Kangatopia

God, I love it when it rains. And raining right now, it is. All dark and stormy outside. It’s actually kind of a nice day to work.

It has in fact been raining for about two weeks. Maybe it’s only been going on for a week. I’m not sure. The timing of my rides is determined by weather radar activity. “I have half an hour before the next storms come through. Go!” And off I go, trying to make it all the way through the route before getting pissed on by the heavens above. It’s worked out pretty well so far. It seems that I clean and re-lube my bike after every ride because of the mud splatters, but otherwise no close calls with out of control cars or bike tires slipping on wet wood or pavement.

Maybe because of the large quantities of seasoning salt I consumed with dinner last night, but I am not yet seeing any significant losses in weight… ie, I’m going up the scale, not down. But, then, in all honesty yesterday was the first “good” day I’ve had in a month or two. I didn’t eat something I shouldn’t have, aside from salt, and I rode.

I really, really love my bike. The past few days I’ve gotten in around 57 miles, but then I don’t really have the luxury of defining my success on a ride by mileage. Mileage has its place, of course - but only in the sense that I have an hour or two hours at any given time to devote to a ride. The overall objective is to see how far and fast I can go in that time, so that 57 miles translates into 4 hours broken across 3 sessions.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 30th, 2007 at 9:56 am and is filed under Health, 2007. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Today I am re-aligning myself to my fitness goals. So, for the coming weeks I can promise lots of boring blow by blow accounts of such. Happy Reading!

Here’s a quick recap of things that have been happening in the last few weeks which I have neglected to blog either because I’ve needed to avoid making an inappropriate admission of my dysfunctional ability to properly maintain the variety of relationships in my life or I’ve been lazy.

I rode in the Richardson Wild Ride on May 19. Due to rainy, cool weather, this was probably the easiest rally I’ve ridden yet. We took the forty mile route and finished quickly with (for me) a higher than usual speed average of 14.6 miles per hour. I am generally very slow on rallies. Even better, the route was packed and the going was slow for the first 10 miles – that I still managed a 14.6 average was worth a hearty self pat. The great roads, ride across the Lake Lavon dam, route support, great rest stops and the free pizza, drinks and snacks at the finish line has made this my most favorite ride… ironic because when I rode this rally last year, I bonked in the last five miles and was barely able to limp home (literally, my dad lives a mile from the start/finish line.)

I started deconstruction work at my Dad’s swill heap of a home on Saturday. While the kids cleaned up the living room, I carefully sorted through the piles in the unused bedroom, which has been used for storage and trash dumping. I am freecycling what I can, and sending the rest to the local transfer station. I’ve been brutal, and will continue this trend until the house is cleared of clutter. I hate sending my children over there, and since neither my father nor his tenant will rectify the situation… Gosh, I sound so bitchy, but there it is. The environment in that house could only perpetuate negative personality traits in my children – sloth, probably, not the worst of them.

Bear finished third grade this past week. His teacher reported that he is reading at a sixth grade level and performed exceptionally well on the standardized tests. I am really proud of him. With encouragement, I am very hopeful that he will keep on a strong academic path throughout school. I began to see growing in him this year a pre-adolescent independence, marked by sarcasm, indolence, sensitivity and a perceptive sense of how he fits in to his social structure at school. This really worries me. He’s growing up, but am I giving him enough by way of values and opportunity to carry him through adolescence?

Monkey is gearing up for Kindergarten. Since her birthday falls right after the deadline, she is going to be the oldest child in her class. I’ve been assured that this will only serve her better. I was one of the younger kids, and I kind of liked that as I was growing up. I’ve been told that chances are, Monkey will be stronger both academically and socially, and will be more mature than her classmates.

I’ve been thinking about holding Winston back a year. Her birthday falls right before the deadline, and thus if she starts on time will be the youngest child in her class. She is so resistant to potty training that at this point I am not even sure if she will have it mastered before she is due to start school. She’s learned her abc’s, knows the basics of counting, and has been practicing writing. Academically, she might be ready in a year to start kindergarten, but socially she will probably need more time. Fortunately, she still has a year to show readiness.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 28th, 2007 at 10:27 am and is filed under Health, 2007, Just Mommy, The Wild Animals & Former Prime Minister. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

“…find what you love, and do it. If you don’t love what you’re doing, you’re dead. Take out insurance. You’re dead.”

Remarks by Frank McCourt at SU/SUNY ESF Commencement
Sunday, May 13, 2007
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Remarks by Frank McCourt at Syracuse University’s 153rd Commencement and the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry’s 110th Commencement

May 13, 2007

Thank you, Chancellor. And thank you for placing me after one of the best and wittiest student speeches I’ve ever heard. (Applause) That’s a cruel act.

But around the country now–all over this country–in colleges and universities and high schools and middle schools and elementary schools, even kindergartens–they graduate kindergarteners nowadays, with little hats and everything–there are commencement speakers who are saying to the students, “go forth.” Have you ever heard a more useless invocation in your life? As if you were going to hang around here for the rest of your lives.

Of course you’re going to go forth–that’s what it’s all about. You have your degree–baccalaureate, masters, Ph.D or whatever it is–and you have big plans. First of all, you have to have lunch. I hope you have it with the family. Some of you are embroiled in romance. Romances that are blooming, romances that are collapsing and, of course, that has to be taken care of too. Love prevails at times like this, and sometimes you’re torn between your family and the loved one. Well, go with the family. The romance will pass, I assure you.

So, as the speakers exhort you, go forth. Well, maybe you’re purposeful. I never had that sense of purpose myself. As a young man, I was kind of a wanderer; I went from one thing to another, one job to another. I suppose I engaged in that particular American activity called “finding myself.” You’ll probably find yourself if you have good luck. It’s all over then. You don’t have to do anything else if you’ve found yourself. So I think I’ve spent my life finding myself.

If I know anything, I learned it in the high school classrooms of New York City, where over the course of 30 years, I had approximately 12,000 students–boys, girls, what other sexes exist in New York City, indeterminate. Whatever I know, I’ve learned from them, because I think I was ignorant. Not illiterate, but ignorant. I’d never been to high school myself. And that’s the best way to become a high school teacher–to know nothing.

I think my students understood that I knew nothing. And they helped me, they took pity on me. Especially the girls. The girls thought I was cute at that time. I had black hair, and I had this fumbling, awkward look about me, and they would help. They’d take the attendance, they’d distribute books, get book receipts and so on. The girls took beauty culture. And then they’d say, “Oh, Mr. McCourt, you have such nice hair, but it is a mess. Why don’t you come up to beauty culture and we’ll do you.” Well, I declined that invitation. That was a dangerous invitation.

So I was learning in the classroom. I was learning to get rid of maybe the pomposity that I had developed as a college student at New York University. There were professors of education who really didn’t know much about teaching in high schools. A lot of them, if they saw a teenager, they’d run a mile. But they told us all about how to perform in high school classrooms. And I had to learn–this is the point of this whole thing–I had to learn something about myself. I had to take off the teacher mask, which so many of us put on at the beginning; the mask that says: “Well, I’m the teacher and I know it all. You sit there and I’ll tell you.”

Well, I realized that I knew nothing, and that I was about to learn something, not just about the subject of English, whatever that is. For me, it spilled over into everything–my dreams, my nightmares, daytime, encountering the kids in the hallway. Because, as the Chancellor read a passage from this last book of mine, “Teacher Man,” I was everything–a high school teacher, elementary school teacher, everything. It’s not like being a college professor. A college professor walks in and stands up there and delivers himself or herself of scholarship and history and English and grammar.

In high school classrooms, there’s a lot more going on. There’s always something going on. They’re always up to something. A lot of it is going on under the desks. They’re passing notes back and forth. They’re passing lunch back and forth. They’re passing all kinds of illegal substances back and forth. And in the beginning, you don’t know anything about this, but you’re learning and suddenly you see kids who are getting that glazed look in their eyes. Then there are kids who want a pass. This is something that’s not dealt with at schools of education: how to deal with the bathroom pass. Because you know, when you’re teaching, if the lesson is successful, they sit there and they look at you. You develop these senses after a while. You know if the lesson is successful. If they start raising their hands and asking for the pass, then you’re doomed. Or if they start looking out the window, or if they start dozing off, or if they start scratching graffiti on the desk. New York City classrooms are full of graffiti that goes back ages and ages.

So here I’m learning all the time. After about 15 years in a high school classroom, I was beginning to feel comfortable–beginning to feel comfortable. They don’t let you feel comfortable, they don’t let you get smug, they don’t let you rest on your laurels. You have to hold their attention. There’s nothing like it in the world. Some of you may be thinking of becoming high school teachers. Well, more power to you. Do it, because you’ll never relax again in your life. But you’ll always have stories.

Some of you are going to be very successful; some of you are going to be hedge fund managers. I say that, and I don’t even know what the hell I’m talking about. Hedge fund managers, or you’re going to be accountants and so on and at the end of the day you’re going to go home and your maid or your spouse or whoever will say, “How was your day, honey?” And if you’re a hedge fund manager, you’ll say “oh, another million,” and you’ll have nothing to say after that. But if you’re a high school teacher–any kind of teacher–you have stories to tell. And then, if you have any kind of facility for language…

(A cheer from crowd)

What did I say? Oh, there must be future teachers over here. My people. I’ll see you later on.

If you’re going to teach, you’ll always have stories. So this was my career, and all the time, while I was teaching, something was happening, something very subtle. Remember, high school kids have been in school for 10, 11 or 12 years, and they’re masters of teacher psychology. They’ve seen teachers come, they’ve seen teachers go. Sometimes they’re responsible for the teachers going, because when you walk into a classroom, they size you up. They do it instinctively. They do it individually, and as a class, organically. And then they decide whether to let you live or die. I’ve seen teachers collapse in front of their classes and they had to be carried away and they were given disability pensions, which used to irritate me, because I was yearning for a disability pension. I tried to weep in front of some of these classes, but the kids just laughed and didn’t report me to the principal.

So the years passed by and these kids–being master psychologists–would say to me, “So, like, Mr. McCourt”–this is the way they talked–”like, where did you grow up?”

“Ireland.”

“Yeah, so like…” They’re trying to get me away from the lesson. Sometimes I planned to teach grammar. Sometimes I was going to devote 45 minutes to the dangling participle, and they sensed this, and they weren’t having it. “So, Mr. McCourt, where did you grow up?”

“Ireland.”

“So what’s it like in Ireland?”

“Wet.”

“So, like, Mr. McCourt…” I used to get so exasperated because they were so good at it;it was a big contest between them and me. “So, Mr. McCourt, are there mostly Catholics in Ireland?”

“Yeah, we’re mostly Catholic.”

“So, Mr. McCourt, in Ireland, did you go out with girls?”

“No, sheep. We went out with sheep. What do you think we went out with?”

So this is what you have to deal with. You’d like to think of yourself like a university professor where you go in and you discourse most eloquently, but it wasn’t like that at all. And I realized, as the years passed, they kept asking me these questions about my life, and later on they’d say, “You know, Mr. McCourt, you should write a book.” So, I do what I’m told. When I retired, I wrote a book. But it was because of standing in front of those classes, year after year after year. Remember, it wasn’t like being a university professor. We had five classes a day, not like five classes every two months like the college professors. Five classes a day, 25 classes a week. I don’t want to discourage any of you who are thinking of becoming teachers from going into teaching, because it’s a huge adventure. I can assure you, you won’t be investing much in hedge funds or anything like that. You’ll be counting your pennies, you’ll worry about having children, and then you’ll have to think of sending your children to college and so on. You’ll always be pinching pennies. But that’s part of the life.

So, you’re going forth, and I’m sure most of you will be comfortable. Most of you have these degrees under your belt now. Most of you will be going through the American way of life. You’ll engage in that dangerous thing called “security.” The next thing is smugness. The next thing is Weight Watchers. And you worry about this. I think at the end of my teaching career, I began to ask myself, “What am I doing in the classroom? How am I trying to affect them?” And I developed an equation for myself; I put it on the board. I write “F” with an arrow pointed to the next day, from “fear” to “freedom.” That’s it. To free yourself of the stuff that’s been imposed on you. I’m not talking about education. I’m not talking about open discourse, but all the dogma that’s forced on most of us. I grew up with dogma, and had to spend the rest of my life shedding it. So I think I’m shed of it now. Now I think I can sleep. Now I’m nothing, nothing. My mind is an open book, if it’s open at all.

So I’ve reached this point in my life where I’m doing what I want to do and that’s the most beautiful thing of all. Last year in San Francisco a young woman told me she was about to become a teacher, and did I have any advice for her. The only thing I could think of at that moment–I think I knew it all along–was to find what you love, and do it. If you don’t love what you’re doing, you’re dead. Take out insurance. You’re dead. And I leave you with a quotation from an old English poem: “Read your scriptures, follow in the path of virtue, and keep your bowels open.” Thank you.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 22nd, 2007 at 9:47 am and is filed under Poetry & Other Writings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

I rode to the lake this evening to keep from snapping. The kids had gone to their dad’s to fulfill their court ordered time with him. I had tried talking to him calmly to describe why it is important that he clean up the house he has fouled. I attempted to explain that the kids’ health and safety is dependent on a sanitary environment, and that the role model he sets is harming them. My efforts were ignored, leaving my stress levels high. Each time the kids go to their dad’s house I panic. I don’t want them there, but I feel I have little choice unless I take the huge risk of involving the courts - and it may come to that soon. So, I rode to the lake angry. I had hoped the exercise would calm me down, but as I rode the anger seemed to build instead of dissapate. Too much time to think possibly. Too many hormones rising up maybe. And then, shamefully, I snapped. I yelled at a guy with a baby trailer who was too close to the center line. Instead of slowing down until I could safely get around them, I attempted to pass but I was forced to the left into the path of another cyclist. I thought afterwards that I should go back and apologize, but I decided against it. It was insane road rage, except on a bike. I am deeply shamed.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 20th, 2007 at 9:42 pm and is filed under Just Mommy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Today, I turned 36. I would write and write and write and write about how I spent the morning crying and how I feel as if the only great thing I’ve done with my life is have three super wonderful kids, but then I would feel all self involved and stupid.

This has been a hard week. I’m really tired and feeling kind of weary, but earlier tonight I gave myself a birthday present I thought I would never get. I managed to average 15mph on a bike ride. I’ve been working up to this, and I don’t know if and when I’ll accomplish it again but somehow I finally rode hard enough that even Shep, Mr. Speedy on a silly red hybrid, had trouble keeping up with me.

Then, after the ride we went to Central Market where we bought some exotic and tasty food and ate some of it in his car while we waited for someone to pick us up because when we got in the car and he tried to start it, we found that his starter died.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 17th, 2007 at 11:20 pm and is filed under Health, 2007, Just Mommy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.