An Open Letter to Jay-Z

Dear Mr. Carter,

I want to first thank you for the amazing contributions you have made over the past five years towards the lessons I teach in my high school classroom. I've used "99 Problems" to discuss the need we all have to name our issues. When my students were learning about allusions, we spent a day studying "Empire State of Mind."  And, just this semester, I've been teaching the concept that words matter, that they have value, so when my Midwestern male high school students use the word SWAG over and over again in an effort to establish they have swagger, I remind them that you are the poster boy for swagger in part because you never need to say you have confidence or infuence. You have it, so people know you have it and, conversely, people know you have it because you do.

I read today that you recently told reporters you would be happy to pay higher taxes if the cause were a just one: education, children in poverty, etc. I impressed with your specificity here, making our poorest children and the intellectual concerns of our American children such an important piece of you life.

As a high school teacher (with a masters degree in my content area--English), I make less than $50k a year and am crippled by student loan debt. This letter, Mr. Carter is my way of asking your charity to start smaller.  No need to rush to the IRS to amend a return, there is a faster way to begin contributing to education.

I'm asking you to choose ten teachers from around the country who owe over $100k in student loans, and then you pay off their debt.  It would cost over a million dollars, but you would be guaranteeing decades of lower stress for people doing one of the country's most exhausting and thankless jobs.

I recognize that you are busy with your own child on the way, you are on the throne so many of us are watching, and I am certain you have many projects to address at this time. I only ask that, now, at the holidays, you consider giving a gift very few people are capable of giving. Give ten teachers their lives back, keep us from scrambling paycheck to paycheck, let us love what we do without that love crippling us financially.

Finally, you could have read anything else in the world today, but you read this from me, and I appreciate that.

---Ms. D

Merry & Bright

There is no more perfect reminder of what Christmas is all about than a child.  This is my reminder.

Simpler Days

I have always loved the holidays.  People seem to be nicer, somehow, this time of year.  I like the magic of soft lighting brought on by small white bulbs on the Christmas tree.  I like hot tea on cold days.  I like curling up with a blanket in the corner of the couch or in an oversized chair with a bad holiday movie or a really good book.  I like the crackle of my fireplace--even if it is a fake one on the wall.  And I like holding hands in the car while driving around to look at Christmas lights.  


I can manage most of those things on my own, but that last one, well...I don't know exactly how hard this Christmas will be for me.  I can tell you that the good man I married is now my friend, something we really weren't before we were a couple, but, even the right decisions have painful ripples, and this time of year I am feeling those waves pretty intently.


So, in an effort to combat those rolling tides, I'm trying to remind myself of simpler days, happier moments, the pure joy of Christmas I knew as a little girl.

My grandmother made my dress and my brother's shirt, pants, and vest.  How cute are we?  I think this is 1980, and the one below is, I think, 1982.  Note my mom's amazing feathered bangs.   

It Is Time It Were Time

I have been feeling pretty low the last few days, trying to focus on what is good but still, inevitably, beaten back by the sadness of being alone this time of year.  Fitzgerald wasn't wrong when he wrote, "[S]o we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."  It is so easy to live there, in the past, when things weren't--most likely--better than they are now, but from this vantage point, they seemed to be.

Just as Jay and Daisy have glorified, idealized, and fetishized the love they once shared, during the holidays it is easy to slip into patterns that celebrate the good in the past without acknowledging what led to the present.

I don't want to dwell on how I got here.  It is not a new story or a particularly interesting one, but today, I am trying to live not in Fitzgerald's world, but in Paul Celan's.  He wrote:

It is time the stone made an effort to flower.

Time unrest had a beating heart.

It is time it were time.

In an effort to honor his words, to look forward rather than back, to be hopeful rather than hurt, here's what I did today.  I can't seem to get the sideways ones turned around...maybe in the morning.