20/20

Cosmos – OOAK, originally uploaded by Soasa Designs.

In two weeks I’ll be 20 which is a lame age because you get the responsibility of not being a teen anymore, but no new privileges. I’ve decided that this isn’t fair, and if I can’t be rewarded for my age, at least someone should be!

So! Since I owe it to all my customers that I’m able to buy groceries, and thus live to be 20, you are the ones who will be rewarded! For every $20* you spend between now and March 4th I’ll give you 20% off! Now, if you were on my mailing list I would also be telling you the secret code for free shipping. E-mail me at RobinMarie at SoasaDesigns dot com if you’d like to be added!

Valentine’s Day is passed, but Mother’s Day is coming, though really, do you need an excuse to buy jewelry?

* This offer does not apply to Team NOLA purchases, of which 50% are donated to Habitat for Humanity SUNY New Paltz.

Read Full Post »

Bah Humbug?

I was all set to write up a report on where I’ve been (sleeping on a couch for the last two nights), the book I’ve finished (Girl with a Pearl Earring), the projects I’ve NOT finished (Enameling, Forming and Ceramics), the book I’m reading (The King of Ireland’s Son), the projects I’m knitting (Fetching for Amanda’s aunt, Forecast for me), my trip to my professor’s studio (She has a pool. In her studio.), and the ridicules weather (Snow, Ice, Rain, Lots of Ice, The reason I’ve been sleeping on a couch for two nights), but for some reason this “holiday” is getting to me more than I expected. I got out of class at 9:20pm per usual and was really, really upset to be going home to my apartment all alone. I missed a call from Mom, the one person I truly wanted to talk to, and it was too late to call her. I guess even though He and I never got to be together for Valentine’s Day, it helped knowing that He was out there thinking of me. Right now I’m feeling pretty isolated.

What am I going to do about it? I’m going to cry a little, knit a little and go to bed.

Read Full Post »

Morning Verse

(Photo found here.)

Every morning my classmates and I recited this verse, all through middle school. Every once in a while it comes up, and each time I come across it I am struck by the sense of purpose and connectedness I feel. A childhood friend of mine just recently returned from Cambodia and he wrote a piece for my school’s newsletter about finally feeling the full purpose of these words. Thus they come into my life again and I am filled with a lightness and bubbling excitement that comes from feeling that all things are possible.

I look into the world
In which the sun is shining,
In which the stars are sparkling,
In which the stones repose.
Where living plants are growing,
Where sentient beasts are living,
Where man, soul gifted,
Gives the spirit a dwelling place .

I look into my soul
That lives within my being.
The world creator moves,
In sunlight and in soul light,
In wide world space without,
In soul depths here within.
To thee, creator spirit
I will now turn my heart,
To ask that strength and blessing,
To learn and work may grow,
Within my inmost being.

-Rudolf Steiner

Read Full Post »

#10 The Kalahari Typing School for Men

Book: The Kalahari Typing School for Men by Alexander McCall Smith
Pages: Audiobook
Entertainment Rating: 5/5
Snooty Rating: 3.5/5
Total Rating: 8.5/10
Books Read Total: 10/50
Pages Read Total: 2410/15,000

This is (I believe) the 4th book the in The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, which means I missed the third one. It doesn’t particularly matter though, as all the books are entertaining and don’t rely entirely on one another. In this book the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency (the detective agency of a woman in Botswana named Mma Ramotswe) faces some competition, religion, typing men, cheating men, charming men, and forever strong women. I loved listening to the audio because I could hear the pronunciation of all the names and places! It was perfect for the gym and the studio. I think I went through this book in about three days. Highly recommended for during those activities when you may be distracted occasionally, but want to be entertained.

I’ve only just discovered the amazing(ly free) wealth of audiobooks available at my library, and I went back last night to get a new one and ended up coming home with 4, having cut back from 8. Last night I picked up The Girl With the Pearl Earring, Fahrenheit 451, A Thousand Splendid Suns, and Bless Me, Ultima. First up is The Girl With the Pearl Earring. I’m also reading (for the YA Challenge) an old childhood favorite called The King of Ireland’s Son.

Read Full Post »

True love has found me

I’m thoroughly infatuated with my Sociological and Philosophical Foundations of Education class (even if it is a mouthful). My professor is an exceptional guide, but I think also that as a whole my class is great! Our discussions are inquisitive, thoughtful and intense, and my professor is great about fielding our hard-to-answer questions, making clear distinctions between the times when what she says is fact, and when she’s simply participating in the sharing of opinions. At this point in the semester we’re exploring the struggle of racism and segregation in education. I absolutely LOVE that there is no right answer. I find myself mulling over possibilities, realities, actions and repercussions even outside of class, as I’m falling asleep or eating lunch. I love having the ground yanked out from under me in this way, forcing me to abandon opinions because there’s simply no way to pin one down!

This is why I went to college.

Read Full Post »

#9: Shame of the Nation

Book: Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America by Jonathan Kozol
Pages: 332
Entertainment Rating: 1/5
Snooty Rating: 3.5/5
Total Rating: 4.5/10
Books Read Total: 9/50
Pages Read Total: 2410/15,000

From Publishers Weekly:
“Public school resegregation is a “national horror hidden in plain view,” writes former educator turned public education activist Kozol (Savage Inequalities, Amazing Grace). Kozol visited 60 schools in 11 states over a five-year period and finds, despite the promise of Brown v. Board of Education, many schools serving black and Hispanic children are spiraling backward to the pre-Brown era. These schools lack the basics: clean classrooms, hallways and restrooms; up-to-date books in good condition; and appropriate laboratory supplies. Teachers and administrators eschew creative coursework for rote learning to meet testing and accountability mandates, thereby “embracing a pedagogy of direct command and absolute control” usually found in “penal institutions and drug rehabilitation programs.” As always, Kozol presents sharp and poignant portraits of the indignities vulnerable individuals endure. “You have all the things and we do not have all the things,” one eight-year-old Bronx boy wrote the author. In another revealing exchange, a cynical high school student tells his classmate, a young woman with college ambitions who was forced into hair braiding and sewing classes, “You’re ghetto-so you sew.” Kozol discovers widespread acceptance for the notion that “schools in ghettoized communities must settle for a different set of academic and career goals” than schools serving middle-and upper-class children. Kozol tempers this gloom with hopeful interactions between energetic teachers and receptive children in schools where all is not lost. But these “treasured places” don’t hide the fact, Kozol argues, that school segregation is still the rule for poor minorities, or that Kozol, and the like-minded politicians, educators and advocates he seeks out, believe a new civil rights movement will be necessary to eradicate it.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. “

This is a complicated book. I’ve been struggling over the past few days to decide what I will write about it (both here and in the paper I’ll have to write for class) and I still haven’t decided. There is no denying that Kozol has devoted his adult life to fighting for the rights of inner city citizens, however I can’t help but feel that his attitude towards the people he is writing about is condescending at best. His writing is completely inaccessible to anyone without some form of higher education, and even then it takes hours to wade through, by which time much of the inspiration and rage has dissipated to frustration. I don’t see how this book will do much to help when his final call to action is to the teachers in these schools. They don’t have time to read his book, as he’s already proven page after page throughout this book. As a reader I was frustrated by the intensity of his use of statistics. There were some wonderful (and heart wrenching) chapters in this book about the schools, the teachers and the students, and those were the most effective chapters. Then there were pages and pages of straight up statistics, during which I had to fight to keep my focus because numbers are really just numbers. They lose their meaning quickly.

The content itself is something I’ve encountered before, and it never fails to break my heart. With each year that we fail to resolve this issue the problems deepen and become less reversible. There were definitely parts of this book that made me want to drop everything and devote my life to the children in these schools, while other parts brought the realization that Teach for America (a program I’ve wanted to participate in) may not be all the peace and love it seems to be. So long as we make these schools settle for uncertified youth as teachers we deny them the resources they need in the form of strong, seasoned educators. In the end I’m torn. Can I, from my position, help this cause? How can we activate the teachers? How can we educate the parents on how to demand what is best for their children? How can we show these students that they can have better, of they’re willing to fight for it?

Read Full Post »

Richard Wilbur

So Yarn Harlot posted a beautiful poem today as a part of the BRigid in Cyberspace Poetry Reading. I didn’t know there was such a thing, but I am all for sharing my favorite poem with you all!

The Writer by Richard Wilbur

In her room at the prow of the house
Where light breaks, and the windows are tossed with linden,
My daughter is writing a story.

I pause in the stairwell, hearing
From her shut door a commotion of typewriter-keys
Like a chain hauled over a gunwale.

Young as she is, the stuff
Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy:
I wish her a lucky passage.

But now it is she who pauses,
As if to reject my thought and its easy figure.
A stillness greatens, in which

The whole house seems to be thinking,
And then she is at it again with a bunched clamor
Of strokes, and again is silent.

I remember the dazed starling
Which was trapped in that very room, two years ago;
How we stole in, lifted a sash

And retreated, not to affright it;
And how for a helpless hour, through the crack of the door,
We watched the sleek, wild, dark

And iridescent creature
Batter against the brilliance, drop like a glove
To the hard floor, or the desk-top,

And wait then, humped and bloody,
For the wits to try it again; and how our spirits
Rose when, suddenly sure,

It lifted off from a chair-back,
Beating a smooth course for the right window
And clearing the sill of the world.

It is always a matter, my darling,
Of life or death, as I had forgotten. I wish
What I wished you before, but harder.

Read Full Post »

#8 Take a Thief

For the YA Challenge.

Book: Take a Thief by Mercedes Lackey
Pages: 448
Entertainment Rating: 5/5
Snooty Rating: 2/5
Total Rating: 7/10
Books Read Total: 8/50
Pages Read Total: 2078/15,000

I wasn’t at all surprised to find this book enjoyable as there are very few of Lackey’s Valdemar novels that I haven’t enjoyed. I’m a sucker for fantasy. She’s easy to read, entertaining, and her characters are always strong and witty. Skif, a young thief, is no exception. Orphaned by his mother’s death he is under the thumb of his skimping uncle and working in his inn in the slums under the watch of an abusive and slow-witted cousin. His only escape is in the mandatory lessons taught by the temple and the chance to keep out of the way. This story details the path he takes to a new life, the people he meets, the skills he earns, and the adventures that find him. The “street” speak was a bit hard to follow at times, but eventually I got used to it. Fun book!

I’ve got about 30 pages left in Jonathan Kozol’s book Shame of the Nation. I’m not sure what I’m going to read next, though I’m sure my classes will control my decision.

Read Full Post »