This has been a bit of a mixed bag week. On the one hand we’ve had the fact that it was 12/12/12 on the same day as the Feast of Guadalupe here in Mexico. Cue lots of early morning parties (for those of us not at work) and fireworks and noisemakers from morning til night.
At school we’re fully into prepping for the Xmas concert. Lots of singing about snow….standing outside in the blistering heat. It is both lovely and confusing at the same time. I like Christmas, I really do but Mexico and its sunshine is not a place for Xmas cheer. It feels weird to be singing about snow glistening and mistletoe when there is no sign of either. Luckily I’m heading to Minneapolis over the break and there is lots of snow there, and maybe there’ll be some mistletoe too!
This week I am waiting on news about the birth of my new niece or nephew. I can tell you that this is more precious to me than the re-enacting of the arrival of the big JC! I am hoping for updates from home, every 10 minutes or more frequent if necessary!
This week also saw the creation of all the social networking sites for The Plus Ones which is the new performance project from Chelley McLear and I. We had both been part of Scream Blue Murmur from its inception and earlier this year we decided to jump ship and form our own performance duo. We are hoping that you will follow us and stalk us a little bit on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/ThePlus1s) and Twitter (@theplus1s) We’ve also applied to do the Minnesota Fringe Festival and we’re hoping we’ll get accepted and then we can bring you details of our brand, spanking new shoe….I mean show. There will not be new shoes. No wait, that’s a lie. There will be new shoes…..and probably poems about shoes. Like you expect anything else.
And as with everything, every yin needs a yang. This week contained the massacre of 20 kids and 6 staff members at a school in Connecticut by some crazed gunman. I don’t think there are words to express the horror of such things. I cannot fathom the agony that the parents, classmates and teachers are suffering through. And I cannot begin to imagine how to explain such a hideous act to ones so young. As many of you know I am a teacher and so I know firsthand how much of a family a school community is. I cannot imagine losing part of that family in such a horrific way.
In reading about the Connecticut tragedy I have also been forced to read about the idiocy of the Westboro Baptist Church who have decided in their “wisdom” to picket the funerals of the people killed. I cannot understand what goes on in the minds of people to make them think that picketing the funeral of small children is an acceptable choice. There is no God in actions like that. And I fail to understand how people can be so far removed from reality. As always with tragedies like this and people’s reactions to it I wonder not only about their sanity but also their lack of empathy. I don’t care about political or social labels but if you cannot react to this as one human being to another, from one human heart to another then there is something seriously wrong.
There seems to be too many of these tragedies, too many lives lost and too many families ripped apart by grief. I can’t fix this. No words will make it any better. Nothing I write here will ensure that this never happens again. No amount of outrage on my part will bring those kids back to their parents. Checkmate.
Still reading The Book of Tea by Kakuzo Okakura
Start & finish All my Sons by Arthur Miller (my class will be studying it next term)
Start Spanish for Dummies (recommended reading from our Spanish teacher)
aislingdoherty.com 