I am so proud. I finally convinced my best friend to join the blogoverse: What I Didn't Say (Yet). Mark knows me better than anyone; he's unable to reveal what he knows on pain of death.
He's also a wonderful, wonderful writer. I've been blessed to be well acquainted with his works over the years, through letters & short stories both. I can't wait to see what he has on offer here.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Bobbie on meat.
I have been taking the girls, one at a time, to Mi Tierra for lunch. This is one of those iconic San Antonio restaurants that in my opinion are an essential part of growing up here. (Though Mi Tierra is in the midst of the city's biggest tourist trap, and is indeed frequented by tourists, we locals refuse to hand it over completely a la most of the crap on the River Walk.) It's too expensive for a family dinner, but just right for two; even including a chunky tip we usually bring it in under $30--though I did spend a bit more than that this time.
It also, of course, provides the girls with some important one-on-one Mommy time. With three children very close in age (slightly under 2 years between each), this is often in short supply.
Bobbie was chowing down on chips as I was perusing the menu. One of their signature dishes is cabrito. I love cabrito, but it's one of those things that is either very very good or very very bad. And the menu is quite large. So I said to Bobbie, "Should I eat goat!"
She reacted about as one would expect a six-year-old to. "No!"
"Why not? They're yummy."
"But they're so cute!"
"You eat cute animals all the time. Chickens are cute."
"No they're not."
"Well, cows are cute."
"Yes, but their hamburgers are so good!"
It also, of course, provides the girls with some important one-on-one Mommy time. With three children very close in age (slightly under 2 years between each), this is often in short supply.
Bobbie was chowing down on chips as I was perusing the menu. One of their signature dishes is cabrito. I love cabrito, but it's one of those things that is either very very good or very very bad. And the menu is quite large. So I said to Bobbie, "Should I eat goat!"
She reacted about as one would expect a six-year-old to. "No!"
"Why not? They're yummy."
"But they're so cute!"
"You eat cute animals all the time. Chickens are cute."
"No they're not."
"Well, cows are cute."
"Yes, but their hamburgers are so good!"
Monday, January 12, 2009
Liveblogging the first day of Spring Semester
OK, not really.
But I did actually bring my laptop to campus with me, so I could print out my schedule and figure out where I'm supposed to be. I know what classes I have, and in what order, but I didn't bother memorizing the room numbers ere now.
There was only a tiny line at the business office, so I stopped there for a Via semester pass, & picked up a copy of my schedule at the same time. So I don't even need to have my laptop here, but I do.
I sense a bout of Eternal Lands coming on in between English & Math...
(No, I don't use my laptop to take notes. I have a different spiral notebook for each class, and 5 different-colored pens, and I hand write very elaborate notes. This is how I managed to get an A in every class last semester. Except Student Development.)
But I did actually bring my laptop to campus with me, so I could print out my schedule and figure out where I'm supposed to be. I know what classes I have, and in what order, but I didn't bother memorizing the room numbers ere now.
There was only a tiny line at the business office, so I stopped there for a Via semester pass, & picked up a copy of my schedule at the same time. So I don't even need to have my laptop here, but I do.
I sense a bout of Eternal Lands coming on in between English & Math...
(No, I don't use my laptop to take notes. I have a different spiral notebook for each class, and 5 different-colored pens, and I hand write very elaborate notes. This is how I managed to get an A in every class last semester. Except Student Development.)
Friday, January 09, 2009
Little bit from column A, little bit from column b
I have mentioned before that Bobbie & I have about a 0.5 mile walk to the bus stop in the morning. It's typically no big deal. We cross two streets, and walk for some time alongside another, fairly major one for this part of town.
The scary part is the little street we cross to get to the bus stop. It's right by a Chevron, and when the station's open it's hair-raising at times, because it gives us a fourth direction to have to keep an eye on. There's a small street that runs briefly parallel to the major street, and the street that we cross as well. It's bad because it's hard to judge where people are going. This is why the speed limit is only 30 mph.
We were crossing this morning--after having stopped and checked for traffic, as always--and damn near got flattened anyway. Little car turned off the street that runs parallel to the big one, going way too damn fast, and I did that little deer-in-the headlights thing where it's going through your mind in a split second "Which way do I break? Run towards the side we were going to, or the one we were coming from? Is he gonna hit the brakes? Is he gonna swerve? Should I shove the kid out of the way?" And, of course, "Oh, FUCK!" I broke towards the side we were crossing too, he swerved in the other direction, blood did not flow. It was all over in a second or two, and I was cursing and hugging my kid and wondering why I wasn't more scared than I was. It was all kind of unreal. I don't think we were in much danger, really, because whoever it was saw us--Bobbie's jacket was white, mine a very light gray--and he wasn't going as fast as it seemed, or hit his brakes good or something. Or maybe my brain is trying to protect me. I dunno.
Funny thing is, there was a letter-to-the-editor in the paper just yesterday on the topic of how dangerous San Antonio is for pedestrians. And it's true. There is no sidewalk at all for the vast majority of our walk to the bus stop; thankfully the land is undeveloped and we can get up well away from the street (speed limit 45, routinely broken). Even in many of the nicer neighborhoods there are no sidewalks; I was in Windcrest last week with Robert and there wasn't a sidewalk to be seen.
I think part of it is this: no one walks in this city unless they're poor. Which, of course, isn't 100% true, but it holds a lot of water (just like almost no one rides the bus unless they're poor). Those who've managed to scrape together just enough money to buy a hoopty tend to be very disdainful of those of us still on the hoof. Many others simply don't look. It does not seem to occur to most drivers that anyone might be walking. (Motorcycle riders will be familiar with the cousin to this blindness!)
The letter actually annoyed me a bit, though, as the writer mentioned something about being almost hit several times crossing driveways. It is his understanding--a correct one--that pedestrians have the right of way. So, apparently he wanders out with great faith in his righteousness. Meanwhile, you will find me standing there getting progressively more annoyed while I wait for a break in traffic or that one person who knows he's supposed to stop. (And frankly, it is very seldom women who stop, even if I've got the kids with me.) I have the right of way. I know this. I am still not willing to take on the law of physics, as I somehow think it trumps Texas law. Greater mass, in other words, pretty much always wins out.
In Connecticut, people stopped. Whether the pedestrian was in a crosswalk or not, the drivers would stand their car on its nose to stop for them. Being of good German rule-following stock, I have naturally done much the same ever since learning I was supposed to in Driver's Ed. (I also do freakish stuff like signal my lane changes, but that's a topic for a different post.) In Virginia, they usually did not. Ditto Hawaii, unless you were downtown in the midst of a tourist throng. Hawaii matched this with a tendency by small, elderly Asian ladies to wander out into traffic. Pedestrians, in the right, got killed much more often in Hawaii than here.
San Antonio is a city of near-misses. Though pedestrians are taken out on a semi-regular basis, it's usually when they've wandered drunkenly out into traffic.
I prefer walking and riding the bus, especially when headed downtown. My college campus is on the northern fringes of downtown. I wouldn't drive in even if I had a parking pass & enough money to pay for gas every day.
Of course, downtown is where the tourists are. I was standing at the trolley stop at Navarro & East Houston downtown this morning after dropping Bobbie, reading my book & waiting for the trolley to take me to Bill Miller's, when movement out of the corner of my eye caught my attention. I looked up and there were three women standing in the middle of the intersection, doing a slow circle. Conventiongoers, obviously (too nicely dressed for tourists, but standing out in the street like 'em). Thankfully, traffic was light. They appeared to be looking for a place to eat, as they spotted the Delivery Market and tottered off toward it. I was sorely tempted to aks them whether there were any streets where they came from, but they were on the other side of East Houston from me.
East Houston is bad for people wandering out into traffic. My mother, the girls, & I were walking to (you guessed it) a trolley stop some short time ago when a woman staggered out of the Majestic Theater, white wine in hand, and stood out in the middle of the street to stare--I presume drunkenly--up at the marquee, completely oblivious to traffic oncoming from two directions. There are several hotels in that small area, and a number of chi-chi restaurants, and of course the theater, and this seems to breed stupidity in people who do not normally walk anywhere. I have seen people wander down the middle of the traffic lane on a semi-regular basis lately.
So while I want to defend the honor of my fellow pedestrians...I cannot. I've seen too much to be able to do so with any honesty. Too many people wandering up the center-turn-lane of a seven-lane street. Too many pushing strollers ahead of them as they dodge oncoming traffic. Too many walking out in front of a bus (for the record, I wait until the bus pulls completely away from the stop, 'cause you just can't see around those suckers), or out from between parked cars. It's crazy.
In the battle of car vs person, car wins. This is a simple fact, yet apparently escapable.
The scary part is the little street we cross to get to the bus stop. It's right by a Chevron, and when the station's open it's hair-raising at times, because it gives us a fourth direction to have to keep an eye on. There's a small street that runs briefly parallel to the major street, and the street that we cross as well. It's bad because it's hard to judge where people are going. This is why the speed limit is only 30 mph.
We were crossing this morning--after having stopped and checked for traffic, as always--and damn near got flattened anyway. Little car turned off the street that runs parallel to the big one, going way too damn fast, and I did that little deer-in-the headlights thing where it's going through your mind in a split second "Which way do I break? Run towards the side we were going to, or the one we were coming from? Is he gonna hit the brakes? Is he gonna swerve? Should I shove the kid out of the way?" And, of course, "Oh, FUCK!" I broke towards the side we were crossing too, he swerved in the other direction, blood did not flow. It was all over in a second or two, and I was cursing and hugging my kid and wondering why I wasn't more scared than I was. It was all kind of unreal. I don't think we were in much danger, really, because whoever it was saw us--Bobbie's jacket was white, mine a very light gray--and he wasn't going as fast as it seemed, or hit his brakes good or something. Or maybe my brain is trying to protect me. I dunno.
Funny thing is, there was a letter-to-the-editor in the paper just yesterday on the topic of how dangerous San Antonio is for pedestrians. And it's true. There is no sidewalk at all for the vast majority of our walk to the bus stop; thankfully the land is undeveloped and we can get up well away from the street (speed limit 45, routinely broken). Even in many of the nicer neighborhoods there are no sidewalks; I was in Windcrest last week with Robert and there wasn't a sidewalk to be seen.
I think part of it is this: no one walks in this city unless they're poor. Which, of course, isn't 100% true, but it holds a lot of water (just like almost no one rides the bus unless they're poor). Those who've managed to scrape together just enough money to buy a hoopty tend to be very disdainful of those of us still on the hoof. Many others simply don't look. It does not seem to occur to most drivers that anyone might be walking. (Motorcycle riders will be familiar with the cousin to this blindness!)
The letter actually annoyed me a bit, though, as the writer mentioned something about being almost hit several times crossing driveways. It is his understanding--a correct one--that pedestrians have the right of way. So, apparently he wanders out with great faith in his righteousness. Meanwhile, you will find me standing there getting progressively more annoyed while I wait for a break in traffic or that one person who knows he's supposed to stop. (And frankly, it is very seldom women who stop, even if I've got the kids with me.) I have the right of way. I know this. I am still not willing to take on the law of physics, as I somehow think it trumps Texas law. Greater mass, in other words, pretty much always wins out.
In Connecticut, people stopped. Whether the pedestrian was in a crosswalk or not, the drivers would stand their car on its nose to stop for them. Being of good German rule-following stock, I have naturally done much the same ever since learning I was supposed to in Driver's Ed. (I also do freakish stuff like signal my lane changes, but that's a topic for a different post.) In Virginia, they usually did not. Ditto Hawaii, unless you were downtown in the midst of a tourist throng. Hawaii matched this with a tendency by small, elderly Asian ladies to wander out into traffic. Pedestrians, in the right, got killed much more often in Hawaii than here.
San Antonio is a city of near-misses. Though pedestrians are taken out on a semi-regular basis, it's usually when they've wandered drunkenly out into traffic.
I prefer walking and riding the bus, especially when headed downtown. My college campus is on the northern fringes of downtown. I wouldn't drive in even if I had a parking pass & enough money to pay for gas every day.
Of course, downtown is where the tourists are. I was standing at the trolley stop at Navarro & East Houston downtown this morning after dropping Bobbie, reading my book & waiting for the trolley to take me to Bill Miller's, when movement out of the corner of my eye caught my attention. I looked up and there were three women standing in the middle of the intersection, doing a slow circle. Conventiongoers, obviously (too nicely dressed for tourists, but standing out in the street like 'em). Thankfully, traffic was light. They appeared to be looking for a place to eat, as they spotted the Delivery Market and tottered off toward it. I was sorely tempted to aks them whether there were any streets where they came from, but they were on the other side of East Houston from me.
East Houston is bad for people wandering out into traffic. My mother, the girls, & I were walking to (you guessed it) a trolley stop some short time ago when a woman staggered out of the Majestic Theater, white wine in hand, and stood out in the middle of the street to stare--I presume drunkenly--up at the marquee, completely oblivious to traffic oncoming from two directions. There are several hotels in that small area, and a number of chi-chi restaurants, and of course the theater, and this seems to breed stupidity in people who do not normally walk anywhere. I have seen people wander down the middle of the traffic lane on a semi-regular basis lately.
So while I want to defend the honor of my fellow pedestrians...I cannot. I've seen too much to be able to do so with any honesty. Too many people wandering up the center-turn-lane of a seven-lane street. Too many pushing strollers ahead of them as they dodge oncoming traffic. Too many walking out in front of a bus (for the record, I wait until the bus pulls completely away from the stop, 'cause you just can't see around those suckers), or out from between parked cars. It's crazy.
In the battle of car vs person, car wins. This is a simple fact, yet apparently escapable.
Saturday, January 03, 2009
Training up the next generation of Do-Nothings
A short while ago, I checked out from the library a book called Hey Day by "Super Clea" and "Keva Marie". It's a young adult book I picked up because it looked vaguely interesting & I was hoping for a crochet pattern or two.
It's a day book, every page dated for one day of the year, with a different activity or recipe or whatnot on each page. Sounds cool, right?
Right. Reading through it I pegged it for silly "grrl power" crap, but vaguely amusing. Then I got to January 19th, which is Linda's birthday. This is what's on that day, & you'll see immediately why I didn't read much farther:
Let's pause here for a moment, shall we? Let's just stop, and ask ourselves what we would do, what we would like our children to do when confronted with something like graffiti on our an elementary school playground. Got that in your head? Hold it there. I'm going to give you the book's advice, and though you can probably guess what it is since I'm posting here to bitch about it, I can pretty much guarantee it's not what YOU would do.
OK, so here it is. Just scroll down some:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
Yep, that's it. In big giant letters like that, centered in the middle of the page like that. Write a letter.
Back to the book:
Well, then.
Mind you, I do not object to writing letters to your Congresscritters. There are reasons to do so. This is not one of them.
I will give the solution here, so as to save sweet young things all that effort of figuring out who their representative is:
GO CLEAN IT UP YOURSELF. That's right. Don't "do something" by writing a letter to demand that someone else do something, do something. Stop by the office Monday morning and ask permission to try scrubbing the graffiti off, or to paint over it. Talk with other alumni of the school, and see about getting together to paint a mural over the graffiti, if it's on a wall (again, with permission). Time was, taggers respected murals and would not deface them. (I realize this is no longer a universal thing, sadly, but it's worth the effort.) Call the United Way or stop by the library and chat up one of the librarians to see if there's a community organization that you can volunteer with. Community centers are a good place for this info as well, generally speaking, as is City Hall.
Letters do have a use in this situation. If there's no community organization dedicated to dealing with this sort of thing--and there most likely is--write a letter to the editor of your newspaper to help recruit volunteers for one.
There is only one thing that has a hope in hell of rescuing a neighborhood. Neighbors. Not the government. The government really doesn't give a good goddamn, especially not the Washington crowd. We have seen time and again that when neighbors huddle in their houses and hope for the government to sweep in & better things, it only gets worse and worse, until everyone who can flee has, and the only folks left are the poverty-stricken and the gangbangers. When people come out of their houses--and granted, sometimes this is so very dangerous I do not fault them for not doing this--and make a concerted effort to improve their community, it tends to happen. I've seen it happen, on occasion.
Writing a letter and expecting someone else to fix the problem. Hmm, who does this sound like?
(And on a side note, why the hell do I get redirected to a contribution page when I type www.BarackObama.com into my browser? I thought the dude made a record-breaking amount of money. Why does he want more?)
It's a day book, every page dated for one day of the year, with a different activity or recipe or whatnot on each page. Sounds cool, right?
Right. Reading through it I pegged it for silly "grrl power" crap, but vaguely amusing. Then I got to January 19th, which is Linda's birthday. This is what's on that day, & you'll see immediately why I didn't read much farther:
So one day you find yourself walking down the street, and you come across your old elementary school (as Keva does every Sunday morning when she walks to the coffee shop). So there you are, gazing upon your old school. You feel happy as you reminisce about first-grade crushes when all of a sudden you notice this vulgar, disgusting, super nasty graffiti all over what used to be your four-square court. "YUCK!" you yell, but no one is around.
You feel angry and sad. You feel like somethign should be done about this. But you don't know what...
Let's pause here for a moment, shall we? Let's just stop, and ask ourselves what we would do, what we would like our children to do when confronted with something like graffiti on our an elementary school playground. Got that in your head? Hold it there. I'm going to give you the book's advice, and though you can probably guess what it is since I'm posting here to bitch about it, I can pretty much guarantee it's not what YOU would do.
OK, so here it is. Just scroll down some:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
Write a letter!
Yep, that's it. In big giant letters like that, centered in the middle of the page like that. Write a letter.
Back to the book:
To whom, you ask? Why, to someone who has the power, such as a government official. Letters, when written well, can be a very powerful thing. They are a call to action, a plea for help, a real voice from a member of the community. And who knows, hopefully you will get a response or, better yet, a solution!
Well, then.
Mind you, I do not object to writing letters to your Congresscritters. There are reasons to do so. This is not one of them.
I will give the solution here, so as to save sweet young things all that effort of figuring out who their representative is:
GO CLEAN IT UP YOURSELF. That's right. Don't "do something" by writing a letter to demand that someone else do something, do something. Stop by the office Monday morning and ask permission to try scrubbing the graffiti off, or to paint over it. Talk with other alumni of the school, and see about getting together to paint a mural over the graffiti, if it's on a wall (again, with permission). Time was, taggers respected murals and would not deface them. (I realize this is no longer a universal thing, sadly, but it's worth the effort.) Call the United Way or stop by the library and chat up one of the librarians to see if there's a community organization that you can volunteer with. Community centers are a good place for this info as well, generally speaking, as is City Hall.
Letters do have a use in this situation. If there's no community organization dedicated to dealing with this sort of thing--and there most likely is--write a letter to the editor of your newspaper to help recruit volunteers for one.
There is only one thing that has a hope in hell of rescuing a neighborhood. Neighbors. Not the government. The government really doesn't give a good goddamn, especially not the Washington crowd. We have seen time and again that when neighbors huddle in their houses and hope for the government to sweep in & better things, it only gets worse and worse, until everyone who can flee has, and the only folks left are the poverty-stricken and the gangbangers. When people come out of their houses--and granted, sometimes this is so very dangerous I do not fault them for not doing this--and make a concerted effort to improve their community, it tends to happen. I've seen it happen, on occasion.
Writing a letter and expecting someone else to fix the problem. Hmm, who does this sound like?
(And on a side note, why the hell do I get redirected to a contribution page when I type www.BarackObama.com into my browser? I thought the dude made a record-breaking amount of money. Why does he want more?)
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