OK, I’ve got to weigh in on this because I’ve just about had it with the fucking wingnuttery spewing out of the mouths of this little sect of Obama haters. If you have not been following the news, President Obama (a sitting president and leader of the free world) is slated to air a speech this next week directed at children encouraging them to “study hard, set educational goals, and stay in school”. Amazing isn’t it? Our duly elected president, the first one we have seen in MY lifetime who can actually speak in complete sentences having the audacity to encourage our kids to keep their shit together and do something with their lives? It’s a fucking conspiracy, there’s going to be a subliminal message in his speech designed to take over the minds of our impressionable kids. I can’t believe this president thinks he can just take over the airwaves and force his views on all of us.
You FUCKNUTS! School districts all over the country (and especially in the south and mid-west) are scrambling trying to figure out how to appease these lunatics who are demanding teachers allow parents to “opt-out” of watching this speech. Many of the most vocal wingnutters are calling on parents to keep kids home from school on that day in protest. I find this whole thing utterly ridiculous and entirely insulting. It takes more than a set of parents to get kids through school. If I had not been told repeatedly by my parents, teachers, community leaders – NOT TO MENTION EVERY REPUBLICAN PRESIDENT OF THIS COUNTRY IN MY LIFE TIME THROUGH THE SAME TYPE OF FUCKING SPEACH etc to keep my shit together and get my education I sure as hell would have chosen to do whatever the fuck I wanted to do at the complete expense of my education. Thank God I didn’t and thank God enough adults had the balls to get in my face and keep me headed in the right direction. That a sitting President wants to SHOW children that an education really does matter should be something huge and something positive. Instead, we have wingnutters threatening to withdraw their children to try and protect them from the President’s speech.
Alright, there is a LOT more behind this little sideshow and it has a LOT do with RACE, PREJUDICE, and CLASS. It also has to do with a small sect of people who simply do not understand the sort of country we live in. From “Birthers” to “Teabaggers” this small, but rather vocal group of people have fallen into the firm belief that our President is a socialist (hes a populist just like every other fucking president has to be…and populist has very little to do with political ideology), that he wants to destroy our democracy (a democracy they haven’t got the first clue about, they seem to think a THEOcracy is the same thing), that the President was born in Kenya (when facts…thats right FACTS, state otherwise), that he wants to kill off Seniors by suggesting that they actually think about end of life issues (something that our government has encouraged for DECADES through promotion of Living Wills and other health care initiatives). This list of things could go on for PAGES but I just don’t have the strength to bother countering their pathetic arguments with the laundry list of FACTS that disprove every one of their claims.
I’m going to suggest that these people will stop at nothing to attempt to derail our elected Present BECAUSE he’s an educated black man who has proven to be far more intelligent than nearly ALL the asshats who claim to be “true Americans”. QUIT wearing your flag on your sleeve and pull the flag pole OUT OF YOUR ASS. Get it together because it’s YOUR children who are going to suffer.
The story below is from Oklahoma and is one of the reasons (among many others) that I completely withdrew my involvement with children and ended my journey more than 10 years ago towards becoming an educator. I have very little patience for this sort of thing and even less patience for people who believe that becuase I am gay, I am somehow a threat to society and more specifically to children. This is from Pam’s House Blend blog. This country still has a LONG way to go on tolerance.
Teacher Joseph Quigley of Northwest Classen High School in Oklahoma City, who is also gay, found himself at a termination hearing recently. School Board Superintendent Karl Springer’s recommended the termination of Quigley, who has been with the school district since 1994, because “he wasn’t following plans for improvement and didn’t obey administrative directives.”
Quigley’s attorneys say otherwise:
“The attempt to fire Mr. Quigley, a career teacher with a stellar record, appears to be driven by some administrators after he advocated for better protections for gay and lesbian students. The legal counsel for OKCPS has relied on trumped up and exaggerated charges to make the case for his dismissal. In fact, Mr. Quigley was the subject of harassment and false charges merely because of his advocacy for gay and lesbian students and/or the fact that he is gay.”
MetroStar News, an Oklahoma LGBT newspaper, reports that Quigley received consistent high marks on his evaluations for a decade — that clearly doesn’t indicate someone was unhappy with his performance in the classroom.What did Quigley “do wrong” in the eyes of the school? Perhaps this sheds some light on the matter:
He stated that the administration “singled him out, applied a double standard, micromanaged him and has instituted a relentless scorched earth policy to get rid of him.” He also pointed out that it wasn’t until after 2007 that his evaluations showed him to be substandard, when Ms. Walling became his evaluator. It was clarified that his evaluations suddenly went down after 2006 , after Joe advocated the inclusion of “sexual orientation” among the groups listed in the Student Handbook to be protected from harassment and bullying.
Here we go. More advocates for the beating of LGBT youth, because, of course, in Oklahoma they deserve it — and the advocate, needs to suffer consequences as well. Quigley and his attorneys are considering taking his case to the federal court.What’s really sad is that Oklahoma is in a race to top of the wingnuttery charts. It was the only state that had no Blue counties in this past election, and voters in that state managed to turn Oklahoma even more Republican. Its LGBT and reality-based citizens pay the price; this should be a reality check to LGBTs out there who are in deep Blue states with a host of civil rights and the luxury to focus on marriage equality. People in deep Red states are in the bullseye of the bigots with limited support from allies, national orgs (and elected officials practically MIA).
I don’t generally like talking head TV because I have a hard time listening to people argue and talk over each other but lately I’ve been watching a good deal of it on the various blogs that I read. I’m a strong proponent of science and science education and I think a great deal of the current lack of REALLY basic knowledge pertaining to science is related directly to Republicans and their insistence on promoting complete junk science in public education. The fact that there is a strong contingent of conservatives that really do believe creationism should be taught right along side of evolution just blows my mind. It is TRUE that they are both theories. It is ALSO TRUE however that only ONE argument (evolution) can be supported using the scientific method which even by itself makes it far more valid than the theory of Creationism. I have NO issues with creationism being taught, I have a problem with it being taught as scientifically proven fact which is what conservative Christians want to do. For it to be taught as fact, you must be able to demonstrate it. Just watch the video. Chris Matthews completely obliterates Rep. Mike Pence. Folks, if you really want to believe that the earth is only 6000 years old, I dare you to prove it and then I dare you to try and disprove the scientific FACT that the earth is several BILLION years old. The Earth is NOT flat, the earth is NOT the center of the universe, and no, humans and dinosaurs DID NOT CO-EXIST!…EVER!
It’s been an interesting year for me this past year. I’ve split up with the person I thought I might spend the rest of my life with, I’ve discovered (although I already knew this) that I don’t live well with people I don’t care for, and I’ve been able to evaluate my life as a single person now in my mid 30’s. I found some old cassette recordings of me singing today in the basement with lots of other shit that I was going to toss. I thought that I would try and salvage these from sure ruin. It amazes me to think how far technology has come in 20 years. When this recording was made, cassette tapes were still the norm. CD’s were just getting off the ground and digital recordings were unknown. Tonight I was even able to edit this recording to make it cleaner and easier to listen to.
The recording you are listening to was created my junior year at Grand Valley State University. I am singing Dixit Dominus and I am sining countertenor. I had perfected my upper range at the American Boychoir School after my voice had changed and this became my range of choice when I got into late high school and into collage. Nobody else that I knew could sing in this range like I could and I was never one to blow my own horn but I was pretty dam good. When there was an alto or countertenor solo to sing, I got the part, when it came to teaching it was perfect because I could sign in the same range that the boys I was teaching could sing in so they understood what I was looking for.
This recording was made during a fairly critical year in my quest to pursue a music education degree. I had become by this time rather cynical of my education and actually I had become exceptionally board with it. I was in my 4th year of teaching for the Grand Rapids Choir of Men and Boys and my 4th year of Collage and I saw little value in the education I was getting as it did not relate to real life at all and was in fact quite far removed. NOTHING I was learning in collage even remotely related to what I was teaching with the GRCMB. Not even close. Sadly, that narrow view of reality would continue until I eventually dropped out of collage about 2 semesters short of graduating with a degree I would never end up using anyhow. This recording was an attempt to escape the mundane and lackluster world of higher education and try to join the ranks with what I considered to be the premier mens chorus in the world: Chanticleer. They did not develop a relationship with the American Boychoir School until several years after I had graduated but they were indeed the gold standard when it came to professional choirs. Having been let down tremendously by the substandard and rather pathetic choirs of high school and collage (and even the Grand Rapids Choir of Men and Boys although that was a higher standard than I could get anywhere else), I wanted to experience professionalism again and I held Chanticleer on an exceptionally high pedestal (and still do). It was a long shot to audition considering the members of Chanticleer were all well into their 30’s and 40’s and all professional musicians but I wanted to try anyhow just to see how I stacked up. My impression from the note sent back to me from Mr. Jennings was that I was certainly qualified and capable but not yet mature enough in my age or technique to join their ranks. I wasn’t shocked but I was disappointed that my exhibited talent had been reduced to a simple lack of professional experience. Oh well, it was not the end all for me but it set me on a path that would end my collage career and put me out into the world pursuing other dreams in unrelated fields.
I’ll be posting other mp3 files in future posts. I have one from when I was 2 years old sining nursery rhymes with dad and I have one of Sarah and I singing show tunes in high school. It was important that I try everything I can to preserve these recordings even though the quality is lack luster. The memories are worth hanging on to. Here is another picture I found the other day. Early on in life Sarah and I were treated to the establishment of traditions. To this day, I still shove my hands into pumpkins and revile in the gooey mess.
