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What do Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Edwards and Sarah Palin have in common?

  • Posted on January 13, 2010 at 10:14 pm

Hillary Clinton

What do Hillary Clinton, Elizabeth Edwards and Sarah Palin have in common?  Oh, yes, I know they are all women but there is more.  All three were targeted in the new book coming out this week by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann, Game Change.  I read the excerpt in the New York magazine and I was appalled.  These two guys would like us to believe that Hillary is just so obnoxious, Elizabeth is a total bitch and Sarah is just plain stupid.  It leads me to believe that these three women must scare the hell out of the Washington D.C. establishment.  When the Republicans and the Democrats pretend to not be able to see eye to eye on anything but suddenly can agree on these three women there must be something up.

I have been saying for the last two years that there really isn’t any difference between the two parties.  This book just reinforces all of this for me.  When Steve Schmidt, McCain’s man can sit on 60 minutes and lambaste Palin, the person his team picked, you have to wonder.  Palin is powerful.  People like her because she is more like them than she is like Washington insiders.  They used her to help McCain because he was going no where before Sarah Palin signed on to his campaign.  However, now they don’t want her because the truth is neither party wants anyone that might actually shake things up and change all of the special interests and money changing going on in the Federal government.  McCain was never meant to be president.  Obama was the chosen one from day one by both parties.  This is why George Bush did everything he could before the election to help Obama out.  This is also why the transition has been so smooth.  If we didn’t know Obama was President, we would think GW was still in office.  Obama is just the new Bush.  He’s kept many of the same people on board and has kept the same policies in tact.  For all the fuss the two parties make over each other, they really are virtually the same.  They both cater to corporations and have been the main reason that we are losing our Democracy and becoming a “Corporatocracy”.  The corporations really have the vote, not the American people because they vote with their money through campaign contributions and special perks for congress.

So, between the excerpt in the New York magazine and the 60 minutes interview of Mutt and Jeff, the authors, not to mention Steve Schmidt as well I am only to believe those three things. First, Hillary is over the top obnoxious, so much so she was working very hard on her transition to the White House before the general election had even begun. That must have been what she was doing when I saw her campaigning hard in Indiana. I also learned that Elizabeth Edwards is one crazy “Bitch”.  Truthfully, they don’t like Elizabeth because she has been a big proponent of health care for all.  Finally, I learned that Sarah Palin is just plain stupid.  Sarah doesn’t fit into the conventionals wisdom of the elites because she didn’t go to Harvard or Yale.  For the shame of it all, she went to a state school.  What is really interesting in all of this women bashing is where is “NOW” or “Emily’s List”?  Hillary and Sarah we know hold great power if and when they choose to use it. You might think Elizabeth isn’t powerful but she has been a huge advocate for health care. It’s obvious to me that these men , who do the hatchet jobs on women, have a “Peter Principle” problem. They have obviously reached the level of their own competence to the point where they are now incompetent and just so envy those women that don’t need a “Peter” to succeed in life.

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Teaching in a Disconnected World

  • Posted on January 9, 2010 at 12:59 am
Global Children

Let's Embrace the Creativity in our Children

The word we always hear about today is “global”.  We are either “going global” or we’re standing still.  However in the American classroom my life as a middle school art teacher has probably helped to make me a bit skeptical of new government educational plans.  We seem to be pressured to make our children “global” beings that will “beat” all the other “global village” people as the government keeps telling us our children are not quite up to par.  The arts are always the first to be cut because greater minds than mine have decided that they must be a “frill”.  I always think those people simply must have absolutely no talent and imagination.  The arts are far more than a “frill” and serve a far greater good than most people can even imagine.  If you are wearing beautiful clothes, driving a highly designed vehicle or live in a fabulous home thank the artist that brought the design to fruition.  I know that many people have absolutely no idea of how most items are created and even brought to market.  If it wasn’t for the very artists that create the cool designs that make us all want to buy the next great thing, we’d all be driving around in box shaped cars and still be computing on the old box shaped computers.

Artists have been treated poorly in this old educational process of teaching for a “test”.  I think picking a, b, c, or d on a test is basically pointless.   The truth is no one will really know the end result of all this testing until these test takers become productive tax paying citizens that the government and business clearly want to be the next little worker bees.   I, on the other hand, believe that a true education will encompass all aspects of our intelligence.  This fight for the “core” subjects is disheartening to those of us that are on the cutting edge of embracing our creativity.  It is through real creativity that we all can find our true purpose in life.  Creativity allows you to learn how to think and make decisions based on realizing that there might be more than one answer to a problem.  Test taking makes us believe there can only be one answer and it is the “right” answer.

In life we all know that sometimes things aren’t easy for us.  Sometimes we actually have to think our way out of problems.  The answer isn’t covered on a test.  I think it’s time that we taught students how to think and make creative decisions.  Many children are lost in this test taking mold.  Many have shut down because their exuberance is not appreciated.  Sometimes teachers are so busy teaching for the test that they can’t see the marvelous gifted mind of the student that may be simply struggling with the test taking process.  I don’t blame the teachers or even the administration.  I blame a society that allows arbitrary politicians that promote programs that are just a boon for the test taking industry and a peril for the poor student confronted with all of the tests they have to take.

I think students need to spend much more time using their hands and brains in the classroom whether it be a core subject or my art class.  Students today are spoon fed information and then given countless hours on the computer where things are really quite pointless in many ways.  It’s just a click here and a click there browsing through things but usually not really reading them all that clearly.  We are in such a hurry today that I think we have forgotten the true wonder of education.  It is a joy in my art classroom when I watch a student that didn’t think he or she could draw figure out the drawing process.

Education used to be a wonderful thing to embrace.  Students need to feel that thrill that comes with the discovery of new intelligence.  If we want students to be excited about learning then we have to embrace the creativity that the arts empower in individuals.  The true joy of learning comes through self expression.  While the arts are a power onto themselves they can also enhance the learning in the core classes as well.  It is the individual we need to embrace and cultivate to be the creative adult they are meant to be.  It is not the test taking process that is going to build the next “greatest” generation.  It is the almost innate creativity we all have within us when we are a child that has been suppressed through years of “drill” type instruction that needs to be embraced and nurtured.  If the government wants us to be a “global village” then we should empower our children through creativity in all of their classrooms.

Below I have included an excerpt from Eliot Eisner that I think needs to be examined further.  The truth is number 10 is what I have really been talking about.

10 Lessons the Arts Teach

1. The arts teach children to make good judgments about qualitative relationships.
Unlike much of the curriculum in which correct answers and rules prevail, in the arts, it
is judgment rather than rules that prevail.

2. The arts teach children that problems can have more than one solution
and that questions can have more than one answer.

3. The arts celebrate multiple perspectives.
One of their large lessons is that there are many ways to see and interpret the world.

4. The arts teach children that in complex forms of problem solving
purposes are seldom fixed, but change with circumstance and opportunity. Learning in the arts requires the ability and a willingness to surrender to the unanticipated possibilities of the work as it unfolds.

5. The arts make vivid the fact that neither words in their literal form nor numbers exhaust what we can know. The limits of our language do not define the limits of our cognition.

6. The arts teach students that small differences can have large effects.
The arts traffic in subtleties.

7. The arts teach students to think through and within a material.
All art forms employ some means through which images become real.

8. The arts help children learn to say what cannot be said.
When children are invited to disclose what a work of art helps them feel, they must reach into their poetic capacities to find the words that will do the job.

9. The arts enable us to have experience we can have from no other source
and through such experience to discover the range and variety of what we are capable of feeling.

10. The arts’ position in the school curriculum symbolizes to the young
what adults believe is important.
SOURCE: Eisner, E. (2002). The Arts and the Creation of Mind, In Chapter 4, What the Arts Teach and How It Shows. (pp. 70-92). Yale University Press. Available from NAEA Publications. NAEA grants reprint permission for this excerpt from Ten Lessons with proper acknowledgment of its source and NAEA.

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The Pope Wants Me to Clean Up My Lifestyle

  • Posted on January 2, 2010 at 3:03 pm

The Pope wants me to clean up my lifestyle.  Well not exactly, but I have always found it interesting when the elite tell the rest of us how to save the environment.  Now you must understand that I do believe in leaving a small footprint in terms of using the “gifts” God has given us as they pertain to the environment.  I find it interesting that in the last twenty years people seem to need bigger houses and cars to lead a normal life.  Even though I love art and you might think I’d want some architecturally huge structure to live in, I have never been one to have an interest in owning a large house.  It seems that I am very alone in this thought process however as I witness many people creating spaces for themselves that are bigger than any space I have ever lived in including those with my thirteen siblings and parents.  I have many family members that don’t agree with me on this issue as witnessed by their ever growing and evolving dwellings.  Yet, I don’t question their choices as I think we all know what’s best for our own life style.

In recent years we have all been heavily put upon with guilt by Al Gore, politicians and even the Pope.  http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6000G220100101 All of these people leave anything but a small footprint on the environment with their jet set life styles but are some how willing to voice an opinion on this subject.  I guess it’s kind of a “Do as I say, not as I do.” type of moment.  Even the Pope is guilty of living larger than the majority of his vast parishioners yet he wants to encourage us to do what most of us already do naturally.  Some of us have always been frugal because we were raised that way.  My parents lived through the Depression so I always heard the following gems:  “Turn the lights off.  Shut the door, were you born in a barn?  Save some for the rest of us.  There are starving children in China and that nice little waste not want not thing.”

I find it very interesting that right now we are all being fed this vast knowledge about how we are harming the environment through our life style choices.  It seems if I choose to eat meat I must pay a carbon tax or something to offset such a terrible thing to do.  I can buy as much Chinese plastic junk without so much as a dirty look but if I buy groceries and bag with plastic I’m suspect to humiliation and explanations as to how they are reused at school.  Suddenly my old car is a problem as well.  It’s nine years old and works perfectly well and really isn’t a horrible gas guzzler so for Katie, the girl who grew up learning not to throw out things before their used up, it works fine.  I am encouraged to throw it away and buy a new energy efficient car that will pollute less even though Arnold can still drive his Hummer if he chooses to do so.   I on the other hand will be given incentives to “do the right thing”.  We are all manipulated by the elite.  They give us a piece of candy and then tax us for it.  You know the drill.

I personally feel that these very same people are now making plenty of money off this new love of all things “green” but the real love is the color green for MONEY.  Don’t you wonder how much Al Gore, who I used to just love by the way, has made off this “green economy”?  I can honestly say I don’t really know but I have my suspicions.  I just wish there would be some small print disclosure made for all of these people that are directing the rest of us to recycle, reuse and refuse to pollute.  Politicians could have disclosure statements on their websites that show what their real carbon footprints are and where there money is invested as well as who it investing in them.  The rest of us should just be smart.  I know I haven’t flown in years so I cannot possibly be polluting as much as any politician that flies on a weekly basis.  I know that I am wearing the same winter coat for the last three years and I try not to waste my money and efforts on things that will just be thrown out.

However, many of us are forced to pollute through corporations that no longer make things that last.  Anyone that talks to an appliance salesman knows that appliances are now given a life of seven to ten years.  When my father passed away a few years ago he was still using the same washer he had from thirty years ago.  Corporations are constantly pushing a newer version of whatever the last thing we bought was whether it is a computer, cell phone or some other gadget we can’t live without.  So, we get this very mixed message from all of this.  We are told to buy new appliances, cars, etc. because they will take less energy to run.  However, don’t expect them to last long but you won’t care because some nice advertisement will convince you that you need something else anyway!  Meanwhile, the rich will not significantly change their lifestyles.  They will still jet set all over the world.  They will still own multiple dwellings and they will still tell the rest of us how to live and our landfills will continue to be the dumping grounds for all of the old cars and appliances that we throw out.  Should listen to the Pope, Al Gore or any one else on this matter?  I say you have the free will to follow what you think is right.

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Dress for Success

  • Posted on January 2, 2010 at 12:15 pm


Dress for Success

The other day I was walking down an aisle in Wal-Mart and I ran across some Michigan State University sweatshirts with hoodies.  Now having graduated from Michigan State I was intrigued.  I was shocked because they looked old and worn out.  The silk screened image was barely there.  I thought a hoax has been carried out on the American people.  I have students that come to class with holes in their jeans all the way up to the crotch area.  They think they look cool.  I, being the age I am, think they look like they should be milking a cow.  Some how in the last forty or fifty years that “Dress for Success” thing has been thrown out the window in favor of the “Come as You Are” model of success.

In the past year my son interviewed for a job.  Of course I told him to wear his suit because he would make a better impression.  He thinks the suit may have been a detriment because while the work demanded professional credentials the work place was extremely casual in nature.  Even at school it is difficult at times to tell the students from the teachers.  When I was growing up the male teachers wore suits and women dressed up.

Recently my sister and I have noticed that we seem to be heading for a class system of dress.  Most people will fall under that “casual” crowd.  They can dress with holes in their jeans, wear tennis shoes with everything or whatever but there is another class that will show a definite separation between the “commoners” and the “wealthy”.  Eventually, the commoners won’t be able to compete with the wealthy.  Labels on clothing have become very important from your jeans right on down to your shoes and even your purse.  As a young woman growing up I never knew much about labels.  Even today I don’t know a lot about them but I know that eventually those labels will separate us all, rich and poor, so that you will know who you “peeps” really are.  The wealthy can occasionally “slum” with the poor but they can’t “marry” them.  They can have fun with them but “those people” will never be invited to the party unless they happen to be working at it.

In politics this clothing issue is more than evident.  While politicians are having their “state” dinner parties and dressed to the “nines” the poor are living on the streets getting handouts to stay alive.  The divide is drastic and yet we are so busy accepting this casual attire we can’t see the class system that is really developing from all of this.  While my students think it is “cool” to wear ripped, tattered clothing they lose the sense of style that comes with developing attire that fits who you really are and what you really care about as well as appropriate for the time and place.  Clothing can be used to express yourself but when you start looking like a massed produced person expression is lost.  It used to be we had our every day clothes and our church clothes.  Many people don’t go to church on a regular basis any more and maybe don’t feel the need to dress up but when you do dress up you tend to walk a little taller.  Your sense of self is stronger.  You feel more confident and self assured.  You know when you look good and you can feel it.

Today so many are so busy being part of the crowd and buying the lies that are being sold to them that they don’t even realize how their sense of style and self is being whittled away by corporations putting out shoddy merchandise with little or no standards.  Trust me the wealthy are not dressing like the masses.  They are still buying fancy designer gowns and Armani suits and attending everything from the opera to those state dinners.  They are still dressing for success but now they know who their “peeps” are and those peeps are the people that hold the power in America as well as the world.  Those huddled masses that make up the rest of us, they are the commoners that will never be invited to the dinner except as a maid, an usher or a specimen to pull out to show what good deeds the wealthy are doing for the rest of us, yes, we the commoners.  The next time you get dressed think about what you are saying by what you wear.

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Living in the Twilight Zone

  • Posted on January 2, 2010 at 3:03 am

I entered the Twilight Zone on May 31st, 2008.  I knew I was in another dimension when everything I thought I knew about the Democratic Party became a myth.  I grew up in a Roman Catholic, John Kennedy worshipping kind of family.  You probably have seen our family or one like it, you know that large family you used to sit next to in a small Catholic church in the sixties where “boys were boys” and girls better be good.  Yeah, that was us.  I grew up with ten brothers and three sisters although one was in memory only as she died when she was an infant.  My parents were staunch Democrats.  Some of my older brothers became Republicans as adults but it was only whispered about in the family.  My mom never really thought it to be true until one of her grandchildren received a scholarship from the Republican Party.  Ouch, that kind of hurt.  I, being the youngest of this family, and firmly devoted to the morality code of my parents, never considered myself to be anything but a Democrat.  My parents have since passed away but I often wonder what they would have thought about the 2008 election.  We lived and breathed politics from the time I was a young girl so for me knowing about all things political was like being able to ride a bike.

During the 2008 primary I followed the candidates quite well.  In the summer of 2007 I heard Barack Obama on the National Education Association website as he had attended the annual conference along with the other Democrats and one Republican, Mike Huckabee.  I watched all of their videos even Mike’s.  Barack spoke the “death words” for every teacher that believes in their union, “merit pay”.  I knew right then that he was more “Republican” than Democrat and I wouldn’t be voting for him.  Even though I had been very impressed with his speech during the 2004 convention, I just figured he wasn’t Democratic enough to warrant my vote.

As the primary moved on I gravitated towards John Edwards.  It seemed like John was saying all of the things that I believed in and he emphasized the issues relating to the poor.  Talking about the poor rarely gets you votes because the poor don’t necessarily vote and everyone else has discovered that the “vote getter” is to talk about the “middle class”.   John had the message that resonated with me from health care to the economy.  Unfortunately, his private life was too complicated for a real go at a political life.  Regardless of the failings of John Edwards, his message was and still is the message that resonates with me.  I see the poor in my classrooms sitting next to students that have plenty.  I care for all of them but I want to help the poor realize that they must dream just like the wealthy always have had the opportunity to do so.

After John got out of the race I had to make a decision.  I must admit I couldn’t see myself ever getting past the merit pay issue.  However, I had many questions about Hillary Clinton as well. When John got out of the race I started noticing Hillary picking up the ball from John.  She started sounding more and more like John.  I was getting interested in her.  She came to Indiana about an hour away from where I was in Michigan in early May, so I went to see her.  I was amazed by her.  She hit all the right notes with me and covered all of the things that I felt were important.

So here we are back to May 31st when I was sucked into the Twilight Zone.  I had already voted for John in the Michigan primary and the Democratic Party in their infinite wisdom decided that I, as an Edwards’ supporter, would have cast my vote for Barack Obama.  The party awarded my vote and some of Hillary’s votes to Barack because they figured if Barack had been on the ballot those voters would have voted for him.  I find it interesting that the Democratic Party thought they could read my mind or read tea leaves or some other nonsense.  They didn’t want a revote because they knew that Michigan would vote for Hillary.  This was all predetermined and I’ve spent a lot of energy wondering how my beloved party could steal my vote.  That is when I realized that I was indeed in the Twilight Zone.

I’ve been stuck here ever since that day.  I’m no longer a Democrat because the party I knew just doesn’t really exist any more.  It died a slow death over the last forty or fifty years.  It was whittled away by special interests, DLC Democrats, DINO’S and southern Democrats that are really Republicans.  Today the Democratic Party looks very similar to the Republican Party.  They are busy rubbing elbows with corporations that help pay to keep them in office.  I was also highly disappointed in my party for the way they allowed women to be treated during the election.  Both Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin were treated with such horrible disrespect by the party and the party faithful that there could be no way possible that I, as a woman, could back such a misogynistic party.  So today I’m still stuck and will probably remain stuck in that Twilight Zone, that mysterious place where up is down and down is up.  I’ll probably never figure out how my blinders were so rudely pealed off my head but some how I’m glad to be free of a label that represents something I don’t believe in.  I discovered in the Twilight Zone that most of us Americans are more alike than we are different.  That there are good Democrats and good Republicans and neither party represents us to the best of their abilities.  That most of us just want to be able to raise our families in peace and free from worrying about losing our jobs or fighting some stupid war.  I figured out that labels are for clothing, people are more alike than different and life in the Twilight Zone has some form of clarity that a lie never holds.

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Women in Art

  • Posted on January 1, 2010 at 11:04 pm

I just love this video I found on Youtube.  I love looking at art related things on Youtube.  People share all kinds of great information and many are so truly talented with either their art or their technical skills.

I must put this link in for this talented guy, Phillip Scott Johnson.  I love the way he morped thses altogether.  His Van Gogh video is pretty wonderful as well since Vincent is my all time favorite artist.

http://vimeo.com/psjohnson

(If the link doesn’t work, just copy and paste it into your url.)

http://www.youtube.com/eggman913

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Amazing Grace

  • Posted on January 1, 2010 at 10:30 pm

I just watched the movie, “Amazing Grace”.  This 2006 movie is basically about the efforts of a group of people in England that worked hard to abolish slavery.  The movie centers on William Wilberforce and how he used his conversion to religion and a run in politics to lead to the legal passage of laws to abolish slavery.  The process was arduous and involved the efforts of many people but the underlying theme I felt from the movie was the power to grow an idea even though the numbers are against you.  While many felt defeated many times with great effort they pushed on and eventually convinced others of their ideas.  One person had a great impact on the whole country but the truth is there were many people that helped push the politician, William Wilberforce, through their backing and even their research.

I found it especially interesting to watch the British Parliament sound very much like our own American politicians.  Even though they knew slavery was morally wrong, they found it difficult to stop because of the financial hardship it would bring to the country.   It reminded me of our own recent years of dealing with the issues of torture, war, civil rights, privacy rights and all of the other current issues.  Many politicians know what is right but when it comes down to many of these issues it really is about the money, the money for private corporations.  We are involved in wars that are quite profitable at a time when every other business venture is probably having some kind of financial difficulty, so we continue to keep the people riled up about terrorists, the new “boogey man” and keep sending our young men and women off to war.  I know I make it sound quite simplistic but in my mind it really is, isn’t it?  Haven’t we gone off to many of our wars for corporations, power and control?

In the movie men wanted more time to “contemplate” what to do as they just couldn’t abolish slavery immediately as it would have a huge impact on the economy, so they chose to do nothing!  I see similarities in the current health care debate.  It seems to me that the politicians know what the right thing to do would be but they are still holding out for their corporate masters that enslave them with their financial contributions that keep them in power.  They are slaves to corporations just as the British politicians were slaves to their own corporate masters.  Our American politicians have grown far too comfortable to really understand how most of the citizenry live.  They don’t know that those that don’t have health insurance rarely see a doctor or only do when they are at their wits end.  They don’t care that those that do have health insurance wonder what in the heck their insurance is really paying for when they get their bills!

For me the movie, “Amazing Grace” really reminded me of how timid and selfish politicians can be and how slow things move when men are the only ones making the decisions.  I personally would like to see a real third party form that involves the efforts of many women, the sensible voices of women, the caring women that devote their lives to the young soldiers going off to war and are appalled at any injustice.

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