Black Friday-Indeed-the empty Big Lot's

Don't be fooled by what you see in the press.

Look around you.

Many people may have waited in line to buy the 3.99 coffee pot Wal-Mart offered between the hours of 5am and 10 am. You might have seen pictures of people lined up outside electronics stores for the big deals.

That's the American mentality. To be first in line. To pay for something they don't need. To feel like they just triumphed over some kind of obstacle. We have to ask ourselves, more often, I am thinking-do I really need this?

The generation of 30 somethings think home equity lines of credit and credit cards are a way of life. Just one more source of income.

The main streets of local shoppers in Las Vegas were even quieter than usual for a Friday afternoon. Even the Strip seemed a little slow.

A friend of mine and I stopped at Big Lots to pick up our usual cleaning supplies for a dollar each. It was 2:00 in the afternoon and the store was pretty slow. We even had a cashier offer to help us! It felt pretty strange to be driving down one of the busiest streets in Las Vegas and not have problems with the traffic.

I drove my daughter to Mandalay Bay's House of Blues for a concert. Usually the strip is wall to wall cars after Thanksgiving. It was pretty slow. I didn't have any problems getting into the casino nor did I have a problem parking. I hate driving to the Strip during the holidays. It felt eerie to be able to drive in reasonable traffic.

This year I bought my turkey dinner fixings at Food for Less. We thought about forgoing Thanksgiving altogether with milk at almost 5.00 a gallon at Albertsons. Food For Less sold it for 3.00 a gallon. I don't mind packing my own groceries if I save a fair amount of money.

Gas is 3.15 a gallon. Milk 5.00?! Coke, at Albertsons is 5.99 a for 12.

Maybe the retailers need to hear us.

I think we have reached a saturation point. I don't think they could squeeze another dime out of us.

I am a teacher receiving a modest salary and I work three part time jobs. It is expensive to live in this town.

I bought a town home last year and it has already depreciated 50,000 dollars.

I don't plan on moving anywhere so it is all on paper. But the payments are high and it is why I work so much.

I predict Christmas may bring us back to a point beyond the gluttony of years past. With no home equity lines of credit available and the credit cards maxed out, the Las Vegas real estate and job market crashing around us, maybe we will be able to appreciate that it isn't "stuff" that shows love but "us".

Or maybe this generation has not been exposed to this concept and will struggle with what many of us from older generations already understand-that it is people who count-not belongings.

Or do they?

The Teachers Witch Hunt

We teach in an environment of cauldrons and burning stakes. I love teaching children. The deep satisfaction of watching the light burst forward when a child discovers new information and makes sense of it is a thousand times better than any fireworks display I have oohh and aahhhed over in my lifetime.

I feel honored.

I am also terrified for all of us working in a room for seven hours a day-theoretically-alone.
Terrifying is the word-the witch hunt of teachers.
Headlines are made based on allegations.
A teacher never recovers from those.
Even if or when found innocent, or when charges are thrown out.

I would not want to be a male teacher today. Our kids need good male role models-desperately. No wonder we have about one male teacher to every thirty-five female teachers.

Who would risk it?

Students are wise today. Even my second grade children who come to me for hugs will yell, "Ow" if a teacher pats their shoulder-they know the game.

Fifth grade girls are no longer children. Look around you. Most fifth grade girls look thirteen or fourteen. Puberty comes early. Sadly, in my neighborhood school of poverty, instability and a revolving door of parental partners, many girls have become sexually active.
When they reach out for reassurance and validation, yearning for approval and encouragement, we have to be even more careful-never allowing ourselves to be alone with a student, maintaining a distance-not even the hugs they got from their second grade teacher are without suspect three years later. We all have to be so careful.

It only takes one word to ruin a teacher. One word from a confused child, an angry parent, or a disgruntled aide. They all know it as well.

Peoples reaction is, "Well, if the teacher is innocent that will come out."

A teacher I knew was accused a few years ago-he was found innocent-he hung himself afterwards.

You have to understand why teachers teach.
We teach because we have a passion for learning. We believe, deeply, believe in the future of our children. We know education is the way out for many of our poor, abused, neglected, confused kids. We love them and we love teaching our kids. I can't think of any other profession I would rather do-it is an honor to teach children-and a gift to me.

When allegations are made and the press gobbles them up on the front pages without substantiation and the indiviudal's life drifts through the system-not even a statement exonerating the teaching, or the simple act of throwing out the charges can heal the terrible stab wounds to a teacher's psych.

I hope to God I have never have to go there. It is frightening enough to make me rethink teaching as a career.

Smokin and Sewin'

This isn't a picture of my mom but it could have -she probably started smoking around this age

She died three years ago at age 83. I was sitting at the sewing machine this afternoon thinking about her and smiling.

Doris smoked everywhere-she never saw a problem with it. She grew up during a time when smoking was glamorous and acceptable.

Ava Gardner, Lauren Bacall, all the sirens smoked. In her heyday, Mom was a siren-she frequented the speakeasies of San Francisco when booze was illegal, wore minks to the country club and her sense of entitlement never left her.

She smoked walking in the streets, threw her cigarette on the ground in front of Albertsons, smoked in the state and national parks as she oohed and ahhed at the scenery and smoked her way around the world. She visited almost every country existing, smoking and enjoying it.

She was also a fabulous seamstress. Many hours of hearing that buzz-buzz-buzz -the needle climbing to it's goal-as she smoked and sewed.

That's what reminded me of her today.

I'm sewing my meager, sad little hems wondering how she did it. She had the machine working overtime and that cigarette burning in the ashtray. I'd hear a pause, for about one minute and the needle would roar to life again. Smoking and sewing-smoking and sewing...

No, she didn't die of lung cancer. Genetically gifted with healthy Nebraskan parents who lived till the age of 91 or 92-she never worried about the hazard's of smoking. In fact, as she got older and could not drive, her second husband, a non smoker used to make it hard for her to buy cigarettes-not much deterred her-he certainly didn't-she was a stubborn smoker and kept a stash of money so she could call me and I'd run to store to buy her a carton.

Ironically, she forgot she was a smoker. She slowly disappeared behind that hazy world of Alzheimer's-forgetting she ever smoked a cigarette.

Just smokin and sewin...

Our Earth-When do we start doing something???

I would not bring children into our world.

Would you want to be responsible for bringing children into a world that looks destined to destroy itself because of our own ignorance?

I look around me, and it isn't about politics anymore. It's about watching our earth heat up, massive disasters, unpredictable weather patterns, increasing destruction of our resources, drought, continued pollution by industry with little or no progress toward rectifying it, and the disappearance of animals on our earth.

I used to worry that it would be my daughter and son that faced the destruction of earth, or maybe their children.

Now I am not so sure it will be my own generation who dies a natural death.

All because humanity's collision course with reality has become unreal to most of us and our powers of denial are unbelievable.

If I read or hear one more conspiracy theory I will scream.

Get off the keyboard-text messages and cell phones and look around you.

Look around and ask yourself if you see change- ask yourself if it is good.

If you think it is you are part of the problem.

How long do you think we can trash, deconstruct, compromise, pollute, and essentially not clean up our mess and not pay the price of losing our planet?

What will we do?

Homophobia-America's last greatest value????

Republican Corruption in the past three years:

Ted Stevens

Larry Craig

Bob Ney

Tom Delay

Jack Ryan

Bob Livingston

Duke Cunningham

Sexual Scandals-with women

David Vitter

Jim Gibbons

Ed Schrock

Sexual scandals with men

Mark Foley

Bob Allen

Craig

Our culture loves moral outrage. Especially politicians. They step into dog shit repeatedly, trying to wipe the residue on the grass before anyone can smell it.

But we seem to have created our last bastion of outrage for our own homophobic fears.

Blase'-oh yeah, absolutely blase'-we have become when it comes to hook ups with hookers, adulterous affairs, even assaulting women in parking garages, like Jim Gibbons did and then smearing her reputation in the press aka Carl Rove style.

Nothing like destroying a woman to make a man feel powerful, eh?

Ah, but male sex? Outrage!

Our last bastion of morality.

Stealing money, selling out the citizens of the US, lying, spying, locking us up without a warrant, denying legal representation, ignoring our critical needs during time of disaster- *yawn*

Homophobia!! Welcome to the forefront of America's paranoid, judgement day act one of many more to come script...Welcome to Brokeback Mountain hell!!

uncharted, american stuff-headlong into whatever...

The American world is one big buffet of polarization, excess and deprivation, obsessiveness and denial, riotous noise and dead silence.

We look for bombs in soda cans, mysterious poison powders in dumpsters, terrorists in skin color and we rarely learn from either our wisdom or are mistakes.

Whether it is interrment camps for Japanese-American citizens, indefinite lock-ups for Americans of middle eastern descent or massive round-ups of Mexican-Americans, we look for the boogy man in all that is not white.

Like a beached whale taking it's last gasp in a swirling mass of air, so foreign and lethal, panicked, we continue grasping for the familiar water. Our instincts to grasp the microscopic, almost invisable fishing line, unseeable, unable to hold the massive weight of fear we collectively produce creates a repeated pattern of attack and withdraw, attack and withdraw.

Hurricane Katrina reduced a city to rubble. All but wiped out a geographical region. Unprepared, using our denial, we created the menu and nature chose the main course.

If human spirit exists, we can transcend the panic mode of our existence and deal with reality rather than rhetoric.

Let's look beyond ourselves, now, rather than clinging and pushing our way to extinction.

Senator Craig's dueling selves...

Senator Craig's bathroom foray almost seemed destined to bring him the relief he must have, on some level, sought in a big destructive way.

A man who decried same sex relationships, strongly espoused family families and preached the christian pathway may as well have detonated a bomb inside his pants.

Why would he do it? Did you see his wife? The image of a Midwestern woman, full -round the middle, maternal material-oozing of family and mundane womanly living.

I find it sad to view a person battling the incongruencies of life-the feelings connected with the shame and the guilt. The denial-which has to be eating away at both selves-and I ask, "Did anyone ever know this man if he doesn't know himself?

Were those who love him surprised or did they already know who he is? Did they know it before he did? Can you imagine keeping his secret for years and years?

I don't think our world is such a condemning place that Mr. Craig would not have been able to live his lifestyle, work and be a productive citizen with some joy.

He is an older man now facing questions and answers which could lead him to that joy -I hate to think of what he considers alternatives.

We all have our own truths. We decide if we live them or not. Facing our own truths isn't without pain, discomfort or anguish. Most of us choose the Senator's way-not to face them at all-until they face us -