what so many Republicans have been working toward for the past two decades of my life and work: voucher systems, private charters with no accountability, an exacerbation of the school-to-prison-pipeline which places our Black and Brown students online to self-navigate through computer correspondence courses, and calls that an education. segregated schools have never left our national ideology, we know this. </p><p>i don't know what this means for me. how long can i exist inside of a toxic system that does not want to see young people as human beings with aspirations, goals, lives to build? i want to work in a place where my contributions are valued, truly, not with awards and vague understanding of what i do, but in a way that uplifts our community, empowers our young people and encourages them to build long and lasting relationships with teachers, friends and family as they grow and understand themselves. </p><p>we need to address the violence that has taken so many young people in our community. how COVID-19 has ravaged and set grief upon our families at an even more accelerated rate. how poverty and houselessness have impacted us. we need to have spaces to process, grieve collectively and work toward healing, share resources and hold each other up. this has always been my goal in working within schools: to use my location to positively impact the community, but it must extend beyond the schoolhouse to families and the community. if we teach restorative practices at school, but they learn something different at home, who are they going to trust? and why should they trust the school at all? </p><p>i don't know what's next. i do know that i've begun to put into the universe what i want, that i've spent time building relationships with other circlekeepers who i deeply value and respect, and that my love for my work is reaffirmed whenever i have the opportunity to be in circle with others. i had such an opportunity this morning and i'm convinced it's the reason why the words are flowing out of me now. i have to stay open, and willing to connect with others. but grief and healing is really hard and ugly work, and i have to commit to it, for myself, for my children, for my students, for my husband and family and friends. i need to be the best version of myself, and that begins with taking the time to rest, to unpack, to resolve, to heal, to dance and locate joy wherever life will bring it. </p><p>also, there is so much pain in our community, and i must heal myself so that i can help others be able to navigate their pain, and provide resources and empowerment to parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles just like i have tried to do with students over the past 20 years (and will continue to do with young people, no matter what path i walk). real healing work does take the whole hood, and United Playaz continues to inspire as i figure out the next way forward to a <a href="https://sites.google.com/ycschools.us/bettermeyouth">Better Me</a>, and a <a href="https://www.supremefelons.com/">Better Us</a>. our young people deserve it, as does each member of our beloved community. </p>lolositahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12767757034930712336noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6027649051535433788.post-61913720365969824192022-02-19T09:21:00.002-05:002022-02-19T09:21:18.280-05:00titles change things<p style="text-align: left;">working on poems with my 9th graders, and just finished a poetry unit with my 10th graders, we've moved onto a Jason Reynolds book and i am finding the rhythm of back in the building, in a new system (quarters) where I must work hard to build relationships and pack content into 9 weeks. it's challenging, and i appreciate challenge, but this year it almost seems like too much to do anything more than teach my classes. the work life balance has shifted since COVID, and i want to be more present at home, especially as winter melts into spring (maybe sometime, right now we're covered under a fresh 6 inches). by the time i get home from work, i have used all of my patience. i feel anxious. i want a clean, quiet space to help with my anxiety, and my home is the opposite. i don't know when i will ever get used to a maladjustment of my spirit, but i do know that titles change things. we wear the mask in our buildings, and we read dunbar, angelou's riff of dunbar and deonte osayande as we asked ourselves which masks we wear. here's the mask i wear: </p><div style="text-align: left;">at this point, <br />i have become <br />used to wearing<br />the villain mask.<br />I, terrorist of the<br />living room kingdom.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />i am tired of the mess:<br />your worst storms, <br />amplified by years of<br />desert island isolation.<br />i am under a spell <br />of exhaustion. <br />tempered and tan-toned,<br />i have become <br />exactly what i said<br />i wouldn't.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />i don't know how to unsee<br />the mountains, how to let <br />the molehills slide,<br />how to stay quiet like breath<br />when you thunder-rumble.<br />i am tired of asking, <br />and getting silence<br />in return. you are tired<br />of talking, and i am a griot.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />i turn off myself <br />like a light switch.<br />taking rest and searching<br />for what i need in<br />wild dreams of turquoise<br />water on our skin. <br />i have to be the hero<br />of my own life, even<br />if i'm always the villain<br />of yours. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">titles change things: </div><div style="text-align: left;">(mom poem #893453495)</div>lolositahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12767757034930712336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6027649051535433788.post-71931099064931756652022-02-05T13:46:00.002-05:002022-02-05T13:46:33.008-05:00joy and rest<p>well, to answer my last post, yes, i do know how to rest. but i have turned a corner and fallen from a steep cliff, my body needs the rest so much that i cannot climb out of bed. it has been a winter where i've consciously been focusing on joy and rest, but it seems that the joy is centrally located in my classroom, and the rest happens at home. to be clearer, i beeline from the front door to my "home clothes" to my bed. this hibernation is normal for me every year, but it is not yet normal to my kids, and it's to a deeper degree than in previous years. </p><p>i am trying to create spaces for joy and quiet during the winter, as a part of our practice. we slow down, we read, we create, we connect, we gain inspiration from the stars, we are cozy, we sleep. this is the counterclaim to their vibrancy, and they're not sure what to do with all this gray. i promise i will get my color back, in the spring and summer. </p><p>the winter is an important time to rest, and yet i've been struggling with the guilt around it. i should be doing more, i should be cleaning this, organizing that, showing up at this event. i am so, so tired, though, and i am struggling to hold space for the grief that has taken over my body. i just need to be here with her, and let her wreak havoc. we must break open to heal, and must trust that rest is what we really need. </p><p>thank you for being with me as i break open, and fold over, and hunker down in the snow. spring will come. in the meantime, joy in the everyday and allowing the rest my bones need. </p>lolositahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12767757034930712336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6027649051535433788.post-65092134200300739662021-11-20T12:56:00.002-05:002021-11-20T14:48:04.991-05:00Anxiety and a Break<p>I realized a few weeks ago just exactly how much I am struggling. My house is a mess and I can't find the energy to correct it or care. I miss people, but I feel so anxious each time I'm in a public situation (including work), that I cannot find ways to reconnect in person that make me feel safe. I don't know when I will enjoy being at shows or at a bar or party again. My kids are struggling to get along with each other at home, and with peers at school. There is an anger seething on the surface of everyone, which of course is grief presenting itself with armor. We are sad. We are depressed. We are grieving, and still unable to celebrate and mourn together in the ways that are most healing. </p><p>I preach mental health all day, everyday, to anyone who will listen, and of course it has been hardest for me to take my own advice. But in my daily struggles with managing my life, it's really hard to make the time and space for myself, and I need to see this as a fundamentally flawed way to exist. I cannot sustain this anymore. I finally got myself to the doctor last week, and asked for a referral to begin therapy again. I started meds for the first time since I was in my early 20's. I realized that as much as I've been holding it together, I am not functioning well, at home or at work, and I needed to take action to care for myself, truly... not in the vapid, consumerist ways that we talk about self-care, but in the deeper ways, the difficult ways, doing the things we have been avoiding for so long. </p><p>So, here I am, fumbling in my anxiety and on my computer on the first day of break. Do I know how to rest? Do I know how to take care? Let's find out. </p>lolositahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12767757034930712336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6027649051535433788.post-69326211107361769522021-10-18T06:56:00.003-04:002021-10-18T08:11:57.017-04:00Reflections on Q1<p> I don't remember any other quarter in a school being so tough. We are understaffed, exhausted, and all meeting'd out. We are trying our best as human beings stretched thin, caring for our own families and our school family. This is the prime place for students to begin to have some ownership over their school, and where leadership can begin, but it also feels like we're always on the precipice of disaster. Adults are in reactive mode instead of thoughtfully planning longterm, myself included, and I think what we need to do is quietly reflect and sharpen our craft, instead of create the turmoil of change, again. </p><p> Everyone wanted to return to school so badly, myself included. We also knew, and planned for, the trauma and pain that students would be carrying when we returned, but it is a deluge more powerful than I have the words for. I can't talk about resilience when there's still so many funerals, some for COVID, but many for the gun violence that our community is experiencing, daily. We are hardest hit by multiple pandemics, and many students don't know how to navigate it all. Adults don't either. </p><p> In week 4 of the quarter, we had a circle in the media center where a young person spit the truest game I have heard in 14 years of teaching. She laid out a play-by-play narrative of why students don't engage in school and what they're actually dealing with during the rest of their day. I will think about her often throughout my life, and her challenge to educators to build lasting relationships and actually be there for students in a meaningful way. The rawness of her grief allowed me to share my own and to remind myself of why I'm here. I placed myself here for a reason. </p><p><span> All I know how to do is to keep showing up everyday, and keep trying to build relationships, to show that I care, to check-in and be consistent. All that I know how to do is infuse power into the young people I am blessed to be in front of, and I weigh this quarter as successful if they see that within themselves. Maybe they won't yet, but I'm confident that we have planted seeds that they will sow later. More than anything, I hope that they remember ACCE as a place where we tried to take care of their whole selves, while healing ourselves. There is so much more work to do, but many hands make light work. </span></p><p><br /><span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiq_THcH4-BAE1yKMjEfWmfe1TqbqtL7NDD3oc8pMDEKlgO_w4LrMNBW8WQbarn2QzAheJP-m8xzviCdruZkBQHLVCFt6qwD2J7Tn_uzT-Hbr4_I1gFLYXY7jvqz7d8DccH4nXoUMBvpaU/s1600/Day+1+Circle+2021-22.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1600" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiq_THcH4-BAE1yKMjEfWmfe1TqbqtL7NDD3oc8pMDEKlgO_w4LrMNBW8WQbarn2QzAheJP-m8xzviCdruZkBQHLVCFt6qwD2J7Tn_uzT-Hbr4_I1gFLYXY7jvqz7d8DccH4nXoUMBvpaU/s320/Day+1+Circle+2021-22.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><br /><p></p>lolositahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12767757034930712336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6027649051535433788.post-60523604203293627442021-09-11T21:45:00.001-04:002021-09-11T21:50:53.241-04:0020 years. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzaC3qiNUbUqOulz8FCazZ-679x4sXRmpv1iDfDKv0d0B_Y3aW3BS47wSB_2wWZN38CBqZUq-pPzRH4kPHFS7c4zktCmOiVbpXgbMRoC20S6fjGbGThHK5dDzSylAkzaK37j8NDUSELHg/s2048/Cover+Photo+3+-+WTC+from+Ferry.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1729" data-original-width="2048" height="270" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzaC3qiNUbUqOulz8FCazZ-679x4sXRmpv1iDfDKv0d0B_Y3aW3BS47wSB_2wWZN38CBqZUq-pPzRH4kPHFS7c4zktCmOiVbpXgbMRoC20S6fjGbGThHK5dDzSylAkzaK37j8NDUSELHg/s320/Cover+Photo+3+-+WTC+from+Ferry.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p>this year, we had an early soccer game, a play date in the open, breezy air at the park by the river, and it was rather lazy and uneventful. i am grateful for the distance, and the reflection. it truly feels like another life, but my body remembers each year. </p><p>different details open up in the corridor of my memory, this year i am thinking about the ways that we tried to volunteer in the days afterward, trying to give our helplessness a job, trying to think of others instead of focusing on how we were feeling and doing. with kids sleeping on my floor in Union Square, and dorms unable to access, with mental health on edge for each person in the city, we didn't know what to do with ourselves, with all the time of classes cancelled. trains not running. phones often busy and cell phones unreliable. the smell of fire hanging in my nostrils for weeks, but blowing that first day toward Brooklyn and then uptown. if we had open windows, we all had the silt coating our windowsills and mantles. the ghosts were all up in our conversations that first night. we were out in Union Square, attending vigils, rallies, there when the antiwar marches began, and through the next few months as countless families of those missing told us that they did not want retaliation, for more sons and daughters to die. </p><p>a few panels from a zine that Jenna Freedman of the Barnard Zine Library unearthed for the anniversary this year. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS-oyWANcrOrcH3BaiCf-CJmFrbWLRXlihGUygzxRa9RxZ77TnkK_Jc387pqNV448aSpnTzYNseGybdpyQwStfYCxei8rXiYR9NtkEa3fPwjGtXDodXp6D544YdzXYE-zxTEmkD_70QSY/s1318/Screen+Shot+2021-09-11+at+5.10.55+PM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1028" data-original-width="1318" height="373" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS-oyWANcrOrcH3BaiCf-CJmFrbWLRXlihGUygzxRa9RxZ77TnkK_Jc387pqNV448aSpnTzYNseGybdpyQwStfYCxei8rXiYR9NtkEa3fPwjGtXDodXp6D544YdzXYE-zxTEmkD_70QSY/w478-h373/Screen+Shot+2021-09-11+at+5.10.55+PM.png" width="478" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p>this is what i'm thinking about most this year, in a never-ending quarantine - what do we do with our hands? we tried to give blood, they didn't need any. tried to donate food/water/supplies for the rescue, everyone kept wanting to go downtown and i couldn't go there for years. so I bought dog food for the rescue dogs. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihGcXkQBW6cTwDE2i2aGokwV76IbKpsWjZ5e4KGIDmWriNJKOsZpQZfofUdhqEG8dtODMqn4H3-jpDzmPxjPi5gl8xgF8opCUYU0OwzBAqa1nqchleRQ7-wKk7sichIv5OTfYocEOtQKM/s1178/Screen+Shot+2021-09-11+at+5.17.03+PM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="952" data-original-width="1178" height="358" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihGcXkQBW6cTwDE2i2aGokwV76IbKpsWjZ5e4KGIDmWriNJKOsZpQZfofUdhqEG8dtODMqn4H3-jpDzmPxjPi5gl8xgF8opCUYU0OwzBAqa1nqchleRQ7-wKk7sichIv5OTfYocEOtQKM/w442-h358/Screen+Shot+2021-09-11+at+5.17.03+PM.png" width="442" /></a></div><p>in 2003, taking the path train into the open carcass of the wreckage unexpectedly set off a panic attack. 20 years later, there is a haze over the direct route to the terror of that day, I have closed off corridors that are harder to navigate in my memory. collective trauma brought us together, but I knew that I would need to write it down, because I forgot much of it. still feel this way about ghosts, and they're still here. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdJ4UFevRRZCOuwfgvff_dwAjBijhvBqx_ytpqZiUQpZN-9Kqb-7fgtKSuNw65-DbM7E3WZOUneaB8ppOBJN3-zaunm2axJ1pzjs0qJnpPUGOhsnbKEHP9OwoC1yT1192jeMDfXCZnkL8/s918/Screen+Shot+2021-09-11+at+5.17.42+PM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="918" height="387" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdJ4UFevRRZCOuwfgvff_dwAjBijhvBqx_ytpqZiUQpZN-9Kqb-7fgtKSuNw65-DbM7E3WZOUneaB8ppOBJN3-zaunm2axJ1pzjs0qJnpPUGOhsnbKEHP9OwoC1yT1192jeMDfXCZnkL8/w493-h387/Screen+Shot+2021-09-11+at+5.17.42+PM.png" width="493" /></a></div><p>the missing posters are something i've seen in dreams for years. the North tower falling, the plumes of smoke. i keep wishing for a new revelation to surface, after 20 years of reflecting, and it's the same thing. tomorrow isn't promised, we never know what tomorrow will bring, if it will come, so we have to be prepared to look death in the face. take the afternoons to sit by the river and spend time with good friends. keep fighting imperialism, oppression, terrorist tactics perpetrated by individuals or governments, systems that reinforce white supremacy. keep questioning the media, keep doing your own research, protect ourselves in the face of a ravaging pandemic, take care of each other. envision what our world can look like if we take climate change seriously and act with urgency. </p><p>xo</p><p>lo</p><p><br /></p>lolositahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12767757034930712336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6027649051535433788.post-12440592219229392702021-08-07T11:04:00.002-04:002021-08-09T12:19:46.164-04:00groundhog day <p>we had two months, a sort-of-summer of maybe we can return to society, a small glimmer of hope, and now a new COVID variant puts cases at over 100,000 in the U.S. yesterday. we hover around 50% vaccination, just crossing 70% in my county, a fairly progressive county in Southeast Michigan. we are in trouble, and in for more death. school is happening in person, and while my district is mandating masks, many in Michigan are opening fully without mask precautions, quarantine or testing/outbreak mitigation protocols. are districts making protocols for this year? we are headed for another winter of outbreaks, and back and forth to in-person and remote. again (for those who went back in person last year, we were virtual until May). like groundhog day of last spring/fall/winter, which increases the trauma that students, teachers and families experience. </p><p>this was preventable, and that's why the anger seethes through so many people. data is showing that hospitalizations and deaths are over 99% people who are unvaccinated, and while children are less likely to contract COVID than adults, the Delta variant is more aggressive and transmissive. i respect that there are many reasons people cannot or will not get vaccinated. but the correlation of those who will not vaccinate and those who will not stay home and abide by mask mandates is evident. let's value each other's lives and vow to keep each other safe, at the very basic level of common humanity. this seems too much to ask in America. </p><p>i don't know what this means for what my school year will look like, but i recall a meme about the first year of quarantine, and whew... am i feeling the weight of that today. </p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJcPTa5wZvvJJ_cuXcJmjZuiM4e34hcd2U-gcVqBB78u-aEMoD9Vi3o7pK5Mvr68dWYquj-6o_7RkgZ44OUCmaY8axPLq9ykUI6tZ1EC5OJciDGJpZJb2I1shTkYORlPpvWX8Dp6Tk-hI/s1266/First+Year+of+Quarantine+Meme.jpeg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1266" data-original-width="1125" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJcPTa5wZvvJJ_cuXcJmjZuiM4e34hcd2U-gcVqBB78u-aEMoD9Vi3o7pK5Mvr68dWYquj-6o_7RkgZ44OUCmaY8axPLq9ykUI6tZ1EC5OJciDGJpZJb2I1shTkYORlPpvWX8Dp6Tk-hI/s320/First+Year+of+Quarantine+Meme.jpeg" width="284" /></a></div><p></p><p>last year, we tried to focus on joy and freedom dreaming toward what the future could be like. i know that work and writing will continue this year, because to focus on the dystopia of our current world is too much, but it's hard to keep the positivity up. i think it's worth it to spend the time with young people envisioning what the future could be, as well as giving them space to think, write, process and seek out more help if they need it. normalize talking about mental health, telling stories, getting through conflict with words. know that it's okay to not be okay, and that we'll try to be there for each other, but we will all have dark days. these are dark times, and we must grieve. we will have new leadership, so much of my year will be about navigating change, god is change, and how we go with the flow of that, and shape it to be what we want it to be. if anyone can do it, it's the ACCE team. </p><p>august is a monthlong Sunday. i try to relax but feel the fall behind me, lurking. i can't truly rest. i get inspired, write things down, look for readings, songs and videos to play in class. get excited about school and seeing students and colleagues (hopefully in person for awhile). scurry to see people i love, miss and didn't see all summer. run all the errands, avoid all the school supply shopping until the very last minute. it is easy to get caught up in the frenetic energy of Sunday.</p><p>this year, i will try to keep the priority on me, firmly, as it has been all July. i became a master of not paying attention to work email and doing what i want to do more often. i want to carry that into the rest of the year and make the space to love myself each day, separate from screens after work and truly be in the present moment. there will be change, and we will keep winning, inshallah. this is how i will get through the 2nd year of quarantine.</p>lolositahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12767757034930712336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6027649051535433788.post-62131258641288032522021-06-24T09:34:00.000-04:002021-06-24T09:34:09.670-04:00summertime sadness, part 4<p>if i were to scroll back through my blogs over the past 25 years, i'm sure that i write a post like this every year, or at least write it in a journal entry offline. with summer always comes sadness for me, but especially these past few years. in 2018, the summer after losing my father, i was intent on healing and focusing on myself, but my mourning continued long past September, as grief is an everyday struggle that continues to this day. in 2019, i was just getting a handle on grief, and wrestling with adulting, so the sadness turned inward as i tried to understand why i was struggling with growing up and being responsible. last year, COVID and the loss of so many folks i love strung the grief out, but i continued teaching summer school, even though i should have rested. so this year, i have said that i'm not working this summer, truly giving myself the time and space to rest and focus on healing and myself. </p><p>and that's ugly. it sometimes means not caring about the everyday things. it sometimes means ignoring others and hiding so i can attend to myself. it sometimes means losing my phone, or not being reachable or reliable. always, it means getting sick. my body has held itself together throughout the year, and mask-wearing + quarantining has meant we haven't been exposed to illness in the same way. but eventually, my body tells me when I need a break, and it is now. (and it's just a cold, thankfully)</p><p>i've been struggling a lot, as the world opens up, with my anxiety around what that means for socializing. after 16 months and, people really give no fucks about safety at this juncture. i am still wearing masks in public spaces because my children cannot be vaccinated, and i must vigilantly protect them. i am wanting to be around people and missing them, but feeling paralyzed and unsafe when i do hang out. i cannot imagine dining or being indoors at a bar for a long time, or seeing live music, and this is what i loved to do to relax before. what new ways can i work on being together with people, and feeling safe enough that i can enjoy the time together? for the summer it can be outdoors, but what about in the fall and winter? </p><p>i also realize and remember every summer how terrible i am at not working. i keep picking up projects and deciding to "do more", even in the face of an obvious need for rest and disconnection from screens. my husband, my children tell me how much i am engrossed in a device instead of the people in front of me, and this needs to stop. as work became digital this year and as i used social media for work and personal reasons, i am always finding new ways to work, and disrupting my own rest with a need to feel connected. what will the cost of this addiction be, and is it vanity, or something else? </p><p>in the midst of this sadness, i am reminded that these are "champagne problems" as Jerome Nichols of <a href="https://getthebutters.com/">The Butters</a> says -- or high class problems. i have a beautiful community of people who love me. i have a home, a vehicle that is reliable, a job that i love, a husband and 2 beautiful children. paid time off. my health. so many amenities and beautiful things about my life. it is okay to recognize this AND also sit in this sadness, contemplate its purpose, its location, its lesson. </p><p>i will continue to find my way to heal in these ways: being around and fully present with people i love and miss (outside, masked up), connecting with water and letting it teach me about perseverance, basking in the sun, loving on my family, feeling unapologetic about the need to rest and set boundaries. the sadness is necessary to recognize and appreciate the joy. </p>lolositahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12767757034930712336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6027649051535433788.post-62404792469575774602021-02-21T12:15:00.000-05:002021-02-21T12:15:30.482-05:00archaeology of self<p> <span style="font-family: "Century Gothic", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I believe in </span><span style="font-family: "Century Gothic", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">dangerous women</span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-5f30a193-7fff-57cf-8106-e4e10634fc71"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Century Gothic", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Century Gothic", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">(a love letter to my favorite writers)</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Century Gothic", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I am a sponge, and I try</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Century Gothic", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">not to appropriate, </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Century Gothic", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">not to ‘</span><span style="font-family: "Century Gothic", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">eat the other</span><span style="font-family: "Century Gothic", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">’,</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Century Gothic", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">but appreciate, uplift</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Century Gothic", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and amplify the work </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Century Gothic", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">of geniuses that history</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Century Gothic", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">does not always name.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Century Gothic", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">say her name. </span><span style="font-family: "Century Gothic", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Century Gothic", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I believe in dangerous women </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Century Gothic", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">who care for themselves and </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Century Gothic", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">their community like Audre,</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Century Gothic", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">prolific poetry-theory of hooks,</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Century Gothic", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I am screaming </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Century Gothic", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Teaching to Transgress</span><span style="font-family: "Century Gothic", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Century Gothic", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">from the top of Kilimanjaro</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Century Gothic", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and traveling to new galaxies, </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Century Gothic", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">freedom dreaming through</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Century Gothic", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Binary Stars</span><span style="font-family: "Century Gothic", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, with Octavia.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Century Gothic", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Black women will be the mule</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Century Gothic", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">no longer</span><span style="font-family: "Century Gothic", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, as we cherish, </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Century Gothic", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and love you, Toni, </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-left: 72pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Century Gothic", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">from </span><span style="font-family: "Century Gothic", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">the margin to the center</span><span style="font-family: "Century Gothic", sans-serif; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></p><div><br /></div></span><p>we have been doing a series of professional learning with Dr. Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz, and she challenged us to write yesterday an "i believe/i am" poem, using a list of everyday tools/objects, people who inspire us and things we believe in. it was also mixed with a consideration of the continuum of whiteness, and i was drawn back to "eating the other", and how in college, that had been such an important concept to me as i listened to hip-hop, lived in NYC, went to shows, and engaged with the culture. i wrote a lot in zines about wanting to be respectful and not appropriate, and i walk that line all of the time, still 20 years later. i teach about hip-hop, and Black music, all of the time, and i have to be careful to appreciate and share my love for it, but not claim ownership over it. talks of the self and others have been consistent in my classes all year, and all i can really do is be honest and transparent with my students, and with myself. </p><p>as I dig deeper, in what Dr. Sealey-Ruiz has titled "the archaeology of self", I was talking to Sampson today about doing anti-racist work with white students. I hope that my work is not construed as white saviorism, but I wonder, as I finish up year 13 of teaching, beginning in Detroit, then the Bronx, and now Ypsilanti, how can I bring this work to the people who need it most? this is why I like to work with professional development and staff, as we know that teachers are mainly white women, but I also want to work with white students. I've started to find small avenues, through trainings and side projects here and there, but will I make the shift? and if not, why? </p><p>today the New York Times cover is a visual of 500,000 American lives lost to COVID-19. i commented "I don't know how we begin to recover from this magnitude of loss and Mulay reminds me of societies who have. Genocide is not new. Grief is not, either. We must remember our old was of healing and forge new ways to collectively grieve. We need each other." this is where I am, coming out of the deep solitude of winter, into wanting to be safely together (still virtually, and maybe outdoors soon) to hold space for each other. we have all lost so much, and the only way through is to feel it all, fall apart, pick each other up, take care and rest, and get up again. we have to keep fighting, because we are alive to do so.</p>lolositahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12767757034930712336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6027649051535433788.post-61123297570527972022021-01-09T16:23:00.005-05:002021-01-09T16:37:19.606-05:00on white supremacist terrorist coups<p>this is what i posted on facebook on thursday, as i spent Wednesday evening on English teacher pages of the interwebs, convincing teachers that they should indeed talk about terrorists taking over the Capitol on January 6, 2021. </p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc;"><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial;">educators, please talk about domestic terrorism at the capitol today. fuck a lesson plan. </span></span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial;">show an image and ask them to journal, or ask what they're thinking about. answer their </span></span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial;">questions, be honest, if you don't know something... look it up with them. (or say "I don't </span></span><span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: arial;">know" and then come back with an update later) model how you research. give them links </span></span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">and resources to research and process on their own. and just listen to them. young people </span><span style="font-family: arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">need places to process the white supremacist violence they see. </span> </span></p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="background-color: black; color: #6fa8dc; font-family: arial; white-space: pre-wrap;">we must understand it to dismantle it.</span></p></blockquote><p> i understand the reasons that teachers, parents, white people may want to "continue as normal", but silence is complicity. if you don't know what to say, at least say something before you continue with your lesson plan. allow the space for processing. tell them that you don't know what to say. read articles together, and learn about it side by side, become a student with them. show them how you research. even if social studies isn't your content area, you should still acknowledge this event. talk about why it happened, who lit the fires of white supremacist nationalism for the entire 4 years of his presidency and campaign beforehand. </p><p>please do not rely on statements like "this is not who were are, as Americans", because it's precisely who we are. present to them <a href="https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/wilmington-massacre-2/">other moments in history</a> in which white supremacy has been allowed to flourish and be violent; there are thousands of examples that we can access easily on the internet. google is free. </p><p>on this very same day, my aunt Reni (Maureen Flynn Sieminski) passed away after a fierce fight with a rare blood cancer. i dealt personally with the overwhelming grief of loss as i watched in horror at Capitol police just opened the gates for violent terrorists, who ended up killing 5 people, and reports are starting to show, intended to do much worse. Donald Trump should be impeached and removed from office immediately. now Twitter finally decides to block his account permanently, and now he is finally blocked from other forms of social media. too little, too late. </p><p>i will post separately about my aunt, and grief, but i have felt numb these past few days. trying to be a parent and remember to feed, bathe and love my kids. checking on my mom. leading healing circles, which is the only therapy i have right now, so i will utilize it as much as possible to reckon with my own losses and see my own humanity. my colleagues in the Restorative Justice Collaborative of <a href="https://thedisputeresolutioncenter.org/">The DRC</a> reminded me this week that we seek to hold a mirror up to ourselves and see each other, which is the only way we can seek to challenge white supremacy in our conversations. we can, and we must, but as a white practitioner, i have less risk in terms of beginning this conversation. </p><p>i am excited more about The Collaborative than anything else right now, because we are working together as practitioners of restorative (read: transformative) justice... where we break down systems of oppression and institutions that have harmed people in Washtenaw county. Courts and <a href="https://www.tolerance.org/magazine/summer-2019/when-schools-cause-trauma">schools</a> are two places where we need to work, and this group will allow us to be in schools, in the court system, and in the community, which is where the values are. we need to collaborate with other groups in our area to maximize our impact and i'm excited to watch our work grow. </p><p>the vaccine has arrived, and i will hopefully be able to be vaccinated in the next month or so. i am willing to wait my turn to keep our most vulnerable folks safe and vaccinated first. both Amy and my mom have gotten their first doses. Mulay will hopefully be able to in the spring, so that we can travel. inshallah, when it is safe, we hope to finally bring him home this year, for at least a few weeks. we can't control when it will be safe, so we are preparing in the ways we can. it would be lovely to get away, but we don't want to harm anyone else, and will not endanger our friends and family, but 20 years is enough and he needs to go home. </p><p>stay safe and healthy. wear your masks. keep distanced. limit travel and gather virtually. hug the people in your circle and remember that tomorrow isn't promised. and if you're tired, full of grief, unable to move much, as i am, rest yourself and take good care so we can begin the fight again tomorrow. </p><p>xo, lolo</p><p><br /></p>lolositahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12767757034930712336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6027649051535433788.post-15285366354972866342020-08-06T13:18:00.000-04:002020-08-07T13:15:53.170-04:00on dying for my professiontoday, i woke up to a couple of <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/08/im-nurse-teachers-should-do-their-jobs-like-i-did/614902/">pieces</a> written about why teachers should essentially suck it up and go back to work. it hurts my soul each time i remember that my profession has not only been intentionally decimated and defunded for the past two decades by government, but astonished at the 180 degree turnaround from us being heroes in the spring for literally flipping education around in a weekend and creating online programs for students, while we sheltered in place due to global pandemic.<br />
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police brutality reared its ugly head again (always) at the end of the school year, and we pivoted to teach about it, talk about it and help teach our white friends and family members about why their silence has not been okay for generations. now is the time to wrench white supremacy from its throne, and burn it down. now is the time to deconstruct the systems that have long divided and segregated quality of life in this country as intricately connected to the color of one's skin. but it has BEEN time, and white folks are just now listening. we mourned with our students as we talked about George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Armaud Arbery, and Sean Reed. we embedded these discussions into our summer school curriculum and built our arguments about looting, terrorism and Black Lives Matter. we refused to let the conversations die after the media coverage stopped.<br />
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i found out a few weeks ago that my husband knew Amadou Diallo and lived near him in the Bronx before he was shot 41 times by the NYPD in 1999. i recalled the protests that I attended afterward, holding our wallets in the air and demanding the officers be fired and charged. I was enraged, and had never met Mr. Diallo. Mulay helped his community grieve and family recover in the aftermath. it has been so difficult to not be able to be in the streets this time, so i find myself asking myself, what is my role in this movement now? i am talking with my students and my own kids all the time, discussing the pandemic, the protests, colonialism, racism, and mass incarceration. when my daughter wants to "play police", we stop and talk about why not. i donate and lift up the voices of <a href="https://www.facebook.com/detroitwillbreathe/">Detroit Will Breathe</a> and <a href="https://www.byp100.org/copy-of-d-c">BYP100's Detroit chapter</a> and have made my work my activism through restorative justice, but direct action is something i'm <a href="https://www.lansingstatejournal.com/picture-gallery/news/2020/08/06/michigan-teachers-rally-against-schools-physically-reopening-capitol-lansing/3307497001/">missing</a>. i'm tired of talking.<br />
<br />
tonight, i listened to my colleagues and administration hold a "town hall" about re-opening, in which they assured our community that we will be safe in buildings. i know that this is not the case.<br />
the data we're seeing from <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/2020/08/03/260-employees-of-largest-school-district-in-georgia-have-tested-positive-for-coronavirus-or-are-in-quarantine/#5d7ef964251a">southern states reopening</a> is enough to tell me that we cannot do this safely. students will get sick. staff will get sick. i love my students, i love my school, but i will not die for my job. i will not send my kids to school to get sick, or carry the virus to their friends, or their teacher. i will not bring it home to my husband and family.<br />
<br />
there are so many complicated factors here -- but the articles i read today focused on teachers being essential employees, glorified daycare, and that like other essential workers, we just need to <a href="https://nypost.com/2020/08/04/teachers-and-their-unions-have-been-anything-but-heroes-amid-covid-19/">be quiet</a> and hurry up in our dying. it reminds me of Langston Hughes' stark poem <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Mct8UB4XhY">"Kids Who Die"</a>. when we decided that Sandy Hook was not enough to legislate gun control, we told ourselves that our children don't really matter. as soon as we know that Black people were dying of coronavirus, we pressed on with "reopening our country", affirming that black lives don't matter to white Americans. the higher impact of COVID on black communities is due to a racist healthcare system that created the pre-existing conditions with hazardous living environments and food deserts -- racism has so many insidious angles, from high-fructose corn syrup and cheap foods to schools reopening and exposing students to a deadly virus. it is not random that these two pandemics are intertwined, and COVID has exposed all of the fictions of US prosperity.<br />
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i wrote <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-KEIO9CAaTJR8xURjA61GNjnNy36nTkaS6KXZhdpaWc/view">a letter</a> to our school board, sent a letter to my representatives and emailed the governor. i am supporting the protest from afar tomorrow because i'm still teaching and can't be in Lansing, but more than ever, i'm wanting to be out in the streets, speaking up about how i would do anything to be back in a classroom with my students, but it is not safe. their lives matter, and their education matters. i will not sit quietly and let my students and their families, already ravaged by this disease, become the trial run for failed safety protocols that endanger people.<br />
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there is much more to talk about, and figure out. how schools have become what keeps our society running, the safety net for all of our failings, but we have been defunded and demonized in media and by politicians, who should hold the teaching of the next generation in the highest regard. how i get paid less now than i did in my first year of teaching, and this is year 13. how i'm up at 2am planning and working on my next virtual classroom, even though i'm exhausted and need a three month instead of one week break between now and our next school year. how companies should be paying folks a living wage and childcare should be free or affordable, and <a href="https://medium.com/@shaylargriffin/schools-arent-opening-we-have-to-pay-parents-to-stay-home-with-their-kids-78a9ac8ab9d1">parents should get paid to stay home</a> with their children this year.<br />
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let me be clear: i have lost enough this year. i will not lose my life, or the lives of my children, my students, my colleagues. we must service our highest need students safely, from home and services that our community needs and we will. educators always figure out how, with no budget. we need to fund this work, and care for our children and our beloved community (John Lewis voice) and be innovative and creative in building community while apart.<br />
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love,<br />
lauren<br />
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<br />
list of the embedded links, just in case you missed them:<br />
<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/08/im-nurse-teachers-should-do-their-jobs-like-i-did/614902/">I'm a Nurse In NY. Teachers should do their jobs, just like I did </a>- The Atlantic, Aug 4, 2020<br />
<a href="https://www.facebook.com/detroitwillbreathe/">Detroit Will Breathe - Facebook Page</a><br />
<a href="https://www.byp100.org/copy-of-d-c">BYP 100 - Detroit Chapter</a><br />
<a href="https://www.lansingstatejournal.com/picture-gallery/news/2020/08/06/michigan-teachers-rally-against-schools-physically-reopening-capitol-lansing/3307497001/">Michigan Teachers Rally at Capitol </a>- Lansing State Journal, Aug 6, 2020<br />
<a href="https://nypost.com/2020/08/04/teachers-and-their-unions-have-been-anything-but-heroes-amid-covid-19/">Teachers and their Unions Have Been Anything but Heroe</a>s - NY Post, Aug 5, 2020<br />
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Mct8UB4XhY">"Kids Who Die" by Langston Hughes</a>, video by Color for Change, read by Danny Glover, 2015<br />
<a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-KEIO9CAaTJR8xURjA61GNjnNy36nTkaS6KXZhdpaWc/view">Lauren Fardig-Diop - Letter to YCS School Board</a>, Aug 3, 2020<br />
<a href="https://medium.com/@shaylargriffin/schools-arent-opening-we-have-to-pay-parents-to-stay-home-with-their-kids-78a9ac8ab9d1">Schools Aren't Opening. We Have to Pay Parents to Stay Home...</a> Medium, Shayla R Griffin, July 30<br />
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<br />lolositahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12767757034930712336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6027649051535433788.post-53639688141396770392020-07-22T13:36:00.000-04:002020-07-22T17:42:27.555-04:00dreaming of vacay in quarantine<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
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<span style="color: #9fc5e8; font-family: arial;"><span style="background-color: black; font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre;">(please excuse formatting irregularity, I cannot get the paragraphs to function correctly)</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">I need a vacation more than I know how to articulate. 120 days today since our </span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">quarantine began in March, and while my kids did have one sleepover recently </span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">so that my husband and I could have a night off, we have been without our </span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">community, for one third of a calendar year, and I am coming apart at the seams. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">The kids are unraveling on a daily basis, multiple times a day. They are addicted </span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">to their screens and I have facilitated that by asking them to learn online and then </span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">be plugged in to stay relatively quiet for my meetings. We have suffered the loss </span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">of more people in 4 months (some due to COVID, others for other reasons) than </span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">in many years. We have lost friends much too young to pass onto the ancestors. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Yet, we are very blessed and have much to be grateful for. We are behind on </span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">some bills, but mostly able to keep paying rent, car note and have enough food </span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">in our fridge. We donated some of our stimulus check, mostly to our beloveds’ </span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">families to deal with final arrangements, and to bail funds. We have lights on, AC, </span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">internet and all the devices. I am grateful everyday to live with a chef. I can survive </span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">on $40 for a whole week, that is my survival skill. I am frugal and want to learn to </span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">garden, un-school and skillshare; maybe I will have a chance to do so earlier than </span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">I ever imagined.</span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">I digress. I need a vacation. So badly. Summer is a teacher’s time to travel and </span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">enjoy what the world has to offer, even if on a shoestring budget. I know how to </span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">enjoy </span><span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">summer vacation thoroughly, as we pack our bag/the car each morning and </span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">set off for </span><span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">new destinations -- pools, parks, lakes, friends’ houses. This year it </span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">cannot be, and we </span><span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">mourn also the loss of summer. </span><span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">Some of us, anyway.</span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8;"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">As reports start to come in of new COVID cases acquired from 4th of July parties, </span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8;"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">I </span></span><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">remember the piece I wrote a few years back about the </span><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;"><a href="http://504fardig.blogspot.com/2017/07/semblance-of-summer.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">white privilege of summer </a></span></span><span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8;"><a href="http://504fardig.blogspot.com/2017/07/semblance-of-summer.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;"><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">vacation</span></a><span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">. </span></span><span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">How one sector of our people are working all summer away, and </span><span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">another </span><span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">sector is </span><span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">at the Hamptons each weekend, aggressively showing their </span><span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">privilege in </span><span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">their </span><span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">ability </span><span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">to “get away” at a moment’s notice. </span><span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">For me, part of </span><span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">becoming a teacher </span><span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">was </span><span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">moving </span><span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">up from working class, and getting to have a </span><span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">summer vacation, time off </span><span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">to write, </span><span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">breathe, think and enjoy. But it is privilege, </span><span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">and on the other side of the coin, </span><span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">are </span><span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">summers </span><span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">filled with violence. This summer </span><span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">is no different. </span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">This summer is marked by police violence and “rioting”, as many summers are, </span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">when </span><span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">the heat gets oppressive and the hypervigilant surveillance in the hood </span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">means daily </span><span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">harassment of young black and brown boys and girls. I witness it </span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">all the time, and try </span><span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">to stand in and stand up when I see it occurring. But the </span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">sustained protests demanding </span><span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">defunding of police and affirming that Black Lives </span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">Matter and we won’t stop until the </span><span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">systems are eradicated and the people </span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">liberated, they are not going away. This is </span><span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">enraging to those who hoped it would </span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">die out when the media coverage did. To those </span><span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">who “allow” some civil dis-</span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">obedience, </span><span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">but quickly want to return to the normalcy of oppression.</span></div>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8;"><br /></span></b></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">We have been tossing around the phrase “I want to get back to normal” so casually,</span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">but none </span><span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">of this is normal. A government that refuses to protect, and is even arming</span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">paramilitary against </span><span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">the people, citizens who take the affect of toddlers in their </span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">indignant refusal to wear a mask to </span><span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">protect others. Schools, if they open, will cause </span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">outbreaks and be forced to close soon. </span><span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">Students and teachers will die. I’m writing </span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">furiously just in case this is my time and really </span><span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">should begin figuring out my will. I </span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">just turned 40 last month. My dear friend passed away </span><span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">at 36. I know that tomorrow </span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">is not promised, but to be looking into the face of tomorrow, as </span><span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">a teacher right now, </span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">is like stepping off the edge of a cliff. I have more to do on this earth </span><span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">and I will not </span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">sacrifice my life, or my students’ lives, or my children’s lives because my </span><span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">government</span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">doesn’t care about my life. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Everyone being home and confined to one space all of the time means that we </span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">are starting </span><span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">to grow sick of one another. This is true of family units and neighbors, </span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">though I love my squad </span><span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">and our reggae dance parties every day. The desire to </span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">“go somewhere” is strong in almost </span><span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">everyone we are near. I feel like I understand </span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">the riots of 67 in Detroit and the riots of 1992 </span><span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">in L.A. more than I ever have. There </span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">is so much pressure, from all sides, and the fever pitch </span><span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">of noise and chaos is evident. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">From nightly fireworks since early June disrupting our sleep, </span><span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">to new incidents of </span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">police </span><span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">violence against peaceful protestors and unarmed black people, to </span><span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">the </span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">continued lack of arrest of Breonna Taylor’s killers, to the systemic racism that allows </span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">for </span><span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">40% of COVID-19 deaths being Black people in Michigan, despite only representing</span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">13% of </span><span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">the population. There is so much to want to get away from, and nowhere </span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">to go. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">We need a break, some respite, to take a breath, so that we can return to the fight. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre;">Please do </span><span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">so safely, my comrades. Be like Samirah, and take to hiking trails, or like </span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">A’yen and paddle rivers. </span><span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">Commune with nature and get your vitamin D. Pause and </span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">unplug as you need. But we must </span><span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">keep looking ourselves in the mirror, as a country, </span><br />
<span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">and keep fighting for justice, for equity, for </span><span style="background-color: black; color: #9fc5e8; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre;">systemic change, from the root. </span></div>
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lolositahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12767757034930712336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6027649051535433788.post-58619921949911797252020-06-07T10:50:00.001-04:002020-06-07T11:02:55.966-04:00grief intersectsover 100,000 people have died in the United States, and the president sits bunkered in the White House while rebellion takes the streets. the intersections of grief from the loss of so many loved ones to Coronavirus, disproportionately impacting black and brown communities, with grief from the loss of more black people to police brutality, captured on film and replayed millions of times on the internet have the people out in the streets. the rage is so guttural and so deep and i hate that white people are talking about the looting and property damage, when i feel like burning it all down. white supremacy must finally die and black lives must finally matter in the US, for the first time.<br />
<br />
at the crest of the grief right now for me is Erin. my dear friend and helluva principal was biking around the Bronx getting laptops to her students, was visiting the homes of students who had lost someone to COVID, and lost her life while fighting for others. she gave everything she had to our small Bronx neighborhood school, and it cost her breath. we can't breathe.<br />
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i can't breathe. George Floyd echoed these words, spoken by Eric Garner and heard by the world in 2014, and again in 2020. his memorial was yesterday and my eyes were so raw from crying that i couldn't tune in for too long. i'm so tired of people's lives being taken so needlessly, everyday. i'm so tired of white people who keep saying "why is it always a race thing?" or "i can't see color", but i need to find the energy and the patience to do the work. it is my job. i cannot walk away from this. BIPOC (black indigenous people of color) do not get to walk away from this and i must shoulder some of the burden to take some weight off of others. we are bound in the same garment of destiny, and it is with you that i look up to the sky and see an anti-racist future.<br />
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please, sit with your rage. sit with your grief. move because your grief compels you to not sit still, but not to avoid facing yourself. if there is one thing i've learned is that you have to cry, rage, scream, collapse, so that you can create, re-envision, dismantle and rise. it is similar with unlearning privilege and fragility. you have to sit in it, be uncomfortable -- but save those tears for later, esp white women -- empathize without centering yourself. you will never understand or be able to live the experience of a black person, but you can listen, you can hear, you can prioritize their feelings and health and well-being. it is not about you.<br />
<br />
the protests in the past two weeks have warmed the fires in my heart. i struggle to find my place on the front lines, because of the pandemic and immuno-suppressed people i love, because of my anxiety, because i don't want to put my children's health at risk, but i hope that my words and dissemination of information is helping other people connect. i am an educator, and i hope that i have used my minuscule platform to share information, books, reading lists, lessons and other ways to bring social justice work home, to the front stoop or the kitchen table or wherever you're doing your learning these days. i have stolen a corner of my kids' bedroom to write my manifestos and take Zoom calls. i am still organizing, and participating, trying to show up as loudly as i can.<br />
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how can you show up? how can you interrogate the racism you find in yourself, and in your life? do some writing, thinking, talking and then, most importantly, take action.<br />
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with lots of love,<br />
lauren<br />
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<br />lolositahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12767757034930712336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6027649051535433788.post-17109536978953553222020-03-25T22:28:00.002-04:002020-03-25T22:28:31.772-04:00adventures in a 2 bedroom aptBefore reading this, please put this on in the background: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vLoM-EqWq8">Chika's Tiny Desk</a><br />
This has been my soundtrack to quarantine, when I've really needed to hear good music to feel a little bit sane. I've also been finding joy in <a href="https://www.instagram.com/dnice/?hl=en">DJ D-Nice's IG</a> live sets; his soul sets have been breathtaking and so important to my mental health. Please let me know what you've been listening to during these times.<br />
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* * * * * * *<br />
<br />
"We are in unprecedented times" is already a cliche, but I have to begin there, because it's true. It is March 25th, and my last day of work was 12 days ago. We have been in our 2 bedroom apartment 23 hours a day since, save for one of us running to the market to get food and a walk in the woods to move our bodies. I feel fortunate that I am a teacher and for the time being, I am still being paid, but there are so many people who have lost their jobs and must stay at home until this pandemic clears. COVID-19 (or Coronavirus) was something many people thought was a scare tactic in an election year, but with over 400,000 people in 156 countries contracting this virus since December where it began in Wuhan, China, it has quickly changed the routines of our daily lives.<br />
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At this time, schools in Michigan are closed until April 13th, which will be a month of "remote learning". Research that I've read lately says that the peak in NYC is still 45 days away, and that we could lose up to 2.5 million people in the United States; many say that we should not expect to return to school this year, though our president is more concerning with money than saving lives, and it's despicable. It has been tough to keep in touch with my students, many of whom do not have computers or reliable internet at home, so I've been trying to text and email (and hope they get their email on their phones), and find them on the interwebs. I feel my age in the way that I communicate online, which is mostly facebook and ig, knowing that most of my students are mostly snapchat and tiktok-obsessed, and there are lines that turning 40 this year will not allow me to cross. 😝<br />
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I sent home stress-relief packets to my students with some articles to read, but mostly work about self-esteem, knowing your worth, developing yourself, positive affirmations, coping mechanisms for depression and anxiety. I didn't send home "work" because I can't grade their work, anyway. Also, I can't imagine why they would be concerned about doing work at a time like this, I'm sure not focused on it. For equity reasons, all work is enrichment work, and not required, which I'm excited about because my students lose out the most on their education in this situation. I want to make sure they have enough to eat, that is a bigger priority to me.<br />
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It has been even tougher to try and manage connecting with my students, keeping the house in somewhat working order, and figuring out how my own kids can and should still learn while quarantined. Their school sent home packets that we work on occasionally, but I am a high school teacher and phonics are not my specialty, so we have adapted project-based learning at home, too. We read books in a new reading nook I created in their room, we planted seeds and have been taking care of them, we draw and do yoga stretches, we have dance parties, we bake things almost everyday, we identify bird calls and leaves on our walks (my 9 year old self would definitely approve). <br />
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It has been tough to navigate time and space to ourselves in such a small area, and truth be told, I've found myself working in the kids' room because it's the only quiet spot in the house, but I am humbled and grateful about how much we have around us, our ability to get through tough times together and grow closer in the process. On day 1 I wrote "omg, how can I do this?" but I am learning this, too, with the help of a partner who sees the look in my eye and says, "go." <br />
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The only place we can go is the woods, which I walked alone today because I needed to feel my breath quicken as I pushed up a hill and paused at the water to say nam myoho renge kyo under my breath. It is scary to know that this virus is everywhere, and I want to keep everyone safe, not just everyone in my life. This is why I stay home -- for my grandparents, for my mom, aunts and uncles, for elders and immunosuppressed folks in my community, for the homeless and incarcerated, for nurses and doctors and medical assistants and grocery store employees, gas station employees and delivery drivers, for postal workers.<br />
<br />
Look out soon for another dispatch from a 2 bedroom apartment in the Midwest. May you be safe, healthy and stay at home to flatten the curve.<br />
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Love,<br />
Lauren, Mulay, Nas and Sali Diop<br />
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<br />lolositahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12767757034930712336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6027649051535433788.post-24310182520513132552020-01-27T08:28:00.000-05:002020-01-27T11:49:39.310-05:00Yesterday's Grief, today<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: , , , ".sfnstext-regular" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">There are days when I have no idea how I will stop crying, because grief is an abyss from which I've never returned. Then I turn the shower off, get dressed and smile for my children, because they need me, and I have to keep going.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: , , , ".sfnstext-regular" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">There are days when it feels almost normal. I smile, I laugh, I try to be in the moments of my life and be genuine, which can be a range of emotions, with this underlying distance. I have hollowed into myself again, an extroverted introvert who got confused for a moment, but retreat is my normal. </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: , , , ".sfnstext-regular" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Grief brings me inward. I keep expressing a need to connect, but the synapses are not firing on how and when. It takes all of my energy and focus to make it through every day. I don't make it through the evenings. I am irritated and fatigued, every night. My family sees the worst in me, and I want to change this. Time is too limited to be upset all the time. </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: , , , ".sfnstext-regular" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">I miss so many people. I will find a way to be there again, with the people I love. The Blind Pig always reminds me of the people I cherish in my home, and it was nice to have a late night pop-out to celebrate with Nickie P, Bianca, Rhett, Harlin, Leanne, Jessie, but many folks were missing. </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: , , , ".sfnstext-regular" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">This is a common theme lately -- I am trying to be present and with my kids, with my family, with my friends, but too many people are missing to be fully in the joy. There is a semi-translucent partition between me and true happiness. </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: , , , ".sfnstext-regular" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">I know that I will figure this out, but the process of grief is so debilitating. I hate that everyone has to feel and know this at some point in their lives. That so many feel it all at once on days like today. I hate that my children know a faded version of their mom, and want to be the version that felt complete. Faith doesn't give me much comfort on some days. I can think about seeing someone in the next life, but it doesn't feel less far away.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: , , , ".sfnstext-regular" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Most of all, there is no time limit, shape or way that this should look. I try to love everyone I can, everyday, because my time, too, is not promised on this earth. </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: , , , ".sfnstext-regular" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">RIP kobe bryant and gianna bryant. As I write, I hate that another mom and wife is feeling the gutting pain of grief that I am clawing to get away from. I hate that this happens all over the world, everyday, to good people, without reason. Life can be so vibrant and beautiful, and yet so terrible and unfair. </span></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #1d2129; font-family: , , , ".sfnstext-regular" , sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"><br /></span>lolositahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12767757034930712336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6027649051535433788.post-61992580804937200942020-01-04T09:35:00.000-05:002020-01-06T08:22:57.071-05:00Unsent draftsI draft things and never press send. When I was younger and published zines, everything about my life was on a page for others to read. I used to get in trouble with friends and family for oversharing and telling too much, so poetry became my way to say it without saying it. I am built for sharing, oversharing, talking and listening. I am trying to listen more; to understand and empathize has become like breathing, it is just part of daily practice. But can I hear and not attempt to solve? Can I just sit with the heavy knowledge and be there for thinking through, or lashing out?<br />
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My unsent emails are books in and of themselves. All the things I almost said. So many things I'm glad I didn't. This is a purgatory that I hope is never discovered after my demise. Journals are fair game -- all saints have a past and I have never claimed to be a woman of god, but goddess, did I live zealously.<br />
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The state of the world has me shedding tears before putting on happy faces for my daughter's 5th birthday. What hell our children are inheriting. How can we stop the fires from burning, both literal and figurative? How can we oust the fascists from all of their powerful positions globally? Why is the change in decade feeling like a change in century, to the lessons of history we apparently did not learn, even though we tell ourselves to never forget.<br />
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As Greta Thunberg says, I don't want hope. I am struggling to find it anyway in a new year of terrible omens, death, destruction and more endless war. My kids and I will be on the streets and I will work to add my United Playaz course back to the elective options for 2nd semester. We have got to mobilize, now.lolositahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12767757034930712336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6027649051535433788.post-1348777593900295692019-09-30T15:02:00.000-04:002019-09-30T15:02:06.851-04:00the pink lifei don't know what to do with my hands. a few times in the past few weeks, i have been away from my children with languid hours for resting, relaxing and remembering who i am. the truth is, i have no idea how to do that anymore. resting is alien territory, and as i navigate REALLY AND TRULY doing self-care, and digging deeply into the accountability of that work, i am trying to investigate why. <br />
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resting means: i lay on the couch while he brings them to school.<br />
resting means: i still got up early to lay out their clothes, help them get dressed and ready.<br />
resting means: there is so much laundry to do, i'll do some today.<br />
resting means: no! you're supposed to lay down and rest.<br />
resting means: he makes me a beautiful, healthy breakfast.<br />
resting means: i do the laundry anyway.<br />
resting means: i answer work emails.<br />
resting means: i cry with gratitude that my boss will not target me in response to this absence.<br />
resting means: i load the dishwasher.<br />
resting means: i answer more work emails.<br />
resting means: "i should..." for eternity<br />
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when i am with others, i am able to remember glimpses of who i was before. at nicole and shawn's wedding, reminiscing with eli, with jos at the beach, with gail on walton ave, at ali's kitchen table. but alone, i clearly have forgotten what to do with my time. <br />
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renequa reminded me this morning that we must write. so i am on the couch, still in my pajamas at 2:35pm, writing a blog entry and trying to figure out how to rest. why i don't rest. and why, when given the time and space to do so, i distract myself from the healing properties of actually resting.<br />
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having young kids, rest is an exquisite luxury, one that i haven't had in years. but as my kids grow into their own hurricane force winds, i do occasionally have some time to think about who i am and how i want to grow. i am turning 40 this year, and there is much i still want to accomplish in this short time on earth.<br />
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the "i should"s are what interrupt my rest, because those are usually domestic tasks. in our household, we share domestic tasks much more equitably than in many heterosexual relationships, but there is the <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-mental-workload-of-a-mother_b_59765076e4b0c6616f7ce447">mental load</a> that many women take on, where i am in a perpetual hell of managing dr's appts, calendars, soccer practices, prescription refills, cleaning, organizing, folding and sorting of our lives. thank goodness we have no social lives.<br />
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as i'm writing this, the dishwasher is sloshing in the background, the laundry is in the dryer and i am poised to write back to my son in his Friday notebook, which i neglected to do last night. i have just sent an email volunteering to be room parent, because i need more things to do with my hands. sigh.<br />
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stay tuned for more episodes which expose the frailty of my commitment to rest.<br />
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<br />lolositahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12767757034930712336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6027649051535433788.post-52269564971062441692019-08-01T09:02:00.002-04:002019-08-01T09:02:31.178-04:00August GreeneI have not written much this year. There are novellas bursting at the seams, but I can't let them out yet. We need to be in a new nest, soon. The tensions at home are fever-pitch, often. I am trying to create balance in a place where grief, memories and the present are oil and water. I am struggling to function, and closing down fast. But this is my family, these are the people I love. I cannot choose between them and will fight to maintain a strong bond with everyone, but I will take some space and breathe. I need to grieve from the traumas of the past 18 months, too. <br />
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I throw myself into my work, because it's where I feel the most confident of my abilities. I am not feeling like a good daughter, wife or parent, but I'm trying to be reflective and strive to do better. I am trying to be good to myself and prioritize my own mental health. I am trying to build a life of truth, love and community, and I am riddled with conflict that I cannot resolve. If I am a good restorative practitioner, shouldn't I be able to make peace happen? I have learned that both participants must be willing, and they are not. I need to make peace with the open wound, until a circle can actually be healing. <br />
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August has been described as the longest Sunday ever for teachers in the U.S. (and some teachers in the South are already back to school). The winds of change appear in the form of cooler mornings and contemplation, which gives way to reading, planning and concocting the approach to draw students into my (ww)web this fall. I read an article about cooling temps in August and although every change is a sign of a shifting climate on which we need to take action TODAY, I welcome the relief from the heat. I am trying not to run away into planning like I tend to do every year, and really intentionally spend moments with my children, provide experiences, support their souls as I get inspired for my new year of work. I relish August like I relish Sunday night leisure during the school year. <br />
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We have more than enough and I hope to spend August moving into a new home for our family, donating things that we no longer need to people who need them and teaching Nas and Sali about the value of service to your community. I am working on my physical health, mental health and slowing down so that I can move forward and find a better chapter ahead. There is a lot of damage to repair, but healing myself must come first.<br />
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(soundtrack, August Greene Tiny Desk, Lizzo, 21 Savage, Lion King: The Gift)lolositahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12767757034930712336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6027649051535433788.post-86728342552535044232019-05-19T08:36:00.001-04:002019-05-19T14:40:33.104-04:00love is...With my middle school students, I attempted to watch <a href="https://www.facebook.com/redtabletalk/videos/621830118291335/">Red Table Talk with the Curry family</a>, when Ayesha Curry so famously spoke last month about wanting to receive more attention. She got dragged on social media for seeing extramarital attention despite lots of love from her man, and I was trying to bring it up to teach a lesson about listening to statements in context and not paying attention to soundbites to make a decision about someone or something (read: politics). We've also been having issues with students using social media to expose each other and tell all of their business, so I'm always trying to teach lessons about viral mentality, and how we search for negative ways to gain attention and start drama.<br />
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My students weren't really engaged in the discussion, but one of the most profound things I learned from that episode is that all womyn experience phases within their marriages or long-term partnerships with someone. Today is our 7th wedding anniversary, and so I am marinating on the idea that your priorities change. At first you are love and committed to one another. Then, you bring forth life and are committing to raising your children. People always tell us to spend time on and with each other, and for the most part, this is advice we have ignored. Mulay and I are both very private people in many ways, and crave being alone. So, when we have time away from kids, we often spend it in a solitary way, and that's okay, too.<br />
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We will make it through this phase, because we prefer to spend lots of time together as the four of us. While there must be a balance of some just-adult time thrown in, I hope we learn to build that in our new life here by supporting our friends' music, art and business adventures. I hope we get to have friends again someday soon, as we have lost what we love, which is to entertain and invite people over. I hope our new home will be a place of community and joy. I need joy with my whole soul right now.<br />
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I used to famously say that I was never getting married or having kids, because I couldn't imagine giving up myself to those things, and I have given up whole sections of who I am to be a mother and a wife. I have learned how to carve out small spaces for myself, but all the self-care in the world cannot heal what has broken in me. I try to take it gracefully as a blessing to have company, to have beings who love me with all they have and will hopefully keep me company throughout my life.<br />
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The idea that we must compromise our selfishness to give to other people what they need everyday is not one that Americans adjust to very well. We are taught to center ourselves in this society, and it's something I've always found problematic. I hope that we get to experience daily life outside America one day, so that my children can see and my husband can remember the beauty of life without constant bombardment with advertisements and shaming: "buy the product that will change your life!"<br />
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Love is difficult. It is beautiful, it holds you in rapture, it is warm and comforting, but it is also struggle and tears against yourself and not seeing eye to eye. It is struggling NOT to grow and having your partner tell you that you should. It is challenging one another's bad habits. It is learning how and when to speak with each other, and how to retreat if the other person isn't ready to talk. It is giving space when you want to talk. It is holding space for them, and them holding space for you. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nph4Ln9BX2E">It is still choosing them every single day. </a>lolositahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12767757034930712336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6027649051535433788.post-75270052273854826512019-01-25T18:08:00.001-05:002019-01-25T18:35:11.906-05:00anonymity in plain sightI love having a blog that no one reads. I have been blogging for over 20 years now, since 1998, when I moved to New York and solidified zines as my preferred mode of contact, but it was right as the internet was becoming a preferred mode of contact for everyone else in the world. I'm talking diaryland and livejournal, and a geocities website for my zine, <i>arrowed</i>, that probably never got more than 200 views, ever.<br />
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There is something about the anonymity of the internet, much like that of living in NYC that is public performance, but also just a small cog in a machine. I appreciate that I could still go look at archives of my writing, even though it's been 20 years and I have no desire to actually see how terrible and dramatic my writing was/still is.<br />
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I have been writing for a few months now about missing people, and tomorrow I will have the chance to see a few of my favorites, for the first time in forever. It's so hard that I have friends who are so close in proximity and I can't get it together enough to make plans. Or I make plans and flake on them. I feel terrible about this, but I'm having such a hard time being able to manage my rest and self-care, mothering two rambunctious, smart and sassy kids, working a demanding job with my students, elbows deep in grief and transitions back to my original home, from my adult home. I cannot find the space for being in public yet, because I don't have positive or nice things to say, it's been a shitty year, this year is probably going to be shitty, too, and I just don't have the energy for small talk, even with my favorite people.<br />
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I am doing a campaign with my peer mediators at work that is about mental health awareness, and it's made me all too aware of how I am not okay. I repeat this like mantra "you are not okay, but you're worth it" to myself, because like my mantra to my children, I need to recognize and be grateful for just where I am. When one is at a low in life, it is important to slow down, show gratitude and tuck in. I am hiding from the storm a bit, but I'm also living right in the middle of it and watching life whirl around me. I am not in control, I am not in control and I don't need to be the master of my surroundings, just need to slow down enough to hear my breath, hear my heartbeat and focus on the beauty of its existence.<br />
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The political climate will never stop being pathetic fallacy for this terrible, until we impeach this nationalistic dictator cartoon character. His buffoonery masks how lethal he is. Holding American lives hostage, in the balance, for a structure built to separate and divide. We already broke the walls down, and will have to tear them down again, but white supremacists don't learn from history and keep wanting their story to be the persistent tale of victors. But the people have always been the source and root of power, and they still are. We are awakening. We are taking seats in positions of power, building businesses, owning our visions, divesting from capitalism, learning how to make and grow and be without that which they are selling us.<br />
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I miss being lolo, but I'm still her. Just a little quieter, three shades lighter in the course of living.lolositahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12767757034930712336noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6027649051535433788.post-70849618602148729292018-12-23T13:29:00.003-05:002018-12-23T17:41:01.413-05:00Bah Humbug.<br />
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It will be no surprise to anyone who has been with me this year that I am hardcore avoiding and dreading the holidays. The past week has been another deluge of tears, not because my dad liked the holidays or his birthday at all - he was the biggest Scrooge in the state of Michigan, if not the whole Midwest. But he was easy to shop for -- we bought him sweats, new loafers, a new Gary (his cooler) if his had broken throughout the year, and beer. We asked what he wanted for his birthday and it was "to be left alone to watch sports". And Charlie now rests on his chair, and we put on football even if no one is in the room and watching, and I open a beer and put it on the table without drinking it. Instead of pouring a little out for him, I make his chair an altar.<br />
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I don't know how we will be okay, or when, but I know that it has to happen, because this dark year in mourning is not sustainable. I miss too much about the world. There is pathetic fallacy in the political climate right now, as we cage and tear gas children at our southern border, and fundraise to build a wall instead of feed or clothe our people who need it this winter, as we further fall into the sundowning empire of racism and white supremacy. I just want this system of oppression to breathe its final breath and collapse already.<br />
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I want to create new traditions, to hold space for the loved ones I miss, but find paths around and through the loss to find reasons to celebrate. This year it is about maintaining peace and not finding joy, but I want to relearn joy in the years ahead. We made a list of things to do while we're on break: sledding, going to the movies, bowling, watching football, playing soccer, indoor playground on Wagner Rd, coloring, reading, ice skating, hot chocolate, going to a hockey game, making cookies, walking by the river.<br />
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We are also struggling with raising bicultural kids and whether to and how to celebrate a holiday that is literally surrounding us (in my mom's house) with kids when we don't want to instill capitalist values into them. I want the holidays to be a time of family, good friends and service to others, not "what am I getting?", but in times of grief, I've found myself shopping more this year, and feeling guilty about our usual rule of "one gift per child" that has worked so well in the past. I will not go into debt to pay for extravagant presents that my kids will abandon in precisely one week, and I want them to feel the joy of helping, giving and being with people in love and with food in our bellies. That is enough.<br />
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My own to-do list includes: cleaning the house, spending time with friends and family, going to the gym at least twice a week, sleeping in, reading, writing, adulting necessities, date night with the hubby, fun activities with the babies.<br />
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I return to writing, I return to making lists, to help me think and process when therapy is not a financial reality right now. When socialization is something I can't handle most days. I will continue withdrawing for winter, but I am trying to get out and give hugs to people who fuel me. Be patient. I am not okay, but I'm trying to figure out how to hold this grief and not drop my life in the process.lolositahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12767757034930712336noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6027649051535433788.post-24786793345749070132018-09-03T01:10:00.000-04:002018-09-03T01:31:32.090-04:00Karaoke at the Blind PigI never go out anymore. I am the true introvert that I always dreamed of being, despite social tendencies before having children. So, a text from B about her birthday karaoke at everyone's favorite bar was right on time. It is so hard to reconcile myself with who I have become. I miss my friends. I miss having things to say to them. I miss talking about things other than my kids. I miss a functioning brain.<br />
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So, I didn't get onstage, but I did sing along and cheer my friends on as they sang, and it was beautiful to have a moment to myself, by myself, catching up with people I love so much and never get to see. I aim to always keep myself alive, but it's difficult to not let your identity meld with parenthood. Who am I without my kids? I don't even know anymore.<br />
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All I really know is that Bianca and Noah singing 'Tenderoni' and Annes singing 'Eighteen and Life' was exactly what I needed in my life and it's so, so good to be home.lolositahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12767757034930712336noreply@blogger.com0