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Down the Drain By Sarah Schwister QuailBellMagazine.com The number of people attending college has surged in the past four decades, increasing 32 percent in ten years alone. However, the ideal of the perfect college experience has changed. People are not longer going with the goal of becoming well-rounded citizens of the world. They attend college for pre-professional majors such as business, nursing, and accounting.
What does this change mean? Clearly it means a change in what people are studying. There has been a steady decline in the number of humanities majors across the United States, going from 30 percent to 16 percent of all majors from 1970 to 2003, with the number of business majors jumping from 13.7 percent to 21.9 percent. Why the change? Students feel that majoring in business will ensure a job, especially during a recession. To save money, many schools are downsizing their less popular departments. At many campuses, this includes the English department. Combine those statistics with this: The upcoming generation is reading less. Teenagers would rather text than read books or even magazines because there's convenience and instant gratification in texting. Combine this shift in going to college as a means of earning job training with the tendency to drop books for Instagram (even the word “instant” is in its word base), and you have the extinction of the traditional English department. The concept of media and communications is booming, and there is the idea that they will take over the English Literature field. Why would people want to read a book for 12 hours when they can watch a 1.5 hour movie for the same story? The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Mundane Money Matters Matter It was a Thursday afternoon at an upscale Dunkin' Donuts in Northern Virginia. Bright and mod, the place looked more like a yuppie coffee shop for tech start-up masterminds than a hangout for cartoon cops. But I didn't have my laptop and I wasn't meeting with an angel investor. My fiancé and I were meeting with a financial planner. At this very romantic stage in our seven-year relationship, we were about to discuss 529s for our hypothetical children and retirement plans we'd need in four decades. (Naturally, I was drinking a large Dunkaccino to prepare for this adult affair. It was Dunkalicious.)
My fiancé and I arrived early, making nervous small talk while we waited. Neither one of could believe what grownups we were. Statistically, we should be cursing ourselves for going to art school and being un- or underemployed. We should be broke. We should be working at this Dunkin' Donuts—if we were lucky. But even in college, we tried to be entrepreneurial. Today we pinch our pennies until they blush and we hoard most of our money. I don't know what his excuse is, but my heritage accounts for my frugality. The Scots are notoriously cheap and Central Americans are notoriously poor. I don't even buy clothes anymore. I just wait for my sisters to tire of theirs. Of course, just because you're great at not spending money doesn't mean you're great at managing your savings and investments and thinking about long-term dealios. I learned of the planner because an old classmate had started working with him. She saw on Facebook that I was getting married and asked if I'd be interested in a free consultation. I couldn't say I was interested, but I knew it had to be done. After all, we've all read over and over that money is the leading cause of divorce in this country. Couples disagree over how it should be spent or saved or invested and resent each other for it. Maybe it would be simpler if we could all have a household system of piggy banks, coin jars, and mattress-stuffing, and the stock market didn't exist, but our country's greater financial system isn't built like that. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Writer Is Living Proof That Body Positivity Matters By Kate Hickey QuailBellMagazine.com Editor's Note: The following is a direct response to writer Carolyn Hall's Thought Catalog piece, "6 Things I Don't Understand About the Fat Acceptance Movement." Read that piece first, please. Danke. First, a little information about how your personal information is worthless. The fact that you admit to only recently finding the Body Positivity movement tells me that you haven’t done much reading about it and are still very much ingrained with the notion that fatness as a lived experience is bad. You also seem to blame the Internet for people trying to not hate themselves. Along with this, you say you fluctuate between a size 6 and a size 10, but that means absolutely nothing to anybody because 1) sizing of women’s clothes in this country is meaningless and arbitrary and 2) you could be six feet tall and underweight for all I know. Finally, I will explain to you things about this movement that you don’t understand, and hopefully at the end of reading this, you will be less of a judgmental person. (P.S. Your need to set up your article with biographical information points out that you want us, the readers, to remember that you’re just a person with some thoughts, and you don’t want any of the backlash you rightfully deserve for writing an article which boils down to “fat people are gross and should lose some weight.” You want us to humanize you while you go right ahead and dehumanize the fatties. Not cool.) 1. America is not accepting of fatness. You pointed out yourself that fat people are bullied, harassed, and negatively stereotyped for existing. That is not acceptance. Just because McDonalds is a successful company doesn’t mean that fatness is something that we, as a culture, find acceptable. Claiming that the United States has embraced fatness, or “tolerates” fat people and in the same sentence stating that people react negatively to fat people existing tells me that you actually already know that fatness somewhere deep down in the bottomless pit you call a soul is not acceptable in America. 2. Body positivity does include health, which you’d know if you had done some actual research before writing your shitty article. You also do not understand that health and weight are not the same. Skinny is not necessarily healthy. Fat is not necessarily healthy. But unfortunately for you, we aren’t talking about physical health most of the time when we talk about body positivity and fat acceptance. We’re talking about mental health and self esteem. Fat people don’t hate themselves because they sit around and eat; they hate themselves because society tells them they’re ugly, hideous, worthless, and unlovable because they are fat. So, what you seem to logically argue, is that we should continue to tell these people that they are worthless unless they lose some weight? Hmm. That really sounds like a great strategy to get obese people up and at ‘em! Or, perhaps we could say something a little less…douchey. We could say, “You are a person, and therefore you have inherent worth.” We could remind them that there are people who love them, and not “despite” the fact that they are fat. They just love them. We could encourage fat people to make decisions that will make them happy and healthy, rather than just healthy. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Why Are There Two Carolinas and Two Dakotas? Ever wonder why we have two Carolinas and two Dakotas? Did the state name-creators simply run out of ideas? Nope. Turns out in both cases the territories split due to riotous behavior, incompetent governance and a touch of bureaucratic jockeying. A Tale of Two CarolinasEarly French settlers to the Carolina territory were immediately driven out by Native American tribes. The English swooped in, but faired not better: the area was subject to open rebellion, corrupt officials, malaria and smallpox epidemics, and the despicable pirate Blackbeard, who prowled up and down the coast tormenting the landlubbers. (Incidentally, his ship was recently discovered off the coast of North Carolina.) After some failed attempts by British aristocratic family to get the colony under control, King Charles II passed the land off to a different, and equally ineffectual, club of British aristocracy—the Lords Proprietors—who ruled from 1663 to 1729. The Lords Club fought constantly and were unable to make coherent decisions ranging from the role of church, to dealing with the two Indian tribes not keen on British encroachment. The governors they appointed were either deposed by locals, or banished from the territory for alleged crimes. It was a gritty time in the heart of the South. Finally, to make the unruly territory more manageable, the Proprietors focused on governing the northern section—dubbed North Carolina. The two regions were officially recognized as separate colonies in 1729, from which point there was smoother sailing. A Tale of Two DakotasThe bitter winter cold and gruesome violence between White settlers and Sioux Indians made the Dakota territory an unappealing area before the 1874 discovery of gold. At this point, prospectors started pouring in—creating squalid camps, decimating the Black Hills for mining, and escalating hostilities with the Sioux. Railroad construction quickly followed, encouraging a surge of new settlers in the northern part of the territory. Problem: the capital of the time—Yankton—was in the south. Sh*t was getting real in the north, the remote capital was unable to govern effectively, and so northerners declared their own capital—Bismark. Congress capitulated, but still wanted to recognize the authority of the south. So they cut a line dividing the territory into two. But there’s a twist! Newly-minted president and republican, Benjamin Harrison, helped sway Congress to allow the split. Why? To create not one . . . but two Republican majority states. So many historians feel the real reason Congress accepted a division of the Dakotas was for redistricting (still an issue constantly at play today). Because what’s a good story of intrigue without an element of political numerical maneuvering? Image: ThinkStock #Real #Ravishly #HighOnHistory #States #Carolina #Dakota Visit our shop and subscribe. Sponsor us. Submit and become a contributor. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Oscarbation By Zack Budryk QuailBellMagazine.com There’s a scene in the 2008 comedy Tropic Thunder where Robert Downey Jr.’s character, an acclaimed, award-winning “serious” actor, talks to Ben Stiller’s character, a past-his-prime action star, about Stiller’s attempt to break into prestige pictures, a critical and commercial flop called Simple Jack in which Stiller’s character plays a cognitively-disabled farmhand.
“Everybody knows you never go full retard,” Downey Jr. says, comparing Oscar-winning performances like Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump and Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man to Sean Penn’s unrewarded turn in I Am Sam. The scene was met with outcry from disability advocacy groups, but in context it’s making a very important point: to the Hollywood powers-that-be, the disabled are often thought of as people second and opportunities to demonstrate their range first. Over the years, in addition to the performances mentioned, we’ve seen able-bodied Daniel Day-Lewis playing a man with cerebral palsy in My Left Foot, the sighted Ben Affleck playing a blind man in Daredevil and the neurotypical Hugh Dancy playing autistic in both Adam and the NBC series Hannibal. This year alone we’ll also get Eddie Redmayne as Stephen Hawking and Steve Carrell as schizophrenic millionaire John DuPont. And then there’s Hollywood’s other favorite form of disabled erasure, the “metaphor” route: characters like the Incredible Hulk, Elsa from Frozen and Vanellope from Wreck-It Ralph all have conditions that are pretty obviously analogous to real-life disabilities or chronic illnesses, but because they aren’t real conditions, the narrative doesn’t assume any of the risk of discussing those conditions. Similarly, the producers of the TV series Bones and The Big Bang Theory have acknowledged that their main characters display symptoms of Asperger’s syndrome, but said they are unwilling to assume the responsibility of accurately writing an explicitly autistic character. Comparatively, Diane Kruger, who plays an autistic detective on FX’s The Bridge, has consulted extensively with actual autistic people (we can, in fact, speak your human tongue) to improve her performance. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Girls Gone Green! Remember that Victorian illness “hysteria” and how it could only be cured by the vibrator-wielding skills of a trained Victorian medical professional? I mean, I guess I can sort of see what they were getting at since the curative powers of orgasms have been well-documented by science. What I don’t understand about that extinct diagnosis is why they thought it was caused by a “wandering womb," implying that all it needed was an orgasm to be put in its place. Just think, an orgasm a day could keep the doctor and the blues away! (So long as she didn’t do it herself, that is.)
According to the Victorians, orgasms not only kept the blues away, but they also kept the greens away. Women with green-tinged skin and a fiesty attitude were actually in dire need of relieving themselves of the excess “female sperm” building up inside of them. The Victorians thought that overwhelmed "blue" ovaries caused green skin in women. The blockage caused fatigue, a lack of menstruation, increased appetite, indigestion, headaches, and all of the other symptoms that are caused by hypochromic anemia. Oh, and let’s of course not forget insanity, the very same thing that the medical world said comorbidly occurred with regular menstruation as well. The Victorian definition of female “insanity” included being disagreeable, outspoken, rude, alcoholic, senile, highly emotional, or any other behavior that deviated from how they thought women “should” act. Even today, a lot of mental illness is culturally defined in this manner. When a woman “went green,” medical professionals claimed that it was caused by celibacy that would normally be relieved by a lawfully wedded husband. Thus, the treatment options were marriage, prescribed masturbation, pelvic massages, or clitoral surgery that the family kept under wraps to protect the young woman’s reputation and chances of getting married. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Return Somewhere up the ridge, the homestead's 46 acres melt into forest overseen by the Bureau of Land Management. Dirt roads veer at a lung-burning angle toward the crest, carving ochre scars through the madrone and chinkapin. I climb upward alone, through the June heat, hearing nothing but the occasional insect whirring in the grass and the gusting afternoon wind.
The homestead is called Gypsy Cafe, home to Barb and Susie, a couple in their forties. I am here through World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms, an organization that connects farms all over the world with volunteers, who work and learn in exchange for room and board. I came to WWOOFing (as it is called) through word-of-mouth. Burnt-out on city life, aching for connection to land, I dropped $30 on a year-long membership and browsed the online directory, searching not for traditional commercial farms but for intentional communities: queer, feminist, cooperative. I had my ideals; I wanted to see how they played out in real life. Barb, with her previous partner Tina, bought the land in 2008, joining the network of lesbian-owned land in the valleys of southern Oregon. This was a new world I stepped into, a world of which I knew nothing beyond a vague mention of lesbian separatism in my college women-in-politics classes. The women I met in southern Oregon outstripped me in both age and knowledge—of themselves, of their history, of the land. I came out as bisexual when I was fifteen; I'd known I was different since the age of eight, looking at a Star Wars picture book after school in Boys and Girls Club. Leia. The gold bikini. Possibly the most cliché way my previously unknown sexuality could have announced itself. I had a mad crush on a classmate, made moony eyes at him during crossing guard duty outside our elementary school, but suddenly I knew my interest in boys was not the end of it. But even after coming out in high school, after countless mad crushes directed at both boys and girls, I dated only men, with varying degrees of interest and success. I struggled with my sense of identity, with feeling like a fraud, or a traitor—to whom, I wasn't sure. My queerness was a history I could not excavate, an archaeological mystery without a carbon date. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Talking to an Octopus I never felt invincible. I knew life was too unpredictable to think otherwise. Even in my youth, I could only see my body as a magnet for disaster, particularly when gravity was concerned. At three years of age, I jumped into the deep end of a pool by accident. Instead of floating, I sank. Fortunately, another body noticed me and pulled me up from the water. At the age of four, I lost my footing in a shower and split the top of my head open. A man in a Delaware clinic had to stich the skin back up. Two years later, I ran across a quilt spread out on a hardwood floor and fell. When I got up, I had cut the other end of my head. It is amazing how much blood the chin holds. By the time I needed to take my first Holy Communion, my body intruded again and spiritual concerns had to compromise with it. A few weeks prior I had broken my arm playing kickball.
Along with many other nicks, sprains, scrapes, and cuts, these countless ills might have pushed me to seek something within myself which was invincible, or at least was whole and could not be broken. I remember sitting on the bed in the guestroom and staring at the mirror across from me. I might have been in the room for punishment, or I might have been bored. My childhood was filled with boredom. The mirror was a large, antique monstrosity, like a rhinoceros made of wood and glass. Looking at my brown eyes, I reflected on my reflection and thought about what I was looking at. At that moment, I had a “meta” experience. I was feeling beyond my senses, observing myself not in my body but somehow apart from it, like a puppeteer under the skin and bone. The one pulling the strings was the real me. Everything else was just an appearance given to fluctuation, chaos, and decay. Before I could become completely lost in the soul, puberty pulled me back into the body. I had to acknowledge its presence because so much was changing inside and outside of me. The constant assemblage of organs and sinew I had grown accustomed to was gone. Without my consent, the body went ahead and turned me into an adult. My voice grew deeper, hair started sprouting in new places, and I added a few inches to my height. Certain involuntary petrifications and emissions also took place and were noted. Of all these developments, Hair was the most striking. Where there was once smooth skin, now there were dark curls and stubble. If it was on my face, it had to be cut. While I was used to haircuts, these only took place on a seasonal basis. Shaving required constant vigilance and took place in increasing intervals, moving from a bi-weekly, to a weekly, and finally daily ritual. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Teenage Love, Universal Fears, and Wonderwall Here’s a show that’s been flying under the radar: My Mad Fat Diary. Starring Sharon Rooney and featuring Ian Hart, this show chronicles the small-town misadventures of a gang of English teenagers in the 1990s. It has everything you’d expect from a show driven by teen hormones: first love, social standing, schoolwork, fear, sex, drinking, and laughing until your sides hurt. But the dark underbelly of this show, the real thing that hooks you and keeps you watching, is the knowledge that the main character has just spent four months in a psychiatric hospital.
Frankly, I can’t quite understand why this show hasn’t become wildly popular in a similar fashion to Orange is the New Black, as these two shows unashamedly take on difficult topics and dig their teeth in the complexities of the people who live within those narratives. Both of them remain relatively upbeat and undeniably charming; both are equally difficult to categorize as a drama or a comedy based on how similar they are to real life, which (as I’m sure you’ve noticed) is never always a drama or always a comedy. And they’re both based on the real lives of real women who wrote real books: Orange is the New Black by Piper Kerman and My Mad, Fat Teenage Diary by Rae Earl. This show opens a dialogue about body image and body confidence alongside discussions about mental illness and eating disorders while still maintaining a youthful, fun, reckless feel. Rae experiences problems with boys, her best friend Chloe, and her mother at the same time she deals with binge eating, her friend’s anorexia, and the excruciating pain of facing all of her fears about herself in therapy. The integration of the two extremes of light-hearted and serious topics remind us of the feeling that all of those things seem equally important and can stop the earth turning. Along with the hard-hitting issues of mental and physical wellness that this show discusses, My Mad Fat Diary goes into the complexities of sexuality and all that entails: questioning, coming out, homophobia, both personal and inter-personal acceptance, and pride. It touches on the topics of abortion, a parent remarrying, sexual independence, unhealthy relationships, and self-esteem. And it delves into the intricate issue of how young girls relate to each other, how gender and gender performance affect how adolescent girls interact with each other. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Rock Your Socks By Deniz Zeynep QuailBellMagazine.com Aside from writing, wearing textiles is my manner of interpreting the world around me. Cut. Fabric. Fit. I am at my most comfortable when I am sitting on my bed, Rumi snoring next to me (my pup partner in crime), while words flow out of me like a Georgette skirt that billows over my ankles every time I step (courtesy of my fashion-muse mother). I seem to have inherited Mom's penchant for light fabrics and neutral tones. Classic. Timeless. Being able to find new ways to describe the world around me seeps from the page and into the breezy silk trousers I have acquired for the summer. There are countless blogs, television shows, magazines, and overall commentary on how to be. They range from shamelessly commercial to vehicles for artistic expression. In regards to the commercial interpretation of how—what's in, what's not—it's easy to forget that they are just opinions. Following a trend, whether it be a train of thought or those low-crotch, baggy pants (still don't get it), is mindless. Droning. Bzzz. What's most important is acknowledging these new ideas. Do they fit? Maybe not and somehow the terms "unique" and "weird" and "quirky" seem to be used. Boring. If they fit? Well, homeslice, you just found a great piece to add to your bumpin' style-collage. Style pervades everything—how you speak, stroll, scribble, sneeze—how you BE(E), basically. Bzzz. Too often we are afraid to be who we are. We're only humans. Fallible earthlings with enough intelligence, ego, and passion to both save or destroy ourselves. It starts from youth—you're integrated into a micro-cosmic bubble of bureaucracies with your peers and the person with the strongest opinion (right or wrong, it doesn't matter) sets the tone for how things should be. What to say. When to say it. We end up squeezing ourselves into a mold the way Cinderella's step-sisters are squeezing their feet into a slipper that only hugs their toe. Before you know it, you're cutting off toes and heels just to fit. Good luck walking. This isn't so much a rant as it is a drop of encouragement for all you Fledglings to rock the style you were born with and that you create as you go. There is no right way to live. No right way to dress. No right way to think, create, or feel. As long as you feel like the 100% version of you, who is to say it's wrong? (Well, aside from crossing over to the realm of evil). And think about it, the more comfortable you feel with yourself, the further you'll go. The easier you will find your calling ::cue Dr. Seuss' Oh, the Places You'll Go!:: I saw a quote somewhere that said "You are your home." So dress up your drapes, water your plants, paint your shutters—be the most bitchin' house on the block. Boom, boom. #Real #Authenticity #RealSelf #WearWhatYouWant #AntiFashionSlaves #RealFashionAdvice #YouDoYou #Life Visit our shop and subscribe. Sponsor us. Submit and become a contributor. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Disney Finally Steps Up in The Game Of Love If any name carries alongside it the definition of True Love, I doubt anybody would argue the name Disney. They’ve been selling True Love Conquers All since 1937 with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and people around the world have eaten it up just like the Wicked Queen’s poisoned apple. And unfortunately, that’s sort of what the concept has become: poisoned.
Disney films are incredibly influential when it comes to forming children’s ideas about how the world works. These films are simplistic and formulaic, but they try to instill ideas about morality. They teach the things that we can’t really explain, including concepts like forgiveness, loyalty, determination, and love. But for decades, they have really only told one type of story. Disney has defined true love as something inherently romantic, and children really do pick up on that. All the way up from Snow White and Cinderella until more recent films like The Princess and the Frog and Tangled, the plotlines of these movies have all relied heavily on this long-standing sexist, classist, heteronormative “true love” narrative. Even films like The Princess and the Frog and Mulan are examples in this field despite their excellent messages to young girls. These heroines are smart, resourceful, and brave. They work hard and dominate their narratives by acting rather than being acted against. But despite physical prowess, mental acuity, and personal agency, they fall into the same romantic traps as their less progressive counterparts. However, Disney seems to be taking a turn. In last year’s hit Frozen, the writers turned this trope on its head by redefining true love. After spending the entire film focused on romantic love, Princess Anna saves herself by acting on her feelings of love for her sister, Queen Elsa. Rather than being saved by her initial love interest, the villainous Prince Hans or the underdog romantic boyfriend Kristoff, Anna saves her own life with an act of true love. And, for the first time in anybody’s memory, the true love in this story has nothing to do with romance. Or even men. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Memorializing Grandma in Pixels By Fay Funk QuailBellMagazine.com Over the Fourth of July weekend I came across The Atlantic essay “She’s Still Dying on Facebook” about viewing a dead Facebook friend’s account long after she’s gone. It was heartbreaking, sweet, and very relevant. Death in the digital age creates a whole new set of issues to examine, and it’s unfamiliar territory. I have dealt with it myself. Last year my grandmother died of cancer. Her Facebook account still exists—both actually, she had two. Her death opened up a sea of complications about online presence, questions of perspective, the wishes of the living versus the dead, and generational differences. How do you view your Facebook? Do you use it to communicate with your friends or to share your opinions? Is it a tool for self-promotion? A place to stalk crushes? Do you think it’s stupid or fantastic? And just as importantly, how do other people see your Facebook? What will it represent to them when you die? Is it a collection of all your most significant life events and memories, as worthy of preservation as a diary? Or is it the CliffsNotes version of you, meaningless and surface-level? Should it be memorialized or destroyed? I doubt any of us were thinking that hard when we first made our accounts.
Facebook played an incredibly complicated role in the last year of my grandmother’s life, and a lot of that was due to no one really knowing how important it was or was not. It’s why the question of what to do with her accounts is unresolved to this day, and will probably remain unresolved forever. On the one hand, Facebook was revolutionary. All of my grandmother’s friends and family joined a group to share stories, updates, and photos with her. She could connect with everyone, even when she was too sick for visitors, and they could all connect to each other. My mother and aunt ran the group and managed the posts to share with my grandmother. It gave her a lot of comfort and eased her passing. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Uncaged Muses By Deniz Zeynep QuailBellMagazine.com I discovered these two artists during different stages of my life. Jelalludin Rumi in my early twenties and Mademoiselle Chanel in my early teens. The former being my source of much needed wisdom and comfort during a latent adolescence filled with existential questions
(What comes first, love or marriage? What is my calling?) and dark blue cynicism (I have no aura). And Chanel being the epitome of feminine strength that juxtaposed perfectly with my yearning for kohl eyeliner, while continuing to blister my hands and roll my ankles as a tennis player. Flash forward to age 26 and these two artists continue to fill my half-full glass of muse booze. Mademoiselle Chanel was the renegade I admired because of her use of fabric as a symbol of freedom in the early 1920's. Freedom from the corset of stuffy social norms that revolutionized how a woman should feel about herself. Free. Confident. Unapologetically herself. Bonjour, knit jersey, linen, and tweed. À tout à l'heure, boned corsets and gossamer petticoats. Being able to wear loose-fitted materials allowed women the freedom to explore the universe. And to bring that statement down to earth: Chanel's choice of a breezy fabric encouraged women to jump on a horse and go parading through the woods creating her own fairy tale. She could ride her stallion during the day (she has the freedom to choose which kind, too) and paint her lips blood red to dress her needle-sharp wit. As an avid horseback rider, Chanel would wear the clothes of her lovers to keep up with with the male-dominated riders. This simple act of trumping through Nature and wearing the wind instead of lace gloves was the wardrobe change that women needed. The bird officially left the cage. "If you are not born with wings, do nothing to impede their growth." —Mademoiselle Coco Chanel The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
What exactly are children's museums curating?I spend a lot of time with kids under the age of 10. I don't have any of my own, but I think kids are fantastic, and babysit them frequently. The way that kids explore the world is a beautiful thing. They usually engage in a more open and honest manner than adults. All kids really need is information, then they've got the lockdown on asking questions. I think it is only when kids are not given all the information, or the context around information, that we shortchange them and set them up for ignorance or failure down the line.
Assuming one doesn't come from a Creationist point of view, one might be inclined to think that places such as the Children's Museum of Richmond and the Science Museum of Virginia would be ideologically safe places to take your kids. From my experiences taking various kids to both of these museums, I would say that, for the most part, they are indeed lovely places for children to grow and explore. Recently, though, I saw something at both museums that put a bad taste in my mouth. At the Children's Museum of Richmond's craft area, they had a "Make a Dream Catcher" table. The table and description had no context for what a dream catcher was, where it comes from, and more importantly WHO it comes from. Dream catchers are a traditional creation of many indigenous groups in North America, including the Cree, Ojibwe, and Sioux. I know, I know, I'm being a fun-killing politically correct cop here. Let the children make their dream catchers in peace, you might say. Maybe in your mind's hierarchy of cultural appropriation, making a dream catcher is a smaller offense than wearing a headdress. And let's not forget that children are still taught to wear headdresses and similarly problematic attire in offensive and inaccurate plays in elementary schools all over this country. But it is worse than just an offense to certain cultures; this omission is shortchanging all kids who see it. Without the context for the dream catcher, kids coming to the Children's Museum are missing out on a lot. Without the history, understanding, and respect for the culture and traditions from which it came, why even call it a dream catcher? It's some tangle strings! Call it a spider web! The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Frozen ≠ MulanAs I sit here on Independence Day, friendless and without a good enough Internet connection to watch Netflix, I can't help but think about how I didn't like Frozen. I think this movie is really overrated, and not even half as good as its predecessor Tangled. And even more than that, it's hailed as being a feminist movie. And yes, you are about to read a grown man's ramblings about a Disney movie. Be preparrrrrrrred! (Get it?)
Now, out of the numerous things that I could write about, such as the inevitable decay of America's democratic system, or the shameful and persistent dumbing down of our culture through our entertainment system, or how 40 million or so people around the world are still enslaved, or about the Bilderberg Group, or about the Duke University adult actress Belle Knox, even I am left scratching my noggin about how important it is for ME to express my opinions on a Disney movie. Although, a recent conversation with a friend, in which she lauded the feminist intentions behind Frozen, has proven to be more than enough motivation for me to make my case. Frozen may be a lot of things. It could be the "best Disney movie since the Lion King." I'll leave that to personal opinion. It could be a deconstruction of the Disney model, even though I would beg to differ. But one thing I shall never concede to is that Frozen is a feminist movie. I take this stance because with full heart I wish to believe that if I have a daughter one day, I will not let her see this movie. First, let's examine the primary motivations for the two central female protagonists, Elsa and Anna. In Screenwriting 101, you learn that it is important to establish good motivations for your main character(s). Although, what is more important is the character's actions, as these are the circumstances that determine the journey they will take, the plot of the story, and the overall reason any bozo will go see your movie. This is like how the real world works, as actions speak louder than…I forget how the rest of that goes. So what does Elsa want? To be understood. To be with her sister. Cool. (See what I did there?) How does Elsa enact the plot? Has a panic attack and isolates herself from the rest of the world so that she can't use her…ice powers. Her famous catchy song, "Let It Go"? In the context of the movie, at the exact moment she sings it, she is singing about giving up her responsibilities not just to her sister and her kingdom, but to herself. Things in her life have become too overwhelming, and she has chosen to let it go and ignore it. It is not a song about self-empowerment. It's a song about being selfish. She proceeds to keep the entire kingdom frozen, which has presumably killed all of the cute furry animals that are not elk. And Elsa doesn't change her mind about it until she almost kills her sister, at the very end of the movie, and the kingdom cheers her about it because she decided not to leave them in a perpetual winter…for once. Simba also escaped his kingly duties…when he was a kid…and his father just died before his eyes…and lions don't have governments or taxation departments to run. So is this necessarily non-feminist? No. It's just bad moral values. Elsa doesn't demonstrate that she has any moral fiber to stand up for herself and be who she wants to be. She just kind of decides to slowly kill everyone in the kingdom instead. Elsa never outwardly admits that what she did was wrong, nor does she change her mind because of it. So whatever, I guess freezing entire kingdoms isn't an ethical issue. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
The Rebirth of My IdentityIt was my first day of elementary school in the U.S. My lunchbox was full of grapes and carrots and my stomach was full of butterflies. As I walked up to the group of kids lining up outside the school, I turned to look at my mother. I wanted to be brave but I didn’t want her to leave. She signaled which line I belonged in, hugged me goodbye, and left. I walked over to the line, stood behind a girl with straight blond hair and waited to see what would happen next.
Everyone around me was chatting and laughing. I looked around and wondered how many of these kids previously knew each other and how many were just meeting for the first time. Soon various women and a man came out and began to take us all inside. I followed the crowd into the first grade area and proceeded to go into the same classroom as the blond girl in front of me had gone into. Everyone began looking for their corresponding desk. I joined in, found my desk, and sat down. The enthusiastic man from that morning went to the front of the room and began saying speaking very quickly. That’s when it hit me—my teacher was going to teach the class in English, a language I did not speak. It was September 1997 in Arlington, Virginia, and although I had been born there, I had moved to Guatemala and fully developed my Spanish and forgot any English that I had known beforehand. We had moved back to Arlington a month before school started, leaving me very little time to learn any English at all. I knew the basics like 'hello' and 'thank you' but nowhere near enough to gain anything from my classes at school. It felt like I had been thrown into the deep end for the first time and had to either sink or swim. I went from class to class mimicking my peers and hoping that I didn’t take a misstep. After lunch, I was instructed to go to a room. I wasn’t sure what I had done but followed instructions and walked on over. I sat down at my desk and scanned the room. It was the first time that day that I was in a room of other students that also spoke no English. Excited at the possibility of making friends, I asked around if anyone spoke Spanish. No luck. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Solving Riddles with a Smart Phone If I asked, I’m sure you could pull a few facts about Sherlock Holmes from the depths of your memory. He’s a detective. He has a friend named Dr. Watson. He plays the violin and he lives in London. There’s a whole bunch of stories written about him. You probably had to read at least one for school at some point.
The resurgence of the fictional detective’s popularity in the last five years is down to the multiple new adaptations of the source material. Warner Bros got the ball rolling in 2009 with the film Sherlock Holmes directed by Guy Ritchie and starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law. In 2010, the BBC launched a miniseries that ensnared the entire world’s affections called simply Sherlock, bringing the famous consulting detective into the 21stcentury. And then in 2011, the Warner Bros sequel Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows hit theaters. And then in 2012, NBC debuted their own modern Holmes with Elementary. The third film of the Downey Jr. franchise has been announced. At the moment, there’s money at 221b Baker Street. What is it about this fictional detective that captivates audiences so much, for so long? Arthur Conan Doyle published the first Holmes novel, A Study in Scarlet, in 1887, and since then, Sherlock Holmes has become a part of our collective cultural lexicon. There’s a reason we say “No shit, Sherlock,” after all. But the Sherlock Holmes star burns brighter in the 21st century than it has since the 1980s. Why? Perhaps it’s because of the mythology that surrounds the man. Sure, everybody likes an emotionally stunted anti-hero, but that can only entertain the public in one iteration for so long. But if you wrap an enough trappings, everyone will find something to latch on to, something that speaks to them. The Ritchie films are action movies—far less cerebral or intellectual than the original stories – but they deliver a stunning visual of the Victorian aesthetic. Accuracy be damned, this is what comes to mind when someone says, “Victorian England.” Industrial London is dirty and polluted, which gives everybody a good excuse to make more of the “dark, gritty” movies that are in vogue right now. But surely there is something more to this fixation than dark and grit. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Gypsy's First CaravanMy grandmother is a Gypsy but neither of us had ever been inside a caravan. There is a history-rich reason for this, appropriate for Roma & Traveller History Month, but I will get to that later. This status changed for me when my husband and I went back to Europe to visit friends and family, and enjoy the most gorgeous and love-filled wedding we’ve ever been to. One of the options for accommodation at our dear friends’ wonder-wedding was The Gypsy Retreat: two caravans, one for sleeping and one for living quarters, originally owned by a Romani family in Britain, restored and moved to the island that hosted the wedding. My friend, the beautiful genius bride, emailed me right away and asked if we wanted her to dog-ear the site for us. YES, PLEASE, YES. Photos courtesy of Jessica Reidy. Gallery follows story. Without doing any research whatsoever, I imagined a bow-top wooden vardo (caravan), typical of the Romanichal clan so wide-spread in Britain. I wondered how it might compare to my ancestors’ vardo. I racked my brain, trying to remember if we had any pictures of my grandmother’s ancestors’ homes. I remembered her telling me that, long before WWII, when her ancestors were nomadic, they travelled up and down the Danube from Germany to Hungary and back again with the seasons. I always thought they travelled by barges, since she called them “river Gypsies,” but maybe not. The women in her family happened to be very pretty, so many were successful dancers. Some told fortunes too, but fortune telling is a trade of desperation, a kind of casual therapy that Roma perform for gadjé (non-Roma) for money in hard times, and not some mystical ritual that we really believe in. Some of the women were advisors, a kind of healer, and that trade based on a very spiritual magic but it’s only for other Roma. My childhood memory is swirly at best and these details are from her childhood memory, too, from stories she heard set before she was born. And the stories were far and few between. She doesn’t remember what the men did—she thinks some must have been musicians since the women were dancers, but she remembers no music during the war. She was born in Germany, 1936, into one of the most horrific genocides the Romani people have suffered. The Nazis persecuted the Romani people alongside the Jews, the LGBTQ community, the mentally ill, communists, Catholics, and others. Half of Europe’s Gypsies were murdered and there was nowhere left to run.
I love Europe, but I admit, when I go back, I’m often enraged. America is bad enough with its Romani racial profiling, cultural appropriation, history of slavery, shockingly current forced sterilizations, and removing Romani kids from their parents and sticking them in orphanages where their culture is beaten out of them. But Europe makes Gypsy-hating a public blood-sport. I see “Kill Roma” scrawled on the wall of public toilets and “No Roma” in shop windows. People who know my heritage still don’t think twice about telling me that they hate Travellers, another nomadic ethnic group separate from Roma with their roots in Ireland who suffer the same stigma and oppression as Roma. Even though I don’t dress traditionally or talk much about my heritage in Europe, I feel unsafe. Even though my DNA is more Caucasian than Romani, in Europe people scream “Darky!” at me in the street, or “Pocahontas! You’re the last of the Mohicans! Be my Mohican bride!” Or, “I want to fuck you, little Indian girl.” Sometimes they get it right and say, “Go to hell, gyppo.” Depends on the racist. When this happens, sometimes well-meaning people “reassure” me: “Don’t worry, you don’t look Indian,” or “Don’t worry, you look white to me!” They don’t realize how hurtful and discriminatory it is to say such a thing. I’m OK with how I look. My ethnicity and appearance is not the problem, here, and damn, it shouldn’t matter. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
An Awful Job or an Awful World?I consider myself very lucky to have never had a truly shitty job. Many of my friends have horror stories from the trenches of customer service and the restaurant industry, of being screamed at and groped by asshole customers, and then not even getting tipped. I am relieved to say my employment history is much more boring than any of that.
But I did have a job that showed me how shitty the world can be. My own privilege was placed squarely in front of me, and I confirmed that privilege when I left. My job wasn’t so bad, but the systems around it were, and they were systems I willingly took part in. Systems I still participate in today. My freshman year of college I was struggling to find a work-study job, so I applied to the America Reads and Counts program at NYU. This program places college students in public schools around the city to tutor kids in reading and math. I was placed in a K-12 school not far from where I lived in Manhattan. The school assigned me to a kindergarten class, and I was not happy when I learned about it. I am not great with very young children. I relate better to teenagers, whose lower energy levels and longer attention span I very much appreciate. So I walked into the kindergarten classroom on the first day with every muscle clenched, bracing myself for a wave of anxiety. The kids were adorable. I’ve never been so surprised at a thought popping into my head. They were bright and funny too, as I learned over time, devouring every new piece of information they came across. My favorite student was an earnest little boy with a faux hawk who memorized every book he read and asked for definitions of each new word he encountered. Most of my students were Puerto Rican or Dominican, and could read not only in English, but in Spanish as well. The shitty part about working with kids? I was in a daze the whole time I was employed. Their classroom was a biohazard. On one of my first days I helped a little girl zip up her coat. She sneezed on my face. I was so disgusted I was rendered speechless. I was sick for two months after that, possibly with mono, though the doctor I went to said it was just a cold. I didn’t get better until I went home for spring break and escaped the classroom for ten days. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Cardboard Bad AsseryBy Zack Budryk QuailBellMagazine.com “The fallacy in Hollywood is that if you’re making a ‘feminist’ story, the woman kicks ass and wins. That’s not feminist, that’s macho. A movie about a weak, vulnerable woman can be feminist if it shows a real person that we can empathize with.” -Natalie Portman The proper way to represent female characters in fiction has been a source of debate for a long time, especially because the alternative is to give more women authors, screenwriters and directors a shot. After centuries of female characters mostly being restricted to mothers, helpless princesses or temptresses, a backlash to this kind of narrative passivity began in the 20th century, with characters like Wonder Woman, Princess Leia and Buffy Summers turning long-established tropes on their head by presenting women who kicked ass themselves rather than waiting for a man to rescue them, marry them and discourage them from working outside the home.
The problem, however, is that since those characters popularized the Strong Female Character as an archetype, popular culture has largely gotten the idea that kicking ass is all a good female character requires; that a spinkick is a personality trait. “Part of the patronising promise of the Strong Female Character is that she’s anomalous,” wrote Sophia McDougall in her brilliant essay “I Hate Strong Female Characters.” “’Don’t worry!’ that puff piece or interview is saying when it boasts the hero’s love interest is an SFC. ‘Of course, normal women are weak and boring and can’t do anything worthwhile. But this one is different. She is strong! See, she roundhouses people in the face.’” Beyond that, such a rigid definition of strength severely limits female characters in, ironically, much the same way as the domestic stereotypes it was in response to. I discussed this idea with a friend of mine at work the other day. “It seems like that basically defines strength as stuff we associate with men,” she said. And this is perfectly true; the worst-case scenario for the SFC is basically the Disney Princess as Gillian Flynn’s Cool Girl. That’s why I think some of the best female characters out there today are not the ones who beat up a roomful of mooks without batting an eyelash, but rather, the ones who are capable of kicking ass as effectively as so many real-life women, while retaining all the personality facets, vulnerabilities and flaws that those same real women have (and, it should be noted, more male characters than I can name are allowed to have). The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Girl Power at Community Publications“You must always remember that your career path is for you to set. It’s not something that happens to you; it’s not something that others draw for you. When you encounter a brick wall, rather than stand there and curse at it, make a right turn and explore some other avenues.” —Pam Luecke, Reynolds Professor of Business Journalism at Washington & Lee University, quoted in The Edge of Change: Women in the Twenty-first Century Press The snug lobbies with floor tiles the color of old scallop shells. The murky tanks brimming with lethargic lobsters. The clattering of dishes and the aroma of mysterious spices. These are snippets of the early memories I have from dining out in D.C. and New York Chinatowns with my family growing up. But there were also the Asian-American newspapers scattered on countertops or crammed into wire racks, an afterthought in places ruled by food. As a little one, I would often pick up these publications and study the photos or trace the Chinese characters with one of the pens my mother always kept in her purse.
As I grew older, I continued to seek out whatever print material I could find beyond library walls. While carrying a book with me wherever I went became a habit, community and metro newspapers, 'zines, and literary journals possessed a different kind of magic: Someone who had not yet catapulted to literary stardom—to borrow my former professor Winnie Chan's phrase—or someone who wanted to engage with the community as a public service, had produced this quarter-pound of paper in my hands. Many of these “someones” were women, a pleasant deviation from the authors dominating my school reading lists. In scouring local mastheads as a young, impressionable writer, I took note of all the women's names. I was looking for hope in female role models. Because, unlike national publications, I saw that smaller, more localized ones populate their mastheads with female talent. These publications may still be imperfect in how they treat female employees, but they should be credited for having a higher percentage of women writers and editors than their national counterparts. They should be credited for inspiring young girls to consider a career in publishing and journalism. My observation that women abound at local publications cannot be purely anecdotal. As a starry-eyed teenager, I got my start as a writer at community publications in the D.C. metro area, Grinnell, Iowa, and Richmond, Virginia. I always reported to female supervisors and was surrounded by female writers and editors. It wasn't until I interned at my first national publication that I found myself overwhelmingly outnumbered. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
A Bordello for VerseThe Poetry Brothel is a poetry lover’s wet dream come true. Patrons indulge in a decadent cabaret experience that allows them to fully engage their love of poetry. The cast consists of “whores” who are actually poets in the guise of burlesque personalities. Following a traditional burlesque practice, the whores perform on a public stage. Meanwhile, audience members have the opportunity to buy private readings in an intimate, one-on-one setting with a poet of their choosing. The Poetry Brothel intoxicates its guests not only with the sensual and sexual delivery of skillful verses, but also with booze, music, and an ever-changing assortment of side attractions. It is a true den of iniquity which debauches all with its rogue sophistication, old French elegance, and masterful artistry characterizing the whole spectacle.
Since being established in 2007, the event series has helped forge a sense of community, appreciation, and exotic revival among the poets and poetry-lovers of New York City. The mere knowledge that The Poetry Brothel exists is refreshing for anyone looking to commune with others over a mutual love of poetry. The brothel liberates poetry from the traditional boundaries of academia, allowing the solitary minds and hearts of readers to freely revel in a literary bacchanal that celebrates the art form's raw expression. In essence, The Poetry Brothel's brilliance brings poetry to life. The Quail Bell Crew asked The Poetry Brothel's 'Madame,' Stephanie Berger, also co-director of the New York City Poetry Festival, a few questions: Describe the magic and mystery of the period bordellos that inspired the concept. There was a lot that went into the inspiration for this concept. Initially an interest in Louis Armstrong and the history of jazz got me reading about New Orleans and its famed turn of the century red-light district, Storyville. It occurred to me then that brothels were places where artists on the fringes of society could find work and experiment with new forms, no matter who they were or how they were viewed by society-at-large. I came upon E. J. Bellocq's photographs through that reading, and I was totally and completely captivated by the imagery of those brothels. I love the looks on those women's faces. I love their fashion, the various poses, both natural and awkward. I love the decor of those houses. Soon, I read a memoir by one of the madams down in Storyville and a diary of one of the prostitutes. They both sounded sassy and tough and in control, and both of their stories seemed to imply that they felt they were feeding their clients' true and deep-seated needs for intimacy, fantasy, love, violence, and freedom. They enjoyed the work they were doing because it felt real despite the artifice, and I was drawn to that. Poetry feels real too, and it is also artificial; that's why I do it, and it fills similar kinds of needs. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Oxygen to Flame“People in the arts often assume that applying the arts to social purposes diminishes the art; art should be for arts' sake. Teaching artists at [settlements like the Jane Addams Hull-House], though, rediscovered that the arts are for people's sake. The need to communicate, connect and express ourselves is fundamental and biological.” —Nick Rabinkin in “Teaching Artists and the Future of the Arts” for The Huffington Post “However, there is one role in the arts that defies [George Bernard] Shaw's slogan [that he who can does; he who cannot teaches]. The role is variously named 'visiting' or 'residency artist' and 'artist-educator,' but the emerging consensus term is teaching artist. Teaching artists come from every artistic discipline, and they use a dynamic balance of skills in art and in teaching that make them remarkably effective educators and crucial resources to the arts world.” —Eric Booth in “The Emergence of the Teaching Artist” in Art Times The uncertainty of the artist's life is one of its most tantalizing appeals. While that same uncertainty has the potential to terrify those craving security, that uncertainty also has great potential for adventure. Imagine a treacherous footpath that leads to a vista of open skies, steep mountains, and dramatic valleys. The commuter toll road doesn't offer the same view.(Just mind the cliff.) If I run the danger of romanticizing the artist's life, it is with the best of intentions. For if someone didn't take the risk, we would not have teaching artists.
Teaching artists are distinct from arts teachers in that they are artists who lead occasional seminars and workshops to engage and empower a specific population to make art. Arts teachers, whether visual, performing, or literary, generally work full-time at a school to, at least in theory, teach the next generation of artists. A teaching artist is understood to be an expert artist; an art teacher is understood to be an expert teacher and may or may not be an expert artist. A teaching artist is first and foremost an artist. But an arts teacher's calling is more likely to be teaching. Neither is “better” or “more important” than the other. The jobs are just different. Becoming an arts teacher requires many hours of practice as a teacher. Becoming a teaching artist requires many hours of practice as an artist. In order to work as an arts teacher, you must earn your certification. You do not need to be certified to work as a teaching artist, but you must have established a track record as an accomplished artist. Teaching artists tend to be freelancers; sometimes (read: rarely) they are contracted for several months or even a couple of years as a side but regular gig to their art-making. But, even then, teaching artists devote more of their professional and emotional time and energy toward writing or acting or painting than they do inspiring students in a classroom. One of my more recent teaching artist experiences took place at WriterHouse in Charlottesville, Virginia. This community meeting space holds writing workshops and seminars in addition to author readings and other literary events. Based upon my background in nonfiction writing and documentary film and photo media, I had the privilege of leading a day-long seminar on documenting memories using words and images. The intimate setup allowed me to advise five students, each of whom had brought personal materials, such as a family photo album or a journal, in telling a story only they could tell. This fascinating bunch included a federal lobbyist, a registered nurse, a retired social worker turned calligrapher, a laundromat owner, and a Medicaid analyst. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Beyond the Classroom and Any Arbitrary GradeBy Garrett Riggs QuailBellMagazine.com When I explain that my children go to a school that does not issue grades or have required classes, people look at me like I am crazy. “Well, how do they learn anything?” is usually the follow-up question. It takes a giant leap of faith to trust that your children will learn on their own. That humans are naturally curious should be rather self-evident to anyone who has a child or who has ever been a child (and, yes, there are people out there who are suspect in that latter category). Curiosity is what helped human beings figure out everything from rubbing two sticks together to make fire to putting people into orbit. Since the advent of standardized education, though, it has been easy to forget that humans are built to explore and learn. Many of us simply expect our children to have the same experience with school that we did—maybe you went to public school and turned out just fine; maybe private school or boarding school was your experience with the world of formal learning. Or, maybe, you were a secret autodidact, staying home with vague complaints of stomachaches or headaches, and catching up on learning by reading all the books at the local library (or if you’re a digital era baby, using the Internet as a tutor). I fit into that last group. For me, school was “day prison” and it was full of bullies and disruptive kids who kept everyone off track. I had little patience with busywork and cared even less about the social aspect of school. If I could have been locked in the library and left to my own devices, that would have been more productive. I might have found a reason math was valuable if I had stumbled onto it through a side door, such as reading Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia, which has a young heroine pursuing quantum mathematics as a central thread, or through studying about architecture and seeing how, yes, geometry does have its practical uses. Holes in the railing created by carpenter bees. Despite my disdain for the traditional classroom, when my own first-born was about to turn five, I enrolled him in our district elementary school. Academically, this was a deterrent to learning; sadly, it turned out that he was one of a handful of kids who had been read to or taught about things like colors, the basics of time (minutes, hours, days, weeks, months), or encouraged to figure out how things in the world around us are grouped and classified (e.g., animals > mammals > felines > big cats [lions, tigers, etc.] > house cats [grandpa’s cat, our cat, Hemingway’s six-toed cats). Because the teacher didn’t have to spend time teaching him these things, he was enlisted at the ripe old age of five to be a teaching assistant. He tutored his pint-sized colleagues on the names of the colors in the rainbow. He helped them learn sight words. And so on. He hated this. For him, school was not about discovery; rather, it became about being a combination lab rat and taskmaster. While he enjoys doling out chores to his younger sibling, he did not like being partially responsible for his peers’ successes and failures. Emotionally, this was a bad experience as well. He was expected to be a leader in the classroom, yet he still couldn’t tie his own shoes. When he got left on the playground the first week of school, he lost his trust in the adults’ ability to take care of him and his needs. He had been “rewarded” with outside time with another class since he was doing so well; his peers stayed inside at recess to work more on learning names of colors and practicing paste-eating abstinence. There was a parent-teacher conference just before the winter break and I confessed that we were considering moving our son out of the school for the next academic year. “Don’t wait until then,” the teacher said. She fixed me with an exhausted stare and said, “If you have any other option—even if you can homeschool—take him out now.” We didn’t think we had other options. Even with scholarships and sliding scale tuitions, we couldn’t afford the private schools in our area. Homeschooling, while appealing, was out because of the parental schedules. Just as we were resigned to leaving him in the district school, we heard about Grassroots Free School. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
A Tribute to the Voice of Maya AngelouBy Ghia Vitale QuailBellMagazine.com
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