This is dedicated to Paul Chavez.
He posts this picture of two genetically affected South Africans to characterize others as "in-bred" when he doesn't like their voting. He's a teacher. If you call him out on using this for such a purpose because these are human beings just like he is, he tells you essentially to stick it.
A teacher.




Foolishness speaks to the dead.

I am often that foolish, I speak to the dead.

Today I voted in an election that I personally have found appalling.
Someone speaking out against banking nightmares and corporations and wealth, at first I thought heroically raising important issues appears to condone the terrible behavior of his supporters-the one for peace with unpeaceful supporters is now playing poor loser. Good grief.
The repeated racism and violence supported in "the other side" by a man married to money, a woman running while being attacked as not "the right woman." Looking back through the news cycle it may well have been worst primary behavior in history, but at 56 I can certainly state it feels lousy enough to be remembered in 200 years, by those we cannot see. Uninspiring from the greatest nation on earth.

It would be utter foolishness on my part to try to point out a few thousand things here tonight to defend that assertion, and I'd be hated even if correct. Actually this cycle correctness is hated.

A country of haters, this voting America.

No one can take pride in seeing a woman, 96 years after women gaining the vote,  onto the ticket of a major party because we are, after all, a nation incapable of managing our on-line behavioral emotions into caring over hating. Hating won this election in these primaries clearly. A bunch of on-line trolls.

Before I hear Hillary's speech I can say it better be one hell of a speech. Because way too many of our people have simply turned to salt.


As a woman I have valued a simple bottomline for my choice.
And here I speak not to the greater number, but to those few that know me. When my girls were little they played a President's game with my mother from a box of pictures of each President with their name and facts on the back of the portrait from the National Gallery. (And they also played map with a 6 foot California map). These were the "games" of my mother. They would try to figure out which President they'd pulled out of a hat-and then check the back of the card to check the guess. The game came from the Smithsonian but was bought by my Mother at the Reagan Library with the few dollars she had. (She died with one dollar and 37 cents to her name.)One day I was outside the door listening to the President's Game. One daughter noted they were all old white men. Mom pulled out Kennedy saying, "He was very young to us." And then my Sylvia said, "Well they are all MEN, I can't be a President because I'm a girl." She was six. And I note always noting gender issues all her life

My mother replied, "Well Sylvia we will not see a woman be President in my lifetime. But maybe we will in yours."

My mother died three years ago.
And she died correct about that. She would be appalled by what is in the media and on-line this election year. My mother never missed a vote-a staunch League of Woman Voter always fighting for voting rights.

In truth I feel I put this "woman thing" ahead of other things this election cycle. I do find Hillary Clinton intelligent and capable. And certainly progressive with which I identify. It would kill me to see a poorly prepared dunderhead reach such a pinnacle. So I decided I would follow my intuition in my voting. It fit me, and it certainly can fit the needs of the times.

I have heard more hate in the last few months than I really want to hear in a lifetime. I've seen enough. On-line.

I'm going to say something rare for me.
Losing is perfectly ok. It is in how you do it you reveal who you are. Having made mistakes is human. Digging yourself in a hole with the flare of your emotions is a rather common state of being, but....

Crapping on humanity, hating, demeaning, dividing, is the lowest common denominator-it's easy and it sucks us all down. I don't know of what it could possibly do to solve much. It is not "the revolution" or "anti-establishment."
And after awhile I think you can't even see yourself in others anymore.
Look in the mirror. Try to see your reflection. Be capable of losing.

I lose all the time. I never enjoy it, but I usually learn about who I am doing so.

Yesterday I transversed many miles metaphorically in my realities. So then, if you will a day's journey.
That's not well put, none of this will be, but I went to bed not having caught up to myself- and I woke up thinking about this.
Yesterday early in the morning a teacher in K stopped me a second for a warm good morning, she was thinking about the importance to her of "structured play."
 I, perhaps, will return to that as a line of thought- truly return to it another day after this year is done,  because what she was talking about I do want to deconstruct. Then I taught my class of TK students filtering the fact I have just about finished a year with a class that "came a long way," and how present they were in all we did- during our three or so hours together- including sharing a music lesson with my husband ,and eating tropical Popsicles. Children that eat pops of ice are completely present as they down their treat-not wanting, not even needing, anything-their rolling emotions are parked in pleasant-it's quite a few moments of "be here now."


And then I was driving with my husband to a celebration of the career of Judith Green, his PHD prof and her colleague, to celebrate work she engaged in in Santa Barbara in her amazing time as an ethnographer that has profoundly affected her field. I'd say, as I said to Jack, it was her retirement dinner except that she says it is not a retirement. Perhaps it is a shift in focus. We followed this amazing ceremony- which included a video that came from a time we were in Warner Springs and work done with kids there and across the country, ( I had a few of my students in the video) -showing their many facets of this work-reviving memories, to a dinner for her broad and amazing network where I talked about women actually with a filmwriter....mostly to learning in my car looking at my phone- of my uncle's death. So by ten at night, as well as traveling back from Santa Barbara- I had covered a lot of the ground I lived tangentially and experientially in my life. I talked of developing the witness self, who took over for me yesterday allowing me to step back to see the day perhaps a bit reflectively, differently than I might have twenty years ago.

My father's brother, Garland McIntosh, died in Tennessee yesterday-on a day when when the Greatest- Muhammad Ali- also passed from this earth. On some level that really makes sense to me. Ali was my husband's hero. So in the day I felt certain shifts in terra firma. My Dad was the second son in a family of 7, and his older brother would be hard for me to describe. That they grew up in the Depression in abject poverty wouldn't really capture much, or that he never missed a day in forty some years in a fabric mill, or served in the Army, or Dad used his name to enter the service at 14, and obviously was called MAC over Garland until many years later he made the lie right, Garland- was who Dad must have answered to-on many levels. I would imagine Dad depended on this brother-and I bet my father will be absolutely devastated by his passing. I don't know, Dad has stopped talking to me really. I think of my Uncle sitting in a kitchen around a table next to a wife he adored, just talking. A loving Dad, enveloped in mountains, with the all of us being fed by his wife Eunice and my grandmother-eating what the family grew....sharing their tragedies and wisdom. It's a backwards journey into a time of their supreme independence, family, who I was very young when I knew. My cousin wrote a text to say he was in Heaven. And I read this text in Santa Barbara in the parking lot of a French restaurant (first time eating out in months) looking at the mountains, hearing the night, wondering about all we touch by our lives, what ways we affect one another, appreciating that when I got out of college Garland drove my grandmother over to see me and he gave me some advice. She did too.

I can't say I took that advice, because he gave it operating on false story my father was spewing to justify his divorces and remarriages and his own projections with even some malice in his heart then, which lead them to think I was wild. But I remember he cared enough to care.
I was really at the time caring for my mom through a stroke we thought was a breakdown, and her mom was  living with us- who would soon die of Alzheimer-the disease that would many years later stomp on Garland. He could tell I'm sure looking around that he hadn't gotten the real story from Dad who was lying to his family. And since my Dad entered service under Garland's name, because he helped minor rob his uncle's small family store in east Tenn in his early teens I think perhaps put into service as his punishment by my grandfather as Garland-he may have  sensed he didn't know what was really afoot. I think he grew quiet because he knew things are often not just what we feel, or hear, or say, or are told. There is much we can't truly know. Secrets we can't know. I didn't grow up daily knowing my uncle. What I saw was a Dad that cared deeply for his kids and wife. Who loved to fish and who came together with us when Dad went home and agreed we were a part of his family. Those days ended for me when I was about 14.

It's funny but yesterday jarred memories of things that happened in my life I forgot, or mis-placed. Students I taught-projects I had a tiny hand in, circles and points of contact with others. I met a woman that is a close friend of my immediate boss. I wouldn't have seen that coming, it's the end of the school year-I'm exhausted...it was a tiny thread of something hard to unwravel.Things cropping up, bits and pieces of meanings. That person expressed to me that we never know in life who we meet or know-how that might be a part of the next road we take.

Judith Green profoundly affected my life and my husband. I admire her so so greatly. Her work in the field of understanding learning is a testament to her understanding of community and commitment. She is an "advancer" -my word, and a "bad ass", my husband's words. She blew through barrier and ceilings and did something to construct her realities and thus constructed some part of mine. It was amazing to sit and listen to her students and colleagues and family talk about their experiences together. It was an honor to be invited. I always come away from being in her presence feeling just very good. She's a rare thing-those she touches seem to move forward-thus my term-advancer, there are not many on this earth....she is one that helped my life. I hope to the heavens she stays on top of her game for another thirty years at the least-this field of education needs her perspectives and bad assness.

Jack was driving our car...which probably describes the metaphor I experienced yesterday-making it more understandable. As I looked out the window I was shaping his thoughts and interacting, I knew that and I knew why he insisted I WAS going I kept asking we stop to eat mashed potatoes somewhere...I don't know why. He told me at some point that " play by definition is unstructured" end of discussion, he shared his thoughts about bad asses like Judith and how she is someone who took on social justice in an active lexicon, he reflected on each child in my room and their singing, he asked me a few things about my Uncle Garland, he drove us through the rock and geology units I insisted we start in Warner due to the majestic geology in the San Diego mountains that became the work of ethnographers within the contexts of something we revisited 13 years later, he drove me...and perhaps I read the directions as I did yesterday with him telling me he already knew and my at last second insisting on the left he was missing. And his jerking us left-while I closed my eyes.

Judith said to us that we construct our realities.
And I thought yesterday and this morning about how family, home, life, friends, situations, shape us into who we are. All of us more aware than ever that our time is short, and we do the best we can, because as Judith said, we are not a problem. It is just problematic.

When I was in training, in university, my Art Education teacher Bill Thomas once said something to the effect that if we can connect the home, and world in that home of the student, to our projects in an art room-if we can glimpse who the student is-then our lesson design was doing something profound.

He was teaching how to design starting points for children's work as an art educator. Something we needed fieldwork to experience and understand but those days were in front of us. And indeed over my many years working as teacher and artist, art teacher,  I saw the bridge, but rarely.
He understood the elusive edge. To connect to who that child is, that was his point.

One time I glimpsed it I had set up an "Olympics" for a wild two classes- days and days of events that I ran with two 6th grade classes-Mrs. S abandoning her kids to me at the end of the year, and my having everything from ringtoss to how high can you reach, along with more traditional events I one by one ran for medals I made out of yarn and tag. How was this art?
We did manufacture the medals as I recall now, but at the cardboard covered pavement art came to exist. And not even at the chalkdrawing competition. A student, Kevin, came to the dance off, where it was 12 girls and a great breakdancer from my class who could easily go to LA and dance on the Santa Monica pier for money. Armed with his expensive and going to be ruined tap shoes, Kevin waded into some pretty determined kids. He was a student in S's room- student getting the A's but often teased by his class, sometimes unmercifully for certain things like his love of and collection of pewter. (which we shared btw as a passion). He came and bar none in my Life-in a dancing family-tapped with the greats-it was barrel rolls that topped my daughter's who stunned her studio. No one had ANY idea he was a competitive tapper, and almost no kid had ever seen tap dance. Great way to learn it exists. He brought his own player and I had to jerry-rig extension cords as I recall. I have never seen talent in a leotard to match that. Every child there had never seen a guy in a leotard in our barrio. And he took dance, the art that it is, and killed it.
No one looked at Kevin the same way, that I can tell you.

I saw this as the potentials, home lives, abilities we never tap in school, that art bridged.

My husband had a short little conversation maybe two years ago with a person in his district that was working in the library. We lost librarians before my career started. I suppose librarian clerks at minimal wages are forced to do what training and degrees might help, but she expressed a desire to do some art with kids, and he HEARD her. She began and he encouraged her setting up, or supporting her trying something in her library art connected.
He decided around this time after re-instituting full music programs, within his district, to pursue art as well as music teachers. He hired art teachers, with the support of Board and district,  and one new hire at the last second left, leaving him with a year starting and no art teacher. (Totally professional she had applied and taken one job while working out another.) That turned out to be the best thing that ever happened for children because the district team put into place that library clerk, she had some ed training, degree, and a hunger to teach art. Now her blog might say this better than I can, if you can scroll it.
createelrio.wordpress.com 
I go there and just literally laugh with the joy of it. (or here https://twitter.com/MrsGuzik)

If you look through her year so far, the images you will SEE play, invention, support of core standards, art ed principles, joy, delight, connection, bridges to culture, samples of  recurrent themes, her adjusting to student levels, you'll pretty much take a course in what an art teacher can do K-8.
If you can scroll with time you'll see how over time she is changing and her students are changing. In short, I'm looking somewhat at myself early in my career-if I had one heck of a cognitive boost and a camera.
AND I see her pulling her children through art movements, art history too with pieces like her recent POP art volcanoes, or the works studying Kandinsky. Since art is embedded in culture, since in the 20th century it drove us forward through massive wars, change, technological growth-you see her students glimpsing the enormity that is "man".

What is man? Who are we? What is the reason?
These things have lined the inner world of artist and humans since time began. I would venture that right this minute as folks around our world are deciding life is something to be blown apart, hurled, to crush the other-as these themes are reverberating we COULD look at what was spawned when a version of that paralyzed our grandparents in the 1950's. as nuclear war loomed and drills for potential nuclear disaster hit, even in schools, as folks dug and lead walled a room in the backyard, art sprang forward with the abstract expressionists.
My brother just the other day commented on Pollock. He still feels his approach as a laziness, a gesture. A cheat.
And I think, when life is meaningless and a man contemplates with his brotheren mass extinction, what image captures that inner awareness. So I know the students sitting before me in my little TK, given the bridge to the arts may well represent to their peer group one day the times we are in. And in doing so, help us once more to work on, who are we? Why are we here? To make visual and give meaning to the hidden.

These young art teachers who largely do not exist thanks to NCLB, thanks to the painter George Bush's policies, may well help us to examine our feet in a tub of hotwater as Bush has, help us to put our relationship to one another into portrait form. Help us move into reality and out of our head. Art is ultimately on the plain of doing. It is zen, it is movement, form, feeling, systems, structures, it is both language and meaning, metaphor embedded in actual physical reality. It serves a broader purpose so necessary to human life. It is a bridge to experience, planet, others, emotion, meaning.
When I was young we were satified saying "art is."

If I put a sign on my door tomorrow, at my school, with permission of course, or not, "art classes at two thirty" adults and children welcome- within a few days I would not be able to sit the crowd. As we made things together I'd have to have the Monday folks, the Tuesdays, the Wednesdays and so on. I doubt I could affort the supplies though I'd try. And I'd be carried along into something I'd do even if exhausted, sick, and not feel anything but the excitement. Of course I know this. And from engineer's child to the child of the mom with a second grade education the playing field would be level enough we could start and learn from one another.

One time I thought about rocks. I pictured rocks one could hold in your hand, worry stones. My husband that year asked me as he always does to suggest and teach his summer school art, for about two hundred kids. He sent out his head custodian to get me some stones, and he did. In came these gigantic, rounded many ton rocks. Hundreds. So we painted rocks with acrylic and sealant in exuberant  sessions on long, long tables covered with bright paper. I can imagine we spent a fortune on the paint, but we really took all my craft paint from years of saving it. And bought some too. Children produced amazing garden stones and after sealed and displayed I went back home enjoying summer, while they lined areas of the school garden, and rocks went home on buses in what I would call a rather questionable moment in his thinking. But I suppose my point is-within the happening adults to child, community was created. No one forgets it.Not worry at all. Not a bit.

Art is happening. 
Art is love, it is all you feel, it is a training, a passion, a compulsion, a precision, a methodology, a core of your humanity.

It would be amazingly great to see it returned to our children so they can gift us with a tomorrow that can consider itself.