It is a quick read, written in verse. It just keeps coming at you. I couldn’t put it down.

Mild spoilers ahead, but nothing you wouldn’t find out in the first three pages or so.

The book shows us life through the eyes of a boy whose older brother was just shot and killed.

He introduces us to The Rules, and they aren’t The Rules of how to get a man to marry you.

The Rules are:

1. No crying.

2. No snitching.

3. Get revenge.

These rules permeate everything I live with every day.

The kids live in a low trust society, even if a high trust society is not far away from them. Gun violence touches everyone. So many sweet kids wear necklaces with a loved one’s picture framed by angel wings. That means the person pictured was killed.

“No snitching” is a huge part of the culture. Kids won’t say who did a bad thing. Sometimes a whole group will get punished, but most of the time, the amazingly good deans and other culture staff can figure out who did what or get a kid to tell. I’m sure they know that they are standing between these kids and jail or death.

When gun violence claims the life of a young person, how can the survivors ever be whole again?

I think that Jason Reynolds’ book shows the depth of the pain, what it can drive people to, and how the cycle just keeps repeating.

When some of my liberal friends express a willingness to forgive all violence and blame it on “the system” or “systemic racism” or some such, I often say, “I think you’d feel differently if I got shot.” Or knifed to death or what have you.

It is different when it happens to you, to your family member, to your friend or your neighbor or your coworker.

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I often cover for teachers who are at funerals. When they come back, you don’t get the sense that the funeral was for a very elderly relative who died peacefully in their sleep.

At another school, I covered for a teacher whose sister was murdered. The teacher was in her early thirties, the sister was her younger one.

How do you keep going? And how do you come in and face kids who are already showing a tendency to resort to violence?

The thing I love most about my school is that the violence is really kept at bay. Other schools have fights, even if they are not frequent and even if the pre-fight gets broken up. Mine really doesn’t. If I call the Dean about a pre-fight, a play fight, or heaven forbid someone threatening something scary, the Deans are on it. No question that they back me up.

Of everyone, I think I love the Deans the most. Sure I love the other teachers and the kids, and all the AP’s and the Marvelous Mr. M, but I love the Deans the most. And Charlotte.

Charlotte Tarantula is getting ready for supper. She will eat on Thursday. She’s up on the side of her terrarium looking beautiful. As it turns out, she is a Pinktoe Tarantula, not a rosehair. She really does have pink toes!!! Like a tarantula with ballet slippers on!

(Closest I could find without paying for ChatGPT’s image generator, which I will not be doing. I clearly need this pair of shoes.)

To understand the kids, you have to interpret everything they do through the lens of gun violence. Lives can be taken and turned upside down in a flash. There is no security. The future is far from guaranteed, so there is a great deal of pressure to live in the present, even at the cost of future possibilities.

Everything can happen so quickly for these kids that their lives are unstable even in the midst of parents trying to do everything they can to give their kids stability. That’s one reason why I have to keep showing up every day. Yes, I need the money. Yes, I like the job a lot. But the kids need to see Sticker Lady. Those stickers are a tiny piece of stability in an ocean of danger.

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Even with the horror that surrounds them, the kids are joyful. We do that on purpose. Music lights up the hallways in the morning. There are clubs and fun events and sports and cheerleaders. Girls who may have lost their fathers, uncles, grandfathers, even brothers, can still jump and scream with the best of them.

In some ways it shows that life will not be defeated. I just wish life didn’t have to fight so hard.

That song from the nineties by Maroon 5 that goes

I don’t mind spending every day

Out on your corner in the pouring rain…

Just popped into my head. Don’t really know why.

The restaurant does a wonderful job with birthdays. In addition to this cute sign, they wrote her a very sweet birthday card and put a candle in her dessert. Seasons 52 specializes in healthy seasonal cuisine, and they have little tiny desserts that are just right for a taste and not too heavy. She had key lime pie, I had carrot cake.

We started out with flatbreads: grilled artichoke with feta and tziki sauce, and chipoltle shrimp with grilled pineapple and feta. It’s hard to go wrong with feta and grilled pineapple in my book, and I adore artichokes and shrimp. Then we each had a Tuscan bean soup. There’s no pressure to order entrees there, and Mom had been craving crab cakes, so she had the appetizer crab cake. We got exactly what we wanted and stayed for several hours. I left a very nice tip for the waitress who was so pleasant and refilled my Diet Coke three times.

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About half of my friends my age have already lost their mothers. I understand how very blessed I am that my mom is still around, still together, and able to go out for lunch. Things aren’t as easy as they used to be, but she does really well. I’m proud of her for sticking with physical therapy for a long time after her joint replacement surgeries and trying to stay healthy. One of her birthday presents is Premier Protein shakes, so she can keep getting the protein she needs even though she feels like eating less these days.

So many people I know have either been cut off from their parents or cut their parents off. While I can’t and don’t want to judge anyone else, I cannot (look MR, I got cannot right!) imagine not having my mom in my life. There will come a day when she is no longer here, but until that comes I want to spend as much quality time as we can together.

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My dad is at peace with God in heaven - I truly believe that. I bet he is playing baseball with my uncle and thinks he is going to be a pro someday. Maybe he gets to talk to God in Greek and ancient Hebrew. He never had pets close to him to meet over the Rainbow Bridge, but maybe Pretzel, the dog he and my stepmother got a few years ago who didn’t live long, is there with him.

Holidays can be hard. My mom has been through many holidays alone. Until my dad died, I spent half the holidays with him, so my mom was alone much of the time. He always got Thanksgiving, so for years she either went to someone else’s house or just had a turkey alone. We usually spent Christmas together though. Some years I was sick and unable to be together - those were terribly sad times. I regret them, but I try to focus on making the NOW as good as I can.

We really don’t know how much time we have. Lately I’ve tried to focus on the present, to truly be where I am. In the morning when I cuddle Loviefluffy for her morning pettings I focus on being completely with the cat, loving her sweet little purr and the way she puts her face in my hand and wants me to rub her teeth (yes I rub my cat’s teeth. Got a problem with that?) At school I focus on the kids in front of me. I love every moment of chit chat with my colleagues. “Do you have stickers?” rings in my ears and makes my heart sing. “Of course dear, you can have stickers.” I go the long way out of the building so that I can give stickers to kids as I walk around the building. Sometimes I go out the door without the handrail so I can say goodbye to Mr. M. He wears the school gear most of the time, and with the hot weather we’re having he’s been wearing jeans and a school t-shirt. He looks approximately 25. I love to take a moment to appreciate what he’s built in fifteen years of dedication to that one school. I may be able to understand it better than most, since I’ve been so many places where the principal doesn’t walk around illustrating the vocabulary word ubiquitous. I may never be a full time employee - the Lord is willing or he is not - but I can enjoy being a part of the community for now, contributing what I do, and appreciating something that is so hard to achieve. It’s not perfect, but it’s better than anywhere else. I know what they are up against - what we are up against - and I see the hope and promise that is stronger than the despair and failure that surrounds us outside the school walls.

A book I loved when I was a kid had a quote that comes to mind: “You don’t have to own Sequoia National Park to be glad it’s there.” Maybe I’m just camping. Doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the wildlife.

(I’d better let this analogy go before I get eaten by a metaphorical bear!)

The tulips are magnificent. The birds start singing at about four am. There is so much to be grateful for, even though all is not how I planned.

Or is it because all is not how I planned?

A few weeks ago some kids asked me if I have a “guy I’m talking to.” I said that I talked to many men on a daily basis - how could I do my job if not? Having totally deflected the question, I got them interested in a new vocabulary word - probably “disingenuous” - and on we moved.

Yesterday a ninth grade girl asked me if I get food stamps.

“That’s a rather personal question, dear,” I replied.

She went on to say that her grandma gets food stamps, and that they went to the corner store and her grandmother bought her a big sandwich with the food stamps. She loved that sandwich. The degree to which the kid loved the sandwich made me wonder what she eats on a regular basis. The students show up to school with plastic bags (they are banned in the city but the corner stores give them out anyway) full of Doritos, Takis, cookies and candies. It’s not unusual to see kids eating Hot Fries for breakfast with a pineapple soda.

During the time leading up to the government shutdown when food stamps were delayed, I heard a lot in various schools from the kids about SNAP. Most of their families are on it, it seems. This is not surprising - the area is very poor, and what work is done I suspect is largely under the table. The EBT cards are accepted at corner stores that sell little more than junk food at very high prices, and the cycle continues.

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Years ago when I was working on the PhD I realized I didn’t want, we were reading Evicted in a class on the social determinants of health. It’s a great book, by Matthew Desmond, and it tells the story of the perverse incentives that exist in the American black city that make sure that everyone stays poor.

One of the kids who was working on her MPH (they were mostly fresh out of college when I was about 45) asked, “What do food stamps look like? Are they real stamps?”

I got out my EBT card and passed it around. The young people working on their masters degrees were quite shocked that a PhD student who was after all white and seemed pretty put together would have an EBT card. Medicaid too! I wowed them with both cards!

The kid in my class on Friday would not have been surprised if I said I got food stamps and would not have been surprised if I said I didn’t. There is no shame about being on government assistance in the world where I work. I’m not saying there should be. I am a big fan of the social safety net, and am pleased that my tax dollars support it. But it should not be a way of life, generation to generation.

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Work has gone out of style. Tik Tok encourages young people to think they can make a living off of recording videos of their little dances. Fortunately, some of my students have not fallen for this. We did a career reflection the other day in my tenth grade class, and one of the kids shared with me that he wants to be an English teacher.

Way to make a teacher cry! I didn’t cry, but I did tell him to chat with the principal, who was a 7th and 8th grade English teacher and then a literacy coach. There has never been more of a need, well not since the Civil War, for people to teach these kids how to read and write.

Why?

So they don’t end up on food stamps.

Now I’m about as literate as they come (though many of my friends are more well-read!) but I’ve been on Medicaid and SNAP. A series of health issues, bad decisions and bad luck (mostly health and bad decisions - I don’t attribute much to luck, and to the extent I’ve had it, it’s been good) and I ended up on SNAP. It is tremendously helpful to have some money to buy groceries, especially if you know how to maximize it by bargain shopping, and you can get to a real grocery store, not the corner store. Many of these kids’ families can not get to a real grocery store.

The safety net is great for keeping people from disappearing into permanent poverty and homelessness. I am thankful for it. But getting into your head, generation after generation, that it’s the government’s job to pay for your groceries, at the risk of stating the obvious, creates dependency. Is that what you would want for your children?

Some teachers don’t like to look at education as a means to getting a job. They like to think that learning in itself is a reward, and if it were, that would be just peachy.

(Like this protein shake. I recommend Premier Protein brand shake. The Cafe Latte is my current breakfast, combined with a little coffee. 30 grams of protein and just 160 calories, and it’s drinkable! Your product placement will end now.)

For these kids, getting a job would be a very good outcome. Becoming employable, so that they can support their own families and live without being dependent on government assistance. There is dignity and value in working for a living - at least some of us still think so.

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All over every school I’ve been in, there is a quote that is just as true for grown ups as it is for the kids:

The choices you make today create your world tomorrow.

Every day we have so many choices that create our tomorrow. When I drink my protein shake, I’m putting some metaphorical coins in the bank of my future health. When I go to work every day, I choose to find value in a good day’s work for a fair day’s pay, no matter how I might feel during the day.

I remember a time when I didn’t feel this way. I dreaded going back to subbing. There is much to dread - the long hours without being able to go to the bathroom (you can’t leave the kids in the room alone and in the regular district there usually isn’t someone to cover) and just the horror of getting treated like a subhuman by kids. But then I found my school, and while it is a difficult job, there are so many daily rewards.

When the kid who wanted to be an English teacher found out that I am a real teacher, he said, “Ms. Smith, why are you just a sub!?”

“A long story, my dear, a long story.”

He said he wants me to teach there, 11th grade so he can have me as a teacher next year.

“I’m working on that sweetie,” I said.

Meanwhile, it’s farmers’ market day, and I have an egg carton to return to the Lancaster farmer and some veggies to buy.

The choices we make today create our world tomorrow. I choose not to focus on the bad. I choose to enjoy the beautiful day, the flowers, the farmers’ market, the cute farmer (can’t hurt to look!), talking to my best friend, cooking dinner for another good friend tonight, Caturday pet pets, and looking forward to taking my mom to lunch for her 81st birthday tomorrow!

We wish you a Happy Caturday!

This is Loviefluffy when she heard a helicopter overhead. She will defend the home front while I am at work!

I will caveat this all by saying that Peter was always personally very kind to me. He may have even supported me in my tortured run for Chair. But he held some political positions that at the time seemed a bit wrongheaded but now I can see prefigure a whole career dedicated to destroying western civilization.

The Libs would have debates once a week, as did all the parties, on our own, aside from the full YUP meetings. Other parties had a full bar at their debates, leading to many fond memories of someone saying, “Get the lady a drink!” But the Libs had pizza and soda at ours cause, well, Libs. Each week, the Executive Board, which met at Dakota J’s (I remembered that place, wow) would decided on a topic.

I clearly recall when the topic was female genital mutilation. Is it like okay or something is how the resolution was worded. Peter argued that it was cultural practice that should be respected.

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At the time most of us took that as an anti-feminist position. We were all big feminists back then, when being a feminist meant wanting equal pay, being pro-choice and wanting to wear what we wished and date or sleep with or marry whomever we wanted. We read Peter’s okay-ness with this barbaric practice as a sign of not being pro-woman. I don’t think I had any clue how deeply it represented an animus towards western values and standards, as well as a pathological need to affirm and uplift anything that is considered brown, black, non-western or somehow oppressed.

I still found it creepy at the time. How can you call the removal of a part of a woman’s body, without her consent, at the hands of her family, and usually in unsanitary conditions, anything but criminal? But he did. And he grew up to be the Peter Beinart Jill knows and skewers.

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This morning as I was waiting for my schedule at work I read a post by one of my new favorite Substack authors, Beyond the Narrative. An Israeli woman shares her adventures on the dating scene in the US, including this one, A Date with a Woke Criminal Lawyer Taught Me Everything About the Elephant in the Room. Do take the time to go read it now. I love her work so much that I became a paid subscriber at the monthly rate even though funds are tight.

You must read her backed-by-statistics discussion of Muslim Arab violence in Israel, most of it violence against women. Her overall observation that one is called a racist simply for stating facts is important for us all to recognize. We have to stop shrinking from saying what is true simply because we wish it weren’t true and it doesn’t fit the left’s narrative.

If you grew up a liberal or a progressive, you probably want to believe the best of people. You want an open society where cultures blend together to be a beautiful reality (funded by tax dollars.) The product of generations of a high trust society where hard work, individual liberty, religious freedom, and the rule of law are taken for granted, you assume that deep down everyone wants to operate under these same principles and that everyone (except the white Republicans whose homes you have have driven past on your way to a vaca spot somewhere far from the deep blue city in summer) has the best of intentions and deep down wants to be a tolerant, open-minded liberal/progressive like yourself.

My dear progressive/liberal friends: please either wake up or shut up before you kill us all. Or rather, before your terrorist friends jump off of Greta’s flotilla and do it for you. We know you would not pull the trigger of a gun you would not own yourself, but progressives stand aside when all manner of atrocities are committed by their favorite designated oppressed people. From DeCarlos Brown in Charlotte to the rape gangs in Great Britain to honor killings going on in this country, too many so-called nice people are fine with rape and even murder as long as the people committing the crime do it in the name of a religion that isn’t Christianity and have the color of skin that wins them instant approval.

Of course there is nothing wrong with law abiding persons of any faith and any color practicing their religion. As long as they abide by the laws of this country, including laws that protect women from forced marriage, child rape, and mutilation of any kind. Isn’t it kinda crazy that I have to write that in 2026?

Peter Beinart led the way in 1992, with his tacit endorsement of female genital mutilation. Thanks Peter. Leading us to hell for almost 35 years!

It’s enough to turn someone who was previously as blue as a Smurf into a red-blooded American. Red light saber too,.

An old friend of mine from high school posted this on Facebook.

I wasn’t planning to write tonight, as I get ready to go back into work, but this really caught my attention.

There are many things I’m not good at, calculus being among them, but I am very good at showing appreciation for others. So this made me happy.

After what I hope will be a good night’s sleep, I’ll have yet another chance to make kids feel important, smart, seen and heard (if sometimes too loudly!)

And another chance to give support to some people who are really trying, against what seems to be almost impossible odds, to change the world in our little corner of it.

For now, it’s enough.

“The Lonely Heart” was on a Richard Marx tape that I played to death on my Walkman my senior year in high school, 1991-1992. I used to listen to it while I was working through lunch in the calculus teacher’s classroom.

I’m extremely good at all things liberal arts, especially writing, but math is not my strong suit. I struggle, but I can work and do it, especially if someone will teach me. It was said that to get into Yale, you had to take calculus, so even though only maybe five kids per year did at the performing arts high school where I went (Interlochen, of recent Epstein files fame, and no I won’t be wading into that trauma vomit, thanks.) Most kids, even on the academic track, stopped at trig. But I went all the way to calculus because I was going to get into Yale.

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I decided to go to Yale in the eighth grade, in the middle school bathroom, to be exact. I was in there with Katie Hall, who played Anna in our musical of The King and I. It was before school. She said, “Have you thought about where you’re going to college?” I can’t recall if I said I had or not.

“I’m going to Yale,” said Katie Hall.

“I’m going to Yale too,” I said, in much the same way I might agree now that yes, I am Mary Poppins.

And that was that.

My mother researched what it would take. AP classes, AP tests, this much foreign language (I did more). She went to an information session held in Raleigh, NC where we lived and found it all out. Interlochen specialized in sending kids to Curtis and Julliard, but it had a good record of sending kids to the Ivies too. And one of the kids it sent to the Ivies… the only one the year before me… was…

“There’s a boy in this, isn’t there?” says anyone familiar with the story line.

Let’s call him Aaron, which is his middle name. Now a happily married (as far as I know) father and college professor in a town not all that far from me, but we’ve been out of touch since college. The first Jewish boy I ever fell for.

We met the weekend I went to visit Interlochen. Immediately we hit it off. Various disasters ensued while I was at Interlochen, some of them hilarious, but I won’t tell those here. We never ended up dating, but we did become good friends.

Aaron went to Yale. I was determined to follow him.

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I remember making the call on the phone. “I’m thinking of applying to Yale and you know a lot about that school.” That was the message I left. Must have been the summer after my junior year. He invited me to visit him at Yale and though my mom could barely afford it she found the money. I stayed with him and we did theater things because that’s what he did. I didn’t end up doing any theater at Yale - I was a Yale Political Union girl - but that weekend at Yale sleeping on Aaron’s dorm room floor convinced me that Yale was the place for me.

So slog away at calculus I did. I skipped lunch and stayed in my calculus teacher’s room. I worked so hard that even though I deserved a D she gave me a C.

It can be very hard to push through and do what we must do to get what we want. It’s so much easier to not want anything. I’m good at cutting my losses - usually - and it used to seem so much easier to know what was right than it is now.

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I think one can rarely go wrong with hard work. In the eighties it was normal to have a work ethic. Everyone worked hard, or said they did, and loudly. Reagan and Thatcher bragged about how little they slept, and that probably contributed to them getting Alzheimer’s. I wouldn’t advocate for skipping sleep anymore (do not call me after 9 pm) but I do believe in hard work. And I want to model that for any students I have, now and forever.

While I sometimes feel like my younger life was charmed - three times people created jobs for me that did not previously exist, I won campaigns that were considered unwinnable, etc. - when I look back there was almost no luck involved. Everything that seemed like a miracle was the logical result of tons of hard work and making sure I was in the right place at the right time.

So I will continue to work hard. And since there’s only one place I am scheduled to be every weekday for the foreseeable future, I’ll have to pray that’s the right place at the right time.

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The steps are large, steep, marble, and to someone with bad depth perception due to severe farsightedness, dangerous. I am scared of them every day and wait until most of the kids have left to exit s…

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It has often been observed in moderate to conservative circles that a certain age liberals seem to bring up Trump in any conversation, no matter how obviously unrelated.

This happened to me yesterday. I was talking with someone I love very much about my frustrations with the behavior of the kids I teach, and she said, “Look who their role model is,” and went off on a rant against Trump.

I assure you, Trump is not the role model for one single kid in the all-black school in a deep blue city where I teach. Not one. Find me one and I will buy that kid lunch.

It does not surprise me though. Even when I was a liberal, watching MSNBC because I was living with my mom and it was on all the time, I thought there was something off about their obsessive focus on Trump the person, not just the policies. Guaranteed to whip people into a rage-filled frenzy, but unlikely to produce rational action.

Like Trump, hate Trump, or in between, it is not rational to spend day and night hating him with all your emotional energy, even if you are planning a run for President yourself. For an average person who has no power in politics beyond the power of their vote and a campaign contribution or volunteering, it’s truly irrational to be consumed by hatred of Trump to the point where it comes up all the time, in every conversation.

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As I thought about it, I realized that my focus on wanting to help the kids improve everything from their behavior to their ability to read and write had become out of proportion to what I can actually do. When I focus on it too much, I become sad that I didn’t get the job, angry at the ways the kids aren’t achieving what I think they should, and less able to help than I would be if I contemplated hot guys and flowers all day.

Bring to mind an eighth grade girl. She has a crush on a boy. She talks about him constantly. She thinks about him night and day. She goes to school only to catch a quick glimpse of him in the hallway. If he says good morning to her and can remember her name, she passes notes to ten friends within fifteen minutes (I’m talking of the eighties when I was in eighth grade. I will not dignify texting by mentioning what eighth graders do now.) Her focus on whoever the guy is is wildly out of proportion to any effect, positive or negative, he might have on her life. Yet to her, he is Jesus Christ, Anakin Skywalker, and Captain Von Trapp in a cute sweatshirt. (And jeans. Did she mention how cute he is in jeans? Like seriously, never did a boy look so good in jeans. I mean, not since last month’s guy, whose name we can’t quite recall…)

“What the hell?” her exasperated parent, or any sane person, might say. “Get a grip.”

Or, as my good friend who is wise and a mutual friend of many of my readers once said, “Girl, you need to chill with your bad self.”

Note: I was approximately 47 when she said this. I am good with eighth graders because I have never quite left the eighth grade.

The thing about eighth grade girls is that they are supposed to be deranged. It’s a developmental process that has fueled the evolution of our species. It’s neurological, biological, fun and annoying all at once.

Adults become adults in part by growing beyond this sort of thing. They develop the ability to put things in their proper place. Some things are very important, like family, making a living, or a terrorist attack. Others, not so much.

Especially those things we can do very little about.

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The state of the world is important. Cute guys are important. One’s work is important. So is the garden. But when things are beyond our control, excessive focus can destroy our emotional and physical health and make us less able to make a meaningful difference, not more.

The media and our constant plugged in-ness have messed up the wiring of our brains. We are supposed to tune it out, eat a family dinner, pet a cat, change a diaper or whatever it is, and go to bed. We are not supposed to scroll all night, text friends or argue on Facebook or the insta-thingy.

I’ve consciously unplugged myself from social media for the most part lately. I don’t need to get upset about what people I haven’t seen in years write on Facebook. I don’t need to constantly read takes on this or that. I don’t even need to know the news of the day every day - I’m not teaching social studies and unlike many others I keep politics out of my teaching. I actually do not believe the public schools should take sides in elections, especially if the side they take are contrary to their own interests, but I digress…

I find I am better able to handle the constant shocks to my nervous system of kids yelling out the n word fifty or more times a day and fighting or screaming at each other if I do not have conflict that does not involve me in my head. (For y’all white folks, a certain demographic of black people use the n word but without the hard r at the end as a colloquial way of saying “man” or “person.”)

Unplugging has helped me reconnect with my cat, myself, and my nervous system. It’s been under so much stress that it made me sick. I’ve been working anyway but I am much better when I’m not feeling like I’m going to throw up half the time.

Obsessive focus makes us less able to read our own biological signals. Have you ever eaten mindlessly while scrolling or watching TV?

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Watching the kids be unable to stop looking at their phones or close their laptops has brought home to me how truly evil it is to let this technology into our schools unfettered. It has also made me realize that it is better to apply the lesson to my own life than to worry so much about the kids.

At such a time as someone asks me, I will tell them that the worst thing there is for these kids is having their phones on them and access to the internet at all times. That I want to work in a phone-free school and politics be damned, if we need a new Vader to bring it about, I’m with him. But I notice…

No one asks me anything. The Democrats do not ask my advice, no one is asking me how to run a school or a district, and at the moment, I am paid to solve problems, not remark upon them.

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The one thing that obsessive focus on something one can not control does provide is relief from working on anything concrete that one can do to improve one’s own situation. No doubt that is why it’s so attractive.

Instead of losing weight, rant about Trump. Instead of applying to phone free schools or even writing good articles or drafting the book proposal, talk to people who already agree about how the phones are evil.

At least crushes are fun! While too much focus is bad, I’ve done amazing things under the influence of a crush or even love… lost forty pounds, organized thousands of workers, gotten a masters, changed careers, written a novel, written five plays and produced them, changed careers again, cleaned the shower, published hundreds of articles, oh so many things… good things. More good than bad.

So I’ll choose unplugging, real life, cute guys, faith, cats, tarantulas, flowers and golden retrievers over rants and raves and rage.

But if anyone wants to text me to remind me… feel free. About 7:45 am would be ideal, and then again around eleven, with a follow up at four. You can just write, to quote our dear friend whom we are not allowed to name:

“Girl, you need to chill with your bad self.”

.

I haven’t written much on the Zionist front lately, not because I care any less but a) lots of people write more insightful things than I could b) I’m had my mind focused on the city where I live. But that doesn’t mean that I support my Israeli and Jewish family worldwide any less.

I fear for my Jewish friends. Sometimes for myself though no one has come after met yet. I’m pretty insignificant and I’m good with that.

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Since I look about at Jewish as our friend the tarantula, people say things around me that I wish they would not. I was chatting with an acquaintance the other day and mentioned that I make an Israeli salad. In this neighborhood, it’s just assumed that most people, especially the young, think they hate Israel. She expressed shock that I would make something Israeli. I just said what I always say, “ I have more friends in Israel than around here.”

I try to challenge people on their Jew hatred comments in a way that might get them to think. Maybe this is just not possible but I try to believe the good. Most Israelis criticize the Israeli government… and they all have families and eat salad and are real people. My Jewish friends worldwide have been so incredibly kind, including listening to me cry on the phone when I’m having a tough time. Thank you. You know who you are.

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And thank you all for putting up with a blog that is becoming about large fuzzy spiders.

Many of my subscribers were boyfriends ages ago or not so many ages ago. We were nineteen, or thirty-five, or whenever. If I loved you then, why wouldn’t I love you now?

My exes for the most part turned out to be wonderful husbands and fathers. Even if they claim to be liberal, and many thank heaven do not, they live conservative values. As I get older and start to come out I realize I was always one of them.

Now of course I do have thoughts about what would have happened if… there’s one both my mom and I think I should have married. And it’s not the one you think. Unless you are that one in which case you can probably guess.

If I were my friend Jill’s age, my life would have been different. I think that if I had come of age twenty years later, I’d have been a conservative from the start.

Years and years ago, I was in a terrible fight with my old boss who was like a father to me. I was distraught over it. My mom, who is full of wisdom, said, “Life is long.”

She was right. Life is long. We get over things. My old boss and I are friends, we call each other on our birthday’s.

I remind myself that every time I’ve gotten my heartbroken God has opened a new door.

Matchbox Twenty says, in the song whose title makes my title today:

All of the wasted days… the memory of your face.

It won’t be the first heart you break. You won’t be the last beautiful girl.

For thirty years I’ve been saying, “The next time I get my heart broken I’m flying to Tel Aviv.”

This is not the greatest time to fly to Tel Aviv. So I might have to wait a bit to ask Gadi out for coffee in Tel Aviv and ask Ari… Ari… to show me the sights of Jerusalem.

But this too shall pass.

Next year in Jerusalem. Maybe I mean it. Maybe next year I will go to Jerusalem. Passover with Ari… something worth living for.

The spring is coming and the flowers are out. I can have the windows open for the kitty to smell the spring air. I worry about my kids. We almost got shot on Thursday. It took a bit for the reality to hit me, but it did. We all came very close to dead that day.

Life is precious. I can not bring Morgan back, or any of the family members who my children wear in angel wing necklaces. But I can live mine, and I can do all I can to give these sweet (and annoying!) babies who are taller than I am a life that they deserve.

Sunny loved that pond. You can tell how old she was then. She was nearing the end. She lived her live up to almost eighteen, never a day on a leash or caged. Free and happy to the end.

But it doesn’t work that way a lot of the time.

I was very sad that I didn’t get the job I applied for, but I kept my super happy face on for days on end. In many ways it is a relief to no longer feel like I’m auditioning every day at work, and no matter what, the kids will always get my best.

But things have improved. I got signed up as a long term for the assignment I was actually doing long term, which means a small but significant jump in pay and some other wonderful things like my own key to the first floor bathroom! I was so happy to get that bathroom key that I think the school secretary was a little concerned, but really, it is awful to have to ask for the bathroom key every single day when you go to work at the place you go to every single day. I realize it’s not being a hostage in Gaza, but it’s annoying, so I am excruciatingly grateful for my bathroom key.

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I’m actually getting to do the lesson planning and grading for a class Tuesday and Thursday (four classes each day) and the rest of the time subbing. That’s fine for now. I have more security than I had, and I have an actual role. Of course I still don’t get paid on days we aren’t there and I have no health or retirement benefits, but I will get all that for next year… somewhere.

I asked to still be considered for positions that come open for which I might be qualified, like 7-8 grade English. The job I applied for was a very non-traditional teaching job, and I suspect I’d be much happier as a middle school English teacher anyhow. Who do you know whose dream in life it is to teach 7th and 8th graders? We are an odd bunch, middle school teachers. I do like the ninth and tenth graders too and the big kids I always address as “Hey, almost grown folks!” but there’s something special about seventh and eighth. It’s so pivotal. If you really want to make an impact, there is the chance.

Clearly the problem was not me, and I get to stay with all my friends and the kids who’ve gotten used to me, so that’s fine. For now. I also think it’s for the best that I get some time to really consider what I want. I’ll apply to a lot of schools and districts. I know I loved teaching my SAT prep kids, and while jobs in those districts may be harder to get, it can’t hurt to try.

Teaching urban kids has one set of problems, teaching suburban kids has another. Everything in life is a trade off. But not having a regular income and benefits has a set of problems I am quite tired of. As my subscribers who came over from our friend Steve’s blog Navigating the Drift may know, it’s actually awful. There is nothing glamorous about gig work or being economically insecure. The anxiety of lying awake at night trying to make the numbers add up between uncertain income and certain bills plus unexpected expenses makes you sick, either quickly or slowly. I’m not interested in one more year of uncertainty. I don’t care if the work is “God’s work” or the Devil’s work, if it doesn’t pay a full time salary with healthcare and retirement benefits, after late August this year, I am not doing it.

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Still, things are looking up. No reason to take anything personally in life but certainly not the fact that I didn’t get the job I applied for. The teachers who saw me staying late yesterday were so happy to hear that I had a long term. “You’re part of the team for real!” one said. Well, almost. But it’s improvement. Incremental improvement.

Better is better.

One of my best friends thinks I just need a boyfriend. Maybe the fellow pictured above will ask me out. Seems like as good a prospect. Handsome, can obviously provide, and would certainly scare creepy dudes away from hitting on me !

“And a tarantula?” I asked.

“No tarantula, please,” they said.

“You don’t think tarantula yoga would be nice? It could be so calming to have tarantulas crawl on us during posts.”

They rapidly changed the topic to their new seven month old puppy.

Apparently tarantula yoga is not everyone’s idea of a restorative practice.

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I’ve been telling the students that I want to start a business training therapy tarantulas to be emotional support animals. This makes more sense in context than out of, but I have to limit what I write about. Anyway, the kids, for the most part, do not think they would want an Emotional Support Tarantula.

It is kinda cute to think of a tarantula wearing an emotional support animal vest. To the extent that tarantulas wear vests.

Arachnophobia is such a common phobia as to have its own name. It is quite socially acceptable to be afraid of spiders, and even to kill those who do no harm and in fact do good. For instance, Daddy Longlegs are very beneficial spiders who consume pests. Yet some people kill them, even using toxic sprays that harm everything and everyone else, because they hate spiders.

Sometimes a fear, or a hatred, or a combination thereof, makes people do things that are not in their own best interest and even irrational. That is when one might label it a derangement syndrome.

In a post I was reading by a teacher who keeps 210 tarantulas I learned that tarantula keeping can become addictive. He says that friends who have started with just one tarantula soon find they have a dozen and more. He also mentioned that he knows people who say very mean things about tarantulas:

Others may have negative reactions to them

Recently my wife, who’s quite involved with the hobby, posted pictures of some molts on her Facebook page. After explaining that we kept tarantulas as pets, one of her “friends” thought that it was appropriate to brag about how many tarantulas she had killed in her life. Sadly, those who keep spiders are used to hearing comments like, “I would smash it,” “Kill it,” and “Burn that thing” whenever they try to show off their beloved pets. I’ve had people tell me that they wouldn’t visit my home because they found out that I kept spiders.

The fact is, arachnophobia is one of the top phobias in the word, and with fear comes revulsion. Instead of respecting these creatures and understanding that they are very beneficial, many folks loathe them. Those who want to share their love of tarantulas with friends may discover that they are met with a very hostile audience. Worse still, people living with roommates or family members may experience resistance when asking to bring a pet spider into the home. Personally speaking, I was absolutely forbidden from keeping any tarantulas when I lived at home because my mother was arachnophobic. Others have also been given the hard pass by roommates and significant others. If you ARE in a living situation that involves others, it’s important that you address any potential issues sooner than later.

I am very pleased to see that my principal (well, I suppose he’s not mine yet as I’m just a sub, but he’s my principal in the sense that Daenerys was “My Queen” to a great many long before she won the Iron Throne) is not one of those people who is close-minded about tarantulas. Charlotte is quite unobtrusive and most of the kids in the school don’t even know she’s there, but I’m sure her dad had to ask permission to keep her in the school. Maybe she pre-dates Mr. M though… or his tenure as principal. I’m sure this is information I could find out, as people are more than happy to tell subs most anything at the slightest provocation. It’s one of the most fun parts of the job, like being an undercover agent with no mission and no boss.

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While I am not surprised if the children have some unpleasant reactions to the concept of a tarantula, I think it is a mark of good character when an adult is willing to co-exist with a giant furry spider (appropriately housed, of course. I’m not saying you have to sleep with one, in fact, I think that would be suboptimal for all involved.) Irrational hatred for a furry creature who is simply doing what God designed him or her to do is… well, irrational, and mean. I do not care for people who would harm a tarantula that posed no threat to them. And while I would not wish to socialize with an Old World one that is known for being very defensive and unfriendly, I’d still be happy to work in a room with them if they were in their terrarium.

Not long ago I was asked about situations in which I become defensive. I’m really glad I didn’t know about how defensive Old World tarantulas can back then. I fear the middle school teacher side of my personality might have said, “Oh you know, when I’m feeling like and Old World Tarantula. Then I bite when all you’re trying to do is change my water dish.” No, Ms. Smith, some days you have to speak to the adults as though they are adults. Keep practicing, you’ll get the hang of it!

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Hating tarantulas is another TDS: Tarantula Derangement Syndrome.

There is no need to get upset about a tarantula. Tarantulas are fundamentally good creatures who eat pesky critters such as roaches and keep the environment clean. They are easy and inexpensive pets and can help cure arachnophobia!

How can you not love a furry little eight legged critter who is the embodiment of peace, love, and intermittent fasting?

I think that pastel hair looks really good on these creatures:

Doesn’t this guy make you want to get pink highlights again? Okay, they look better on a tarantula than they did on me!

This was about a decade ago when I had just quit my job to become a freelance writer and I thought pink highlights were cool. Now pastel hair is the norm around here and I’m unusual because my hair is a natural looking red.

This one makes me want to say, “Hi sweetie! Of course I have stickers!”

Sending love to all those who are cool with tarantulas. We see you. We wave at you with one of our eight legs.

I thought for a moment.

“I usually don’t bring religion or politics into school, but you asked. It is likely that there is Jewish on my father’s side, but I was raised Christian. Why do you ask, dear?”
I always address the children as “dear” or some such, also as sir for the boys. I affect my best Mary Poppins accent. Sometimes when they come running and ask if I have stickers I say, “Of course I do sweetie, the seventh graders would rip me from limb to limb if I didn’t, now wouldn’t they, and we can’t have that!” in an exaggerated slightly British accent. I’m developing this character as I go.

She said, “Because you dress very modestly.”

Well, that is true.

My school outfits are long sleeved shirts, below the knee skirts, leggings on the cold days, black or cat socks (can you wear cat socks on your job?) and teacher shoes. Obviously not picked out to be seductive. I’m going for professional and comfortable. It’s a long and uncertain day, and I walk to and from the school as well as up and down many flights carrying heavy bags and now all my own worksheets and copies.

If my fashion says anything, it’s “I can’t afford new clothes.” I’d love to get some more fashionable things to wear, but with uncertain employment and only one full week of shifts since winter break, I simply can’t afford anything unnecessary. So I make it on the clothes that I have and I am grateful. I am able to wear clean clothes and greet the students in something appropriate, even if it doesn’t exactly show me off. I am not the point. They are.

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I’m glad that my students see me dressing modestly. They know that I’m not Muslim because I don’t cover my hair, but I do dress a bit like an Orthodox Jewish woman. I show my collarbone and I don’t plan to stop, but I’m usually covered other than that. I’ll lighten up perhaps as it gets warmer.

As I’ve gotten older I’ve had time to consider the messages we send with our clothing. Women in this country in large part have choices about what messages we send. I always picked more conservative, feminine clothing, but when I was young there was no shortage of slut shaming for me.

“Your skirt is slit up! You’re trying to attract men!”

“You grow your hair long to attract men!”

“You do your nails to attract men!”

Long before the backlash against wacko feminists, I was brutally bullied by a group of harpies in Burlington, Vermont. I was 27, running the largest organizing campaign ever to be won in Vermont and the largest campaign to be won that year in the country. Done at 27. Organizing Director of my own union in PA the next year, and for a decade. I can understand those who have come to power young.

Ah, the slut shaming. Too thin, too pretty, too something. Too curvy, too open about liking men, whatever. Perhaps the seeds of my conservatism were sown then when the guy I was dating, former and later Chief of Staff to Bernie Sanders, abandoned me to deal with the harpies and went on vacation without me. Feminists who claimed that any interest in men was suspect.

I came home from that experience a tremendous professional success, but personally shattered. My experience with my union had its own problems, but brought me back. I was the leader of the nurses for a decade, and completely united in purpose with my Executive Director in a way I’ve missed since we both left.

We are still good friends. One of the things of which I am most proud is that I’ve remained close with almost everyone who has ever been close to me in my life. If I loved you once, why would I not love you now?

The feeling of co-creation… I was not exaggerating when I said when I’m in, I’m all in. If I’m in, I’m in. I am always thinking about the mission.

I’m older now and I have learned, perhaps the hard way, the value of putting limits on how much you allow your job to be your life. My dad called me a “Workaholic” during those years. My work was my whole world. My social life, my best friend, my everything. That’s not sustainable. We all need healthy relationships with family and friends outside of our paid job.

But that highly driven madness still peeks its little head out. And thinks that it might, just might, be able to find a way to be useful in a new world.

I’ve always felt most comfortable with my Jewish friends. We share a bond that I can’t describe. The Israeli I fell in love with is the one who thinks there is a genetic explanation for it, and that I am really Jewish, but to me it’s not about blood. It’s about brain and heart. You can teach skills - you can’t teach heart. My heart is Jewish and Christian, just as my skin is Celtic and burns easily.

My heart breaks less easily than it used to. But it still does break.

That driven madness to do what others say is impossible… that fire behind the eyes. Do you recognize it sometimes?

It’s why I’ve led workers in organizing campaigns and on strike. It’s how I held myself together through things that most people can’t imagine.

It’s also why I do zen meditation and commune with a therapy tarantula. Never overestimate your emotional strength. Refuel as necessary.

But I miss it. I want so badly to be all in.

But when I walked by his office, which actually houses half or more of the leadership team in one office, this morning before eight, there she was. She looked so sleepy under his desk.

“She’s back!” I exclaimed. “I was wondering where she was!”

He says she comes in two days a week and that she had been keeping a low profile. She looked like she was wanting a nap, which frankly I was too. But I don’t get paid to cuddle the principal’s dog and she has a job to do too, so apparently we both went about our own set of duties.

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She’s small for a golden. He confirmed that she’s half the size of Sunny. Tiny one, he could probably pick her up and carry her. Maybe 40 pounds. Darker red than Sunny, like a touch of Irish setter in there. Goldens have that sometimes though. Sunny looked a bit like a golden lab.

I love therapy dogs, but Charlotte is my Therapy Tarantula. She is just the embodiment of calm. As she watches the kids from the side of her terrarium, she has everything I want. She gets to live at the school I love so much I hate to leave it. She gets her meals regularly (a few crickets every two weeks for her, I prefer different fare but to each their own) and she never has to worry about her place to stay. I have to make the rent, work, figure out how to pay the bills, and worry about lots of things. She has a regular job. I don’t know when I’ll see her next most of the time.

It turns out that tarantulas are not hiring, so I do not think that my next job will be as a school tarantula. But I do love seeing her.

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One of the full time teachers today told me that she said in a meeting, “We have only one sub who can handle these kids and actually leaves us notes.” I keep being surprised that the others don’t even do their jobs by leaving proper notes.

One of my favorite APs said he was so happy that he got to see me many times today. He’s been like a guardian angel to me… if it weren’t for him I might not have been brave enough to apply. I was running up and down stairs so much, meanwhile the principal, who also seems to be everywhere all the time, was constantly running up and down similar stairs and we kept running into each other. As a trained stage manager and director, I am beginning to feel like this has the complicated stage directions of a ballet written and produced by Oscar Wilde. Like Coppelia mixed with Lady Windermere’s Fan.

All of this would be funny if it were happening to someone else.

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The kids are so sweet… much of the time! I’m part of the scenery now. It’s so nice how they are happy to see me even now that I’m doing some grading and such. Everyone can see how much I care about them.

“Off to see the little ones, who are taller than I am,” I say to the Dean when I head to the middle school floor. Then when I’m on the senior floor I say, “Hello, almost grown folks!”

It’s hard to feel like I finally know what I want, and not know what is going to happen.

But we never really do know what is going to happen, even when we think we do.

I never would have seen the twists and turns in my life that even made it possible for me to be a teacher.

So I can’t see the next twist.

As I read the biography of Justice Brandeis that the rabbi I was studying with suggested I read, and that my old friend kindly sent me, I remind myself that we never know what twists and turns will bring us to the next step.

I will try to trust in God. The G-d of Israel, the G-d of the Whirlwind of Job. The God of Cats and Tarantulas.

The God of Stickers who has blessed me with the ability to bring a bit of joy into these children’s world.

And maybe to some of their teachers and administrators too.

Hey, at least I show up.

Sunny dog, may she rest in peaceful grasses. She lived to be almost 18, on 44 acres of Christmas trees her whole life. Bless you, sweet cousin and hiking partner. Someday we will meet again at the algae covered pond in heaven.

On Friday, after a particularly busy class of kids who I know and who are coming a long way but who still require a whole lot of managing, I had a particularly quiet class in the room where Charlotte Tarantula lives.

The kids were as quiet as a tarantula, which is a rarity in urban subbing, and while it would get boring if it were all day, it was lovely for that class period.

Since they were already set with what they had to do (one thing about my favorite charters that really stands out if you’ve subbed in the regular district is that the teachers all have lessons in the Google Classroom or equivalent, so you almost never walk into a situation where there is no work prepared for the kids, and if for some reason there isn’t, an administrator will copy off something for the kids to work on. Education continues on days when a teacher is ill or whatever.) I got to spend some time communing with Charlotte.

“You’re so pretty,” I said to her as she chilled in her terrarium. Tarantulas are masters of chilling. They basically do that all the time if they aren’t eating.

On my way out I saw her human dad, Dr. P. Or is it Mr. P? I’m not quite sure but it’s always safer to award people a doctorate they do not have than to call someone with a PhD something other than Dr.

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“I got to chat with Charlotte!” I said. “She’s so lovely. Doesn’t say much but she’s a great listener!”

He said that he had to get her some crickets this weekend. I asked if he raises or buys them. He replied that he buys them because she doesn’t eat that many. She eats only about once every two weeks.

Can you imagine if we ate only once every two weeks?

So much of human society is structured around eating rituals that it’s quite hard to imagine eating only every two weeks. My ex, who is also one of my two closest friends, and I discussed it this morning.

He thought we would all have different eating schedules so we would not eat socially. But I suggested that it might be like a biweekly Shabbat dinner, where families and friends gathered for the event that would be meal time.

How do you think we would eat if we only ate every two weeks?

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Did you know that there is a difference between Old World Tarantulas and New World Tarantulas? Old Worlds are faster and much more defensive. New Worlds, from the Americas, are much more friendly and docile. One of my students told me about this and I just found this video explaining it.

I do love tarantulas. I was thinking that if I become a full time teacher I might seek permission to have a tarantula at school, but I think I would get too worried about him or her and not be able to sleep at night wondering if my tarantula was lonely. I get very, very attached, to put it mildly.

If you ask Google about tarantulas eating Shabbat dinner, here is what you get:

Based on the search results, there is no direct connection between “tarantulas eating shabbat dinner” (a Friday night Jewish ritual meal) and the search data provided.

The search results show two separate topics:

• Tarantulas eating: Videos and descriptions of pet tarantulas (like Pelinobius muticus or Mexican Red Knees) feeding on crickets, mealworms, or cockroaches, described as “dinner” or “midnight snacks”.

• Shabbat/Kosher dietary laws: Information regarding Jewish law, specifically that “creepy-crawlies” are not kosher and that religious Jews carefully check vegetables for insects to remove them.

In short: Tarantulas eat insects (not Shabbat dinner), and Jewish law forbids eating tarantulas.

Isn’t it wonderful that these days we have AI to tell us that tarantulas do not eat Shabbat dinner?

But perhaps some Jewish families might feed their tarantulas on the Shabbat, so in fact the tarantula would be eating Shabbat dinner.

With all the horror in the world, all my anxiety about life and the future, and the fact that it’s cold again after precisely two nice days, I think it’s delightful to think of a family celebrating the Shabbat with their tarantula.

Are you raising your tarantula Jewish?

I wrote what I wrote, published a lot, did what I could.

I Stand With My Jewish Friends

Support Peaceful Free Expression, Stand Up to the Angry Mob

Israel Under Attack

Israel Is Not An Abstraction to Me

and some more.

I kept checking on people, but eventually everyone needed to go on with their lives, to the extent possible. I made more friends in Israel and my mind stayed there. I once almost ran into a telephone pole because I was texting Ari in Jerusalem.

Most of my blog friends are from that time - we read the FP, Eve, Jill, each other. But most of my in person contacts are not Jewish, and no one ever mentions things like the attacks on synagogues and Jewish schools in just the last few days.

Some of my colleagues are visibly Jewish or very likely. A large percentage of our students are Muslim, not Arab Muslim but black Americans who are Muslim now. The schools make arrangements for the kids to pray during Ramadan and to be somewhere other than the cafeteria during meals if they are fasting. As well they should: I’m all for making it possible for people to practice their religion. Many kids wear Muslim garb. The girls describe it as “All garbed up.”

Some of the students and staff are Christian. The crossing guard always wishes me a blessed day, which is very important because most of my day being blessed means not getting hit by a car! She’s so nice.

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I don’t believe in bringing religion or politics into school, to the extent that it is avoidable, and I wear no religious symbols except my black cat necklace. They probably don’t realize that I worship the cat goddess Bastet.

But since the attack in Michigan, I’ve been thinking a lot about how my fellow teachers and the administrators at my school are hanging in there. If they were my friends I’d say something but I’m just a sub… I try to do my job, be supportive, and not throw myself on the ground crying, “Please keep me!” I am not a stray cat, I remind myself. I do have a home. It would be untoward to wait on the stairs outside every morning meowing to be let in.

As a teacher, you think a lot about school shootings. I’ve never had a formal training in what we are supposed to do, though I imagine the full time staff have. I’ve thought about it though, and I’ve had trainings in other contexts. They say: Run, Hide, Fight. I’d want the kids to run and hide. But I know my children. The instinct to fight is so strong with the children of the hood that they would fight.

My kids have come out of a place that is torn by violence, especially gun violence, and crime. What does not look like an adaptive response actually is: they fight easily and posture as people who will fight. More at one school than at my favorite… there is a different vibe. How I’d love to really talk about it some day, compare notes, tell all the things I know as a de facto undercover agent for years to someone who is making a difference…

The kids fight to protect their siblings first and foremost. Their honor, second. Of course their women. This is why it makes sense that the girls are drawn to the boys who might look like the worst prospects but who have the ability to defend them out in the real world… for now.

I didn’t think that the instinct to protect the kids would come back. But I remember the day that Mr. G at my second favorite school said to me, “It’s my favorite person to see on the schedule!” and I thought, “You’re going to drag me back in, aren’t you?”

So I think about it. They’re our kids now. Mine too. I bet I’m the only sub who gets stopped by kids on the way home. They ask for stickers and wish me a good weekend. “Get home safe” I say. Get home safe, my little babies who are a foot taller than I am!

I wonder if my colleagues are watching what’s happening. I’m sure that some are. I wish I could say, “I hope you’re okay, how is your family, I’m here,” but I can’t.

So I just show up, stickers blazing, and smile.

I asked the kids what kind of stickers they want next week. I get them cheap on Amazon, order when I get paid on Fridays.

Hearts and basketballs and footballs. So glitter hearts and basketballs and footballs will be delivered tomorrow.

I’m going to cover that place in hearts.

I had some of my favorite eighth graders on Friday at the end of the day. I love watching them grow up. They’re becoming young men and women. Eighth grade drama is such fun… this one talking to that one, this one saying, “I’m not ready for a relationship.” I was in eighth grade once, I tell them. Some days I’m not sure I’m not!

Perhaps I have officially graduated to the eighth grade.

With one of our sweeties at the shelter this week. This guy was found trying to get into a house. He has a purr that you can hear across the room… he was obviously someone’s cat and abandoned. He must find a home soon. So must I.

[Caveat: as my daughter is a cat, that would be weird. So I’m using a more general “our."]

I’ve often written about how one of the joys of teaching in good charters that serve the toughest neighborhoods and do it well is watching the male teachers and administrators model proper adult male behavior. You actually want a principal or an assistant principal to be calm, kind, and in control of the situation. Watching the men I interact with professionally in their roles supporting teachers and students makes me feel sorry for all those man-bashing people who want to beat every instinct out of boys that makes them, when raised properly, turn into the kind of men who can actually care for and protect our human tribe.

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It’s the tiniest of little things, the things you might not notice if you weren’t the kind of person who notices everything.

I walked into my favorite school this morning, happy to be back. Even though I love the other one, my favorite feels like my home. I miss the kids when I’m not there. I’m afraid they’ll develop a form of scurvy from sticker deficiency.

I was wearing a long printed skirt that I love to wear in summer. It’s a floral hippie skirt that could also be worn by one of those beautiful modern Orthodox women in Israel. I still had shoes on for walking around and being on my feet all day, but I was not dressed for PE.

And for the first time, I was subbing PE.

Okay. What’s the first rule of improv comedy and substitute teaching? Whatever happens, go with it!

“Good morning Mr. M!” I said to the principal as I headed to the gym.

“I’ve been waiting for you, Ms. Smith,” he said. He always greets me by my name. Same with the other teachers. He makes everyone feel seen and respected. Honestly, I get more respect on this job than I did at jobs where I made four times as much money.

He had made a change to the location of my classes, so that we would do health work as assigned by the teacher in classrooms, not in the gym.

“That’s great. I’ve been hit by a basketball.”

“And that’s far from the worst thing that has happened when there was a sub in PE,” he said. I’d love to hear his stories. Maybe sometime I will.

He filled in my schedule and brought me the rosters (not roosters!) a few minutes later. He started to highlight the names of kids who could take attendance for me, but I told him that I like to call the names myself so that I can learn all of their names.

Think about that for a minute, especially those of you who have taught. The principal is in the hall, greeting the kids and teachers in the morning first thing. He takes the time and care to arrange a whole day, moving people around, so that the sub and the kids are safest when the PE teacher is out. He comes to the room himself instead of sending someone else and annotates the list. And he gets why I want to know all the kids’ names. Because I want to be real. I want so much to be real that sometimes I almost cry. But I wait till I get home to cry.

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Over the course of the day, various staff check in. The deans are in the hall, kindly and lovingly reminding the kids to get to class! No one is wandering. No one is lost. The sweet children see me looking for a room and ask if they can help. The truth is I know the place even better than the teachers because I go to so many rooms, but it’s so nice to see the kids extend that spirit of helpfulness. They see that modeled by the adults and they pick up on it.

When you teach in an urban district you can lose all hope. I did, once. I had given up, until I found just these three schools. Maybe there are more in the same system but I’m loyal to mine.

Black men, white men, Jewish men, Hispanic men, Asian men, all showing young boys how it is that men should behave. Respect for women. Respect for teachers and education. Let the lady walk ahead first. The young men students hold the door for me, without fail. They are more polite than a large percentage of men I’ve been on dates with (subscribers not a part of that - all my exes were perfect gentlemen and I trust still are!)

Making eye contact. Treating everyone like they really, really matter. On Friday afternoon after the snow storm, when I knew Mr. M was tired because I’d heard him mention that his child had been sick at home the whole storm to another teacher in the teachers’ lounge, I saw him patiently helping a kid open their locker. That means the world to that child. In a community where there is chaos, crime and instability, the principal helps you get your locker open. You matter. Imagine the other scenario, where no one cared that the student couldn’t get their things. Imagine what it felt like to be a student who was ignored when they had needs. The whole course of that child’s life could be changed by Mr. M. hanging out on the school floor fiddling with a combination lock.

They aren’t easy on the kids. They are tough in a way that men can be and need to be, especially with each other. Growing boys need men to discipline them. This is just a fact and if my liberal friends want to freak out, have at, just go pull a few shifts subbing where I work and come back to tell me how you feel.

No matter what happens, I’ve been blessed to be a part of this. I don’t want to leave… today I could say to the beautiful and amazing AP Ms. M. that yes, I’ll see her tomorrow, because I’m on the schedule. I want to say that every day.

If I get a full time job I won’t be able to write about it much, as I have to avoid being identifiable. But you get the idea. There is hope. Order can be returned to the galaxy. There is light. It isn’t in people screaming in the streets. It isn’t protests. It’s in the way we can choose to educate our children. It’s the small gestures that build community, belonging, purpose and love.

Charlotte the Tarantula is doing well. She loves it there too.

One of our newest paid subscribers (thank you! It really does help!) suggested that since I have a background in the labor movement, I should write some reminders about what unions do and why they are important. Here you go!

When I was an organizer of nurses for about five hundred years (closer to twenty but it felt like five hundred), nurses would commonly say, “I’m not really a union person.” That’s code for, “I’m not working class,” and in Philly, it’s also code for “I’m not black.” Here, hospital service workers (nurses’ aides, transporters, environmental services, etc.) were long organized into a union called 1199, but the nurses were, for the most part, not. So we were pushing a big boulder of race and class identity up the hill every time we organized a hospital.

My answer to that statement, made by thousands of nurses over the years, was:

I’m not really a union person either. I didn’t even know what a union was until I joined one to put myself through college at Yale.

That’s code for, “I’m just as well educated as you are, in fact better, and I can help you improve the unpleasant situation in which you currently find yourself.”

Well, that’s almost what it’s code for.

It was essential to slap down that idea that the nurses’ education or professionalism made them too good to join a union. When their wages stagnated, their retirement was slashed, their health care costs went up, and the number of patients they were expected to care for shot up to the level of truly dangerous (stats on your chances of dying in the bed after a routine surgery going up with every patient your nurse has over six are real), they called the union.

So there I was. Day after day after night after night in every diner, McDonald’s, and even a lot of people’s homes (so nice to have house meetings, it’s where I was introduced to Party Lite candles and Bath and Body Works hands soap, years ago), educating about how workers, even professionals (you have to slightly hold your nose as you say that to get just the right affect) could come together and organize to have a say in their work lives.

So to say I am pro-union is correct. Unlike a lot of people to whom the phrase is now applied, unions really did build this country. By setting a point in wages that other employers could not fall far below without losing workers, union workers raised everyone’s wages. Unions brought you the weekend, the forty hour work week, child labor laws, retirement for normal people, even public education which was largely created as a way to get children out of the factories, something it remains relatively good at to this day.

But wait: the forty hour work week is mostly a myth now, lots of people don’t get weekends or are desperately picking up shifts and gigs on the weekends to make ends meet, there is still child slavery, and old fashioned pensions have gone the way of men wearing top hats.

So what is up with the unions?

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As an organizer, I used to point to the fact that I was born just six years before Reagan took office, with his aim of destroying the labor movement, so I was joining the movement to witness the decline. But the decline started way before then, when the Communists (who were good at some things, like organizing) were run out and the forces of nepotism took control of way too many unions. Jobs went South and then to Mexico and China, immigrants who were way too scared to join unions took residential construction jobs with no penalty whatsoever to the Americans hiring them, and so on.

But mostly, I think, Americans got very comfortable.

They really thought that things would be just fine if they showed up, did their jobs, and went home. They forgot how hard won the idea that workers should have rights at all was. They lost the will to fight.

I get it. I didn’t get it when I was younger, but I get it now. Life if hard. If things are basically okay, if you can pay your bills without selling your children or prostituting yourself on the street, it is hard to find the energy to do much other than work and take care of your family. Most people don’t want struggle - in fact, it’s sorta messed up that some people do. There is a reason why “deranged” and “unhinged” are such common words on Substack these days.

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The attack on the labor movement was relatively subtle. The National Labor Relations Act, which set down ground rules by which workers could organize and bargain with their employer, was meant to create labor peace, and for a long time it did. But bosses decided to just ignore it at a certain point. They started hiring anti-union consultants who would do everything within and outside the law to prevent workers from organizing. My young life, age 21 - 38, was filled with fighting these high-priced, truly nefarious consultants. They lie (that’s legal), use incredible psychological intimidation tactics, and make great opponents for people who are hyper sensitive to any change in the environment. My natural anxiety (which is infinitely better now, with age and careful lifestyle), was perfect for leading organizing campaigns because every small change in a workers’ behavior really did mean that management’s campaign had gotten to them.

[Side note: just realized this: that extreme sensitivity, with the anxiety removed, is also very good for teaching. I know when something is up with a kid. A child who is normally annoying suddenly starts being quiet: something may be very wrong. A child who is usually happy is suddenly cursing and being argumentative: same. Everything matters.]

I won’t go into too long a story about my twenty years of organizing. It’s too complicated to explain to an outsider, and hard to believe if you weren’t actually watching it happen. It can be summed up in this common dialogue with a worker:

Boss does something bad, like slashes retirement.

Worker: Can they do that?
Organizer: They just did.

I organized professionals, so I had to look more professional than the boss. I wore suits, or at least skirts and jackets, and heels, almost every day. I was paid very little at first, so I haunted the Ann Taylor factory outlet and Payless shoes. I can’t believe I walked on those cheap heels for so long. My feet paid the price. Could have been worse, I guess. I wasn’t a ballerina!

The union I gave a decade of my life to as Director of Organizing was truly good, in fact, quite amazing. We were a start up of sorts: a group of nurses in Pennsylvania had left two international unions where their interests were not being represented and founded their own independent union. They recruited our Executive Director, with whom I’d worked in my first union job, and he recruited me. Over the years I ran many campaigns, organizing and contract campaigns, and helped lead quite a few strikes. It gives you a different perspective on what pressure is.

Unions existed to give workers a voice on the job, some protection from unfair and at times evil behavior on the part of employers, and for quite a while unions made an American middle class lifestyle possible. Some were better than others, to put it quite mildly.

My reader asked me to address why unions are still important.

I strongly believe that they are. Without at least the threat that workers will organize, employers have less incentive to pay fairly and provide any benefits at all. The middle class will likely continue to wither away as unions lose more and more power.

Will the labor movement make a resurgence?

I doubt it. To paraphrase a good friend of mine who is still in the movement, over time the infrastructure of the major unions has lost so much in the way of resources that there isn’t a long standing, multi-generational cadre of dedicated organizers who can do the hard work of helping workers fight for the right to organize and for good contracts. Workers do not do this on their own. Nurses know how to provide nursing care, not how to organize a union or negotiate a contract, and so on for every profession and trade. There must be a deep bench of very strange people who really do give their lives to the movement to make it successful. That has been eroded over time, and a bunch of young people who want to organize their local Starbucks aren’t going to replace it.

The kind of people who are attracted to the idea of unions are, as a rule, the worst people at organizing them. You know the kid who has a problem with authority, complains about everything, and smokes weed on break? No one follows him. Workers only organize when the good workers, the respected ones, get so fed up that they decide to organize. If the best nurses in the hospital are not for the union, you have no campaign.

The gig economy makes it very difficult to organize, just as a structural matter. Labor laws were made to regulate large operations, not disparate groups of Uber drivers. There are ways around that, of course, but it’s harder to get around the combination of economic desperation and lack of investment in the job that many if not most gig workers have. I’m not blaming the workers - it is what it is.

It’s not like the labor movement needs any help with its decline, but to look at the far left leadership of some prominent unions, you would think they were hellbent on digging their own graves. While the teachers’ union was very helpful to me personally when I was a member as a district employee, I am horrified by the political stances and unprofessional actions leaders are taking. If you follow the NAVI K-12 Extremism Tracker Substack you’ll see what I mean. I am so glad that the charters do not have these unions and that as either a sub or a charter employee I’ll not contribute in any way to extremist political action that has nothing to do with educating the children.

Charters also have flexibility to do things that schools with unions don’t. This is good. They can create innovative programs and recruit people with non-traditional backgrounds. They can reward teachers for performance, not just for longevity. I think this is good and I’ve seen it in action. In the schools where I work, there is NOT an adversarial relationship between teachers and administration. The teachers are always telling me how much they appreciate the principal and I see the administrators on the floor supporting teachers and students every minute of every day. Not hiding in their offices doing paperwork.

I used to get really annoyed when people would say, “Workers don’t need unions unless they have bad management.” Now I see things a little more in shades of gray. When unions take political stands that are not conducive to education (including encouraging students to walk out of school for causes that are on the other side of the world and on which teachers should not be taking sides in the classroom), when unions prevent innovation, and when they hold students hostage because they resist change - well, I’m not for that. And if you had to choose between putting your child in a failing school and putting your child in a charter that was doing well, you would agree with me.

When I was a union organizer, we fought to raise the standards: not just in pay and benefits, but for patient care. Our number one priority was always safe staffing. We fought for an end to mandatory overtime and won it in two states because it is not just bad for nurses, it’s extremely dangerous to patients. We fought for quality care.

For eleven years now I’ve been missing that rush of energy that comes with being on a team of people united in one clear, powerful, meaningful mission. I am so far from a loner - I’m what you might call an extreme team player. When my subbing schedule for the day gives me the last period off, I insist on staying to cover a class so that a regular teacher doesn’t have to. I volunteer for lunch duty because I love seeing the kids have fun, especially when they get to be on the playground. I believe in the mission like I haven’t really believed in anything since I left organizing.

Equality shouldn’t mean bringing everyone down to the lowest common denominator, whether it is workers or students. It should mean giving everyone the best chance to succeed.

Even when I was an organizer, I was not all that ideological. I wanted the workers to have better lives and the patients to get better care. When an idiot anarchist said to me, “Big labor is not revolutionary,” I think I told him to get off my couch and stop drinking my beer. But I agree with him. Labor organizing is a way for workers to improve their working conditions and better provide for their families, thus improving things for everyone, without bloodshed, chaos, and all sorts of things that leftists fantasize about but would not so much like if it came to their own door.

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Union organizers, it seems, no longer wear heels. I’m horrified when I see pictures of people who work for my old union now sporting pink hair. Pink hair is all well and good, but it is not the look that appeals to nurses, who tend to be more conservative in their fashion and often in their politics. I was the fashion police back in those days, teaching young organizers to leave their identity politics at home and come to work dressed so that actual workers would not think they just rolled out of jail after a protest.

Ah, things are different now. I’ve traded in my Payless heels for teacher shoes and cat socks. To everything there is a season.

But I remember what it feels like to be all in. To be able to say, “I can do this,” knowing how hard it is, how much it will take of the life energy I have, but that it will give me back something I haven’t had in over a decade. What it feels like to wake up in the morning already knowing that I’m going to be doing the most important thing I could be doing with the people I want to be with. To love Mondays and be a little sad on Fridays, but happily say, “See you Monday!”

I remember what it was like to have coworkers I’d follow into battle, and to have thousands of workers follow me into what is about the closest thing you can get to a war without violence. 1550 people on the street on strike, many of them about to lose their houses if we don’t get a contract, and we are in negotiations for 96 hours straight…

So yes, I can handle pressure.

And there are things that are better than worth dying for. Things worth living for.

I could probably still rock these shoes, and they are only $7, but they would be totally inappropriate for school. However, if anyone wants to take me on a date, I am accepting invitations. Weekends only - I don’t go out on school nights.

XO, Ms. Smith

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