Well, we made it home in time for a mad rush to get back to work and get ready for school.
JT starts middle school this year - which I fondly refer to as a "black hole." However, I have to admit that I loved the one junior high that I went to for 7th and half of 8th grade. So I am trying to keep this more balanced perspective in mind.
I just know that it seems like a lot of kids have negative things happen to them during middle school - whether it's teasing and bullying, or getting sidetracked with social things and losing their way for a while, or setting the stage for adolescent sex, drugs and rock'n'roll ... But the reality is that I think hormones are running high and you go thru so many changes (physically, emotionally, socially, etc) and you lack life experience to put it all into perspective, so no wonder a lot of teens (and adults) I may talk to have negative experiences to recount.
The reality is that we probably have too much time to reflect on the nuances of it all, so it all gets magnified. And what is the meaning of life anyway? Personally, we are at the pinnacle of human existence: We're all alive, healthy, live in a suburban land where violence is extremely unusual (in our lives personally), we can eat ice cream for lunch every day, and we can read a book or play video games until we get hungry (or mom kicks us off). We have green space to go play in out our front door. We have our choice of exotic fruits from the store. We can do our little things to make the world a better place, while not having to personally put ourselves at risk... As long as we don't want to be millionaires, what else can you ask for?
Monday, August 27, 2007
Monday, August 6, 2007
Random Thoughts on Politics and Blogs
I have been reading quite a lot - just none of it for preparing for the course I'm teaching this fall. Trying to wade through a backlog of magazines and keep up with the newspaper.
One of the articles I read (in Mother Jones) was talking about blogs and the internet and politics, and I found it interesting that basically most political blogs are run by white men and that the internet's role in politics basically reflects what happens in the outside world in politics in the USA - most energy and power is focused around white men, with women and minorities playing a very peripheral role. I know that while politics interests me, the time constraints of being a working mother mean that I don't have time to go to a bunch of evening meetings to keep up with what is happening in city council meetings. Let alone any political party meetings or caucuses. And I do not have cable (saving money while I save our brain cells) so I can not watch the recordings of meetings. And the reality is that the minutes of meetings, when they are available on-line, leave out much of the nuances and nitty-gritty that you get when you go to meetings in person.
I wonder if I would approach things differently if I were in a country where it felt like politics had a vital role in my life. I think politics have a big impact here, but my life is so cushy here in the USA that I wonder if it allows me to put politics on a back burner. Or is it that politics is such a huge bureaucratic animal that there is no sense of how I can have an impact. Sure I write my senators and congress people (usually email them), but it always feels like my voice doesn't really count. Either they will do something I agree with - because they would do that anyway, or they do something I DISAGREE with - which is also what they would do anyway. While I appreciate all the nice letters and emails to me from their aides, I can't say that I feel like my voice really has an impact.
And as far as local politics is concerned, where you think you could have a real impact, people seem to feel even more disconnected, or if they aren't disconnected, they are small-minded and vituperative. Which is not about to make me want to get involved. Life is too short and the issues they are up in arms about seem meaningless when I look at the big picture.
There are not really any open doors that invite people into the process. I have seen the way that outsiders get treated - like they are annoying or irrelevant, or to be appeased to their faces and talked about behind their backs, or just out and out ignored. Or they give you the round-around: "that's not in our jurisdiction, it belongs to so-and-so"... with everyone just passing the buck (or the hot potato) because they don't want to invest the energy it would require to do something meaningful.
And I get very angry and frustrated with the lack of visionary people in local politics, and that is NOT good for my blood-pressure, so I'd rather put my energy in other places than to bang my head on a door that seems to already be closed and locked.
But am I making a big mistake?
One of the articles I read (in Mother Jones) was talking about blogs and the internet and politics, and I found it interesting that basically most political blogs are run by white men and that the internet's role in politics basically reflects what happens in the outside world in politics in the USA - most energy and power is focused around white men, with women and minorities playing a very peripheral role. I know that while politics interests me, the time constraints of being a working mother mean that I don't have time to go to a bunch of evening meetings to keep up with what is happening in city council meetings. Let alone any political party meetings or caucuses. And I do not have cable (saving money while I save our brain cells) so I can not watch the recordings of meetings. And the reality is that the minutes of meetings, when they are available on-line, leave out much of the nuances and nitty-gritty that you get when you go to meetings in person.
I wonder if I would approach things differently if I were in a country where it felt like politics had a vital role in my life. I think politics have a big impact here, but my life is so cushy here in the USA that I wonder if it allows me to put politics on a back burner. Or is it that politics is such a huge bureaucratic animal that there is no sense of how I can have an impact. Sure I write my senators and congress people (usually email them), but it always feels like my voice doesn't really count. Either they will do something I agree with - because they would do that anyway, or they do something I DISAGREE with - which is also what they would do anyway. While I appreciate all the nice letters and emails to me from their aides, I can't say that I feel like my voice really has an impact.
And as far as local politics is concerned, where you think you could have a real impact, people seem to feel even more disconnected, or if they aren't disconnected, they are small-minded and vituperative. Which is not about to make me want to get involved. Life is too short and the issues they are up in arms about seem meaningless when I look at the big picture.
There are not really any open doors that invite people into the process. I have seen the way that outsiders get treated - like they are annoying or irrelevant, or to be appeased to their faces and talked about behind their backs, or just out and out ignored. Or they give you the round-around: "that's not in our jurisdiction, it belongs to so-and-so"... with everyone just passing the buck (or the hot potato) because they don't want to invest the energy it would require to do something meaningful.
And I get very angry and frustrated with the lack of visionary people in local politics, and that is NOT good for my blood-pressure, so I'd rather put my energy in other places than to bang my head on a door that seems to already be closed and locked.
But am I making a big mistake?
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