Open Letter on a Private Blog

I'm thinking about proposing we send out the following letter to all the parents of our students. Feel free to give me your feedback:

Dear Parent or Guardian of My Student,

Your child is a liar. I'm sorry. Your child is a fucking liar. I'm not supposed to tell you that, because...uh...I forgot why, but I'm not.

Face it. Your kid is lying when s/he tells you s/he did the work and handed it it, but the three people with Master's Degrees and a million years of teaching experience lost it/didn't grade it/ate it/ whatever...for the 11th time.

Your kid is lying.

By the way. You're a fucking liar, too. If your kid was doing so well at XXXXXXX school for the last 5 years like you claim, why would you take that kid out and put him/her in our school? Haven't you noticed that you're child is basically illiterate? If your kid really was such a scholar at the Don Ho Elementary School maybe you should look up the following term: social promotion.

Look. We all lie. Some more than others. Most do it in harmless situations. But when you bother other people with your lie by complaining over and over again, you become a fucking liar. So leave us alone so we can get back to trying to educate your child. It's about time someone did it.

I really am glad your child is in our school. (Now I'm a fucking liar)

Dave Atias

Over the top???

Thanksgiving Recap

This isn't good. It's almost Midnight - my time - and I'm having a really hard time shutting off my mind. I have no idea when I'm going to be able to get to sleep. And it's a school night. So I thought I'd jump online and recap my weekend. If you listen to the podcast, the new one has me already talking about this, but I know that many of you don't (hrumph) so I'll give it another spin. Stay with me on this.

My second day of school, I was talking with Peggy, one of the other teachers I work with. I have no idea how we got onto the topic of Thanksgiving (it was July), but I suddenly found myself invited to her house for Thanksgiving. Actually, shanghied would be a better word for it. But I figured that there would be ample time to either get used to the idea or come up with a broken leg or something.

Last week, Peggy found out that her mother - who lives in Cleveland needs bypass surgery...the next morning. So she's going to the mainland for a week and Thanksgiving is canceled - well, at her house anyway. She's not that commanding.

Cool. I can spend the night by myself, which is really what I would prefer. Like a good little jew, I'll get a good piece of fish, maybe rent a movie (for the first time since I've been here) and just chill out. Well, one more little speed bump.

A couple of days after the Peggy announcement, I was doing some work afterschool. As a quick aside, I'm getting the feeling that I'm making some people uncomfortable with the amount of time I spend at school. I'm usually the last to leave. But by the same token, I rarely take work home with me, which most teachers do. Or the good ones, anyway. So, that day, Mark, my boss, is making conversation with me and at the same time steering me out of the building - by turning off all the lights, you know...subtle hints. He invited me over to his house for thanksgiving. Which was very nice of him. But he also mentioned that his wife, Lori (who is very nice) has an aunt's step-daughter - or something like that - who is single and will be there, yada, yada, yada.

OK, I'm not all that hip to the "fix-up" but I'm actually at the point where I don't care anymore. But something like that over Thanksgiving dinner...uh...nah. So I politely decline.

Now I'm back to my good piece of fish. Which was good by the way. I eat the fish, I watch the movie and it's still not really late yet. I notice that there's a salsa band playing at this bar. OK, I can do that. Hang out for a beer and hear some salsa. I did miss the Puerto Rican Festival for the first time in a million years. Why not.

I get there...and it's not exactly a band. Think the Culps from Saturday Night Live.



Now mix in salsa and that's what you have. A keyboard that plays the cheesy percussion. Dude has a guitar and the chick has a tamborine and a gigantic hair-do. Add to that, they're playing pop songs with salsa-ish arrangements. Oy. They were even playing this old Sting song that was really about people who were tortured in Central America. What the???

I was going to leave after a beer, but something caught my eye. This dude who had to be at least 70 years old. He was doing that really fragile, old-man-walk, like his walker is in the shop. But he would shuffle up to a woman, get her to dance and once he was on the dance floor he was a freakin maniac! I don't mean for a 70-year-old. That dude was out dancing just about everyone. I stayed just to watch that guy.

But because it was a holiday, the place closed at 11 so I just ended up going home with bad salsa stuck in my head.

But really...the salmon was good.

Another Stuart Bedasso Show

Here's the newest Stuart Bedasso Show. (mp3)

Buy Nothing Day

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New Stu for You To Listen To

The latest Stuart Bedasso Show if you have an hour to kill. (mp3)

I Thought It Would Be Bigger

Not THAT! Get your mind out of the gutter.

The other day at school, I had to go into the office for something and Mark started saying something about he wanted to show me how much my work is being appreciated, blah, blah, blah. And I could see he was holding a check of some kind so I'm figuring it's for 25 cents or some goofy amount like that. Well, it was for a goofy amount alright...uh, like $1.1 million goofy. It was the check from the Department of Education for the school. I was really busy at the time and it didn't hit me until later that I was holding a check for a million bucks. I thought it would have been one of those big ass checks that have at golf tournaments.

Anyway, the holiday season is just about upon us and with it comes my old friend. Yes, for those who have known me for a while will remember that around this time of year I start to get a bit on the grumpy side. OK, I'm an asshole. I've learned to embrace my annual bout of depression so fear not, my friends. Instead of using this time to mope around I'm trying to use the time where I tend to hate most people by being productive. Here's a video of some work the kids did last week. I'd love to say that it's not too jiggly, but let's see you hold a video camera when you're up to your chest in ocean at high tide.

My First Luau

I was invited to my first Luau over the weekend. What made it a little odd was that it was a fundraiser for the local VFW (Veterans of Foreign Wars). Of course I brought the average age down to about 150, but I had a good time. There were a couple of musicians there who were good - both were teachers in a school upcountry. There was - what I'm told was - authentic hula dancers. I have to admit, it really reminded me of storytelling in American Sign Language.

Now the food...um, I don't think I'm going to be eating too much Hawaiian food. Salty, high carbs and some raw fish. Not quite my favorites. But I tried it and lived. I've now had authentic poi. There wasn't that much flavor to it and it was really heavy.

I tried to stay away from the folks telling war stories. I'm not going to get into the reason why, but if you're curious, you can check out my Veterans Day post at Whitee.com.

Gym Event

Something happened to me at the gym today that's never happened before. Somebody asked ME for advice. Hold your jokes until the end, please.

I was on the elliptical machine doing my cardio and during this time an "older" guy got on the machine next to me. A couple of times. I noticed that he was kinda looking at me and I really didn't care why. Maybe I reminded him of Opie Cunningham or the guy who works at the gas station or he was some old gay guy looking for a date. Whatever. I had work to do. So I finished my 30 minutes and got off to wipe the machine down and he came up to me and asked how I got up to that amount of time.

He must have thought I was an idiot because I didn't have much of an answer. I'm not used to anyone talking to me at the gym, let alone asking me how or why I do something. I told him that I just start with the time I want to do and increase the intensity as it gets easier. I wanted to tell him to start with getting rid of the banana yellow Crocs and half shirt.

Now by half shirt, I don't mean sleeveless, I mean the kind of half shirt we used to wear under our shoulder pads in football. Yeah. It wasn't pretty. But I guess it wasn't as important as the shoes.



I'm really surprised that he didn't go flying off the machine wearing those.

But dude had the last laugh. He wasn't alone. He was with Hot Older Chick who was bending and stretching all over the place. I guess I need me some yellow Crocs. But I'm not going with the half shirt unless I'm strapping the pads on again.

Tangent Alert: At what point am I not allowed to refer to someone as "older"? I mean, I'm no spring chicken any more. Now when I do it, I actually have to do the math in my head to see if it's appropriate. When I'm in the home and I'm 70, can I talk about that hot 85 year old hottie as "older"?

So...is your grandma single?

OK, I'm done.

Life is Full of Contradictions

I read a review in Bitch Magazine of the book by Danica McKellar called Math Doesn't Suck: How to Survive Middle School Math (without losing your mind or breaking a nail).

I decided to buy it as I have a bunch of underachieving girls in school who aren't doing well in math and thought that it couldn't hurt. Now, I may not be so sure.

At the risk of having all the women in the Kelsey family on my ass, there's actually horoscopes inside the darn thing. It's not totally "girlie" but enough that makes me a little uncomfortable. I'm trying to get my girls to NOT identify themselves with what they wear or if the cute boy likes them or not. There's good things in the book, but...

I guess I shouldn't be surprised. I do remember when these pictures came out:



Yes, Danica McKellar is Winnie Cooper from The Wonder Years. She has a degree in math and is doing some cool academic math stuff. But something in my gut...

Screw it. I'll give it to the math teacher and she can decide what to do with it. I just hope it helps.

Speaking of the math teacher...she invited me to join her and her husband tomorrow to my first luau. The semi-ironic thing is that it's a fundraiser for the local VFW (Veterans of Foreign War).

I'll save my annual hand-wringing on veterans for Monday.

Now I Make the OLD Girls Cry

This was kind of a weird day. I've had weirder, but it definitely wasn't normal.

I was greeted at school this morning by a parent who was...uh...upset about her kid. We're all upset about her kid. Her kid is obnoxious. You don't know this kid and you should be upset about him because he's breathing your oxygen. Anyway, yesterday, I sent him out of my class. I just had it. He was rude and disrespectful for the 7 millionth time and it was just enough.

We have this web-based tool that we use to give parents a constant update on kids' grades and behaviors. And for the...oh, maybe 9th day in a row at least one of the teachers wrote a note describing his obnoxious behavior. On this day, all 3 of us did. Now this isn't a huge surprise as this is one of the parents who tried to intimidate us at that parents' meeting a couple of weeks ago.

But she came in today in tears. She doesn't understand what is wrong with her son, they can't get him to cooperate, he's never had this problem before, etc. She's going to hold him out of school until something can be figured out. OK. I tell her that I'll make some calls to one of our administrators and the school counselor and that I'll call her later.

Well, by the afternoon, all the teachers received an e-mail from her. She's figured out that, while it's no excuse for his behavior, it's all of our fault (the e-mail was much longer than that). Uh...OK. So my reply was that this is now an issue for an administrator and I passed her off to one. You are dead to me, Crazy Lady.

I blame Mark for hiring such lousy teachers.

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This morning we had a visit by the Bookmobile! Yeaaaaaaaaaa! What's the big deal, you ask? Well, remember, our school is in a Tech Park. We're it. There's no gym, library, nurse's office, etc. We've been trying to stock our own classroom library, but it's slow going. It wasn't bad. They had some pretty cool stuff. Most of the kids found things and I even checked out a 2 CD set of Hawaiian Cowboy music. Yippie-kai-yea, Mother...oh...sorry. Started channeling Die Hard.

And I heard that Rochester's Bookmobile only carries old copies of Jet Magazine with all the good pictures of Lola Falana cut out.

That's what I heard.

Anyway, the Bookmobile leaves and I don't think about it again. Until later, when I was informed that we got in trouble because the Bookmobile parked too close to the world's 11th largest supercomputer that is in the building right next to us. At first I thought they were pissed because they were too close to the dumpster - which is locked, by the way. I have no idea what THAT is all about. What do those nerds throw away, anyway? But no, they were too close to the Wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii.

Were they worried that the Bookmobile librarian was going to try to shimmy over the non-existent barbed wire, take out the non-existent guard and...uh...try to play a war game, inadvertently almost starting World War III while simultaneously kissing Ally Sheedy? It's a freakin Bookmobile! Although the librarian and Ally Sheedy kissing would be hot. I'm just saying.

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Then, this afternoon, I had my school baseball "informational" meeting. All 7 of us. And two of them were girls who came because there isn't a softball team. Doesn't matter to me. I told them that if they're willing to go through the practices, they're on the team (assuming it's OK with the state). Sheeeee-it. I coached at Franklin. I can coach anyone. Bring me your tired, your poor...your players who throw like girls...you get the point.

Oh, and I found out yesterday that if we wanted ANY team for this year we were supposed to go to the league last May. So, we're going to try to get a team, practice and scrimmage with the intent of showing the league that we're serious, then start the full program next year. Assuming I can get more than 7 kids.

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I'm on again at Mana'o Friday night, 8 to midnight. I'm doing so many of this guy's shifts, I wish they'd just give it to me for crying out loud. Remember, now I'm only 5 hours difference from you East Coasters. So that's 1am to 5am.

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If the Greens here moved any slower, we'd have to change our name to the Wilted Greens.

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While I'm having a blast, I can't wait to get home to see everyone. You should all move down here. I'm just saying.

I'm Ready For My Closeup

I was supposed to do all these things this weekend. In fact, as I type this I'm supposed to be at a beach party for the Save Makena folks. I'm just into big crowds this weekend. Last night I was supposed to go see a couple of bands play. Instead I stayed home and took the next step into my activist world - video. I told you a week or so ago that I spent time at one of the sign waving protests taking video. Well, we've also started to accumulate a lot of video at school so I figured it was time to bite the bullet and learn me some video editing.

Uh...in my own unique way I figured that it wouldn't take long so what's the harm in having a "pop" while I'm working. Well, it took a long time and by the end I was pretty hammered. Oops. So I finished a rough cut last night. I brought it to school today because I wanted to see it on our big-ass flatscreen TV. It was cool, but there were a couple of things bugging me still and seeing as how I'm avoiding this beach party I decided to fix them. Here is the improved-but-still-rough-cut.

[UPDATE UPDATE: This is the real final version. I changed the text over the video to black to make it easier to read.]



Feel free to send me any feedback. Yes, I know. I'm a shitty camera person. So you can skip that one.