Happy Halloween!
October 2008
44 posts
dear america,
there are enough concerns to go ‘round,
enough issues
enough problems
without having to conjure up some socialist boogeyman
to carry all your fears.
i know it’s halloween and all —
but come off it already.
“I’ll be damned if I let most folks out there do unto me what they do unto themselves.”
—Toni Cade Bambara
“For being a foreigner, Ashima is beginning to realize, is a sort of lifelong pregnancy — a perpetual wait, a constant burden, a continuous feeling out of sorts. It is an ongoing responsibility, a parenthesis in what had once been an ordinary life, only to discover that that previous life has vanished, replaced by something more complicated and demanding. Like pregnancy, being a foreigner, Ashima believes, is something that elicits the same curiosity from strangers, the same combination of pity and respect.”
—Jhumpa Lahiri | The Namesake
le sigh.
back in saigon again, and not feeling so great about it. my stay here in vietnam is beginning to feel more like a tour of duty, especially after a trip to the philippines to visit my family. being here allows me to save money and travel in a way that would be substantially more difficult in the US (or possibly even the Philippines). but, aside from a couple close friends, i feel a perpetual stranger here, a fact that bothers me exponentially more after being around close family for a week. i wonder, as quickly as this past year went by, whether i can muster up the strength and energy for another.
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post debate/as a teacher...
as a teacher, i had a visceral reaction to McCain’s desire that military come in, directly from service, and go into teaching jobs, sans qualifications and certifications. really?? with education in the shape that it is in, do we really need more unqualified teachers? or the attitude that the classroom should be more akin to a military camp?
in regard to education, there is plenty of blame to go around. of course, the onus is on teachers to better manage the challenges of the american classroom, but we need to take a fresh look on what is an archaic school system, and archaic curriculums. the onus also has to be on the parents and on the students themselves, because you can’t expect a measly 7 hours of school a day to overturn what a child deals with the other 17 hours. either way, throwing military servicemen into the mix isn’t going to solve the problem. this isn’t an education surge.
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the motherland
bought my tickets to the philippines yesterday morning. will meet my mom there, as well as the rest of her side of the family, whom i havent seen since i was 15, after living with them from the time i was 5-9 years old.
my soul is grinning like a gotdamn chesire cat.
