This week went by quick. Not as quick as we all wanted it to, but it went by. There was a continuous feeling of exhaustion that pushed us all to keep going--keeping staying awake until the day was done, and we could go home and sleep and eat.
On Tuesday we had a visitor from the Department of Health. She came really early in the day for the lunch service, so I decided to let her feel a little more welcome than to just sit in the kitchen awkwardly for three hours, and had her make paper mache with the kids. We passed that inspection with flying colors. Joyce was a cool inspector anyway.
On Wednesday, we went to the Astoria pool instead of Camp Deerpark. We brought eight kids, a pile-up of volunteers, and went to the park nearby while most of the kids swam. It was a good time. I didn't get in the pool, but enjoyed the park with the sprinkler that was close to where we sat our things down. Besides Dequisha getting hives from the infamous peaches that come in the free school lunches, it was an uneventful, fun time, ending at the Lemon Ice King, for Italian Ice. After work, I went with Vanessa to get her ear pierced--she got a Rook. It looked really painful.. The piercist had to bend the needle because her ear was so small, and when he pushed the bent part of the needle through, she grabbed my hand. Ouch!
Friday was more of less the worse day of the week. The kids walked to P.S. 20 for a hot lunch, and played at Bowne park. I stayed back at the church because there were parents that always come early, and it's good for someone to be there when we are doing the program. I cleaned up the rooms after crafts and dodgeball, and everyone started coming back, and soon everyone was back, until the doorbell rang, and Vanessa went to see who it was--Gregory, one of the kids in the program. We were all in a bit of a state of shock when he said he was left at the park and walked home by himself. After that came the heavy heavy discussion between leadership about how to tell his dad--the only dad that had been riding us the entire time, and seemed to be wanting more out of what we were doing. When Dan did tell his dad, we knew that Gregory wasn't coming back. The whole issue is really full of tension, so I'm just going to leave it at that.
The rest of the day was fine, but after that stress load we were all frustrated--with the program, and with each other when we left.
The work that we do in this program has two sections: the work that you do, and the work that you are. The work we do is the preparation, the crafts, the food, the clean-up--things we see and do, and the work we are is the attitude which we come in the door with, and the relationships we build with the kids. I think both at equally important.
Friday evening, I was blessed with a sit-down dinner with someone who wasn't affiliated with my work, and I could just talk about it and not worry about offending anyone. We went to the Happy Buddha, and ate vegan entrees and desserts. Judy got the chocolate cake, the soy ice cream, and a smoothie to go for us to share after the wonderful dinner. We took the bus to a Nail place in Bayside, and she bought me a manicure-pedicure, which was completely wonderful and awesome. And so relaxing. Now, my nails are teal, and my toes are neon yellow.
On Saturday, I went to the food pantry for the last time. I hadn't had a chance to go since before the program started, and it was fun, and fine, and I prayed for one of the ladies before I left. Sylvia and her friend Charla came into town--she called me in the afternoon and asked me how I was and what I was doing for the weekend, and at first I said I was fine, but then I said, "Actually, I'm in a foul mood because I miss Zach, and I'm watching Sleepless in Seattle, and I'd love it if you came and visited me," and she did! They came Saturday night, spent the night, set off the alarm while I was in the shower, and scared the crap out of the neighbors. We got a great laugh out of that one. They came to church with me in the morning. I went to the Perri's for dinner Saturday night, and Hannah made a Tofu "Cheese"cake, with chocolate, rum, and cinnamin. It was good.
On Sunday, I shared about my time in New York and what I had learned--what challenged me, and also shared a song. I was going to play one of my newer ones that I had written while I was in New York, but during worship, God nudged me in a different direction, and I played a song Marie and I wrote together--"true love", and said for people to listen to it, as God's love. That went really well. Then there were all these goodbyes. Goodbye is always hard, especially when I don't know when I'm coming back. I had this idea to work at Camp Deerpark, but in all honesty, I don't know where God is leading me, and what kind of a job I'll have. And I very well might spend next summer in Ohio, with people that I love there. Though saying goodbye was happening, I also had some interesting discussions with people. I went into the bathroom, and a woman that I had spoken with the first Sunday I was there, about being a vegan, said, "I've met some more Christian vegans." and then we discussed that for a little while. It made me giggle--that we were having the discussion in the bathroom.
I prepacked all my things, to see if they would fit, and then I sent my guitar with Sylvia because I knew that I didn't want to have to pay extra to take another thing under the Greyhound bus when I would have to take it, so I sent it with her, and I'll see her in September or October.
We went to Manhattan Sunday evening. The weather was perfect. We walked from Penn Station to this wonderful elevated walkway that actually had field grass and wildflowers on the edges--it was like a field in the middle of a city. So bizarre, but so wonderful at the same time. We went to Cocoa V, and they had artisan chocolates like Stella Leona's, but vegan, and I got a bunch that we tried, with great interest, Starbucks later. We then walked to the Crepe place, called Motek, that had 8 cent crepes, because it was their opening night, but Hannah and Christa got in line too late. The plus was, that across the street, there was a Vegan bakery and I went in, bought some vegan lasagna, and came out and when we as a group finally sat down, at Starbucks, add some dollar pizza, dollar falafel, some dolma, and voila! we had a great time! I had a soy chai tea latte. mmmmmmm. Then we took the subway home, the bus from there, and went to sleep at midnight. But it was perfect.
Showing posts with label veganism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label veganism. Show all posts
Monday, August 09, 2010
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Colman McCarthy, Connections, and Veganism
I had my second full day of high school. I guess this semester at these two high schools is going to have to suffice for all the time I skipped at Streetsboro High. I woke up at 5:45, and was out of the house at 6:30 and I ran to the Metro. There was a bit of a wait for the train to arrive, and I saw of the alert that said that trains would be delayed and that there was some type of accident between Twinbrook and Shady Grove, and I later found out that there was a fatal accident that two Metro workers were killed by the a piece of equipment falling of them. I feel for their families right now. I can imagine the holes in their hearts right now.
There were several delays on the way to Bethesda, but I expected, and I read my book on the way there, so I was fine, there was a man that was in the Metro that had a little impatient outburst when we stopped for the second minute delay. Once I got out of the Bethesda Station, I remembered where I was, sighting the McDonald's and walked quickly toward the way I knew the school would be. I got there on time, and Colman was right--they had some kind of homeroom first, so because I was a little late I still made it on time, and I waited in the office until Colman got there and then we walked to the first class--on the fourth floor! It was packed full--I sat on a stool behind Colman for the first class. One of his students from the previous semester's class had a free period and came and listened in.
Colman began his first class of the semester just the same as he did every time. He begins by asking the class if they like money, and then some outgoing or late student is addressed and tells him how much they like money--in this class, his name was Jordan, he was both late and outgoing, and he had to sit at the teacher's desk in the back of the room because there was nowhere else for him to sit. Then Colman takes out a $100 bill, and offers to give it to anyone who can identify and say a little bit about each person he names--there were six people that he named. He started out easy--Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, Mike Tyson. Everyone gets into the game, and is excited about this $100 bill at this point. Then he stumps them.
"Who is Barbara Lee?"
"Who is Jeanette Rankin?"
"Who is (and I can't even remember her name)?"
And no one knows the answers to these because, as Colman states, "You are learning the men that break the peace, but not the women who makes the peace. It's not your fault, you weren't taught it."
He teaches his first class by telling students how they are peace illiterate, telling them the math that they have been taking since first grade will be useless, as they can't graduate from high school to be an Algebraist. "Let those who love Algebra take Algebra, but let the rest of us take what we want to take."
He sent the students out in the hall to count the doors in the hallway, and then when they came back in, he asked them why they did that. They replied, "Because you told us to."
"Why did you listen to me?"
"Because you are the teacher."
"That's right, because I have the power. I am the teacher. I want you to learn to question authorities. Ask me 'Why are we going into the halls and counting doors? What's the point of this?'"
Even though Colman is an anarchist, and tends to teach in slightly irrational ways that anyone on the board of Education would frown upon, I find that his teaching methods seem like they may be the only ways that students actually like to learn in. His class is discussion based, asking questions, and going off on tangents.
This is true with connections. Whenever someone walks into the classroom, they have to be careful, because they are about to be the discussion. Whiney, a student from a program at American University showed up about an hour after class started, and Colman had her introduce herself and talk about where she was from, which was California, and then Colman asked the class what four cities in California were.
Later, a guidance counselor walked in with a new student, and Colman started asking her questions. Where'd you go to school? What did you do before you got here? The main discussion when this happened was when Colman asked the class, "Does anyone not want to be here?"
A couple kids raised their hands (this was at Wilson), and also the newest addition to the class, and he said, "I'd rather be in my original class." Colman thanked him for his honesty, and then proceeded to ask other students in the class who raised their hands to see why they didn't want to be there. One girl, Natalie, said that she'd rather be somewhere helping animals, and then Colman told her to go, then--now--and go help with at some Animal Nursery.
The guidance counselor was still there, and Colman was asking her opinion on what students should do if they didn't want to learn the way the high school made them learn. She said that it is the case for a lot of students, and maybe they want to do something like learn to repair cars, but they don't have that option at Wilson. I decided to say what they options were at Streetsboro--it was then I realized that although this was a bigger school with more class options, we had more options for those who wriggle in their seats with boredom because they can't stand math. We had the option of going to the Maplewood Career Center, as well as Post Secondary, or remaining at the high school, and here they had no options. I could tell that no one else had these options and it made me sad that they didn't.
The counselor left eventually, but you could tell that she had a lot to say and enjoyed the conversation that she had with Colman. There was another man that wondered in named Mr. Chase, looking for Ludwin, who wasn't in school. Colman also asked him questions about what he was doing as a job and what he did in college, but this guy seemed rushed, as he was on his job, getting students who were present to sign off. But still the same, he was letting the students see that these people weren't just invisible people in the world. They have homes and jobs and were in the same situation as we are in now five-ten years ago.
Colman also spoke with the substitute teacher that was at Bethesda in the first period. It turns out this guy graduated from Harvard, and taught Lacrosse part-time at a local private school, and was looking to be an English teacher at that school. But he majored in the history of Government, and Arabic at Harvard. And he said that the people weren't as exciting with unique thoughts and ideas as he had hoped. He wrote a book, and gave me the URL--it's called www.tremblethedevil.com . I plan on reading it. The guy seemed legitimate, and hey, he went to Harvard.
Then Whitney, girl that stopped in and Natalie, the girl who wanted to go help animals, and also some other students in the class were talking about animal rights and what should we feel about that. There were some kids who were talking about how meat is important to eat and that you get nutrients that your body needs from it that you can't get anywhere else. It turns out Whitney is vegan, and she was talking about how she had cookbooks, and it makes it really easy to eat vegan. Natalie stopped eating meat at the beginning of the year, and someone asked Colman if he was vegetarian, and he said he was Vegan.
Some students always object to the idea of being manipulated into changing their diets, and so I was just listening and taking it all in.
Whitney said that meat and animal products are bad for your body, and I was curious about that--I looked it up, and it says that eating meat has some connection to heart disease and other things, and being vegan leads to a cruelty free lifestyle. So part of today I was trying to define what my opinion was on food. I've grown up on milk and dairy products, and I know that I wouldn't be able to eat vegan, but I was trying to figure out how I would eat, because I don't want to be cruel to animals. I have a hard time with animals getting hurt--in fact when I was in sixth or seventh grade, I read this article in a magazine about some kids who tortured a cat to death, and it killed me, and it made me really sad.
So in reference to my diet, I read in Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, which was a great reminder, that cows need to be milked, or they are in pain, and chickens will lay eggs--it's inevitable. So why waste these things? So I'm all for drinking milk and eating eggs within reason. But within the case of animal cruelty, I know that some of these animals are tortured and kept in horribly small spaces, and I don't want to support that, but at the same time, if I get something out of the dumpster that has been tortured or encaged in small space, I would rather not waste their by-products than leave it there and declare that because these animals are cruelly treated that I refuse to eat their by-products. So I guess I want to eat vegan, aside things that are dumpster dove.
After work, I rode the bus home, ate soup and a muffin for lunch, and then bummed around on the internet before taking a nap. Now it looks like dinner's almost ready, and then we are going to volleyball, and I still have a journal to write for the seminar tomorrow.
There were several delays on the way to Bethesda, but I expected, and I read my book on the way there, so I was fine, there was a man that was in the Metro that had a little impatient outburst when we stopped for the second minute delay. Once I got out of the Bethesda Station, I remembered where I was, sighting the McDonald's and walked quickly toward the way I knew the school would be. I got there on time, and Colman was right--they had some kind of homeroom first, so because I was a little late I still made it on time, and I waited in the office until Colman got there and then we walked to the first class--on the fourth floor! It was packed full--I sat on a stool behind Colman for the first class. One of his students from the previous semester's class had a free period and came and listened in.
Colman began his first class of the semester just the same as he did every time. He begins by asking the class if they like money, and then some outgoing or late student is addressed and tells him how much they like money--in this class, his name was Jordan, he was both late and outgoing, and he had to sit at the teacher's desk in the back of the room because there was nowhere else for him to sit. Then Colman takes out a $100 bill, and offers to give it to anyone who can identify and say a little bit about each person he names--there were six people that he named. He started out easy--Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, Mike Tyson. Everyone gets into the game, and is excited about this $100 bill at this point. Then he stumps them.
"Who is Barbara Lee?"
"Who is Jeanette Rankin?"
"Who is (and I can't even remember her name)?"
And no one knows the answers to these because, as Colman states, "You are learning the men that break the peace, but not the women who makes the peace. It's not your fault, you weren't taught it."
He teaches his first class by telling students how they are peace illiterate, telling them the math that they have been taking since first grade will be useless, as they can't graduate from high school to be an Algebraist. "Let those who love Algebra take Algebra, but let the rest of us take what we want to take."
He sent the students out in the hall to count the doors in the hallway, and then when they came back in, he asked them why they did that. They replied, "Because you told us to."
"Why did you listen to me?"
"Because you are the teacher."
"That's right, because I have the power. I am the teacher. I want you to learn to question authorities. Ask me 'Why are we going into the halls and counting doors? What's the point of this?'"
Even though Colman is an anarchist, and tends to teach in slightly irrational ways that anyone on the board of Education would frown upon, I find that his teaching methods seem like they may be the only ways that students actually like to learn in. His class is discussion based, asking questions, and going off on tangents.
This is true with connections. Whenever someone walks into the classroom, they have to be careful, because they are about to be the discussion. Whiney, a student from a program at American University showed up about an hour after class started, and Colman had her introduce herself and talk about where she was from, which was California, and then Colman asked the class what four cities in California were.
Later, a guidance counselor walked in with a new student, and Colman started asking her questions. Where'd you go to school? What did you do before you got here? The main discussion when this happened was when Colman asked the class, "Does anyone not want to be here?"
A couple kids raised their hands (this was at Wilson), and also the newest addition to the class, and he said, "I'd rather be in my original class." Colman thanked him for his honesty, and then proceeded to ask other students in the class who raised their hands to see why they didn't want to be there. One girl, Natalie, said that she'd rather be somewhere helping animals, and then Colman told her to go, then--now--and go help with at some Animal Nursery.
The guidance counselor was still there, and Colman was asking her opinion on what students should do if they didn't want to learn the way the high school made them learn. She said that it is the case for a lot of students, and maybe they want to do something like learn to repair cars, but they don't have that option at Wilson. I decided to say what they options were at Streetsboro--it was then I realized that although this was a bigger school with more class options, we had more options for those who wriggle in their seats with boredom because they can't stand math. We had the option of going to the Maplewood Career Center, as well as Post Secondary, or remaining at the high school, and here they had no options. I could tell that no one else had these options and it made me sad that they didn't.
The counselor left eventually, but you could tell that she had a lot to say and enjoyed the conversation that she had with Colman. There was another man that wondered in named Mr. Chase, looking for Ludwin, who wasn't in school. Colman also asked him questions about what he was doing as a job and what he did in college, but this guy seemed rushed, as he was on his job, getting students who were present to sign off. But still the same, he was letting the students see that these people weren't just invisible people in the world. They have homes and jobs and were in the same situation as we are in now five-ten years ago.
Colman also spoke with the substitute teacher that was at Bethesda in the first period. It turns out this guy graduated from Harvard, and taught Lacrosse part-time at a local private school, and was looking to be an English teacher at that school. But he majored in the history of Government, and Arabic at Harvard. And he said that the people weren't as exciting with unique thoughts and ideas as he had hoped. He wrote a book, and gave me the URL--it's called www.tremblethedevil.com . I plan on reading it. The guy seemed legitimate, and hey, he went to Harvard.
Then Whitney, girl that stopped in and Natalie, the girl who wanted to go help animals, and also some other students in the class were talking about animal rights and what should we feel about that. There were some kids who were talking about how meat is important to eat and that you get nutrients that your body needs from it that you can't get anywhere else. It turns out Whitney is vegan, and she was talking about how she had cookbooks, and it makes it really easy to eat vegan. Natalie stopped eating meat at the beginning of the year, and someone asked Colman if he was vegetarian, and he said he was Vegan.
Some students always object to the idea of being manipulated into changing their diets, and so I was just listening and taking it all in.
Whitney said that meat and animal products are bad for your body, and I was curious about that--I looked it up, and it says that eating meat has some connection to heart disease and other things, and being vegan leads to a cruelty free lifestyle. So part of today I was trying to define what my opinion was on food. I've grown up on milk and dairy products, and I know that I wouldn't be able to eat vegan, but I was trying to figure out how I would eat, because I don't want to be cruel to animals. I have a hard time with animals getting hurt--in fact when I was in sixth or seventh grade, I read this article in a magazine about some kids who tortured a cat to death, and it killed me, and it made me really sad.
So in reference to my diet, I read in Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, which was a great reminder, that cows need to be milked, or they are in pain, and chickens will lay eggs--it's inevitable. So why waste these things? So I'm all for drinking milk and eating eggs within reason. But within the case of animal cruelty, I know that some of these animals are tortured and kept in horribly small spaces, and I don't want to support that, but at the same time, if I get something out of the dumpster that has been tortured or encaged in small space, I would rather not waste their by-products than leave it there and declare that because these animals are cruelly treated that I refuse to eat their by-products. So I guess I want to eat vegan, aside things that are dumpster dove.
After work, I rode the bus home, ate soup and a muffin for lunch, and then bummed around on the internet before taking a nap. Now it looks like dinner's almost ready, and then we are going to volleyball, and I still have a journal to write for the seminar tomorrow.
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