I'm no Dana Perino, but...

Today was a bit weird. I've already talked about Summer's reluctance to go after her opponent, then she kind of did with the campaign finance thing. We have a press release written and ready to go, but she didn't want to send it out. So it sits.

We tossed around the idea of finding a reporter who would be sympathetic and would try to take the story without saying it came from us. (OK Heather, if you're reading this, be nice. You know the game as well as I do.) So we put out a few feelers to activists we trust and one name came back - Kate Bradshaw. Never heard of her. I don't know every reporter on the island, but there's not that many and if someone I know recommended her then I would have thought I'd recognize the name.

Well, I e-mailed her and told her who I was and we set up a time to meet for coffee at a cafe that is right across the street from the newspaper's office - Jill works there and I actually like the place.

As I'm walking towards the place, Rob Parson's is coming out of the building where the paper's office is. Rob is a freelance reporter for the paper, but it's kind of like how colleges abuse adjuncts. He writes at least one thing every week (sometimes more) but they get to pay him shit with no benefits. And he's not a cub reporter either, but that's Maui and Alternative Journalism. Rob and I also have other connections - he does a lot of environmental activism. Ironically, he was the facilitator at a community forum at which two of my students participated in. (And wowed the crowd and made me look ridiculously good, by the way...oh, and one of whom was the Jewish student from the previous post.) He also was the interviewee of one of my students who did a project on global warming last year...hmmmm...which student was that??? The Jew. (OK, I'll get off it.)

So I asked Rob about this reporter, I never heard of her...what's the deal? Can I trust her? Basically, his response was: I don't know her. She's young. That's pretty much all he could give me.

OK. She's young. That doesn't mean she's not a shark. I remember this young reporter back in the day who took me to town over my sordid past as an aspiring, old, white, rap star. I learned the hard way. They may act all nice, but at the first chance - BLAMMO!

So I went into the cafe and picked a table as it was pretty empty. Ordered an iced tea (foreshadow warning). Kate came in a few minutes later. She wasn't young. She was YOUNG! Well, not 12, but like, just out of college - young. I later found out that this is her first reporting job that wasn't an internship.

Now Heather can chime in in the comment section, but I think I've always been pretty straight with reporters. Some friends have said that I was TOO straight. But I admit, I had an agenda here and I'm not slick enough to do it the politician way and I haven't been keeping up with my Jedi Mind Trick skills so I had to improvise what I was going to do. If I was paranoid, her fumbling and uneasiness would have been an act to me, but...did I mention that she was young?

The conversation was cool. I didn't just come out and say, "I want you to write this story about Kyle Yamashita and not mention that I came to you." But I think I was pretty obvious...on purpose. I did say, on the record that Summer had no knowledge of what I was doing - and that is true. She had no idea that I had taken it past the feeler stage of getting a name. So if a story comes out and my name is in it, I've got some 'splanin to do, Lucy.

Here's the weird/funny part. We pretty much talked about everything we could about the subject and she was obviously having a tough time figuring out what to do - if she should just tell me to fuck off, just tell me what I wanted to hear or if there was a real story here. And we needed to pay for our beverages - my iced tea and her coffee...and the waitress would just not come. It really wasn't that long of a time period, but seeing as where we were in the conversation, it seemed like forever. Now, if she wasn't a reporter I would have offered to just pay for her coffee and she could have left (she did have another appointment). But a grizzled, veteran reporter once told me that reporters don't accept even a cup of coffee. So we sat there...and made chit-chat about national politics...and third-party politics...and we may have looked at carpet swatches, I'm not sure. So finally, our waitress comes and asks if we'd like to pay. YES!

So I get out a 20...it was all I had. She gets out some kind of credit/debit card. Whatever. By now I think we're comparing Impressionist painters...which is not good because I don't know dick about Impressionist painters...or any other painters. Let me put it this way...to me an impressionist painter is Rich Little redecorating his guest bathroom...you know what I'm sayin?

Sorry.

So the waitress comes back with the check and Kate gives her the credit/debit card and the waitress leaves without my cash. Now, the check was literally $3.50, but it was drilled into me that reporters can't accept a stick of gum. I was seriously confused. I had no idea what to do. It was almost like we were on a date or something.

"I...uh...she...money." (I'm very eloquent around reporters.)

"Oh, it was only a buck. No worries."

"But...uh...I...uh..."

I swear, my inner voice was saying, "Heather! The reporter paid for my beverage. What do I do?" My brain needed a ctrl-alt-delete as I could not compute this. So I tried to use humor to deal with this...or I guess I should say "humor".

"Uh, thanks. Well, after the election, I'll buy you a beer then."

"Cool!"

Wha? No...you're talking Gorgonzola and it's clearly Brie time, baby! I can't buy you a beer. Heather!!?!?!!

So we parted ways and I have no idea what just happened. Will there be a story? I have no idea. Maybe I should have given her a Whitee CD.

[I know this was a long post, but that Rich Little joke was money!]

Is This The End?

Who would have thunk it? The end of my teaching career because of Zionism.

OK, that's a bit of an exaggeration, but it did sound provocative, huh?

I'm pretty sure I blogged about a problem I had with a parent last school year when I did the Amnesty International activity that focused on kids in Palestine. She basically went all AIPAC on me. Of course Israel could do no wrong, the Palestinians are terrorists, etc. I'm not going to get into that here. I've blogged on my views on all that at the other blog.

Well, this week we did a letter to Iran, trying to stop someone from getting executed for a crime he committed when he was 17-years-old. The trial was a bit hokey, but either way, the goal was just not to kill the guy (he's an adult now). Life in jail, but you can't unkill him if things are found out to be different.

Well, today, Mom delivered a two-page letter. The first long paragraph gave her gripe (again) about last year...so it's obvious that she's still pissed. And again, Iran sponsors terrorism, blah, blah, blah. First I'll give the response to her shit, then I'll tell you about the "compromise" that I'm about to break.

*Let's say I agree that Iran sponsors terrorism. We've been shown for the last 8 years that not talking to your enemies is NOT the way to deal with the situation. That DOESN'T mean capitulation, that means you don't be a douchebag.

*The letter actually indirectly tells Iran that they suck.

*The United States sponsors terrorism. Sorry. Tell me to go back to Cuba (I'd probably enjoy the music more, anyway), but it's true. And we have lost our right to preach to anyone. Again, does that mean to roll over? No. But preaching ain't gonna cut it. Sorry.

*I do have issues with this Israel's shit doesn't stink attitude. Do they have security worries? Absolutely. Have they made them 20x worse? You betcha, Sparky. Am I a bad Jew? Don't care. I'm in a Jewish family by luck...I could've been born a poor black child. (Or combine it and been born Sammy Davis Jr.) Right is right and rigid is rigid.

OK...so the compromise...now when I use the Amnesty Urgent Actions, I'm supposed to provide a second option for all the kids. Like, if you don't want to do the Amnesty letter you can do a letter to the editor on any current events topic of your choice. That was what I agreed to when school ended today. I've since decided that I'm only going to provide that option for the Mom's kid. (Oh, and by the way, I have a very good relationship with the kid) Here's why:

*Our kids are lazy. It's just the truth. Every single one of them will take the easy way out every time. Normal or not, it's just the way it is...so if I give the choice, I may as well scrap the AI part.

*The letter writing is too good of an activity to give up. I'll fight for this one. These kids can't write. These letters help them learn. We also mix in geography, current events and history. And best of all, it gets them used to being activists at a young age. If they come out of this, really feeling that we should execute people who commit crimes when they're kids, then I'll want them to explain to me why - to defend their stance and make sure it wasn't just something their Dad heard on Fox News.

*I will not capitulate to one person who tries to manipulate what I teach. This woman homeschooled her kid for years and the kid came to us illiterate. She's made amazing strides in the year she's been with us - which tells me that we know what we're doing.

And I'm going to turn this into a serious positive. It's been percolating in my brain all afternoon - it's amazing how coincidence happens. One of the books offered in this month's Quality Paperback Book Club is Letters to a Bullied Girl. Also, we do this thing every morning called "Advisory". It's an OK concept, but like everything at the school, it's done in a really uneven manner. But that's for another post. So I can use this book in Advisory, then convert it to what countries have done about safety. I'm focusing on Hawaiian history and it is a warrior culture, so we can do a ton of comparing of countries, time periods and individual choices. Including the Middle East. Eat That!

Where's Smokey When You Need Him

I'm sure I've blogged about it, but every now and then the sugar company gets around to burning sugar cane near Kihei. It's how they harvest it. I'm not going to get into how bogus that industry is, but the point is, last week they were doing it again round these parts and we got the results, a lot of coughing, black snow all over our cars, extra dust through the open windows, etc. That kinda sucked.

But then last Saturday I was coming home from the Y. It was around 8pm so it was dark. I had heard that there was a fire in Kihei. Miles before I had gotten there I could see this thing. It was actually a brush fire that burned a lot of land, but it was really freaking close to the fire department (ironically) and a lot of houses. But from where I was coming from, it really looked like a forest fire. The more I started to think about it, the more weird it got...what if there was a big ass fire on this island. There is no where to go and the roads are so few and laid out so ridiculously that it would be difficult to go even to another part of the island that was relatively safe.

I must be Notra-freaking-damous. Two days later there's another fire in Kihei, during the afternoon, between my school and my house. They had to close down the one highway. I had to go to town to work at the Y and I was an hour late for work. We were in a serious traffic jam and if this fire got out of control it would have been chaos instead of gridlock.

In the year I've been here, when all the Maui-experts pontificate on why mainlanders find it so difficult to live here, one of the reasons is "isolation". I hadn't had that feeling until this week. This place is kinda dangerous...and you damn kids get off my lawn!

Other News:

Thought I'd show you video of Summer, her speech from the fundraiser. It's 13 minutes long.



That one's OK...but the one I loved was where she verbally punched Kyle in the mouth at the Kula forum. It starts out slow, but she let him have it at the end. You couldn't see or hear me, but I was in the back of the room trying not to start the wave.

The campaign's going well. We're good money-wise...getting a lot of endorsements, people are starting to write letters to the newspapers, good interviews, etc. That's why I haven't had much time to call anyone or post much. It's pretty much school, Y & campaign. The primary is Sept 20th and I'll have 2 weeks off of school then, so I'll get some rest before we (hopefully) gear up for the general election. Jeez, I think we may actually win this freakin thing.

I did have a parent give me a compliment at school yesterday. She was psyched that I showed the kids The Story of Stuff. It was the only nice thing anyone said to me the whole day. School hasn't been very uplifting so far. More on that at another time.

Other than the time I spent on the phone with Jimena (I was also doing laundry and cutting campaign flyers), I've been doing campaign stuff all night - wasn't paying attention and had too much caffine. But I think the couple of beers countered that and it's really late, so I'm going to try to go to bed.

So to sum up...while from reading this post, it may seem funky here...it's nothing major. Everything's OK and I'm just looking forward to getting this school year over with and getting off this death trap. Eyes on the prize.

The Protest Song

So I started out the school year with an introduction on Human Rights. I've done a bunch of different things to help the kids look at his from different angles. And last week we did protest songs. You can go over to my teaching site to see what we did with that. After that, we wrote a protest song together. You know how you get in a circle and make up a story where each person does the next word. Well, that's what we did. So tonight, I spent waaay too much time recording it. I'll be putting it up on the site and the kids can download it. It's pretty ridiculous, but...I guess that's just how I roll.

Here's the song. (mp3)

I tried to do it straight, but I just wasn't feeling it, so I went bad-Dylan-impersonation. I'll try to post lyrics during the week.

So when I got the chords figured out for the song, I played it for some of the kids...and one of the little bastards heckled me. I mean, stood in the middle of the room and continuously yelled about how much it sucked. It was like having a drunk at Open Mic night. Little fucker.

Anyway, even with the fact that I suck at this, I really didn't have software to record it the way I wanted, but I improvised it well enough so that it sounds like a bad demo. Enjoy.

This Week's Lesson - Ahupua’a

A picture essay of Mr. Atias' lesson this week:

At Iao Valley, talking about Pre-Contact Hawaiian Communitites


There's a fine line between good teaching and dangerous teaching. This could go either way.


The Professor of Silly Walks. (I actually was doing a silly walk. Lucky of me to have Renee catch it.)


George Eastman House? I don't need no stinkin George Eastman House!


It wasn't Socrates, but I'll take it.

Trouble in Paradise

I think the campaign's in trouble. I keep getting unsolicited feedback from people who have been here a while, many of them in office already, to do things that we're either not doing or not doing enough. We're not knocking on enough doors...and Summer is REALLY not knocking on doors. There's only so much I can do...I did 4 hours yesterday and 2 today. I guess I'll be back out after work tomorrow as well, but weekends is all I have because Upcountry is so far away.

Others are telling me that Mr. & Ms. Sixpack are telling them that they need a reason NOT to vote for Kyle. That's why I want to put his voting record out there. Summer won't let me do it. She finally went after him in terms of campaign contributions...once. We did a killer press release about it, but she won't let me send it out.

Other than the fundraiser stuff, which was great, but the only other thing I can get her Dad to do is to be lawn sign guy. He's taken that on as his mission. Which is fine, but he is such a popular guy that there's so much more he could be doing to help the campaign...and won't.

Then there's this whole sign waving nonsense. Everyone says we have to do it, but no one wants to do it. Same with letters to the editor.

I guess I attract this shit.

I don't really know what to do about all of this. We should be kicking this guy's ass, but my hands are totally tied.

Boo-Ya!!!

Alrighty, then...

So the Kula Candidate Forum just finished. It's a big deal because it's the only one the Upcountry candidates get before the primary. They tape it and it gets played over and over again on the cable access station here - which holds waaaay more influence than the one in Rochester.

It started at 6pm and Summer's race was last. So she was there at the beginning, schmoozed, did all the right things. Her opponent? Showed up at 8:45, right before it was time to go on.

So at about 8:30, Summer finds out that among the questions their going to be asked, is to ask your opponent a question...the opponent answers then you get one minute to react. So Summer, Summer's Dad (who I haven't really talked about, but I should soon) and I went outside and started come up with some strategery. We shaped the question so that Kyle would have no choice but to either avoid the question or straight out lie...about the fact that he has 0% of his campaign money from the district he supposedly represents.

Explanation Break: The stat here is 0% of people who have contributed $100 or more, because that is who you have to report name & addresses for. So in theory, Kyle could have gotten thousands of $5 donations from different people in the district. But seeing as how these Oahu donors were sleezy developers, and Maui is so small, we would have heard if he had that going on, we doubt that's the case. I'm going to crunching more numbers tomorrow. Back to the story...

So now it's Summer & Kyle's turn. They lobbed a softball question for Kyle and he was vague even when he wasn't put on the spot. What accomplishments in the House are you most proud of? Summer's version is what do you hope to achieve when in office...she did OK with that one. The second question was how you deal with the communities in the district that are so diverse. Neither one did that great of a job with the question, but Kyle never even addressed it.

Then they came out with the big one...ask your opponent a question. Summer was first. You can see she was nervous about it, but nailed his ass. She asked him if he thought it was important for a representative to have the financial support of his district, blah, blah, blah. He gave another vague, lame-ass answer. In her response she lowered the fucking boom. She went into the stats and the second after she said "zero percent", the moderator said time was up. It was theatrical. A murmur was heard throughout the room.* Some doofy redheaded guy was trying not to laugh his ass off in the back of the room. BOO-YA! I wanted to do that Jim Carey thing in Liar Liar when he won the case...that weird fist-jab, kick thingy.

Oh, but that's not all, my friends. Because now Kyle had to ask Summer a question. He was pretty condescending about it. Something about how hard it is to work in the Legislature and that sometimes there are disagreements and how would she handle this. It was really bad...I was waiting for him to call her a little girl.

What happened next is what I've been waiting for the whole campaign. She stopped thinking and just let her experiences take over. When I talked to her afterward, she hadn't even realized it, but her instincts told her that she was being insulted and she proceeded to - rhetorically - rip him a new one. She wasn't shy or halting. She didn't look at notes. She let it go. And it rocked.

To bring this around to the main subject...me...I've been dragging lately. It's felt like the campaign was going in a way that I didn't like and that I didn't have control over it. It was slipping away. Combined with all the school foolishness, I haven't been sleeping and I've just been a big crankypants. Still am. But this really gave me a boost.

Summer's really worried that she's fired the first shot, that now they're going to come after her...or her family. Which is really, really possible. Kyle is tied to the good-ole-boy network here. I've heard some gnarly rumors. But I told her at the beginning to expect it. While her Dad is one of the good ones, he still is a "developer" and they're going to throw that around because only Republicans like developers in these parts. So Summer was freaking a bit in the parking lot afterward.

But now's when I get to do MY job.

*There's actually a Republican opponent in this race. Someone younger than Summer. He's not in a primary race so he wasn't on the agenda for tonight, but he showed up with some supporters. Made sense. But they were the white version of the Klumps. Another politician there is big on the swag...he's got bumper stickers, canvass bags and these creepy-looking snack cakes. The Klumps were all sitting in the back chowing on these...uh...tasty morsels when that 0% thing came up. And I heard all of them kind of choking on their little treats. I think most of them ended up wearing their Little Bodega Debbies.

Uh...OK...

Tonight's the Kula Candidate Forum. I'll be heading out the door soon for the 45 minute drive. Talked to Summer on the phone a couple of times today. The first conversation included another discussion about talking about Kyle's voting record - which sucks. She doesn't want to do it because in this culture it's showing disrespect because he's Japanese, older, a man and the incumbent. I argued against that, but I am the houlie here.

The second time we talked, she called me with the revelation that he has almost no financial contributions from people in the district - most of his money comes from Oahu. THAT she wants to use. Which I'm fine with, but I think the voting record is the most important.

{sigh}

Serenity now.

The Big Fundraiser

Last night was the big fundraiser for Summer's campaign. Featuring our boy, Makana. I don't feel comfortable talking about some of this on the podcast, so you lucky readers get to check out the unedited version.

The place we used was pretty freaking cool - huge grounds, great view, a swimming pool to just do laps. Summer's boyfriend, Aaron, ran the thing and it looked and ran spectacularly. The food was great...I ate more carbs than I have in the last month combined. We made about $9,000+ . But it cost us about $5,000 to put it on. So we didn't clear as much as we expected or needed, but overall it was a great time.

Everyone freaked out about Summer's speech, which I thought was well-written, but her delivery could have been better. But who am I to speak.

Then there was Makana. Jeez. This guy is part guitar wizard, part yoga instructor, part Mack Daddy Pimp. If you saw the flyer for the fundraiser and other pictures on his site, he's got no shirt on, he's ripped, oiled... a real stud. Dude showed up last night with a freakin gut. It looks like someone's been digging the drive-thru at Krispy Kreme's just a little bit too much. So he's there during sound check and I'm leaving him alone, but I am curious so I just kinda watch him for a while. He really didn't do all that much other than semi-nicely heckle this teenage girl who was going to be singing before him.

I won't get into the Pimp stuff. It doesn't translate into the written word, but I will say this...if the way Makana acts with his "good friends" is the norm then some of you and I need to talk, because I've been getting gypped. Mike.

After the music was over and people started leaving, I got to hang around with Summer and a bunch of her friends. While I was definitely the oldest in the crowd, I was the only one who had school the next day, which was too bad.

To sum up: the fundraiser was OK, Makana was weird and some of you owe me some booty.

Elitist? Moi?

I was driving to work today, thinking about the big fundraiser for the campaign that's going down tomorrow. Thinking about all the e-mails I was copied in on about the cole slaw dressing and centerpieces, and making sure there's enough ladels, etc. The people who worked on this $100 a person fundraiser have really busted their asses. But then it hit me. Most of the people who have been working so hard on this, were the same people who were very hesitant to lift a finger for the rally/fundraiser that was essentially free for folks and featured more pedestrian food and was in a public place rather than someone's "old plantation". That one was postponed once and eventually canceled for this foo-foo one. (well, foo-foo for Upcountry Maui)

Our opponent had one of these fundraisers last week. It was pretty crowded. Though, I think with the size room he had, it may not have been "packed". But it was definitely a Joe & Jane Sixpack kinda gig. I'm hoping to have a campaign meeting on Friday, where I'll propose that the same people organize one of those same type of fundraisers...$10 a person suggested donation. I'll see how much gusto there is for that one.

Mr. Atias? Yeah, he used to work here.

"Hi Becky. How was school today."

"OK."

"Just OK? What did you learn today."

"Nothing."

"Nothing? You couldn't have learned 'nothing'. What were your classes like?"

"Well, we did some computer stuff. That was pretty lame. Then Mrs. Temple did math. Something about ratios. Then we made babies with Mr. Atias." [insert needle going across the record sound fx here]

That's right. Babies having babies.

OK...we obviously didn't make real babies. The way our schedule is this year, we teach...jeez...I don't know...rarely. It's hard to explain. There's a lot of kids, a lot of teachers and a serious amount of chaos. It all adds up to teaching 2 lessons a week. It's only one if it's your turn to go out in the field. This sounds like it's easy, but there's never down time. It's really weird...and hard to get any kind of momentum. It's hard to do things that take more than an hour because you may not get that group of kids again for days...literally. I really think that it could be the downfall of this school, but that won't happen until I'm long gone.

So, I started yesterday with that Matt video, then today we talked about the similarities of all the people in the video then, in what they think is a total non sequitur, I had them draw their own child on a piece of construction paper, name it, then annotate it. Annotate a baby? Yep. We talked about what they would want for their child...the personality of the child, the material needs, the physical needs, etc. I even referenced Maslow's Hierarchy. Then in the margin, they had to annotate the baby.

Now I don't teach again until next week. And I won't even know when that will be until Friday afternoon, when the team meets. It's kinda frustrating.

Anyway...about the making babies thing. So I told the kids that I didn't want them to go home and say that they made babies in Mr. Atias' class; they had to fully describe what we did. Hopefully, I'll be keeping my job and not be put on the federal pedophile list.

********************************************************

Then tonight was a bit weird. There was a Maui Obama meeting tonight for the people in Summer's district. I knew there were going to be people there whom we've been...uh...courting (?) to work on Summer's campaign, so I went. It was a bit painful listening to all the Kool-Aid drinkers, but I think we did OK. But the funny part was that some folks were a bit bewildered because there were some prominent local dems who weren't at the meeting. Where could they have been? Hmmm...I don't know...Uh, maybe they could have been...

...at the fundraiser for Summer's opponent that was going on right next door????

Oh, yeah. That.

Whatever. Dude started with $30K from corporations...and you don't need that kind of money to win an election as an incumbent. So it was just a show. I've found out that everyone who does a fundraiser expects the other dem candidates to show and I noticed that they were there so a lot of his crowd were party hacks who weren't from the district.

Oh...and we have potholders....

I Seem to Have this Backwards

It is my humble opinion that adults are good for doing 3 things with: drinking, screwing and playing baseball. Somehow, I seem to be doing all 3 of those things by myself lately. Instead, I'm spending waaay too much time with adults doing stuff that is really annoying. School is over a week old and I finally got to teach my first class today. Don't ask.

Of course it went pretty well. It's where I'm supposed to be. We used the online video Where the Hell is Matt? It's pretty cool.

Most of my time has been spent dealing with stupid stuff that should have been done a long time ago but were thrown at me last minute AND wrong. Seating charts, new grading software, etc. Decisions are made from above, then changed again last minute. I've been lost as to what the hell we're doing. But I finally had 3 hours of time where I was scheduled to teach and I didn't have to worry about any other adults...and hey...it went well. What a shock!

Kiawe is My Bitch!

Today ended the first week of school. And as it was Friday we did service learning. We went back to my favorite place - the wetland restoration project. Killin' Kiawe Trees. Yes, I know...I'm Greenman...a treehugger. But these are some evil-ass trees.

There I was...in the middle of a Kiawe jungle. Armed only with gloves, loppers and 24 middle school students...Man Vs. Kiawe. I'm a bit bloody, but I reign victorious.

Most of the kids were the new 6th graders and they were loving life. One of them said to me, "Mr. Atias, this is the best PE class I've ever had."

I actually have video of some of the action. I'm hoping to do some editing on Sunday so I'll letcha know when it's up.

So, my overall impression of school? Eh. OK. We have some work to do to get things smooth and due to the bad planning of 76 kids in not enough space (and computers that don't work), it's going to be pretty chaotic. But I have some crazy stuff I wanna try and lets see how it goes down. Stay tuned.