End o’ semester blues….

It is (almost! one more week!) the end of fall semester. The specter of spring semester looms just at the edge of my peripheral vision. I will not panic. I am trying to be encouraging to my students and to me. We can do it! We can make it!

As we all stagger towards the finish line.

It’s been a tough semester in a lot of ways.

The students are tired, lots of them are sick, many of them are turning in good work and I’m proud of them. Some of them are turning in crap work and I know I take it way too personally. At the end of the day, crap work means one of two things – I didn’t teach them well enough or they don’t care about my class and/or my subject, which I happen to care about very very deeply. So I take it personally and it doesn’t help my mood. I’m tired and cranky.

My co-workers are tired and cranky.

I’m in grading hell.

I’m not getting my writing done.

I need to get my syllabi together for next semester.

Happy holidays.

Gah.

Now that’s the Christmas spirit

Ugh

Update:

The Salvation Army Greater Houston Area Command will no longer require Social Security numbers as part of the registration process for its Christmas assistance program known as the Angel Tree program.

Ahhh

you are

Transgender Day of Remembrance

For the names we know… and the ones we do not know.

Ain’t nobody writing about this

Ain’t nobody writing about this

… maybe the words don’t come. I’ve been thinking of not much else since I first heard about it on Tuesday. But I don’t have many words. Just a heavy heavy weight … all over. No words.

I grew up about 4 miles from this house. I don’t live there anymore.

All those women. All those dead women… in the articles I read they are bodies. Dead bodies. Corpses.

All those women. Somebody’s somebody, every one of them.

And I’ve been reading the articles… as much as I can stand. The article in the link is the first I’ve seen of mainstream media news reports that say anything about missing women.

All those women. Somebody’s somebody.

Somebody noticed they were missing.

Somebody told somebody.

But nobody looked around and said – damn, that’s an awful lot of women missing.

An awful lot of black women, from the looks of it.

All those women.

Somebody was looking for them. Looking for their mother, their sister, their daughter… their somebody.

But nobody listened to them.

Or at least, nobody saw a pattern.

Greeting Card Emergency – Coming Out Day Edition

Watch till the end.

“There’s nothing ambiguous about that….”

Fortunately I don’t go to movies anyway.

I. Love. This.

You Need To Comb Your Hair

via Renee

OMG the president totally just told my kids to stay in school

and to take responsibility for their actions.

Look – a shiny new school year

Tomorrow is September 1st and I will be back in the classroom.

And this makes me happy.

That is all.