Tales from the Shark Tank

It’s been just about 46 years since the Supreme Court first said clearly that the people in positions of authority in the schools must not, under the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, promote any particular religion. That includes administrators, teachers, bureaucrats and therapists, among others. It also includes substitute teachers.

That brings us to this morning. A little group of girls walking into the high school math class I was subbing for today looked over towards the desk, saw me, and said things along the lines of “We’ve got you? Wow!” One girl even stuck her head back out into the hall and called to a friend: “Hey, Casey, it’s gonna be fine. We’ve got Ms. C.!” I’ve been greeted enthusiastically before, but this was a whole new level. Then the assistant principle came in to tell the class that if they didn’t behave, I was to send them to the office forthwith. I agreed that I would do so, adding that I didn’t expect trouble; I’d not had any previously. (I had none today either; I had only to say “Please do ‘X’” and it was done without a murmur. Liking does not mean lack of respect.) When he had left, I asked the girl nearest me what was going on – and the floodgates opened. It seems the sub they had last was auditioning for evangelical b**** of the year. Not only was her idea of maintaining order to scream at them, but she targeted one particular child and would not leave her alone. “Jesus wants you” was quoted to me, as was “Repent and return to Jesus”. The girl in question dresses as a goth, and wears a pentacle. She’s also quiet, polite, very bright and very hard-working. Everyone was angry on her behalf, even the kids I knew came from evangelical families.

I was stunned. The separation of religion and school has been clear for nearly half a century. Nor need you be an attorney to be aware of it. It’s in the news at intervals. I’ve never met a parent who didn’t know that’s how it was supposed to be, however they felt about it. I blew the proverbial gasket. The kids know, because I’ve let them see, that I’m multi-dimensional. They’ve seen my costume drawings in my sketch book. They’ve seen me hemming a cloak. They’ve heard me toss in the random bit of social history that puts some action or other in perspective in terms of the attitude of its time. And they know I’m a lawyer, who is choosing to be a mom. So when I told the child in question, in front of the whole class, that what that sub had done was not only inappropriate and rude but also illegal and that she should report it to the principal, they listened, and started asking questions. They were good ones, too; they were eager for something they could actually think about instead of just memorize. So the first quarter-hour of that class wasn’t spent on Algebra, but I think that bunch of Freshmen got a good if impromptu lesson in Constitutional rights. The kid herself was rather stunned, and very grateful to have another authority figure supporting her so unequivocally. She came up to talk to me when the others started to work on their assignments, asking me why this was so personal an issue for me. So I told her. We talked for another 20 minutes. I asked her, at one point, if she wanted me to help her with the assignment since we’d spent almost the whole class period talking. She smiled and brushed it aside, saying that math was easy and she was getting an A, and would get it done in study hall.

The Bill of Rights forbids the government from establishing or supporting any particular religion. There was good cause for that: the excesses and persecutions of Protestant monarchs against Catholic subjects, and of Catholic monarchs against Protestant subjects, were still very recent when the Bill of Rights was written. The Jacobite Rebellions in England, a conflict between the Catholic James II and the Protestant William and Mary, had ended in 1745. The stories of the Protestant Huguenot exodus from France, escaping massacres that would probably now be characterized as “ethnic cleansing”, would have been part of family stories about parents and grandparents. Paul Revere’s father was one of those immigrants, settling in Boston; Revere would have absorbed that awareness of what a government-supported Church could do along with his lessons in silver craft.

That didn’t mean all was smooth sailing thereafter, of course. But in 1962 the Supreme Court said very specifically that no one religion could be presented in a public school, where the kids are a captive audience. I’m glad that’s the current standard, not only as an attorney, but as a parent. I’ve been asked, now and again, what I “have against religion”. Nothing. Nothing whatsoever. I am, in my own life, a deeply religious person. But I don’t want anyone in school, where my child has no choice but to go, teaching him religion. That’s both our job and our right, mine and my husband’s; if we delegate to other teachers, we choose them, and know that they will, for the most part, teach him the same things we would. The same is true for every child in a public school. School is a place for learning everything from science to social skills, but it is not a place for learning how to be [insert religion or lack thereof of your choice here.]

So the arrogance of this woman, whom the children do not respect and actively despise, strikes a very personal chord. I told the assistant principal about it, telling him all I knew except the name of the girl in question, because she’d asked me not to. I think the child is hoping that I and that other sub will be there on the same day. And in a way, I hope so too. I’m still boiling on behalf of a child who couldn’t defend herself, couldn’t tell that woman to go away and leave her alone, was nearly in tears just thinking about the experience. I’d relish the chance to tell Ms. Evangalist that the separation of Church and State has not expired.

Everyone in the house is sick, to greater or lesser degree. Today was a snow day; the phone call from the alert system telling us this came at 5:30 a.m., and woke our boychick – which meant that whether I intended to be awake or not, I was getting up every seven minutes. And as Murphy would have it, last night was one for rodent-wheel insomnia. (You know, the kind where the brain is spinning off to nowhere, but won’t shut up? Yeah, I thought you did.) I am sick and tired of being sick and tired and in a rotten mood. I don’t even want to be on the same planet as me. So you who talk to me, be it occasionally or regularly? Consider yourself warned.

Here endeth the kvetch.

My husband is teaching our son (who requested it) to play Kingmaker. (For the non-gamers, that’s a game based on the English War of the Roses.) That is our context. But it is still an attention grabber to hear, wafting over from the dining room table in plaintive tones, “Dad, can I kill something now?”

I am awake for a time in most nights. Sometimes it’s only enough to stumble into the bathroom and back to bed, but others, such as tonight, I am nearly awake enough to start the day, but it’s an unsanctified hour of dark. Not one I wasn’t accustomed to seeing, but when I was in college and from the other end, not now. The technical name is insomnia; my personal one is frustrating.

But tonight has been worth the time awake. First there was my youngest cat, Miss Cloud. I found her tucked into a corner by a kitchen cabinet so tightly that you’d swear she was trying it on for size, growling under her breath. Then I watched her hindquarters bunch and push her further into that corner, when I wouldn’t have thought that was possible. When she backed out, it was with a tiny brown rodent very firmly in her jaws, and very clearly dead.

I had wondered if she would manage to learn to hunt, since she isn’t allowed outside. Sophia taught Tornado, but she did it outside, in the fields near the house. Inside, there’s less opportunity. But apparently there was enough, because Cloud has obviously learned the skills. She has also been profusely petted and praised and told she’s a Good Girl. I’m not sure she understands what she’s being praised for, as I couldn’t get close enough while she still had the mouse. That’s what the growling was about. It was her mouse, her very own by Bast, and woe betide the human or cat that dared to challenge her right to devour it!

That would have been fascination enough. But I remembered that the litter box in the attic needed cleaning, so I took an old grocery bag, saved for that express purpose, and went to take care of it. There’s a window over the attic stairs, which gives a clear panoramic view out the back of the house, across yard and woods and fields. It’s a brilliant night; still cloudy, but the moon is so bright it still manages to light the landscape. It was certainly clear enough for me to see the small rabbit against the snow. And if it was clear to me, it was undoubtedly 10 times more so to the owl that swooped down from somewhere near the trees behind the house to pluck the little creature off the snow and sail off toward the woods. The rabbit didn’t know the hunter was there until it was far too late; it didn’t even try to escape until the extended talons were no more than mere inches from its back. It was an incredible, amazing thing to watch, so fast and precise that it is only after that my slow human eyes could disentangle what they had seen. One minute there is a rabbit, looking to see what might be found edible that has not been fully concealed by the snow, and then – blink – there is a soon to be well fed, silent hunter sailing toward the trees. No more rabbit on the ground. No scuffle. Tracks that lead from the brush pile to a point in the open, then simply stop. And a clear, sure flight, wide wings that flap only once, despite the added weight clutched in talons.

Life in a farmhouse, very late at night. Sometimes insomnia has its compensations. I can sleep another time. Watching the hunters is a privilege I would not forego.

I hope that someone among my various and assorted friends and acquaintances is taking pictures of tonight’s eclipse. That’s all I’ll be seeing of it – pictures. We have lake-effect snow falling, which of necessity is descending silently and steadily from clouds. Heavy, dense, moisture-filled, opaque clouds. My friend left me voice mail telling me the eclipse was “worth seeing”, and I have no doubt that it is – there. Here? Not so much.

Sigh.

My in-laws 50th wedding anniversary is at the end of this week. My brother and sister in law hosted a party in honor of the occasion, with pictures set out and the wedding album for everyone to look at. The entire wedding party fit around the family dining room table. The only word I can find for the way my mother-in-law looks in those pictures is “sweet”. It’s clear that her dress isn’t white; in fact, it’s a street-length dress, with which she had a small veil and a bouquet of white flowers. The photographs are black-and-white, but she says the dress was turquoise blue. That made me smile, because the jacket she wore to the party was also turquoise blue. And my sister-in-law, bless her creative soul, found a baker to copy the wedding cake from a photo. The only difference was the topper – instead of a bride and groom, there was a golden “50″ on top.

The friends they’ve done things with since at least the early 60s were there, and the conversation was still, as I’m sure it was then, about kids. The difference, of course, is that now they’re talking about grand-kids – of whom 5 small examples were running around the house. (Four of them lived there; our son was the fifth.) There were other things on the conversational table as well, of course, everything from the political candidates to the hip replacement one man is having next week. It was fascinating to listen these women, all college educated before that was the norm, talking about the candidates in terms of women’s rights. I’ve been trying to explain, when I’ve subbed in high school history classes, why that is still important and something of what the assumptions were within the term of my own memory. It’s difficult; not only they but their mothers have little or no direct memory of a time when the attitude that women were inherently inferior was not only common, but utterly permeated every possible aspect of the culture. It was borne in upon me last night that no matter how immediate it is for me, mo matter to what extent I and my peers had to be trail-blazers, it is even more visceral for these women.

This was a celebration of companionship and love, partnership and friendship, that grew as the partners did, not only for my in-laws but for their friends, all of whom married in the same year or so. But for me, born in the year they were wed, it was a brief look into a future we will, if we are fortunate, come to in our time, as well as a look into a past as distant for me as the time I grew into social consciousness is to the kids I sometimes try to teach.

I was listening as our son and his friends were playing with his trains today. K. was the narrator, with J. enacting whatever K. said was happening. Near as I can tell, Miss Cloud walked through and pounced on some building beside the track, making it move. “Thomas is going to wreck!” said K. “He can’t see where he’s going. He closed his eyes because he got scared by the Haunted Cat-house!”

I’m very glad I was in the kitchen. I could laugh myself silly, and since they didn’t see it I didn’t have to explain what was so funny.

There is a new Janome quilter’s sewing machine rejoicing upstairs on my desk, and I think I may be in love.

I understand now why the dealer was willing to sell it for 25% of list price. It’s a 2004 model, and while the website still shows the model number, the features have changed. The new one has alphabets among the fancy stitches, and a memory that allows one to string together those stitches, save the whole, and then push a button and watch it happen. So I can’t do monograms or write. My heart is broken. NOT! As to the stitch sequences, I can do it, but I have to make it happen one step at at time – set a stitch, let it complete (I can set it to stop at the end of that sequence), then set another.

But I didn’t get it for the fancy stitches, except for the buttonholes. I got it because it can do things like feed brocade and cotton together at the same speed. I got it because it will sew a 1/8 inch seam allowance accurately. I got it because it while it does have default lengths and widths and tension and foot pressure, I can reset any of them to my own preference, and do it easily. It will handle stretch fabrics, synthetics, chiffon, fleece, cotton, flannel, silk and brocade with equal facility and ease. Nothing puckers. Nothing slips. Nothing feeds unevenly, not even going over a previously sewn seam in denim. I can set it to go slowly enough that my son feels confident of his ability to make it go and not get his fingers under it, or fast enough for my skills, which are pretty good.

I was told, and the research I did confirmed, that the made-in-Japan machines are solid, reliable, sturdy workhorses. Janome (who also makes New Home) is the best of those. Only time will tell if this will live up to the reputation in the long term. But I am delighted with what’s sitting upstairs right now. In fact, I think it’s calling my name right now. I’ve promised a friend a bodice by Valentine’s Day. And the way this works, I think I can deliver on that.

So if you all will pardon me, I’m going to go play with my new toy some more. I think this may be the start of a beautiful friendship.

I love the internet.

Having done my homework, tested a bunch of different machines, and decided what I wanted, I went hunting to see if anyone had any of them on sale. Someone did – a dealer in Pittsburgh. It is duly ordered, paid for and shipped, and should be arriving on Thursday. I can’t tell you how excited I am about this. I had a brief moment of wondering if it was really necessary, but then, in the process of mending a seam in my son’s pants, the one I’m replacing quit working. Completely. I tried to tweak it back into functionality, and couldn’t. So no, the new acquisition is not before time.

I did have to laugh at my husband’s perceptiveness, though. The expedition to test sewing machines entailed driving over to Chicago, as there is a dearth of dealers around here. I told a friend I hoped and planned to be home by around 5:00 p.m. Saturday. My husband’s comment to her was that my intentions were good, but that if I was playing with sewing machines such a plan was analogous to her husband – a confirmed car aficionado – saying that he was off to drive a Lamborghini and would be back in half an hour.

That’s ok. It’s nice to have a husband who knows me that well. The expedition served its purpose; I figured out what I wanted. I have confirmation; it’s been shipped. Now I just wait until Thursday. I’m tremendously excited!

I was pushing my shopping cart through the parking lot the other day, having filled it with all the assorted things we needed. I’d had a song running through my head, and being me, began to sing it to myself, only half aware that mental singing had morphed into something audible to others. Another woman, passing me, commented “you sound happy”. I blinked and realized what I was doing, smiled back in mild embarrassment and responded that singing as I walked was a childhood habit I’d never entirely broken.

“If I sang like that, I’d do it more often myself” she responded, and turned to unlock her car. It’s one thing when people you know compliment your voice, hearing it when you’re consciously performing. But a stranger, chance-met when you not only aren’t trying to sing for anyone else but aren’t altogether conscious that you’re doing so? Somehow that is something else. I started singing again, walking the rest of the way to my car – no longer unaware of it, but singing, as she’d thought to begin with, because I was happy.