One really weird thing that teachers do is think about thinking. I mean, how can a person actually teach someone else how to think and how to learn if they don’t themselves understand the underlying processes? Now that I have retired from teaching and spend all my time feeling sorry for myself, I thought I would try thinking about thinking one more time at least. Hey, just because I am retired, it doesn’t mean I can’t still do some of the weird things I used to do as a teacher, right?
This time I made a map to aid me in my quest to follow the twists and turns of how Mickey thinks and how Mickey learns. Don’t worry, though. I didn’t actually cut Mickey’s head in half to be able to make this map. I used the magical tool of imagination. Some folks might call it story-telling… or bald-face lying.
Now, a brain surgeon would be concerned that my brain maps out in boxes. He would identify it as a seriously deformed brain. It is not supposed to be all rectangular spaces and stairs. It probably indicates a severe medical need for corrective surgery… or possibly complete amputation. But we are not going to concern ourselves with trying to save Mickey from himself right now. That is far too complex a topic to tackle in a 500-word daily post. We are just discussing the basics of operation.
You see the three little guys in the control room? They are an indication that not only did I steal an idea from the Disney/Pixar Movie Inside Out, but I apparently have too few guys doing the job up there compared to the movie version. (It probably makes sense though that a young girl like the one in the movie has a much more sensible configuration in her brain than someone who was a middle school teacher for 24 years. Seriously, that job can do a bit of damage.) The three little guys are not actually Moe, Curly, and Larry, though that wouldn’t be far from descriptive accuracy. They are Impulsive Ignatz, currently in the driver’s seat (or else I wouldn’t be writing this), Proper Percy the Planner, and Pompositous Felixian Checkerbob, the fact-checker and perfectionist (also labeled the inner nerd… I am told not everyone has one of these). They are the three little guys that run around in frantic circles in my head trying to deal with a constant flow of input and output, trying to make sense of everything, and routinely failing miserably.
I shouldn’t forget the other two little guys in my head, Sleepytime Tim in the Dream Center, and little Batty up in the attic. I have no earthly idea how either of them function, or what in the heck they are supposed to do. But there they are. The other three run up and down stairs all day, locating magic mushrooms and random knowledge in the many file cabinets, record collections, book stacks, and odd greasy containers that are stored all around in the many nooks and crannies of Mickey’s mind. They collect stuff through the eyes and ears, and it is also their responsibility to chuck things out through the stupidity broadcaster at various inopportune times. It is also a good idea for them to avoid the lizard brain of the limbic system in the basement. It is easily angered and might eat them.
So now you should be able to fully understand how Mickey thinks. (Or not… a qualifier I was forced to put in by Checkerbob.)
“Kaw-Liga” KAW-LIGA, was a wooden Indian standing by the door He fell in love with an Indian maid over in the antique store KAW-LIGA – A, just stood there and never let it show So she could never answer “YES” or “NO”.
He always wore his Sunday feathers and held a tomahawk The maiden wore her beads and braids and hoped someday he’d talk KAW-LIGA – A, too stubborn to ever show a sign Because his heart was made of knotty pine.
[Chorus:] Poor ol’ KAW-LIGA, he never got a kiss Poor ol’ KAW-LIGA, he don’t know what he missed Is it any wonder that his face is red KAW-LIGA, that poor ol’ wooden head.
KAW-LIGA, was a lonely Indian never went nowhere His heart was set on the Indian maiden with the coal black hair KAW-LIGA – A, just stood there and never let it show So she could never answer “YES” or “NO”.
Then one day a wealthy customer bought the Indian maid And took her, oh, so far away, but ol’ KAW-LIGA stayed KAW-LIGA – A, just stands there as lonely as can be And wishes he was still an old pine tree.
The quirky movie I reviewed, Moonrise Kingdom, reconnected me with a song I loved as a child. It was on an old 45 record that belonged to my mother’s best friend from high school. When the Retleffs sold their farm and tore down their house and barn, they had a huge estate sale. My mother bought the old record player and all the collected records that Aunt Jenny still had. They were the same ones my mother and her friend Edna had listened to over and over. There were two records of singles about Indian love. Running Bear was about an Indian boy who fell in love with little White Dove. They lived on opposite sides of a river. Overcome with love, they both jump into the river, swim to the middle, lock lips, and both drown. Together forever. That song, it turns out, was written by the Big Bopper, and given to Johnny Preston to sing, and released the year after the Big Bopper died in a plane crash along with Buddy Holly and Richie Valens.
Kaw-liga, by Hank Williams, was a wooden Indian sitting in front of a cigar store. His love story is even worse. As you can see from the lyrics above, he never even gets the girl. Dang, Indian love must be heck!
But I have come to realize that these aren’t merely racist songs from a bygone era. They hold within them a plea for something essential. They are a reminder that we need love to be alive.
When I was young and deeply depressed… though also insufferably creative and unable to control the powers of my danged big brain, I knew that I wanted love. There was one girl who went to school with me, lovely Alicia Stewart (I am not brave enough to use her real name), that filled my dreams. We were classmates, and alphabetical seating charts routinely put us near each other. She had a hypnotic sparkle in her eyes whenever she laughed at my jokes. She was so sweet to me… sweet to everyone… that she probably caused my diabetes. I longed to carry her books or hold her hand. I cherished every time she spoke to me, and collected the memories like stamps in a stamp album. But like the stupid cigar store Indian, I never spoke up for myself. I never told her how I felt. I was endlessly like Charlie Brown with the Little Red-Haired Girl. Sometimes you have to screw up your courage and leap into the river, even if it means your undoing. Because love is worth it. Love is necessary. And it comes to everybody in one way or another over time. I look at pictures of her grandchildren posted on Facebook now, and wonder what might have been, if only… if only I had jumped in that stupid river. I did find love. And I probably would’ve drowned had I done it back then. Life has a way of working things out eventually. But there has to be some reason that in the 50’s, when I was born, they just kept singing about Indian love.
I have written three chapters in the last week. Cissy Moonskipper Meets the Nebulons is back on the production line. I would tell you more, but I still have to curse the keyboard and arthritic fingers while typing the wrong thing and correcting it more times than any nudist ever typed the word “naked”.
It has been more than a semester now that I have not been a teacher. I am missing it mightily. I even miss the yelling and screaming, the name-calling and the crazy-eyed threats against life and limb. And that’s just me. I miss what the kids always did too. This was driven home to me as I tried to move my middle child from one school to another. We were hoping to get a bit of a break on his placement. He is a gifted child with a penchant for bizarre and long-lasting obsessions. He has a talent for building huge, monumental structures in Minecraft. He is very computer-nerd and history-wonk. (Yes, I know those are not pure predicate adjectives, but I am a retired English teacher and just don’t care any more.) I was hoping they could overlook his burnout/blowout eighth-grade brain meltdown from the previous year and give him the chance to be a ninth grader for at least half a year. No. Arbitrary rules must be obeyed. (That isn’t even how she said it. More like, arbitrary rules MUST be obeyed). That meant of course that he has to continue to repeat the mindless indoctrination of year number 9, (eight numbered grades plus K), (And Pre-K, come to think of it.) Make that year number 10. No high school yet, though he is more than mature enough, intelligent enough, motivated enough, and sweet-natured enough. We are not loving and forgiving people. We are strict and by-the-book people! Forgive me, Lord. I am writing my own book. (In more ways than one.)
This is what we are doing wrong in Education;
1. We are putting people in boxes. (Little people. Kids mostly. We are calling those boxes things like ADHD, Special Education, trouble-maker, learning disabled, emotionally disturbed, disobedient, truant, and “in need of alternative education”… here meaning kid-prison.)
2. We are sealing those boxes with heavy-duty red tape. (Read special or remedial classes as waste-baskets for keeping the rabble and the riff-raff out of the good teachers’ hair.)
3. We are routinely handing those boxes to the box-bangers and package manglers. (The semi-incompetent teachers who have discipline problems because in teacher college nobody tells you what to do with the kid who sits in the corner and sings to himself instead of paying attention, or the girl who gets out of her seat every time the teacher turns his back to go flitting around the room like a bumble bee going flower to flower (except that it is a more hormonal attraction and goes boy to boy); or the competent teacher like me who incurs the principal’s disfavor for having classes that always make noise and are given such classes in boxes as a punishment because that kind of principal is too limited in intelligence to understand that those kinds of boxes are not really a punishment if you merely take a moment to examine the treasures they contain.)
4. We keep the boxes air-tight so that no oxygen or light gets in. (To suffocate learners under piles of worksheets and endless drill and practice is murder. We are killing the precious learners with boring stuff and teaching them to be zombies who all act alike and hate learning because their brains are rotted masses of goo.)
This is what we must do instead;
1. Open the boxes up again and thoroughly mix the contents. (The rich suburban parents will resent the heck out of having their precious honors student sitting in class next to the poor black kid from the projects, but studies show that both kinds of learners do better when they are mixed together.)
2. Notice, we don’t need two any more, because learners are already distributed to different and diverse boxes based on what they individually need and want to learn about and have talent for. Groups should be more like the Shakespeare-loving group or the talkative-socializing group or the Tinker-toy builders group or the vampire-literature-writing group and less like groups of kids all the same color or all the same culture or all the same age.
3. All the teachers need to be trained to handle all the possible… no, make that probable problems that may come up in the classroom. Every classroom needs a proven veteran teacher and an enthusiastic young apprentice teacher. Neither one should have to face the evil hordes alone. And most important of all, any teacher who doesn’t love working with kids (and doesn’t love the kids in a way that will not lead to a prison term) needs be utilized in some way other than as a classroom teacher.
4. Every classroom is a laboratory and every teacher is a creative and daring mad-scientist-type intent on trying new things and only re-doing things that really work well. Forget this nonsense about standard curriculum goals and common core curriculum. Those are only buzz words for suffocating learners and being too lazy to think on your feet in the middle of the every-day classroom battle in the on-going War on Ignorance.
Now you see… I have all the answers and I know everything. The only mystery is… why don’t more people listen to me?
Life is a Gothic horror story now. We have to anticipate terror-filled things even more than we did the last time the Pumpkinhead King took up the scepter. The government may actually collapse this time when you consider the 2025 plan and what the evil minions have planned. The economy will collapse from tariff-fueled price inflation and the deportation of so many of the people who actually do the work in our society. The FBI is going to be overseen by a wild-eyed hate goblin with a mandate to hunt and destroy the Pumpkinhead’s enemies and critics. The secret factory will be run by a woman who delights in giving the poisoned tea to our friends and the goulash to our former enemies. The Department of Defense will be run by a drunk rapist who knows nothing about leading a squad, let alone an army.
We will be walking blindfolded into a future where another pandemic is lurking with the worst possible people in charge of protecting the nation’s health. The head of health is going to be an anti-vaxer with no medical education of any kind, one who not only doesn’t want to develop vaccines for the next pandemic but wants to invite POLIO back.
Elmo Muskmelon, a South African immigrant who appropriates other people’s inventions to make himself the richest and most important man in the world will take the role of viceroy regent who runs the country by fiat while the Pumpkinhead King farts around playing golf all day. The government will literally be looted by minions enriching only themselves.
Of course, climate change has the Doomsday Clock counting down to death by storms, death by wildfires, and the eventual elimination of breathable atmosphere at temperatures that will burn the birds and the bees right out of the sky.
The world will be filled with monsters, survivors who can afford underground bunkers and domed villages under the acidic sea, growing fat by eating everything they have stolen from those of us who did not survive, and probably eventually each other when resources run out. Or they will become mutants, gill men, wolfmen, and snake women. Hunting and hunting and then eating the luckiest of the rest of us who happen to last the longest as non-monsters.
Having read the Bible completely three times, I am well aware of the end of the world as predicted by the Book of Revelations. It is nowhere near as awful as the reality we will most likely be facing… If we don’t burn it all down ourselves before it can happen via nuclear war. Everything is gone or poisoned in a few flashes. A more horrible way to die? It’s quicker.
I fear there is not enough love left in the world to keep all this from happening. Sometimes it sucks to be a true pessimist.
Picture created on the coloring-book app, Tapcolor Pro
Miraculously I am still alive and will be giving Donald Trump another potential four years to torture and kill me. He didn’t get me with Covid or the Tax Cuts that contributed to my bankruptcy in 2017 (I had to pay over $2,000 in taxes instead of getting back the $47 in tax savings that my conservative friends in Iowa got.) This time will certainly be worse. He means to deport my wife and take away my children’s birthright citizenship if he does what he crows about at his pep rallies. And eliminate the Department of Education, put Democrats in jail for being Democrats, and give more aid to Putin in Russia and our other dictator enemies.
But I will also have a chance to write more and draw more. So, there! I defy you to stop me, Pumpkinhead.
Here’s a picture of Ariel, my plastic doll, which I created today to show old Pumpkinhead how I will defy him by drawing.
It is a simple matter. As down and pessimistic as I have been in 2024, I am still here. I can still see. I can still think. I can still write. If there is a God, he has given me more time to work on the story. I mean not only the story of me but the story of us. I assume you are still here too. So, let’s see where this chapter takes us next.
This year, this miserable year of 2024, has been a debacle that I really don’t think most of us deserve. But part of what makes the outcomes of 2024 despicable are the result of the power of stupid people and the evil people who manipulate them.
We have now entered into a time in which the climate change numbers have crossed the red lines into irreversible consequences.
Here is what the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reveals;
I am a pessimist. I think we are already doomed. It is not that we don’t already have technology to deal with the problem and save life on Earth. We certainly do. But the stupid people in this country put the Pumpkinhead President back in charge of the US government. to be assisted by co-president Elmo Muskmelonhead, you know, that fake technical genius who became the world’s richest man by buying other people’s genius inventions. And they will undo all the progress we have made because they can make more money for their hoards by sticking with the deregulated use of fossil fuels. Our lives mean nothing in the face of vast deregulated profits. Oh, and those profits are also going to be tax-proof. The massive national debt will be paid for by ending our Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid funding. You know, the stuff we have paid into every single year we have worked.
My only accomplishment of 2024 is my published book of poetry. It was published early in the year and I have barely been able to write since. I am suffering from increased arthritis problems, growing blood pressure and diabetic issues, and a serious loss of energy and ability to mentally focus.
My book sales seem to slowly be gaining momentum. I am noticed by more and more readers, especially from those looking for nudist-related literature. But I am also suffering from problems that prohibit me from getting naked and being a nudist.
So, what this all means for me is that I am drawing near the end of my story. It will all go onward without me soon. Or not go on, depending a lot on the whims of stupid people and their Pumpkinhead President.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking I have any earthly idea where writing comes from or how it began. I am only talking personal history here, nothing grander or more meaningful. This post is only self-referential hoo-haw, which is a fancy way of interpreting “conceited crap”.
So, the truth is, I am writing about Charles Dickens because he is the author I most want to become. True, I rant on and on about Twain and his humor. And a good deal of my artwork owes everything to Disney, but everything I am good at in writing is based on Dickens.
The first actual Dickens novel that I read was accomplished during my extended illness as a high school sophomore. I read in bed, both at home and in the hospital, from my library copy of The Old Curiosity Shop. I was enthralled by the journey and subsequent tragedy of Little Nell. I thoroughly loathed the villain Daniel Quilp and was roundly thrilled by his well-deserved fatal comeuppance. It was my first encounter with the master of characters. I followed that reading with a biography of Dickens that revealed to me for the first time that his characters were based on real people. Mr. Micawber in David Copperfield was actually Dickens’ own father. Little Nell was the cousin he dearly loved who died in his arms. The crafty Fagin was a caricature of a well-known fence named Soloman, a Jew of infamous reputation, but not without his redeeming quality of caring for the orphaned poor. So it is that I have chosen to make my silly stories about real people in much the same way Dickens did. If you are now worried that since you know me, you may end up in my books, never fear. I change names and splice characters together. You will have to make an effort to recognize yourself. And, besides, nobody reads my books anyway.
I also like the way Dickens uses young characters and follows them over time as they grow and change. Oliver Twist was the first child protagonist in English literature. David Copperfield, Nicholas Nickleby, and Pip in Great Expectations are also like that. David Copperfield, in fact, is Chuck’s own fictionalized self. I fully intend to do the same. It is the reason my books fall into the Young Adult category. I also intend to employ the same kind of gentle, innocent humor that Dickens used. I mean to portray things that are funny in a disarming, absurdist way rather than resorting to attack humor and bad words.
There it is, then, my tribute to Charles Dickens, a writer who makes me be who I am and write what I write. I am not supposed to do Christmas posts because of my avowed religion, but you can consider this to be as close as I can come. The author of A Christmas Carol… it doesn’t get much more Christmassy than that.
Catch a Falling Star 