Snow in Eskişehir and My Experiences

Happy New Year!  Eskişehir municipality sent up about five minutes of fireworks at midnight New Years. I could see them out of my living room window. I was disappointed they didn't last longer.  By the time I had my camera ready, the color and explosions were over. 

In five days I will have been teaching and living in Eskişehir, Turkey for three months Over the last several months I've had mixed feelings: positive, negative, excitement, fear, anxiety, loneliness.  Sometimes the loneliness is excruciating.  It's not that the Turks are anti-social like so many in the US are, but there is a barrier between me and them, language. Here my race is not a barrier the way it is in the states.  Turks do not seem to expect the worse of me or prejudge me the way some people do back home because of the color of my skin. Some are just delighted to see a black person and would like to get to know me. 

It began to snow here four days ago. The snow started to come down on Tuesday morning. I woke up to it, the flakes quietly falling to the ground most of the day.  I was very very worried about having to go outside and falling. On Tuesdays I don't have a regular class in the evenings, but I do have a private student and conversation club which totals three hours of work.  Tuesday afternoon I discovered that my private student had sent an e-mail overnight saying that he wouldn't be coming to meet me at school.  His car had broke down again and the weather was just too bad he wrote.  I called my boss and told her this, expecting that no one would probably show up for conversation club.  She told me to stay at home, and if anyone came she would phone me.  About an hour before conversation club was scheduled, she phoned me and said one student had already arrived.  I told her OK I was coming, but I would be slow.  

It snows on average every five or six years where I live in northeast Georgia.  However, things have changed a bit in the last few years.  About two or three years ago it showed at Christmas and again the following January.  Even in my parents' lifetimes they'd never experienced snow twice in a short time span.  Here in Eskişehir it's cold and snow is very common.  In fact, some hope for snow because I was told if it doesn't s snow the winter will be painfully cold.  The school lost two American teachers last year because they said Eskişehir's cold weather was too much for them, I hear.  I also hear that Erzurum is the coldest place in Turkey, and I might have ended up there.  A language school in Erzurum wrote to me requesting an interview just one day after I was hired by this school.  I am glad I didn't go to Erzurum.  I might not have survived the low temperatures.  I am surviving here, and I am both surprised and proud of myself.

Tuesday evening when I was told I would have to come to school for my one hour conversation club I was very worried.  Several scenes flashed through my head.  What if I fell?  What I fell and broke my hip or hurt my knees?  I have knee problems, so I was afraid I might be too stiff to walk.  What if my YakTrax (snow grips that I attach to my boots) wouldn't stay on?  My boss' description of YakTrax are very clever.  When I showed them to her, she smiled and said "They are snow tires for the shoes."  All of my anxiety turned out for nought.  Yes, the snow had piled up outside reaching somewhere between my ankles and my knees I discovered when I went outside on my way to school.  One of my neighbors, a young guy was downstairs at the front door waiting for someone, I know because a company car pulled up.  He held the door for me and I went out moving very slow and unsure.  He said something to me which I imagined might have been "Be careful." I took my first steps in all that deep snow, the deepest I'd seen in person in my entire life.  The YakTrax worked perfectly in the narrow path of packed snow that people had made running through the apartment's courtyard out to the street.  Once I got out on the street and walked further along I felt more confident that I wouldn't topple over.  I arrived at the school without any broken bones, and it was the same on the return home.  I was a little afraid of some of the snow that was banked up, but as for slipping on any snow or ice I felt less and less uneasy.  I still took my time and was careful though. I also discovered that my knee problems had disappeared in the snowy air.

On New Years Eve I ventured out again to go to the nearby mall to purchase minutes and messaging for my cellphone (here it's called a mobile phone), buy a newly discovered olive oil soap I just love, and some warmer gloves.  I picked my way along my street in the packed snow and ice.  As I was gingerly nearing the curb leading off my street a young man came up beside me and took my arm. I was not afraid because I realize he saw that I was going so slow as if I was afraid I might fall.  He said something in Turkish and helped me up on to the curb.  I thanked him twice in Turkish and he went on his way.  Nearly always when I go out someone will help me even if I do not ask.  Turks like to help and I've heard this is a characteristic of many people who live in this part of the world whether in Asia, Africa, or parts of Eastern Europe.  I've said on here before that I do not follow femininist idealogy.  I understand that men and women are different and that we compliment each other.  It's not about superiority or inferiority.  So I didn't feel insulted or weak because that guy helped me, in fact I felt honored.  I don't speak for other women, but I happen to appreciate such gallantry.  

When I go into stores and shops, often some of the Turks brighten up with excitement. There are black people around here (Africans) but they are scattered around and I only see some on occasion.  At the pharmacy that I go to near my apartment, an older man works there, perhaps he's the owner.  He also speaks some English.  There are several women who work there too, an older woman who is perhaps his wife, a middle aged woman, and a young woman.  The older man and woman are always extra excited when I come in.  I use a mix of English and Turkish there, and the older man does the same.  Today when I picked my way to the pharmacy they all welcomed me and he told me to sit down and relax before I made my purchase.  Often I think about Walmart and its' greeters back home, most them stand at the store entrance not greeting any of the customers or only the ones they probably know.  Some of them will not greet you if you are black.  This has happened to me a few times.  The people coming behind me who were white, they would greet.  Both the white and black greeters have done this, but I expect this kind of behavior in the US. Here when I enter 98% of the stores I will be told "Hoşgeldiniz"  which is "Welcome" in Turkish and I always answer back with "Hoşbulduk" which is "Glad to be here" or "I'm honored."  There are a number stock phrases the Turks use to show courtesy, concern, or appreciation.  To me this is showing culture. 

Also today on my way to the pharmacy and the market, a middle aged man took my hand and helped me up onto the sidewalk as I was crossing the street through some water and ice.  I am gradually becoming more comfortable out now.  The first time I came to work in Turkey in 2004 a lot of Turks would stare right through me.  I mean almost not blink an eye and just stare.  Some would be in cars, look up and see me on the bus and start smiling and waving.  I have been sitting at the busstop and some on a passing bus would look down and start waving.  I was younger than and just so happy to be in a place where people were not intimidated by my skin color. I felt like a celebrity, but now that time has passed and I'm older I prefer just to be a bit anonymous in the crowd.  

The weather forecast says it will snow off and on over the next week.  Today it has not snowed and the sky seemed as if it would reveal the sun.  Yesterday it snowed a great deal during the afternoon.  The air here feels so pure and healthy the way it does after a snow. I saw a disturbing sight when I was walking along this afternoon on my way to the pharmacy and the market.  A stray cat was lying dead on the sidewalk; I suppose a victim of the cold. Temporary I felt very sad (I like cats), but I walked on by and got my mind back to making sure I kept my footing in the snow and ice.  Today at the pharmacy they marvelled at my YakTrax.  I am beginning to understand Turkish more even though I cannot always respond. The older woman was saying they are like snow tires.  I responded in Turkish telling her yes they are snow shoes.

It is both difficult and wonderful here.  There is such a thing as good stress. And this is it I sometimes believe.

Once Again In Turkey

Two months ago my life was totally different.  I existed in a different world.  Now I am learning to exist again in this new world where I have been several times before.  

I am back in Turkey again.  Close to three months ago I was offered a job by a language school in the city of Eskişehir  on the Anatolian (Asian) side of Turkey.  Eskişehir lies east of Istanbul sort of between that city and the capital city Ankara.  Until I came two months ago, I had never been to this city before.

In early October I took the four hour bus ride to here the next day after arriving in Istanbul, and I was the only foreigner and black person on the bus. I was strangely comfortable and very happy to just be away from America.  I absolutely find the country hideous now, and it's unlivable to me. My homesickness for there only concerns my family, especially my mother, and some minor conveniences such as having a car to put a lot of groceries in the trunk.  I also miss my books.  In Turkey I am too afraid to drive, so outside of having a vehicle to convey my groceries home, I also do not miss having a car with me.  

In August I started to apply to Turkish universities for English instructor positions. Here my masters degree will generally be adequate since I am a native speaker of English.  I knew it was very late in the year, but I send my CV to several schools anyway.  Then I learned from one of my Turkish friends on Twitter that because I'm not a Turkish citizen I would not be considered for a position at a government run Turkish institution of higher learning.  My best hope would be with private universities which Turkey has many.  By that time I had sent off my CV to several state schools, but then I took the detour and started to send them off to some of Turkey's private universities.  Spring would have been the best time to apply, but for the last few years I've been indecisive about going back to Turkey.  I feared international conflict, and Turkey has had its' share of unrest.  I finally made up my mind in the summer because my life was at a terrible stagnant point.  I had thought that maybe I would take the risk and return to teaching in the public schools back home, but the process of getting fully back in the system is nonsensical and highly unfair. The new curriculum implemented by the state and just the general quality of students in America rendered the situation highly undesirable for me.  I also wanted to go to a place where some tradition, history, and respect for teachers were still left.  Being a black person America was suffocating.  I had been told by others to get out, and I also wanted very much to flee and maybe find a sense of purpose somewhere.

I did hear from one of Turkey's better universities, Bilkent University in Ankara. I was told that my application would be kept on file and considered for the school year of 2015.  The woman who received my application materials also told me to feel free to contact her anytime.  This was in late August just before schools and universities would restart in Turkey.  I had worked for three other language schools and was very wary about dealing with anymore of them.  My negative experience had always been housing. After living in a hotel in the Beyoglu district of the Istanbul the first time I worked in the country and having to deal with a psychopathic female roommate in Izmit, I was not optimistic my try this time would be any better.  I loved working with Turkish students, and being a black person in Turkey has its' pluses at times, but Turkish language schools do not have a good reputation in some ESL forums, and my experience with the roof over my head had been negative, until this time.  

I have been in Eskişehir the city of one of Turkey's greatest poets Yunus Emre and Turkish philosopher and humorist Nasreddin Hoca for two months.  Oxford House College is my employer.  The owners are a husband and wife who are both university professors, two people I have a lot of respect for and like a lot. The manager is the niece of the owner (the husband). I like her very much as well. The school is in its' second year and trying to attract more students.  I've been encouraged to give ideas to help in attracting students.  The school is a floor in an upscale office building near the center of the city.  The books are good and the equipment (technology) for the classrooms is modern. I live in a furnished apartment just walking distance from the school. The business is family run, so the atmosphere is like a family.  One of my weekend students said last week when the class did an activity about the best and worst aspects of the city that Oxford House was where the friendliest people in the city are.  But this is Turkey and whereever I go I usually meet Turks who are friendly, courteous, curious, and helpful.  Most Turkish people cannot speak English or know very little, but even the ones who don't will try to communicate.  They want to know what nation you are from.  I never hear anyone call me black here, the Turkish word is "siyah."  I just hear "foreign" (yabancı).  

Getting acclimated to Turkey again has been difficult this time.  I am older now and going through what can be a difficult period for a woman. This year I really was struck hard by the affects of perimenopause.  At times my emotions are like a seesaw, but I try to fight off the doldrums, and I have support both here and back home.  

Before I came to Turkey this time around I heard from schools in Bursa, Erzurum, Konya, all in Turkey, and I also heard from schools in China.  I applied directly to schools, and did not come here under the auspices of any program. I also advertised myself once again on ESL Teachers Board and Dave's ESL Cafe as I've done in the past.  How I connected with my current employer through an advertisement was that posted on ESL Teachers Board saying that they were seeking a native English speaker to teach classes and for anyone who was interested to send an e-mail for information.  I did so in late July or early August, and didn't hear anything until about a month later.  I had almost forgotten that I had answered the advertisement e-mail by that time.  

In less than a month and a half of job of searching I had heard from a few language schools and one university.  There are educated people in the US who have searched for jobs for years and cannot find anything. In fact the news is that many people have given up completely on finding work in the US and that the government tries to hide how bad things really are by not including the ones who ceased looking by not mentioning their numbers in unemployment statistics.  Many people are also so frustrated by the climate on many jobs in the states that they don't want to work.  When my uncle died just before I came to Turkey I was talking to one of my cousins.  She hadn't worked in two years and is college educated. Before her father (my uncle) died of cancer, she had helped her mother to take care of him. My cousin is about 56 years old, and she is not old or in poor health from what I can see, but she told me she doesn't want to work.  She hinted that since she has no family and obligations that she doesn't feel an urge to work. I felt sad for her. She isn't a very old person. Surely there is something she would like to do besides watching TV everyday or being on a computer.  On American jobs there is often the feeling of isolation and competition.  Some people reject this climate, and don't want to work.  Yes, plenty of people are lazy, but some just don't care for the atmosphere on a lot of American jobs. On all the Turkish jobs where I've worked I never noticed this coldness and competition to the extent I've it seen in the US.  The isolation, backstabbing, and just general iciness will wear people down.  Most Americans never grow out of being in very tight cliques that are suspicious or hostile to new comers.  But that is the way it is back home, and why the overall society has drifted so far into abnormality.  Turkey like everywhere has shortcomings, but here humanity still lives unlike in the US where only a tiny minority of people are trying to retain what is sane and good.  

I will end here.  There is so much to tell, and I hope to become more active on this blog now that I have a lot to write about and am eager to share my thoughts and experiences.  Certainly I am in a place where there are little wonders daily, and those little wonders restore my faith in humanity. 

How Marriage Went Out of Style in the Black Community

I am going to write things here that some are not going to like or want to accept, but it needs to be written.  I feel I am the person who should do it.  This is going to be painful for me to write.  I feel uncomfortable about being this open.  Nevertheless, it is time that I finally do it to lift a terrible weight off me that I have carried for years. 

For the last decade I've spent a great deal of time with Muslim Turks and have developed a love of Islamic culture and history. I converted to Islam last year then quickly became an apostate because I still have many questions.  I consider myself once again a Christian, but one who is in limbo. 

Unlike in Western culture marriage is highly encouraged and expected in Islam. Family is prized. One of the first questions many Muslims will ask me is if I'm married.  When I tell them, feeling shame, no, they ask why.  Why?  Because I am an educated black woman in America, and if you could only imagine... 

It's very easy to get married in Islamic culture if you want to.  Friends can introduce you to someone, you can easily meet your future spouse while attending an institution of higher learning in a Muslim country, you can seek a Muslim spouse online through Islamic dating sites, you can meet someone at work or randomly, and lastly parents and family can even offer a hand in finding someone for you.  A woman can ask a man to marry her in Islam.  I had a student who told me when her mother was a older orphaned teenager she asked her a widowed and middle aged man to marry her.  At first he hesitated because of the age difference, but eventually this girl's future parents wed.  Sometimes in countries like Iran and Nigeria mass weddings are held where couples and single or widowed women who are having a hard time finding a spouse are married. If you do not get married in a Muslim country, it is a personal choice, not because you cannot find anyone.   Some of the above do or used to apply in American culture, but if you are a black woman you have little to zero options of ever finding a husband who is marriage material or anyone who is willing to marry you.  I was born during the final years of the Baby Boom, and things have steadily collapsed since the time my parents were introduced to each other by my father's sister who knew my mother.  My parents have been married fifty-three years.  A rarity in America.

When I was in high school dating came into vogue.  I found it all atrocious.  The white girls would cuddle up in the hallways a month or two with one guy and then be with someone else a month or two later.  Because of lack of culture or real identity many of the blacks started to do the same thing.  We always take on the worst behavior of the whites and then intensify what they do to even more outrageous heights.  The white girls tried to keep their promiscuity secret, but there were many rumors in high school about who had gotten abortions.  By the 10th and 11th grades there was an avalanche of black girls who had gotten pregnant.  My best friend did, and I was shocked and heartbroken.  She was such a sweet person.   Later she told me she had been raped and how she hated her child's father.  My friend was not a loose girl, so I believed her. The father of her child was a guy I knew who had already graduated from high school.  I was totally turned off by the dating scene.  I saw it as a kind of savagery and a total disregard for other people's feelings.  I was not interested in dating when I was a teenager.  I was too idealistic and just too afraid.  

My freshman year I attended an all women's black college.  There were two other neighboring black colleges in vicinity, one of them all male.  In middle and high school I had seen how many of the black boys were crude and sexual in their behavior.  Many showed little respect for girls. They would use profanity and make open sexual advances. Even I was not left out as a target for their sexual harassment. They also developed a hierarchy of which black girls were most  valued.  If you had long hair, light skin, or was loud and lewd you were seen as the most appealing. One or all three would do.  Things did not change much in college.  Studious girls like me were ignored.   Over time I came to dislike most African American men except some of my uncles who were kind and caring.  I met a few black boys who were nice guys, but the majority were not. 

I transferred back home to my town's university where I met a few foreign men, some from Africa. I found them more learned and gentlemanly.  I wondered why so many black American male did not want to work hard, did not value education, be responsible, or treat women well.   Why couldn't they be more like the Africans and some of the other foreigners I met?  I had to go all the way to Turkey before I ever even received flowers from a man.  I almost married a Turkish man, but things fell apart.  I don't blame him fully.  I also blame myself. I still ask almost everyday what is wrong with black men in America?  Some might say forget African American men and suggest marrying a white American man.  I know my history and I'm aware what still goes on today and the attitudes, so no I could never marry one of them.  I'm a Pan-Africanist, and I have my pride.  

As time went on I realized that I might never get  married because there was really no one to marry.  I confess that after all these years I'm traumatized by what I witnessed in high school.  I do not have many happy memories of that time or ever dream of going back to that period like some people do. When many of my black and white schoolmates found me on Facebook and sent friend requests, I was not excited.  I never really liked most of them.  I was not interested in reconnecting with these people from the past.    

One of the many dirty secrets of the black community is that a lot of African American men are intimidated by a woman who is educated.  Read what this nerdy black woman went through on a date with a black male who could not accept that she was not typical: My Black is Not Your Black, and That's Okay.    You must follow an expected pattern, remain in a certain box if you are a black woman.  If you do not many African American men will find you unacceptable or too "white."  

The darker skinned some black men are the more self hatred they  appear to have. Even someone who is reddish brown like me is not light enough for them. Also this is an era when more and more black men openly say they hate black women in social media and show it by their actions.  A number of  black male entertainers and athletes promote this kind of thinking. They do not feel they are anyone unless they have a white woman on their arm.  Today even where I live in  the Deep South, the cradle of some of the worst white racism on the planet, the majority of the interracial couples you see are black men and white women.  

American society is isolated, selfish, and schizophrenic.  What black people have become is a reflection of the society.  America is not exceptional. It is a grotesque anomaly.  African Americans had a choice not to become degraded, but most of us have fallen into a terrible state where I don't see there can ever be a return.  I am very very ashamed to be American or an African American.  I started calling myself African three years ago.  I feel that I am basically a stateless person now.  

Because of so many twisted attitudes in the black community and society at large marriage went out of style in the black community.  The black community is now based on a hedonistic culture of consumerism, sex, violence, thuggery, and whoredom.  Blacks in America are destroyed.  Without black men and women marrying each other there is no family structure and future of there ever being a healthy black community.  Almost 80% of black children are born out wedlock.  Only about 35% of black women will ever marry.  This is not about the legacy of slavery, a lie and misinformation that a lot of young blacks and few so-called black intellectuals are screaming.  Most of the people in my parents' and grandparents' generation got married. This is about the sick attitudes, recklessness, and immorality that started to get out of hand in my generation.  Today we see the final culmination of sin and bastardization of an already bastardized society, a black president married to a black woman who never once has talked about the fact that most black women in the US will never get a husband. Instead he promotes homosexual marriage.  He looks the other way and refuses to promote our well-being.  

The next time a Muslim asks me why I am not married I'm going to tell him or her that my own people ruined my dream of a marriage and family. In their eyes I am too educated and too decent a woman with traditional values for anyone to consider marrying me in this culture. Really it is too late for me.  The world is upside down here.  It is not like your world.  Maintain your world if you know what's good for you.  In the American black community women decided that the best thing to do was to sleep around and have kids with anybody, and the men decided that the only "good" women were the ones with the worst character.  Females are to be  judged solely by they appearance or how good they are in bed.  

Any Muslim who is enamored with anything American, I urge you to flee.  My one comfort is that I did not have to raise children to suffer as I have in this country.  Let America go to hell. 

The World Is Still a Madhouse and I'm Back

I didn't intend for this post to be so long, but it ended up that way.  I had a lot to say.  I feel better telling it.

The last time I posted to my blog the world was the same as now.  I think it gets worse by the month.  I believe  even madness was slower paced once.  I have no way of proving it though. I think madness used to come in new forms by the century or half century or decade or yearly or biannually, but today different forms of human neurosis appear every month if not every week.  I believe many people are no longer able or willing to stop and take a look at themselves. Many aren't coping.  They won't allow themselves to ask 'Am I a little bit out of control; why I am doing what I'm doing; does it make any sense?' 

I stop sometimes, be quiet, and just think.  I have a thick conscience so maybe it is a little easier for me to ask myself are the things I'm doing in my life of any intrinsic value?  Have I been knowingly cruel to anyone?  Who is toxic in my life and should I start avoiding them?  Am I really learning anything of benefit from these people or am I just hanging out with them so as not to be lonely?  Are the people on Facebook really my friends or since I never talk to maybe two out of over 300 people am I deluding myself and wasting time?  Should I have kept up blogging and wrote for myself instead of posting something for an audience on social media?  Is it healthy to hold on to people that make me unhappy and for whom I have little trust or respect?  

I decided to come back to blogging because I enjoyed it far more when I wrote a post then posting on social media whether Facebook or Twitter.  It felt more creative, and it was fun to express my thoughts in a long way instead of in one sentence, abbreviations, or just chunks of words. I know blogging is out of style, but I'm writing for myself.  I will post what I blog on Twitter, and people can accept my offering or not.  

I deleted, not deactivated my Facebook page on Sunday night.  It will be all gone in fourteen days.  The chains are gone, and I have such a sense of relief.  The final act of a relative made it clear to me that I was making the right decision to jettison Facebook out of my life for good.  It was a cousin I only saw once when I was girl.  I barely remember when we met.  He had come down here from New York with one of my uncles.  I think he might have been an older teenager or in his early 20s and I was much younger, still a girl, perhaps a pre-teen.  In all those years since, we had not communicated.  In fact, I had forgotten about him.  I have many cousins on my father's side of the family that I have never met.  Many of my father's people left the South years ago like many black people did to escape Jim Crow laws seeking what they believed would be a better life in the North. Some succeeded, but most did not. 

Black people tend to be blind followers.  When a few gather the courage to do something different, many others will follow if they relate to the ones who decide to make a move.  We don't give much thought or do much research to really find out whether a situation or location is suited to us on an individual level.  We go by hearsay. We do everything collectively.  Our fear to really leave the plantation has lead us to a culture of failure because many of us are anti-intellectual and easily led astray by various con artists whether they are preachers, celebrities, sport figures, one particular political party or "my president." 

Almost a month ago one of my cousins who lives here in town told me on Facebook to introduce myself to one of our cousins after I saw an old photo of my dad on the cousin's page where he had been tagged. Most of dad's people killed themselves with alcohol.  Big city life corrupted them beyond any redemption, so they self destructed.  Also before they left the South my grandparent's home was one of those early dysfunctional residences that are the norm now.  The only difference was there were more kids in the house and a father; my grandmother had a total of eighteen pregnancies, fourteen children survived.  Her husband, my grandfather, threw away his money on alcohol, gambling, and women. This is the kind home my father grew up in.  

By contrast my mother grew up in a stable home far out in the country.  Her parents were religious and kind having both black and white friends.  Both family and friends could depend on them.  My maternal grandfather had drank when he was young, but unlike my paternal grandmother who found excuses to remain with an abusive husband, my mother's mom gave my grandfather an ultimatum.  She hated alcohol even though my grandfather was never abusive or violent.  He'd go out and drink, come home and collapse.  But grandma didn't want her kids seeing that, so she threaten to take my mother and her older brother who were both small kids and leave.  Grandma was never a doormat.  Granddad never touched alcohol again.  He was good at going cold turkey like that and never returning to the garbage dump.  I remember when he stopped smoking.  I was a teenager, and he had heard from some preacher that smoking was a sin because our bodies are temples and putting everything in our bodies is not good.  Granddaddy who rolled his own cigarettes with Prince Albert tobacco and loved to chew tobacco announced he was stopping them both, and he did.  He never smoked a rolled cigarette or chewed tobacco again.  He encouraged grandma to stop dipping stuff, but it took her awhile to kick her habit.  

My father's family was stubborn, rebellious, and self destructive like way too many black people.  They have made little important progress as human beings.  They were highly materialistic and liked the "good things in life" such as big cars and nice houses, but they lacked moral strength and self control.  They tended to sink into madness, disease and self destruction.

So I introduced myself to one of my cousins who lost her mom to cancer about two years ago. Immediately I could sense our personalities were not going to mix well.  I looked at her Facebook page and comments and she seemed bitter, arrogant, and angry.  She'd post these almost whiny complains on her page.  I learned that one of her sons had been murdered at age 25 and left five children behind. I felt sorry for her.  I want to help people, but I have learned only the person can help themselves, however, they must have the will-power to renew their minds.  Most don't.  Most will drive themselves down to hell.  I feel sorry for people obsessed with changing the world or some individual.  They will 99% of the time fail. 

Well, this cousin told me she would tell another cousin about me.  This other cousin who lost her father back in December had started a family reunion page on Facebook.  Suddenly I was getting several friends requests from relatives daily.  I was delighted and wanted to connect.  I was added to the group and I started to post old family photos of our uncles, aunts, grandmother, grandfather, some of their fathers and mothers.  Many  seemed to like them, but the first cousin I talked to who'd lost her son said off hand she'd seen most of them and a grandson of my uncle that the page was dedicated to give almost one of those "meh" comments. He said he'd seen them before.  I doubted all the other cousins had, but often people only think about themselves and what they've done or seen, not anyone else.  I would post photos and explain who the people were in detail along with little  stories about the photo based on what dad or mom had told me.  My uncle's grandson had been in prison and he seemed to glorify that like some African-American males do.  He appeared to get in a sort of race with me posting photos after saying he'd seen most of mine.  I had said I would only post a few at  a time because I didn't want it to seem I was spamming her page, but my cousin who started the page said to post as often as I liked.  I noticed that when I stopped posting photos he abruptly stopped.  I just felt he didn't like me.  

Black people do not want to admit this, but many black men do not like women who are highly educated.  Street smarts are fine but book smarts are not.   It is very common for some lower class or "ghetto" blacks to feel intimidated by educated or middle class blacks.  No matter how friendly we are they are suspicious and see us as more of an enemy in some cases than whites. It's OK for whites to have certain things or to have it all, but we're not supposed to.  

There is also a jealousy factor there as well.  Many black people do not want to see others succeed.  I don't have any money.  I just have an education, and I live comfortably with my parents.  I have lived alone several times, but I prefer the non-Western way of not living alone if I can help it.  I think family is very important.  The world is a hostile place for women, and if you can get along with and live with family, it makes more sense than living alone and being a prey for all kinds of predators.  This ex-con cousin might even have more money than me.  But it was something about his attitude and the first cousin that as time went on I felt uneasy on that page.  Also I don't like arrogant people.  I see arrogance as a tool of someone who is really insecure but is putting on a show for everyone else.  These two cousins were arrogant, bragging on themselves.  I was amazed at seeing how some of the attitudes that have made it difficult for the older generation in my father's family to get along showing up in the younger generation.  My father has this similar swagger and posturing also, but at 74 he has mellowed a lot.  He is very insecure still like my cousins, but unlike them he has been heavily influenced by white culture, so he does not have the "hood" mentality I see in them.  Still the arrogance and need for affirmation by other people are in most of the people that I see on his side of the family.  When people are raised in homes where there is so much chaos or neglect they become this way.  The black class clown in school is often at heart insecure and feels uncared for at home, so he or she seeks attention at school, even if it's negative attention.  

I had become fed up with Facebook in the last year.  More and more I questioned why was I on there.  I tried to justify it by saying I had people on my list with a little influence such as "friends" who were professional and independent journalists. A few worked for PressTV and others appeared as political commentators on both PressTV and Russia Today.  I had a number of people on my friends list whom I'd attended school with.  I've known some of them since elementary school.  They are black and white, but I have almost nothing in common with them outside of the fact that we grew up in the same town.  All are older now of course, but those who were the poseurs and noise makers of middle and high school are still the same except for the usual adult accessories: a home, spouses, children, grandchildren, a job.  Most are still attached to football the way they were in high school.  Some can't let go of their favorite local bands and singers from college.  I didn't see a bit of emotional or intellectual growth.  Sure I have some favorite singers from my child- and young adulthood, but I have added many of other types of singers (most are international) and genres since then.  I see nothing except an urge to cling to the past in many of my former classmates.  I don't have all of the adult things because I was not willing to settle for less in most cases like many people do, but I have traveled, taught various age groups in three different countries, interacted with varied ethnicities and races of people, people which my classmates have probably never ever encountered; I have grown in insight and intellect, and I want to continue to grow in all that as well as morally, spiritually, and philosophically.  Many of them seem to be at a standstill.  My pastor paid me a wonderful compliment the other week when she said I was a philosopher.  I never expected that.  I have a lot more work to do on myself, everyone does, but I have changed plenty even in the last decade.  Even Muhammed Ali said sometime maybe in his rambunctious days, "A man who views the world the same at fifty as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life."

So it was doomed with my cousins really from the beginning.  Sadly, we had little or nothing in common, and two of them just did not accept me.  I believe they wanted to, but we are from different worlds that will never mingle.  They probably see me as too "white" for their tastes.  They can't open themselves to my language.  I can't quite open myself to theirs.  I have tried to relate to all kinds of people in the past.  I understand now that it is not always possible.  Sometimes relating to your own can be the hardest task.  

It so turned out that I was so tired because of several bad experiences I'd had on Facebook in the last year that I decided to close my account for good.  It had been on my mind weeks before all of these cousins had sent invitations to be friends.  No matter where your privacy settings are you are still listed somewhere on there as "maybe you know so and so," and I've seen a drop down list of people I "might know" under the friend invite icon.  I had to deal with three monsters last year that were on my friends' list.  I had long stopped commenting on pages especially if the topic was controversial, but I did make a statement the other week about a cartoon concerning Africa and whether Christianity and homosexuality are indigenous to the continent.  I am not for the persecution of gays, but I am against this Western obsession with gay and exporting it.  It has nothing to do with human rights  and freedom just like humanitarian intervention did not.  At the heart of it is population control.  I didn't touch on the part about gays, but I argued that Christianity has roots in Africa.  Christ lived there as a child in Egypt.  European monasticism was an offshoot of the Desert Fathers and Mothers of Egypt.  Ethiopia was one of the first nations to make Christianity its' official religion.  I also mentioned St. Augustine who lived in what's now Algeria and the martyrs Perpetua and Felicitas in what's now Tunisia.  But then some black guy who looked at least middle aged started arguing that Christianity is a European religion brought to Africa by slave masters.  Even though he was putting out some Afrocentric arguments that were quite strange, his hatred of Christianity  and whites was blinding him to over 1000 years of Christian history that was long before the first Europeans came to Africa to trade and kidnap human cargo.  Really he was advocating without even knowing it the white Western view that history began five centuries ago and nothing previous was of any value since we weren't involved.  He trolled away with me and some Africans who agreed with me.  I was put off by him and didn't want to waste my time.  I invited him to Google all that I had written, but he only wanted to make ridiculous statements that even I had never seen written anywhere else.  I was even more disgusted when one of the Ethiopians who was a young woman born America and who had agreed with me sent a friend invitation.  I accepted it.  She stayed on my page for most of the day, but then unfriended me and changed her page so only people could message her.  I had a number of African Facebook friends in Africa, and no one had ever done anything this stupid and psychotic before. 

Facebook has become about 70% insanity and 30% sanity along with the government spying on people.  I really came to see it as a highly unappealing outlet.  I liked a lot of good pages on there pertaining to my interests in current events, art, history, literature, poetry, architecture, and cultures.  I will miss those pages, but I will not miss the banality of Turks constantly taking photos of themselves sitting at a table with food before them, people lying about someone's baby they don't really think is adorable, people seeking attention with their doomed relationships, women bragging they have the most wonderful husband in the world or the greatest kids; do they ever tell them that or is it all for grandstanding on Facebook?  I had a complete lunatic and nuisance on there who expected me to chat with him everyday for hours.  I blocked him.  I don't like life in the virtual, and he needed to get a life.  I was sick of it all, and my cousins weren't putting anything out there to make me eager to keep my account open.  I can  see black women with blonde wigs  and tattoos any time especially if I turn on the television.  My cousins have not broken the cycle of ignorance and self destruction that started as far back as my grandfather who drank and my grandmother who put up with his abuse until it killed her at a young age.  

So when I announced I was going to close my Facebook page the cousin I mentioned at the first who had only seen me once years ago and knew nothing of my life or who I really am, unfriended me.  I messaged him and politely asked why, but then I told him it didn't matter since I was ridding myself of my account anyway.  I told him to take care and God bless.  I know he got the message because when anyone sees your message on Facebook, a little check mark appears below the message.  I suppose he was too cowardly to say anything.  I have asked black guys why in the past on Facebook when they displayed certain bad and off the wall behavior and most say nothing.  For all the bluster of some of them, they are the worst cowards.      

I deleted my Facebook page late last night.  I had fallen asleep early, and after I woke up I wanted to wipe away the nagging little demon that lurked in the back of my mind.  Deactivating Facebook was not enough.  I learned how to delete it, and I did. 

You have to get all of those devils out of your life to have peace.  Some times that devil is a person or a group of people.  Sometimes it's a website like Facebook that is just a vampire and time waster anyway particularly for a person like me. 

The last time I looked the world is still a madhouse.  I'm back blogging again. 

A Rap: Black Hatred

This video showed up either on my Facebook or Twitter timeline.  I've forgotten which site that fast.   I ponder the issue of black hatred or self hatred often because in the media and out in real life I see so much evidence that many black people aren't comfortable with their own being. I see it in both black males and females.  I see self hatred as a kind of blasphemy.  To hate the features God intended a person to have is not only abnormal but an insult to God.  

Some black self hatred in America comes as a result of being severed from our homeland and true identity.  There are not many good blueprints for black people in America to go by so more and more we have been cast away into dysfunction.  As a people we have been existing in dysfunction for a very long time, but only now it is widespread. 

In this case I'm excusing this rapper's language.  He uses less profanity than most rappers including my old favorite Tupac. 

I'm also posting the piece below in italics.  I can't remember where I got it online exactly.  I saved it to my documents months ago.  There is much truth in the piece, but I disagree somewhat that Africans are in as bad a shape as we in the Diaspora here in the US especially.  Here's why. I haven't been to any countries where large populations of black people of African descent live such as Brazil and some other parts of Latin America or the Caribbean, so I can't critique, but I know African Americans very well, all of our pathologies.  I feel that many continental Africans lack self-confidence in standing up to various forms of oppression and exploitation, but one strength many have is that they still respect marriage and have a desire to be wedded and to have an intact family and community structure. Africa is not the West where the individual rules.  The clan and the tribe hasn't been erased there.  I don't believe that illegitimacy and divorce is as rampant in Africa as here.  Also many Africans value education. They don't see learning as being "white"  as some African Americans have described getting an education. Overall American culture is anti-intellectual. But too often all the shortcomings, ills, and recklessness of the society blacks in America take on with a hardy vengeance.  This all goes back to self-hatred and lack of  a true and meaningful identity.  Our history didn't begin with the nightmare and oppression of slavery in the Americas, and we haven't reached the pinnacle as a group because of President Obama.  Very very far from it.  

Therefore, I will end in a bit and allow you to ponder like I often do. 

One way we can conquer our self hatred as a people is to connect with Africans online since most of us will never get to Africa.  I've been to two African countries and have meet many Africans from various countries over the years.  My view of self began to slowly change when I set foot on the continent.  It took many many years, but I changed into more of a complete person.  Today I see myself as an African of the Diaspora.  There is no nationality, country, or continent named "black."  Black is a misnomer and too limited in scope for me.  I alienates me from my origins.  Like "American" it just isn't detailed enough for my tastes, describing the essence of who I am.  It's too new, inaccurate, and limiting.  Shame over my skin color or hair texture has nothing to do with me refusing to go solely by the description of black.  I don't have any shame over my features. But I want more. I want to identify myself with my ancestry and a particular geographic region which I relate to the most.  There is nothing wrong with that. I have a longing for this, and I will not deny my longing.  It is my right. However, "African" doesn't quite go deep enough as well for somewhere on that vast continent in a little spot among some tribe or clan is my true home.  I am a part of Africa whether north, south, east, west.  We are one, and I am proud to be who I am.  Everyone should be. 

I have come to the conclusion that the majority of Afrikan men and women in the UK -- and most certainly in places like the USA and Caribbean, and most probably in Afrika -- are 'functionally mentally ill'. By this I mean that whilst most people in this category can function effectively at a certain level, i.e. hold down a job, obey the rules and laws of society, maintain social relationships over a prolonged period time, use their cognitive skills to solve various problems, there is something fundamentally wrong or missing at the heart of their psyche. This affective gap manifests itself in a deep-seated but unrecognised sense of racial inferiority, an inability to admire the Afrikan physiological and cultural aesthetic, a lack of racial self-esteem and confidence and a profound difficulty in working effectively with other Afrikans, often induced by the inability to trust one another. This functional mental illness is one of the main reasons that most Afrikan controlled countries are economic and social basket cases. It explains the widespread use of skin bleaching agents by Afrikan women and why Afrikan women who 'go natural' with their hair often provoke such enormous and negative emotional reactions from other women who use chemicals to straighten their hair, or who wear wigs, weaves, extensions etc. It explains why Afrikans find it so hard to forgive each other and yet can forgive Caucasians in South Afrika (and other places) for their atrocities without any strong demand for justice or reparations. It explains why we are in such a mess and yet so many of us think we are 'doing well' as individuals. It explains why so many Brothers think that 'things' will help them to feel whole and never learn the lessons when they don't. It is time for a rethink. Time to get down beneath the rhetoric and the kente cloth (or Versace) and deal with the pain. Deal with the pain of being rejected by your absent father, the pain of never being hugged by your physically present but emotionally absent father, the pain of belonging to a defeated and oppressed race, the pain of having to go to your oppressor for the means to live, the pain of a lifetime of insults and accusing looks, the pain of being rejected by your women, the pain of somehow feeling less than a man. We are a group of men who have been conquered and we have failed in our single most important task, namely the protection and defence of our community. However, no matter that many battles have been lost, the war continues apace. Can we face ourselves in the mirror of our ancestors and those yet to be born and summon the will and self-belief to win? For win we must. You cannot have an honourable defeat at the hands of white supremacy. Let's do some healing and some cleansing and build a nation of men our women and children can be proud of."

Paul Ifayomi Grant
Niggers, Negroes, Black People & Afrikans

Rather a Brief Manifesto

It has been awhile, but I am here once again. 

I am better and more relaxed with taking standardized tests than when I was younger.  Saturday morning I took the certification exam for my state in early childhood, and if I passed it will be added to my middle grades and high school English certification. 

I am planning to re-enter the teaching job market here in the USA full-time.  I feel I am needed, so here I am.  I will not return idealistic like I was as a youth.  I return a realist and pragmatist, so therefore I might be able to survive this time.  I will be up against a lot, so God give me strength.  The familial decay, especially in the African American community, and the overall social degeneration that was evident when I was a young teacher, is three or four times worse now than it was when I hired for my first job as an educator.   

I am not sure if I passed the exam yesterday, but I don't think I failed either.  At my old high school, I finished all 120 multiple choice questions and four short essays in less than the allotted four hours.  Many many people were there taking exams.  I was relaxed and used the tactics for doing a standardized test I actually learned from teaching my students strategies for the TOEFL exam in Turkey five years ago. 

The first time I took a teaching certification exam near the end of my graduate studies, I passed it, but I knew few less back than about test taking I did this time.  In the past, I was a very nervous test taker.  I don't think I even studied for my first teacher's certification exam, yet I passed. 

In the last 12 months I really started to ponder how can I be of use to my people here.  I go to Walmart (don't particularly like it, but I go)  and see some of the elementary school kids I work with through substitute teaching, and some of them come up to me with hugs.  I get hugs from black, white, and Mexican kids, and I'm not even their regular teacher.   There is one little wide-eyed Mexican girl that even if she is with her mother or father at Walmart she leaves them and comes up to me with a hug.

Nowadays so many children are falling through the cracks.  It almost seems to me that a lot of people are in denial of this.  There is so much apathy and denial.  Kids aren't little birds or other baby animals who by instinct can strike out on their own early.  They need good parents and good teachers who guide them. I don't think a lot of kids get any love from their parents. The parents themselves don't really know what love is.  I don't agree that teachers should be surrogate parents, but the society we live in is forcing teachers to change diapers in early Headstart classrooms and teaching morals in first grades.  I see it in my town, and I wonder what the devil happened, but I don't have to really wonder.  I know.  

I see the society collapsing, and I know the problems are too big for me, but what is the little bit I can do right here in the place of my birth?  So I hope to come back and be a servant (teacher). 

I was also talking with my mother yesterday saying I am thinking of doing the research on how to run for mayor of my town. LOL Yeah, I'm really thinking about it.  Getting involved in politics is not my cup of tea, but what else can I do around here to help?  I am not bragging, but I'm not your typical black woman or woman in general. The people who know me are aware this is the case.  I was always different.  I will die a person who isn't afraid to be my true self. I've had a lot of experience with people of many races and various cultures.  I am a cultural hybrid, West and East, but I am more a person who leans towards the outlook of my African side and see things like an Eastern person.  What can I bring to the table here in this place? 

I'm something of a news and political junky but the stress?  The corruption?  Me mayor of this small city with a huge university and a rather exceptional public library?  But who knows?  At least I can do the research and then decide if I might take on such a challenge. 

Most of the population my small Southern city is black.  Outside in the suburbs where I live the population is more mixed.  However, the city  limits has seen some gentrification in the last few years for the renovation and building of housing and flats geared towards university students who don't want to live on campus or can't find space there.  My town has never had a black mayor to this date.  In recent years, all the mayors have been white women.

I keep asking myself what can I do, and with my sometimes not so great health, am I tough enough?  Mom in all her wisdom even said that running for mayor is very stressful.  She doesn't know what the first steps to take are, but she is right that it is a stressful proposition. 

For sure I want to bring back the idea of the public servant. The day of the leech, parasite, and mafia needs to come to an end.  But then again sometimes I just want to drown or bury myself in poetry because I really don't like the lime/lame light at all when it comes down to it.  hehehe  The lame light has led some folks to an early death...  #randoms

Gangnam Style in the Classroom: Randoms

This is going to be rambling, but here I go.  This was post was stimulated by what I saw in a classroom yesterday, but I will get to that later. 

Years ago after frustration and feeling the heartbreak that I was not appreciated as a teacher and had gotten the worse of it because of my race, I said I would never teach in America again.  I turned my back on my profession, my people, and the society.  I felt that my principal, many of my black students, and some of the white parents had taken my good intentions, enthusiasm, dedication, and concern slapped me in the face with them, threw them on the ground, and trampled them all underfoot. 

I had gone into my profession idealistic and ready to go, eager to make a deep and positive impact on young lives, but instead I had been faced with bad grades, indifference, breaking up fights in the classroom or having to run to one of my male colleagues to break up the fights, being cursed at once by a student, a parent who made it painfully clear she didn't want me to teach her little blonde daughter solely because I was black, another who subtly complained because she didn't like the fact that I taught her blonde son three different subjects. You see a black person even with a masters degree couldn't possibly be capable of giving her son a quality education because the few of us who got that far were just benefactors of the handout called affirmative action and were naturally less qualified than whites.  I faced a parent who complained I was giving too much homework, extracurricular activities were more important for her daughter than doing work at home to reinforce what she had been taught in the class. 

There was so much I faced as a young teacher so that after two years I said never again.  My soul had been slashed by knives.  My spirit deflated.  I rejected another contract for third year at that school, applied and was accepted into Peace Corps, went to the African nation of Botswana, enjoyed myself there,  felt more at home in Africa than I ever had in America, loved my students and my international set of  colleagues from various African, European, and Asian nations, loved one man in particular, it was a great romance, but it was not meant to be, came back home and went through a very dark period in my soul, recovered from the depression, and in the last few years taught English occasionally in Turkey. 

It is not easy being an educated black woman in America.  I have an Eastern bent to my mentality than most of the people I live among.  I am a hybrid of sorts, American in name but more Eastern than American.  African Americans used to be closer to our African counterparts on the continent and other Eastern people back in my grandparent's era.  My mother's parents were very much like some African and Middle Eastern people.  They were deeply religious and unselfish.  Even though they were poor they helped those they knew who were poorer and more desperate. They were devoted to the well-being of their families, hated divorced, were well liked by their communities and even by many of the whites they knew.  These were the heroes I looked at and were influenced by including my mother who is just like her beloved mother and father. They live on in her and in two of their other surviving children.  I didn't have to look to the TV and have some celebrity or sports figure as my role model.  I lived with and visited my role models. 

It is not easy to live in America.  It's even more difficult and lonely if you refuse to model yourself after everyone else.  The is a recipe to being an American, and most people follow that recipe.   Blacks expect you to be just like them, and whites expect you to be a version of their envisioned stereotype.   All my life I have longed to be free to be me, not have some vision of who I am supposed to be imposed on me by my own people or white people. 

I would say that life has gone nothing like I had hoped partly because I was very different from most in my environment from almost the very beginning.  At various points in my life I have been an outcast.  Other times I was applauded, usually by foreigners and a few others.  I've had few real friends. Either I got bored and frustrated with them or they got bored with me.  I refused to settle for less, so I have been often alone with mainly my family except in the last few years.  For a long time I have felt more at home with non-Americans than I have Americans.  I am not an optimist like many Americans.  I am more of a fatalist and realist, but I am attracted to mysticism.  The world of the mind and of a higher plain outside of what we can see with the physical eye is more real to me sometimes than the absurdity of this world.  

I have come back and for better or worse I am going to try and help my people again.  I have been substitute teaching randomly in the last several years when I was not teaching English in Turkey.  When I was certified to teach in my state, I could teach anywhere from grades 4 to 12, but after elementary school I was confined to only the subjects of social studies and English which are my two favorite areas.  If the children in these groupings are not taught love of learning and respect for teachers and other adults by this age there is very little that can be done, I feel.  This may sound harsh and discouraging to some, but by second or third grade many kids in this country are infested with arrogance and dislike learning.  Many including people in the government blame the schools, but few are courageous enough to blame the parents, but maybe they don't because of their own guilt over their lax parenting.  Some say the schools are grooming kids for our prison industrial complex, and yes the way some schools are formulated, this is probably true, but a lot of parents are also aiding in their kids' downfall.  Then at the same time there is the threatening cloud of the state taking away people's kids if there is the accusation of abuse which can come even if a parent is not being abusive, but is only trying to discipline an unruly child.  The system we live under craves more prison inmates and just sits there like some big predatory fish with his mouth wide open for small fish to just swim right in.

Next week I begin an experiment to help my people. I will be teaching a course at a local community center on African historical figures from J.A. Rogers' first volume of World's Great Men of Color.   I have Facebook friends who live in other countries, a few who help and try to enlightened others.  They have been a big influence on me and an inspiration even though I haven't met any of them face to face.  They write prose and poetry, have gatherings to talk about geopolitics and write articles about wars and their consequences. Some are guests on international news networks that I watch online.  Some have gone on peace missions, and organize and go to demonstrations.  In other words they are trying to make a difference, a phrase commonly said in this country.   I am invited to some of their gatherings, but sadly I live too far.  Even though my residence is in a small city with a huge state university, this place is an intellectual and cultural wasteland.  I was a part of a writer's group for almost four years, but no deep and honest critiquing of anyone's work was done, When the leader of the group become so self obsessed, stop coming with anything to read and only wanted to talk about gifts she got from her grandson and men, I quit silently without saying another word to her or sending an e-mail.  I was also a part of what I call a pseudo-intellectual group run by some so-called friends who are Turkish.  They are mostly doctoral students, but they don't seem to have the dedication or level of knowledge to be Ph.D candidates. To me is it very strange to sit in a room with a group of people working on higher degrees who are too afraid to voice their own opinions.  I got tired of being one of four openly expressing my views in that group when all the rest were too afraid to open their mouths.

Recently I was invited to a gathering of black ladies, but after sitting through a presentation given by the head of the local Red Cross, a middle aged, dyed blonde, fat, white female who acted like she was still God's gift to men I said I would not go to a second meeting which I was invited to.  I've so tired of going to some prosaic gathering dressed up as something interesting and refreshing when it really isn't just to get out of the house.  I like my own company better than being bored to the edge of insanity.

As to Gangnam Style, it has replaced one of Justin Bieber's songs in some of the elementary schools here.  The pre-K and kindergarten set require more than Mary Had a Little Lamb and The Itsy Bitsy Spider nowadays.  Such nursery rhymes and childhood songs just don't cut it with kids raised on TV and Gameboys.  Learning must be backed up by entertainment or the kids go cold to it and stay jittery.  Yesterday I worked in a pre-K class and the parapro couldn't get the kids to pay much attention to swaying houses with lyrics about numbers and days of the week, but when she pulled up a version of  Psy's Gangnam Style on the smart board, the kids were all eyes.  They wouldn't dance before but when Psy and a woman dancing in hot pants, garters, and police cap got on the screen they did.  At four they are already being conditioned to become disciples of fads and commercialized entertainment like the rest of the population.  Today's media is extremely adroit in indoctrinating all ages.  It was sad to see that early they are learning to conform to what doesn't promote art and culture, the here today gone tomorrow opiates that the media pushes down their throats.  Learning for learning sake died some time ago in this country.  It is advocated in educational circles that education and entertainment must be wed in the American classroom.  American kids need an assortment of extras to get excited about learning.  Still so many of them fall short.

I liked the parapro at the school today.  Despite hating her choice of putting up a video of Gangnam Style, I guess she felt the only way she could grab the attention of a large class of 4 year olds, a number of which were highly jittery was to start up a popular pop song. She and I sat together at recess and talked, finding common ground since both of us plan to take the state teacher's certification exam this spring.  She even asked me about myself.  Often as a substitute teacher and being a black woman people just expect that you probably have only a high school diploma or less.  Most don't ask me about myself. Living abroad where people were often curious about me resulted in my being spoiled a little. I was more visible abroad and sometimes got weary of the attention.  At the schools here they probably couldn't imagine that I have taught both here and internationally and that I have a higher degree.  Sometimes as a substitute I feel invisible, but I make myself feel better about that invisibility by conducting myself professionally and dressing better than the majority of the teachers.  I still believe in professionalism in attire on the job.  In Botswana and Turkey the standards for dress at work were higher than here.  It's difficult for me to go to schools and see teachers dressed in jeans, tennis shoes, and some even showing cleavage.  What happened to high standards and dress codes?   

I don't worry so much about the majority or white culture around me.  My concern is for my people.  I am not sure there is much hope for us locked into an alien identity that has scarred us.  I am not saying that all white people are bad, but there is so much that is wrong in the culture which destroys lasting human connections on so many levels.  I remained connected to my ancestral values mainly due to how I was taught by my mother and witnessed from her parents.  My father is very American in his outlook.  He admits that even as a child he dreamed of having what white people had.  His family was not close and very dysfunctional.  He and some other family members say they don't like having people coming around visiting all the time.  In all the years that he visited his in-laws he never allowed himself to open my grandparents' refrigerator once even though almost everyone they allowed into their home were treated with hospitality.  You're at home, my grandmother would say.  I wonder how my grandparents felt about my father never trying to really make himself at home for all those years.  Dad's mother grew up in an abusive and violent home and then married my grandfather who drank, was abusive and unfaithful.  He said she would tell him to never accept food at the home of his friends even if he was offered it.  I feel the suspicion, competitiveness, narcissism, and paranoia that some of the members of my father's family have, including himself, are some of the worse symptoms of white American culture.  However, despite the differences I've had with my father and continue to have I must say that one spot I praise him in is that he has successfully run a small business for many years and states that black people must become more independent, productive, and have their own businesses.

So this is my rambling post.  I guess I just wanted to get a few things off my mind even though this was inspired by seeing little kids dance to Gangnam Style in a classroom.  I wonder often where are we going as people.  It never gets better despite all of the so-called improvements, all the "grand" propaganda that is touted.  It will never get better until we examine ourselves and realize where we are heading.