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19640. arkymalarky - 6/17/2006 12:33:09 AM Our downstairs a/c went out today, but I was able to get everything in the house in good shape before it crashed except my study, which is downstairs. I'm not sweating it, though (so to speak), because I have the stuff I need to get things in order there, including several large black garbage bags that I plan to fill up.
Thanks for the helpful advice, Judith. I'm not a great housekeeper and my house has been messy--incredibly messy and dirty--on numerous occasions, but this is the first time it ever got to a point that I literally couldn't figure out where to start.
Hopefully I won't let it get to that point this coming school year. Bob also needs to take up more slack, but I'm not going to go there. He does a lot more than I do, but sometimes it seems to me it's not what most needs doing. And we've been having an unspoken power struggle over plant watering and emptying trash which pretty much reached the level of MAD by the end of school. Plant casualties were significant. But like I said, I don't need to go there. For one thing, I don't have a leg to stand on in that debate. 19641. Ulgine Barrows - 6/17/2006 4:47:32 AM 19621. arkymalarky - 6/13/2006 1:36:11 AM and the ones following
larky, that's retarded. You're too busy to clean. So don't. Or hire it out, if you have the money. Forget it, if you don't, and so the minimum to keep bugs and pests and mold away.
Some folks came to surprise visit us from Arkansas a few months ago, folks I'd never met on my husband's side. I had the paper piles all over the tables, vacuum in the middle of the floor, kid what-not scattered everywhere.
I said, welcome to my messy home. Can I get you anything?
They said, no. we're fine, looks familiar, and we went from there. Not so difficult. One uncle leaned on the vacuum as an armrest. We didn't have enough chairs. It was a passel of visitors.
And what was funny, later, the local family were asking my husband if I was angry about it. I guess some of the other in-laws would pitch a fit. Whatever.
I was glad to meet those AR folk, they had some good stories. That is going to be one of my 'gracious hostess' memories. We all had a great time.
Housework isn't a top priority for me, yeah, you can't live in hovel, either, but really, if the floor doesn't crunch underfoot & bugs don't come, you'll be OK. 19642. arkymalarky - 6/17/2006 6:37:30 AM This is for me, not company. I'm not having company until the end of July. I don't worry about what other people think of my house day to day, but we built the home that I wanted and I love, and when it's chronically in bad shape as it has been this past couple of years, it affects my mood--it depresses me. My home is my haven. I want a comfortable place I enjoy, not a place where I can't sit at the table or in my study without shoving a pile into the floor. I will never be a very good housekeeper. I never have been. But I like to get my house like I like it at least once a year, and maintain a level of comfort in it the rest of the year.
It also relates to the cyclical nature of school teaching, which is one of the best parts of the job. You start every year new, with new school supplies, new ideas, and enthusiasm. Getting my house in order is a huge part of that for me, in addition to the practical necessity of getting organized. It would be disastrous if I lost some of the stuff I've had strewn all over the place.
If I've learned anything over the last few years, it's that I know what I need for my own emotional comfort, and I don't give a rat's ass what anyone thinks about it one way or another--and that pertains to much more than the house. When I'm in the middle of a lot of stuff and people come over to a messy house, no one thinks anything of it (or seems to), least of all me. When I've got a week to get things manageable again, I'm going to take it. You can't hire that out. No one would have the first clue what to do with my stuff. I have too much in too many categories right now. 19643. Ulgine Barrows - 6/17/2006 7:02:44 AM It is for you, so you can be gracious. 19644. Ulgine Barrows - 6/17/2006 7:44:29 AM 19638. Magoseph - 6/14/2006 12:20:10 PM
Did you listen to Judith?
Tell me, do you have such people in your families?
I have hired a therapist. What I've learned from therapist, quite common.
bwah, bwah I think so 19645. Ulgine Barrows - 6/17/2006 7:47:41 AM o, larky 19646. arkymalarky - 6/17/2006 3:21:31 PM Haha! Thanks, Ulgine! I must also add that in this process I'm trying to get a system for keeping up this coming year. I don't want to live like I have the past three or four years, and especially last year.
I'm adding AP history to what I'm teaching, I'm taking two night classes in the fall and two more in the spring, and our rural work will ratchet up tremendously due to a legislative session in January, to say nothing of my daughter getting married in March. I'll be buried alive again in paper if I don't have a way of dealing with it going into this year. I don't like the panic I've felt more than once lately of needing something desperately and not having a clue where I put it, or even whether I may have thrown it away.
As far as prepping for company, I know I've told this before, but Bob's sister once got a call from their preacher that he and his wife were going to drop by, and since she didn't have time to wash the huge sinkload of dishes (they didn't have a dishwasher), she threw the dirty dishes in boxes and put them in the attic. Where there's a will there's a way. ;-)
19647. jexster - 6/17/2006 5:20:03 PM Dick's Thought for the Day:
Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them,
you're a mile away and you have their shoes. 19648. jexster - 6/17/2006 5:44:00 PM Lesson Plan AP History ark???
Think Juan Cole's site and America Abroad at TPMC sometimes has history stuff
Also, Cole loves to refer to History News Network
Betcha if I asked him, he be delighted to recommend an appropriate work on Middle Eastern History too. 19649. arkymalarky - 6/17/2006 7:24:42 PM Thanks so much, Jex! That would be fantastic! Especially since I don't even know yet whether it will be American or World History; but I teach non-AP too, so all of that will help tremendously. 19650. arkymalarky - 6/17/2006 7:28:43 PM And at a glance, that History News Network site looks great. My parents are on their way over, so I wish I'd checked it out later when I could really look through it. It'll just have to wait until they leave, I guess. 19651. jexster - 6/17/2006 11:22:18 PM When you figure it out Arky, why don't you email him at UMich address. Tell him who you are, what UR lookin for, that you're Ellie May Clampett's cousin from Bugtussle etc .John McCutchen from SF State saud you should write. 19652. jexster - 6/17/2006 11:34:08 PM This is an attention-getter no matter which subject you teach. Perhaps you've read it Arky....
Lies My Teacher Taught Me
Good critical thinking...
Woodrow Wilson
".. two antidemocratic policies that Wilson carried out: his racial segregation of the federal government and his military interventions in foreign countries" (23).
"Under Wilson, the United States intervened in Latin America more often than at any other time in our history.. In 1917 Woodrow Wilson.. started sending secret monetary aid to the "White" side of the Russian civil war... This aggression fueled the suspicions that motivated the Soviets during the Cold War..." (23-4).
"..Wilson's interventions in Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Nicaragua set the stage for the dictators Batista, Trujillo, the Duvaliers, and the Somozas.." (24).
"He was an outspoken white supremacist--his wife was even worse--and told "darky" stories in cabinet meetings" (27).
"Spurred by Birth of a Nation, William Simmons of Georgia reestablished the Ku Klux Klan. The racism seeping down from the White House encouraged this klan.." (28).
"Wilson was not only antiblack; he was also far and away our most nativist president, repeatedly questioning the loyalty of those he called "hyphenated Americans"" (29).
"To oppose America's participation in World War I, or even to be pessimistic about it, was dangerous. The Creel Committee... After World War I, the Wilson administration's attacks on civil liberties increased, now with anticommunism as the excuse. Neither before nor since these campaigns has the United States come closer to being a police state" (30).
"Because heroification prevents textbooks from showing Wilson's shortcomings, textbooks are hard pressed to explain the results of the 1920 election. James Cox, the Democratic candidate who was Wilson's would-be successor, was crushed by the nonentity Warren G. Harding, who never even campaigned. [It was] the biggest landslide in the history of American presidential politics" (31).
19653. arkymalarky - 6/18/2006 12:29:33 AM Thanks Jex. I'll see what schedule I end up with (which probably won't be final until August) and drop him a line.
Interesting on Woodrow Wilson. The history/text attitude toward Wilson from my high school and college to now is almost like night and day. Another interesting site for me to go through, too.
You really ought to check out C. Vann Woodward and his take on the post-Reconstruction era, both nationally and in the South. I keep telling Wombat the same thing. His work on the Compromise of 1877 and the rise and fall of the Populist Movement (and the corporate and political machinations that helped doom it) are absolutely fascinating. Here's a bibliography with links to some great articles from the New York Review of Books.
Speaking of Wombat (hint, hint) I'd love it if he weighed in with any advice, info, or resources for an AP history class. 19654. arkymalarky - 6/18/2006 2:28:39 AM Bro's the first one pictured in this Ome Banjo "Artists Gallery". 19655. Magoseph - 6/18/2006 6:49:13 AM Bonne fête papa ! 19656. arkymalarky - 6/18/2006 4:01:42 PM Happy Father's Day all you Mote Dads!! 19657. judithathome - 6/19/2006 1:41:24 AM Ditto from me to all the Mote daddys!
Arky, your bro looks so much like his dad! 19658. arkymalarky - 6/19/2006 2:20:17 AM I'll have to tell them--they'll both appreciate that!
Bro's in CO right now. I've got the next twelve days to run the gauntlet, then we're headed there. Bro will be home by then, though. 19659. arkymalarky - 6/20/2006 2:58:08 AM One day down, eleven to go.
It's an excellent program, though. I'm learning a lot and enjoying it. Creating the portfolio and the four ten-page papers that go in it (along with a bunch of other stuff) will be hard to find time for, but I have until November to do that, because it requires using my work environment, instruction, and student interactions during school time.
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