In which I’m getting paranoid

On March 10, 2020March 18, 2020 By Luther M. SilerIn life, Teaching3 Comments

Spent the day at home with the boy, who hasn’t been at school for the last couple of days. Most of the time when he’s sick my wife is able to work from home, but she wasn’t today on account of various Meetings What Could Not Be Emails. I am mostly feeling better; my voice has more or less recovered, although I do have an annoying throat cough still lingering.

I’ve spent most of the day in a state of vague horror at the world, honestly, both as various places and institutions either do or don’t react to the continuing spread of the coronavirus. It’s an open question as to how my district is going to react to it; attendance has been shitty for several weeks now and I suspect it’s only going to get worse, and I’m absolutely certain that there are already students in our buildings who are carriers; if there aren’t, there will be by the end of the week. Meanwhile, you may be aware there’s another batch of primaries tonight; I’m sure that won’t cause any particular stress.

I dunno. Despite everything I’ve always been a person who more or less feels like most people are basically competent and trying their best, and that brings with it a certain amount of trust in institutions, something that really should have been bred out of me by now. And what frustrates me about this is that no one anywhere, from national governments on down, who has any sort of a plan for how to deal with this shit before it gets much, much worse. Like, I’m hearing about schools that have confirmed cases shutting down for two weeks. Well, okay. What happens when in two weeks the epidemic isn’t over and you have another student test positive? Do we shut down for another two weeks at that point? How many times do we do this?

Anyone? Bueller?

Yeah.

On the I Know Nothing About Politics front, I suspect Sanders is going to be in an awful lot of trouble after tonight’s primaries are tallied, but I got this wrong last time too, so we’ll see what happens. Lord knows the fucker won’t be dropping out anytime soon one way or another.

On my feminist agenda

On March 28, 2017March 27, 2017 By Luther M. SilerIn Politics6 Comments

On the plane on the way to Denver it became obvious very quickly that the young woman one row ahead of me and across the aisle was going to the same event I was. She was in her early 20s, blonde, pretty in a girl-next-door sort of way and, as it turned out, really chatty. She spent the entire trip talking with everyone around her, a circle that grew bigger as it became clear just how many of us were on the plane for the same reason. The guy she was seated next to, who was in his late forties or perhaps even his early fifties, wasn’t with us. I overheard her mention her boyfriend at least two or three times during the flight, and it’s not as if I heard their entire conversation. Later on, she told me that he’d spent some time talking about his daughters, one of whom is a recent high school graduate– meaning that she and the eldest daughter were no more than three or four years apart.

I’m betting that if I stopped talking right now, you’d all be able to predict how this ended. Because of course he either magically ended up in the same car rental shuttle pickup as her or he actually followed us, and of course he asked her out, despite her making it clear that she had a boyfriend and despite her being less than five years older than one of his own daughters.

Because, y’know, she talked to him, which is exactly the fucking same as wanting a date.

I heard a lot of presentations from furniture company reps and various executives in my own company over the last week. What got to me was the repeated and constant gender essentialism of goddamn near every single presenter we heard from. The funny thing? None of them agreed. Some of the reps refused to use any word other than she to refer to the buyer, because why would men be interested in something like furniture? Obviously only the women would make decisions like that. Others went on and on about how these features of the furniture would appeal to the girls and these more practical features would clearly appeal to the men— and it was always the more practical features– construction, say– that were for the penis-people and style or color concerns that were appropriate for the more vaginal among us.

It was constant.

Had a conversation at our table at one point about whether being married or unmarried was a detriment to being an effective salesperson. One of the salespeople– another young, unmarried woman– said that she’s figured out that if she wears her Irish wedding band on her left hand when talking to couples she’s a lot more likely to close the sale. This contention came as close as anything did during the week to actually causing an argument. On my end, for whatever it’s worth, I’ve not noticed that any particular demographic or combination of customers is more or less likely to buy from me.

That one dude who won’t stop explaining basic simple concepts about sales or about furniture to every woman at the table, and won’t accept corrections from anyone except for the men, at which point he immediately starts pretending that’s what he was saying all along. Had him too.

On the last day of the trip we’re allowed to wear streetclothes because we’re all headed to the planes after the final exam. I wear my ASK ME ABOUT MY FEMINIST AGENDA shirt, which I have legitimately packed accidentally (I have a plain shirt of a similar color) but I’ve got it with me so fuck it. The following things happen:

While helping a friend frantically search the pool and hot tub area for the glasses that she realizes she’s lost the night before, something I am very obviously participating in, a dude in the hot tub– meaning in a bathing suit– looks at me and, out of nowhere, says “I’ll bite!” at me. It takes me a moment to even parse that the half-naked wet man is talking to me, and another moment to realize that he’s not hitting on me, and about two more to tell him that I’m fucking busy at the moment, because obviously I’m busy right now for fuck’s sake, I know what the shirt says but I’m still not talking to you right now.
One TSA agent winks at me and tells me he likes my shirt.
A second TSA agent, waving me out of the microwave scanner or whatever the shit the thing is, noticeably growls at me and says “You’re done, whatever your… agenda is.” I’m weirdly pleased at having annoyed him a bit.
We hang out in a bar at the airport while we’re waiting for our first flight to board. A dude at the bar asks me to explain my agenda. He seems friendly. I smile and say “right now my only agenda is to get the fuck home, but if I can smash the patriarchy along the way I’ll take it as a win.” He laughs. I pat him on the shoulder and join my friends.
Eventually the co-worker who is on the trip with me asks about it. I ask him how long of a conversation he wants to have and we agree to put it off for a bit since we’re both tired.
As I’m getting on the last plane, sweaty, fat, and gross, the motherfucker in the seat next to me has his backpack in between his legs and he is honest-to-god fucking manspreading in the plane seat. As I’m putting my bag away and taking my hoodie off, nothing changes. I weigh my general urge to not be rude to strangers and my general urge to not start shit on airplanes and my current mood and in the politest way I possibly fucking can tell him that I paid for the same size seat he did and to put the arm rest down before I sit. He does, which surprises me, and I passively-aggressively shove his knee out of my legspace for half an hour before he either gives up or actually falls asleep.

For the record, and possibly for future reference via some sort of preprinted business card, this is a representative but not complete list of the items on my feminist agenda, such as it is:

As a man, my first and foremost priority is to force other men to see a man wearing a shirt that says FEMINIST. Even if there’s not another word to be said. Men need feminism as much as women do. My son needs to know that I his daddy is a feminist as much as any (currently hypothetical) daughter I might ever have would. Men need to be aware that men 1) can be and 2) are feminists.
I support equality between the sexes in all respects, but I am most concerned as a former teacher with equality of access to education. I believe girls in particular need to be encouraged to move into STEM, and I believe that the culture of adult STEM environments needs to change to welcome those women when they get there. Training little girls to do science experiments won’t do any good if the culture of programming classes in college is impossible.
I believe access to free, reliable and high-quality birth control should be an essential part of any ethical insurance program, and support Planned Parenthood completely. I believe in the right to an abortion as well.
I believe intersectionality is critical to any successful feminism, and believe that women of color and trans women and gay or bisexual or asexual women face challenges that straight white women do not. I also believe that white feminism frequently privileges the first word over the second.
I believe that feminism is about choice, and that a woman should be able to willingly choose to wear hijab or a bikini or anything in between if she wishes. Her reasons for doing so are none of my business either way. I do not believe that clothing in and of itself can be feminist or antifeminist, but the attitude of the law to clothing certainly can be.
I want rape culture ground into the dust and consigned to history. I believe that “boys will be boys” is a cheap excuse and not a truism. I believe the way that you stop rape is by teaching boys not to rape, not by teaching girls to avoid it.
I believe that publicly declaring myself as a feminist male does not mean that I deserve cookies, and do not expect to be offered any. I am also aware that as a feminist male my position in any feminist movement, such as it is, is mostly to shut up and listen, with a side dish of doing what I’m told to help out. I believe that I can and will and probably frequently do get shit wrong, and I need to recognize that someone telling me that one of those things is happening probably deserves to be heard out.
The following is true despite the fact that I’ve literally just written 1500 words about what I think feminism is.
So deal.

I could probably write more, but it’s 10:30 and I have to sleep sometime tonight. This will pop tomorrow morning; be aware that I likely won’t be able to respond to any comments until I get home from work.

#WeekendCoffeeShare: travel mug edition

On April 10, 2016April 10, 2016 By Luther M. SilerIn Stories6 Comments

newcoffee

If we were having coffee, I’d… yeah. Coffee would probably be good, 1:30 in the afternoon be damned. I’ve kinda got a headache. Caffeine may well be helpful.

I slept in an empty house last night for the first time in over four and a half years; since the night after the boy was born, I think. My wife is in Boston on bidness, and because she left so late last night the boy spent the night at Grandma and Grandpa’s house. So once I got home after dropping her off, I was alone in the house. She’ll be back on Wednesday; this will be the first time I’ve been a single parent for more than a few hours at a time since the boy was born. I’ve left home a bunch of times, but she doesn’t travel often. I’m not griping– I’m a grown-ass man and I’m perfectly capable of taking care of my son for three whole days while my wife is gone– but it was still weird to be alone in the house last night. I’ve officially survived the boy’s Spring Break, and have to manage to get him up and off to school on time tomorrow. Now, that’s usually my job, so it’s not like it’s a new thing, but it’ll be interesting to see how much of a coma he’ll be in when I get him up at “go to school” time and not “Spring Break” time.

I might ask you if you’ve ever had jury duty before. That’s on the agenda for Tuesday, and who knows how many days after that depending on when the trial is, whether I’m selected, and how long it goes. I’ve gotten the letter before but I’ve never actually made it into the courtroom. I’m actually looking forward to the opportunity since I’ve never done it before, but it could have had slightly better timing– in addition to my wife needing to be picked up on Wednesday, we’re having a new washer and dryer delivered, so I’m going to have to do some fancy footwork to schedule everything if I’m going to be in court all day without access to my phone.

Hoping to have some good news on the job front this week too. I’ve applied for several positions in the last several days that are in the “You have no reason not to call me about this” category, so hopefully at least one or two of them will actually come through. And that’s not counting the “work for the devil” job that I mentioned earlier this week, which I think I’m going to have to decline for a variety of reasons, some of which are better than others. Hopefully it won’t turn out to be a mistake. I’m tired of saying no to jobs; I know I’m not actually being a prima donna about what I do next but I’m starting to feel like one anyway.

But yeah. More coffee; let’s make this headache go away. How’re you?

REBLOG: Being A Girl: A Brief Personal History of Violence

On December 4, 2015December 4, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn PoliticsLeave a comment

I’m not in the mood to write today, and this is more important than anything I’d have to say anyway.

The Belle Jar

I am six. My babysitter’s son, who is five but a whole head taller than me, likes to show me his penis. He does it when his mother isn’t looking. One time when I tell him not to, he holds me down and puts penis on my arm. I bite his shoulder, hard. He starts crying, pulls up his pants and runs upstairs to tell his mother that I bit him. I’m too embarrassed to tell anyone about the penis part, so they all just think I bit him for no reason.

I get in trouble first at the babysitter’s house, then later at home.

The next time the babysitter’s son tries to show me his penis, I don’t fight back because I don’t want to get in trouble.

One day I tell the babysitter what her son does, she tells me that he’s just a little boy, he doesn’t know…

View original post 1,402 more words

In which I am upset about a good thing

On June 2, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Parenting1 Comment

So the boy got into Hogwarts. Which is what I’ll be calling it from now on.

He actually had to do the preschooler equivalent of an interview today, which was basically just my wife dropping him off for a couple of hours and them making sure he didn’t try to stab anyone. I suspect the actual interview part of the interview was with us, not with him. But at any rate: he’s in. Next year my son will be attending a private school, nay, a private academy, that will cost me $car his first year and $muchnicercar every year after that. And my salary is about to drop. Rather substantially.

I’m conflicted.

On the one hand: like every parent, I want my son to get the best education I can provide him, and I’m willing to work harder to provide him with a better education. On the other hand, I’ve spent almost my entire career in public schools– hell, I’ve spent almost my entire life in public schools– and working in them while refusing to send my son to one seems just a wee bit hypocritical.

The more advantages I can provide him with now, the more likely he is to land on his feet as an adult. On the other hand, the first time he starts acting like he’s more special than the people who don’t get to go to schools like his I’mma slap him.

I’m not looking forward to the day where he finds out he’s one of the poor kids, and I’m even less looking forward to the day where I have to convince him he has no goddamn idea what poverty is.

There are not nearly enough children of color in his classes, and I don’t know that there’s more than one or two people of color on the staff.

They don’t do any standardized testing. Well, okay, there’s one test in middle school. But they pick it themselves and use the data for their own purposes, and it’s not the ISTEP. No IREAD. No second and third grade nearly entirely wasted on testing.

I’m not conflicted enough to even consider not sending him to this place, mind you. We can definitely afford it next year. The year after that… we’ll see. It’ll depend on an awful lot of things.

Until then? I think I probably need to spend more time writing books. And maybe jobhunting. We’ll see.

Ugh.

Okay that’s quite enough for today

On December 16, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching6 Comments

Most of the way through the, oh, 300-page or so report I have to have finished by Friday for the IDOE.

Had to listen to a grandmother admit– in tears– that she doesn’t think she wants her own grandchildren any longer. Their parents have already abandoned them and the kids are so screwed up that she has no idea what to do with them any more.

And then got home and had to deal with some shit on Facebook so goddamn vile that I don’t even want to talk about it. I have had enough for today. Thinking about actually taking the rest of the week off at this point but I probably won’t even make it through tonight.

On priorities

On November 18, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn Parenting6 Comments

10401384_10152875059674066_1925030334716189476_n It’s been a bad few days at work– not in the “come home and pull my hair out” sort of way, but in the “come home and curse the world for letting this happen” sort of way, which is in some ways worse. We had– did I mention this?– the first real snowstorm of the season on Thursday of last week (it snowed on Halloween, too, and I know I mentioned that, but it didn’t stick) and it’s been really cold and intermittently snowy for the last few days. It was somewhere in the neighborhood of ten below zero wind chill when I left for work this morning, and most of the districts in northern Indiana and southern Michigan were at least on a two-hour delay today. (Not ours. We are a hardier folk than most.)

The thing about cold weather? Depending on how charitable you’re feeling, it either makes it harder to ignore how poor most of our families are or makes it more visible. It becomes real clear real fast which families can’t afford to pay the bills once it starts snowing. If a kid shows up at school in the same polo shirt that he was wearing (and I mean literally the same polo shirt) when it was seventy degrees outside, chances are that kid’s family can’t afford to keep the heat on.

There are an awful lot of kids in this building who don’t seem to have winter coats. An awful lot. And we ended up having to send our social worker over to a couple different houses where it turns out the heat isn’t on at all.

You may be wondering what the picture at the top of this post has to do with anything. Not much, except as an exemplar of my general lack of fitness as a human being. We’ve spent the last few days at work with the problems of poverty full and center, right? I got home yesterday to discover that one of the dogs had done that to Kitty.

Kitty is my son’s favorite toy. Kitty’s the stuffed animal he screams for when he hits his head or falls down or is scared. And the dogs– I have my suspicion which one– had destroyed it.

The rage was immediate and incandescent. I’m not sure I’ve ever been that angry at one of my pets before. I could have killed the little bastards, and I ended up shoving both of them into the back yard until I calmed down, which should have taken a lot less time than it did.

My kid’s three. He’s got his own room. He’s got a big house with blankets and heat and food and plenty of toys and books and all four of his grandparents and his uncle and his aunt are in town and he has two parents who are still married and hold steady jobs. He’s fine. And despite my worries to the contrary, when we told him about Kitty, he was basically okay with it, although my wife did promise him she’d try to fix him.

I probably ought to find something worth getting angry about.

And suddenly I’m a parent

On November 10, 2014November 10, 2014 By Luther M. SilerIn Parenting7 Comments

Tonight I have to go to an open house for a local Montessori school. Want to? Am about to? I don’t know how to phrase it. Certainly no one is making me go; I think my main objection right now is that I don’t want to be old enough to have to be thinking about this right now. Pay no attention, by the way, to the fact that most parents my age are worrying about high school and not kindergarten. It’s not even that I want him to stay a baby forever or anything like that; as I’ve said on several occasions before, the older he gets the more I like him, so I suspect I’ll like kindergarten-kid more than I like three-year-old kid right now.

I will admit that I’m liking three. It’s a good age. It’s too bad that he had to go through the three years to get to three, where I liked him less, but three is okay.

So, yeah. Point is, I gotta go to an open house for a school I don’t know anything about, so that I can learn things about it, because maybe I’ll want to send my kid there soon, because he’s old enough that I need to worry about that. Blech.

So speaking of parenting: he noticed Halloween, right? We’ve talked about that. Which means he’s gonna notice Christmas this year for the first time, too. Which means that the wife and I have to make a decision about Santa Claus. I am, in general, against lying to my kid, and somewhat generically temperamentally against suggesting that he should adjust his behavior in order to receive rewards from supernatural beings.

I also don’t want to be the parent of the asshole kid who ruins Christmas for the other kids, and “let them believe what they want to believe and don’t worry about it” seems like kinda complicated advice for a three-year-old. My wife has suggested that we simply don’t bring it up and see what he brings to the table, and that seems like good advice.

An anecdote: We are at Meijer. We need to buy the boy a coat. As we pass the coat rack, an idle thought floats into my head: What if he decides he wants the pink one?

I, progressive Dad that I am, decide that I don’t really give a damn if he wants the pink coat. He picks out a dark blue one and tries it on and has a fit about the length of the sleeves. (Note: this is an ongoing thing. M’boy has issues with sleeves.) We try on an orange one. Same thing, only now the fit has a bit of a head of steam behind it and is getting a bit more obnoxious. We get him calmed down and my wife tries one more time to see if he’s interested in trying on a coat.

“The light blue one,” he says. I look. There’s a light blue one. With polka dots. It’s one of the girl coats.

You deserve this, I thought to myself. And the wife and I just sorta looked at each other. Looked at the coat. Neither of us really wanted to be the one to say no, because he’s fucking three, and who cares what coat he wears. At the same time, I noticed quickly that color wasn’t the only thing differentiating the coats. It turns out that girls’ winter coats from the exact same company– coats for three-year-olds, mind you– are actually cut different. They have froofy fur around the hoods, and– and this is the ridiculous part– they’re fitted. They have elastic on them, for the hips that three-year-old girls do not have. Which I suspect actually makes them less effective as winter coats.

Color? Wear whatever you want. My parental liberalism apparently ends at the point where my son wants to wear a coat that is fitted to show off his hips. I suspect he’s not about to start developing an interest in wearing girls’ clothing all the time, because I think we’d probably have seen that by now; he just likes the color light blue.

I shoulda just put it on him. He’d have had another fit about the sleeves and we’d have been done. Instead, my wife sucked it up and told him it was a girl coat and he couldn’t wear it. I’ve got a tiny bit of a dirty feeling in my mouth about it, but only a tiny bit.